Star Ship Girl Era: My Shipgirls Are Too Overpowered-Chapter 39: Ecological-Class Ship Girl
Fortunately, the one thing Aurelian did not lack right now was a way forward.
The commander advancement interface was still sitting in the back of his mind, waiting for him to fulfill the last condition, but unlike most people who had to crawl for months to reach this point, he had reached it in a few days, which meant his real problem was not strength or time; it was choice.
Astra stood beside him as the ship finished its final sweep of the Shatterglass Belt, the last wreck fragments being logged and tagged, but her main focus was on her commander.
"So what’s next?" she asked.
Aurelian didn’t answer the question right away; instead, he watched the map for a few more seconds, because even with two clean victories, he didn’t think everything was over.
But this also fueled him to get stronger so that he could face any challenge without fear.
"They’ll react," Astra said softly, more statement than fear. "We just removed another piece from their chain."
"I know," Aurelian replied, eyes steady. "And we’ll be ready when they do."
The ship held position just long enough to finish the last logging cycle, then Astra angled them back toward the corridor lanes as she set the course back to the Cinderleaf’s direction.
It was during that return glide, and when the ship finally entered the warp drive, Aurelian, who was still on the edge, finally breathed a sigh of relief as he set his attention drift inward toward ’one of the options’ he was talking about.
The Destiny System.
He didn’t like relying on it too openly, and he liked it even less that every time it helped him it also reminded him that luck was a weapon in this universe, but there was no point pretending he didn’t have it, not when his advancement was being held by a single line that could be solved the moment he made the right choice.
He called it up.
The interface showed him the basic info he had seen countless times, and the first thing he noticed was the number at the top.
Destiny Points.
The value had climbed again after the second engagement, and it wasn’t a small climb either; it was the kind of leap that made him pause and re-check it once, because it felt wrong for something so abstract to grow so fast.
He remembered what it had looked like before Astra, before the first battle, before the first cut into real war.
Back then, saving even a small amount had felt slow, like trying to fill a cup one drop at a time.
Now, the number he saw couldn’t help but want to laugh out loud with glee. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎
But Aurelian didn’t do it; instead, he stared at it for a moment, then let out a slow breath.
"So, I now know how to earn these points other than just living," he murmured. "The fastest way to stack points is to kill, because ending someone changes their destiny."
Astra, who had been looking over sensor updates, glanced at him.
"Did you say something?" she asked calmly, wondering what her commander was up to, as he did not act like this before, so she thought he was up to something.
"Nothing, I was just thinking about what the omnic’s next move might be," Aurelian said, and he did not elaborate further, because even now, he didn’t want to spill everything into the open, but he did not hide the next action either.
He opened a query field and typed a request in the simplest, most direct way possible, because he had learned that the Destiny System responded best to clean intent.
How to obtain shipgirls of purple rarity or higher.
For a second, he expected the same thing it used to do, a single answer, a single direction, a single clue thrown at him like a coin.
Instead, the Destiny System changed its behavior.
A list unfolded.
Not one result, but multiple, presented like a small shop menu, each item labeled with a time window and a cost, as if the system had decided that information was no longer a yes-or-no; it was a market.
Aurelian’s eyes narrowed slightly as he read it, because the structure itself was new.
Purple Frigate Shipgirl Clues (6 days): 10,000
Purple Destroyer Shipgirl Clues (21 days): 56,000
Purple Cruiser Shipgirl Clues (27 days): 90,000
Purple Battlecruiser Shipgirl Clues (21 days): 148,000
Purple Ecology-Class Shipgirl Clues (30 days): 240,000
...
There were more items below, but he stopped scrolling for a moment because his attention was caught by the pattern, and by the fact that the system was no longer acting like a mysterious oracle; it was acting like a structured exchange.
"This is different from before," he thought.
Astra, seeing her commander close his eyes again, didn’t think much about it as she turned her attention back to the reports that were still left.
Meanwhile, Aurelian was immersed in himself as he checked the new change.
The first thing he noticed was the number of days next to the type of ship girl, and from the looks of it, it was time-sensitive, and the logic was obvious once you stared at it long enough, because the closer an opportunity was to expiration the cheaper it became, and the farther away it was, the more expensive it stayed, as if the Destiny System was charging you for how early you wanted to know the answer.
Aurelian’s earlier problem had been that he always got information when the window was already tight, which made it cheap but also risky, because knowing something at the last moment didn’t mean you could act on it.
Now, the system was giving him the whole shelf and letting him choose when to pay.
His gaze paused on the ecological-class line for a second longer than the others.
A shipgirl designed so that it can terraform a barren planet into a Tier I planet artificially, and this is huge because there are so many planets, but the number of habitable planets is something that everyone fights over.
An ecological-class ship is the major factor between a prosperous territory and one that must constantly search for habitable planets.
