Jeor understood the risk of what he was doing. He was especially aware of the fact that the titan was literally standing on an asteroid with nothing covering his shapely body.
It was not about the fact that he was naked that filled Jeor with trepidation. It was the fact that the man was able to stand there like everything was absolutely normal.
In the vacuum of space where not even sound could travel without being given a proper medium, this man was seemingly perfectly healthy. He did not seem to be breathing at all so why would he need a suit to sustain his body's needs? If anything, being completely naked felt more like an intimidation tactic, showing off his impervious self.
But still, Jeor cannot let this go. For one, he needed that asteroid for profits. Which also meant that he needed to know where this man had taken the rest of it. Second, this might not be the first asteroid of its kind in this area.
Judging by how fast this asteroid had shrunk in size, Jeor thought that this man had perhaps taken a couple others as well. And he wanted them for himself. Besides, if this man could come here with such an advanced ship, then he was surely not in desperate need of money unlike Jeor.
And the third and most important reason as to why Jeor risked talking to this man in an authoritative tone was because he was not lying. This region of space was still under the territory of the Starnet Company.
Although their influence is not as pronounced in these parts, that was mostly because it was a rather barren frontier zone. Well, at least it was barren until that one group found the Vitacor planet. So he was at least a little justified in his claims. Adam, however, had other thoughts.
Adam was initially wary of the ship that arrived, but he was also feeling expectant inside. He was really anticipating a fight that would allow him to test out his abilities, but he was immediately disappointed.
After observing the ship for a while, Adam realised that although it was durable, it was not really meant for battle. He did not know that it was a mining ship, but it did not matter. It would not even manage to break his ship's defensive barrier with its mining tools whereas he was certain it would take him only one or two punches to drill into the barrier.
Adam could tell that it would not be a problem to just destroy this ship and get back to devouring the asteroid, but he decided otherwise. After all, what he needed right now was information about the wider Universe.
The Universal System would only give him information on what the Universe itself allowed. The reason he was given information on the Corpus and their ultimate demise was because the Universe had allowed the system to give him such information. It was also the case that there were no other sources of such information other than the Universe itself.
In this case, however, if he wanted to find out about the situation of the civilisations outside the Solar System, then he would need to get it from others. The Universe would not help him with this even if he asked. And so, he did exactly that. He asked.
"What is this Company you speak of?"
Inside the mining ship, Jeor and his crew looked at the man with strange expressions on their faces. They wanted to ask where this idiot came from, but they held their tongues back. They did not want to unnecessarily antagonise him when he seemed to be genuinely asking inquisitively.
Still, they could not believe that there was someone in this galaxy that has not heard of the Starnet Company. Jeor decided that this might be a good opportunity to talk to the man.
"Sir, I'm referring to the Starnet Company. We could talk more about it if you would come with us. Please step into our ship so we can discuss more comfortably."
Adam shrugged. He did not mind entering their ship. After all, he had already judged that he could easily destroy it, especially from within, so there was really no need for him to worry about anything that could threaten him inside. He was still a planet, after all. It would take a whole lot of power and effort to kill him.
Adam began moving toward the ship, but on the way, he suddenly thought of a great idea. Should he not test his core while he was still outside the ship?
Semperlux Core was an enigma to him. He did not know what it meant to have a core that produced eternal light. Was that not like any core lighting up from all the energy it was producing? But then there was Evelyn's case.
Her Permafrost Core could not be explained by science, defying logic by growing colder and colder as it grew stronger. Translating it into Adam's context, would his core grow brighter and brighter then? What would it do other than produce light? Evelyn's core also produced light, so what was special about his?
As Adam focused on his core, he willed it to increase its power output to allow him to display whatever shocking abilities he did not know he had. This was what he learned to do from devouring that turquoise mineral that he still did not know the name of.
The reddish pink core began churning as it supplied more power to his body. Soon, Adam's body was emitting an incredibly bright aura of reddish pink light so potent that it was literally bending space around him. And this was the cause of Adam's shock.
He was still in motion when he decided to try testing his core. So when his body lit up brightly, he was shuttled through space that was warped by his own light. In an instant, he crossed a vast distance.
He tried to put a stop to it immediately, his warp jump halting midway, but he had already traveled pretty far from the ship. Worse yet, around the area where he exited his warp jump, a burst of potent pink light exploded outward. Whatever debris was in the area was crushed and turned to dust.
Adam looked at his surroundings in surprise, but Jeor and the crew of miners were horrified. They did not even see Adam after his initial glow. He suddenly disappeared as though warping through space by himself.
He then appeared over a lightyear away in the ship's sensors, clearing out a minor asteroid field in the area. Was this man showing off? Was he telling them that he could literally destroy their ship in the blink of an eye if wanted? Jeor was now regretting having said what he said. Even his crew was glaring at him nervously, all their backs drenched in cold sweat.
Meanwhile, Adam had fully shifted his focus onto his core. He did not care what the other ship was doing as he had just realised how terrifying his power was.
Semperlux
It meant eternal light.
From the name alone, one could not truly understand the scope of its power. But Adam now knew one of them. He could move at the speed of light. Even better, his light had reached a level of potency that could affect all matter around it.
It seemed that Evelyn's Permafrost Core had somehow converted the heat of Adam's budding stellar core into pure light and radiant energy that now contained all the destructive power of what it should have had before.
"I've become more of a star than I thought. But no, even stars are not made of pure light. I'm something different just like Evelyn."
Indeed, stars were made of very hot gas that glowed brightly due to the combustion of elements in their core. Compared to them, Adam and Evelyn were anomalies. One had a core that produced endless cold rather than heat while the other had a core made entirely of light.
Yes, for some reason, Adam's core no longer had mass. It was just a giant ball of condensed and concentrated light. It was a wonder why he still had the trait Nuclear Core, but perhaps it just meant that he still had a stellar core.
There were other things he wanted to test out. He needed to know his limits if he even had any. After all, he did not believe that his body would be able to handle the full power of his light. He needed to properly assess himself in order to be prepared to face the unknowns lurking within the Universe and without.
The threat of that invasive breach from the Corpus mothership still lingered in his mind. Why was it left unattended all this time when the invaders could have easily slipped through without the Universe's notice? They even setup that barrier just to block its observation.
"I guess there's no point thinking about it for now. I'll take it one step at a time, starting with this Starnet Company."