That was the early upgrade the system had talked about, all laid out in bold. A better gun might have been cooler, but Marco couldn’t deny this is what they needed most right now. Marco explained what he had in mind to the rest of the team.

“Ships upgrade themselves. Kind of,” Marco said. “I’ve seen shipwrights work. You can just set a pile of materials next to the boat, touch both, and set off the process.”

“Then why do they have hammers and things? I’ve seen them work too,” Riv asked.

“Because labor makes it go faster. So does using better wood. A ship has stats just like we do. Ours need to be higher or we’ll never make it away from here. We can take you home when we go, by the way, or at least close enough to a port to get home. Does that sound good?”

“That’s… you know, it’s just hard to answer that right now.” Riv looked sad and confused all at once. “The guys I came with are sort of rich. The whole island is, really. I don’t think they know that there’s trouble they can’t buy their way out of. Maybe they really didn’t understand.”

“That sounds pretty hopeful.”

“Believe me, I know. I’d like to say I’d deal with it when I get home, but these guys have the kind of money that solves a lot of problems. There might not be anything I can do, even if they were trying to get me killed,” Riv said.

“Why would they do that?” Marco asked.

“No idea. I’m just a common class who helps out with work around town. If it wasn’t for being the same age as them, they probably wouldn’t care about me at all.”

Marco and Elisa exchanged a look. They could see that Riv didn’t want to speak more about it and without a new topic to take its place, the conversation flickered out.

Sooner rather than later, they all began to nod off. There wasn’t much use in setting up a watch. There were no wild beasts that presented any danger on the island to repel with firelight, and in the dark, nobody would be able to find them anyway.

The next day, they dipped into their rations before Marco began, for the first time, to take his role as captain literally in a giving-orders and directing-things sense. He marked out several of the island’s best trees for disassembly into parts, then the team got to work on them. Marco had tools in the boat, courtesy of Tatric’s generosity. With them, they got to work on felling trees and generally destroying the island’s flora as quickly as they could.

Marco was pretty good at this. His Savage Shipwright made all the work easier and faster, and he had very high stats for someone at his level. The trees themselves weren’t very high quality materials, which meant they were very easy to work with, in the same way a monster with bad drops would usually be very easy to kill. He sliced bark like he was peeling crust from bread, split wood like he was cutting through paper, and did everything with a precision he just hadn’t been capable of a few days ago.

As fast as he was, Riv was faster. A Sturdy was a full work class, a general use laborer who could help out with anything. He was working even faster than he should have considering that, and making piles of material much cleaner than what Marco had.

“How?” Marco asked.

“I worked in a lumberyard for a while. Just a couple of months, but I got some traits out of it. Coming in useful here, for sure.”

“About that. Did you get much from the dungeon? We never talked about it last night.”

“I did. The normal Sturdy skill. It’s called Brawler. It’s nothing compared to what you have, but it’s something.”

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“You want to build a weapon? Something for later, if we go back in?”

“Naw. It’s more about… grabbing things. Punching them. A Sturdy doesn’t have many advantages in a fight, but one of them is how tough we are. Against one of those little guys, my best bet is just to pick it up and slam it into the ground. I’ve seen some Sturdies who are different, but not many.”

“Well, good. Anyway, keep it up, it’s making a big difference.”

Two hours later, they were done. An impressive pile of materials had accumulated by the ship, ready for use. Marco wasn’t really sure he could successfully upgrade the ship at this point. Usually, he’d wait until he had a lot more repairs under his belt to consider trying. With a fleet of potential captors coming after him and an unexpected third passenger, he needed the ship to be bigger and faster, and to hold more food.

He put his hand on the materials first. That was how he had seen it done.

The system followed up on that message with a long itemized list of every bit of wood they had harvested, right down to the splinter in Marco’s hand. He authorized it to take them. All the materials, splinters included, vanished in a haze of soft light.

“That’s forever,” Elisa commented. “I’m glad you wandered so far off course now. Otherwise, they’d find us well before that.”

“They still might, if your dad blabs.”

“Dad? Not a chance. He knows what I’d do to him if he did. Besides, he thinks you’re a dangerous criminal who might do unpredictable things.”

“It’s crazy what one class will do,” Marco said. “I’ve known him my whole life, almost, and now this changes everything?”

“Oh, nothing changed.” Elisa giggled. “He thought you were a criminal long before this. I promise.”

With three days to burn, the group of them turned towards the dungeon. It was really the only thing they could do besides shoot birds, and Marco wanted to save the few on the island that looked edible for just before they left.

“Okay, remember the plan,” Marco said. “Me and Riv attack first. If there’s just one, he waits until I’ve got its weapon tangled up and then holds it still for me. That’s if the gun doesn’t get it first. If there’s more than one, I fire and stab to get the numbers down while you work on distraction. And Elisa, you only move in if you are sure it’s going to be safe for you.”

“Got it.”

“And the whole time, we watch for food. Right?”

“That’s the most important thing,” Elisa emphasized. “Levels are nice. But everyone dies if they don’t eat. I didn’t see anything edible last time except maybe the Palmars, and I really don’t want to try eating them. So we look for anything else. Got it?”

Everyone did. Marco and Elisa both clocked the nervous look on Riv’s face and gave each other a knowing glance. Without waiting for him, they stepped through first. There was no reason to put him through worry without a good cause.

He came through a few minutes later and gave them both a thankful nod, just before the plan went to hell. This time, however, was one of the few blessed times when a plan went to hell in a good way.

A minute after they entered, they were charged by one of the Palmar Brutes, who Marco immediately shot. The monster took the projectile in the thigh, at which point it fell to the ground writhing in pain and more or less waited for Marco to approach and finish the job.

“Huh.” Marco looked at the gun. “Why did that happen?”

“Because we are now over-leveled for the dungeon. That’s how early levels go.” Elisa sparked up her hand, displaying her still limited control of electricity. “If we want things like this to get better, we’re going to have to make choices about how we handle this dungeon. Eventually, it will stop giving us experience at all, even for skills. Hopefully, we hit that point before the ship does.”

“So should I just clear out and let you two work for a while, or what?”

“No. Absolutely not.” Riv laughed. “Just work on your gun for a while. Let us know when you stop getting better at it. That’s our escape plan if things go sideways. Let’s get it up and running first.”

It took about an hour of unfair Palmar harvesting for the gun skill to stop gaining levels. In the meantime, the experience had continued to trickle in until Marco reached his eighth level and all the upgrades that came with that.

Marco’s Fencer skill had come up as soon as Gunner had passed level three, as if it was being held back and only needed a few finishing-things-off stabs to get it to the fourth level once Gunner had leveled some. Neither would budge now, although Savage Shipwright had been ticking up as the process outside ran itself.

Elisa and Riv got some of their own skill levels by taking care of downed enemies that got hit particularly hard from the gun without quite dying. Once Marco was topped out, they changed strategies with Marco tying up all the monsters’ attention as Elisa stepped in and shocked them again and again. He almost felt bad for them. Riv took his turns after that, sucker-punching anything he could get his hands on. When they came across the bigger groups of weaker grunts, he even handled his own enemies outright.

“We still haven’t found any food,” Riv said. “And I’ve been looking. Do you think we can eat these trees?”

“We could if they grew fruit, but they don’t. And there’s nothing else but dirt and sand,” Marco said.

“Well there must be something,” Elisa said. “The Palmars have to eat something, after all.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Marco thought about that for a moment. “Would you say we’ve just about cleared this place out, Elisa? Emptied the whole island?”

“Yeah. Probably. Why?”

“Because, for once, I have a pretty good clue where the food is. Come on. Follow me.”