Work Order complete

Time elapsed since last XP gain: 567 Minutes

Current XP gain: 900 XP/s

+30,618,000 XP

+3 Levels [Level 51]

+3 Class Points

I spent most of the night just fucking around in my room. Decorating, moving the bed, adjusting the mood lighting, and installing the chalkboard for me to put ideas onto. The work order had finished relatively early, but I didn't bother putting in a new one until I knew what I needed.

The first issue was to add more armor, but there was a problem--weight. The more shit I added to this ship, the slower it became, and without realizing it, I had more than halved the top speed of the ship by bulking it out.

Current Speed: 9 kph | 4 knots

It was down to a crawl. The solution? Add more engines. A bunch more. So I added 8 to make it 10 in total.

Engine Level: 2

Engine Power: 10,000 P

Engine Drain: 1,000 F/s

Engines: 10

Total Drain: 10,000 F/s

Projected Speed: 45 kph | 24 knots

This would also really dig into my resource gain, but with the size of the resource hold, I felt confident about it. The idea of quadrupling my speed was just too much of a good thing to pass up.

Also, I went ahead and made the first prototype gunboat. With Cassandra's help, we essentially repurposed a tank engine to power a propellor. We also used the tank's turret and front-facing machine gun. Essentially, it was just a boat-shaped floating tank with less armor and more speed. Awesome.

Work Order

8 Engines

1 Gunboat Mark 1

Hull: Dragonscale Layer

Hull: Additional Armor

Total Cost: 695,000,000 W

Resource Gain Rate: 70,000 W/s

Estimated Time to completion: 166 Minutes

Sunrise came. The weather was cloudy. The crew of the ship slowly rustled awake, and the pirate captain returned to the bridge. We had been anchored a few kilometers away from the pirate-friendly docks, mostly just to stay out of sight, but now, with the pirate captain's aid, he pointed me how to navigate the waters to avoid running aground.

"This would be easier," he said, "if you just let me sing it to you."

"No."

"It's just the chorus. We always do this before docking."

"Nope."

He started humming it anyway, and to my horror, it was surprisingly catchy. Catchy enough to be stuck in my goddamn head for the next few hours at least.

As we made the final turns through the island straits, Cassandra kept warning me about the shallow waters, annoyingly so, but even after I told her that us men had it under control, she demanded that I upgrade her yet again so that she could use this stupid thing called SONAR, whatever the hell that was. It was probably fake. Still, I relented and upgraded her to AI level 3.

Little good it even did, since by the time she woke up again, we had already docked about as well as we could in a ship this size.

The piers were long and narrow, mostly used for the smaller wooden ships that the pirates had. Still, we were able to drop a gangplank without too much trouble. Just had to be careful walking down it.

Before doing anything else, I ordered the dungeon mob recyclers to hop over and guard the gangplank. They did so dutifully and with the clankity clangs and tinny rattling that would be expected of dungeon mobs made from trash cans.

CLING CLANG CLING CLANG CLING CLANG!

The trash squire--a sort of watered-down version of my trash knight armor--stood as an overwatch behind them. At my current dungeon level, I could only afford a single boss, but I made plans to buff it out once I got back from going ashore.

Which I wanted to do, of course.

Outside, the sky was an overcast brown and white, as if the gods poured engine oil into milk and swirled it around. It was both vaguely normal-appearing while also unsettling. The rain came in waves, mostly as a drizzle, but not enough to justify an umbrella.

Since Vil decided to join me, we both sported the Cyberleather hooded cloaks, and that was plenty to shed off the rain. I had made one for Jessie, too, but she stayed in.

Out here, dozens of people were going offshore for this or that, mostly to fetch the food, spices, and alcohol we needed, and some just left to check out the local town. I couldn't blame them. It's what I was doing. For the most part, they were dressed like typical peasants or dock workers or passing sailors, but some of them had paper masks over their faces, and the others seemed to pay it no mind.

Maybe there was a cult here. Or a guild. Or a very popular paper mask seller who happened to be a young lady, mousy and attractive, homely with touseled brown hair and humble freckles, and wore long skirts and crinkled her nose at every silly joke these seaside dorks threw at her.

If this were the case, I would need to investigate.

The town seemed groggy this early in the morning, the entirety of it built half into a jungle, the other half covered in mud and dirt. A wagon rolled by, the horse snorted and shook the water from its mane, and the heavy wooden wheels creamed through the mud as it passed.

A voice called out to us. "You two." It was a guy of average height and build, dressed in typical leather armor, but he was one of the mask-wearers. He had on a white and red mask over his whole face. It was some kind of animal, but hard to tell what it was.

He stomped up to us and gave us a good look-over. "You seem like STRAPPING young men." He really drove into that word. Practically shouted it. Was he angry at us? "The guild has BOUNTIES on the market board over there. Why not take a look?" He pointed, and my eyes followed him to a nearby lodge and a market board beneath the walkway.

"Thank you, local... person," I said. "I'll be sure to, uh, check it out. I guess. Th-thanks."

"Get on with it," he said, his voice somehow simmering behind that mask. "Only the most NOBLE," he stepped closer, "and COURAGEOUS heroes need apply." He tilted his head close at me. "You're that guy, right? Noble and... courageous?"

I clicked my tongue. "Yep." I walked around him, Vil followed, and he watched as we hobbled through the mud to escape him. Soon we found the market board by the lodge, and on it, papers and advertisements and little side-gigs, including the bounties, and sure enough, there was one for me.

ISKANDAR REDRIM, it said in bold. I pulled it and gave it a look over. They didn't have a sketch for me, and where my face should've been, there was just a rough, human-shaped outline with a question mark in the middle. Weird.

I looked back at the masked weirdo. He was gone.

"Strange," Vil said. "There's not one for me."

"Oh, look at that," I said with feigned pity. "First you were more expensive than I was, but now you're not even on the board."

"I was more expensive than you?" He snatched the bounty paper from me and looked it over.

I wasn't trying to gloat. It just came naturally. Of course, I was more dangerous than him and thus wanted for my treachery. Ha! Everyone knew! I couldn't keep it a secret. I was just living my trash can life out loud, riding the bounty vibes, cruising by the--

"This isn't you," Vil said with a shit-eating grin.

"What? No, you're not reading it right. It says my name right on top there."

"The bounty describes the target as a person with bulging muscles, wavy hair, and really, really large breasts."

"But I don't have tits, though." I double-checked and gave myself a good squeeze. "Nope, no tits here."

"That bounty isn't for you," he said. "It's for the original Redrim, who is a woman, and according to this, a woman who was last seen on this island."