I decided to sleep on it at the dungeons entry room. I was exhausted and slept well as did the two felines after we ate of course. When I woke I had made the decision to return to the outpost. I had been gone nearly two days and I wanted to empty my DS. I packed up and exited the dungeon.

As I walked the cats hunted. I picked some flora as well but mostly was focused on picking a pilot sub class. I knew I wanted to focus on some type of space craft. Small transport subclass was only 500 experience. All other sub classes with spacecraft were at least 1000 experience. So my choices were space fighter, gunship, corvette, frigate, and … well who cared about larger craft. Fighters had a max crew of 2, gunships crews 3 to 12 crew, corvette had min crews of 12 and up to 120, frigates needed 40 minimum and up to 350.

The courier ship I was focused on saving for fell under the gunship class/ courier class. The courier class only cost 500 experience though… Ah…light shines on marble head. The extra 500 experience probably had to do with weapon systems and combat. So I would be stupid not to buy the more expensive gunship subclass. Decision made I checked my experience, 944. Close and it was clicking up as the cats hunted. I checked my map, I was halfway back. I had spent 10 hours walking, harvesting and thinking. I focused of getting back before sunset. A red dot appeared…it was a large gray grizzly bear.

Stone Fur Grizzly Bear, Level 13

Could we take it, an affirmation was heard in my mind. The cats were for it. Ok I aimed my rifle, the bear sensed my intent and charged before I could fire. The cats turned invisible. I fired and hit. The cats were trying to stun the beast but it was shrugging off the mental attacks. I hit it twice rending two gashes it its shoulders. Then it hit me, evaporating my shield and throwing me 30 feet back into a tree. My head swam. The cats leapt onto the beast's back and clawed and bit. I come to my senses just in time to see Cassie flying off its back and into a tree. Callie had her claws dug it and was biting repeatedly. I drew my sword and activated it and charged. The bear didn’t see me as I took off one of its paws. It swung blindly at me with its other and I felt pain as I was sent flying again losing my sword in the process. My shield winked out, the battery drained. I was stuck in some bushes and fumbled with a nanite vial draining it. I pulled my plasma pistol while I untangled myself. Cassie was trying to stun the beast from a distance and Callie was still riding the beast. I fired into the belly of the beast and got the bears attention again. It was spewing blood everywhere and moving much slower on three legs. It charged me again as I fired my pistol. Fortunately it collapsed and slide to a stop 10 feet from me. Holly crap! That hurt. Cassie and Callie looked fine, their shields absorbing their damage during the fight apparently. I was slowly mending from my own damage.

I checked my experience, just 104 gained. And I leveled up. I added my extra stat to Charisma because I figured I was going to need to recruit a crew soon. Fully committed I dumped all 16 piloting points into Pilot: Gunboat. This gave me skilled in gunboat and +1 to my agility. Ok I committed to Gunship: Pilot subclass.

Gunship Pilot SubClass

Pilot Gunship Skill, Gunship Weapons Skill

+1 Stamina/ Level

+1 Pilot Gunship/Level

+1 Starship Weapon System/Level

Starship Weapon Skills 25% less

Starship Sensor Skills 10% less

Command Skills 10% less

Your skill in Pilot: Gunboat has reached 23 raising it to Expert 1. You gain +1 Agility and +10% reaction speed.

Awesome all I needed was a ship now. I also apparently just got two new free skills to add to my 23 skill cap. I checked to make sure my pilot gunship skill had moved to the 'free' skill and was relieved that was confirmed. If I specialized further would I get three more skills free from my cap?

I checked the specialization classes for Gunboat: Pilot. The cheapest was 5,000 experience. The most expensive was 107,500 experience! Wow. The 5000 experience options seemed general, Anti-Fighter, System Patrol, Capital Ship Attack, Frontier Scout, and a few others based on the role of the pilot. The higher experienced specializations varied; Drudak Assault Pilot, Vantarian Royal Escort, Polyhorm Scout, Centurion Guard, and many others. Most had requirements. Some were race, some skill, some stat. My guess was the base classes had +1 to a stat, +1 to a skill and +1 to another general skill. The higher cost ones had better benefits. Well I was quite far from being able to purchase a specialization.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

I focused on getting back to the outpost now. The cats were almost the size of a small dog and trotted along side me. The guards nodded at me as I entered and raised their eyebrows as the cats flanked me entering. It was the first time I had openly displayed the beasts but I knew the guards were probably aware of them prior. I went directly to Dmitry’s to sell my load. Dmitry was happy to see me and was impressed with the haul I set on the long counter. Callie made sure to get his attention and get some nutria-milk.

Piles of silver bars, scrap and digger parts lined the table as Dmitry tallied it. “I will give you 17,300 GC for this lot.” I nodded. It was a good haul for two days work in the dungeon mine. And we were now at a point were we could do it with minimal risk to ourselves. I purchased the book for Gunboat Specializations so I could make a more informed choice if I ever had the extra experience to purchase it. I also upgraded my wrist device and increased my sensor package out to 85 meters, replenished my grenades to 10, got my skinsuit repaired, purchased four different protein mixture recipes the cats seemed to enjoy, got a mac n cheese recipe, a pepperoni pizza recipe, restocked the food fab, and increased my nanite vial total to 20. This cost me just over 16,000 GC but I figured with more prudent killing in the mines I now had a decent source of income. I figured I could get 20,000 GC a day by clearing the first floor of the mine. I also purchased a light pilot flight suit. It gave me some light armor and a cool looking helmet and the fashion statement only cost 6000 GC. I thanked Dmitry and headed across the street to turn in some flora and potion quests.

Zelda had a big smile, like she was happy to see me, when I entered and I tried to make small talk today and she responded. Apparently a goblin had come into town to turn in some quests and the Orpheans were not happy. They were a competing corporation after all but Zelda was an Elder construct and accepted the quests. Yes she remembered the name, Timoell. That bastard was definitely a pain in my ass – he was probably searching for me. I needed to be careful. I turned in as many repeatable quests as I could and the two potion quests I had enough stock for, 218 experience and 1,208 credits. Not bad, but hunting the dungeon was a quicker line to GC and experience. I decided to focus on just the quickly harvested flora on a straight line to the dungeon. I thanked Zelda and commented how lovely she looked today and went to my room at the tavern. I slept well after a large meal.

The morning was a quick packing and organizing my day. I had a 12 mile path laid out to the dungeon hitting six large flora harvesting locals. Then I would set up camp in the dungeon and clear the level with the cats. The increased range to 85m would help me avoid encounters that would have just slowed me down. I managed to get to the entrance in just 4 hours jogging most of the way between stops. The cats loved the faster pace even though they only hunted while I gathered flora.

The dungeon door looked exactly the same as I entered with the cats. I did worry that someone might have moved into the dungeon while I was away. Dmitry said the area was pretty dead of players as there were much more exciting locations on the new planet. I set the shelter up in the entrance area and got to work. I reset my map to make sure we hit all the passages and we got started. We had no issues with encounters and I slew 28 diggers…which I think was a few more than yesterday? My DS was already full of parts as I left the scrap metal figuring that hauling it was not worth the effort. I hit level 9 and added my stat point to charisma again. Callie's Psionic Electric Surge attack became very effective when it reached level 7. The diggers were immobilized for 2-3 seconds making them easy targets. I felt confident we could take the large cavern if we pulled 2 or 3 at a time. I also had a ton of experience to spend. I unlocked sneak and pushed it to Level 7 for 280 experience. My cats were doing well by the stalk skill so I didn’t want them to get too far ahead and it was prerequisite for a gunship specialization I think I wanted. I then bought my first ability, Night Vision. It cost 500 experience and I probably could just get some tech to get night sight but I had found a gunship specialization I wanted and the ability was another of the many requirements. I found I could only buy 7 abilities from the system but I could 'learn' unlimited. My second ability was just for fun. It was a magic spell Lightning Bolt. It cost 250 experience and cost 15 Aether to cast. It was not a requirement for the specialization but I had always been an admirer of Zeus so what the hell. The bolt was pretty pathetic, just the size of baseball bat but it could be leveled with experience or practice and acted similar to Callie psionic electric attack.

We cleared the large cavern fairly easily. The tunnelers were tougher but still succumbed to our stun attacks. When we finished clearing we tried to cross the cavern to the opposite side and the floor burst upward to show a crazy looking robot which I analyzed before combat began.

Sentinel: Minor Guard, Minor Boss Level 7

Great. I had the cats get wide and drew its attention to myself while firing a lightning bolt. It failed to stun the guard but left a tiny black scorch mark on its body. Callie’s and Cassie’s attack also did little to the 10 foot tall beast. The beast charged me in a straight line and I managed to dodge barely.