I made my way out of my cabin, through the narrow hallway. The soldier who was heading for the shower, quickly backed up. The hallways could fit two people tightly. I was in my armor, so pushing past each other wouldn’t be fun.

For a large airship, it was only larger than the previous airboats. I reached the kitchen. “Morning, what’s the meal?” I asked. We had two light meals a day. While we could go longer without eating, me more so than the others, it brought a sense of mental peace to eat food.

“Bacon and egg sandwiches on buttered bagels. Watered orange juice to drink,” the chef who was also a soldier said. They rotated through the kitchen and the other duties. That was Captain Francis’ main role on my team. Keeping everything running smoothly on board the Crystal Vortex.

“Thanks,” I said and took the plate and juice cup. I went over to the nearby standing table where another soldier was eating.

“Morning,” she said. I could tell she was just coming off shift. The bleary tone and eyes, were a sign that someone had been looking at the surrounding zone for too long. There had been extensive medical checks by our resident doctor, but it was just minor damage to their energy. Very minor, but it had an adverse effect. That was one reason why taking the Crystal Vortex, into a level 6 zone had issues.

“Morning,” I replied back. Another rule after the first rule, of not damaging my precious Crystal Vortex, was no formalities. Everyone knew their roles and jobs. We were packed in and completely miserable already, no need to add additional aggravation onto that.

I looked at the shelves, they were about two thirds of the way depleted. We could last 60 days out here on our own before resupplying. Normally we did 40 days out, then 10 days back including travel, to be on the safe side and let people get a mental break.

It also allowed the soldiers to swap in and out and for me to collect that juicy passive income. It was frankly sickening how much was brought in every day. Right now, the Gross Domestic Points, or GDP, stood at around 600 million points per day. That meant 60 million in taxes per day for me.

That was the number I was concerned about the most. Clarissa had her efficiency map by city, showing how much each one was producing compared to how much it should be producing. Tracking the percentages over time to show if cities were maximizing the zones assigned to them.

I liked to think of it as her, but she had a staff handling everything nowadays and was basically retired at the top of her game. After my breakfast, I went to the front of the first deck. That’s the one with bigger rooms, showers, bathrooms, kitchen, and now the bridge.

There were three soldiers on duty. Two manning the controls, while a third was nominally in charge. There were two beam cannons to either side of the Captain’s chair. If the Crystal Vortex needed to make sudden movements or evasions, then people needed to be on duty ready to respond. Thankfully the constant attacks at all hours seemed to have been worked out. No chucking waste off the side, or doing anything that would break our bubble of hiding, once it was parked and the area cleared.

That didn’t count the sky monsters either. Screw the sky monsters with a rusty stick. Fighting them was the absolute worst. It was a massive headache, and you didn’t get anything from it. The point crystals dropped to the zone below, which would cost a million times more to retrieve.

“Any issues?” I asked as part of my routine of checking on the Crystal Vortex. The name was etched into my mind.

“All clear. Hold steady without issue,” the soldier seated in the Captain’s chair replied. I nodded at this. I then went forward to right behind the controls to look out the thick glass windows. The soldiers manning them gave me a look but didn’t say anything.

The undulating rubble outside was still going. We were at the sweet spot, where the chunks of rock wouldn’t hit the airship, but low enough we could not trigger the overly sensitive sky monsters. They were really sensitive.

Walking across the shatteredlands, was a dangerous experience. If you paused for too long, the constantly shifting ground would pull you down. It wasn’t the type of terrain you could pull a cart over. The monsters were even worse, since they often moved through the terrain like water.

I then left the bridge and made my way up on the second deck, or main deck above. I passed by the engine on the first deck at the back of the airship, as I took the stairs up. This was where there were the other two engines tucked behind the cramped five-person rooms.

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There were another eight beam emplacements on the main deck and it was open on the sides. The air moved back and forth across the deck, but our position did not change. I couldn’t make out the jungle to the North, but I knew it was there.

“Morning,” I greeted one of the two soldiers on watch duty here on the main deck. He didn’t look away as he greeted me back.

While the ground might be changing, our position wasn’t. This had been tested observing fixed things like towers, zone boundaries, and void areas. Another thing I didn’t want to think about. The one time I decided to cross a void zone, it got complicated. There were two types of void zones, I had discovered.

The nice happy kind, that were surrounded by land. Then the unhappy kind, that generated lots of turbulence and threatened the soldiers on board. It was like the difference between a lake and an ocean. Lake traveling was fine, but ocean traveling was bad news.

The biggest headache was a lack of direction. Only by experiencing more turbulence could one tell things were going poorly. Same for ascending into the sky with an airship. Even if you killed the monsters, there was a point where the waves of energy threatened the airship itself.

I had poked the edges of our territory and felt confident I could push past the turbulence to the West. It had been slightly less, but we would have still had to commit to crossing. It was less than in any other direction except the Southeast. But I wasn’t about to poke another nation just yet. One I opened that box, I would be unable to close it easily.

If the airship was badly damaged, then I might not have a way back. After talking about it with Clarissa, it was decided that I should hold off for the time being. I did not want to get stranded on the ground in a level 5 zone. I could handle it, but they were a pain. If I crashed in a level 6 zone, then it would be a battle.

Also, this was the Crystal Vortex, and she wasn’t about to get injured by stupid people doing stupid things. I patted the railing as I walked around the main deck, or second deck. We numbered upwards from the bottom apparently.

I hadn’t decided that, but it was something Captain Francis had implemented to keep communication simple and clear. The churning rocks, weren’t exploding, but they were just exceptionally buoyant. The first time I had seen this zone, I had thought it would be a low gravity zone. That had been a mistake. No way would we get something fun like that. The rocks that made the terrain of the shatteredlands, were just naturally anti-gravity, but still heavy.

It was confusing as hell. The weight was what you would expect a rock to be, but they moved a lot more lightly in this zone. Not the other zones. They lost that property once they were moved and didn’t get it back when they were brought back into the shatteredlands.

I had been hoping that there would have been some amazing insight, but it was just a regional effect. Everything was clear as far as I could tell. I then went to the ladder and climbed up trough a narrow passage in the balloon portion of the airship. The third deck was a platform on top of it.

There were two soldiers on watch up here. This position provided the best view all around, but not up close. One soldier was keeping a look out behind the airship, while the other soldier kept watch on the sky.

The third deck was like a plus sign with a fat middle. It was very small but had jutting portions where one could stand on and railings. If there was an emergency, then I would have to respond most likely. Trying to keep track of the monsters while maneuvering the airship was a good way to damage it.

There was also someone else up here. “Doctor Katz, good morning,” I greeted the good doctor. He had changed a lot over the years. Now he wore a trench coat, filled with hand cannons, bombs, and healing flasks.

Normally he didn’t fight, but if he did, it could get messy. Instead, he played the roll of support most of the time using his various imbue type skills to great effect. On his weapons, others, and the beam cannons on the airship when it had become needed in the past.

“Just enjoying the early morning view. Watching the light source come up over the horizon, is something I enjoy,” he said. I knew this, since we had been on this airship for a long time together. Similar conversation had happened countless times. But there was comfort in the familiar as we fought horrors at the edge of known human civilization in the Systemic Lands.

“Bacon and egg sandwiches for breakfast,” I said.

“Had one already. Any news?” he asked me.

“We are going to try a level 6 zone tomorrow. Today, we need to rest up, refocus, and get ready,” I replied.

“You want to try and kill a level 7 monster on top of dealing with the hellzone?” he asked me.

“Hopefully. A man can dream, right doc?” I asked with a smile.

“Yes, a man can dream. I keep looking out hoping to understand something about this place, still no progress,” he said while holding a piece of rock from the zone in his hand. The soldiers were listening in of course, but we were all polite enough to pretend we didn’t overhear each other on this cursedly small airship.

“The others should be getting up. We will need to plan out a strategy or something,” I muttered.

“The last time, we almost died. We were lucky the airship was only heavily damaged,” Doctor Katz said.

That hurt worse than anything. ‘Don’t listen to him Crystal Vortex.’ I patted the railing. ‘You are the best airship and are never, ever going to get damaged.’

“We can’t take the airship. We would have to go in ourselves, and battle our way forward to find a level 7.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that. I just think the Avatar was lying to you when she told you about the Divine Empress killing a level 7 monster. Level 6 monsters are nightmares and the level 6 zones,” he shook his head.