They arrived at the Palmar village quickly. The distorted island was bigger than the real-life deserted island they were temporary tenants of, but they still moved fast once they weren’t looking around every corner for contingents of small island warriors.

There were a solid eleven of the Palmars in the village, doing nothing much at all. Of those, about six of them looked to be the grunts.

“We still haven’t seen any of those snipers,” Marco commented.

“We probably won’t, Marco. It’s likely a higher-level variant, higher than the level ten cap of this dungeon. I’m sure we’ll see one eventually on some other deserted island.” Elisa shielded her eyes from the light and looked at the enemy force. “How many can you get before they get to us?”

“Depends on what we want.” Marco frowned at his gun. “The gun doesn’t fire quickly. The skill only helps with that a little. It hits harder now, but not always hard enough to take down a brute. It always gets the grunts though.”

“Go for the brutes then.” Elisa’s lightning element now snaked out almost a foot from her arm, like a short club made out of electricity. She had been shocking the little guys and finishing them off by freezing their heads solid, something that looked impressive, but she claimed that she wouldn’t be able to do that on anything tougher. “Riv and I can get the others. We’ll keep one alive so that the system doesn’t kick us out of the dungeon.”

The plan went skill-raisingingly well. Marco was able to drop three of the five brutes with his gun before they got to him and skewered another before almost missing the last, clipping it on the ribs. He rushed in, put that one down, and then turned to find his friends with their hands completely full. Elisa or Riv had dropped two of them, but the other four grunts were circling them, looking for openings. Both already had a few shallow cuts and were only kept back by the threat of Elisa’s lightning whip.

He rushed back, knocking one down with a shot from his pistol before disrupting the rest of their plans with well-aimed sword blows and general fury.

“Okay. I’ve got the last,” Riv said as he bear-hugged the grunt. “Though it’s not in great shape. Hurry before the system marks this dungeon as complete.”

“I can be fast.” Marco ran back towards the village proper, kicking one of the grass huts over entirely as he got to it. That had been his realization earlier. They had searched almost the entire island for food before they even got to the village the first time. If Garrick and Tatric were right, then there was food in the dungeon, somewhere. The huts were the only part of the village they hadn’t really searched, having opted to set them on fire the first time instead.

As the grass hut toppled backwards, it revealed a few bucket-sized baskets of some sort of brown meat. Marco reached down and grabbed one. The system liked that.

“Oh yes.”

Marco ran to another hut and kicked it over. He managed to get to four of them before getting kicked out of the dungeon entirely, the last Palmar having finally given up the ghost.

“What did you all get?” he asked immediately on hitting the sand outside. “Anything good?”

“Check your own first, weirdo,” Elisa said. “I’ll tell you after.”

He did. It was familiar.

“Another armor set piece. You two?”

“Armor for me. It must know I need it. It’s not a set, though. Just normal leather armor.” Riv looked vaguely disappointed. “I guess there probably isn’t a set for a Sturdy at my level.”

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“I got a scholar’s robe. It amplifies what I can do with my magic. No magic supply enhancements, though.”

“You can run out?” Marco asked, surprised.

“Actually, no.” Elisa wobbled her hand in the air uncertainly. “I could if I was better at magic. Our fights go so fast and the spell is weak enough that I’m not getting close. If you gave me another five minutes in combat or a half-decent combat-specific spell, I’d be bottoming out all the time.”

“So no problem for now, but eventually.”

“Something like that.”

—

As soon as they were rested, they went to check on the ship. It looked different now, like the planks were working themselves apart to allow for more space. The few levels he had gained in his shipwright skill as the process continued also told him there was now more work he could contribute to optimizing what was happening. He got Riv and Elisa involved as they found what little bits of wood and bark they could slap on to the ship and any place they could invest their limited supply of nails.

“There’s still two days, you know.” Marco looked at the ship and frowned. “What are we going to do while we wait?”

“The dungeon,” Elisa said. “It’s not completely milked dry yet. At the very least, we can all farm gear. We might even get some levels out of it.”

“It’s boring.”

“It’s practice,” Riv said. “At least that’s what my uncle used to say. He was a dungeon raider. He said no matter how easy the dungeon, you can always practice. You can refine how your team works together. You can work on paying close attention to the small things. There are ways to improve.”

They got down to the long, hard task of practicing right away. Over the next few days, they squeezed out the last few drops in the dungeon. Elisa topped out first, gear-wise. She got a scholar’s robe, a scholar’s slippers, a pair of gloves that offered some minor protection, and a few accessories that helped a bit with her magic but not a lot otherwise. Riv got a bunch of leather armor, none of which gave him any buffs at all. It was essentially all just clothing, but system-clothing that would at the very least offer more protection than the conventional man-made stuff he had been wearing.

Marco did a little better. His rewards from the dungeon were at least part of a named set. That guaranteed some sort of minimum bonus when he completed it, even if it was just fancy, ship-captain-friendly leather armor in the end.

He had been lucky to get the two pieces he got on the first two runs, it turned out. After that, the drop rate of the goods became so slow that he worried he wouldn’t complete it before the time was out. He consoled himself that every single repetition of the dungeon did give them a bit more food. By the time they were halfway done with the runs, they had to stop taking more food. Mostly it was just fish, but every now and again they’d find small pouches of grain that would hopefully provide some variety.

About the time the ship was due to be done, the last piece of armor finally came in.

“Pretty good,” Marco said, in the dark. “Elisa? A bit of light?”

“In a second. I’m still reading my stat screen to make sure I didn’t get anything new,” Elisa replied.

It was her thoroughness that saved them. As Marco waited, a small light shifted in the distance, getting out of the way of whatever had obstructed it up to that point. From a distance, it looked like a lantern. Elisa had just raised her hand, as she did when she was getting ready to light it on fire for the purposes of light. Marco caught her wrist before she could.

“No light. And be quiet,” Marco hissed. “We have company.”

Elisa’s head whipped up, and she squinted at the small lantern of light in the distance. “That’s down by the ship. What do we do?”

“We sneak up, Elisa. It’s dark. Maybe we can figure out what they are after.”

“It’s only dark until the moon moves. Could be dangerous.”

“We need to get to our ship. No choice.” Marco grabbed Elisa’s forearm and began to guide her through the dark. “Let’s go.”

They managed to get close enough to hear the others before it was the other way around. That was easy, mainly because these strangers were so loud.

“…still in the dungeon, if I had to guess.” The loudest of the voices had just circled to the other side of their ship. “So he couldn’t have used it.”

“Then the people who own this are still somewhere around here. Unless the dungeon got them. If I…”

A third voice, oddly shrill, cut off the second.

“Nobody was going to get killed by that dungeon except Riv, and even he’s a long shot. He probably built a raft and escaped. Whoever this is, they’re probably still here.”

“That’s Gamble,” Riv whispered, so quiet that Marco could barely hear him. “Rich kid. Basically the leader. The other two are Rice and Dello.”

“You know,” the first voice said. “There was a dispatch this morning. A missing kid from Gulf Island. They want to capture him.”

“A criminal?”

“Worse. An evil class.” The voice got louder. “They said he was in a boat like this. Some captain saw him but didn’t manage to capture him.”

“And I care why?” Gamble squawked. “I’m here to make sure some idiot Sturdy got the message and doesn’t bother my girl anymore.”

Elisa and Marco both looked at Riv at once. He didn’t seem the type.

“I guess I know why they left me here now,” Riv whispered before turning his attention back to the group.

“Because, Gamble, there’s a reward. Twenty gold, free and clear. And they said he just got his class a few days ago. Easy pickings.”

“Really?” Gamble stepped in front of the lamplight. His head would have barely come to Elisa’s shoulder, and Elisa’s barely came to Marco’s. “I guess that’s worth checking out. We’ll have to make sure the dungeon’s clear and wait until dawn, but unless they are dead, we’ll get the gold.”

“We’d probably get something even if they are dead,” the first voice said. “Confirmation, you know. And…”

“And?” Gamble asked.

“And they probably won’t ask too many questions why the kid is dead.”