Arrival at Hecaris
On the spaceship, Arix was staying in the cheapest room. There were four beds in the room, but the other three were empty.
The room was totally silent, and after waking up, Arix leaned on the bed to enjoy the view outside.
Through the window of the spaceship, stars were scattered like gems, and the galaxy stretched like flowing water. Distant star systems emitted a soft glow, while nearby meteors streaked across the night sky, leaving behind brief but brilliant trails of light.
After a long journey of five days and nights, the spaceship finally reached Hecaris. The landing port was in the biggest city on Hecaris.
As soon as Arix stepped off the spaceship, the scene in front of her was overwhelming. The place was packed with people, like ants on a hot pot.
It was the time of the annual enrollment of the Hecaris Military Academy, so every year during this season, Planet Hecaris was overrun with people.
Arix was so squeezed that she almost yelled out. In the end, she managed to make her way out of the arrival hall and finally left the huge interstellar hub.
...
"To celebrate the academy enrollment, mechas at crazy low prices! First come, first served!"
"Applicants for the academies get a 30% discount on all potions! An additional 20% off for the first 1000 customers, act fast!!"
Shops on both sides of the street were bustling with promotions.
Arix, looking at the lively crowd and with three days to go before the assessment, couldn't help but squeeze into a mecha shop to feast her eyes.
The reason it was just feasting her eyes was that, even at a slashed price, the mechas were still way beyond her reach, with prices reaching into the billions.
Arix's eyes nearly stuck to the ten-meter-tall mechas in the shop.
It was a pity that a glass case separated the mechas, or else they would probably be covered in drool from all the window shoppers.
Just then, Arix suddenly realized that she could sense the internal structure of the mechas using her psychic power. It felt like having X-ray vision.
Swallowing her saliva, Arix got even more excited and scrutinized every mecha from head to toe.
Luckily, the highest grade in the shop was Planet-Class mechas. If there were Star-Class mechas with LD chips, their owners might report a pervert to the interstellar police.
After having her fill in the mecha shop, Arix, with a dismissive look from the shop assistant, casually went to the neighboring potion shop.
In her previous life on Earth, Arix was born into a very privileged family. Her father was a doctor, and her mother was a chemist. Influenced by her parents' interdisciplinary backgrounds, Arix had been deeply interested in drug manufacturing and research from a young age.
Later, she graduated with a Ph.D. and became a chemist herself. Just when she finally had the chance to make a big splash, she was accidentally killed by a gang on the street.
Arix sighed about her short and dramatic previous life, then turned her attention to the counter, where rows of colorful potions were displayed.
There were potions for detoxifying, healing, cancer prevention, longevity, and the most amazing of all, the Booster potions for upgrading one's physique.
From the lowest grade Boosters to the Planet-Class Boosters, there was a small screen in front of each potion, displaying its level, effects, and the chemist who created it.
Arix was staring hard at a Planet-Class Booster, priced at one million astrocredits. If she could get her hands on a Planet-Class Booster, she would be almost guaranteed a spot in the Hecaris Military Academy's entrance examination.
But then she thought of the roughly ten thousand astrocredits lying in her opticomputer, and her burning desire was put down instantly.
Maybe because Arix spent too long in front of the evolution potions, a salesperson came over and asked, "Would you like one?"
"No, thanks." After replying, Arix kept her last bit of dignity as a poor person and left the potion shop calmly.
However, the moment she stepped out, Arix quickly searched for Planet-Class Boosters on the interstellar net.
Boosters above Star Class were indeed secret recipes guarded by the Alliance. However, for Boosters below Planet Class, their manufacturing methods were as common as cooking videos, flooding all video websites.
After watching a tutorial, Arix realized the biggest problem wasn't making the potion. Just the cost of the ingredients for a Planet-Class Booster was already beyond all her current assets. If there were requirements for the purity of the materials, the cost would more than double.
Stubbornly, Arix went to a raw material store to check the prices and finally hung her head low in defeat.
If she didn't know how to make potions, Arix would have accepted the result—but she knew how. Essentially, potions were just about purifying various materials with psychic power and mixing them together.
As long as one's psychic power was strong enough, mass production was a matter of minutes.
'Wait a second!' An idea struck Arix, and her eyes lit up. She excitedly said to the materials shop owner, "I want to buy ingredients for making potions!"
Although the shop owner was taken aback by Arix's sudden change of demeanor, his professional demeanor quickly returned, and he responded enthusiastically, "Alrighty!"
Soon after, Arix walked out of the materials store, carefully holding ingredients worth 50,000, treating them like treasures.
This caught the attention of a few thieves on the street, but upon closer inspection, they realized it was just a bunch of worthless materials and lost interest.
One of them thought he had spotted an easy target and eagerly followed Arix, and he felt duped when he saw just some unrecognizable stones and liquids.
Annoyed, he muttered under his breath to his companion, "What bad luck, ran into a nutcase. Treating a pile of trash like treasure."
"The Hecaris Military Academy's entrance exam is drawing near, and all sorts of people are on this planet now. I just saw someone dressed decently, but her jewelry was fake. Girls these days...sigh!"
His companion, also feeling the sting of disappointment, couldn't help but share his grievances.
Arix paid no attention to the thieves, and even if she had noticed them, she would have chosen to ignore them.
Her mind was entirely focused on the pharmacological combinations for the Planet-Class Booster.
With her vast knowledge of pharmacology, Arix could quickly deduce the manufacturing process of a drug based on its effects. She soon figured out how to combine the ingredients to replicate the effects of a Planet-Class Booster.
This was similar to comparing genuine and counterfeit drugs in her previous life, where counterfeits could be made at a fraction of the cost to look just like the genuine product—though the effects might not be as good.
After all, genuine drugs are the result of millions of lab trials to find the best outcome.
Arix booked the cheapest room in a hotel, one with shared bathrooms. Without even taking a look around, she dove into her work for two full days.
Crushing, melting, extracting, purifying, merging, and finally, creating the medicine.
For several days, Arix followed tutorial videos, repeating these six steps until, the day before her entrance examination, her room echoed with her joyful laughter.
"I did it! Now I have the physical strength of a Planet Class."
Arix happily looked at her hands. She wanted to lightly punch the wall beside her but knew the dilapidated hotel might not withstand it.
Her physical strength had leveled up, and her psychic strength was already at Moon-Class. Considering these improvements, if she still couldn't pass the Hecaris Military Academy entrance examination, she would be too ashamed to return to Planet Waste and face Sister Gwen.
Having addressed her most pressing concern, Arix felt a deep sense of satisfaction. However, looking at the remaining nine Planet-Class Boosters, she became troubled again.
She was indeed short on money, but she couldn't openly sell the Planet-Class Boosters she had made. If she carried those nine boosters worth millions of astrocredits, it would be like a toddler wandering the streets with a suitcase full of cash.
After some thought, Arix decided to open a secret online store on the interstellarnet.
The Alliance values the protection of personal information, and ordinarily, the personal information of online store owners is inaccessible to the public, except for the military department.
Some people, to be extra cautious, pay a personal information protection tax to the Interstellarnet Administration Bureau every month, ensuring that even the military can't easily access their information.
Unless a person is deemed by the Interstellarnet Administration Bureau to potentially destabilize the Alliance, or if the request to access someone's data is approved by the admirals of the five major legions, that person's information is completely secure.
Arix felt she wasn't significant enough to attract the attention of the admirals, so with this tax payment, she would be entirely safe.
Arix got right to work. After going through the process of setting up an online store and marking the store owner information as highly confidential, she paid a personal information protection fee of 30,000 astrocredits.
Finally, she received her contract, indicating she now owned an online store, albeit with just three square meters of virtual space on the interstellarnet.
Now, she needed a Connective Pod equipped with a brain-machine interface (BMI). This device would connect her to the virtual world of the interstellarnet.
In this era, even the most basic hotel room would have a Connective Pod for accessing the interstellarnet.