The Dawn of the New World

Hao Xuan's brows were locked in a tight furrow as he stared at the glass panel in his hands.

They were several hundred feet underground, near the foot of a volcano but the temperature in this room was pretty cold. Yet Hao Xuan couldn't help but sweat under the mask.

The trader was looking at his every move extremely carefully and he realized that as well so without wasting any more time talking, Hao Xuan started entering Poriverse's details.

On the screen were three empty fields without anything under or above them. If someone was looking at them for the first time they would probably be a little confused without any explanation but everything related to it was burned into Hao Xuan's mind.

He left the top two fields empty and tapped on the last one. A keyboard popped up in an alien language. Hao Xuan had never seen this before but he knew exactly it was.

He looked up and cracked a smile at the trader.

There were more than 32 different characters on the keyboard. Hao Xuan's hands moved like he had done this a million times before as he expertly entered one character after another.

*Tap*Tap*Tap*

Without any hesitation whatsoever, Hao Xuan continued to tap away at the screen for over five minutes. After the first few seconds, he got used to it and the tapping sound actually created a sort of melody if one listened carefully.

The trader that was full of doubt and suspicion at first somewhat relaxed seeing that. Right now Hao Xuan was entering Poriverse's 750 character long code.

Poriverse had created just this code to identify himself but the chances of someone finding it out were rare, to say the least. They were in a completely random sequence that made no sense whatsoever.

Hao Xuan tapped the screen for the final time and it went blank. he handed the panel back to the trader and sat down unceremoniously on a chair that had been placed on the side. The trader looked at the panel until a light popped up.

Hao Xuan couldn't see what was on it but he relaxed a little seeing as the trader still hadn't attacked him.

'Probably shouldn't have impersonated Poriverse, that was a stupid mistake. I could have just claimed to be his student or something,' he cursed himself internally.

The trader, on the other hand, was completely lost in what he was seeing.

After Hao Xuan entered the 750 character long code, all his information including prior dealing was pulled up. It was both good and bad at the same time.

The good thing was that there were recorded transactions going as far back as 20,000 years ago. This confirmed 'his' or rather Poriverse's age. It was entirely possible that he could have met Mirek.

But the bad thing was there were absolutely no other details about the individual who owned this account. It didn't mention his species, his age, his affiliations, all the things that were required to become a customer in the first place.

'How is this possible??' the old trader went back and forth, pulling up all the previous transactions one by one but the more he looked, the worse his expression got. More than half of the transactions were redacted.

Meaning he didn't have the authority to view them and were above his clearance level. As a trader, the only transactions he wasn't allowed to see where the ones that had something to do with the inner workings of their species.

He looked back up at Hao Xuan who seemed to be sitting as calmly as one could be, like he was in his own garden. But there was no way this human in front of him was a monster that old. It was a difference in bearing than anything else and for someone like him that had dealt with hundreds of thousands of customers of all kinds, he could tell.

'Maybe he's lying but there is no way to prove it. But in the off chance he's not, I'd rather not get involved with someone like this.'

Thinking up to here, the trader just wanted to finish their dealings as soon as he possibly could. He was already on thin ice and couldn't afford to make mistakes.

So with Hao Xuan's identity out of the way, the trader handed the panel back to him. He was neither servile nor aggressive and treated him as he would any other customer.

"Everything checks out dear customer. You have 5,000 credits left in your account right now. If you would like to sell something then I am allowed to purchase for as high as 20,000 credits, that is my limit."

Hao Xuan took the panel and looked at the new page that was in the same language as before. This was the roach's official language. His mind translated the characters on its own and he could read it just like it was his native language.

"5,000 credits, huh?" he mumbled.

Poriverse didn't leave any memories about the number of credits in the account so it was news to Hao Xuan as well.

Speaking of credits, they were the currency used in the space. It was used even in the beast world but at very high levels. One credit would be equal to hundreds of millions of gold coins if he actually wanted to trade, but no one in their right mind would do that.

You could buy gold with credits but not credits with gold. It would be the same as wanting to trade some sort of heavenly wine for manure.

The first page was very clean with a few main categories listed and some extra information in front of them.

-Terraforming equipment

-Slave Auction (War Beasts only available for Tier 5 and above customers)

-Ships (Terrestrial and Interplanetary)

-Vessels (Galactic), (Deep Space made to order for Tier 5 and above customers)

-Information

-Raw Materials

-Weapons

-Manuals (Battle skills, Scriptures, Techniques)

-Bounties

-Protection

There were 7 tiers of customers. Tier 5 seemed to be a dividing point where a lot of products and services were only available to the ones above that. Hao Xuan's tier was tier 4 at the moment.

"Ho, you guys sure expanded quickly eh..." Hao Xuan commented unconsciously but the trader pretended not to hear him.

In Poriverses memories, there weren't anywhere near as many things as mentioned here. Back then it was pretty rudimentary with the only things on sale being the ones they looted from others. But it seemed like they had now had their own operations and offered a lot of services as well like "Protection".

It was funny to see something like this from them, like seeing kidnappers providing protection services.

Seeing as Hao Xuan was taking his time going over everything, the trader decided to speak up after some hesitation.

"Dear customer, our records show that you have some pending credits leftover from some previous deals. If you would like to receive them, you'll have to visit one of the planets where we have our headquarters. After going through a small confirmation process, all the credits will be handed over to you."

Hao Xuan peered up at him with a raised brow.

"What pending credits?"

"It seems to be some sort of royalty from a previous transaction you made. But since you didn't log in for several millenniums, it needs to be accepted by you in person for the first time at least. Your tier will also be upgraded at that point."

"Hmm..."

Hao Xuan nodded mindlessly.

That was too far ahead to think about and he might not even get the chance to go to space. He looked back down at the screen and clicked on the slave section.

"Are the humans you picked you from this planet for sale yet?"

***

While Hao Xuan was busy talking to the trader, a storm was brewing above ground. The Academy, the Hall, and the Temples first guardians got together and found out it wasn't any of their doing.. In fact, almost all of them had lost contact with the majority of the newly arrived participants.