“You again. The Armory is a place for contemplation and self-improvement, not zany schemes. Be mindful.”

“I apologize on behalf of my colleagues, Coremel. Our Sindze contemplated self-improvement a bit too hard, you understand. Won't happen again.” Quille ushered his team in. “Hurry up, let's not bother the man.”

Some Broken gear and pocket change later, and everything was 10/10 as far as level. Judged by effectiveness, a one out of ten seemed [Winze] generous [Stezlin], but Exceed Refine still waited on more Torn Cloth and Cheap Wax.

“I think the Warp Enhancement stuff starts dropping in Chapter 5, right?” Burmin Trivvis asked.

“Four,” Coremel said over the magazine he was reading.

“'Warp Enhancement Monthly.' Handy.”

Treten's troupe left the armory and was partway up the steps to the walls when Vinnette yelped. Lengths of rope coated in black paint to hide its presence against the adamant steps rose under her feet and formed into a net when pulled from above. She barely kept her tiara on with one hand as she was hoisted up to the top of the stairwell.

“Thanks for the healer, idiots!” Dennet called down.

“Take this as payment!” Tramda Olex showed herself long enough to roll Ipons Ulsrada down the steps. Ulrik and Burmin hurdled him and raced to the top, but the abductors were already gone. Team Reaper searched with no result while the others dragged their new comrade to his feet.

“Welcome back, Strategist,” Quille said.

“Great to be back! Where are we going? I hope it's to a fight. I don't like fighting all that much, but that's what we're here for, existentially speaking.”

“We're going to the coast of the Greater Gulf, huh? Neat. Do you guys think this is as close as Sindze will ever get to a summer alt? I do. Ouch!” Ipons rubbed the back of his head and looked around with ever-wide eyes, his light-blue hair bobbing as he did so. “I don't see any enemies.”

“I have two questions. First, does he really not realize? The second only matters if the answer is yes.”

“I think the answer's yes, Ulrik.”

“Then how is he a Strategist?”

Burmin shrugged, but Ipons had the answer. “I can come up with great plans for other people. You just have to tell me your goals and all the relevant information. Like when those guys said they wanted a healer, so I told them what to do, and now they have one.”

“Can't say it wasn't effective. Next assignment is to get me a Christmas alt within the next three years. I already have the beard. What's next?”

“Um, I'll think about it. Hey! Enemies!” Indeed, no fantasy coastline went unpirated, and men with cutlasses and eyepatches approached the officers with the shore, the sea, and a jutting headland as their background.

“I think they made a mistake in the design here,” Ulrik said. “They put in Floods.”

“What's wrong with that? Lightning Sweep!” Burmin Trivvis did away with three Pirates at once.

“Barbed Arrow! Just for you, Inferno, I have this passive, you know? It reduces Defense when I hit? Sometimes. Follow up on my arrows, wait, that one died. That one too. Whoops!”

Ulrik and Quille teamed up to kill a single pirate while the Storms depopulated entire ships-worth, and Ipons Ulsrada contributed some damage with his sword-length ruler while adding survivability. His Solid Foundation increased the group's Defense and Debuff Resist while his Invigorating Design added a minor HP gain to each hit based on a small percentage of the Strategist's Attack. Ulrik's amulet-given Vampirism by contrast gave an even smaller percentage of the user's much larger Attack. Much, much larger.

Speaking of Vampirism, the swarming Pirates dropped green Pirate gear with a Vampirism set bonus along with white Scavenger junk. As for Commons, both Flood Dolphins and sanitized, movie-style Pirates wanted to join the forces of Freegate, which they did after a fashion. Sindze U. Radalo grabbed the first Pirate Dagger and started accidentally arrowing the other officers till one of them took the hint.

“We'd better return to Freegate. The sun's going down,” Burmin said.

“My greed rises. Idle mode is a forever kind of place. Go to Ittora if you want to use up your vacation days.”

Ipons Ulsrada backed Burmin up, and Sindze by proxy. “We call it idle mode, sure, but that's just a way to relate it to something familiar. Vigilant Patrol is supposed to stop when the game closes like any other mode, and who knows what kind of weird glitches might happen if we're out after that? Especially inside a new feature. I heard Surgeon Merilia lost three levels by staying in a Suppression area overnight.”

Quille picked up Ipons by the collar so they could discuss things as equals in both dignity and height. “Are you sure? She never said she did herself.”

“She refuses to say she didn't, either, and would you want to admit that happened to you? Anyway, there won't be anybody to fight.”

“Oh, all right. Back we go, my little helpers.”

“Quille. I refuse to acknowledge you as Santa.”

“That's all right, Ulrik. I'll treat you as an elf just the same.” Quille set Ipons down, shoved Ulrik over, and rolled him past the combat border while the other three ran along the wide groove that made.