After the incident with the monster Adam had decided to speed things up a bit. His family had fallen asleep once more, and without them watching he seemed more willing to draw on his power.

“If you want, I can power the oars while you steer. If it were just me I’d be just as likely to run us aground as to get us to Clentim, since I never picked up a spell or skill to navigate, but you seem to have that aspect of things covered.”

I thought it over, even while I appreciated the fact that Adam was treating me like a person. For all the power that he had displayed, he clearly wasn’t comfortable using it freely. I tapped out a quick yes on the water, and began to figure out how exactly this cooperative strategy would work.

It would have been easy if I had an inbuilt rudder to steer with, but I was forced to rely on imbalanced rowing to angle myself left or right. Tring to do so at the same time that Adam was rowing us forwards was difficult, but not impossible. He had experience handling an oar, and even if I couldn’t exert more pressure than he could, I could move the oars enough for him to pick up my intent. With that figured out, we began to pick up speed, as each of Adam’s pulls sent the boat soaring through the water. Even if he wasn’t calling out [Power Stroke] with every action he took, it seemed as if some aspect of that skill or another still came through. We were simply moving faster than we should be, and for the first time I began to appreciate my quietest skill.

Water Resistance was not something active that I could use on command, nor was it obvious enough with its effects for me to figure out its workings like Saltwater Sense or Blessing of the Tides. It was only now, as we were travelling faster than ever before, that I could get a feel for how the Skill worked. Water Resistance protected me from water. The context that I had gotten the skill from made me assume that it would protect me from the deleterious effects of being submerged, but it was now clear that there was more to it than that. Water resistance was the interference caused by water colliding against my hull, and with the help of my skill I could simply ignore some of that, and could resist the ocean’s efforts to slow me down to a more reasonable speed. The more I learned how to wield this subtle ability, the faster we went, keeping up a strange equilibrium that sent us speeding towards our destination.

My oars were blurring through the water, leaving me unable to talk, but that didn’t stop Adam from filling the air.

“I appreciate the warning that you tried to give us. You might have been protecting your own hide as well, but most monsters out here will only eat meat, and aren’t quite smart enough to break apart a boat to get at it. I’ll admit I had my doubts about you when you first appeared, but you’ve been straightforward with us the entire time, and it would have been a trick and a half getting everything to Dirint without your help. So thank you for that.”

Adam was quiet for a while, and I thought he might have finished saying what he had on his mind, but then he spoke up again.

“I don’t know what you are exactly, or how you might have happened to come into existence. It’s a big world out there, after all. What I can say is that you’re weak at the moment. Most monsters out here will ignore you, but the ones that won’t will tear you apart in seconds. People are probably worse, because most won’t see you as a person, just as something they can use to enrich themselves. A fire trap or two placed in the right spot would leave you permanently at their mercy, not to get into some of the stranger Skills and spells out there. Hell, even I’m somewhat tempted to try and make a profit off of you!”

“I won’t! But not because it’s the wrong thing to do, but because Jim and Gladys wouldn’t approve of it. Doesn’t matter if it’d mean the difference between us starving or not, they have higher standards than I do, and I’m glad for it. So be careful, and try to find a way to always have an escape plan handy.”

The honesty that Adam admitted to his thoughts chilled me. Lirillin had seemed like a decent enough person, if ignorant of my condition, and Adam and his family had been more than welcoming to me. He still was, but to know that he had thoughts of other designs on me hurt. The emotional barriers I kept around my heart had come down these last two days with Adam and Jim, and while his poking was gentle, it still was painful to be told to keep my distance once more. A part of me had hoped that I could turn this singular trip into a longer-term arrangement, that I could work with Adam or Gladys or Jim to take care of my needs. Nothing that Adam said removed that idea outright, but his current attitude and the fact that he had already sworn off sailing once meant that my mind began to focus on making new plans.

One option was to simply use Navigation to try and find my way to someone else that I could safely work with. It might take some time to figure out the best phrasing, but if it worked once then I could probably make it work again.

Heading off on my own was another option. It had been good to spend time with people, and while a part of me still craved that interaction, a larger portion of my mind and heart were satisfied at the moment, ready to be by myself for another period while I gathered experience and improved my skills. I wanted to see some of those strange sights that Adam had listed, and heading off by myself meant I didn’t have to bind myself to what my passenger wanted or to only head where they wanted to go. It was a heady idea, brought back down to earth by my recent encounter.

Monsters existed in this world, and while I could probably avoid them by simply staging close to a shoreline at all times, the idea was both limiting and uncertain. It would take me years to turn my Power Strike into a tool equivalent to Adam’s Power Stroke, and until I did that or found another combat skill I was more or less at the mercy of any beasts I might come across.

Thoughts about my future kept spinning through my head as we raced through the night, right up until I began to feel the beginnings of a shoreline ahead of me. Active Sonar confirmed that the ocean was still relatively deep, even as I began to get feedback of shapes ahead of me that were distinctly manmade. Perfectly straight walls with square corners, the soft impressions of boats and ships sitting lightly on the water, and the feel of my oars slowing down as Adam began to more carefully steer us forwards all fed into my senses. Jim and Gladys being asleep cued me into the fact that it was late at night, but I wouldn’t have been able to tell without that fact. The section of dock I was pulling up to was busy, with numerous sailors and workers continuously moving back and forth as they loaded and unloaded cargo, walked from bar to bar, or simply huddled outside chatting and playing a game on the street.

Shellpin Bay had been large enough to have most professions present, and had decent sized crowds that came and went as the day progressed, but Clentim was a city. This wasn’t earth, with round the clock shifts, coffee, or electric lighting, but the tide doesn’t wait for anyone, and that meant all sorts of people had to be up and working to keep business going and ships flowing in and out.

The size of some of the larger ships staggered me. Sailing ships on earth were limited by materials to a decent size, and were eventually replaced by metal ships as it became easier to work with and shape precisely, but magic seemed to throw away most of those concerns here. Ships so large that they were probably towns in their own right waded about, slowly making their way carrying more than a dozen smaller ships could manage. Other ships were so blocky that they should have sat dead in the water, victims of their horrible profile, only to cut through the waves as if the water around them didn’t even exist. I could hear sails flapping in the breeze, but could also hear the sound of oars splashing in the water. Most were quiet affairs that I needed to confirm with Saltwater sense, but one particular boat had a musician keeping a steady beat while the rest of the crew hauled away on oars that must have been dozens of feet long. I didn’t have sight to confirm or deny my imagination, but in my mind’s eye a roman slave galley bulled its way towards shore at ramming speed, forcing other ships out of the way with complete arrogance.

Adam managed to get me through that mess of ships without any incident, and soon I was once again bobbing in the water next to a dock. It felt familiar, no matter how different my circumstances might be now.

“Honey, Son, you need to wake up.” Sleepily the pair managed to clamber out onto the shore, before stumbling their way towards a nearby inn that Adam pointed out to them. For a moment I thought he was going to tie me up and follow after them, only for him to surprise me by taking hold of my prow and carefully pulling me completely out of the water onto the shore.

“Beats paying for the docking fee.” He sheepishly answered my unspoken question, before lifting me onto his shoulders and following after his family.