Star Ship Girl Era: My Shipgirls Are Too Overpowered-Chapter 46: Returning And Waiting For The Second Ship Girl

Aurelian’s mouth twitched, almost amused.

"Either way," he said, "I’m here now."

They did not stay in the open bay long, because the starport had cameras and bored people, and the Arcturus family had a private logistics warehouse in this starport for the same reason most great families did, because Polaris was a trade center and an academy center, and if you did not have a footprint here you were choosing to be slower than everyone else.

A family manager met them at the warehouse entrance, polite and professional, and led them into a sealed storage corridor where the air smelled like clean metal and cold packaging foam, and where everything important had already been sorted into neat stacks that looked almost ceremonial.

The first thing delivered was simple resource support, credits, and fragments.

The credit transfer was recorded cleanly through a secure ledger, and the fragments were handed over directly, because storing large quantities through public banks was a pointless risk for a family that already had the infrastructure to move them privately.

Aurelian’s allocation was not small, tens of thousands in base fragments and a smaller stack of higher-grade ones, while the triplets also received their own support packages, because their families and sponsors were not blind, and because the three of them had become high-profile the moment they awakened.

Then came the items that actually mattered for growth.

Two trait chips were presented in sealed cases, both blue-tier, both rare enough that you did not casually find them on a normal market unless you were willing to bleed credits at an auction, and the warehouse manager explained them simply because that was his job.

"These are commander-network characteristic chips," he said. "They install into the trait slot, and they can be removed later, but removal requires source fragments of the corresponding tier, so they are not something you swap casually unless you know what you’re doing."

Aurelian already understood the concept, but he still listened, because small details were the difference between smooth progress and wasted resources. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

The chips were growth-oriented, the kind that increased experience intake and stabilized training gains, with the standard limitation that their effect weakened or became invalid beyond a certain threshold, because nothing in this system allowed infinite scaling for free.

They were still perfect for the early stages.

Aurelian installed his chip into his network without hesitation, and he felt the slight internal "click" of it settling into place, not a physical sensation, but the way a system acknowledged new support, and beside him the triplets did the same with their own chips, each of them taking the boost with the calm practicality of people who understood that pride did not replace progress.

After that came physical support.

Gene-enhancing recovery kits, high-density nutrition blocks designed for cultivation cycles, and sealed medical supplements tailored for commanders who were pushing mental load harder than their bodies could naturally tolerate, all of it labeled, all of it expensive, and all of it presented without fuss, because families like this did not treat survival tools like gifts; they treated them like basic maintenance.

Mirei whistled softly when she saw the stack.

"Someone really doesn’t want you to slow down," she murmured, half joking, half honest.

Aurelian did not respond with false humility.

"They want me alive," he said plainly, and that was the truth that mattered most.

Once the immediate resource handoff was complete, Aurelian asked the warehouse manager the one question he had come here to confirm, and he did it in a normal tone, not demanding, not entitled, because he was not here to act like a spoiled heir; he was here to solve a time limit problem.

"The heavy destroyer hull," he said. "Was it secured?"

"Yes, Commander Arcturus," the manager replied smoothly. "It arrived yesterday and is being held in the adjacent secured bay under your authorization only, with the purchase trail routed through the family’s standard acquisition cover, so it will not draw unnecessary attention."

Aurelian nodded once, feeling the advancement gate in his mind space like a locked door that had finally been given a key.

Astra looked at him from the side, expression calm, but her eyes carried that faint approval she never bothered to fake.

"That solves the fourth condition," she said quietly.

"It solves the ability to solve it," Aurelian corrected, because he refused to count victories before they were real. "We still have to do it properly, and we still have to make sure the second bond is worth keeping."

Mirei leaned in slightly, voice lower, curiosity sharp.

"Still sticking to purple and above," she asked, like she already knew the answer but wanted to hear him say it again.

Aurelian nodded.

"Purple and above," he said calmly. "If the fleet is going to be my foundation, then it has to be built like a foundation, not like a pile of convenient parts."

Yelena looked at him for a long moment, then gave a small, slow nod as if accepting that this was not arrogance but strategy.

"And the ecological-class option," Katsura added, remembering his earlier message and the way his tone had changed when he talked about it.

Aurelian’s gaze stayed steady.

"We get it when we can," he said. "A ship that can change worlds is not optional if we’re serious about expansion later, and I would rather plan around it now than regret it when territory becomes real."

They did not talk longer than necessary in the warehouse, because every extra minute invited attention, and attention was the one thing Aurelian had been trying to manage since the day he awakened Astra.

So he thanked the manager, accepted the final documentation, and walked out with Astra and the triplets beside him, carrying the weight of supplies and new options without letting it show on his face.

Behind them, the war at Cinderleaf would continue as a wider campaign, but the critical phase had shifted, the Omnics had committed, the alliance had answered, and the front line no longer depended on a single flagship to keep a planet alive.