With its ultra-high productivity, the Crimson Alliance provided excellent benefits, and its citizens had no need to worry about food, clothing, housing, or transportation.
Because he was still a minor and had been placed under a public household registration, Lancelot received a full living allowance.
He first applied online for temporary housing. In just one minute, the artificial intelligence had completed the paperwork.
Following the address on his communicator, he took public transportation to his new home, the Hazy Moon Community.
Towering buildings stood in rows, connected by a crisscrossing network of glass walkways, while maglev cars traveled in orderly lines along elevated tracks.
Lancelot opened the car door, paid the fare with a facial scan, and stepped out onto the roadside. After looking around, he reached out and beckoned to his right. A spherical flying device with cute wings flew over from the distance.
It was a floating assistant. They could be found in every corner of the city, serving as surveillance cameras while also performing the duties of urban management officers and police.
The little thing looked harmless, but once it encountered a criminal, it would activate attack mode and could easily subdue an adult.
"Take me to room Ax2235!" Lancelot said.
A smiling face appeared on its electronic screen, followed by a crisp, pleasant child's voice. "Happy to serve you!"
Led by the floating assistant, Lancelot soon found the residence he had applied for.
It was a spacious single-level apartment of nearly two hundred square meters, complete with bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, a gym, a study, a living room...
The new apartment was quite good in every respect, and Lancelot was very satisfied. He could live there for free until he came of age, thanks to the government's considerable housing subsidy for minors.
Even after he came of age, Lancelot could buy it at a very low price.
In the Crimson Alliance, unless a property was in a top-tier city like the capital, Brandes, real estate in smaller cities was very cheap.
After putting his things away, he took out his communicator and ordered a large amount of high-energy food through a well-known delivery app, preparing for the intensive training ahead.
Although he had signed the "immigration consent form," Lancelot had no intention of obediently going to Planet Golden Bridge.
The planet had only recently been opened up for development, so going there would mean breaking new ground for those who came after him. It was also a low-magic planet, and there were certainly plenty of monsters. If a breach appeared in the city's defense system, the consequences would be severe.
There had been bloody lessons in the past.
Of course, the most crucial factor was the difference in opportunities for advancement. He wasn't that guy Gustavo, who could grow into an epic creature just by lying around and sleeping, nor was he Logo, who had the support of the entire Campbell Family and a knight companion in Crassus.
Lancelot had nothing. He could only rely on himself.
That made his environment for growth extremely important!
And if he wanted the Alliance government to make an exception to its rules, he needed to demonstrate his value.
The extraordinary!
Of Planet Oklo's major empire-level powers, the Crimson Alliance was the most recently established, with a history of only a little over a thousand years.
Although the Alliance had made a formidable name for itself through its powerful high-tech weapons, extraordinary power had always been its weak point.
More precisely, high-end extraordinary power.
That is, the number of powerhouses at the Legendary level and above.
The Dawn Empire, the Winter Empire, the Corte Alliance, the Tia Empire, the Crimson Alliance, and the Sea Dragon Alliance.
Among Planet Oklo's six empire-level powers, the Crimson Alliance was at an absolute disadvantage in terms of high-end extraordinary combat power and had faced the threat of enemy decapitation strikes on more than one occasion.
For this reason, the Alliance placed great importance on extraordinary beings and had even established the Department of the Extraordinary specifically to manage and cultivate them.
If he could become an extraordinary being before immigrating, or prove that he possessed exceptional extraordinary aptitude, the "immigration consent form" would be a worthless scrap of paper. Whether he went to Planet Golden Bridge would be entirely up to him.
The Crimson Alliance's extraordinary system consisted of many different professions.
Spellcasters, knights, warriors, gunners, mechanical warriors...
The most numerous among them were ability users!
An ability was an extraordinary power that differed from those of ordinary people, developed through a mutation in the genetic chain.
Controlling flames, spewing lightning, possessing boundless strength, spatial movement...
The potential of the human body was limitless, and the same was true of abilities.
In the Astral Realm, the civilization that had developed the extraordinary system of ability users most fully was the Northern Spirit Empire.
It was one of the Astral Realm's super civilizations, a hegemonic power in the known cosmic sea!
And the Crimson Alliance was a fanatical admirer... and imitator of the Northern Spirit Empire!
There were two ways to become an ability user!
First was natural awakening. People who awakened this way were also known as innate ability users. Their genetic chains were more stable, and their abilities had outstanding potential. Every one of them was a priority for the Alliance's cultivation.
But innate ability users were far too rare. There was only one in more than ten million people.
The vast majority of ability users awakened later in life, through the second method: using gene serum.
Lancelot certainly wasn't an innate ability user. Otherwise, Grove would have treated him like a father long ago, and with an innate ability user for a son, his official career would have taken off too.
If he wanted to awaken an ability, he could only rely on gene serum. However, gene serum was extremely expensive to produce, and its price was outrageous. A dose of normal gene serum sold for as much as 4.5 million Crimson credits. He simply couldn't afford it.
That left only one option: the dark web!
Where there was light, there was darkness. The regular internet was monitored by government agencies, making it impossible for negative information to appear on a large scale.
The dark web was different. It was filled with countless violent and bloody audio recordings, a playground for criminals and a headquarters for illicit underground trade.
Of course, even on the dark web, a dose of gene serum was still extremely expensive.
But Lancelot had never intended to buy normal gene serum in the first place.
What he wanted to buy was inferior gene serum.
In other words, a defective product.
Gene serum carried a risk of death. After all, genetic mutation was inherently quite risky. If you wanted to trade a bicycle for a motorcycle, how could you do it without paying a price?
If normal gene serum had a mortality rate of around five percent, inferior gene serum had a mortality rate of at least ninety percent.
A high mortality rate was no concern to dark organizations that placed no value on human life.
They could simply order more stock from the life factories.
The key issue was that inferior gene serum not only had a success rate several times lower than the genuine product, but even after an ability was successfully awakened, its potential would be greatly reduced, essentially locking it below D-rank.
Even following the Innovator School remained fraught with difficulties, with every step forward costing hundreds or thousands of times more.
The true significance of the extraordinary lay in the deterrent power of its strongest experts. The most valuable thing about low-level extraordinary lifeforms was not their strength, but their potential!!
What good was it to go to great lengths to cultivate tens of thousands of low-level extraordinary beings?
A single Legendary could slaughter them all!
With so many shortcomings, inferior gene serum was bound to be cheap, costing less than one-tenth the price of normal gene serum.
Lancelot's mother had died because of a medical accident, and the hospital had paid a large sum in Crimson credits as compensation. Grove and their children were all primary beneficiaries, and after the money was divided equally, it was deposited in their respective accounts.
Lancelot had never touched that money. He had always believed his mother had paid for it with her life, and he had never intended to spend a single cent of it, even for the rest of his life.
But now, he had changed his mind.