The System Seas

Driving the boat out to sea meant slow going for a while. Marco was the most bothered by the speed, and the time that had seemed so short when getting to the capsized boat dungeon now seemed like an eternity when going away from it while fighting a deadline. The rest of the crew were visibly stressed as well. Elisa was scribbling furiously in her notebook, and then just as furiously scratching out the notes she had just made. Aethe was somehow furiously looking, scanning the horizon to and fro and trying to identify any threats that came their way.

Only Riv was being truly productive with his stress, forcing the ship to heal a little faster than it otherwise would have. Once he finished smearing tar on all the cracks he could see, he went to work mounting two of the newer, bigger cannons on the port side of the boat. It was also him who broke big, high-quality pieces of wood off the sinking back half of the enemy ship before they had towed the front half to relative safety, and only him who remembered what a big load of top-quality wood would do for the ship in the future.

“Can you see them on your system screen yet?” Riv yelled forward, pounding large nails through the mounting plates of the cannons, securing them to the deck. “The system won’t let us use them if we don’t.”

“I see them,” Marco said. “But they aren’t operational yet.”