So what you're telling me is that I was right, you were wrong, and they are a bunch of scumbags?” Jim asked.

“Not exactly.” I started, only for Jim to speak up again.

“So now we just need to figure out what they’re smuggling, where they’re keeping the money, and then we can take it all for ourselves.”

“No.” I shut that line of thought down as quickly as possible. “We don’t know for sure that they’re doing anything illegal, and even if they were, I can’t think of an easy way for us to just steal that money from them without getting caught and punished for it.” I still wasn’t fully committed to the idea of performing a heist, but I figured it was probably easier for me to simply have Jim decide it wasn’t worth pursuing than to veto his ideas outright.

“But still!” Jim protested. “Two hundred gold pieces for a single delivery. With that much money I could buy Mom and Dad a new place to live in, and Mom wouldn’t need to work so hard trying to keep everything in order while still bringing money in.”

While I appreciated his altruistic thoughts, it felt like Jim still wasn’t fully connected to reality.

“So you buy them a new house, and then when the Ferrymen track down the money they do all sorts of nasty things to the people who stole from them. After all, look what they did to you for trying to attract your own customers.

“Oh.” Jim quieted down after that, at least a little, before giving his thoughts on the matter. “Yeah. That would not be good.”

“I’m not saying that it’s impossible, I’m just saying that we need to take our time, gather more information, and act only when we are absolutely positive that we can pull it off. Probably once we get some Skills that might help us out, or some other trick to help put the odds in our favor.”

“Oh!” Jim perked up a bit at that. “I couldn’t tell you yesterday, but I have a new Skill! Well, I haven’t bought it yet, but I will once I get the experience I need to pay for it. It’s called Instant Repair, and I think it popped up in my shop once I helped you fix yourself up for the second time. I just didn’t bother checking immediately because I never have enough to get anything listed there.”

“That’s interesting.” Was my neutral answer. It was interesting; I just didn’t know how to respond to it. If Jim could leverage that skill correctly, he could easily afford to switch careers. Rowing people around all day was something anyone could easily pick up, but being able to restore items back to pristine condition with minimal materials was a rare gift.

Or was it? I’d managed to unlock a few skills myself after working with Adam for a day, and now I had evidence that that sort of exchange could go both ways. It made me wonder what the limiting factor was for people obtaining skills. Was it simply a matter of getting enough experience to pay for as many skills as you wanted? Or were there hidden factors such as an unspecified limit on the number of skills that kept things in check. For some of the more esoteric Skills finding a tutor might be difficult, or perhaps people were generally too lazy to go about gathering Skills that weren’t immediately useful, no matter how valuable they might be in emergencies.

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“How do you unlock new Skills?” I asked Jim, curious to see what his father might have told him, or that he picked up through cultural osmosis.

“Hmm? Oh! You get skills through performing actions that are linked to the skill in question, usually. Some skills you can do by yourself, but the easiest way is to assist someone who already has the Skill. They get some help, and you get a new skill to purchase eventually, if it’s not too expensive. The cost of skills varies from person to person, and no, I don’t know why.”

“Thanks!!”

I’d have to figure out if there was an easy way for me to game that system to my advantage. It wasn’t like I could just walk up to people and use whatever normal systems were in place for this. Working with Adam showed it was technically possible, but I’d need to get creative if I wanted to find a way that I could assist the Skill tutors as a boat. Further thoughts were put out of my mind by Jim knocking on my newly painted side to get my attention.

“I’ve got it. I don’t want to lead them back to my parents, so We will make it clear that we’ve stolen the money and left town for a good long while. That way if they follow us at all we can be halfway to Nowhere and Mom and Dad will be safe!”

“It’s a start.” I admitted. “Now we just need to refine it multiple times as we keep our ears open for more information. Once we know where they keep their treasure, how it’s guarded, and what our capabilities are , then we can make a more detailed plan. For now, we should just relax, and keep our ears open. Most of the people in the guild probably aren’t part of the midnight deals, so you’ll have to do your best to remain casual and pretend everything is business as usual. It might be weeks or months before we find what we need, so try and enjoy yourself.”

“What?” Why so long?” Jim protested.

I mentally sighed, thankful that Jim couldn’t hear me doing so. “There’s three ways that we can succeed in stealing something from someone else. The first is power. With enough force you can simply break everything that stands between you and what you want, and leave with impunity. This is the smash and grab school of theft. There’s the style that requires skill, where guards are incapacitated or snuck by, locks are picked, and traps are disarmed without anyone the wiser. The stealth school of theft, favorite of cat burglars everywhere. Finally there’s the loophole school of theft. Here we’re not relying on being more skilled or more powerful than the target, but on having unique skills that exploit the system in an unexpected way. My existence somewhat falls into this category as it allows us to get information we wouldn’t have access to otherwise, but I alone am not a guarantee of a successful heist. The long time period is for us to either collect enough power to break our way through, to develop our skills to the level they need to be at, or to become familiar with the system to the point that we can trick everything into going our way.”

“”Yeah, none of those seem like they’ll go fast.” Jim sighed. “I just really don’t like them right now.

“It's a good life lesson. You can’t always guarantee that you’ll have to work with people you like”

Jim blew a raspberry at me for that one “You sound like my dad.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. I like your dad, after all.”

“Back on topic, which do you think is the best strategy for stealing from the guild?”

“Don’t, would be my first answer. Failing that, I’d love it if we could work towards the skills needed to loot them quietly, but I don’t think that’s likely. I’m a boat, not a master thief. Our best bet is probably just to get to know more people, and see what they bring to the table. The ferrymen might be pretty decent people most of the time, but the times that they aren’t will have left them with a few people holding a grudge at least. All you need to do is find them and give them a target.”