An hour later to the minute, the prow of the ship buried itself in a sandy beach, just as predicted.

“How?” Marco looked around in disturbed wonder. “I mean, how do you actually know this stuff?”

“The position of the sun relative to the horizon and the directions on a compass. And water temperature. And the direction of the wind. And a dozen other things.”

“Sure. I’d expect something like that. But how do you know? I’m a captain class and I don’t know that stuff.”

“Because, Marco, as I already told you…” Elisa reached her hand into her bag and pulled out a leather-bound notebook. “All that stuff is in books. And I’ve read them. And now I have a class that helps me remember what’s in them and put it to use.”

“Could you beat me in a fight now, too? I know you’ve read books on combat.” Marco grabbed a big stick from the beach and tried to hand it to her. “Come on. Let’s spar. Use your electricity on me.”

“It’s not like that. It’s a knowledge class. It lets me know things. That’s a lot different than letting me do things that normally take practice or a system skill,” Elisa said.

“Still.” Marco bent his head down in a slight bow. “I would have died out there, I think. Or got caught. You really came through, Elisa. Thank you.”

“Well, you’re going to end up being the big important hero of the next part of our story, Marco. Knowledge only goes so far with what’s coming at us now.”

“Isn’t Knife Rock boring? It always has been before. There shouldn’t be that much to do.” Marco looked around the beach. “We’re already out of food, so we’ll need to find a way to stock up. I guess there’s wood to repair the ship from the damage that big fish did, but I don’t have the levels to actually improve beyond that. Not the most dangerous place in the world.”

“All true. Or it would be, if we were on Knife Rock,” Elisa said.

Marco looked around. There were trees and a beach, just like Knife Rock should have had. He turned his gaze back on Elisa, suspiciously.

“You set out for Knife Rock, but you missed it by a mile,” Elisa explained. “Lots of miles, actually. This is Isle 19-H. It’s one of the little ones nobody bothers with. There’s not enough fresh water to grow crops.”

“Oh. Huh. Well, we’d still have to find a dungeon. There’s no telling if there’s any to find.”

Elisa held up her book again and waited.

“You know where one is somehow. Of course you do.”

“Just because an island is uninhabited doesn’t mean it’s uncharted, Marco. I know everything about this island from the reports. Now come along. We’ll go hunting.”

They stopped for a few minutes to pull the boat on dry sand and cover it with one of Garrick’s tarps. It was a tan color, which didn’t make the boat invisible but did mean someone would have to be pretty close to it to know there was something besides sand on the beach, and then would have to be motivated to check under a tarp for a thimble-sized ship. It was safe enough to leave it, considering.

Halfway through their trip, Elisa broke the silence. “I’m glad I have these stats. I didn’t get much constitution, but it’s apparently enough that mosquitos can’t touch me now. I’ve been watching this little guy go to town on my arm for a half-hour now. He can’t get through.”

They had been walking across the island almost that long, so the mosquito must have got an early start. Like Elisa had said, there wasn’t much to see. Besides a small seep of water she found based on her class-assisted memory, there wasn’t anything to see but sand and salt-air tolerant trees. Even the island’s birds seemed bored with it, lazing around trees without reacting to the pair much at all.

“I hear in some places the mosquitoes are monsterized. As big as your thumb and just that much stronger.”

“Gross.” Elisa pointed. “There. See the distortion?”

The air was shimmering several yards from them, like the radiant heat that came off the roof of a house in summer. That was the sign of a dungeon. In civilized places, people built buildings around them or arches over them to keep people out who didn’t want in. Here, there was just a simple wooden stake driven into the ground, rotted from the sun and the brine in the air.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“The surveyor who worked on the island wasn’t a dungeon expert, but they marked it down as definitely being less than level ten, and probably less than level five. Not a lot of details besides that, I’m afraid.”

“That’s a big range. A level ten would get us fast,” Marco said.

“It’ll be fine. We’ll scout it out. If it’s too dangerous, I’ll know. That’s in books too.”

Marco wasn’t about to argue, considering how many times she had already been right that day. He nodded and moved to her side, the way they had seen adult adventurers on the island do to make sure they arrived in the same place at the same time.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

They jumped forward into the portal together, and soon found out there was an awful lot that books left out and scouting couldn’t get the jump on. The dungeon was a negative of the island they had just left, shifted in color to something alien looking but otherwise looking the same in almost every respect. Marco craned his neck around wildly trying to make sense of things, which gave him just enough warning of the spear headed for Elisa to get in front of it.

He had been prepared to get stabbed, but not for Elisa to be the first target. Luckily, his sword flashed out almost as if it had its own will and swatted the weapon to the side. The source of it became clear a moment later as a small, angry looking humanoid dropped out of a nearby tree and charged them, stone knife in hand.

“Look out!”

Elisa yelled moments too late to actually be useful. Her stats made her smart, but did very little for her reflexes. Marco was already in motion towards the enemy, locking blade on blade with it a second later. Besides his training with Garrick and the Bladefish swats, this was the first practical use Marco had been able to put his swordplay to the test with. He quickly found that he was faster than the small, leather-skinned monster he was fighting. He was able to intercept every single one of the clever, deft stabs the Palmar Brute tried with almost no effort. For a while, it seemed like that would be enough.

In the meantime, he was thankful for his gun. Every so often, his offhand would point towards the monster on its own volition, sensing openings and opportunities to take advantage of. The Palmar seemed to fear it, dodging wide whenever this happened and letting the bullets fly harmlessly wide around it.

The fight would have been over almost immediately if he had ever landed a shot with the pistol, Marco realized. Any hit would have made an opening he could have taken advantage of in a big way. His class was built to use the two in tandem. Even missing every shot, all his swordplay was propped up by the mere threat of the gun.

The Palmar eventually realized what it was trying to do wasn’t working, and went with another tactic entirely. Unfortunately for Marco, it chose sheer, brute force. Despite only standing about as tall as Marco's waist, the little thing was strong. Worse, it was striking at an upward angle, and every strike not only deflected Marco’s sword but also popped him a little bit away from his optimal footing. Infuriatingly, this also meant he couldn’t get a clear shot at it with the gun. He fired it as best he could, but the constant reeling from the force of the strikes meant none of the shots found flesh.

The extra power made the monster slower, but Marco had to respect its animal strength, given that a single blow from the sword would probably be enough to put him down for good. It was only a matter of time before one of them made a mistake, and a matter of who made it first that would determine the winner.

Or so Marco thought. Just as he started to consider taking desperate measures, Elisa darted from behind a tree and slapped her hand on the monster. The sparkling surprise she had planned with that slap was devastatingly effective. With no warning at all about what was about to happen to it, the little Palmer flinched, stiffened, and dropped its sword entirely. Marco was surprised too, but Elisa had either by luck or genius shocked his opponent when Marco was in mid-thrust, meaning he didn’t have time to stop himself from stabbing if he wanted to.

The Palmar didn’t go down from a single hit, but it had lost all ability to fight back. The follow-up stab and shot to the head Marco landed afterwards took the monster down permanently. After a quick look around to make sure no other enemies were coming, Marco grabbed Elisa’s wrist and dragged her to a relatively open bit of ground where they’d have some warning if anything else was approaching.

“That was good. Stupid of me, but good,” Elisa said.

“You think what you did was stupid? I thought it was pretty brilliant,” Marco said. “It made my life a lot easier, anyway.”

“That was a level six, Marco. Or at least it had all the hallmarks of one. We should have been running away and getting as far away from this dungeon as we can. Not fighting it head on. Do you know how many people die because they get overconfident of their abilities? I got overconfident and made a mistake. You can beat as many dungeon monsters as you want, but it only takes one mistake for us to regret everything.” Elisa huffed out a breath of air. “It was stupid to take on a level six monster when we were just level five.”

“Actually, are we still level fives?” Marco looked down at his status screen. “Now we aren’t. I knew it. Look!”