Interstellar Age

Chapter 330 Meeting Your First Love Again for the Second Time

Erich was led to his quarters that were given to him for the duration of his stay in the Dvrakian Consortium. It was a nice and comfy room that had a bed that was just large enough for Erich to sleep comfortably on, that is assuming he curled up in a ball and slept on his side.

The standard Dvrakain Male stood at around the same size as an average human male. That being five feet and nine inches, or roughly 175 centimeters. But Erich was slightly above average for a Germanic male. Meaning he was six feet five inches tall, or roughly two meters in height.

Because of this, the bed was not exactly made with his dimensions in mind. But Erich endured nonetheless. He went to bed knowing that tomorrow he had to make a proper first impression on S'aleth. After all, he had nailed the ball out of the park with Yumi, making the Oni beauty more interested in him than she had been initially during their past life. But now, he had to do the same for S'aleth.

S'laeth had fallen in love with Erich during their past life because despite being an officer in the StarFighter Corps of the Nation that had conquered her own he was still a normal guy, and far more kind as a flight instructor than he otherwise should have been.

But decades had passed since then, and Erich had been molded by the cruelty of the universe into a ruthless cold blooded dictator who would do whatever was necessary for the good of his people, and his own ambitions.

This was not the type of person that S'aleth would be attracted to. And because of this, Erich had to dig deep inside himself, and drag out a long suppressed portion of his personality if he had a chance of winning over her heart like he had done in his past life. Or at the very least would have to fake it until he made it.

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After a decent night's rest in the cozy hotel room, Erich emerged from his lodgings in more casual attire. Knowing that the Germanic Star-Empire was not well liked outside of its own borders. He decided to go on this tour of the city while dressed in civilian clothing. Had he worn his military uniform he would quite literally be painting a target on his back for some of the more radical elements of Dvrakian society to take advantage of?

However... Germanic society did not know the meaning of the word casual. Because of this, Erich's civilian clothing was far more formal than most would consider to be anything but the most formal of attire.

He wore a classical style tailcoat jacket that had been made of the smoothest black velvet imaginable. He then wore a proper suit vest beneath it constructed out of the same material. Beneath that, he wore a white silk dress shirt that had a black silk bowtie.

However, hanging beneath the bowtie was his Knight's Cross of the Iron cross with Swords, Oak leaves and Diamonds, whose red white and black ribbon was concealed beneath his shirt's collar. Displayed on the right side of his jacket was his breast star for his Grand Cross of the Order of the Black Sun.

Meanwhile, a solid blood-red sash hung over his suit vest, but beneath his jacket. Giving Erich the appearance of a noble gentleman, or in the case of the Germanic Star-Empire a highly decorated war hero.

Military uniforms and civilian fashion were different for every civilization. But the Germanic Star-Empire had a certain sense of fashion that was unmistakable within its own region of space. So much so that several Minor Powers had begun to copy their sense of fashion. Because of this, Erich was not immediately revealed as a Germanic Envoy simply by dressing in such a striking way.

His silver hair and eyes also helped disguise his origins, as the Galaxy was woefully ignorant about the existence of so called "mutants" in the Empire, considering the fact that 99.9% of their population all had blonde hair and blue eyes.

The only reason S'aleth even recognized him as a member of the Germanic race immediately upon making contact with her was because she had seen him in her father's office the previous day. S'aleth immediately bowed with respect towards the foreign envoy and introduced herself with the grace befitting of a politician's daughter.

"Good morning Captain Jaeger. My name is S'aleth Tavarian, and I shall be your guide for today... If there is anywhere in particular you wish to visit please let me know right away. If not, then do not fret, because I have already come up with a proper plan for today's tour!"

Erich smiled after seeing S'aleth so out of her element. He could tell by the embarrassed expression on her pretty face that her father had ordered her to do this out of the blue, and it was something that she generally was not accustomed to doing for international guests. Because of this, Erich decided to voice his support of whatever plan the young succubus had come up with to entertain him for the day.

"That's fine... If I'm being honest I am woefully ignorant of your Civilization and its culture, so I will trust your judgement in these matters... Please do inform me of any potential taboos there might be, before I accidentally break them...."

S'aleth was immediately surprised by how agreeable Erich was being. From what she had been taught about her people's southern neighbors, who were practically the overlords in this sector of space, they were an arrogant and prideful people who believed all other races were inferior to themselves and worth as much as the dirt beneath their feet.

Or perhaps even less... Yet Erich had not acted in such a way towards her, and was actually culturally conscious enough to ask for advice on any actions that might get him in trouble with the local population.

Thus, the young succubus had a much better opinion of Erich than she had initially thought she would when she was asked to entertain him as a glorified tour guide for the day. With this in mind, she wore a pretty smile while lecturing Erich about all the things that he could potentially do that were either criminal offenses or socially taboo. And it was only after Erich sat through this lecture that the two of them began the festivities for the day.

The tour started with a visit to the various palaces that existed on the planet to display the might of Dvrakian Architecture and their industry which supported such ventures. They then visited several memorials and monuments that were important to the history of Thexkar such as the Founding Monument, which was dedicated to those brave colonialists who travelled to the world of the Thexkar millennia ago from the Dvrakian homeworld via generation ships. Which were a type of sub-lightspeed starships used by many early civilizations to establish colonies on distant worlds outside their own star system.

In fact, most of the interstellar civilizations that existed across the galaxy started off with generation ships long ago. Humanity was a unique species that was so war torn and politically divided that they did not begin any attempts at interstellar colonization until after they developed FTL travel.

Many species either united early on in their history either diplomatically or militarily, and then used these generation ships to begin colonization. But humans were a vicious and violent species by nature.

One with many nations that throughout its history had many nations that were relatively equal in military power, and too tribalistic to unite via peaceful means. Because of this, even during humanity's early space age, its nations refused to work together on the development of space technology, and actually foolishly enough did not even recognize space travel as a priority until a time where a single global government was made possible.

The Germanic Star-Empire was an exception in this regard. As according to their own history, their ancestors saw the future of the human race, and decided they wanted no part of it. Thus, they banded together from several different nations with a similar ethnic and cultural origins, and privately developed FTL technology to escape from Earth.

Interestingly enough, the Chinese would follow a similar path nearly a century later, and embark on their own exodus to create the Heavenly Domain. But humanity was an outlier, as most species that were that barbaric and war like never even made it to the interstellar age, instead they usually ended up destroying themselves and their planets with them.

Thus Erich was actually extremely interested in the early history of the Dvrakian Consortium's government, and came to the conclusion after S'aleth's rather boastful retelling of history, that the reason their civilization's worlds were so independent, was because they had begun colonizing new worlds, centuries before their home planet developed faster than light technology. And because of this, each world developed its own sense of culture and selfsufficiency.

However, one thing became immediately apparent to Erich, Dvrakian civilization was much older than Germanic civilization, or the preceding human civilization. Human civilization was not even ten thousand years old at this point, While Dvrakian Civilization begin in its earliest forms some fifteen thousand years prior.

The fact that the Germanic Star-Empire was so much more advanced than the Dvrakian Consortium after only 400 years of existence was really a testament to its strictly authoritarian government, which kept a united Empire with singular focus.

And of course their mandatory practice of genetic augmentation, which improved their population in every way, including of course intelligence, which was the key to advancement in technology. And these were the primary thoughts that Erich had while on the tour that S'aleth had guided him on.