Marco applied it to the ship with no further delay. If there was one thing that Marco had learned, it’s that upgrades to his ship were a good thing. Now that he was a captain, he had slowly but surely started to care more and more about his ship. He felt like no upgrade was too much for it. The system rewarded him for his common-sense decision, giving him exactly what he needed in return.

“Okay. I think we’ll be fine now,” Marco said when he read over the next notification.

“It’s good?” Riv asked. “It will get us out of here?”

“I think so, yeah. At least that’s what it sounds like.”

“Good, then,” Elisa said as she looked around. “Now pay attention. I don’t think this dungeon is going to last much longer, if we’ve already…”

The world flashed, and they found themselves standing on rotted wood in a space that much more closely matched what they had expected from the inside of the ship in the first place. A few skeletons littered the rotted hold around them, which was otherwise empty of any objects of interest.

A few creative climbs later, they were able to jump back onto their own ship and relative safety. Riv had barely hit the deck before he started working with his club, swinging the heavy chunk of metal-studded wood back and forth with deadly force. It looked impressive.

“Is it any good?” Marco stood well clear of the club as Riv spun around the deck, braining invisible foes. “It looks like a lot to deal with.”

“It should be. That crystal changed my whole class somehow. No delay, no waiting. I just have a full suite of real combat skills all of the sudden. Now, if only they were leveled, we’d be getting somewhere,” Riv said while taking another swing with his club. He was getting more and more comfortable using the big weapon.

“Speaking of.” Marco lowered his sword and caught the club at the end of a swing, holding it still before Riv could start another sequence of pretend hits on non-existent enemies. “Let’s get the sails pointed that way. We’ll probably have to push off with oars or something. I don’t know how it’s holding us in place, but it is.”

“To catch what?” Riv held his hand up, checking the wind. “I don’t feel anything.”

“Me either, but somehow I can tell it’s there. Or the ship can. Hard to say. Just do it, and I’ll show you.” Marco pointed in a direction where he felt something.

It took five minutes to get the ship turned, and they lost an oar in the process through use the poor thing was never intended for. Once they got turned around and heading in the direction that Marco was pointing in, the sails filled. Marco didn’t know what the sails were being filled by, but they filled all the same and dragged the ship just as if they had caught a healthy, tangible wind.

“We’re on our way, then.” Marco breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. This conquest system is starting to seem better and better.”

“I wonder when it stops.” Elisa looked down at the deck below her thoughtfully. “It almost has to have limits. Otherwise, you could keep stacking these achievements every time you… how do you get them, again?”

“Big enough kills. Or big enough accomplishments. I got one when we took down the first Razorfish group. And this second one after we defeated the captain,” Marco said. He paused to try and find a pattern but gave up pretty quickly. “I can’t tell. It’s been pretty hit or miss.”

“Either way. It can’t keep going on forever. It’s almost like your ship has a separate class all its own if it does,” Elisa said.

“I’ll take it either way.” Marco knocked on the ship’s wood rail. He felt more connected than ever to this ship. It had only been a few days, but now he didn’t know how he could live without it. “Don’t jinx it. We can use every bit of strength we get.”

“I can’t guide you this time, you know.” Elisa looked up at the sky and shook her head. “Everything is wrong here. I have no idea where to point you.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Straight ahead is fine.” Marco somehow knew that they were getting close to where they were supposed to be. “Let’s get on our way.”

The ship moved just fine now, even if the exact motion was a bit bizarre. There was still no wind that any of them could feel, but the sails were consistently full. The discussion of which direction to go turned out to be moot when the phantom wind turned out to be pushing in one very definite direction, almost too strong to deviate from even if they had wanted to. Marco allowed himself to have a break, going over his experience rewards from the dungeon. He had picked up enough levels to get to level ten, not as a reward for clearing the ship but simply because the captain was that stout of a foe.

He was getting stronger much faster than he expected, but this particular jump in levels meant something different. Now, he had free points. Free points he could spend as he saw fit. Well, as Elisa saw fit, anyway. She had been hard at work in her notebook ever since Marco had made the jump to level ten, and even quite a bit before that.

“I could just put them in Strength and Dexterity.” Marco pulled his sword and made a few pokes at the air. “That’s most of what I’ve been doing for the team anyway. Stabbing things, shooting things, distracting things. I’d be better at doing that. And we’d know the points weren’t wasted.”

“We’d know that right up until you got squashed because you didn’t have enough points in your physical and mental defense, yes.” Elisa jabbed at Marco’s head with her finger, luckily without any element attached to it. “One good mental attack or one good thwump with a club, and you’ll be open for the other kind of attack. Things can’t go good forever, Marco. You need to bolster those things.”

“Still. Defense is boring,” Marco whined, even while knowing who was going to win this. “I have to put all those points into wisdom, intelligence, and constitution? Just like that?”

“And charisma. At least five of them have to go to charisma,” Elisa stated.

“I don’t even know why that stat’s important outside of a few cases, Elisa.”

“And it shows. Sit down. I’ll explain it.”

Charisma was a weird stat, and one that hardly anybody Marco had ever talked to bothered to raise. It didn’t raise defense against anything but mind control spells, which were so rare they almost didn’t exist. That was about the extent anyone knew about Charisma.

“Yes, it doesn’t block anything. But the reason you never saw it on the island was because you were on the island where no one needed it.” Elisa bit into a piece of dried fish. “And because Garrick never talked about his stats. Secretive man, him.”

“You think he upped charisma?” Marco asked, suddenly interested. Anything that got him closer to Garrick was worth investing in.

“He would have had to. He was a ship’s captain. That’s the first thing charisma does. It enhances leadership skills.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning captains have a hidden skill, the crew menu.” Elisa pointed at herself and gestured in Riv’s direction. “The higher your charisma is, the more bonuses we get from you being our captain, and the more you get from us being your crew.”

Marco had benefited from the crew menu, and it had admittedly saved them all. It wasn’t a huge bonus, but if he was just a hair weaker, he might not have been able to parry the Zombified Captain. If he couldn’t parry, then the fight might have ended long before they wore the zombie down. Charisma wasn’t exciting yet, but it was looking better.

“What’s the second thing? You said this was the first,” Marco asked.

“Just a theory some people have. You’ve heard about system-touched?”

“Heroes and all that?”

“Yup. Just like in the books you read.”

System-touched was a fairy tale thing, something that showed up in stories. As far as Marco knew, it wasn’t a real thing. It was like saying someone was fated for greatness, more than it was describing something literal you’d really expect to matter much.

“I thought that wasn’t a real thing.”

Elisa tilted her head, noncommittally.

“Maybe not. But there’s a theory about it. Because there really have been heroes, you know. Powerful people who did much more than you’d imagine one person could accomplish. We don’t know all their stats, but we know a lot of them, and all of them had invested in charisma. Every one we can confirm.”

“Who is we?” Marco scratched his cheek. “Not me, for sure.”

“No. I mean scholars. Now be quiet and let me talk.”

Elisa got this way sometimes, and Marco knew it was pointless to try and interrupt her. He held his hands to the task of steering the ship, as useless as it was to try and influence the ship’s direction in the ghost wind. She kept going, as he knew she would.

“The idea, or theory, is that charisma does more than it’s billed. That every other skill somehow lets you influence the world more, but that charisma is anchoring you to the world, more or less. Putting you closer to the core of the universe. Plugging you into the system more. Or something like that.”

“And this matters?”

“It might.” Riv finished another round of training with his new club, and flopped down on the deck, sweaty and out of breath. “You seem to be up against quite a lot. People don’t win against our kinds of odds without something weird happening. If this can make that happen, it’s good.”

“I think saying it will make it happen is a bit of an overstatement.” Elisa looked up towards the sky. “But it might be like wearing a brighter color at a party. It could make you stand out more, get you noticed. What happens then is up to you, but… maybe we’ll get you to be system touched after all, Marco.”

“Well, let’s hope.” Marco dumped the points in his stat block just as Elisa had told him to. “That’s done, anyway. And just in time, I think. That’s real wind coming up behind us. And land in front of us. We’ll probably need these stats soon.”