After the dinner, which was a huge success for Dan, he was making his way to his room as his thoughts branched into so many different things that he almost had a headache.

  The people were still having fun in the Skyline. After the bomb he dropped on them and having them vote on the matter, Dan only mentioned gathering again in some of the coming days to discuss their classes before they steered the night back to its festive atmosphere. It was hard to bring people's spirits into partying mode, but it worked, it was almost impossible to stay gloomy when you had someone like Mary to steer the mood for you among the participants.

  "Are you sure about this?" Dan was lost in his thoughts when the sound of someone pulled him back to the land of the living.

  "Oh, hey Fleta," he greeted the doctor first before what she asked registered in his mind. "Honestly? No, I'm not. But it is the right choice, might be our only one at the moment really."

  The doctor didn't speak straight away, she fell silent for a while. Dan didn't know what she had in mind, but he could guess, it probably was what everyone was going through at the moment, a mix of fear and uncertainty about the future.

  "Do you have some concrete plans or is it all up in the air right now?" the doctor finally asked just as Dan was losing himself again in his thoughts.

  "I don't have something ready." Dan didn't lie, "But I know how to start our preparations. We will sit with Freddie and Keith tomorrow. Study that book we got with the map and see if any of the other danger zones in the ocean could be of use for us. We made use of the Swarmers' territory to hide, I'm sure there's something like that that might not be as dangerous for us as it is for the other ships. Such a location would be our priority. Another matter would be understanding the Classes and skills everyone has and coming up with an attack plan that would have everyone level up easily."

  "Good," was all Fleta said as she nodded.

  "Wait, why are you here? Why aren't you still with the others in the Skyline?" he suddenly realised that the party hadn't really ended yet.

  "I'm not into such events." Fleta shrugged in disinterest. "Going back for an early sleep seemed much better, I may even read some of the books we got, a couple seemed quite interesting."

  "Same." Dan just smiled. "Ships and the Ocean has been calling my name ever since we got it. I just never had the chance or frame of mind to look at it."

  The books they got were put on the bridge with a sign asking people to take pictures of the ones that interested them and leaving the books themselves where they were. That way, everyone would have a way to acquire their languages before the Translation skill timer ran out.

  "Speaking of which," Dan said as an idea flashed through his mind, bringing back something he forgot through all this mess, "Can we pass by my room before you go to yours? I have something to give you."

  "Hmm? Okay." Fleta just nodded.

  They then walked in comfortable silence, talking here and there when something came to mind.

  "Wait for a moment, please," Dan said as he hurried inside.

  He had to search through his mind to remember where he had put the small bag he got from Mandy's in Windy Cliff's village. Opening the drawer of his nightstand, he found it there, unchanged.

  "Here." He passed it to her with a smile, awaiting her reaction.

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  "Hmm," Fleta raised an eyebrow as she looked inside the bag. She put her hand in and brought up a small grape-sized ball. She took a sniff before looking at Dan and questioning, "Sweets?"

  "Something I noticed while we were leaving Mandy's," he said, a smile to his voice, "Take them as an apology for giving your chocolate to Nulara, and also for having you use your earrings for us. I can't believe I forgot about taking some gold with us... The old lady said they are made by drying and mixing fruits and other things. I hope it's good."

  Dan truly felt sorry for having Fleta use her earrings, she was the type who rarely wore any jewellery, and to have those on her must have meant that she liked them quite a bit. It would have been different if they hadn't had any gold on them, but the Voyager had many jewellery shops in the retail avenue, they could have taken much better jewellery with them if they had just remembered it. Unfortunately, they didn't, and she ended up using her own.

  Fleta looked at him and then at the sweet in her hand before putting it in her mouth. Dan watched her with interest but her face showed nothing. A few seconds later he heard faint crunching sounds before she said,

  "Sour."

  "Really? Let me have a taste." He extended his hand in confusion.

  "Good night Dan," she said, avoiding him and waving as she left.

  Dan just sighed and shook his head with a chuckle as he entered his room again, locking the door behind him. He took a shower and changed before sitting down, taking his phone and scrolling to the first page that he took a picture of. The book was quite long, so he only took pictures of the first couple of chapters.

  The first chapter started with an introduction to how dangerous the waters were, especially the oceans. It went into explaining how in their bid to cross the oceans, humanity tried many things, many of them ending in failures that almost always bordered on a disaster.

  It even mentioned Flying Ships, something the Empire looked into. Unfortunately, those were too mana-heavy and needed a huge amount of power. During their time, they were only used for crossing the seas. No one attempted to cross the ocean using them though, they would run out of power first before even making it a small portion of the way there.

  It was around that time when people were starting to give up on the hope of ever sailing the waters that a new invention was made, Cornerstones.

  Dan found himself focusing more as he reached this point. Cornerstones had been something that was brought up again and again, he was extremely interested in knowing more about this essential part of this world's ships.

  The 2nd chapter dealt with and mainly focused on Cornerstones, especially their emergence and history. Dan didn't know when the ensuing events happened, but from how the author spoke about them, it felt like hundreds of years passed since then, and who knows when the book itself was written.

  The first power to come up with Cornerstones was the Alliance, they called them that because they were the most important part of a ship, without them no ship would sail the waters safely, not having to worry about water monsters. It was said that through some secret method, they managed to make something that made the ship unnoticeable by the sea and ocean monsters. No such monster ever approached the ships with these Cornerstones.

  At first, the Alliance got a huge advantage through this new invention of theirs, heading into the Imperial Ocean without fear, opening shore-side routes and finding quite the bountiful ocean. Meeting Behemoths deep in the ocean held back their exploration, but it was still a huge win for the Alliance.

  That didn't last long, though. Their Cornerstones weren't ready for use; whatever way they made them, it backfired eventually.

  They called it the Bloody Dawn. Every captain with a ship that had a Cornerstone, turned crazy overnight. No one knows what happened nor what led to it, the Alliance never published what the first version of their Cornerstones was made of, nor did the Empire.

  The Alliance managed to kill the crazed captains and burned their ships, but that set them back years. The Empire, having managed to get their hands on one of those Cornerstones, eventually managed to come up with something much more stable and secure. Through this advantage of theirs, they took the first step into their dominion over the ocean, even though their Cornerstones were weaker in effect than the old ones by the Alliance.

  The Alliance got their hands on this new version eventually, but it was already too late. They had lost many of their high-level captains in the Bloody Dawn, and their higher-ups started having some infighting over the importance of the ocean. After it all got sorted out, they had already fallen into second place.

  Dan found himself frowning. He knew from the emphasis that people put on the term that Cornerstones were important, but he didn't expect them to be so important that it was almost impossible to sail the oceans without them.

  Of course, knowing about them made him create the next logical conclusion for someone with his knowledge, did Cornerstones do the same job as the Voyager's aura? Were they emitting something similar that would keep the normal creatures at bay? But again, the aura the Voyager had made even a Behemoth hesitate for a bit.

  Knowing at least what Cornerstones did, Dan decided to sleep for the night; they were in for a long day tomorrow after all.

  "Goodnight Voyager," he said.