Alex had caught onto Colonel Margit's use of words right away.
"Did you just say there's 'another' interfering third party? So these guys weren't the only ones?"
He ignored Colonel Margit's first few questions and immediately addressed the last one.
Seeing Alex respond so casually, disregarding his very serious counterquestion, Colonel Margit internally sighed in relief.
His original assumption upon seeing Alex's ship attached to four other foreign ships via tractor beam was that he had been captured or something like that.
"These guys turned out to be pirates, coming to this system to leech off of any weakened victims. Unfortunately for them, they chose me as their final victim."
Since Colonel Margit didn't respond right away, Alex decided to follow up with some more information to ease the tension a little bit. Discover exclusive content at m,v l'-NovelFire
After all, he was faced with thousands of Human ships a few hundred kilometres ahead of him...
If any one of those didn't get the memo that this wasn't an enemy attack, then Alex would be subjected to a barrage of fire that he didn't believe his ship could take.
Sure, it could defend against 1 King class A- rank attack, which was far, far above what any of those ships could produce.
But when thousands of ships all shot at once?
That was probably just as deadly.
"Well, you're indeed the King class prodigy. You captured a crew of space pirates who had intended to do the same to you."
Colonel Margit spoke, a little envy underlying his tone.
But he continued shortly after.
"But those four ships aren't like yours. You remember the first time you came to this system right? Well, just like you were when you first came here, those are unregistered. Not to mention the fact that they are alien ships. If you want to bring them back without causing a ruckus like this, then you need to contact us first, or it would be mistaken as an invasion just like this very moment!"
Rather than his usual disobedient tone against the military officials like Colonel Margit, Alex decided to stay silent this time around.
He realised this was completely his fault, with no one else to blame.
Obviously, they found nothing.
Meanwhile, Alex transferred the pirates from his ship to a military ship.
Alex didn't have to worry about what to do with the ships anymore, so he could finally get the rest he felt he deserved.
And with as little time he had left before he would have to go back out again, he didn't waste any effort in getting back to the main base as fast as he could safely do, before entering his personal cabin and completely passing out onto his bed.
***
4 hours later.
Alex woke up feeling refreshed.
In the end, he decided to sleep in on this day.
His original 2.5 hours of sleep had turned into 4, which left him nearly 2 hours behind schedule.
But he had already considered this.
With his progress towards completing the second, and final requirement to reach C tier nearing completion, he realised that he wouldn't need the full day to achieve this.
With the deaths of the four pirate captains, Alex's total was ticked up to 949.
And after Alex had killed off over 60 of the pirate crew members, he was surprised to see it go up another 21 points.
It turned out 21 of those ordinary pirate crew members were C tiers themselves.
Leaving him at 970/1000.
With only 30 numbers left to fill, Alex was confident that he could complete this in 10 hours, rather than the 20 he had allotted.
Hence, he decided to extend his sleep until he was fully energised.
It was better to make sure that he was fully prepared for battle, rather than going in on not enough sleep and getting sloppy because of it.