There was a platform that sat in the shade of the bridge, and I sat on it like a throne. The rebels had gathered on my side, and the pirates on the other, but no angry faces were shared between the two. After all, they had just fought against a mythical beast together and prevailed.

The pirate captain approached with tired steps, paused a distance between us, and took off his hat.

I propped my head upon my hand like an unamused king. "Well?" I said.

He snapped his fingers. Four pirates jumped to his side.

Some of the rebels drew guns.

I raised my hand to pause them.

The captain snapped his fingers again. Then paused. And again, this time with the four others altogether. Another pause. They stomped forward. Snapped. Forward. Snapped.

What the fuck--

"Yo ho," they sang together, "yo hee," they snapped again, "we're the pirates dillidee--"

"No, no, no," I stopped them. "No songs. We don't do that here. Just--just talk like normal people. Please."

The pirate captain took a deep breath and waved his men away. "Yar," he said, somehow not actually sounding like a pirate and more like an ordinary guy. "I figure I owe you an apology," he said. "We had intel that the Lambston Empire had found an old ship East of here, and we thought you were them."

"I sank that ship," I said. "We are the only thing that survived from that place."

"Yar," he said plainly. "Queen Marianna's fleet had killed most of the shipping between the channel and the Northern Seas, so business has been poor. Yar. We had hoped this would've been our last job for some time, as we've been struggling to feed our families." He nodded around at the other pirates, and they nodded back to goad him into saying whatever he needed to say. "And, uh," he stammered, "You see, this is hard to say without singing, so… why don't I just," he snapped his fingers, his men joined his side, they stomped forward, and said, "Yar, maties, it be me, the pirate dillidee--"

"Out with it!" I barked. "No singing. Just say it. For fuck's sake."

The captain's face reddened. He was... shy.

The Card King stood beside me. He leaned in and whispered in my ear. "They have no ships, and from what they say, they have no jobs. We might as well hire them."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. That much was obvious, but I really wanted to hear it from the captain's mouth. This was, after all, originally a fight between him and me, and I was the victor. Hearing him submit to my power would've been the sweetest treat to my ears, but this bashful songstress of a pirate man wasn't budging.

I sighed. "Just--Just fuckin' join us, I guess. Whatever."

They cheered. The pirates cheered. The rebels cheered. I sat there and rubbed my temples as the people jumped up and down and hugged their battle-comrades across the decks, and soon, a hand reached out for mine.

"Admiral Redrim," said the captain. "After witnessing the battle with the Kraken-spawn, I'm excited to be taken under your wing. Yarr."

"Sure." I shook his hand. "Wait, Kraken-spawn? That wasn't the real Kraken?"

"It was not," he continued. "But it matters not. The original Kraken has long since been dead, and there is yet no chance—yarr—that it could surprise us in the future."

I narrowed my eyes. "I see…"

"Yarr. With respect to my station, what role could you have for me on this vessel?"

I smirked. "I actually have an idea about that. Something you would like."

He blushed a bit and grinned back.

And I rolled my eyes and left.

Time Elapsed Since Last XP Gain: 438 Minutes

Current XP Rate: 900 XP/s

+23,652,000 XP

+3 Levels [Level 48]

+3 Class Points

I shivered in excitement at that huge burst of experience. It seemed that I was hauling ass through my mid-levels, but after a glance at my XP requirements, I could see that I would need to double my total XP just to reach four or so levels. It was alarming. A couple dozen million experience was massive, nearly unheard of before this. If I wanted to keep progressing, I would need to build bigger and bigger machines to recycle with, and just the thought of that final XP gain to max level unnerved me.

But that was a worry for another time. For now, I needed to unfuck the hull again and put in some much-needed renovations to this ship. After the total clusterfuck of that last fight, I already had a long list of changes.

The first thing to do was add more hardpoints to mount turrets to. Having only one turret was unacceptable for a warship-in-training.

Hardpoints 10 unlocked.

Hardpoints:

Port: None

Starboard: None

Bow: Turret

Stern: Mining

Keel 1: Mining

Keel 2: Mining

Keel 3: Mining

Bridge: Comms

Deck 1: None

Deck 2: None

Work Order:

Hull Repair

Hull Expansion: 20m

Internal Communications System

Room: Auxiliary Ship Hold

Room: Public Crafting Station

Port Hardpoint: T-34/85 Turret

Starboard Hardpoint: T-34/85 Turret

Deck 1 Hardpoint: T-34/85 Turret

Deck 2 Hardpoint: T-34/85 Turret

20 7.62mm LMG w/Tripods

10,000 7.62mm Ammunition

200 85mm HEAT

200 85mm HE

Total: 506,510,000 W

Resource Rate: 86,000 Water per second

Estimated Time Remaining: 48 Minutes

Resources:

1,000,000 B

1,000,000 F

1,000,000 E

1,000,000 A

Perfect. I did a little bit of fiddling with the resource storage. Instead of drawing from the rare element storage to craft this work order, I decided to keep that storage capped until I needed it. After all, water was all around us, and it was free. Also, since I put a limit on those rare resources and we met the cap, the resource gain reset to store just water, bumping my total gain to 86,000 water element per second after fuel costs.

Once this was done, a great many problems would be solved. The communications system would enable me to yell at people below decks over the loudspeaker, and during battle, the turrets could talk to the bridge. There were other connecting lines between various rooms, mostly for convenience.

My next trick was the hull expansion. We were about to add maybe another 50 or so crewmen on board, and we needed the extra space. Somehow it felt cramped on board during that last fight, and I didn't like that. Once we got the hull repaired and extended, then I would work on adding more armor.

I also added a couple rooms. The first was a genius idea I had come up with (including some help from Cassandra). It was a public crafting station that could be used by anyone on board. I intended to use a voucher system to act as a sort of payment plan for the crew, but I decided to talk that over with the rebel leaders instead. For now, it was free to use for anyone as long as there were no current work orders, and we weren't getting shot at or bitten by strange deepwater beasts.

The other room was more of a huge cargo area that opened to the stern of the ship. I had to get Cassandra to reposition the hardpoint to either side; that way, we could have a boat hangar essentially. Inside, I would make little gunboats for the pirates to use. The boats would be docked beneath the hull, accessible from the lower decks, pulled along by chains, all covered and protected by the main ship. The pirates could sortie out, do flanking maneuvers on things like raid bosses, then return back. I already had cool ideas about the gunboats, but I would make those later.

Finally, I fleshed out the turrets on the deck. I still only had access to the tank turret, so we'd have to install those along the top deck on the hardpoints. They would be fit there in a line down the length of the ship, some built at ascending heights so that we could fire them over one another if we faced the target straight on. It wasn't the prettiest looking thing, but it worked.

The extra light machine guns could be carried around by the rebels, and that alone should prevent any more unnecessary melee fighting on the ship. Still, I went ahead and dropped a few points into my Dungeon Core skill tree, mostly to add more recyclers.

Mob Tier 2 unlocked.

Boss Tier 1 unlocked.

Dungeon Core:

Resource Limit: 50,000

Spawners: 2

Dimensional Floors: 1

Mob Tier: 2

Boss Tier: 1

Available mobs:

Recycler: 5,000 R

Recycler++: 10,000 R

Trash Squire: 20,000 R

This was so cool.

Essentially, the entire ship was my dungeon, which counted as the single floor. The dimensional flooring, according to the guide, meant that I could have alternate-dimension areas to fill mobs with. For us, useless. We only needed the one floor.

Though the idea of luring enemy ships into boarding us, just for them all to die in an ever-changing ship labyrinth was probably the most metal thing I could imagine, it wasn't necessarily the most convenient. Instead, I decided to have the recyclers and trash squires walk around and do menial tasks. Like mop floors or stand guard.

I was a bit sad I couldn't have zombies or skeletons or even goblins, but as the rules stated, I could only have a dungeon the same theme as my race, so trash theme it was.

Jessie sighed. "How long are you gonna keep hovering over me?"

I blinked. I stood in her workshop as she fiddled with more mechanical... devices. It was a simple room, relatively long. Lit by pale electronic lights, tools, and desks filled with papers and other workshop-related junk, and on the far end, a target zone. There were scorch marks all down the target alley.

"Sorry," I said. "I was working on something."

Jessie was dressed in a dirty lab coat over her coveralls. Her blond hair had been pulled back in a ponytail, and she had goggles over her eyes. Whatever it was in her hands glowed and sparked. "Goddamnit. Redrim, you're bad luck. Get the fuck outta here."

"I came in here for something, but I forgot what it was," I said.

"Oh, yeah. The rockets." She pointed at the corner without looking. "There's one there. Eat it and get your recipe. I'm busy."

Sure enough, there was a rocket just propped up in the corner like a door stopper. Probably not very safe. I stepped over and picked it up. It looked essentially like an ordinary tank shell, just pointier. I didn't want to eat it in front of a lady, so I held onto it for now.

"Long-range or short-range?" she asked.

"What?"

She hit me with an annoyed sigh. "You and I both know what's up. I'm supposed to research new tech for you. You capture a beautiful young girl like me, who happens to be amazing at everything, and she engineers cool shit for you to use. Right? It's how it always works. Except for the part where you fuck me, which you still haven't done. Little bitch."

Yikes. "Uh, long-range. Make me something long-range. We have enough short-ranged stuff."

She rubbed her temples, then glared me up and down. "So you didn't come here to fuck. Alright. Fine. Get out. I'll just find a few soldiers to entertain me tonight."

"You know what? No." I dropped the rocket back in the corner. "Sure. I'd fuck you. But I can't. Okay? Are you happy now? I'm a goddamn walking trash can wearing knight's armor. I have no dick, Jessie. I'm a dickless trash can."

She leaned back in her chair and hit me with a grin. "Aw, Redrim." Her cheeks glowed a shade pinker. "Here's an idea: You let me stab you, then you'll be reborn as a hot slut like me, then you could--"

"Fuck off," I groaned. As she chuckled, I picked up the rocket and walked off.

There was a recycle chute nearby, so I just dropped the rocket in.

+1 Rocket

New Recipe unlocked.

I walked through the decks of the ship to return to the bridge. I wanted to see how much daylight we had left and if the pirate captain--under rebel supervision--sailed us any closer to his home port.

The people here seemed to be doing as well as always, maybe a little tired looking, maybe a bit more crotchety than usual. This was probably because of the lack of any good food. It reminded me that I needed to make someone a quartermaster to handle buying supplies that I couldn't make. Food and spices, mostly. Also alcohol. That sort of thing.

When I made it back above deck, I saw the darkness had truly set in for the night, and we idled in the channel waters alone. Land could not be seen on either side. The lights along the deck were on, and the bridge was lit well enough to see from afar. Inside, I could see the pirate captain and his officers talk with the rebels officers. They were pointing at maps and such. Boring shit.

I poked my head in the door. "No night sailing?" I asked.

"Nay," said the pirate captain. "I could explain, yarr, but I'd need to do it in a song."

"No night sailing. Got it." I stepped out, around the walkway, and climbed the stairs to the roof of the bridge.

Vil and Lara were here, doing some weird, silly shit. I peeked my head up to spy on them.

"This is such a peaceful night," Vil said with the binoculars in his hand.

Lara crouched as if to pounce. "It would be a shame if--"

Vil finished. "--something bad were to happen--ha!" They both looked out across the sea. I looked this way or that, and I saw nothing.

"Strange," Vil said. "It's so quiet out here."

Lara grinned. "I sure hope nothing comes to ruin our night--ha!"

They looked out again. Nothing.

I couldn't help it. I snorted.

"Redrim!" Lara anchored his fists on her waist and stared down playfully at me. I was still stuck to the ladder, but now I was full-on belly laughing.

There was a suspicious amount of color in Vil's cheeks. "Oh, there he is," he said in his usual tone. "And here I thought you might've slipped off the deck and drowned."

"Funny." I slid down the ladder. "Get some rest for once. You're both stressing me out."

"I suppose it's long overdue," Vil said. "I haven't slept in weeks, it seems."

"Don't forget," I told him. "You're in the VIP rooms."

He smiled down at me, and he hit me with a thumbs-up.

I returned it.