93. Even the Perverted Captain Has Female Fans (Seeking a two-in-one subscription!)

Approaching the Zuoan Asteroid Belt meant the Rioning had already crossed the middle of the Dawnway Route.
Chaotic dust storms and gravity eddies mingled together, producing changing drag that made the ship bob up and down in seemingly calm space, like a small skiff in a stormy sea at night.

The whole way, every few hours Luochen received a safety warning.
Threats came from irregular black holes, whirlpool storms, and high-energy particle bursts.

Inside the Rioning’s bridge, at the lounge table:
In a delicate translucent white-jade teacup, a glass of wine-spiked red tea shivered with ripples.
Luochen sipped his tea and read the news, feeling the wave of chaos from headlines crash harder than the storms his ship had faced.

First came Imperial reports.
Aside from Wolf Fang Company’s own national news, Luochen had appeared in the Imperial Entertainment Weekly for the third time.

The first time, the True Spirit Continent Report mentioned the Primal Sky Adventuring Band in passing, without naming Luochen.
The second time, Fog-Sea Star News claimed he was simply a product of the Adventurers’ Association’s star-making machinery.

At first, the Entertainment Weekly condemned him for raiding a legally registered Imperial cargo vessel, saying he had become a full-fledged interstellar pirate and was no longer worthy of the Empire Hero Medal, calling for him to be revoked.
A few hours after that report appeared, Luochen was suddenly on the Federal Constellation of Freedom.

The Federal news praised Luochen and two teammates for freeing three hundred humanoid slaves from a powerful Imperial slave ship and transporting them to Scarecrow Star, calling them deserving recipients of the Federal Liberty Medal and true fighters of freedom.

Because the evidence was solid—and because there was multiple corroboration about Wolf Fang’s human trafficking—the Entertainment Weekly quickly deleted its earlier story and shifted tune: its investigative team had allegedly entered Wolf Fang, and discovered that the slave trade had only been carried out by the vessel Passer. Its captain, Silva, was merely a temporary contractor newly signed by the company.
Then they conveniently reaffirmed Luochen’s status as an Imperial hero and admitted the magazine had been the first in all galactic media to notice this unremarkable adventuring party, praising Captain Luochen’s talent as though he were a master talent scout.

Then the tone turned again: they claimed that as a human, Luochen’s tastes were broad, especially fond of every variety of beast-eared girls—
especially those with very obvious ancestral traits.
They even hinted whether the three hundred humanoid slaves handed over to Scarecrow Star had been all of Passer’s humanoid passengers.
Wouldn’t they have hidden some pretty girls…?

Luochen thought, It had indeed hidden people, but not pretty girls—just two patients of the Dragon King.

Across the room at the study desk, Ari, who was watching the same news with him, trembled in fright and tried to tuck her wolf ears back.
She could fold them a little, but once she tried they quivered and refused to stay.

Goria came near Luochen and glanced at the broadcast with interest. “The Entertainment Weekly is being objective this time. That doesn’t happen often.”
Luochen looked up.
Goria, who had taken a thousand spirit-stones from one slash alone, had shimmering starry eye shadow, held an Assassin ice cream in her hand, wore high heels and an expensive elegant dress, and the red chiffon at her chest was barely visible. She was utterly beguiling.
A stranger would have thought she was a rich heiress from nowhere and wondered which one.

Her full, snow-white thighs, deliberately or not, rested on the edge of Luochen’s table.
She looked in high spirits, as if eager to reward him for this windfall.

Luochen didn’t look at her legs even once; he raised his cup.
Following the slander in both the magazine and Goria’s own talk, he gave a cold snort.
“Where did this human girl come from? Go away!”

Goria’s face darkened and she immediately pulled her skirt down to cover her legs.
But she had a trick left.
She clipped on a black cat-ear headband with a quick movement.
“Meow~”

Ari turned and stared at her, startled. “So cute...”
Luochen nearly lost his composure.
Feigning calm, he took a measured sip and said, in a wind-brushed voice,
“That is the proper way to please one’s master.”

Goria flashed a petulant look, then raised her hand and tapped Luochen on the head.
The blow was gentle, like a cat’s paw stroking in spring sunlight.
“How about it, have you decided?”

“Decided what?”
“A broad and open road.”

Without pause, Goria launched into an impromptu speech.
“Of course the interstellar pirate route. Why spend your life doing ordinary quests and picking up scraps of treasure? If you have a purity obsession about morals, we can still go for that pig-and-tiger trick, bait-fish law enforcement. Let the pirates provoke us first, then we strike back in one sweep and get rich. I’ll guarantee you can earn enough for a long-range ship worth one hundred thousand spirit-stones in under a month, and in six months you’ll be into the ten-thousand New-Generation tier. Do you not want to be the kind of man to become Star Pirate King?”

That depends on who the king is, Luochen thought.
He sipped his tea, crossed his legs, and replied in easy comfort,
“I don’t like days of killing. Traveling around, gathering odd relics, collecting medals, studying the customs of each world—wouldn’t that be beautiful enough? Interstellar adventure should be in the heart; no need to overwork yourself.”

“Mm.”
Goria simply didn’t understand that philosophical chatter.

Luochen reflected for a moment and said,
“Out here, the things I remember most are not the bloodshed. It’s the trips, fishing, swinging, beach volleyball—the small pleasures across planets. Adventure, life itself—if everything becomes a formula, one day someone will just harvest you like a field of greens.”

“Still not listening, just chanting mantras,” she muttered.

Goria shoved a stick of Assassin ice cream into Luochen’s mouth and turned back to her game.
From the other table, Ari spoke up, “Captain, it looks like we’ve been put on a bounty list.”

Luochen kept eating the ice cream and scanning the news.
He had—yes, he had a bounty.
But not from the Adventurers’ Association.

Wolf Fang had sent him an email demanding that he return Passer within three days. Luochen’s reply had been a single word: “Go.”

Then the company issued a statement claiming all the humanoid passengers aboard Passer had volunteered to sign contracts and would be recommended to adventuring parties that needed talent; Wolf Fang merely took a tiny commission.
“Even this is shamelesser than the Entertainment Weekly.”

After Passer was refused, the company announced a reward of twenty thousand spirit-stones for capturing Luochen and the Primal Sky Adventurers alive. If someone seized only the Passer, they would get ten thousand.

Luochen slapped his thigh.
“Damn, I sold myself short!”

He should have found an intermediary and paid one thousand spirit-stones commission, he thought; then Passer could have sold for nine thousand instead of seven thousand. Why the bounty didn’t appear earlier?

Ari, usually thrilled by adventurer-point gains, looked somewhat worried about the imperial reward.
“Captain, don’t you worry about this bounty? Twenty thousand spirit-stones is no small amount. Someone would definitely bite.”

Luochen calmly drank another sip.
“Someone bites, then lets me live the rest of my life as a blood-soaked, daily-profit-chasing mercenary?”

Ari felt the captain was far too confident.
Yet somehow, every time he judged an enemy’s strength, she felt he was absolutely clear-eyed: what to fight, what to run from, no hesitation at all.
Was it some kind of predictive ability?
She was curious.
She’d need much more quiet observation.

After finishing the ice cream, Luochen logged into the Adventurers’ Association news network again.
The Association had just posted news as well.
Not a headline on the Dawnway Route section, but still marked in bold red.

“Hijacking the Passer Starliner, Liberating Three Hundred Humanoid Slaves—The Miracle of Primal Sky Continues!”

Based on investigation from all sides, the association largely reconstructed Luochen’s adventure and praised the liberating spirit of the Primal Sky Adventurers, condemning Wolf Fang’s slave trade.
It estimated the true strength of the Primal Sky team had already passed level forty and had become a very mature adventuring unit.

From this single fight, Luochen’s adventurer points jumped by ten thousand to thirty thousand.
His annual New-Star ranking rose from ninety-sixth to seventy-third.

Behind the article, in the comment section:
Several Imperial engineers had spent several days fixing the dynamic terminal display issue.
Still, even the five-cent shills stood there like startled birds, trembling and temporarily quiet, too afraid to throw slander around anymore.

Luochen, wisely, made no plan to hack the association’s news server again.

This comment section now had many more humanoid adventurers than before.
And this time, Luochen did not just have symbolic praise. He had something rare here: fans.
Mostly female humanoid fans.

Reading their comments, Luochen felt as if spring wind swept over him.
“A rare human hero.”
“Aha, such a delicate human boy. I finally found a human I can truly like.”
“Maybe he isn’t fully human. They say dragon descendants don’t always show obvious draconic traits, so maybe he’s dragonborn.”
“He’s the only liberator I haven’t felt was only doing this for money. There’s light in his eyes—the light of someone of our kind.”
“The Entertainment Weekly says he likes beast-eared girls, but I don’t have ears. I only have an insect shell...”
“Then you’re even more unlucky than me. I only have tentacles.”

Luochen thought the dragon-born theory wasn’t entirely wrong. Wasn’t everyone a descendant of dragons somehow?

From the comments it was clear that humanoid women seldom favored human men.
Good looks alone did nothing; even being a liberator didn’t add much weight. You had to have some special temperament.

“One of the girls asked,” he read, “which nickname should we give this adorable human captain?”

Luochen was startled at the audacity of it all.
The squirrel-girl had even started a poll.
The final top ranking was—

Lu-Bao.

Wasn’t that the nickname they gave to Rufi in the “Pirate King” stories?
Ari, at the opposite study table, quietly synced Luochen’s page and laughed softly when she saw Lu-Bao.
She said nothing, just forwarded that nickname to Goria.

Goria was still gaming when a vote pop-up appeared before her, a poll for Luochen’s nickname.
The top one, unmistakably, was:
Lu-Bao?

She removed her glasses, stood up, and dropped down beside Luochen, then peered left and right and pinched his cheek.
“Since when did you, oh pervert, become a ‘Bao’ too?”

Luochen answered with a quiet sip and a smile.

“That’s envy and jealous resentment. Want to see what your fans named you?”

Goria’s mood changed instantly. She said nothing and turned back to her game.

Luochen wasn’t done.
He brought up an older poll from the Fog-Sea Star News section where Goria once had her own nickname contest.
The top was—

Fat Cat.

The nickname came from an unnamed adventurer who had posted an AI painting of Goria in beast form.
A lazy posture, a plump, sensual body, a lovable vacant expression, and a pair of soft cat ears.
From then on, the votes for Fat Cat climbed in a rush.

Luochen smiled inwardly, keeping his merit quiet.
Holding his tea, he crossed to Goria and kept rubbing her ears.

“Fat Cat, where did your cat ears go?”

Goria turned red and her eyes twitched; she couldn’t play properly for a moment.
Then suddenly she snapped and bit Luochen’s hand, drawing blood.
She had a furious, flushed face, and her purring rasp of feline anger, plus that radiant, mature face.

Luochen bled.
Some appetite stirred.

“Fat Cat is quite adorable. Why be ashamed of it?”
Goria ignored him and continued the game.

Luochen laughed. “Ari’s also been called Puppy Boy by her fans. Isn’t she happy about it too?”
Yes, Ari’s top nickname in her own voting had been Puppy Boy, and it was truly from fans.
Wolves are aggressive, while dogs are cuter. Ari has a loli style, so a nickname like that isn’t bad at all.
In Little Sirius, her full name is too eye-catching and invites trouble; Puppy Boy sounds much more natural for a humanoid nickname.

“Actually, in Little Sirius my childhood nickname was close to Puppy Boy as well. It just sounded familiar,” he added with a small nod, then sat back at the lounge table and pointed to an activity post.
“Ari, your fans are a little too wild, aren’t they?”

“Are they?”
“They are,” he said.

He looked at the association comments and noted the ratio: Ari’s fans, Goria’s, and his were roughly one hundred to ten to one. The gap was obvious.
Ari’s fan group even organized events. They opened a separate thread on the adventurers’ forum, planning a full party run to Ardenfema on the seventh planet of the Rogel system.

But these people all belonged to different adventurer parties and each had active missions, so none could spare time to detour back to Rogel at once.
So they decided on a bounty mission.
At present they were fundraising in the forum.
One reply to a post equaled default support of one spirit-stone.

Luochen looked closely.
So far the main thread had already raised over thirty-eight thousand spirit-stones.

“Good grief,” he said, “I’ve been sailing this long and never even made thirty-eight thousand spirit-stones. I’m almost willing to turn right back now and butcher Ardenfema on the spot.”

Ari, however, spoke with unusual thoughtfulness.
“No hurry. Didn’t you say once we’re strong enough, we’ll return for revenge. We’ll need a ship fast enough to run back immediately and keep adventuring after that.”

Yet the minimum bounty to open that group run was one hundred thousand.
After all, Ardenfema was no weakling. He was a bona fide level fifty cultivator, a retired second-tier admiral of an imperial allied state, and had once led a retired imperial fleet.
At minimum, with Luochen’s current strength, he could not kill Ardenfema.

On top of that, there were already many rumors about Ardenfema’s identity. He seemed to have strong backing.

And then things quickly went beyond everyone’s expectation.
One of Ari’s fans uploaded brand-new news onto the forum:
The ninth warship of the Gernika Beast-Handed Squadron, Scorpion Tail, had overthrown Ardenfema’s regime on the seventh planet of Rogel, slaughtered Ardenfema, and liberated three thousand slaves.

Not only Luochen but Ari’s whole fanbase was speechless.
The bounty mission hadn’t even launched yet, and Ardenfema was already gone.

End of chapter.