Quote Originally Posted by Chakramaster View Post
I'm gonna buy a little more time here. Think there's a little more to uncover before we get to cracking and finishing things around here.
We just have to hurry before too many more innocent lives are taken! (38) The Righteous Rider
After rising up with the dawn, you help yourself to the breakfast that Benni has provided you and then head outside, intent on investigating the Righteous Rider ship to see if perhaps the Stalkers were there at one point and planned to make it a part of their sinister plots.

Once outside, you feel the air and atmosphere isn’t quite as bad as it has been in previous days, but you’re not sure how much longer that’s going to go on for. The Stalkers continuously creep toward their dark goals and you feel in due time, the closer they get, the more morose things may become. What you see now could be a trace of hope, or it could be leading into a false sense of security.

After levitating your way toward the ship, you stand before it and see the large metallic commercial fishing vessel has been in operation for about ten years and only shows minor amounts of wear and tear. As with the other ships that have been ordered to remain near Seabourne Town, the Righteous Rider has been docked here ever since the Stalker crisis had started, keeping all possible suspects grounded to make sure potential Stalkers don’t attempt to escape and get away with murder.

However, you know the truth… they’re here until either they succeed or they fail and wouldn’t attempt to escape regardless, at least not to the point where they would abandon their mission. And these Demoni are so hellbent on accomplishing their goals that they would sooner sacrifice themselves to do so if it meant buying time for the others to complete their mission. In a way, you’ve realized the Savants have had to do exactly the same, remaining in Seabourne Town and pressing forward regardless of what gets thrown at you and the others… never backing down.

Thanks to your levitation power, you’re able to easily survey the exterior of the vessel and not have to be concerned about having to take a swim to do so. You do a full inspection of the entire perimeter, but you don’t see anything that seems unusual or gives off a trace of Stalker presence. The hull of the ship is entirely intact and despite a few scratches and dents here and there, you figure this ship will still be in operation for quite a while. Other elements of the ship, including the bridge, cranes, masts, nets and other supplies still appear to be in good working condition and show no sign of having been manipulated by the Stalkers. You then decide to sneak aboard and see what might be on the ship itself.

While Gresdo the Toxicroak has a small crew consisting of Min the Golurk and Jobo the Conkeldurr, you have the feeling they don’t really think for themselves all too much. From your external observations, Min is eerily complacent and obedient to all of Gresdo’s commands and orders with no hesitation or objection at all while Jobo himself seems somewhat dim-witted and can’t really think beyond simply lifting heavy crates and taking on tasks that require a lot of strength but definitely don’t require intelligence.

Your immediate thought is the crew must be hurting financially due to being unable to head out to perform their early morning catches and bring back the hauls to the market. Instead, you’ve noticed that Gresdo has the crew performing labor-intensive tasks on land, including hauling of heavy construction equipment, shipping crates, and waste disposal at the Anchorpoint Shipping Company Headquarters as a supplemental source of income. Meanwhile, they’ve been using the ship itself as a storage facility beyond using it as lodging for themselves.

Some of these wooden crates and metallic containers seem sketchy and you have a feeling Gresdo and his crew aren’t aware about the suspicious cargo they’ve been handling. In some of these containers that you gently investigate, you find money printing plates, most likely used for printing counterfeit money. Others include drugs, illegal weapons, and even some explosives that appear to be military-grade. In another crate, you find what looks to be a set of combat armor, which appears to look like it’s intended for some kind of insurgent warlord.

You decide to take the armor, feeling it would benefit the Savant cause way more than whatever warlord this might be going toward. You’re quite sure by the time they realize the armor is missing, Gresdo and his crew will be long gone… hopefully after everything is resolved with the Stalkers…

+|A| Combat Armor+ (3H) has been added to the Team Inventory (Equipment)

You almost wish all of this nefarious cargo could be dealt with and investigated further to determine the source, but for now, it’s more important to focus on the Stalkers, which is keeping the entire world at stake. After you finish your search upon this ship, you come to realize the Stalkers haven’t been here yet, but at least you’ve made sure…

As the sun begins to set, you decide to head back to Benni’s to make it back in time for dinner and prepare for tonight. The clouds are starting to gather overhead and you’re beginning to suspect there might be rain.

Perhaps this really was the calm before the storm…

Chakra the Tatsujin Jirachi (S: Kūsho)
Health: 14/16 | Sanity: 11/20 | Purity: 15/24 | 10/10 Kurosuōbā | Dodge Rate: 40%
Perk: Security
Reincarnation Forms: Pikachu, Pachirisu, Minccino, Victini, Mudkip
EQUIPMENT:
  • Defense Armor: +|A| Guardian Armor+ (4H, 2P)
  • Jewelry: +|J| Sapphire Amulet+ (1S, 2P)