Adam returned to the asteroid, this time using just tiny bit of his light to get him across. It was not a perfect process as it was his first time regulating his core's power output, but it was a good start.
It took him a while before he achieved a good speed for travel, but he got back in less than five minutes. All this while, Jeor and his crew never moved their ship away to escape. They thought that if they had done that, this monster would just blink back in a destroy their entire ship.
Adam arrived beside the mining ship, knocking on its sturdy rust-coloured frame as though he was just knocking on the door. The ship soon opened its entrance to allow him entry.
It was cramp, very much so. After all, Adam was now a little over seven meters tall. He could not shrink his body anymore than this either so he had to fit his entire frame into it. This was why he liked the ship he took from the Corpus. It had quite a lot of space for him to move freely and unhindered especially with its unique spatial distortion technology inside. Even if he grew a bit more, there would still be room for him to move.
Since he cannot exactly move far from the entrance, Adam sat there and waited for the people in the ship to come and meet him. He did not have to wait long as Jeor along with a few of the crew arrived in front of him looking particularly pale. How could Adam tell they were pale? Well that was because the crew was apparently made up of two races.
The first were Humans like Jeor while the second was a race called Voren. They were a humanoid race with four arms and a bulkier natural build than humans. Their skin was a leathery grey that seemed to give them a bit more resistance to extreme temperatures. They had two pairs of beady black eyes on their rather flat faces.
They were often ostracised for their ugliness that was only further worsened by their lack of hair. Honestly, the Voren would probably be the race with the worst treatment in the galaxy if not for the fact that Humans were just overall more useless than them despite their pretty faces.
But despite their ugly and somehow intimidating appearances, the Voren looked like toddlers in front of Adam. It was only natural. After all, the man was over seven meters while these people were just around 3 meters at most. To the Voren and the Humans, Adam was a literal giant. They even wondered how such a creature could exist. Surely there was no lifeform out there that could or should reach this big, right? But while they were still in denial, Adam spoke.
"Gather your people and transfer to my ship. This thing is not even remotely comfortable. We will talk once I'm able to actually sit properly."
Jeor and the crew woke up from their daze when they heard Adam's words. They immediately called the rest of the crew and told them to hurry. They did not want to make this titan wait. They had also completely abandoned the thought of taking the asteroid for themselves. They were no longer even thinking of returning to the Company. Their thoughts were now limited to just surviving this encounter.
Before long, the whole crew had assembled before Adam. There were only eight of them including Jeor himself. Any more than that and they would be splitting their earnings too thin for them to actually get by.
Seeing that they were ready, Adam released his gravitational field to envelop the crew. Then his body erupted with bright pink light that destroyed the mining ship from the inside. His back was already aching just being forced to fit through that tiny thing for a few minutes.
As the light practically disintegrated the whole ship, Adam also found something interesting. It seemed that the light that he released returned to him carrying with it the power it had obtained from all the things it had destroyed.
This meant that he would not need to be punching things to reduce them to a size that he could devour. He could just use his light to devour for him. It was a convenient thing that he was eager to test out on the asteroid.
But first, he took the crew with him and entered his ship. He put them in the conference room connected to the combat information centre (CIC) before telling the AI to take the ship away from the asteroid. He did not want to accidentally hit his ship when he tested out his devouring light after all.
As the ship put some distance between itself and the asteroid, Jeor and his crew watched the monitor in the conference room as it showed the image of Adam standing alone on the asteroid. Soon, his body began glowing brightly, its light surging out like a tangible wave that devoured the entire asteroid. Jeor's heart ached at the waste of precious money, but even more so at the fact that the asteroid disappeared so easily.
Was this what the monster had been doing before they arrived?
Adam stood in space for a few minutes, feeling the surging vitality within him as he transferred more than half of what he got to Evelyn. He could feel that this vitality was not only strengthening his body, it was nourishing his consciousness subtly.
Although his Will had not progressed past Epsilon-4, he was getting closer and closer to Epsilon-5 due to this asteroid alone. The effects of this mineral was simply comprehensive. If he gave this vitality to Evelyn, he was certain that it would speed up her progress from Nascent World to a Minor World and she would finally be able to fully awaken.
He smiled at the thought. He truly wanted to see the Moon again, to finally meet the sentient Evelyn. She was his lifelong companion. He could not even remember a time when the Moon was not orbiting around him, shining light upon the dreary darkness left by the Sun.
He wanted her to stay with him now as well, to experience the unknowns of this vast Universe together. So with his core churning madly in anticipation, Adam returned to his ship and set a course for his main body.
"Now, tell me about this Starnet Company."
Adam sat down in the conference room. Jeor and the crew were still wondering what their fates would be when he spoke. They now received an answer to their doubts. This man really had no idea what the Starnet Company was.
It was a shock to them, but they could only keep it to themselves, letting no reactions appear on their faces. Jeor was the one who replied being the de facto leader of the group as he was the Supervisor and had more knowledge and credentials to be speaking on the topic.
"Sir, the Starnet Company is the largest commercial conglomerate in the entire Severis Galaxy. Their Dominion extends to over 300 star systems, but their influence stretches even further than that. They basically have monopoly on every business venture in the entire galaxy with everyone using their products and commodities daily making them a necessity.... Well, almost everyone."
Jeor observed Adam furtively, trying to gauge his reaction. It was proving too difficult, however. The man was like a damned statue with barely any muscle movements. How could someone be so inexpressive? What the hell even is going on in that huge head of his?
If only he knew that Adam was already expressing interest and curiosity on the topic. All this time, Adam actually thought his expressions were actually visible on his face. Little did he know that that was far from the truth.
It was not his fault though. He was a planet who had gained consciousness. He never had to deal with emotions and expressions before, not that he could even if he had emotions.
After all, how would he have expressed a frown? By curling up a whole fucking continent? How many times a day would that happen? That was simply too disastrous.
In short, Adam never really learned how to express his emotions through his face. And seeing that he was not reacting, Jeor just continued.
"I don't really know much about the inner workings of the Company since my employee rank is low, but I can tell you why we were looking for the asteroid."
At this point, Jeor just talked about his work as a Supervisor for this crew of prospectors. He told Adam about the planet made of Vitacor that was recently discovered and how they were looking for other mineral deposits that might have been created. He also explained that the region of space they were currently in was actually part of the territory of the Starnet Company.
Adam just scoffed at the Company for thinking they could claim a territory that already had a Lord.