Gottlieb sits back on his chair, his hands held together before his face as he stares at the monitor with a grim expression.

The blue light, twinkling above it, like a star shining outside of the station in the darkness, peers back down his way.

— The metal hatch off to the side, that the slime is trying to press itself up and out of, wobbles. Grunheide yelps, jumping up from her chair to press it back down and to stop the monster from escaping. Gottlieb doesn’t let it bother him and just continues to stare at the screen.

He opens his mouth to speak, but then closes it again a second later.

The goblin lets out some distressed cries as she pushes the weight of her body down against the hatch. She seems to be doing just fine, so Gottlieb ignores her.

“Kai,” starts the man. “You’re fucking with me, right?” he asks.

Kai does not respond.

Gottlieb stares at the monitor.

What does this mean? The goblin was weird enough already, but now this slime too? Where are these things coming from? If they were just monsters down on the surface of the world, he wouldn’t be concerned in the least. But it is certainly fair to say that it is odd for them to be up in orbit, aboard the station.

A clamor comes from the side of the room as Grunheide fights to hold the metal plate down at the same time as she attempts to drag over several plastic tubs, full of cables and components and things of that nature.

Gottlieb’s eyes turn back towards the monitor, zooming around over the landscape of the world.

— Where do monsters come from?

Usually. Under normal circumstances. Down on the surface of the world, where do monsters come from? Are they born of intricate biological processes? Or, given that there is magic in this world, are they simply ‘made’, in essence?

This latter concept would explain how an adult goblin got aboard the station. It’s hardly feasible for her to have been birthed and raised here without him having noticed, let alone in this short timespan.

So Gottlieb can only assume that this means that the goblin, essentially, ‘spawned’ inside of the station. She must have just appeared.

And, following this logic, then the same could be said of the slime.

Gottlieb sighs in relief, realizing that maybe Kai was just pulling his leg after all.

Grunheide shoves the heavy tub over on top of the hatch, sealing it shut. She sighs in relief. Gottlieb flashes her an unbothered thumbs-up and returns his focus to the monitor.

“So, Kai. You have parasites, huh?” asks the man, looking at the light.

[Answer]

- Correct. Orbital Gunner Gottlieb has been here for exactly nine months and twenty-two days.

“Ha. Ha,” says Gottlieb dryly. He spins a finger. “It’d be more exciting if you ever gave me a real answer. I expect you to be a dick at this point.”

[Addendum]

- After [REDACTED] cosmic-event, alterations began to occur aboard the station.

“So… monsters?” asks Gottlieb.

[Answer]

- Monster. Singular.

Gottlieb points over to Grunheide, who is sprinting past him in a wild panic. The slime seems to have realized that it can’t go up through the left side of the tunnels, so it has begun moving towards the other, unsecured hatch on the right corner of the room instead. “Her?”

[Answer]

- Correct. However, given recent developments, the problem has intensified in its severity.

“Huh…”

Gottlieb crosses his arms as he thinks, watching the Goblin repeat her terrified process as she fights against the rising hatch. He lifts his gaze, staring up towards the ceiling, wondering what this could mean.

But he can’t think of anything, in all honesty.

Gottlieb shrugs, rising up to his feet. He’s unlocked some new doors with his latest level-up, so perhaps these are worth investigating for now.

“Keep up the good work,” he listlessly calls back to the goblin, who is putting in a great amount of effort to pull in some other heavy objects, while also not letting go of the violently shaking hatch beneath herself.

He’s sure she’ll manage.

[Azimuth]

It’s over.

She’s done for. She’s as good as dead.

The orcish woman gulps, the plush, luxurious carriage that she is sitting inside of wobbling around as they ride down the road. Attendants, servants, priests and soldiers walk alongside the carriage as they march on down the way.

Nobody within the throne-room, in the presence of the church or of the nobility, had dared to utter a single questioning word about her story and the testaments given.

— But she knows that there are still skeptical people remaining, herself included.

That’s why she’s here, in this carriage. That’s why she’s been sent off to some backwater badland in order to kill some giant, horrific monster.

The official explanation had been that it was because they needed her to do so, to fulfill her holy duty.

But the real explanation is that some people with strings to pull just weren’t ready to buy it, or to let go of whatever her rising would cost them.

Azimuth looks out of the window, out towards the landscape. She doesn’t understand it herself. The light. The explosions. The… the sheer power of the force that came from above to shield her from harm, not once, but many times now.

It sounds crazy, given that she was at the heart of it all. But what if it was just a coincidence? What if she was just at the wrong place at the wrong time? What if she gets there, to the den of whatever this terrible creature is, and nothing comes to save her this time?

Azimuth feels the sweat beading on her forehead, despite the mildness of the day.

She just wants to go back to her chickens.

[Gottlieb]

Gottlieb wanders the metal corridors of the station.

The perk ‘ranking one’ had allowed him access to the observatory, which, by all standards, had been a fairly pointless investment. It did allow him to receive some answers and closure, regarding the fate of his colleagues. But that was about it.

‘Ranking two’ had enabled him to enter hydro, which is great if he needs more water or an agricultural robot, for whatever reason. Plus he was able to enter security to get the rifle, that was a good investment. He got to shoot a goblin and a slime. He’s never gotten to do that before. Oh, and there was the junk he stole from everyone’s lockers.

‘Ranking three’, he isn’t so sure about. He doesn’t know where a door with a ‘three’ is, he hasn’t seen one so far. Although, he hasn’t exactly undertaken a deep exploration of the station since the shift.

The door to Kai’s core is marked off with a four, being perhaps the highest rank of door on the station. This is still one away from his current ability.

But there has to be something he can do or get with a three.

Gottlieb looks around the corridors. The labs, maybe?

He turns and walks down towards the labs, which are just next to cryo.

Sure enough, a three marks the doors there.

The man lifts his gaze, looking up at the blue light above the door.

It blinks and the metal door to the labs slides open. A cool, thick vapor comes out against him, obscuring his vision somewhat. Gottlieb coughs, waving his hand in front of his face to try and dissipate the very strong, chemical smell in the air.

It seems that some various containers of ingredients and reagents have fallen from their fastenings and mixed together into an odd pool of liquid on the floor.

Barring the scratchiness in his eyes, Gottlieb doesn’t really notice anything wrong with the lab. It looks like one would expect a lab to look, at least in space. There is heavily fastened and fortified chemical equipment that he can’t make heads or tails of. There are implements and machines that he can’t begin to name. There are containers full of raw materials, meant to be examined in orbit for any interesting properties or uses.

He walks in, looking around the room.

Honestly, there’s probably a lot that he could do with this place.

— If he was smart enough to know how to do anything with it.

“Damn…” mutters Gottlieb quietly to himself. Perhaps investing every single stat-point he had gained into his ‘strength’ stat wasn’t the best plan for long-term space survival after all. The man rubs his chin, thinking.

Then again, he’s in so deep now, and with the strong-man ability getting stronger and stronger, it would be dumb to not keep investing in strength, right?

Yeah.

Gottlieb nods. He’ll come back here when he gets a little more intelligence by pumping his strength higher.

Maybe Kai can teach Grunheide to operate the lab?

“Wait…” Gottlieb stops in his tracks. If Grunnheide did just ‘spawn’ into the station, is it possible for more goblins to spawn? Does Kai have an influence over this in any way? Can they just… replace the dead crew with goblins? “This is a great idea,” says Gottlieb in surprise. He walks out of the lab, looking up towards the blue light. “Kai. We should get a bunch of goblins to spawn and train them to run the station,” he tells it, expecting to read a response by the time he gets back to the gunner’s bay. “We could use more hands,” he says. “This place is falling apart.”

While interested in what this could mean for the future, Gottlieb was hoping for something more tangible as an immediate pay-off. Sad.

— Something bubbles behind himself.

Gottlieb turns his head, looking back into the lab. The pool of chemicals that had mixed together, down between some workstations froths and bubbles. It condenses together, moving very similarly to the slime from before as it tightens itself into a more coherent form.

An almost human face forms in the ooze, lifting itself from the metal floor to look his way. It opens a wet, bubbly mouth, the jaw of which drips down back to the ground.

“…Pa…pa?”

Gottlieb blinks.

“…Kai. Shut the door to the lab and lock it,” says Gottlieb, looking at the half-human slime monster that is far more advanced in appearance than its counterpart trapped down in the gunner’s bay.

The metal door the lab slides closed and clicks with a loud bolting.

Just how many monsters are there on the station?

A few goblins and some slimes are cute and fine and all. But he’s worried about what this could mean down the line. Will there be bigger things? Stronger, meaner things? The slime was bad enough, considering he currently has no way to kill it. But what about something really dangerous? Like that minotaur that he had blasted with the gun the other day? It’s all fine and good from up here in space, but he doesn’t want to deal with one personally.

Gottlieb looks down at himself.

— He doesn’t have the muscles.

…Yet.

“Kai. Warm the gun up,” instructs Gottlieb. “I have a new life goal,” says the man, slinging the rifle over his shoulder to head back to work. If he finds some target rich areas and shoots the gun there a few times, he should be able to get some easy levels and then, not only ‘strongman’ rank three, which is fine and all, but he can beef up to a size big enough to fight a minotaur one on one.

What more could any man ever want?