Dan didn't miss his alarm that morning, so he woke up right on time for his shift. Finishing with his morning routine, he made way to the bridge. He sent Robert away to rest before sitting alone there.

  He enjoyed the silence and tranquillity, reassured even more by the fact that the Voyager was most likely watching over him and everyone else.

  Those couple of hours before the sun rose passed fast, he didn't even realise it was about time for the others to start waking up before he saw some of them start trickling in. He greeted them, having fun exchanging some meaningless morning conversations.

  "Captain, good morning," a voice said as he was talking to Rose.

  "Oh, morning William," he greeted his chief engineer, "How are you doing today?"

  "Good, it's a nice morning," William said. Dan noticed how the man appeared a bit absent-minded.

  "Is everything alright?" he asked in concern.

  "Nothing, nothing," William waved him off with a laugh, "Sorry to make you worry, I just think I've noticed something and I wasn't sure, so I was wondering if I should bring it up."

  "Oh, what is it?" Dan felt both relief at not having to deal with another problem and curiosity over what his chief engineer might have noticed.

  "Before making my way here," William started his explanation with frowned brows, "I decided to take a look at where the cannonball hit us, you know to be sure that nothing is off. But what I have noticed made me question my memory. It seemed as if the dent disappeared a bit. As if it was healing? The change is small, but it's there."

  Dan didn't know if he should be surprised or not. The Voyager was alive after all, her being able to heal might be something to expect. But it was still a ship healing, it would lead to a surprise no matter what.

  "Something just came to mind," Rose, who had been talking to Dan before William came, interjected, "We know that each level up makes us a bit stronger and healthier physically, I wonder if it's the same for the Voyager. Is she growing stronger with each level? If that's the case, what is she going to become at later levels?"

  Her words caught him by surprise, he had considered similar things about the Voyager before, but his thoughts had more to do with how her skills were going to be affected by tiers and all that. The fact that she might be growing stronger with each level, just like them, escaped his attention till it was brought up by Rose. What he knew was happening was her consciousness growing, but her as a whole? That didn't even come to mind.

  "I can't see why that wouldn't be the case," William said as he scratched his head.

  "Just keep an eye on it, and tell me if more changes happen," Dan said.

  "Already on it, I used a pencil to circle the dented area. Should be easy to notice if any changes happen," William replied with a smile.

  "Rose, you're staying here?" Dan smiled at his friend before asking the engineer officer, "I will go with William to have breakfast."

  "I'm here, don't worry," She answered with a thumbs up.

  Dan then made his way to the Skyline with William, talking about different things. Once in the restaurant, they greeted everyone, got their portions and searched for a place to sit. Looking around, Dan led old William to a certain table after noticing who was sitting at it.

  "Hi Keith," he greeted his first officer, "Did you sleep well? You seem tired."

  "Morning," she greeted back, her eyes a bit red and the dark circles around them quite clear, "I just spent both my and Freddie's shifts going through that book, trying to choose somewhere where we could get levels easily. Both of us went to sleep late into the night."

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  "You shouldn't have done that, we still have time." William beat Dan to it. "We could have worked on it together."

  "Yeah, our current location is safe enough." Dan nodded. "We don't have to worry about being attacked or found out before we leave here."

  "It's alright." She waved them off. "We just started going at it and couldn't stop ourselves. And it's good to have something to do."

  Dan shook his head at his first and second mates. Part of him could understand though, after what had happened the last few days anyone would want to do their best to help.

  "Oh, yeah." He remembered something that got brought up the day before, "How does your skill scan the area around us? Is it spherical or just a circle? We were thinking about that yesterday."

  "It's more of cylinder," Keith answered without much thought, as if she had already gone about that before, "It shows me everything inside its radius."

  "So even the depths of the ocean?" Dan asked, making sure that what she said was exactly how he understood it.

  "Yeah," Keith shrugged, "At least for creatures of interest, I think it filters creatures that are too deep or that are deemed too unworthy of being noted."

  "I guess that answers our question for yesterday," William said with a light laugh.

  With a mystery that few even cared about dealt with, Dan and the gang continued with their breakfast, their conversations jumping from Classes to levels and skills. Things that were so alien just a couple of days ago, were becoming more and more just another part of their daily lives.

  They finished their breakfast and made it to the bridge. Once inside, Keith made a beeline for the book that came with the map and opened it.

  "As I said," she spoke as she flipped through it, "We made a list with a few possible choices. These aren't just ones that might work for us, but are the ones that we found easy to understand, there were quite a few that were too weird to consider safely. For example an area where huge bubbles rose from the ocean, so big that they toppled ships. Sometimes they even took them tens of meters into the air before exploding and sending them back into the water."

  Dan found his smile straining, the mental image of a ship getting toppled or lifted by a bubble was both comical and horrific.

  "Those scary areas aside," Keith led the conversation along, "I know that it's better to bring the areas we chose up with all the others, but why not have a sneak peek at them before then, right?"

  Dan just smiled at his first officer, who flipped the book to a certain page before pointing at it,

  "This was the easiest one to spot. It's called the Foggy Maze, it's not much of a forbidden zone but more of a place that needs a specific set of skills. It is around a day or so away from our current location. It's an area of the ocean that's heavy with fog, so thick that ships can barely see a few tens of meters ahead of them. If you don't have a scanning skill, it's heavily advised to avoid it, pirates are also known to use it as a hiding spot. Other than that, it's a good choice because you can find some weaker ocean monsters there, so we wouldn't have to worry about them being too strong for us."

  Dan just listened without interrupting her, but he had already lost interest in this one, if any of the others were even a bit better than it, he would prefer to go with them. This location wasn't as isolated as they hoped, who knows what they might face in the deep fog or around it? They might even come face-to-face with a patrolling navy fleet.

  "The 2nd is my favourite." Keith flipped to another page when she saw them not commenting on the Foggy Maze. "It's called Sticky Reefs, an area of the ocean with a high concentration of weird gigantic seaweed. Those weeds aren't some man-eating plants or anything, don't worry, they just exist, their long leaves stick to anything that might come close to them, be it creatures or wood. It's home to a type of ocean monster that seems immune to its stickiness. They lure prey into the weeds and wait for them to get tangled before finishing them off.

  "This area would work for us because the best way to get yourself off these ocean weeds seems to be using metals. Those weeds never stick to metal. It's essentially another area of the ocean that we can abuse due to how special the Voyager is in this world! Another important thing to keep note of is that those sticky weeds are valuable, there seems to be a small group of people specifically making a career of it."

  "Is there another downside to this option? Other than those weed gatherers, I mean," William said while looking at the page that spoke about the weeds, "You would have mentioned it first otherwise."

  "Well yeah." Keith sighed. "The weed gatherers aside, it's far. It would take us around three days of sailing South just to get there. That's without taking into account our new speed due to all the buffs we have, but still, it's gonna be quite the trip."

  "Is there another option?" Dan asked. If he was being honest with himself, the one she just mentioned seemed pretty good for them, but the distance was still something they needed to look into.

  "There is..." Keith seemed hesitant, "But to be honest, it's more of something interesting that we noticed than a real option to consider."

  "Oh." Her words raised Dan's interest.

  "Yeah," Keith nodded, "There was a passage in the book mentioning how the Kraken in a certain area was still there, so it should be better to steer away from it. It seemed interesting and reading some more into it, an injured Kraken has moved to somewhere in the ocean and made it its territory. Many eyes are on it, the navy might even move against it soon, from what was mentioned."

  "It's really out of our hands then," Dan shook his head.

  The news of a Kraken was interesting, even though he wished to never meet such a monster, a small part of him still wished to lay eyes on it.