Ship repairs were progressing adequately. I say that not to disparage the time and efforts the workers put in just that I had never accounted for proper major repairs when I built the Retribution in the first place.

It was a major mistake on my part and was making everything ten times harder to complete. Take replacing the power conduits. Entire sections of the wall had to be removed to get at the areas in question. It was a good thing spatial storage was a thing, otherwise, even that step would have been impossible. I made a note to include smaller service panels for hard-to-reach places in future designs. Having to remove dozens of screws to get at one section was a nightmare.

But that was the least of my issues. What I had mistaken for armor or surface damage, turned out to be structural. The entire keel of the ship had twisted slightly. Replacing it simply wasn’t possible. So the workers did their best to straighten it out, but to do that they had to cut away the armor along the keel as well as two layers of welded titanium plates.

I sighed as I watched the ship being sliced open. It felt like someone was butchering my favorite pet. Self-repair was high on the list of runes I was going to look into. I doubted I could get enough hydra scale to cover an entire ship. Not that the Retribution showed up as a magical item anyway so I doubted it would work as I envisioned. At least now I knew why the Shipbuilders preferred wood over metal construction.

Watching them work on the ship made me too melancholy so I returned to casting my new mana cannons and mana lasers.

Detail here mattered so I took two full days carving the mold blank to exacting detail. I already had plenty of ground-up bone powder for what I needed. I could have used my earlier mold but I had rushed that one a bit. Better to start fresh for the best results.

The first thing I did was pack the powder next to the raised runes. This would ensure there were no voids. I then lightly coated the entire wall. This step wasn’t as important but it still helped with the overall strength of the finished product. I then filled the cavity a bit and used a flat wooden mallet to pack the layers down. This was the longest part of the process. But I was still able to pack a mold in under a minute.

It helped that the powder was weirdly tacky to itself and nothing else. Which meant I didn’t need mold release. I warmed the entire mold over an open flame to set the exterior before popping it out of the mold and sanding the release lines off. Then in the kiln, it went. I already had a dozen barrels ready to heat treat and harden. I also had about two dozen failed attempts as I tried to master the process. I would break them down and reuse the good material later.

At one point I figured out that having raised runes on the weapons worked just as well as making a negative mold but was much quicker to build. It also made it easier to get the details. Unfortunately, I found out the raised runes were prone to chipping off either during the heat treating or as they cooled. Making those efforts a complete waste of time.

To try and save those attempts, I dipped the entire finished cannon in epoxy then trimmed it away from the front and connection points.

It made for an oddly jello-like appearance to the finished barrels. I hated it and I couldn’t say why. So I scrapped those attempts as well along with my first mold and came up with a better way to make a mold. The runes needed to be embedded into the finished product, but instead of carving away everything except the runes, I simply welded metal to the inside where the runes would be and carved those areas until they were perfect. With the mold being split lengthways it wasn’t all that hard.

I could have just done the same thing I did on my first prototypes and carved the runes by hand after forming the barrel. But I didn’t want to carve thirty plus new weapons, not to mention the spares.

Perhaps if I had a rune crafting class and it earned me experience, it would make sense to do it that way. But I was on the clock.

I don’t know if the others picked up on this but if the Enforcer had captured the pirate ships, which seemed to be the case. Then they had people that knew about this island. Maybe not our role in freeing it but perhaps the fact that the freeing of slaves originated at this point. So it was only a matter of time until someone came by to check it out. Considering how we fared against one of those warships, I didn’t like our odds against three. Let alone the addition of the other ships with them.

I wasn’t going to be an ass and hide this fact from the people currently residing here… I was just going to wait until repairs were complete before I brought it up. It was a bit of a dick move, I knew that. But they only had themselves to blame for this current predicament. I didn’t tell them to give a bunch of pirates the ability to free themselves and rampage across the islands until they drew the ire of the pirate kings, they did that on their own.

At least they had a few ships and a steady shipment from the Guild merchant. So they could leave if they needed to once I told them. Or they could hunker down. The island was certainly far more defensible than it had been.

Each island bunker had portable shield emitters now. Along with a full complement of cannonballs.

It was surprising to learn that most of the island cannons only had three or four enchanted cannon balls prior to my arrival. The rest were simply iron cannonballs that weren’t all that effective against a shielded vessel.

I guess the cost was too prohibitive or maybe they were afraid an errant strike could set off all the rounds at once. I didn’t think that was possible, otherwise, pirates wouldn’t risk the deadly payloads on their ships.

***

I stepped into the noisy bar as the smells of alcohol and surprising appetizing food hit my nostrils. It didn’t take me long to find the others. They were holding down a table and talking animatedly. Apparently, Barcos was miming his fight against the Enforcer, using a chicken drumstick as his weapon of choice.

He was using Em’ah as the Enforcer’s stand-in and she was stabbing at him with her bone swords. But Barcos expertly avoided her thrusts and would bop her on the face with the drumstick in reply while saying something I couldn’t hear over the laughing and cheering of the other bar patrons.

I couldn’t help it, I chuckled at the absurdity of the display. Em’ah wasn’t holding back either but Barcos was treating the whole thing like some big joke. But she didn’t seem to be too upset over it.

I walked over and joined the table.

“Captain,” Barcos saluted with his half-eaten chicken drumstick, “what brings you by this fine establishment? I thought for sure you would be holed up with the ship until every last repair was complete.”

“The workers are doing a fine job without me hovering over their shoulder. And my project is in the waiting phase, leaving me nothing to do. So I figured I would join my crew for some much-needed rest and relaxation.”

“So you were bored,” Em’ah added before her arm reformed and she took a long drink of her beer.

“Pretty much. I don’t like being idle, it seems wrong somehow.” I knew why it felt wrong. Before the System, I would race through my work just to sit back and waste time on whatever caught my fancy. But after the System, I had no idle time because I needed to spend that time to stay alive. When that no longer became the case, I used my free time to protect my friends. I certainly didn’t have any free time as a slave. Eventually, it was just ingrained into me to be doing something. Whether building a new runic device, weapon, armor, or leveling.

When my friends overcame Lord Vik’t’s attack, I was left treading water. With no apparent goal or drive, I wasn’t sure what to do until Martin gave me the proverbial kick in the ass to get going again. Since that revelation, I haven’t stopped doing something. This was essentially the first vacation I have taken since… and I was already hating it. I was fidgeting and nervous, waiting for the other shoe to drop or some big bad to come out of nowhere.

For most people, it would be crazy to think like that but I have pissed off so many people with my actions that it was more a foregone conclusion that eventually something would happen.

“Sometimes, you need to unwind and just enjoy the fact that you are alive, Captain,” Khikall toasted. While I didn’t completely agree, it would look bad if I left him hanging. I clinked my glass – that the server had just dropped off – against Khikall’s and downed the rather thick beer. It wasn’t a dark beer either, just unfiltered, leaving most of the sediment behind. Not the tastiest thing I had ever imbibed but also not the worst.

I realized I tended to get melancholic after a loss. Not much I could do about that, other than learn from my previous mistakes. It was sometimes easy to forget there were far more powerful factions and players in this world than I was capable of dealing with alone.

So while I enjoyed the company of my crew, I thought over the issues ahead. My crew wasn’t true friends as of yet, but if we continued to fight alongside each other we would eventually be. But that wasn’t one of my issues.

The first issue was the pirate kings’ and their fleets. It hadn’t been nearly long enough since I tasked Em’ah to rile them up so their presence had come as an unwelcome surprise when we accidentally came across the freed pirate ship we had been searching for.

Had they not been there, I would have tailed the fleet and waited until they attacked another pirate base before I struck. But I was forced into action to at least take one of the pieces off the board in hopes I eliminated the original crew who knew of the island of origin. It was a risky gamble at best and probably wouldn’t have worked out unless the other ships died in the fighting with the Enforcer’s fleet.

Unfortunately, the Enforcer wasn’t a bloodthirsty idiot like so many other pirates. He must have seen a value at keeping the enemy ships and their crews at least partially intact. Otherwise, he would have simply destroyed them all outright. So what were they after?

Information was the most likely reason I could come up with. And also my ship, or more likely my new weapon. It made more sense timeline-wise. I had first deployed it against Tu’Cath’s fleet of ships to fantastic results. It wasn’t hard to imagine the pirate kings’ had a spy or multiple spies aboard those ships. You don’t get to keep your position at the top for long without knowing what those below you are up to.

That was two reasons to send ships here. But to what end? They already tried to capture my ship once, otherwise, they would have just blown us out of the air after our shield was down. They had to know a second attempt would not go their way. But I wasn’t suicidal enough to stick around and test that theory. So they had other plans for this area… expanding their influence, I realized. And I gave them the perfect cover.

With the protectorate busy quelling the unrest and the slave revolt, the pirate king, Black Gar, had jumped at the opportunity to expand. But to be so well informed, he must have someone on the inside feeding him information. Someone who knew what was happening on every island and could see what was occurring before even the spies knew. Not a comforting thought.

I finished off my drink and the food on my plate before nodding to my crew and heading back to the ship to think some more. I really needed to get out of this area before it turned into a complete warzone. My need to eliminate that prick, captain Grulaine, for his unprovoked attack against me and my promise to help Khikall was the only things that kept me here. I also wanted to eliminate the Enforcer and his fleet but that wasn’t a possibility with my current resources. Leaving and coming back wasn’t an option either because I would have to start from scratch after the inevitable war that changed the entire political landscape of the Isles.

Joining the Guild was looking better and better. At least then I wouldn’t have to worry about all the political bullshit that was happening around me. But I still didn’t believe the offer was to my advantage. Director Tolish wouldn’t have made it unless he had more to gain from it than I did. All this politicking and political crap gave me a headache. I just wanted to explore the world and crush my enemies, was that so much to ask for?