“I need the money,” Azrak had muttered to himself. He lived in a small shack in the corner of a massive main corridor on the ship Leviathan.

  Covering a cybernetic with alien technology was expensive, but if there was anything more expensive than that, it was keeping alien relics alive.

  Azrak had found his drone friend, Jul, in one of the relic zones some time ago. Or more accurately, Jul had found him.

  His team had been ambushed by a machine whose lower body resembled a Tyrannosaurus Rex, while its upper body looked like a giant squid. Even though this creature lived in a pit miles below, it had managed to climb up using its gills and caused the deaths of dozens of Exosanguis members in an instant.

  The hunters had been caught off guard. The pit where this creature resided was only a few kilometers away from where their ship had landed. When the spaceship landed and deployed signal bombs to probe the surroundings, the creature inside the pit hadn't picked up the signals. Thinking the massive pit was safe, everyone had proceeded along the base of the mountain. This false sense of security led to their slaughter.

  As the thirty-man team was dragged into the darkness by massive metal limbs and torn to pieces by metallic strikes, those with jetpacks tried to fly away to escape. The problem was that the defense systems of the relic site they had landed on were still active. Anti-air cannons were picking off those trying to fly away one by one. They had no choice but to stay on the ground.

  Azrak was lucky. While his friend beside him was being torn apart by a metal limb, he had escaped by a hair’s breadth. Later, he noticed a gap in the side of the mountain where the metal limb had struck. The limb had hit so hard it had broken off a piece of rock, opening an upward-sloping hole leading into a cave inside the mountain. As all his friends were dying, Azrak climbed into that cave without looking back.

  The metal creature was busy at the cave’s entrance, tearing apart his cybernetic friends and devouring them raw. No… these robots weren't man-eating predators. Besides, the relic hunters weren't human either. Most of their bodies were cybernetic, made of alien technology. Many alien relic machines attacked relic hunters simply because they were cybernetics. They wanted to eat and digest the components in those metal bodies. Relic hunters had to be cybernetic so they could protect themselves from other predators and find the strength to carry relics weighing tons. In short, it was like a system of gears eating each other. They had to touch to function, but their contact consumed one another. The relationship between Jul and Azrak was an example of these self-devouring gears.

  When Azrak entered the cave, he expected to find a silent cavern in the darkness, but instead, he realized he had found a dungeon. Driven by curiosity, he descended deep into this cave, fought alien relics many times, and emerged victorious.

  While exploring this dungeon—adorned with the cold of white-painted metal—before the other team members arrived, he was brutally killed by a trap. Yes… Azrak thought he had died that day. Because the trap was a laser beam that tore him apart in seconds. A laser beam that split his body in two from the shoulder and left him for dead…

  But strangely, he had been able to open his eyes. It was as if he had been brought back to life by a divine hand. When he opened his eyes, he was in the infirmary of the spaceship that had carried them to that planet. But there was something strange. There was a drone attached to his body. Jul…

  It was Jul who had brought him back to life, but he didn't know why. Perhaps it was a repair robot, or a parasite robot carrying a virus. Considering how large the robots of that relic city in TerraGorh were, it was quite likely that a drone would want to latch onto them like a tick and suck their lives away. To them, the drone was no larger than a tick.

  At first, he was afraid of Jul. He went to many engineers to have it removed from his body, but it was certain that he would die if he stayed away from Jul for too long. Eventually, he got used to Jul. He accepted it. He saw it as a pet. They completed many missions together and struggled together to survive many times.

  And then what happened? Jul slowly began to die. Despite being a symbiotic creature, even a parasite had a certain lifespan. Azrak couldn't let Jul die after years of friendly companionship. He went to many engineers to keep his friend alive, but no one—except for one person—lifted a finger to treat Jul.

  The person who said he could treat Jul wasn't an engineer. He was a scientist. His name was Ukar. On Old Earth, he had conducted experiments that pushed the boundaries of genetic science, but this man needed many genetic relics. Especially alien relics…

  If Azrak agreed to work for him secretly, then this scientist named Ukar would use his influence and ask for help from his boss, the wealthy businessman Crowrift.

  Azrak worked for Ukar for a very long time. While everyone else chased mechanical relics, Azrak chased biological ones. Azrak, who had fallen into the indifference of a desperate man, expected something in return from Ukar and his boss, the man named Crowrift. Yes… the work brought in good money, but money alone wouldn't save Jul.

  Then one day, the man named John Crowrift contacted Azrak. According to him, Crowrift actually knew someone with the technology to save Jul. But to get that man to work on Jul, 10 million SWR Credits were needed. Azrak had only managed to save nearly a million, because the idea of saving money hadn't crossed his mind. This meant he would need nearly 8 million more.

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  Being a desperate man, he didn't question John Crowrift’s words even once. Who was this engineer? How would they heal Jul? He didn't hesitate to ask these questions, but he feared the answers he would receive.

  Only a few hours after Azrak’s conversation with John Crowrift, he heard of Ukar’s death. The facility belonging to the scientist Ukar had been inspected and destroyed by the Bioethics Oversight Agency, which hadn't been active for nearly a century. News, newspapers, and all other media outlets were talking about this event. Was this organization, famous for corruption and poverty, being resurrected? People were even spreading rumors that a Bioethics Oversight inspector had returned.

  While these Exosanguis members watched the news on a massive screen, Azrak, sitting at one of the back tables trying to charge himself, was holding a digital hologram. This hologram contained a letter from Ukar.

  Before he died, Ukar had reached out a helping hand to Azrak on the ship Leviathan. According to what Azrak said, the TESO company on the planet END99141 needed protection. They were planning to pay a large sum for this protection. Before his death, Ukar had acted as a collaborator between Azrak, who needed the money, and Labiba, one of TESO’s managers. Azrak was grateful to Ukar. If he really earned a large sum of money, he could somehow contact John Crowrift and save his friend Jul.

  Upon contacting Labiba, Azrak learned that two people were needed for the mission. Before he could start looking for a companion, Hikmar found him. They had worked together a few times. Other than that, they weren't particularly close.

  Why were two people needed? Because they had to reach END99141 without performing a large-scale hyper-jump. No one should know that a TESO manager was working with Exosanguis members because Exosanguis wasn't exactly a legal organization. For long-term hyper-jumps, one had to request permission from SWR traffic and be visible in the Hyper Tunnel. If you weren't visible in the Hyper Tunnel, it was very possible to turn into atomic particles within seconds due to a collision with another ship in such a fast flow. Short but frequent hyper-jumps, though risky due to the luck factor, allowed one to proceed without being visible on the SWR Network.

  But the problem was that for a cybernetic, entering and exiting hyper-jumps was quite exhausting in terms of energy consumption. After all, cybernetic captains had to connect their own bodies to the ship to operate the vessel. The energy field created by the hyper-jump damaged their own bodies, which were integrated with the ship. Therefore, it was essential to have more than one cybernetic on ships that would frequently enter and exit the hyper tunnel.

  He didn't know who he would have found if Hikmar hadn't come to find him. Hikmar had asked if Azrak had a job like that, saying he wanted to make a killing before retirement, saving Azrak from the difficulty of finding a teammate. During their journey filled with hyper-jumps, Azrak truly got to know Hikmar and came to consider him a friend, though perhaps not as close as Jul. Now, he was going to discuss with his friend Hikmar whether they should sign an agreement whose content they didn't know.

  “These men are untrustworthy,” Hikmar said once they were alone in the room. “But they are as helpless as they are untrustworthy. It seems they have no choice but us.”

  “Do you think what Labiba says is true, Wise Hikmar, or is he trying to deceive us?”

  “Regarding what?”

  “Regarding the fact that he's doing this to heal himself… about the job, and many other things…”

  Grasping his metal staff tightly, Hikmar scratched his chin and thought. “The money is a very large sum… eight million per person. It guarantees my retirement and heals your little friend,” he said, looking at the alien drone named Jul. Then, souring his face, he added: “I think we shouldn't accept.”

  “And I want to accept, Hikmar, but I can't convince myself not to. If you tell me why we shouldn't accept, perhaps I can convince myself more in line with your words.”

  “First of all, I think neither Labiba nor his henchman Nuskul don't seem to know much. He is just after money, just like us. I don't know how much he’s getting for this job, but I don't think he’s doing anything more than hosting the place where the job is conducted. While he is just the host, we are the guard dogs.”

  “You’re saying the real danger isn't Labiba…”

  “I don't know if Labiba is dangerous or if he will be a danger to us later. One thing I’m sure of is that he is certainly not the key man in this job. We need to think that the danger lies far ahead, not in the decision we make here, and decide accordingly.”

  “I suppose you’re saying we should accept the contract. Yet I thought you believed the opposite.”

  “I think…” the old man said and stood up. “…there was no contract at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Labiba is more of an employee than an employer, just like us… You said the man's name was Ukar, right? The man who acted as an intermediary for you for this job. He should be considered your actual employer or boss, and this man didn't make you sign any contract, am I wrong? Similarly, Labiba wasn't made to sign an employment contract… why should you be an exception?”

  “So what you mean is…”

  “Labiba wants to sign a contract to save his own skin, perhaps to gain privileges. Yes… let’s not sign the contract. He will still be forced to tell us about the job.”

  “If there's no agreement, we can't get our money.”

  “In which of the legal agreements we sign has there ever been information about money? The money we receive or the work we do won't be written in the contract anyway. Most contracts are to protect the employer, not the employee. If we sense a situation where we won't get paid, Labiba’s head will be on the line even more because we will be the ones who talk. As Exosanguis as a whole, we have nothing to lose.”

  “That… although it’s just a hypothesis, I trust your hypothesis quite a bit, Master Hikmar. Let it be as you say…”

  Thus, after the drone let Azrak stroke its head slightly, it moved to its dock on the man's back. With the cameras and communication devices reactivating, Azrak said:

  “You can come in, our talk is over,” looking at one of the hidden cameras.

  When Labiba returned with a look as if expecting an answer, Hikmar told him they wouldn't accept the agreement. Although this initially caused Labiba to be angry, our duo said they wanted to work without an agreement. It seemed Labiba really had no choice but to accept.

  “In that case…” Labiba said, taking a deep breath. “…follow me so I can explain your job to you.”