With the moron gone, Vaile went through his item box until he found what he was looking for. He had not had to use this little ‘toy’ in quite a long time, as his countless Tamed Beings had long since taken this little thing’s place in his toolbox. However, with his access to his Tamed Beings neutered and his stats being limited to what they were, he would need to use an old but reliable tool that had served him well in the early days of the MMO.

He withdrew another small box from his item box and casually tossed it into the churning waters around the pier. The box made contact with the waves and immediately transformed into a full warship big enough to put the largest Napoleonic Warship to shame. Covered in heavily enchanted and reinforced plating, powered not just by the wind but also by multiple water-jet systems and propellers and armed to the teeth with mortars, harpoons, rapid-fire cannons, and even a rotary flak cannon, it was clear as day that Vaile had taken the original rinky-dink ship that he had gotten so very long ago and given it the same treatment that he had given to his Tamed Beings.

What was once nothing more than an oversized single-person sailboat had long since evolved into a ship that could make the combined Spanish, English, and Dutch Armadas of the Napoleonic era turn tail and run, and best of all it was almost entirely automated. Although, what was possibly tied with that was the fact that it didn’t want to bed him, which went a long way to putting it in Vaile’s good graces. To be fair, it wasn’t that Vaile was dense, nor was he homosexual. He just did not find the various beings he had to deal with all that attractive, which he supposed could possibly be chalked up to his own preferences and also due to the restrictions placed on Player Avatars.

After all, you could have a massive dick, but having it work was entirely out of the question. And, in a way, he was glad that the holdovers of the MMO led to him being mostly asexual. It saved him a lot of trouble, although he was fairly certain that there were ways around all of that.

ANYWAY!

He now had another place to use as a hideaway and given that he had outfitted it with all the bells and whistles that he could during the MMO, he was fairly sure that he didn’t need to go through the hassle of fortifying it all over again. After all, this was a ship that could go toe-to-toe with a Trench Leviathan that had been geared towards inducing madness and insanity (the debuffs, not the real thing), and it not only kicked that fucker’s butt, but it did so without taking barely a scratch. Hell, even the cultists and the Deep Servants that tried to add to the mix could even begin to board the thing during the fight, and it was thanks to this beast that Vaile gained a few new unique Tamed Beings.

If any ship could keep him safe, it would be this one. Now he just needed to finish exploring the rest of the city and then he could try his hand at exploring the fog-covered waters that he assumed hid the way out of this place. Well, it was back to the old grind, once again.

…

That night, there was a commotion at the docks. Once the mind-shackles fell away and all were free to do as they willed, the majority of them decided that it would be best to avoid attempting to breach Vaile’s rooms. Those Hounds had already told them of the fact that Vaile found their attempted intrusions to be… distasteful, but they were indeed worried that every second that he was not informed of the truth, every second that he was not ascended to a higher state of being was a second in which they could strike.

It did not occur to them that if they made Vaile into one of them that he would be chained by the same locks and bonds that kept them bound and enslaved to the wills of lesser beings, and they still could not come to such a conclusion. Of course, unbeknownst to them, the Hounds had come to that conclusion, which was why they kept watch over Vaile and had now redoubled their defense of him.

It was now a pointlessly futile and downright suicidal endeavor for either side to try and go anywhere near Vaile’s rooms. Not many could survive an encounter with one of the Hounds of Tindalos, especially while so limited. Facing several, possibly hundreds at once? Even for a group, it would be an exercise in futility, insanity, and suicide.

And so attention was instead focused towards the massive warship moored in the harbor. The nightly battles between them and them could wait a single night. After all, nobody who died stayed dead forever here. Even that person, one of them that had found themself drowning in the deep had popped back up again, only to be torn apart by the guns and other things on that massive ship when it tried to take what it thought was theirs.

The sheer display of obscenely gratuitous firepower that had reduced that person to nothing more than a fine red mist was beyond hilarious to them. And when they showed up en masse to try and take the ship, only to be given a fate worthy of those of their kind that attempted to strike against those better than them the mind-link erupted with mocking laughter and cheers. The sights! The sounds! An entire section of the docks reduced to nothing more than a blasted mess of smoldering craters and burning wrecks with mangled limbs and scattered gore thrown here and there!

A part of them wanted to try and claim the ship, or at least attempt to leave a message, but the guns of that vessel kept pointing at them when they came too close, making that plot an impossibility. And then, someone amongst the mind-link came up with a wonderful idea! Though the time of freedom was passing quickly, a hurried message was written down in the best script that could be made in such a short time. A mental blast launched the parcel towards the ship and it-.

Was blasted into oblivion by deck guns and fully autonomous and utterly soulless/ mindless golem marines.

Well, that could have gone better…. Or worse….