Since that day, the number of jobs that I’ve taken on has increased. Due to the majority of our team being wiped out, Van Drake, the veteran, and I formed a party of three and took on various low risk jobs. The other surviving member of our ten man party had been among the members who had left the crew at Xylphas.

Through these jobs I began to have a steady income, and soon I was taking on jobs independently. Day by day I would complete jobs that were slightly more difficult compared to those I took the day before. At the same time, my reputation within the crew seemed to have been elevated. As I was the only rookie to have survived and remained a part of the Maelstrom’s crew from Van Drake’s party, the other crew members began to develop an interest in me. In a way, I had proven my worth as a member of the crew, and that the captain’s decision to hire me wasn’t a mistake. Slowly, the animosity between the other crewmembers and myself began to decline.

People who had once shunned or ostracized me were now sitting with me during meal times, asking if I wanted to team up with them for certain jobs, and in general just hanging around me while talking about anything that was on our minds.

After a month of these developments, the captain called me into his office and asked me if I would like to be promoted to ten man officer. I was thrilled. A ten man officer has a higher degree of influence within the crew. Furthermore, they aren’t as restricted in their actions as the rest of us are, since many of the rules set for the crew only apply to those who hold no official rank or position. So of course, I agreed. Two days later we stopped at a port and began recruiting new members. I was assigned 9 new rookies to take under my wing. Among them were street rats like me, lost and searching for a ray of hope.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

I took it upon myself to train this new batch of recruits. We began by taking on easy jobs so that they could get a feel of their own capabilities. After our first sucessful mission, I slowly  began increasing the level of difficulty of the jobs we took. By overcoming the hardships that came with each new job, we became closer to one another. We started to reveal our pasts to the rest of the team, helping us to further develop the bonds we had already created. Soon, we had become one of the crew’s top earners, taking on higher difficulty jobs while earning a decent sum of money in return. The situation of these recruits has also improved. They have been able to develop relationships outside of our group, which comes to me as a relief. After having to take care of the guys for so long, I’ve grown quite fond of them. Most of them are younger than me by at least a few months, so I see them as something akin to a younger brother. Some of their upbringings couild be considered harsher than my own, and I’m genuinely happy that they were able to improve their situation.

Today I was called in to a meeting with the captain and the rest of the officers. Everyone there was anxious, as no one knew what matter the captain had called us all together for. The tension in the air remained until the doors to the captain’s quarters opened and the captain himself walked through.

After glancing at the surrounding members to make sure that everyone was in attendance, the captain began the meeting by announcing,

“Today I have called all of you here regarding a certain job the Maelstrom has agreed to take on. This is a job was recently issued to any ships and their crews who were willing to take it on, and I am here to ask you on what our next steps should be. In most cases, I would merely inform the crew that we’re undertaking a large scale job and that would be the end of the matter. In this case, however, the job is too dangerous to merely be decided by me. You ten man officers know your boys well enough to know what they would think about this decision. Thus, onto the heart of the matter.”

He paused for a moment to catch his breath and gather his thoughts, then continued,

“The mission that we’ve been asked to find and eliminate the Leviathan, are there any takers?”