I pull up my status screen and will it to be seen by her. She gasps in shock, wriggling while sitting on my leg, but reads my race and class descriptions.
"You can't tell anyone about this, you know that, right? If some noble discovers you can share experience with others, they will definitely kidnap you and force you to share experience with their kid or something."
"Yeah, I know. That's why we need to become strong enough that nobody could ever do that, in as many different senses of the word. I need to become personally strong, financially strong, and I need a strong fleet. We will need a strong home base that nobody can invade, and we will need connections with powerful individuals who can back us up in times of crisis."
She rubs her cheek on my shoulder a few times and places her free hand on my chest. "I promise you, Captain. I will tell nobody about this, and I will do my part to make sure that you can live the life of freedom you want!"
"You do know that you being able to live a free life is also a part of my plans, right?"
"Naturally, but I can't do that by myself, I can only do to with a captain like you."
"Maybe you should get used to thinking about being able to live free with a man like me."
"Hehehe, we aren't there yet, but I can indulge you a little by sitting on your leg and flirting a bit." She gives me a soft and long kiss on my cheek, and then adjusts the position of her head so she is looking me in the eyes.
She continues our discussion. 'I guess we need to decide on an end goal and a way to achieve that.'
"I have a rough outline of what we should do, but there are 3 main priorities right now. First, personal strength. We need to raise our combat levels as much as possible. We can dive into dungeons like we are now, or we can win ship battles.
Second, financial wealth. In the case of airships, money is literally strength. The more we have, the more powerful we can make our airship. A more powerful airship means we can take out more powerful opponents, earning more money from pirate bounties and experience from battles. Increasing our overall strength.
Third. Recruitment. We need strong crew members. People who can either be strong individually or can strengthen our crew. We need to be able to board enemy ships and repel enemy boarding attempts.
For now, those are what we should worry about."
Kaelin looks at me, nodding her head and stroking her chin. Her fox ears twitch and turn, and she makes a small humming noise with her mouth, thinking.
"So basically, for money, we need to hunt pirates and dive into dungeons, and use that money to make the ship stronger. At the same time, we should be on the lookout for strong people to take on as crew members."
"Strong women! I don't want to share the ship with men. I will be the only one on the ship who can chase after the crew members."
She looks at me, an amused smile across her face. "I see, so even if a man is seriously strong, they can't join the crew?"
"Right. They would need to be a member of a subordinate ship of our fleet. The flagship crew will be me, you, and the women who agree to crew it with us."
"You really are shameless! Tehehe, although I do like that honest side of you, Captain!"
"I'm glad you understand my beautiful fox. Now, in regard to money, there is something we can do while the ship is being worked on.
This fruit wine we bought. It is only produced here, right? We can buy a large quantity and sell it at another location for profit.
Is there anything else that can only be bought here that you know of? Local specialties or things like that. When we arrive at other ports, there are normally merchants on the docks who try to get their hands on goods transported by skyfarers."
"Yeah. This is the only place for quite a while that has cheese. When I gave tours, visitors would often complain about not being able to get cheese anywhere else, and the prices being absurd. Also, Pops's products are pretty popular, people fly in from all over to buy them."
"Excellent. The ship has a little over 400,000 gp right now, so I think investing around half of that in goods for trade would be a good idea. Tomorrow, before we go to the dungeon, we should visit the wine manufacturer, the cheesemaker, and Pop's shop."
"400,000! Captain, you could live a life of luxury for over 10 years with money like that!"
To my foxkin gunner, who regularly made 5 to 10 gp per day in the dungeon, 400,000 is an absurd number. I take the bottle of wine and top off her drink, while at the same time kneading and massaging her waist.
"That amount of money is insignificant when we are talking about aiships. The bounty on a small-class pirate vessel is around 6000 gp, so 400,000 really isn't that hard to come by.
At some point, when we upgrade to a larger, more powerful vessel, it could end up costing tens of millions. Imagine the cost of building a fleet. It will be way too high."
Kaelin snuggles back into my chest, sipping on the rest of her wine. "I really have found the greediest, most shameless captain around, huh?"