A peaceful dreamless night ended as the sun entered through the open window. Standing framed by the incoming golden sunlight, Emily was gazing at the ocean with a sad smile. It was the second time I had ever thought she was truly beautiful, with the first being our original meeting in the cave. Call me a sucker for traditional beauty standards but the princess ticked almost every box except boobs.

I woke up from my self-delusion and gathered together some clothes before having a shower. We packed up our supplies before storing it in our space rings and as the princess walked out the door in her dracon appearance, I stashed the bed inside my space belt that unlike the ring didn't have a size limit. Flicking the prepared mana crystal into the room producing a physical illusion of the bed that would last for a few hours before dispersing I wandered into the street.

Despite the early hour, the city was full of commotion. Being one of the biggest trading ports on the continent it was constantly receiving and dispatching supplies. The accessibility to commonly rare spices from the western countries and the local seafood created a thriving market port market filled with food stalls. The air was dense with the scent of cooked fish and something that reminded me of lemon.

Ignoring the multitude of seafood on offer considering it would be our staple diet during our ocean journey, we grabbed some roast meat wrapped in a red corn flatbread from a street stall before arriving just in time to board the boat. It was a large three-story Barque armed with several ballistae and flying the flag of the Free Trade republic. From the outside, it was apparent this was not some luxury cruise ship but a trading vessel with freshly repaired hull sections visible.

After waiting with the other passengers while eavesdropping on the current rumours we were led up the gangplank and into the ship. The interior was unadorned and there were members of both races among the crew with the captain being a dracon woman. I could immediately see a problem.

No, not that she was a woman. What kind of a sexist asshole do you take me for? The problem was that she had blue scales as opposed to the normal brown or red colouring. This specific mutation marked her as an oracle with access to an identification subsystem within the system and therefore able to see through our illusion.

Pulling the princess behind a stock crate before we could be seen, I decided it was time to change the plan. Since we could not pass as dracon businessmen, we would have to try a different approach. Unfortunately, the best idea that came to mind was for me to act as the princess's slave while she disguised her appearance with a physical object like a veil. My last words before taking my role as her 'servant' for the trip were, “Don't take this too far!” To which she only replied with a mocking smile.

The first two days on the ocean proved that Emily was having too much fun with this, always ordering me to do petty things like get her a beverage to drink or massage her shoulders and while it was annoying it did not cross the line. Luckily or unluckily on the third day, we encountered a lesser Kraken, unlike the traditional version the lesser variant could not use magic and relied completely on physical strength. To escape the giant monster, the captain activated a costly runic formation increasing the speed by manipulating the surrounding water.

The oversized squid chose to chase us and the captain had to maintain the formation, going so far as to request the assistance of the passengers with mana control while ordering everyone else back to their rooms. With the observer distracted I let the servent play fall away and began my revenge by testing the princess on everything I had taught her over the last month. Like a strict teacher, I asked questions hoping for the wrong answer so I could conduct some form of punishment.

"How is physical damage calculated? How is magical damage calculated? What determines a spell's mana cost? What is Resistance? How does resistance work? and why is the sky blue?" I called out like a machine gut while staring at her.

Knowing that not answering would result in having to cook for herself next time we went camping and that with her cooking ability at the level of burning water, she confidently replied. "Physical damage is equal to ten plus an attackers strength, magical damage is a bit different since it's ten plus both mana control and any relevant affinity with both being multiplied by skill bonuses and weapon modifiers." She looked up to me to see if anything was wrong and after receiving a nod continued.

"Mana usage is equal to half the spell damage and can be modified by skills and items. As for resistance, it is a secondary defensive stat that comes in two variants, magic and physical. It is applied to anything that makes it past health shielding to further protect the body from damage. Its full value is applied to blunt attacks and converts the damage into a knockback effect. Half of its value is applied to slashing attacks and a quarter its value applied to off piercing attacks reducing the damage they inflict. So if you want to hurt someone you need to bypass or breach their health shield and then overcome any resistance they have before you deal any actual damage." After a pause, she looked down, "I don't know why the sky is blue."

Deciding to throw her a lifeboat I tapped her on the shoulder and whispered, "Sometimes admitting you don't know it the correct answer."

The princess looked up, "So I passed?"

I gave her a smile "Yes so it looks like you won't have to cook."

Immediately the slightly depressed look disappeared and the princess ran out onto the deck to offer her services to the captain leaving the words, "That's a promise!" Lingering in the air. I realised I had been tricked and I took the bait hook, line and sinker. But at least she had bothered to correctly remember what I had taught her.

The use of the artefact shortened the time until we reached the Isle of Mages from three days down to one and since everyone was distracted I remained freed from my situation. Taking the opportunity I sneaked into the cabins of the wealthy merchants to gather information from their belongings. As we approached the port, lesser Kraken still in tow, an old elf floated out from the shore suspended by the air itself.

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He waved his staff with one hand and icicles the length of our ship were formed from the seawater. Following a hand gesture with his free hand, they levitated into the air beside him before beginning to rotating high speeds. Lastly, he pointed the staff at the monster and the icicles launched, tearing through it in an instant and leaving a howling sound in their wake.

While others watched the corpse freeze I activated identify and looked at the old man. The pale blue screen revealed he was level 92 which was not surprising considering his display of power. Given the complexity of his spells it was apparent he was an ice and wind double specialisation with Offensive Casting and probably backed by a decent magical class. But I would need to make contact with him to confirm it and I'm not that suicidal. Using wind he lifted the frozen squid into the air before retreating back to the shore.

While looking at the princess I pointed to the frozen monster, "Look It's a holy frozen squidicil." This earned me a royal facepalm so I continued while laughing, "Because it's a giant squid with holes that is frozen in an icicle and flying." The princess looked actually offended by my bad humour and refused to speak to me as we pulled into port. All in all, It was a rather astounding welcome to what is the strongest independent territory on the planet.

After docking, we were required to complete a questionnaire regarding why we were visiting the isle, if we intended to join the college of mages and how long we would be staying. I left the particulars to the princess as I surveyed the surrounding people. The average level was between 15 and 30 with the robe-wearing officials between 50 and 80. These seemingly unimpressive people handling the paperwork were equivalent to the dracon holy knights and probably used this ruse to distinguish between those worth truly teaching and those whom they would allow to enter the college merely as a source of funds.

Since we did not apply to attend their school, we mostly ignored them and they seemed to pay us little attention which worked in our favour. With a two-week visitor permit in hand, we followed the procession of people before heading to the local markets in order to purchase materials for making another batch of transformation potion or if we were truly lucky enough upgrade the illusion pendant. The stalls lined the road and sold everything from metals to food and upon seeing a transaction I had to do a double-take.

I approached the vendor and asked about the small white stone coins that they were using to trade. Apparently these coins were found in the dungeon and had no real worth but due to their unique magic signature and indestructibility, they became the common trading currency for the isle. Upon confirming my suspicion I had to stop myself from bursting into laughter.

These 'worthless' stones were actually skill stone fragments, a strategic resource even higher layer sects and kingdoms fight over. The core of this dungeon must have been an artificer from the fourth layer at the bare minimum which begs the question of how he died on such a small planet in the seventh layer. Sure descending layers has it's own limitations such as the energy required to do it and the fact that your powers are sealed but if push comes to shove and you need to, you can always break the seal and regain your strength before the layer forces you to re-ascend. So killing a high layer descended is almost impossible.

Now skill stone fragments unsurprisingly merge into skill stones which provide the user with either a free skill point, a skill mutation, a skill fusion or a 100% randomly generated skill. As a favour to the systemless, I will explain each of these results one at a time.

Skill points are the most common of the rewards. these points are exactly the same as the ones generated from every tenth level and can be used to improve a skill. Every skill has a different amount of skill points than can be applied which is known as the skill cap.

Skill mutations are upgrades to the skill and can be gained after reaching the skill's skill cap through either performing a quest or by sacrificing an opportunity to gain a new skill.  The mutations from a skill stone, however, are different and can be from any species including monsters, bypass the skill cap limitation and can even be detrimental.

Skill fusion is similar to Skill mutation except it sacrifices two or more skills to creates something new. The fused skills do not need to have reached their skill cap before undertaking the fusion quest or commencing the new skill opportunity sacrifice. A skill stone will only offer the fusion possibility if the person using it has skills that can be fused.

As for gaining a new skill the stone will randomly select a skill from the entire system list. The result can be anything from an incredibly powerful monsters special move to a 'child of water" skill when the person in question has no access to Water Affinity. there are even cases of people gaining rectal respiration skill. Despite the randomness and possible detrimental effects, people still gamble on and fight for these stones with reckless abandon. Yet here due to limited knowledge they are being used as a currency.

Scrapping the dungeon crawl, for now, I went to the cheapest hotel in the city while the princess continued shopping. Taking out a small mana crystal and my knife I began carving the fragile gem into a more spherical shape. After getting it down to a rough orb I used the fragments and wind magic to smooth and polish it before drilling a small hole in the centre so as to create an egg-sized bead. Placing the completed object in the 'original' part of the counterfeiting formation I began to mass-produce them using my numerous small mana crystal as materials.

The counterfeiting formation is a strange runic creation with two modes, 'form' and 'function'. When in form mode, it will take whatever materials are provided and try to make a replica that is identical to whatever is placed in the centre. This allows quick and easy exact duplicates of any non-magical item. The function mode acts in a similar manner but will attempt to produce an item to do the job of the original.

Take making a coin, for example. In 'form' mode, the exact same materials the coin is made from must be used and it will be an exact replica right down to the scratches. While in 'function' mode it can use a mana crystal, stone and fools gold to create a fake coin with the same weight and appearance.

Once the light faded I found myself looking at around a hundred spheres. My idea was simple, to create escape beads and trade them for the skill stone fragments. Seeing as my space magic was 123.6 with my Proto-Phoenix Wings activated, the same as a level 56 space specialist mage who placed every point into affinity or a level 28 space savant that did the same while also having the child of space skill, I mas more than qualified to produce such simple trinkets. In addition, I had a much more powerful escape spell thanks to the pheonixian knowledge so the items I could create would be superior to any on the market.

Three hours later I was only about halfway through enchanting the stones when the princess happily returned from her trip. She had apparently traded the majority of the silk for a large selection of random dungeon-based potions, most of which had unknown properties. After gaining her new class she had gotten onto the habit of drinking any new potion or poison she came across and I was very supportive in this endeavour. After explaining what I was doing and why, she handed over the twenty 'white coins' in her possession.

The night passed and as the sun rose we both began our respective plans to gather as many 'white coins' as possible.