Location: Magicon Empire; Magicon System; Benson Moon

After all the scolding and concern, things start to relax quite a bit, and my family starts questioning me about my experiences. Sure, they've apparently seen a recording of some parts of it but hearing it directly from me is still different.

When I finish with the story, they congratulate me on my first successful exploration, even though it ended in a bit of a mess. Then I finally manage to ask what's been bothering me for so long.

"Can you tell me why there are traces of a Worldender explosion in the Vexton System?"

That earns me some sharp glances from almost everyone. "How'd you identify that?" Grandma Amelia asks.

Right, my specific knowledge about Worldender Ships isn't common knowledge. I only told my parents. At least I've got a good explanation for it, even if it's a sad reason. "Clara told me…"

"Oh, right… I take it was rather disturbing for her then?"

I nod back at her. "Yeah, it affected her more than she admitted. But we managed to keep on going."

"That's good. Why don't you explain a bit more about the Vexton System to your daughter, Aidan? You're the best informed on Worldender technologies among the five of us." Grandma Amelia gets up after delegating over to Dad. "Unfortunately, this is also where I have to leave you… I've got an appointment I can't miss."

I get up to hug my great-grandmother, then she leaves through the door where Vic gives me a short wave before following Grandma Amelia.

Dad clears his throat and starts explaining.

"First of all, what happened to the Vexton System goes back to a very dark time for The Empire. About 9,000 years ago, there was a terrorist organization that somehow got its hands on the plans for the Worldender Ship. This enabled them to build two of those ships, which they used for attacks against both The Empire and the Starseeker Kingdom simultaneously."

I look at him with wide eyes. Two Worldender Ships! That's two star systems destroyed at the same time.

"Both nations worked together to bring the terrorists to justice, and the whole organization was obliterated soon after. This attack caused a new fear for those ships, as this was their first appearance after the disaster in the Solar System. Emperor Jack Benson tried to find a way to counter the Worldender Ship and therefore used the newly discovered Vexton System as an experimentation ground. There's no special reason why this system exactly besides the fact that it was right at the edge of The Empire's borders at that time.

"During their research, Jack Benson and his team managed to miniaturize the ship and reduce the resulting explosion to a fraction of its initial size. That's why only the asteroids are contaminated, and the contamination isn't that strong. Each asteroid represents a miniaturized Worldender explosion."

I decide to interrupt Dad at this point, as what he's telling me right now is rather confusing. "But why would they try to miniaturize those horrible things? Wouldn't that make it easier for terrorists to use them?"

"True, that's why the experiments were only made by Jack Benson himself and his closest friends. They also kept every single technical record strictly on paper and burned everything after they finished their experiments. As for why they miniaturized it in the first place… It should be obvious. A full-sized ship takes a year to charge, kills off a whole star system, and makes it impossible to set foot into said system for millennia. How can you experiment on such scales?"

Huh, that makes sense.

"In the end, it was all for nothing though, and the experiment was shelved. The only result they could produce was a slight reduction in radiation – an example of this is the asteroid you visited. Instead of trying the impossible," he gives me a pointed look and continues. "Emperor Jack Benson rather focused on evacuation plans and processes on how to deal with all the refugees. Modified versions of those plans are still in use today."

He finishes and I look at him in silence for a while. Then I shake my head. "Wow, that's scary. I hope we'll never have to deal with such a ship again."

Dad nods with a sad expression. "I hope so too, but we can never know…"

We wrap things up quickly after that as all the others have meetings to attend. I teleport back to the Stargazer and disguise myself again. Then it goes straight back to my dorm room where the other three girls are already waiting. We have a movie to watch!

Location: Magicon Empire; Magicon System; Terra; Imperia; FBC

Monday morning greets me with newly found free time. Beginner Space magic stopped being helpful, as I learned all the basic tricks very quickly. So I talked with Instructor Renner right before we left for the Exploration mission. We both concluded that it's better for me to fully focus on the Advanced Space magic course and drop out of the beginner one. As I'm not getting a grade anyway, it didn't even cause any issues.

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The result is that my Mondays are now pretty relaxing as the only course I've got to visit is the Exploration one in the afternoon. Therefore, I treat myself to a nice breakfast in one of the coffee shops on campus. I sit in a quiet corner and activate my interface.

It shows Lydia and Alina's report of our week in the Vexton System. As I've got nothing else to do, I decide to try my best on some holographic supplements, showing the things we did there. I have to praise both girls later for their report. It's way too good, which makes it very easy for me to create something we can show the others during our presentation.

We all meet up for lunch again and go over the final details before I teleport us up to the space station where the Exploration course takes place.

While we wait for Sam to arrive, I look around and nod at the other students sitting around me. There are a lot of them, but, if I'm not mistaken, quite a few are still missing. Probably the ones with a less powerful Space Mage, or they simply chose a destination that's further away from here.

Sam is late! But the reason becomes obvious when she enters the room ten minutes after the lesson originally should have started: She's followed by a group of students. I guess, they've just arrived and Sam received them right after docking.

"Sorry for being late, guys, but Pia's group was just docking their ship, so I decided to wait for them. I hope you didn't become too bored, but apparently, we have quite the report to listen to today. Sara, do you want to start right away?"

"Yeah, sure. But we only have the short version prepared. The main presentation has to wait until we're done with it."

Sam nods in understanding. "That's totally fine! Your presentation today won't even be graded, but I think you've managed to explore some interesting things from what I've heard."

I chuckle a bit darkly. "You could say that, sure."

My friends and I get up and line up at the front of the classroom. A few taps on my interface have it connecting to the room's holographic suite, and the visuals I created earlier start to appear right next to us.

It starts with a schematic of the Vexton System, and Alina starts to give everyone an overview of the star system. She continues with our initial long-range scans which classified Vexton 2 as a planet in the habitable zone of the local star. As it's only a short version of our actual report, Alina ignores both our trips to Vexton 4 and 3 and finishes with us approaching the asteroid belt.

This is where Nick picks up and explains his analysis of the giant piece of tristanium. He goes into more detail and also explains a few of his thoughts behind everything. Meanwhile, I change the pictures to a closeup of the asteroid we investigated and a picture of how Nick pulls out the cylinder of solid ground right before casting his Analysis spell.

Nick finishes with his shocking discovery and Lucy smoothly picks up. She glosses over the whole decontamination with system security and mainly focuses on our discovery on Vexton 1's moon. With my visual support, she explains how we found the broken Artifact core and how we learned that this was a hidden objective afterward.

That earns her some knowing nods from more than a few other students in the room, while a lot of others silently start to swear. Tim picks up where Lucy stopped and explains how our powerful sensors got some strange reading from Vexton 2's surface. He also tells the others that the planet actually was terraformed hundreds of years ago. He finishes with the question we all asked ourselves at this time: Why make the planet habitable if no one's living there?

Lydia continues with how we tried to solve the mystery and reports about our trip down to the surface. I grin broadly when she starts talking about the dinosaurs. Then I tap my interface, and the room is flooded with dinosaur holograms in all sizes. One even shows how Lucy and I rode the big one.

There are gasps and shouts of disbelief throughout the whole room. It takes a while until everyone calms down again.

Then it's my turn and I start talking about how we managed to find the second continent and how different its inhabitants were. I don't mince my words and tell them what went wrong in the end. It was way too dangerous, and they should know it!

I finish the presentation with a bang and have the projectors show an almost life-sized Gina in the middle of the classroom. This time, it takes much longer for everyone to calm down again.

Sam sits down in her chair and looks at me. "Okay, now I understand why you don't want to repeat your experiences in the near future and also why I've got such an angry message from Captain Tulip… Anyway, if your finished report is half as good as your quickly put-together presentation right now, you have nothing to fear in this course. Thank you!"

While we walk back to our seats, Sam addresses the whole class. "Does anyone else want to quickly present their experiences during the exploration week? I promise I won't bite."

A few other students lift their hands, and Sam calls their groups to the front one after the other. They all give their presentations, and I do my best to listen. So far, the groups had a much more normal exploration group than our group. The first group explored a system where every planet was just a big rock floating in space. While terraforming could have made them habitable, there weren't that many resources to find so the group decided that it wouldn't be economically viable to put that much effort into the Star System. It reminds me of the story Mom told me about the Silvani System, but so far no one had a good idea to make something out of that star system.

The second group had the opposite experience. Their system was actually perfect with rich resources, a planet in the Goldilocks zone where only the air composition needed to change a bit. Their verdict was that The Empire should start inhabiting the system as soon as possible. Sam tells them that they were actually the last group allowed there for exploration, as Duke Valterion decided a few months ago that the Duchy's next expansion would start with this star system.

Go, Dad!

Everything changes when the third group starts their presentation. They also fire up the holographic projectors and we're immediately greeted by a big red star. The team captain chuckles with his starting words. "As you can see, our system, System UX317, was quite different. We thought a system that doesn't have a name yet would be a newly discovered one… Turns out it wasn't, it was just that useless for The Empire that no one bothered with giving it a proper name."

He points at the red star next to him. "Turns out that it is a twin star system, and while our good boy here is a fine star to probably support life without much terraforming on the third planet, his twin causes a few issues."

He puts his hands together and the star shrinks with it until it's only as big as a melon. Suddenly, a second star appears in the air, and it basically fills the room from the ground to the roof.

"You see, his brother is a red giant that will go supernova in the next few hundred years."

They continue with their presentation but I'm suddenly very distracted. A few hundred years… With Song Medical's longevity treatment, I should be very much alive when it happens. I wonder if there is a way to watch it…

But I also should hit up my parents to give me the treatment. Otherwise, I'll look older than them soon!

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