Darren checked his quest again. He was down to six days and change now. They’d sailed through the night and now he stood on a beach in the cool pre-dawn light. They were in a sheltered bay of a fairly large island called Rumrunners’ Island—not large enough to found a settlement on, but it had plenty of trees.

  Captain Montague, bless his heart, had nailed the “island with an arse-ton of trees” mission.

  The HMS Sea Dagger was anchored in the middle of the large bay, barely visible in the low light but for the lamps burning on its deck. The bay was one of the reasons Captain Montague had picked the island. It was nearly a kilometre across at the widest point, and the mouth was over half a kilometre across, meaning they’d be able to build the floating settlement in its shelter and get out if they wanted.

  Shortly after Darren’s meeting with the captain the previous day, Montague had assigned 50 sailors to Darren, having them join Darren’s party. Because of that, he’d already ticked off 12 hours of the three days he needed to lead a party of five or more.

  Darren had been put ashore with the sailors. Half of them had the Shipwright skill, and the rest had varying crafting/resource collection-related skills. They were all around his level. The sailors were currently unloading supplies from the longboats.

  Montague had also sent three of his most trusted marines, all over level 15, to offer protection from any dangers the island presented and enforce Darren’s authority. They were still in Montague’s party.

  Unfortunately, Short-n-stocky was one of the marines. And the marine in charge…

  By the time Darren had found out that Short-n-stocky—Eric, apparently—was involved, it was too late to ask Montague to pick someone else. That said… he had a sneaking suspicion Montague had made the pick intentionally. Remind Darren who truly held the power here.

  Whatever the reason, it’d left Darren in a sour mood. He supposed he should be grateful, considering how smoothly the crew had accepted the concocted story of him being on a mission from the crown and fooling spies by being taken on board as a prisoner, blah, blah, blah.

  But he certainly wasn’t about to complain about the good fortune. He vaguely wondered if his 14 points in Luck impacted that at all. He had to hope so, because those points into Constitution would have given him another highly valuable 40 hit points.

  As with most games, the devs had been vague on exactly what Luck impacted. He suspected it impacted rewards for big kills, maybe quest rewards too. Maybe it skewed the numbers of “chance to hit” effects?

  Oh well. He shrugged and returned his attention to the beach activities as Short-n-stocky, his bright red hair flaming nearly matching the dawn sky. “Anything to report, Eric?”

  The muscles along Eric’s jaw tensed. Evidently, he didn’t like being asked to report. Well, he could suck it.

  “The crew’ve almost finished unloadin’,” Eric said, “and the longboats will be pulled up the beach soon. The camp will be done in the next hour. Would you like those with resource collection skills to start gatherin’ lumber?”

  Darren tried not to smirk at the nearly physical pain Eric seemed to feel at having to ask him a question. He nodded his assent and checked the party list in the top left of his vision for the hundredth time that day. Wilson’s health had fully recovered and not dipped again. Hopefully, the drop had been from him flipping someone off or something mild.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Eric turned and started barking at the crew, hurling insults and threatening to flog anyone not moving fast enough. A group of around ten broke off and headed for the jungle some 80 metres away.

  Insects started to buzz as the sun crested the horizon beyond the mouth of the bay, the day already feeling like a sauna. It was gonna be a rough one.

  Darren followed Eric towards the crew. The camp was designed around production. To the south, they were setting up a logging station, next to fires that would function as the game’s broken, open-air kilns. Beyond that, racks were being set up to store the dried planks.

  Next in line after the material production section, an area had been levelled to produce boat ribs. They’d then be shuffled along to a location dedicated to putting hulls together and planking them, before sealing the gaps and shoving them into the bay.

  Once a simple hull was finished and floating, the fun began: connecting them all together.

  Darren hadn’t wasted the 12 hours it’d taken to sail to the island. He’d spent the vast majority of it slouched over a stack of paper in the Sea Dagger’s great cabin, scratching away at designs. He’d had some input from Captain Montague and his highest level Shipwright—a level 6 Classless man with Shipwright lvl 5 (95% Proficiency).

  The Shipwright, Josiah, was a fount of information, giving Darren some great insights to the skill. They’d kept the focus on designing the floating settlement, but Darren had every intention of sitting down with the man and picking his brain soon.

  The design was an interlocking square of smaller platforms. Taking inspiration from Darren’s earlier success with boat building, they were crafting 19-metre by 19-metre catamarans. 60 in total.

  The width of the catamarans wouldn’t work IRL, needing far too much bracing to hold the two hulls together without an insane amount of flex. But in the game, the laws of physics played second fiddle to the Rule of Cool. Darren wasn’t about to complain. It was going to let him get away with a crazy-arse floating city!

  He had big plans for his new little kingdom, but for now, it was a keep-it-simple-stupid scenario. The catamarans would form the perimeter of the giant square, 16 boats long per side. Each boat would be 10 metres apart and connected with two solid beams in an X-brace.

  Each side would be 454 metres in length.

  The X-brace would help the floating settlement keep its shape, while the individual boats and the bracing between them would allow the entire contraption some flexibility as it rode the waves.

  Darren had initially been concerned with the torque on the bracing due to the total weight of the structure, as one end got shunted by a wave. But Josiah had shared his Shipwright skill with Darren, showing off one of the Additional Effects. Magical Construction. Simply put, if Josiah handled the final connections, joints were reinforced beyond anything possible IRL.

  At the end of the day, it didn’t need to be that durable at this point. It wouldn’t be leaving the shelter of the bay. For now, it was the bare bones to get the task ticked off. He could always change the shape or structure at a later point to create something more robust. That and filling in the middle would add a lot of strength. Throw in some big, eff-off catamarans in the middle for craps-and-giggles.

  Right now, it was about pumping up them rookie numbers and producing 60 already quite large catamarans in just a few days. He figured three days should be good, which gave him a day to establish the settlement and two days to knock Ron off his perch.

  Darren ran a hand through his mop of hair. 20 boats a day. He had no clue if the crew would be up to the task, but he’d be right there beside them, smashing away at Shipwright until they succeeded or failed.

  As he surveyed the buzz of activity on the beach, he just hoped they didn’t have too many interruptions to deal with. They were on a stupidly tight schedule.

  Which was naturally when he heard a spine-chilling screech coming from the centre of the island, and saw the crew who’d entered the jungle only moments ago come sprinting out, faces white.

  Good. There’d been far too much talky talky and not enough stabby stabby lately.