Chương 13: Chapter 90: Ocean Life

William Oh arrived at The Flotilla on a ghost ship, carved from the bones of a dead leviathan and piloted by ghosts. Once they docked, tales spread like wildfire of deckhands and voluptuous chambermaids that seemed to appear and disappear, never allowing others to get an accurate grasp of how many souls were on board.

Some nights it seemed like hundreds were on board, while other nights, only a single window would flicker with lamplight revealing about a dozen people, begging the question of where the rest of the crew had gone. Not to mention the strange noises, and objects moving with a mind of their own. And the smell of death that seemed to follow it.

Heron Stiles, level 30 Sailor Will yawned and tossed the blanket off, slipping out of his Relics and back into his clothes before putting his Relics back on over them It was weird sleeping with falconer's gloves and a dragon mask on, but you got used to it. You didn't not sleep in your Relics. Or at least, Will didn't ever since the church of Granesh had tried to kill him in the middle of the night while they bunked at what should've been a reputable inn.

Will glanced down at the Swampstompers that hadn't left his feet since last month. I should air out the shoes at least. Will took his shoes off and regretted it instantly. The socks he'd been wearing the entire time had holes eaten through the heel and toe, and the smell… Dear gods, the smell. Will hastily tossed the shoes and socks in one of the Sourdough Barrels in the Relic room, where they stuffed all the Relics they plucked out of the ocean that were waiting for sorting and destruction.

Some of the smaller, more valuable Relics, they saved to trade once they found The Flotilla, while the rest got broken down to bake their consumeables in. Hopefully Relic dust is a good deodorant, Will thought, using Sourdough on his socks and burying them. They weren't technically Relics, but maybe the Ability would restore them as if they were plain consumables. And even if it didn't, covering them in magical powder would likely kill anything living on them making that horrible smell.

Or the magic might mutate it into a lethal stench. Will was willing to take that chance. He ambled over to the washroom, which was connected to the desalination room. During the day, polished metallic scales caught sunlight and reflected it onto a metal pan, which boiled saltwater. Above, the condensate was collected into a tank. It wasn't fully automatic, it required someone to add new seawater and clean the salt crust out of the pan every now and then.

Anna had stepped into her role as the support, single-handedly running every aspect of the ship's domestic affairs. Despite being technically working for them, Will was intrigued to note how the attitude towards Anna had shifted from slightly awkward to deferential. Nobody wanted to risk having her stop making water, washing clothes and baking bread for them. The bread still ran out, though. They were a bit too excited and had bread every night to celebrate another day of being alive on the 6 th Floor.

Their one bag of flour was empty after the first week. That was when they started taking rationing more seriously. Every morning Anna split into four, each copy bustling around the massive ship, keeping everything running smoothly, performing more work than any one person could hope to accomplish, justifying her inclusion as Support staff. They didn't bring a big enough pan to desalinate enough water for everyone to take full shower and baths, but they did get enough to drink and take quick sponge-baths.

Loth was hoping to find a bit of another ship's desalination room with a bigger boiler, but she wasn't particularly expectant, since that part of the ship was more likely to sink due to the heavy iron. Will sat down and glanced up at the tank beside the desalinator. It was a makeshift wooden barrel about an arms-length from side to side, and half as tall as a man. Full up to his kneecaps.

Will grabbed one of their ladles and scooped out his daily ration of water, drinking his fill before pouring about half of the rest in a shallow bucket and aggressively scrubbing his feet with soap. The soap they'd brought was still holding steady, and likely would for another month.

"Ugh," Jean groaned as she entered the room, taking a ration ladle off the wall and filling it before moving behind the women's divider.

"This is why you don't sleep in your Relics!" she shouted over it.

"Says the girl who's never been attacked in her sleep," Will muttered, continuing to vigorously scrub his feet.

"I heard that," June said.

"It's not so bad," Reggie said as he entered, grabbing another ladle off the wall and measuring out his daily water, drinking about half before pouring the rest in a bucket and beginning his routine, soaping himself up.

"My uncle's feet smell way worse."

"Your uncle literally has a disease." June called over the divider. The rest of the party filed in while they were washing up, and Anna #2 made herself busy bustling between the two areas, cleaning up after them, bussing tubs, scrubbers and and soap without any particular awkwardness at seeing the male members without their clothes. Probably another reason why nobody messes with her, Will thought.

Anna #2 ran the bath and water desalinator because she was the first offshoot, created first thing in the morning while Anna #1 and the rest of the girls took their bath, then spending the rest of her day refilling their water supply. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. By the time Will got out, his feet smelled like… nothing in particular, which was about as good as it was going to get.

Will used the last little bit in his ladle to rinse himself off before heading off to breakfast. Anna #3 was in charge of breakfast. … it was fish. Because of course it was.

"The mushrooms are spreading well and the sprouts are thriving in the substrate. In about a week, we'll get our first crop." Loth said as they each peeled bone-filled fish-meat off scaly skin with their knives. Substrate is a fancy word for 'rotting fish guts'. Will thought to himself, working his knife. Thankfully the room dedicated to growing mushrooms and breeding insects was kept far, far away from their main living quarters, for their sanity. Scrape, scrape.

Reggie had invented the most practical way of eating fish by running his blade along the outside of the meat to separate the whole skin at once before quickly slicing it into bite-size chunks of flaky meat, then spearing each individual piece with his knife, treating the fish skin itself like the plate they didn't have. The rest of them gradually began to copy him. This left the problem of bones, but it was still leagues ahead of messily trying to gnaw meat away from greasy skin with their hands and teeth.

Fish didn't smell too bad when it was fresh, but get the oil on your hands, and you'd be carrying around a gradually worsening stink until you got the opportunity to wash up the next morning.

"Don't take this the wrong way, you cook fish good," Mason said as Anna moved past him, popping some breakfast in his mouth.

"But I would fight to the death for some toast and butter."

"Pepper." June added.

"Peanut butter honey pancakes," Reggie grunted.

"Cider." Travis mused.

"The booze or spiced apple juice?" Will asked.

"Take your pick." Travis shrugged.

"I'll get right on that," Anna #3 said with an eyeroll as she rounded up their fish skin plates, adding them to the bin to be thrown overboard.

"I think our party needs either a Grower or a Logistician that can shuffle supplies." Will said.

"That one that Roger was talking about?" Loth asked.

"Eh?" Mason grunted, the slender Nuker glancing between the two of them. Will described Roger's story about a quartermaster who could spend Charges to shift the quantities of bulk supplies in their ledger by shifting the numbers around, as long as the values were roughly identical. In theory, they could take a pound or two of flour with them and the quartermaster could add more by adding a zero to the flour and subtracting one pound from Relic dust. Add a Charge while doing it and the supplies would simply… shift.

They were practically swimming in Relic dust. Over the last few weeks, they'd gotten the knack for judging when and how to fish a miasmatic corpse out of the water, just before it spit out its loot. And there was always opportunity to learn, because the floor didn't ever seem to run out of monsters aiming to kill them. Fighting for their lives was a daily occurrence, and they could only afford to sleep because Jean and the butlers were watching their backs at night.

"Oh yeah, I heard about that lady." Travis said, nodding.

"Incredibly valuable Builds like those get lost to the sands of time every day." He shrugged and continued picking at his fish.

"… We could send Thea a letter asking her to look into it," Will suggested. If they bought the recipe from whoever had funded the logistician's Class originally, - if they were still alive – Will could theoretically fund his own, but he'd also have to pay to give the person powerful relics to guarantee they survived their Trial, then hire mercenaries to guard them all the way up to the fifth floor.

All told, that would take a large chunk of their war chest, and about six months to wait for the next crop of Aspirants. And then of course, it would be someone gullible enough to accept a job offer from an unknown like Will. All told, it was unlikely to work, risky, prohibitively expensive, and slow… but every day Will spent eating nothing but fish weakened his resolve. Someone who could magic fresh-caught fish and relics into sugar and flour was nothing short of miraculous.

"I'll draft a letter." Loth said, nodding. After breakfast, they went out to their separate jobs. Will and Alicia: lookouts. Alicia could see anything with a physical body that might be sneaking up on them, no matter how many layers of camouflage it had. Will on the other hand, could see further and kept his gaze fixed on the horizon looking for any sign of The Flotilla. Reggie and Jean were on manual labor, Mason and Loth did logistics, Travis worked up in the sails, while June steered.

Anna and the butlers kept everything running smooth while Bee and Ria killed things that needed to be killed. Anything that came at them in manageable numbers, the Tangled girls swept away like so much chaff. Thankfully, no leviathans were brave enough to attack Shimmer. The massive vessel was named such because of the way the hypnotic scales of the sky sharks decorated the sides.

According to Steve's primer on the Floor, The Flotilla stayed at the same latitude in order to maintain its climate for the floating gardens, so all they needed to do was match that latitude and then maintain it until they came across the boat-city. The Tower had said the Stronghold was west, so once Loth confirmed they were on the right latitude, they continued going West, adjusting their heading as needed to stay on course.

The signs were promising: They found more shipwrecks, scouring each one for supplies as they sailed past signs of human activity, like floating glass bouys, garbage, the occasional dot of sail in the distance. They didn't bother trying to chase anyone down to say hi. First, Shimmer wasn't built for speed, as lovely as she was. The ship was big enough to accommodate a crew a hundred times it's current size, with a barge-like, chunky look to her. And second, chasing people down on the open ocean wasn't the…

friendliest gesture. They made decent time, but that was only in comparison to the floating city they tracked. Two weeks later, Will was up in the crow's nest, considering finally buckling under the monotony and tasting the honey created by Loth's 'Carrion Honeybees'.

'meat honey' sounded…unpleasant, even though the others swore it was almost palatable. I'll stick to radish sprouts, fish and mushrooms, thank you very much, Will thought sourly as he scanned the horizon. The first sight of the floating city made him think he was hallucinating or seeing a low-hanging cloud formation on the horizon. As the smudge of white resolved into individual sails clustered tight together, Will's eyes widened.

"I see it!" He shouted.

"See what!?" June shouted up at him.

"The Flotilla!" Will replied as Alicia squinted beside him, not quite able to make out the city herself.

"How's our heading?" June asked.

"Two degrees, port!" Will replied.

"Roger!" June made the adjustment on the steering wheel, gradually turning Shimmer's nose slightly portside. Over the next two hours, the city became visible in the distance, even from the deck. When the sun went down, The Flotilla turned into a beacon of light on the horizon as lanterns kept the night-life going aboard the floating city. The next morning they'd closed the distance drastically, and a sloop detached from the several mile cluster of boats, heading their way over the course of the morning.

The sloop pulled up alongside their port side, their deck about fifteen feet lower than Shimmer's. Will's party clustered around the edge and peered down as experienced sailors delicately secured themselves to the side of their ship.

"Permission to come aboard!" A sunburnt man shouted from below them, wielding a massive rope in his weathered hands. Will noticed everyone was looking at him. Despite the ship running like a well-oiled machine without his input, he was still the Party leader.

"Granted!" Will shouted back down. A moment later, the oversize rope was flung up onto the deck of the Shimmer, and they watched as three sailors climbed up the side. Will's bare toes clenched down on the deck as the heavyset men climbed to the top, each of them armed and armored with nearly a full complement of Relics. The grizzled veteran frowned when he saw Will's party, rubbing his back as he scanned the rest of the deck.

"Interesting 'ship', lads. Never seen anything like it. Makes my skin crawl." The man muscled back a shudder.

"But I ain't one to judge. Since you didn't give the signals as you approached, we figured you were newcomers. My name's Heron, and we're the welcome party today." He produced a waterproofed scroll lined with cork wood and offered it to Will.

"On that scroll is the law of The Flotilla. Study it before you dock, then return it. Ignorance is not a defense, and the lightest punishment on the Flotilla is banishment." Will nodded.

"We'll be sure to do so." Heron nodded, gazing back at Will for a long moment.

"Welcome to The Flotilla."