Slowly, Marco calmed down enough to consider the facts of his situation. Not interesting didn’t mean it was boring. He was out on the water, in his own ship. He had his own sword, and he had a crew in Elisa.

Government pursuit and a general lack of preparedness aside, this is pretty good. It’s most of what I wanted. We’re alone, sure, but that has its own charm.

He took a quick inventory of his supplies. He had some food and water, although not enough of each that he could afford to take too long finding land before he’d have problems he didn’t want. He had Tatric’s basic tools, which he knew like his own hands. He had tried to push them back to the old man, but the dockmaster had insisted he could get more. It was much more than a hammer, a few nails, a saw, and a few other miscellaneous tools. It was a bit of home.

Last but not least, Marco had a small package. The captain had looked like he didn’t want to give that one up when he had pulled it from his pack at the last minute. After a bit of hesitation, he handed it over.

“I’m supposed to deliver this to someone. I guess I’m going to claim I lost it and compensate him.” Garrick had looked a little embarrassed as he said it. Marco had guessed that he was more worried about failing at an assigned task than the money part of things. “I thought you might need it after I heard what your class was. Don’t open it now. There will be plenty of time once you’ve already caught wind.”

He turned the package over in his hands a few times. It was heavy, which usually meant good things in Marco’s experience. All the best stuff weighed a significant amount. Given the kind of quality his sea-faring friend usually traded in, this promised to be something special.

He had just started to work out the knotted twine when he was rudely interrupted. At first, he thought he had just caught a bit of an impact on his head, maybe from a loose piece of rigging. The immediate warmth coming down the side of his head surprised him. That was blood, from a real cut. He had taken real damage. There was a splash from the side of the ship as something silver disappeared back into the water, not quite fast enough to keep his class from identifying it.

“Damn.” Marco drew his sword and stood as wide as he could within the small ship. He was just in time to bat away the fish as it made its second leap at his neck. “Please just be a single fish. No schools. Please.”

“Marco? What’s wrong?” Elisa said as she woke up from the movement.

“Bladefish. And we don’t have enough height. Stay down.”

Bladefish were usually much less of a problem because they either couldn’t jump high enough to get in a craft or beached themselves on the deck when they could, making themselves easy pickings for cutlass bearing crewmen. He wouldn’t have that advantage with the ship. He might be able to slash one fish to death, or get lucky and take it down in a single well-aimed piercing strike. A dozen would kill him for sure.

It would be worse for Elisa. Without a combat class to bolster her body, the fish would cut through her with almost no trouble at all. He hoped she’d stay safe until he had it resolved. This was his job, and he might just be able to handle it so long as there weren’t that many fish in total.

Any number more than a few fish would be complex. More complex than I want.

The fish made a wider circle in the water the next time. He could see it in the water, glowing as its metallic scales caught the moonlight. It built speed through the water, flexing its body and working its fin until he could hardly track it with his eyes.

Most of that speed was burned getting it out of the water, but it had plenty of steam left to try and slice him with. Marco got the point of his sword up just in time, catching it in the belly and opening up a long, straight cut as the fish slipped back into the water. It wasn’t dead, but he could see it was much slowed down. He’d be able to kill it next time it surfaced. Problem solved.

Or it would have been if the combination of his own blood and the fish’s didn’t act as a homing beacon for more life. A few smaller sharks gathered around the boat, too small and weak to be much of a problem for him. After them came a good eight or nine Bladefishes, which circled briefly through the water until the sharks were lacerated to death, and then turned to the open sea as they prepared for an attack on their ship-based prey.

“Not good.” Marco whipped his sword through the air a few times, trying to loosen up. He thought that he might be just able to bat the fish out of the air long enough to tire them out or weaken them, but it would be a close thing. “Not good at all.”

The fish came hard and fast. He made no attempt to actually kill any of them, going fully on the defensive with his sword, parrying the fish out of the way when he could and ducking when he couldn’t. If he had more room to move, he would have had a much easier time. As it was, the fish were having no problem tracking the straight-line motion of his ship and aiming accordingly.

Marco kept up the equilibrium for two or three minutes before a lucky cut across his cheek sent him reeling. He barely blocked the next fish with the edge of his sword, cutting but not seriously injuring it. He got the worse of the exchange, reeling backwards from the impact and catching another fish flat on his back that sent him pitching almost out of the ship.

Taken from NovelBin, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

He rolled back in just in time as one of the fish shot almost straight up out of the water. If he hadn't stumbled forward, it would have taken his head. As it was, it fell down into the boat with him, flopping and cutting at his legs. He went frantic, stabbing and stabbing until the fish stopped moving.

This isn’t working. I need an edge. I need…

“Marco, what’s in this package? It looks like a gun.” Elisa was dipping her hand in the water, which was both confusing and concerning. Especially so, Marco felt, considering that she wasn’t even paying attention to the hand at the moment. Her eyes were aimed lower, at the planks of the ship rather than the death-filled waters.

Marco followed her eyes. Where the fish had been flopping, he saw a glint of metal in the boat. It wasn’t scales this time. It was what had been in the now slashed-open package, now freed and ready for use.

Marco didn’t bother with the weapon, opting instead to stumble over to his friend. “Your hand. What are you even doing?”

“Trying something.” A golden glow came from below the water and the fish seemed to swim just slightly slower when they leapt at the ship now. “Don’t worry about me. Just handle yourself.”

Marco had no choice but to obey. He bent down to pick up the pistol and rose to his feet, just barely missing another fish as he did. He leveled the pistol as it hit the water, pulling the trigger and missing the fish by a good six feet.

“Aim, Marco.” He shook his head and took a breath, parried a fish out of the air, then took another breath. “You can do this.”

The next fish that breached the water got a shot between the eyes. The projectile leapt from the gun, glowing and round, flew through the air, and pierced easily through the thin layer of scales, sinking deep into its flesh. The other fish swarmed the corpse, allowing Marco to get another can’t-miss shot off into the water before they were back after him.

With a bit of experience under his belt, he stabbed the next fish out of the air before killing another with a well-timed, point-blank shot. It hit heavily, carrying the fish back a few feet into the water. The gun was a game changer. It wasn’t just that it gave him a ranged attack. It somehow made his whole fighting style feel better and more balanced.

He kept the fighting up, still taking cuts here and there but dispatching the rest of the fish one by one. He sat down heavily as soon as the last fish was dead in the water, changing the direction of his boat slightly and heaving in air as fast as his lungs would allow him to.

That was not great. Not great at all. He watched as his class closed the smallest of his cuts and worked on the larger wounds at a much slower pace. But it wasn’t without its advantages.

The first level ups of a class were especially meaningful. His skills had gotten stronger and his stats had gone up, which was normal. Everyone's did. The part particular to his class was which stats went up. Every stat had picked up one point for each new level, but some had taken two.

“All physical offense. Strength and Dexterity,” Marco whispered to himself.

He now knew what kind of class he was working with. It wasn’t all bad, as stat emphasis went. Eventually, he’d be the fastest, strongest thing. He wouldn’t be much good at magic or even particularly hardy to tank attacks, but his high starting stats would help with the latter.

And that wasn’t the only thing happening. There was a new skill in play, something he hadn’t seen before. The fight had triggered it showing itself, and a quick glance at his notification showed a partial explanation as to why.

Pulling up the new skill that seemed to be driving the system’s unexpected question, Marco got a bit more information, if not nearly as much as he’d like.

It wasn’t a lot to go on, but at least he knew that it would mean more strength. Considering how poorly the fight had started, if a larger school of Bladefish found them, he’d need an edge. The group he had drawn was small compared to the groups that fishermen boasted of.

Unfortunately, that was exactly what was coming.

His brief respite from the fighting was interrupted by a glint far off the port side of the ship. Many glints, really. In the distance, there was another group of fish at least twice as large as what he had just fought, swimming along looking for something to eat. They hadn’t seen him yet, and there was a good chance he could just escape if he wanted to. He could turn the ship’s wheel, let the wind move him off, and wait for a safer time to level.

Or he could take a risk, get stronger, and get better prepared for the problems coming for him. He let the system know what he wanted and felt a slight shift in the handling of the ship as it took in whatever the defeated Bladefish had offered it.