Marcus told Dan that he would come to discuss that, so he waited for him on the bridge, all while keeping an eye on the ongoing fight outside. Not that it was much of a fight, he used the Voyager's aura to take care of those who got close to them. At the same time, he didn't stress himself over whether a few of them bypassed him and his aura, as the guards were there too.

  With the help of the Voyager's protective aura and her normal tentacles joining in when the bugs were too concentrated, the main swarm was kept at bay and the guards didn't seem to be in much trouble. Dan even noticed Sam's Swarmers hitting the Harvesters too, making the situation even easier to control.

  Dan kept an eye on the battlefield and the guards. The one Marcus left in charge in his place was George. Old Raily though, was holding the starboard on his own like the last time they faced something like this. It helped that almost all the bugs were coming from port, barely one or two would have time to reach starboard.

  It didn't take long before Marcus stood in front of Dan.

  "Marcus." Dan nodded at the man. "What do you think of what I told you? Should we go with it?"

  "It's viable," Marcus said slowly, thinking deeply about it, "We require a place or situation like this, to grind and get more levels for everyone."

  "I feel that there's a 'but' there." Dan smiled at the chief security officer.

  "But." The man didn't disappoint him. "We can also use it to grind for fuel. Our strength is important, but so is fuel, you can even say that it's even more important. As long as we are on the Voyager, we are in an impenetrable fortress that few could manage to break into. I doubt finding another chance like this to grow our fuel reserve would be easy, so we should make use of it."

  Dan didn't answer straight away, he thought deeply about what Marcus had brought up. While he held the swarm with the Voyager's dark oppressive aura, they finally noticed that the fuel reserve had risen a bit. It was great news, as it meant that they didn't need to use those dark tentacles and have the Voyager suffer. It also proved that what had happened before wasn't just a mistake on their part or a misreading, they could really raise their fuel through this method.

  As for what Marcus had suggested, it made sense and was something Dan had considered. He had decided to see what Marcus would say first though, and now that he himself had brought it up, Dan had no reason to disagree.

  "Okay," Dan said, "We will go with that. I doubt I can keep at it for long though, I will hold on for as long as I can before letting the guards grind for levels when I can't hold on anymore. That way, we have the best of both worlds."

  "That's good too." Marcus nodded. "You can continue then, just hit me up when you feel like taking a rest, I will return and tell the others what we have decided on, good luck."

  Watching him go, Dan again focused all his attention on the gigantic water striders storming towards them. He deployed as much as he could of the dark aura without stressing himself too much, he wanted this to be a marathon and not a sprint after all.

  Dan continued with the grind for levels. As he controlled the aura to specifically go after one of those smaller one-meter-long water striders which ignored the Voyager's protective aura, he casually thought how even killing gigantic monstrous bugs would turn routine and boring if done for a long time and there was no stress in it.

  He had been quite serious about it at first, focused and doing his best, but he soon realised that the bugs were truly capable of doing no harm and he could afford to make some mistakes. That didn't mean that he was careless, but he was just starting to lose focus here and there.

  After a while, he noticed something, there was a huge amount of monster bodies left in the area around the Voyager. Thinking for a bit, he turned to Arnold and asked,

  "Hey, Arnold, are there any valuable parts in a Harvester's body? Should we gather some of them?"

  "Let me think for a bit." The Nautical Archivist closed his eyes for a second as he thought. "Their forelimbs . Also the back legs of the bigger variants. Those two seem to be the more important things we can collect from them. You can see with Jackie, the Oceanic Druid might have a use for some other part. Of course, you should also check if they have any mana cores."

  "Thanks a lot, that helps."

  Dan honestly was happy that they didn't have to collect heaps of bug corpses on the Voyager. Just their legs and checking if they had mana cores was more acceptable and easier to deal with. He even thought of a way to deal with it easily; outsourcing the work to the Voyager.

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  "Hey, big girl," he called to her.

  Hmm? she sent. With the emotions, Dan felt that she was tilting her head to the side as she looked at him questioningly.

  "Cut the back legs and forelimbs of those bugs that we killed and put them somewhere empty," he said, "Also check if any of them have mana cores, you can get those right?"

  Yes! I can do that! Dan could feel her excitement rising at having something to do.

  "Thanks a lot, big girl."

  He smiled at how pure she was. But an idea made him pause as another picture surfaced in his mind, a mean child torturing ants in a playground, cutting their legs and squishing them to see what's inside them. He hurriedly discarded that idea, the two situations couldn't be further from each other!

  Just as he calmed himself with that, he got a huge rush of fascination and happiness from the Voyager as he watched her messily dissect one of the Harvesters.

  "It's not the same..." he murmured weakly to himself.

  Trying to ignore what the Voyager was doing, and how happy she was about it, Dan threw himself again into dealing with the Harvesters. Hours later, and just as the fight against the aura was getting hard to keep up and its bloodthirsty nature was fully awakened and ready to lash out at everything if let be, Dan felt a familiar sensation, a system notification.

  Surprise because he wasn't expecting it, Dan froze for a second before he hurriedly called it up. To a mix of disappointment and relief, Dan found the skills not up to his standards. He chose to skip as he willed the skill that the Voyager chose to appear.

  At the same time, he thought of something that had been going through his mind after the last few level-ups; It was about his skill choices and which skills he should go for. He was messing with the idea of going for skills that seemed to be tailor-made for the Bonded Captain Class, like Advantage. He felt that such skills would be the best suited for him and taking other filler skills that were available for anyone would be a waste. Getting skills like that seemed to be pretty rare though, so he wondered how long he would have to wait if he went for that, or even if he could do it at all.

  Discarding those thoughts for now, Dan focused on the window in front of him, the Voyager's skill,

  Bonded Ship's skill choice:

  Boost.

  Dan had an inkling about what the skill might do once he saw the name. Not wanting to wait any longer, he called its description.

  Boost: the Voyager enjoyed how fast she was going under Flagship's Command, it was a feeling she couldn't get enough of and she was starting to find her current speed underwhelming. That's why she decided to go with this skill. Tier 1 Boost: Doubles the top speed of the vessel and protects it from the pressure induced by the new speed. Lasts for 2 hours, cooldown: 5 hours.

  Tier 2 Boost: triples the top speed of the vessel and protects it from the pressure induced by the new speed. Lasts 3 hours, cooldown: 3 hours.

  Dan found himself nodding as he read the skill the Voyager got. It was a good skill and might be able to save their lives if they ever found themselves in a situation like the one with Sticky Reefs before.

  Dan updated everyone on the fact that he levelled up, and what skill he got before contacting Marcus and telling him that he was tired and needed some rest. Getting the ok from the man, Dan finally dropped his control over the aura as he allowed himself to relax.

  Leaving the bridge under the control of Robert and the others, Dan told them to call him in case anything happened as he went to the Skyline to have something to drink and eat, his body was demanding it.

  After enjoying a quick meal that was nothing but a bit of soup and an accompanying sandwich, Dan felt something coming his way from the Voyager, it was curiosity and wonder.

  "What is it, big girl?" he called her, "Let me see."

  The Voyager didn't keep him waiting and she soon linked him to one of the starboard's cameras. As it focused on a point on the horizon, Dan noticed a group of approaching Harvesters that seemed to have been returning from somewhere. Each of them seemed to be holding something in their forelimbs and also hugged them to their bellies with their other free legs.

  Dan couldn't make out what those Harvesters were carrying at first, but as they closed in, he found himself standing up in alarm as he finally realised what some of those were carrying.

  Bodies, some of them were carrying bloodied humans.

  IMPORTANT ANNOUNCMENT: The novel will drop to 3 chapters a week starting next week. Dropping cruise ship due to burnout has been one of my biggest fears since the beginning, so after a discussion with some authors, I decided that this would be the best for both the story and me. Hope you understand.

  See ya tomorrow!!

  !