I slowly stepped through the first door, turning stiffly to the suit that was hanging there and put it on before moving through to sit down on the cushion. Once I was sitting on it, I just stared out into space. I still felt weird to me that the speaker had known I had advanced on my path without anything telling me I had. I suppose the speaker announcing it was this void walking sect's way of telling you, since they didn't have a system HUD to do it for them. I let out a sigh as I began to relax and stare at the stars, my mind began to slowly wander, thinking about home and how my crew was doing. I hoped they were all still alive and had somehow managed to fix the frigate, so the power was back on. Before I realised it, my mind had gone blank for a while, and I was now feeling the Qi running through my body, I guided it through the second stage paths to my lungs watching them soak it up.

"Ding! You have completed 8 hours of cultivation, as someone that has not reached Qi Gathering stage 3, yet we recommend you take a break and have lunch before returning to cultivation."

The loud voice jolted me out of my meditation, causing me to look in at my lungs and notice they were fully saturated and somehow my cultivation had shifted and had already started nourishing my muscles.

"Wow, this really does make me feel lighter and stronger, I guess those books back home were onto something." I muttered to myself as I slowly stood up and left the cultivation chamber, making the rounds to the cafeteria and grabbing the soup from hell before heading back to cultivate again.

On the way back I was intercepted by a boy that made a point to walk into me hitting my shoulder with his own and turned to sneer at me as he called out "watch where you are walking federation dog!" before turning and continuing his path to where ever he was going. The four people with him laughed and snickered as I stood there, rubbing my sore shoulder with a frown on my face. After a few moments, I slowly turned back and continued walking. I spotted my cultivation chamber door when I let out a sigh and mumbled. "At least in the federation, I could fly a ship."

"You could have flown a ship here too, if you had asked" a familiar voice said from behind me.

I turned around to see Mentor Zhang standing behind me with a scowl on her face as she stared at me. She managed to hide it a few seconds later, but she did not smile at me.

"A young boy has reported you ordering him to bow down before your might and offer you gifts. When he refused, you apparently smacked his shoulder with your own and told him he was probably too poor to afford anything good anyway. Care to explain why I had to be humiliated by your foolish actions today?"

I immediately went to rebuttal and deny the outlandish claim before stopping as I had a better idea. I slowly raised my hands and shrugged my shoulders as I put on my best innocent face, which wasn't too hard since I was innocent.

"Please forgive me Mentor Zhang, but I do not understand, what gifts could some random person actually offer me? We only get soup from the cafeteria, and it tastes horrid, is there a shop where I can purchase other things from? Wait… do I even have any money? If I don't, then how do I get money? The system kept track of all my credits for me." I said as I frowned and placed my hand on my chin as I contemplated this. I kept one eye on mentor Zhang to see how she would react.

"Cultivation resources, are gifts young ladies often receive from men, of course there are shops on boards, this is a sect ship. I doubt you have any money, you haven't left your cultivation chamber long enough to go to the Mission hall and take a mission." she let out a loud sigh as she rubbed her forehead for a moment before looking at me.

"Ah, so I can take a mission to earn money, kinda like an adventurer's guild, right?" I mused to myself as I glanced down the hall behind her to see if I could spot this mission hall.

"What? What the hell is an adventurer's guild?" she suddenly snapped at me

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"Huh? Oh, it's like a group of people that form an organisation. They rank their members by strength, and they post missions on a board for each rank to be able to accept, like kill ten goblins and get a reward of fifty copper coins for the lowest rank. A high rank would get something like guard a noble or hunt a dragon for gold coins as the reward. It's a popular setting in fictional literature on my home planet."

"Right… Well, the young man you assaulted and insulted has claimed you have besmirched his honour, while he is the disciple of an inner sect elder, and you technically outrank him, by being the mentee of a core elder. He insists his honour be returned. I of course have accepted this challenge, you are required to win and show everyone that while you are a pompous dog from the federation. You can at least still bring honour to your mentor and show your arrogance is backed by skill instead of hot air.

I blinked a few times as I stared at her in confusion, quickly coming to the assumption that she didn't believe me or didn't care, she wanted me to challenge this kid and win. I let out a sigh before waving my hand for her to continue as I asked.

"And what exactly do I need to do to win this challenge thingy?"

I felt trepidation run up my spine suddenly at the sight of her smile as she leant forward to leer down at me.

"You said you wanted to fly a ship, well here is your chance to build one. The challenge is to construct a ship at the blueprint table down in the hangar. You will design the ship using licences you own or your own ingenuity to design what you need. Then you will submit your ship to be piloted by a sect member in the annual sect race through space to locations on planets. A team member will complete a task before signalling the pilot to move onto the next one. The pilot, that has had all the tasks completed the fastest and with the highest score, wins the race and brings honour and prestige to themselves, their ship's designer and all of their elders. It starts tomorrow, be ready! Oh, and don't fucken lose!" She snapped the last bit at me before turning on her heel and walking away.

I quickly abandoned the idea of cultivating and instead ran to the nearest wall map and started searching for places I could check or buy licences for ships and ship parts. It took me almost half an hour to compile a list of places and how to get to them. Before, I was running down the hallway, following the route to the nearest shop.

I almost burst through the door, but I managed to stop myself at the last second and carefully open it. I calmly stepped through, into the small shop. There were a few kiosks in the middle of the room with a bunch of holograms of ship parts slowly rotating the part as they displayed them for the customers viewing around the edges of the shop.

"Welcome, welcome to the Builder's Emporium, we have shops in more than 12 dozen dimensions and throughout a wide range of sects. Please peruse our wares to your heart's content." The gentleman behind a small counter called out what sounded like a well rehearsed greeting to me as he tapped away on a holo screen in front of him. I waved to him as I moved towards the kiosk, hoping it could tell me what licences I already had. I was honestly hoping the licences I had or Clara had purchased for me had carried over to here, and I could use them. I tapped the kiosk screen to turn it on and waited a few moments as it booted up and began to display a holo screen a foot away from the glass. It displayed a list of all the wares the shop had to offer. A moment later, I noticed a tab that listed licences I owned. I clicked on it to see if I had my licences still. I let out a sigh of relief when I saw I not only had my licences, but all the ones my guild had too. Then I started to smile as I took inventory of what I had, before turning to look around the shop at the holograms.

"This is going to be fun," I whispered to myself.

I quickly turned back to the shop list tab and began to scroll through it, looking for fun ideas, and quickly came to realise my problem. I had no idea what would work best for space flight, but planet side I knew a lot, and my fingers began to blur through the list as I shifted stuff into my basket for review. I began to giggle in glee, it had been a long time since I had designed a plane. I had been going to that university to get a degree in aeronautics, and I was finally getting to put it to use. After a few hours, I had a large basket of things I thought might be useful, and was finally ready to start going through it. As I did, I slowly went through it, looking at what would work best in the atmosphere. I slowly smiled as my education updated quickly as I went through it, learning all sorts of new technology and how it worked. The kiosk was very helpful with explaining it all down to the last detail, almost like it wanted you to be informed about everything you were about to purchase. I as I learnt I began to expand my basket looking into new parts that apparently did better in space, parts that did great in both soon followed as I read and learnt.

After roughly twelve hours, I had narrowed my list down to what would cover most of a ship. However, there were a few parts that I had not managed to find a good enough piece that fit in with what I was slowly building. My knowledge had expanded, and I had learnt so much about the technology and advancements in aerodynamics, among a few other fields. As I finally submitted the cart for purchasing, the gentleman behind the counter who had at some point sat down and fallen asleep jolted awake as his computer on the counter let out a loud chime. He rubbed his eyes and leant forwards, looking at his screen.

"You have no sect points." he stated flatly, not bothering to look over the list. A few seconds later he frowned and let out a sigh, muttering something about core elder privilege and approved the purchase before standing up and walking towards me.

"Alright, you have your licences, and you have wasted my entire day, please leave, Young Miss." he said as he gently shooed me out of the shop.

After I left, I smiled happily, turning and walking back to my room to get some sleep. This was going to be so much fun, and I couldn't wait to get started on putting these pieces together, designing a ship that would hopefully win the race ahead of it.

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