Surrounded by a blinding empty white space, Drackenn felt his heart speed up for the first time in a long time. Of course, he had a little fear when the beast took down his armada, but this wasn’t fear. This was pure excitement, and it had been quite a while since he felt it.

  This place felt outside of time and space. The laws of the universe didn’t matter within this white void. There was a sense of safety while floating there which surprised him. It was as if the System was letting him know not to move or panic.

  Suddenly, there was a wave of rainbow mana coming at him. As he watched the massive wall of colors coming to devour him, it shifted into water and then the white void was gone.

  Instead of that blinding white, he found himself floating in a violent ocean. The waves were angry and seemed to be going in every direction at once. The water was a dangerous grey which popped against the black sky. Lightning came in short intervals arcing across the storm clouds. That was the only light source present.

  Rain seemed to come down as if it were trying to damage the planet itself. Every drop hit the ocean and made a loud plop before becoming one with the body of water. Drackenn was certain it seemed louder than it did that night.

  Of course, he knew where he was or when he was. That was the key to the dungeon after all. This was what he needed to overcome. This was the night that his wife died.

  Piercing through the howling wind, he heard his wife’s screams for the first time in years. It brought tears to his eyes when he turned and saw her on his first ship. Even with the storm sending her hair into chaos, she still looked beautiful to him. It had been so long since he had seen her. All his pictures had gone down that night with the ship and with her.

  Now, he knew where he was and what would happen, but he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. What he did know was he wanted to take this amazing opportunity to speak to his wife one last time even if it wasn’t truly her. With his stats as high as they were, this storm didn’t prove difficult to swim through.

  Once on board he ran to her and took her into the tightest hug he could. Tears were falling down his face with almost the same force as the rain in this storm.

  “What has gotten into you?! We need to act fast. The class expected can’t withstand these conditions.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m just so happy to see you. I don’t want to let you go.”

  “Drackenn, what’s wrong? We’ve been at sea for months with each other. I figured you’d be tired of me by now.”

  “Never, Aspen.” Even speaking his wife’s name had felt forbidden until now. He hadn’t said it since that night. Speaking it now left his lips wanting to say it again and again and again until the end of time.

  “Okay. We definitely had an argument this morning that said otherwise, but let’s worry about that later. We need to make sure this ship stays afloat.”

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  That stupid argument. He doesn’t even remember the small thing that set it off. The words that were said were never meant to cut so deep even though they had. Months at sea can do that to anyone. It takes one bad day and one accidental word to ignite the most pointless arguments. That morning, they had found themselves in one and sadly they hadn’t found themselves a way out of it before the storm hit.

  When this happened, he was five levels lower than he is now. Checking his status screen let him know that he kept those five levels in the dungeon. Perhaps those stats would make the difference. He knew this wasn’t real even if it felt like it was. The System, however, did something miraculous. It had been studied and confirmed that it always kept echoes of people. The System gave everyone a gift and in return everyone is integrated. Memories, feelings, personalities. It was all saved. Dungeons were known to make use of those echoes to create whole worlds based on the connections of the one inside. His wife was a System manifestation of mana, his memories, and her echo. She wasn’t flesh and blood, but it was still her.

  He let go and she looked at him with a worried face. It looked like she was going to speak when a huge wave nearly capsized the boat. That shook them both into action.

  Another giant wave was about to hit. Drackenn faced it head on and used his ability to shoot a mana cannon to break it. His wife took her familiar stance and created a shield around the entire ship. She was a defensive specialist. Her class, The Life Shield, was a legendary one. Even the System knew how special she was.

  Aspen’s skills revolved around protecting those that couldn’t protect themselves even at the cost of her life. She could create shields from her own life force and due to her vitality being so high, they were nearly unbreakable. It was truly incredible what she could do. In exchange for this amazing class, there were drawbacks.

  One was that she no longer could interact with mana or endurance. All her stats directly affected her life force. When most would spend mana, she would spend health points. When others would spend stamina, she would again spend health points. That made her health a massive number. Even with that vast resource, she could spread herself too thin.

  That was the second drawback. Any skill she used would directly cut into her own life. She could recover in the blink of an eye, but for a long drawn out battle her class wasn’t ideal.

  The ship was completely covered by a bubble shield that had a slight tint of red. When she used this skill on this scale, she had to focus. Her stance was designed to optimize the flow of her life force and enhance her focus.

  Drackenn was breaking waves to help keep the force on the shield at the bare minimum. His wife could handle a storm like this with no problem. He still did whatever he could to help her. He loved her devotion to protecting people. Others always thought they were a weird match since he was a pirate and that meant hurting people from time to time. In reality, they were the perfect match.

  She did have problems with hurting innocent people, but those were in short supply. Their rule was that none of Drackenn’s pirates would make the first violent move. They would go on plundering from those that came into their space, but no one would cause harm until they themselves were in harm’s way. That was her rule, and he followed it. To have her, he would have given up his class completely.

  They balanced the scale in his eyes. If someone was in actual need of help, they could with her amazing abilities. At the same time, she was protecting others, he was protecting her. Through his class, he was able to provide her with a good life and in turn she was able to influence his pirates to make the impact she wanted on the world. In the days she sailed with him and his crew, they helped thousands and brought down even more awful people. They gave back to those in need through pirating from the truly evil.

  That night, Motholo lost something far greater than a single person. He kept thinking as it in terms of “that night”, but that night was happening now, and he knew what would happen next. The only uncertainty left was if he could stop it or would he have to watch the worst night of his life happen all over again.