"Well it wasn't much of an adventure but at least, you had a chance to experience the ocean first hand and if you are still interested I will be sure to invite you out again if I find something of intrest.: Rick said as he and Nellie left his office.

"I would love to go out there again Cedric it was so exhilarating and those women who were sailing your boat were also very impressive. If only I knew how to fight and could live a life traveling the open seas and discover a new and exciting place like them." She said with a light tone of regret.

"Oh? Are you planning on quitting your job as my sales manager to live a life of adventure!" He said in mock disappointment and then he couldn't hold back from laughing and Nellie joined in.

"You continue to do a great job here and don't worry I will be sure to take you on a few adventures again someday," Rick said with a smile.

Nellie lit up with excitement and agreed to do just that and walked off now recharged from her lunchtime vacation to help out the waiting customers or assist her sales girls.

Rick watched as Nellie almost skipped away to head back out to the showroom while shaking his head with a smile. He went back into his office and went back to the ship and recast Portal to travel over to the castle workshop. He removed the overly priced iron ore he bought from the stingy blacksmith and began loading up his blast furnaces with it along with coal and limestone dust. He recharged all of the storage gems and then started them all so that they would begin melting down the materials he loaded them with.

Without waiting on the blast furnaces, he went back to the ship and went out on the deck to see the ever approaching land ahead of them.

"We can start heading toward the west now while following the coast. When the sun starts to get ready to set have the crew keep an eye out for a small cove that we can stop for the night. I want to find a place that will protect the ship from any bad weather that may come along. I will be down in the cabin for a while if anyone comes down there looking for me and I am not there do not be alarmed I have a magic spell that allows me to leave the ship. That is where the young lady that was on the deck came from earlier I saw that the crew was a little surprised by her appearance." Rick explained to the captain and went back to the cabin.

Back in his castle workshop inside of the Fast Domain, he finished the smelting process of the blast furnaces and bled off the impurities before pouring the molten steel into ingot to cool. Even though the iron ore cost him more than he thought was fair, Rick was now able to at least restock his dwindling steel supplies until his miners began to send back ore from the mine.

When the last ingots had solidified but were still glowing hot he popped them free of the ingot molds and started making a long thick steel chain. He made a heavy-duty steel chain that was about fifty feet long and placed it into his inventory. He placed a few of the steel ingot into the forge to get them hot enough to work and he hammered them together in layers and when he had a long piece of metal weighing about fifty pounds he hammered it into the shape of a basic anchor with a loop on the post to connect his chain.

After attaching the chain to the anchor he went back to the ship and bolted the anchor chain to the front rail. He then made a small wooden box with a hinged lid to store the anchor inside of and screwed it to the ship deck so that the anchor would not slide around the deck and injure the crew.

The sailboat quietly slipped through the waves along the uninhabited coast and slid into a narrow cove to drop anchor as the sun began to set on into the western horizon. Rick explained his spell to the crew that would allow them to travel back to the city and walked through with them to end up in front of the restaurant. Rick told them to go ahead and eat dinner in the restaurant if they were hungry and also told them about the gaming houses and tavern. He told them to meet him at the restaurant after lunch tomorrow and then they would head back to the ship and continue their voyage.

Rick went inside the restaurant to also eat his in-game dinner and fill his satiety level up. Once he entered he saw the shipwrights had also decided to stop and eat. He sat down with them and discussed having them start on a new ship now that they had finished his personal sailboat.

The group finished their meals and agreed to meet up at lunchtime to go over the designs of the new boat that they would build next. Rick left the restaurant and wnt to the castle library and dropped off the new books.

He opened a Portal to the store office and collected the thick layer of coins from his desk that contained a lot of gold coins. He skimmed over the day's sales and seen they had another great day of sales.

It seems that it was a good idea to hire the new sales girls. More customers are being helped now before they can become impatient and leave the store and that leads to more sales.

Once he had dropped off the sales book, Rick used the Portal to rave to the outskirts of Lorebark forest. Using his Astrallium axe he chopped down just over two hundred trees and stripped them clean. With all of the trees in his inventory, he flew off to the riverside lumbermill and made a couple stacks of fifty trees each.

The other hundred trees he took to the harbor and stacked them alongside the dry dock to be used for the new ship. Now that the sun had completely set he flew back to the castle and logged off for the night

[]--------------------[]--------------------[]

Prodigy Wave Corp

"Hello, Clair how are you today."

"Oh, just fine Jeff. Is that what I think it is?" Clair asked with a smile.

"Yeah, the usual player reports that Mr. Morgan has taken an interest in." Said Jeff

Clair nodded in understanding as she picked up her desk phone and let Mr. Morgan know that Jeff was outside his office. "Yes, sir not a problem at all," Clair said as she hung up and rolled her eyes toward the office door.

Jeff smiled and walked past her desk straight into the CEO's office and set a stack of reports down on his desk.

"So what's the word Jeff anything new worth reporting?" The CEO of Prodigy Wave Corp Mr. Morgan asked as he picked up the folder and opened it.

"The player Asmodeus has conquered another demon tribe along the eastern side of the continent and made them forcefully submit to his rule. He now controls almost half of the tribes on the Demon starting island even if he doesn't' own that much land." Jeff explained.

"The demons were never designed to be easy to rule they are selfish and self-centered how is he making it look so easy?" Mr. Morgan asked curiously.

"They are that, but they also were designed to protect their clan and family. Asmodeus is using that to his advantage. He has built a large citadel Prison and has been imprisoning demon women and children along with their clan leaders to make them fall in line. If they refuse to submit he brings out their family's and begins slaughtering them right in front of the entire settlement until they change their minds." Jeff explained with a frown.

"I know they are only AI NPCs but that is a little bloodthirsty. This guy has me worried about what he will do if he decides to cross over to the starting continent." Mr. Morgan commented while turning skimming over the information on Asmodeus.

"It seems that Mr. Stryker or Cedric your hope to counter Asmodeus is not quite as bad, but he isn't far behind Asmodeus in the bloodthirsty department. From what we can figure out he sent an Elven Scout north to make contact or spy on a tribe of Nekomimi. Not far from the Nekomimi tribe the Scout was killed in an ambush by the tribe and his belongings were taken and divided among the attackers. Cedric led a small party who used a skill to trail their scout that never returned and found his dead stripped body. Before Cedric's party could leave they were ambushed and managed to fight off their attackers. A few days later Cedric led a small army to the outskirts of the settlement just before Dawn. This tablet has the highlights of the battle on it if you are curious to see how he fought." Jeff explained as he handed over the tablet to Mr. Morgan.

Mr. Morgan hit the play button and watched as the Ballistas with runic arrows streamed across the dark sky to ignite the wooden hovels. He watched as Rick flew over the sleeping settlement dropping a number of fire spells on the hut to encourage the settlement to become engulfed in flames. The video then cut to him moving his troops out on mounted Tigers and Dire Wolves to ambush and drive back the tribal Nekomimi. In the end, they encircled the tribe and slaughtered every one of them without exception.

"It is quite impressive that he has these long distance ballista already and he has a great understanding of the battlefield. I wonder why he decided to wipe out the entire tribe though?" Mr. Morgan asked.

"All I can think of is that he just couldn't trust leaving an enemy like that out there to come back and strike at them again in the future," Jeff said shaking his head with a puzzled look.

"Also if you think that those ballistae are impressive you should take a look at this," Jeff said as he passed over a screenshot of the air rifle Rick had recently designed.

"Is this what it looks!" like Mr. Morgan asked sitting straight up in his seat in surprise.

"Without digging more into his personal game recording it is hard to say. It looks like a modern assault rifle and it wasn't used in the recent battle so it must be something he recently made. We would need your permission to look into the mechanics of the rifle or like I said his personal gameplay recordings to be sure but I doubt he just made a fake gun that doesn't do anything for nothing. We know that Mr. Stryker has a whole store of unique items for sale that no one else in the game has come close to making so I am sure it is a safe bet that this rifle is the real deal."

Mr. Morgan was quiet for a minute. "Continue keeping an eye on him there is no need to infringe upon his person gameplay recordings. Instead, keep an eye on his future NPC purchases from the system. We knew that someone would one day start making weapons that aren't in the game but to go from ballista to assault rifles.... we may need to start thinking about releasing some of the 2nd generation of buyable NPCs soon." said the stunned Mr. Morgan.

He excused and thanked Jeff for the reports and began reading through them as Jeff went back to his office to continue his research.

[]--------------------[]--------------------[]

During classes Rick let his friends know that he had set sail on his boat and had it currently anchored off the western coast of the starter continent. He made plans to first pick up Lily on the western coastline of the Elven lands and then start working along the southern coast in search of the Enclave Isles. Once he found the Enclave Isles he would find a that would be convenient to open a Portal later so that he could bring Luke and his girlfriend to his city. After leaving the Enclave Isles which was the home of the five major vampire clans he would then need to search out the Darfellan Archipelago. Once he had found the Darfellan Archipelago he would be able to pick up Ryan.

Rick also let his friends know that he planned to continue sailing up around the eastern coastline and stop at the Gnome Citadel, Nekomimi City, and possibly the Kitsune City as well. He figured since he would be so far east when he had picked up Ryan that he should just make a complete journey all the way around the starting continent Etheraland. This way he could stop at the main cities that were so far from the human city. This would allow him to be able to use his Portal to return to these cities anytime that he wanted in the future.

He only wished that the Dwarven Moutain Fortress wasn't so far inland and blocked by mountains from the northern ocean or he would stop there before heading home. Rick had always wanted to visit the Dwarven underground city and would need to make time after picking his friends up to fly there from the human city to check it out.

...

Once Rick was back in the game he made his way to the restaurant and rejoined his female boat crew and found his shipwrights that were already there waiting for him. Rick sat down at a big table with the shipwrights and his boat crew and began drawing up designs and measurements for the new ship that he had wanted to be built. After doing some research online he decided to make a large ship that would be able to hold a good sized crew.

Rick planned to one day open his city up to tourist, Players, or anyone who wished to live in the outer city district so he would need a large dependable ship that could make trips from the main continent to his island.

Once he completed his designs he allowed everyone at the table to look them over. Even though his ship crew would not have anything to do with the construction of the ship, he wanted them to see what the ship would look like since they may one day be the crew who was in charge of sailing it.

Spoiler: New Ship Designs.

Because of the size of this ship and how much more detail would need to be put into it, he was sure to draw out the masts, sail lines, how the hull and skeleton should be built and also provided them with cutaways of how the ships interiors and different levels should be laid out. Since these Shipwrights were AI it wasn't that difficult for them to understand everything they were being shown. It was just a matter of having a high enough level in their skills to apply this knowledge to the ship when they were building it.

Once he passed all the designs over to them and they had the gist of what they needed to do he walked with everyone over to the System Gate and spawned in ten Shipwright_Artisans. He sent the original Shipwrights off with the new ones to find their new apartments with the messengers. Once they had found their new apartments, RIck told them to work out a schedule with the wagoners to take them to the harbor and pick them up every day. Rick told them to use the huge dry dock he had built next to the docks to build the new ship. Once they had finished the ship inside the dry docks he would be able to open the gates and flood it with water so that they could float the ship out into the harbor and dock it.

The group of Shipwrights then left to begin the new project and Rick used the Portal to bring him and his crew back to the ship and begin sailing south along the western coastline. Now that he had learned how to make magnets, Rick sat at the table inside the boat cabin and began experimenting on making a compass. He had his compass that he was awarded from completing his quest in the Lorebark forest, but this did not help his captain when he was not on deck.

Since the weather had been clear and fair she could use the sun to know the general direction the boat was headed. The problem was what would happen when they had a foggy or rainy day and he was not up on deck or on the boat.

The small ship continued to roll along the waves pressing further south. Rick kept himself occupied with making a compass while his crew vigilantly sailed the along keeping the sails full of wind. He had made three different sized compasses to test out his theories and was now working on a steel case compass that he had filled with clear vegetable oil so that the magnetized needle would freely float and point to magnetic north.

After a few tweaks, he had the compass pointing in the exact same way as his virtual compass on his game hud. He then cut a circular piece of glass and fit it into to the top cover and soldered the bottom section and top section together to prevent the compass from opening or leaking the oil inside of it.

Rick was presently filing down the excess metal that he had used to sodered the compass to give it a more appealing look when his ship's commander came down to inform him that they had spotted land on the horizon.

Rick picked up his compass and stored it in his inventory and followed the commander up to the roof of the bow of his ship. He activated his Far Sight skill and could make out a desolate almost desert looking terrain without out any signs of life or structures.

He walked to the back of the ship and instructed the captain to steer the ship closer to the land mass. The ship soon came to within roughly a half mile of the coastline and Rick called out to lower the sails and drop the anchor. He checked to make sure that the anchor was holding the ship in place before informing the captain that he would go ashore to investigate.

When he activated his Flight skill and zipped off toward the shore the women on the boat were all left speechless as they watched their lord fly through the air faster than any bird could even fly. As he flew over the land Rick was reminded of a few of the southwestern states like New Mexico and Arizona that had wide open dry land with sparse dry vegetation.

While traveling along he actually came across a small scale battle about the size of the battles that he had been through with the different tribes on his island. He decided to lower descend in altitude to see if he could figure out what was going on without getting so close that someone might try to cast a spell or send an arrow in his direction.

Rick used his Far Sight skill to zoom in and was shocked to see creatures that he had not seen in-game, but had seen screenshots of before. The creatures below him were Demons and from what he could tell one army of demons was made up of many types of demons and they were currently slaughtering an army of large demons that looked to be of all the same type.

From what he could guess someone had developed an army of mixed demons and was placing them into roles that best suited their classes and skills. It almost reminded him of how his army had races with classes that best suited them. Even though the mixed army of demons were still an unorganized mob they were working together to press back a larger, stronger force without much difficulty.

Now that Rick knew he was over the Demon starting island he decided to head back to the ship after finding a secure out of the place spot that he could Portal to if he ever wanted to return here. Back on the ship the anchor and sails were raised and they continued to sail south. As the captain was steering the ship, Rick built a small wooden pillar about waist high next to the ship's wheel and mounted his new compass on top of it.

When it was secured in place, he gave the captain a crash course on how to use the compass that was easy to read right next to the wheel. The captain followed the compass on a south-eastern route until they were once again in view of the main continent and then she changed course to follow the coastline south in search of the elven forest.

....

After a half day on the ocean, the ship pulled into a secluded bay and dropped anchor as the sun was setting into the western ocean. Rick used the Portal spell to bring the crew home and asked them to meet him tomorrow at the same time that his classes were over.

He quickly went through the crafting district and gathered up all of the items that had been completed over the past couple days and jumped over to his store office. He gathered the thick layer of coins from his desk drawer and restocked the store displays after returning the records book to Barat's office.

Rick had gone back into his office to gather a couple stacks of books left behind by his merchant once everything was restocked and even went upstairs to check on the guards and give them a few more coins for meals and entertainment.

Using his Portal he jumped over to the castle library and took out the new books to place on the books shelves after showing them to Angelica and Nezera who were both sitting together reading before heading to bed.

In his castle bedroom, he unequipped his gear and logged off to make dinner and go to bed.

Disconnect!