First Intergalactic Emperor: Starting With The Ancient Goddess-Chapter 450: Finding Coordinates of the Next Treasure Location

Veyr assigned them rooms deeper in the base, not cells or guest suites either, but something in between. Secure, quiet, functional. Guards stayed outside the corridor, far enough to be respectful, close enough to remind them where they were. Arlen went with Rin and Klatos after a long day finally caught up to them, while Xavier turned in the opposite direction and headed back toward the storage wing where Bull’s containers had been moved.

The treasure itself barely held his attention now. Gold, rare metals, weapons, tech, all of it had weight and value, but none of it answered the only question that mattered. Bull had stacked his work. Every stash was supposed to point forward, not sit there like a reward waiting to be admired.

Xavier moved slowly through the rows of containers, reading markings, opening a few just enough to see what kind of logic Bull had used this time. Some crates were deliberately mislabeled. Others had redundant seals, not for security but to force someone to slow down.

One container stood out because it didn’t fit. No markings. No weight tag. No security seal. Just bare metal, worn at the corners like it had been handled more than the others. Xavier pried it open and found nothing inside except a thin metal plate bolted to the bottom.

He crouched, unscrewed it, and lifted it free.

On the underside was a grid of shallow grooves, intersecting lines carved by hand rather than machine. At first glance, it looked meaningless. Xavier stared at it longer, then dragged the plate over to a nearby work surface where several other items were laid out.

He placed it next to a broken navigation core pulled from another crate. The grooves lined up with the core’s internal lattice almost perfectly. That made him pause. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

"You really are an asshole," Xavier muttered, more to Bull than anyone else.

He pulled data from a nearby terminal, cross-referenced the lattice structure with old mining schematics from Jupiter and its surrounding moons. The pattern didn’t match current routes. It matched something older. Decommissioned paths. Collapsed tunnels. Abandoned transfer corridors that no longer appeared on public charts.

Xavier rotated the plate, flipped it upside down, then turned off the work lights entirely. In the low ambient glow of the base, faint symbols emerged along the grooves, visible only when the light hit at a shallow angle. It was text or markers. Rather, it was directional cues meant to be followed in sequence.

He laughed quietly, shaking his head. "You couldn’t just leave a coordinate, could you?"

Xavier activated a local projection and traced the sequence manually, step by step, forcing the system to interpret the plate as movement rather than location. The result wasn’t a point. It was a route. A path through space that only made sense if you already knew where to start.

The final projection locked in place, hovering above the table.

A new location lit up on the map. Farther out in the space. Xavier stared at it for a long moment, then leaned back, satisfied in a way he hadn’t been since Jupiter.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "This one’s bigger."

He shut the projection down, secured the plate, and left the containers behind.

Now that Xavier had possibly found the coordinates of the next treasure location, which was somewhere in space, Xavier’s goal was to reunite with Reva and others.

Xavier made it back to the assigned quarters late, the corridor quieter now, the kind of quiet that meant most people down here were either asleep or pretending to be. He shut the door behind him, dropped onto the edge of the bed, and started peeling off the last layer of gear, already thinking about sleep. When the knock came, he didn’t jump. He already had a name in mind.

"Even after everything that happened today, she wants to be fucked. Her sex drive might be higher than Reva’s."

He opened the door without checking.

But much to his surprise, it wasn’t Arlen.

Klatos stood there instead, wings folded tight, posture careful in a way that told Xavier this wasn’t casual. Xavier blinked once, then stepped aside. "Something wrong?"

Klatos hesitated, then nodded. "May I come in."

Xavier waved him through and shut the door. "Go on."

Klatos didn’t sit. He stayed standing, hands clasped together, eyes fixed on a spot just above the floor. "I wanted to speak before you slept. What I’m about to say might be useful."

Xavier tore open a packet of snacks, leaned back against the wall, and motioned for him to continue. "Then talk."

Klatos drew a slow breath. "When you mentioned Astraxiom Industries Limited, I realized I should tell you what I know. I worked for them. As a sales agent."

Xavier paused mid-bite, then kept chewing. "Hmm."

"They didn’t hire Kla’ots for authority," Klatos said. "They hired us because we were trusted in our own communities. Faces people recognized. Voices they listened to."

He shifted his weight, the memory clearly uncomfortable. "AIL rolled out a product aimed at newborn Kla’ots. A feeding powder. Marketed as superior to maternal nourishment. Easier. Cleaner. More modern. They said it would reduce infant mortality, improve growth rates, and make early development more consistent."

Xavier’s chewing slowed.

"The feeding powder wasn’t the worst part," he said. "That was just how it started."

AIL didn’t push it everywhere at once. They tested it on districts that were already struggling. Places with poor infrastructure, weak governance, and populations that trusted outsiders because outsiders were the only ones who ever showed up with supplies. They sent teams like mine first, sales agents trained to sound sympathetic, trained to speak local dialects, trained to frame dependency as progress. We were told to emphasize convenience and modernity, to make mothers feel backward if they resisted. If a woman hesitated, we were instructed to remind her how many infants already died in those areas and ask her if she was willing to risk her child out of pride.

Xavier had to put down the snack because it was getting hard for him to listen to.