The power creep was getting out of hand.

It seemed like every jump increased my power exponentially. Trash can to Trash Knight, then to tank, and now to this ship. Each iteration enabled me to recycle even greater amounts of resources at insane speeds.

Right now, I was recycling a mind-numbing 90 liters of water every second, which was being auto-transmuted into Fire to keep the fuel storage topped up. Cassandra had seen this coming, so she insisted the fuel tank be kept small, and the leftover space be instead used for regular resources.

And even then, the resource hold only contained a token amount of space, mostly to be used for crafting.

As it stood, the pipeline looked like this:

Input: 90,000 W/s

Output:

Fuel: 4,000 W/s > 2,000 F/s

Storage:

5,000 W/s > 2,500 B/s

70,000 W/s > 35,000 E/s

5,000 W/s > 2,500 A/s

5,000 W/s > 2,500 F/s

Total Output: 24,000 W/s

Surplus: 1,000 W/s

We were converting loads of water into Earth since I really needed to fix the entire ship. It was rusty, falling apart, smelled like garbage still, and the armor was trash. A dolphin could run up and sneeze on us, and the front would fall off.

Obviously, we couldn't have that, so I put in the work order to unfuck the hull.

Work Order:

Hull Unfuckening: 623,000,000 E

Estimated Time: 148 Minutes

Fantastic. No longer were resources the bottleneck. It was time.

To further stack on the work orders, I input the other things that I had made a mental note on. At least the things I could remember.

Work Order:

Hull Repair: 623,000,000 E

Rooms: 900,000 E

Furniture: 500,000 E

Kitchen: 250,000 E

Dining Area: 100,000 E

Food Storage: 120,000 E

Armory: 230,000 E

Ship Ammunition Storage: 215,000 E

Daycare: 50,000 E

Cow Shit Storage: 20,000 E

Machinist's Workshop: 500,000 E

Executive Housing: 120,000 E

Captain's Housing: 110,000 E

Estimated Time: 298 Minutes

There. That wasn't so bad. Once that was done, I'd start work on building more turrets. Since this ship didn't come stock with any weapon recipes, I had to use the turret from the tank and to be fair, it has worked wonderfully so far. I also made a note to add more turret ammo once I had the time.

It would take until past sunset to finish, but we were pretty far from anything that could threaten us. I wasn't sure how far exactly, but once I got back to the bridge to check the map, I knew we were safe.

Some of the rebels were once part of the airship crew, and they had maps and navigation equipment we could use. Back on the bridge, I had made a big table to put the map on--where else would we put it?--and the rebels agreed to pass through the Channel before docking somewhere. This was a part of the sea that cut narrowly between the main continent and the smaller subcontinent to the north.

Hours passed by without an issue.

Once we crossed through the Channel, the ship had already refurbished its hull. Nice and shiny and new, thick and sturdy, a pleasure to walk on. It even had that new ship smell!

As we crossed through the narrow passageway, the ship continued to finish the work orders. First was the various rooms. Bedrooms, mostly. Two bunk beds per room, super small, but they didn't need to be big. I let the rebels manage their own housing.

Then came the furniture. Beds, chairs, lamps, tables. That sort of thing all throughout the ship. It didn't take long.

The kitchen and dining area were next. It ended up looking more like a restaurant than an actual ship kitchen, but not by any of my designs. The bread girl, with Vil's help, decorated the place with empty crates and other pointless shit to make it look homely, and to be honest, she succeeded. Although there was nothing to cook with and nothing to serve--besides recycled sandwiches--it went mostly unused. The food storage was appended to the kitchen and connected to a vertical shipping lift so we could haul goods easily in and out.

Next was the armory. Just a big storage place for guns and bombs and that sort of thing. Cassandra was careful to put hard separators to help divide explosives just in case something went off. The same went for the ship's ammunition storage, except we divided it up into several micro storage locations that would eventually be fed via pipes into where we guessed the guns would be.

After that was done, we finished the extra stuff. A daycare for those kids. I still didn't know why we had kids on this ship, but whatever. A problem for later. I added a cow shit storage for that asshole farmer. A workshop for Jessie to stay in. Fancier bedrooms for the rebel leaders and higher-ups, and of course, the admiral's room. It was more of a five-star hotel room with a huge circular bed and a princess bed canopy that draped around it. Black and pink.

It was a waste, of course, since I didn't need to sleep and I didn't have a dick with which to entertain a woman, but still--a guy can dream, right?

My room was on the far back end of the ship, and like the other executive rooms, it held several reinforced windows that we could see through. It was nice outside. The evening was setting in, and the skies had just begun to darken.

And then I spotted it.

Far behind us, right around a cliff-face. A small wooden ship peeked out, its sailed unfurled, and the ship turned to follow us. Curious fishermen, surely. Soon, even more ships. Then more. A dozen and counting. They eased into a flanking formation behind us as they began to catch up, and just when I could see a blur of a man at the helm of the first ship, they raised the flag.

The black flag.