>> You decide that taking on the wonders and dangers of the unknown, with only your wits about you, is a more worthwhile use of your time <<

It took us quite a bit of time to find a good fashion store, even after using the navigation on our personal systems.

We ended up in a fairly large department store in a trendy-looking location, which had all sorts of clothes on sale.

I asked a store associate if there was anything suitable for explorers to wear. She told me that pretty much anything that isn’t formal or nightwear should be fine for outer space, as long as you don’t let your Hazard Shield expose them to the environment.

Eunseo and Yeoreum split up from me to look around in the shop, while I headed towards the footwear section.

A good pair of hiking shoes should suffice for any planet. I found out that some of the ones on sale had their own movement upgrade slots, independent from the ones on my suit.

I chose a particularly resilient pair of shoes, with a good number of slots that could fit higher Clearance class upgrades. It’s a good investment for when I get enough Prestige for them.

I then headed for the clothing section and chose a few pairs of trousers for myself, pairing them with the tops and cardigans I found.

The two girls joined up with me soon after, holding a few shirts and pants up against themselves and asking for my opinion on them.

Yeoreum went for a style similar to how she dressed in real life; a petite fashion with a loose shirt that went over a pair of short pants.

On the other hand, Eunseo tried on a more of a business casual look, with a buttoned shirt that matched the slim pants she chose.

Both of them picked out clothes which coordinated very well with their styles. They’ll definitely turn heads walking around Seoul with these on, like they usually do in their schedules.

“They look great on you guys.” I commented. Piling my clothes into the shopping basket on my arm, I continued with a question. “Have you gotten something for trekking outside, though? I’m thinking of getting a jacket or two for it.”

“Won’t our suits be good enough for that?” Eunseo answered. “No point getting our nice clothes dirty when we’re outdoors.”

“These are only for when we’re in the city, KC.” Yeoreum added.

“That makes sense.” I admitted. Just because I had a lot of credits doesn’t mean I had to waste them on a coat I’ll never wear.

“You should take a look at the shoes, though. I think that the upgrade slots in them will be useful to us.” I showed them the shoes I got.

“Ooh,” Eunseo held them and looked at them from several angles. Returning them back to me, “I think that’s a good idea, Yeoreum.”

“Alright, unnie.” The younger girl agreed.

---

We finished our shopping before long. Each of us bought around three or four sets of clothes, and a pair of hiking shoes. Storing everything in our inventory meant that we didn’t have to carry bulky shopping bags around.

As we seated ourselves on a bench in an indoor garden, Eunseo asked me,

“So, have you thought about what you want to do?”

Trying on the new shoes I got, I gave her my answer.

“I think I’m going to explore the world anyway. We don’t have a lot of time in Hyperspace Frontier, and I’d like to see as much as I can while I’m still here.”

“What are you going to do about your equipment?”

“I’ll get everything I can find that doesn’t require Prestige to buy. Plus,”

I recalled what happened after I first woke up. “I gained a point in Academium Prestige when I found a forest on Mars.”

I alternated my gaze between her and Yeoreum.

“Exploring the planets should net me a good amount of Prestige, and if I can get my hands on some rare parts to sell?” I continued. “That’ll make for good pay as well.”

“As long as you don’t go beyond your limit, KC.” Yeoreum sighed, settling her case.

“Don’t worry, Yeoreum.”

I opened my chat window and typed.

You: What’s the safest planet in this system, Uzzu?

With a smirk, I showed them the message I sent to the group. However, the answer that came back caught me off guard.

Uzzu: Most of the planets in the Malia system are relatively safe, apart from the Neptunian planets of Doter and Yasater.

Uzzu: As long as you don’t offend the Magna population on Kamag and Sadus, exploring these worlds should be fine.

Uzzu: Nillon’s free markets also carry the risks of fraudulent and unsafe methods with them, so do practice caution when dealing with their services, Astronaut.

You: Oh.

Luda: lol 😂

Dawon: You tried, KC 😂

Well, that was embarrassing.

“It should be fine, then.” Eunseo spoke up. “If most of the planets are as safe as Chao is, we shouldn’t run into too many problems on them.”

She stood up and motioned to leave for the hangar. Seeing as there was nothing left to do here, the three of us quickly went back to where our ships were parked.

---

“I haven’t asked you about your ship yet.” I spoke out to Eunseo in the departure terminal, “What’s its name?”

“Virtuous 08.” She answered, “I like to call it the Veteran, though; it looks like it’s seen a lot of things in its lifetime after all.”

Her words made me think about a few things.

Our ships must have come from somewhere, right? Built in a yard on a random planet, sold to an interested explorer, flew its miles, changed hands as time goes on…

What about us, then? If we base ourselves on the same logic, are we just stranded humans who lost all our memories? Did ‘we’ have our own past lives as well?

These things are far too deep for me to think about, so I stopped pondering on it.

We went through the departure process and boarded our ships. Making sure everything was ready,

“So, straight out of Chao, guys?”

I spoke into the transmission.

“Yep, see you there.” Eunseo answered.

I informed the hangar control about my liftoff, then started the Wandering 14’s engine.

After a few seconds, our three ships flew out from the hangar and blasted off into the atmosphere together.

Leaving everything to the autopilot, I brought out my chat window to look at any new messages.

Oh?

Exy: So, you two are alright now? Will you have time to get everything done today, unnie?

Seola: I think we’ll be fine, not sure about our stuff though.

Looks like Seola is online, huh?

Soobin: I suggested that we get one ship repaired first, then use it to fly around and look for materials to repair the other.

Soobin: I don’t know why you’re so afraid of flying, unnie.

Seola: I don’t know how to steer the ship, Soobin. I’m afraid we’ll crash as soon as we start flying.

Soobin: Let me pilot it, then!

Seola: Still…

Soobin, too?

Wait.

You: Seola and Soobin, did you two start on the same planet?

Seola: Yeah.

Soobin: We found each other by coincidence while walking around.

You: And you two weren’t even far from each other?

Yeonjung: Seems like it. Charon isn’t really that big after all.

You: Seolbin never dies, huh.

I’m impressed at how much the worlds favour them being together, whether it’s in real life or in HF.

Xuanyi: …You realize you just typed that out, right KC?

You: What?

You: OH

You: Pretend you never saw it, everyone 🙏🙏

Bona: 💀

Seola: …Anyways, are you still on Earth, Yeonjung?

Yeonjung: Preparing to leave, actually. I was thinking of paying you two a visit, unnie.

Seola: Really? That’ll help us out a lot. 🙌

Yeonjung: 👌

That should be the last of us to join the chat group. All fourteen of us can now contact each other through the messaging system.

As my ship left the outermost atmosphere of the planet, the authorities performed another scan on my ship. Seeing nothing wrong, however, they let me leave after the scan was complete.

I joined up with the other two ships on a point in space, well away from Chao’s radius of surveillance.

---

“Where to, KC?” Eunseo asked.

“I thought about what you said, and I’d like to see an epic canyon.” I answer.

I have never seen one in real life, so experiencing one in HF will be the next best thing.

“I don’t know about canyons, but if we’re talking about really nice rock formations,” She pondered, “A guard I worked with has been to the Kremur Falls on Nillon, and he really enjoyed his trip.”

“Being far off from any ground trade routes on the planet, there shouldn’t be any bandits or the like roaming around… That’s what he said.”

“Sounds good.” I answer after a few seconds of consideration.

“Can we pick up stuff that we find from that place?” Yeoreum chimed in. “You know, for anything useful.”

“You can do anything, anywhere you like, Yeoreum. Just make it out alive before the angry people get you!” Eunseo suggested.

Not something I expected to hear from someone working in security, but alright.

We marked a waypoint on Kremur Falls and set off.

Nillon was the second planet from the sun, so it was right next to Chao… relatively speaking. Still, it took us only five minutes of travel before we reached it.

From outer space, I could see that Nillon had a mostly sandy, desert surface. Patches of green adorned the planet in places, but what struck out to me were the concentric and linear formations that seemed to decorate its face.

Formed from the terrain, I could tell that they were incredible geological features of a scale I couldn’t imagine.

As expected, our waypoint was marked in one of these formations. With no change to our plans, we let our ships approach the destination at cruising speed.

Entering the warm atmosphere of the planet, I could see the gargantuan cliffs and valleys belonging to the formations show their might before me.

These rock formations, some a marble white and others with layers of brown and yellow, were so imposing that Point Galileo’s Nexus paled in comparison. An entire army of interstellar frigates and fighters could barely fill the mass of the average landform in this place.

“…Wow.” I could hear Eunseo’s voice through the transmission channel.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to find anything like this in real life.” I concurred.

As our spaceships flew close to the terrain, I could hear the silence that visited these rock formations, broken only by the dry wind that occasionally blew past them and the rumble of our ers.

There was no notification on the HUD, but I could guess that we were finally in Kremur Falls.

A drone flew high above the skies, and two or three automatons crawled in between the crevices of the rock formations. Apart from these unmanned machines, however, there was no one we could see in sight. We continued to look for a place to land.

“Oh!” I spoke into the transmission. “How about that clearing, over there?”

Over in the distance to our left, a piece of flatland lay beside a valley of orange rock, not less daunting than the formations we saw before.

“Right, there’s a canyon right next to it!” Yeoreum answered.

“Nice find, KC.”

“Let’s go.” I stated.

Eunseo’s Virtuous 08 steered first in the direction of the clearing, seeing as she was the one leading our group. The two of us followed her maneuver and approached our chosen landing point before long.

We decided to land our ships close together and turn them into a sort of camp site, each ship acting as a tent or caravan for our own use.

After the landing procedure ended, I walked out of my ship and touched down on Nillon’s brick-red soil. I waved to the other two girls as they left their own vessels soon after.

All three of us were in our original spacesuits, as expected.

“Shall we?” Eunseo said.

Not more than a hundred metres away from us was an opening that led into the nearby canyon.

“Alright.”

“Let’s go!”

---

The pathways eroded by the rivers that flowed through the canyon were sometimes wide, sometimes narrow, sometimes still soaked in the water of the canals that continued to travel through these rocks.

At times when we had to move in a straight line, I was surprisingly the one in front, leading the walk through the difficult terrain.

“Something about this place makes my footing a little unstable,” Eunseo explained.

As dangerous as this place was, to us and our Hazard Shields, it wasn’t really an issue. Even if we get buried in a mountain of rubble, we could easily use our blasters or tools to dig a way out.

Apart from the heat of the evening in the Kremur Falls and the humidity from some of its damp areas, we were largely fine and healthy.

As the path opened up to a wide area, I saw a vein of black out of the corner of my eye.

Embedded in the ground near the canyon walls was a piece of ore that seemed to contain a mineral of sorts.

Upon closer inspection, I could see that several more chunks of this ore were scattered around the floor, some even jutting out of the orange walls.

“What are these things?” Yeoreum voiced, “They look pretty useful.”

I approached the vein closest to me and used my all-purpose tool to dig out an entire piece of the mineral. Processing it with the refining function revealed a metal with a rather dark lustre, almost like a gemstone.

“What is this, Uzzu?” I asked, “Tell your answer to everyone here.”

A hologram of the alien mascot immediately appeared between the three of us.

“That is Nysertium, Astronaut!” Uzzu began. “A versatile, alloyable metal that is commonly found on many planets and systems, especially Malia and Turi-Nur.”

“But not in the Solar System?” I asked.

“Even in the Solar System! But you’ll have to dig pretty deep into a terrestrial planet to find any good deposits of the metal.” It answered.

“So a useful, common metal, huh.” I pondered, “It won’t sell for a lot, so better keep it for our own use.”

Yeoreum nodded, hearing my words.

“Nysertium is highly significant to the four dominant races of the Frontier, Astronaut!” Uzzu continued. “It’s one of the four elements chosen to be held auspicious in the Ne-Dangsa Pact!”

“Frontier? Ne-Dangsa Pact? What do you mean?” I questioned it on reflex.

The mascot suddenly used new terms that I wasn’t familiar with, so I couldn’t help being curious about them.

“The Frontier is the currently fully documented group of worlds in Hyperspace Frontier, comprising the home systems of four dominant races: Human, Gray, Shaen, and Magna.”

Uzzu explained.

“The Ne-Dangsa Pact is the agreement held by these four races, honoring four rules between them and four elements important to their legacy.”

To be honest, this is a little too much for me to take in, especially when we were just exploring the canyon a few minutes ago.

“…So, what does the pact have to do with this metal, other than the fact that everyone loves it?” Yeoreum raised her question.

HF has a huge amount lore for its players to pore through, but it didn’t make sense for an explorer only interested in mining to learn about this particular bit of information.

“This makes Nysertium very useful to you, Astronaut!” Uzzu replied, “The four races have highly distinct construction techniques, and Nysertium responds differently to each one!”

“Human forging, Gray transmogrification, Shaen alchemy, Magna assembly… They all imbue the metal with unique properties!”

There were a few seconds of silence after the mascot finished its explanation and disappeared.

I could tell that the gears were turning in our minds, as we processed what we just learned.

“I see,” I began, “Well, let’s get mining then!”

I stored the piece of Nysertium in my hand into the inventory, then moved to pick at another vein.

Eunseo and Yeoreum didn’t linger long either, taking out their own multitools and digging out their own chunks of ore.

A material that turns into different things, depending on which race you ask to process it, huh?

I guess that’s one way they encourage us to reach out and meet the major races in this game.

Nysertium is found everywhere in HF’s worlds and there was no rule against us hoarding it, so we were only too happy to help ourselves.

Almost an hour passed before any of us thought to stop and check how much of the metal we mined.

Addendum - The Ne-Dangsa Pact

The Four Races:

• Human
• Gray
• Shaen (Mun/Li)
• Magna

The Four Rules:

1. No race wars.
2. No interfering in faction conflicts.
3. No unfair trade exclusions.
4. No oppressing minor races and lifeforms.

The Four Elements:

• Oxygen
• Gold
• Nysertium
• Theracyll

Frontier / The Four Systems:

• Sun (The Solar System)
• Shalim
• Turi-Nur
• Malia