Titan: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 4) by Jez Cajiao (beach books .txt) 📗

“You’re evil,” I said to her, and she nodded, as our ship curved around and started back on the heading to catch up with the fleet.

“That’s been said a time or two before, sir,” she said with a nod. “Now, I’ll familiarize myself with the ship and see what needs doing, with your permission?” She asked and I nodded, as she turned and started walking away, Josh nodding to me as he hurried over to follow her below decks.

“She’s right you know; that was an evil trick…” Oracle said, and I grinned at her, wrapping my arm around her shoulders as she moved in close to me.

“I know, but in fairness, he thought he was ripping me off…” I said before leaning down and kissing her long and slow.

When we eventually broke off the kiss, it was with a sigh, and we turned back to the ship, knowing that despite the joking, the next few days on the ship wouldn’t be as easy as we’d made it out to be.

I had a dozen things that I should have done a week ago, and every time I actually stopped, and rested, I ended up regretting it.

Lydia had changed, and I needed to check out what had happened, as well as make sure she was, in fact, fully healed. And the ship was a bombsite; it might be solid now, and charging the Core and crystals, but it’d also been left for a hundred damn years, and all that was keeping some sections together looked to be termites holding hands.

Add to that, I needed to do something I’d been neglecting for far too long.

I needed to put my damn Alchemy profession to work. So far, I’d essentially botched and blundered my way through it, relying on the combination of my identification spells and the novice skill book I’d read ages ago.

I knew there was more to it, though, and I knew very specifically that my fleet, my people, and my damn civilization needed me to not just toss this off.

I was going to have to knuckle down and actually learn properly for a change, so we took a few minutes to relax together, watching the building chaos on Mal’s ship, before turning away with a lighter heart.

We returned to the wheelhouse, and I took a seat with Oracle sitting possessively on my knee, and I looked over to Jian and Tenandra.

“Okay, guys, thank you for getting the gnomes across to Mal’s ship. Time to get things sorted here, I think, though; what state are we in?” I asked them both.

“The ship’s structure is sound, despite the cracks and physical issues. The abundance of mana, thanks to the outer edges of the storm, means I can use that to begin repairs as we go. I would estimate the overall structure at around forty-two percent intact. Certain areas are entirely rotted away, but these are predominately the outer hull, where the wood was sitting in water for years. The inner hull is mostly sound, with only a few small issues that will need to be addressed sooner, rather than later. I can keep the ship together for the time it will take to reach the Tower easily, however,” Tenandra stated with clear pride in her voice.

“That’s a relief, then,” I said gratefully. “Thank you, Tenandra. Now, what about the crew? I know we were going to be mainly reliant on the gnomes until you took over the ship… I got six people from Mal to help out, but honestly, I was more concerned with removing his primary help of Soween and Josh. Leaving him with that wanker Jay makes this even funnier.”

“Wait, he’s just got Jay to help him deal with gnomes?!” Jian asked, grinning widely.

“Oh, he’s got a load of other people as well, but you know, out of his core group that we all dealt with? I could only see Jay there still!” I said with an evil laugh.

“Oh, now, that’s just cruel… you know Jay is gonna pick a fight with one of them, right?” Oracle interjected, and I shrugged.

“If its Giint, they’ll be picking bits of Jay out of the damn teeth of his kill-stick! Anyway, that’s his problem, and I seriously doubt Mal would let something like that happen anyway. So, back to the subject at hand: food, drink, and the ship.”

“Well, we’ve all got a few days’ rations left, I think…” Jian responded, rubbing his chin. “The biggest problem we have is space to sleep and relax. Almost the entire ship is filled with mold and crap. The rooms that were secure are okay, but they’re all sized for gnomes…” Jian broke off as Soween pushed the door open and stood to attention.

“Permission to enter, sir?” she asked, and I nodded, waving her and Josh to chairs before responding to Jian.

“Okay, so we sort a few rooms out to rest in, and we set up a Rota between us, make sure there’s always one of us in here, and beyond that, we just spend the next few days resting and recovering,” I said. “I’m going to need a few rooms’ clearing, at least. One as a medical and alchemy room, so it’ll need to be entirely clean of the spores and fungus. Once we make sure everyone is healed up, then I’ll use the room for Alchemy and make sure to restock our potions. After all, I know Mal agreed to give us all his alchemy stocks…”

“He did, sir. I grabbed the bag myself. Mal practically threw me off the ship in his excitement,” Soween said, smiling faintly.

“Well, I think he’ll probably be regretting that very soon,” I chuckled.

“I’ll look forward to seeing that, sir. So, you described a single room you needed to clear, but you said you wanted at least three?”

“Ah, yeah, I need a room for us all to sleep in, somewhere we can actually sleep, or relax, or do, well, whatever. And third…” I said, wondering if