The next morning was the very first time Marco had ever felt relaxed on his ship. They took inventory of their food, which was now supplemented by a couple bags of monster crab. As they didn’t expect it to keep long, Riv was keeping a grill full of the stuff cooking as they worked through their morning.

“Nothing in sight yet.” Marco chewed on a piece of crab as he inspected the ship’s anchor chain. It was a bit rusty, but he didn’t have the supplies to do much about that at the moment. Luckily, all the oxidation was purely on the surface, far from compromising the structure of the thing. He was sure he’d spend some time waterproofing it at some point. But that was a job requiring specialized equipment, and they had done an exceptionally poor job collecting stuff for the ship thus far, outside of upgrades from Conquest. On the other hand, the constant upgrades from Conquest meant that the rest of the ship was in very good condition. They didn’t need to make a port call to maintain the ship for a few months at the very least. “I wish we could find something. I figure we can do three more islands by the end of the week, if we get lucky.”

“Not that many.” Aethe finished coiling a rope and moved towards the port side of the ship. “You already had two relatively fortuitous encounters, right?”

“Not sure that’s what I’d call them.” Riv grinned. “Zombie captains. Huge crabs. Got pretty close to dying a couple of times.”

“Yes, but we got a companion and a few ship upgrades out of them. You got a class upgrade. That’s not small.” Elisa followed Aethe towards the side of the ship. “She’s not wrong. We’ve gained a lot. Although I’m not sure why that would mean we can’t get even more.”

“There’s only so much this place lets any one party get. My people will also get a reward from the crab island that almost destroyed them, and then it will be a race to see when they can complete as many encounters as it might take to get them out. The total fortune between us and them counts as both a maximum that can be gained and a minimum that must be reached before you will be allowed to leave.”

“That’s too bad. I feel like we hardly got here,” Marco said. Riv was right, it had been some pretty hard fights. But at the same time, he could literally see his new strength with the ship significantly faster and stronger than before.

“Well, you won’t have to leave this very moment. There’s still time to gain something, at least one more time. Of course, that’s if…”

Aethe trailed off as her attention focused down from a general regard to the entire horizon in the distance to a razor sharp, pinpoint gaze on one particular spot.

“Trouble?” Marco asked.

“Possibly. When you came into this area, which direction did you come from?” Aethe asked.

“I mean, we’ve sort of zigged and zagged a little, I think. But generally that way.” Marco pointed in the same direction that Aethe was looking in.

“Don’t panic, but I think you might have been followed in. I see a sail, and there’s no way my people have been able to throw together a boat that quickly. It’s also unlikely that there was someone else in this place before you came in.”

“Ah. Riv, could you move up the inspection of the cannon? It seems like we might need it sooner rather than later. I’ll keep moving us away. Maybe we can avoid whatever is coming for us altogether.”

“Probably not,” Elisa said. “We’re in spyglass range. What kind of captain forgets to bring his spyglass?”

“A new one,” Marco said. “A very new one.”

The cannon on the ship had upgraded back during the upgrade on 19-H, growing in size from a joke of a toy gun to something that really looked like a cannon, even if it was the smallest Marco had ever seen. They had never really had occasion to fire it except when they were on a crash course for the ghost ship, and it hadn’t occurred to any of them to fire at a wrecked ship. Now it seemed much more important to understand how it worked, and who could fire it the fastest.

The ship hadn’t come with much in the way of powder or ball, but it had come with at least a few shots worth. Riv loaded the gun, claiming that his general ability to work on a variety of things effectively gave him an advantage. Aethe watched, shook her head, then said she could do better based on her dexterity alone. Marco found that he wasn’t alone in the opinion that Aethe wasn’t the type to exaggerate when Riv simply nodded, handed her the cannon’s ramrod, and stepped aside.

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Marco focused on keeping the ship moving as fast as possible. Now that his overdrive skill had come into its own, it was much easier to manage the periodic bursts of speed, keeping his magical power consumption at a manageable level but not letting a single drop of regeneration go to waste. Considering how his week had been going so far, Marco was more surprised than he cared to admit when this mostly worked. The ship that had been gaining on them at a pretty good clip was suddenly relatively still to them as if it had been frozen there by a spell.

Or at least it looked that way at first. There was no place to hide on the open ocean, no shrubberies to duck behind and no shadows to take advantage of. It was like fighting on a giant plain, except the ocean had its own wind and currents that needed skill to utilize.

Marco hoped that night would give them the cover they needed to pull off some sneaky directional changes, but Aethe quickly disabused him of the notion that a ship as large as the one chasing them would sail without someone with night vision and scouting abilities as part of its crew complement. More than likely, she said, there was someone who had both of those, specialized for use on the open water. Elisa confirmed that was just as standard a class in their society as it was for elves. After a few dozen minutes, it was clear that the other ship really was gaining on them, if only a tiny bit over the course of each minute.

“I see the ship now. We probably have a day before they catch us. But they will catch us.” Elisa sparked up her hand, nervously.

“We could land somewhere, if we find somewhere to land,” Riv suggested. “Fight them on good old-fashioned dirt.”

“That’s not a good idea,” Aethe said. “It’s a much larger ship than ours. Their minimum crew complement is far larger than our maximum. On ground, skill won’t matter much when there are far more of them than there are of us. Two of our party members are slow. Sorry, you two. It’s a fact. We’d get caught and mobbed within minutes. Even if they don’t catch us, they can simply guard our ship and wait us out.”

“The ocean is not a guarantee of safety but…” Elisa began

“But it’s our only chance,” Marco said. “I understand. I’ll keep going.”

“To where?” Aethe asked.

“Somewhere different. That’s all I have for now.” Marco lit up his own face with a smile he didn’t really feel, just to make the others feel better. “We’ll make it. I’ll come up with something, I promise.”

The wind was with them, but not in any generous way. It pressed at the sail with the enthusiasm of an empty-pocketed drunk leaving a bar to face the cold, cruel world once more. Even with the Zombified Captain Enhancement and his own ship-navigation skills, Marco simply couldn’t push their speed by much. There was motion, but only the kind of motion that invited long conversations about whether they were really moving at all.

Marco tried to resist the invitation. The others followed suit.

It was Aethe who eventually broke the silence. “They’re still behind us.”

“Yeah,” Marco said. He didn’t look back. “Figured.”

“I can see the sail now,” Riv said from where he was perched near the back of the ship, club resting across his knees like a beloved pet. “I’m surprised it took so long. My eyes just aren’t anything like what Elisa and Aethe have. I also didn’t see that reef last time.”

“You mean the one we hit?” Marco asked.

“Yup. That one.”

Marco grunted. He wasn’t steering much, since there was nowhere particular to steer towards. Off to port, the clouds massed like sullen thoughts. Off to starboard, the sea just continued on forever, without even the threat of storms to liven it up. Neither side seemed exactly like the right direction to steer into, especially because doing such a maneuver would allow the ship behind to gain on them more.

Elisa emerged from belowdecks holding two mugs of something hot and smelling vaguely herbal. She passed one to Marco, who took it with a grateful nod. He was starting to get worn down, in spirit if not in body. It took a lot of concentration to do what he was doing. Over the hours, the strain of it was building up in him.

“This will help me stay awake?” Marco asked.

“It might,” Elisa hedged.

“That’s not the same as yes.”

“No,” she admitted. “But I thought it sounded more encouraging.”

“Fair enough.” He sipped, winced at the taste, and drank again anyway. “You think they’re catching up?”

“They’re trying,” she said. “But I don’t think they’re in a hurry or trying very hard. From their point of view, there’s plenty of time.”

“Good,” Riv muttered. “I see some dots on the side of that ship. Are those holes? Or windows?”

“Those are holes for oars,” Elisa said. “My best guess is that it’s an explorer ship. So it’s equipped for Rowers.”

“Why would they need Rowers?” Riv asked. “Aren’t Rowers just for small ships?”

“Because they have to be prepared for anything. The ocean is a big place, Riv. Wind is almost everywhere, but only almost.”

Marco sipped on his tea and let the warmth wake him up a little. As it did, he started to feel like he had missed something in what the others were saying. It was something important, for sure, but whatever it was just wasn’t complete yet.

He went over all of his thoughts. When that didn’t work, he thought back to Aethe’s first line of questioning. There was something in there and with each passing moment, Marco felt like he was getting closer to the truth of the matter. Something that the others had also missed.

When he finally realized what everyone had missed, it hit him hard.

“Elisa. I need a course. Can you do that in this dungeon?”

“I can. It will just be general, but I can take us anywhere we’ve been. Why?”

“We need to double back. Now. It might already be too late.”