Zheng Yang looked at the boat before him, sensing how the vessel absorbed the power of the moon as if it were breathing it in. Yet all he could think about at the moment was how the winds would blow his boat out to sea because he'd lowered the sail for the boat to bathe in the moonlight.
This was rather painful to imagine.
He spent some time around his boat while it drank in the moonlight for a while before deciding to raise the sail and tie the boat up at the rocks on the harbor. He sensed that the boat was still absorbing moonlight at that moment. While it wasn't absorbing the moonlight as quickly as when the sail was lowered, the rate at which it absorbed the light was still higher than before when the boat didn't have any sails. At the very least, he was able to clearly sense the boat recharging.
Finding this acceptable, he went back home to sleep in peace.
The winds that night weren't that strong, yet the sound of the tide ebbing and flowing remained as it had always been. He went to bed, cradling his machete, hoping to at least be able to bring the blade with him in case he had that weird dream again. However, that weird dream didn't come to him again, and he didn't even have any nightmares because of the curse. He slept, feeling like he was being rocked in a cradle. It was incredibly soothing.
In the morning, he immediately brought up the Information Page on the spirit vessel the second he opened his eyes. He was able to sense that the spirit power core of the boat—that shell embedded in the boat—was fully charged, which made him feel very, very pleased.
"So it only takes a single night for it to fully recharge, eh?"
But what surprised him even more was that he was able to sense underwater objects within a 2.5-meter radius from the ship. He could also perceive the current of the seawater, along with the types of creatures under the boat and their activities. And his perception was so acute that he could even sense things as fine as hair, which was far more than he could see underwater with the naked eye.
He realized that it was the boat's perception instead of his. He was only able to perceive what the spirit vessel perceived because of the workings of the magic formation, which he could turn off at any given moment.
It was a very magical, surreal feeling.
He was unable to wait to read the information on the page.
Basic Information:
Vessel: Level One Spirit Vessel
Status: Complete
Sealed Spirit: Scaly Demon Bug (larva)
Spirit Power Core: Moonlight Shell
Spirit Power Reserve: 100/100 (Spirit power fully charged. The vessel spirit awakens. Self-modification and self-repair processes activated.)
Base Speed: Five knots
Attack Boost: 5%
Defense Boost: 5%
Power Boost: 5%
…
Equipment Data:
Main Drive: Single Mast, Triangular Sail
Auxiliary Drive: Manual Oars
Figurehead: Scaly Demon Bug
Figurehead Skill: None
Remark: …
After he finished reading all the information on the boat, once again pretending as if the remark didn't exist, he got out of bed without brushing his teeth or having breakfast and headed straight for the harbor.
"Weird. The ship in the travelogue was only able to recharge up to 20 percent in one night even with its sails lowered. Why was my boat able to completely recharge with the sail raised then? Is it different somehow?"
"And that thing about awakening the spirit vessel and self-modification and whatnot…"
Zheng Yang sensed that the ship had some form of awareness, albeit weak. Furthermore, there was an image of a bug on the side of the Information Page. That bug was none other than the scaly demon bug he'd summoned and then squashed in order to seal its spirit into the boat. The Information Page changed when he touched that demon bug with his mind.
Vessel Spirit: Scaly Demon Bug (larva)
Level: 1
Attack: Weak
Defense: Weak
Skill: Perception Extension (two meters), Self-modification, Self-repair
…
Ability: Execute partial commands. Could be summoned to battle. Grows by devouring ethereal matter, which helps the spirit vessel recharge as well.
Remark: The scaly demon bug is an insect-like creature from the other realm and is at the bottom of the food chain. It's capable of high-speed flight. Matured scaly demon bugs are vicious and bloodthirsty, and they have a powerful bite and a certain measure of defense, while adolescent scaly demon bugs are only food for birds.
"D*mn, this thing is weak!"
It turned out that the vessel spirit was actually the one responsible for the spirit vessel's ability of perception as well as its self-modification and self-repair. All of these things were listed as the vessel spirit's skills.
Zheng Yang ran to the harbor like a gust of wind and excitedly caressed his boat. He became even more in tune with the boat when he touched it, which gave him a better understanding of the workings of the vessel spirit and its self-modification. This made him even more excited.
He had to do everything manually when he was out modifying his boat. This included installing the required parts and securing everything in place and making sure the modifications followed at least a general outline. All this had to take place before he was able to control the magic formation to automatically vitalize and refine the newly installed parts.
With the self-modification ability the boat had gained after the vessel spirit awakened, all he needed to do was put his plans in place, and the boat would automatically list the required materials in accordance with the optimized plans. Then, after dumping the required materials into his boat, he would only need to give the order and let the magic formation on the boat take its time to do the rest according to the plans.
There was no doubt that all of this would cost a great deal of spirit power. It was the same as if he had an AI on the boat carrying out all his commands in detail. Both took a lot of energy.
What was surreal was how he only needed to think up a crude design and the boat would refine his plans, thus avoiding the awkwardness of some amateur putting together something unsightly.
The boat's self-repair ability was self-explanatory. The magic formation would be able to repair the damaged parts within a certain period of time by using a bit of spirit power.
He then looked at the information on the vessel spirit's abilities. He somewhat understood what the "execute partial commands" part meant. It meant that he could order the boat to turn the capstan to lower or raise the sail, adjust the sail's angles, man the rudder, lower and reel in the anchor, and so on. These things could be done by expending a bit of spirit power and having the magic formation do the work, thus preventing him from having to do everything manually.
But then again, his boat was so crude at the moment that he needed to do everything manually anyway.
"And there's summoning."
Zheng Yang willed the black bug to appear at the bow. The bug, which was originally the size of a grown man's head, was now only the size of a thumb—it had undergone a severe downgrade.
Looking at the bug, which was no larger than a cicada, Zheng Yang was rendered speechless.
He wondered what good summoning such a tiny thing to battle would do. No wonder the bug's attack power was described as "weak" in the Information Page.
He then got up to shore and dug out a worm from the beach, willing for the vessel spirit to attack it. The demon bug then flew at the worm and gulped it down in one bite.
The demon bug devoured the worm in mere seconds, without even bothering to spit out the sand on it first. This gave Zheng Yang a sense of glee.
He then gave the vessel spirit the order to hunt such prey on its own. But, too bad for him, the demon bug either wasn't intelligent enough to comprehend the command or was already full from eating just a single worm, because the demon bug just stood around doing nothing.
He then dug out another worm to see if the demon bug would attack it; the demon bug proceeded to eat up that worm as well.
At this time, he came to realize that the demon bug was acting like it was the boss—it would only attack something and eat it if he put it in front of it. He decided to keep feeding it regardless, having considered that he needed it to facilitate his boat's self-modification processes.
After spending some time looking into the new information, he then went off to tinker with his modification plans. He activated the Information Page and willed the image of the boat's structure to expand, lengthen, deepen, add a deck, add a hold, and install an engine and furniture.
A long list of materials appeared off to one side of the page—wood, steel, natural gum, all manner of plastics, ropes, sails, and an engine... This would cost him 3,000 points of spirit power.
He learned something else from this.
When installing things like cabinets and chairs on the spirit vessel, the more finished and complete they were and the less they deviated from his design plans, the easier the modification process would be, and the less spirit power it would cost. Things like engines or motors and televisions would need to be ready-made. While the spirit vessel would be able to use its magic formation to meld those things with the boat's internal structure, it wouldn't be able to craft such complicated products just like that using raw materials.
The boat's self-modification ability seemed to be limited to melding things with its inherent structure. Whether he wanted to include those things in the vitalization process was completely up to him, with the only requirement being that he had enough spirit power to spare.
Then, there was the final key to everything—3,000 points of spirit power were needed to get all that done in one go, which was a lot.
This meant that the upper limit of the boat's spirit power reserve could far exceed 100 points. Per the Information Page, there were two reasons why his spirit vessel only had 100 points left in its spirit reserve—"level one spirit vessel" and "spirit power core." He then recalled the concept of "evolving vessel" and guessed that the upper limit of the boat's spirit power reserve was limited by those two factors.
His boat would need to evolve and level up.
He then realized why his boat was able to fully recharge in just a single night, while some other spirit vessels out there were only able to recharge to 20 percent. He figured that this was probably due to the exceedingly low upper limit of the boat's spirit power reserve. His boat could only recharge to 100 points max, while for other vessels, recharging to just 20 percent could mean thousands of points.
He gave up wanting to get everything done in one go after learning all of that. He modified his plans more and settled on something fast and simple that could be accomplished with just 100 points of spirit power and didn't require too much of his time to furnish the needed materials. He even took the fact that the boat was only able to recharge under the moon into consideration.
The plan was simple. He only needed to expand the size of his boat, install a deck, and create compartments for cargo storage, freshwater storage, and a fish hold and space them out along the keel. This plan would ensure that he could use the boat for fishing when its sail was completely lowered.
"Those planks reserved for the boat won't be enough. I'll need to look for more materials. There's a wreck at the back of the island, and I'll probably be able to reuse something from it. I could then cut down some trees in the hills for wood. But modifying the boat with raw logs would take up more spirit power. It would be best to saw them into planks, at least..."