Chapter 130: Kalkan Fleet
The Captain smiled. It seemed that he had found the reason that their group was doing so well. Like himself, they had a specialist who could organize their forces, and give them a group benefit.
He briefly wondered if she had also gained a source of otherworldly supplies, but that wasn’t something that he could ask when they first met.
"Tell me, Captain, are those ships common among your navies? I’ve never seen anything like them," Kalli asked.
Kovalev sensed by her tone that she was lying. She had seen ships like that. But where?
"No, these were a System Reward for our fleet managing to retain four hundred heroes and eight hundred thousand civilians at the end of the First Trial. It upgraded all our ships to what it called [Galactic Standard Survival Arks].
They’re incredibly advanced inside, and our people have been doing quite well."
The moment that he named them, the details appeared in Kalli’s System Interface, giving her the basic details of the item, including the line {Exclusive First Trial System Reward} indicating that she would never be able to purchase something so extravagant.
Kalli laughed, and the Captain frowned.
"Did I say something funny?"
"Those are Galactic Standard Survival Arks? What are you doing playing in the water with them during a typhoon? Power up the plasma drives and take them into low orbit, or at least high atmospheric stabilized flight."
The Captain’s whole fleet froze, standing immobile in the middle of the yard.
"What makes you think that they can fly?"
"Come inside and sit. I will explain it to you. You see, I have access to a huge amount of System Information, and among it is the design specification of your ships. I thought that it was just a coincidence, but your name for them confirmed for me that it actually gave you space faring vessels."
They entered the Hall of Heroes, and Kalli brought up the details of the Survival Arks from the System Store. She couldn’t buy them, but when she searched for them, the basic details were available, including the fact that they did not have faster than light drives, and were designed to shelter refugees in orbit during emergencies.
Kalli paid one point to the store, and purchased a user manual for the Survival Ark’s basic operating system, which was the same one that the sentry turrets were built on.
It even conveniently came with a digital copy sent directly to her devices.
"This might help, if you don’t know how to turn them on."
The Captain turned to his aides. "Gentlemen, I suspect that the Coordinator intends to flex on us at this point."
The soldiers looked around the high-tech building, and nodded. It was the same design as the ships they were on, and the bodysuits that everyone was wearing were all beyond anything that the people of Marimgar should have had.
Kalli poured them all milk tea, and brought out a sliced watermelon, just in time for Yara to run in with a big plate of fried crab cakes and sliced tubers. The lunch special for the day.
"Sorry, we didn’t have any snacks ready," she whispered.
"That’s fine. I have napkins. Grab yourself a tea, and take a seat. We will be some time."
"Are these safe?" The Captain asked.
"I should hope so, we’ve been eating them for some time. The crab cakes are a hit, and the tubers are the staple crop you’ve seen growing outside. They’re a product of the other world, but extremely high energy. If you’re looking to keep people fed on minimal production space, I recommend them.
However, the tuber plants can be a bit hostile."
"Hostile plants?"
"Indeed. They have long vines they will attack with. They’re not a major threat to a prepared hero, but to a regular person caught off guard they can be lethal. Just leave one tuber in the soil and the whole plant will regrow.
That’s how we spread them through the grounds, and they even survived being flooded by a category four typhoon."
The group waited while Kalli sampled from both foods before hesitantly trying them.
"Oh, now that is good. I’m actually envious now. We’ve been living off ration packs from the System Quests, but the quests in this region are strange, and don’t make much sense."
Kalli winked at Yara, then smiled at the Captain. "Let me guess, it asked you to do four hours of skilled labour, gather wood, explore the area, and protect Fort Marimgar?"
"That’s how we knew you were here," the Captain confirmed.
"Those are the same quests that we have. If you were on land, rebuilding after a storm, they would have made perfect sense. The strange monsters outside are magma corrupted after the triple volcanic eruptions. They bleed liquid stone, it’s quite disconcerting.
But I have some good news for you. While you’re near Fort Marimgar, you can get System Points for doing the quests, and you can get bonus physical stats for ninety minutes of continuous extreme physical exertion."
The Captain smiled. "Now we’re talking. I’ve received six points since the start of the invasion, and I managed to get the [Safe Harbour] skill to lead my fleet away from natural disasters. If we can get one or two more points before the end of the Second Trial, I think that we can obtain another outstanding rating."
This time it was Yara who laughed.
"Captain, if you do all those missions, you can get five in a single day."
The Captain was stunned. Just passing near Marimgar could give them such good things?
"If you would like to send a landing craft with some of your heroes, they could complete the missions before you continue to your destination. Even a few days would be an immense help to your people," Kalli added.
"And to you, if we helped clear those monsters."
"They come back within an hour of killing them. Or did before the storm, I’ve been waiting on updated respawn times today.
That’s not the imperative part of this conversation, though.
How many of its people did Kalka manage to save? Our local region has been hammered by disasters, including a foreign nuclear strike. We haven’t had a whole lot of luck that way."
The Captain shook his head. "There were five evacuation fleets, at a million civilians each. They were arranged by region, so the number of heroes varied. But that was only one percent of our population, and we have no data on how the survivors on land have been doing.
We were actually on our way back, now that that typhoon has passed. According to my System Skill, we should be near the end of the Second Trial.
If there are survivors on land, we intended to gather them onto the arks.
Even if it means overcrowding, the Arks are equipped with synthetic food processors that will keep people alive."