Kaldalis started the day, fresh out of bed, by reviewing his character page. It seemed silly, but this was the first time he went to sleep with his health bar completely fucked up from the previous day’s adventures, but without Balrim patching him up.

He was pleased to find himself restored to full health. That was an unexpected thing. At least he knew now that if he couldn’t mend his friendships, he could just take a nap.

As soon as that thought hit his brain, he resolved to find Balrim and Myrin and apologize.

That was not a healthy way to live.

He wasn’t going back to his college days, where any social awkwardness would send him into a depressive spiral that eventually ended with him sleeping for twenty hours and then never returning anyone’s calls.

Dylan snapped his thoughts away from that shit and returned to looking at his character sheet. It looked much the same. He was level 4, and only needed less than 300 experience to get to level 5. The rest of the stats were basically the same, since he hadn’t found any new gear.

Same with his affinities. His elemental affinities were all at 40, except light and wind, which were at 44. His debuff affinities were all 37. He flipped over to the skills panel, and saw that after the previous afternoon’s work, he got his spear skill up to 15. That had been the cap for level 3. But now the cap for level 4 was at 20. If weapons skilled up that fast, he considered that it might behoove him to keep closer track of his spear skill, and switch to skill up a different weapon until he next leveled up.

He was also a bit chagrined to see that between all the quests and turn-ins, his harvesting and mining were at a higher level than his fishing. Kaldalis knew he’d have to find some time - and maybe a proper lake - to fix that.

The sun was barely rising out over the ocean when he left his tent. He could already smell eggs on the wind before he got to the tent that was serving as the mess hall. It seemed lizard eggs were on the menu after everyone had gathered them last evening.

Kaldalis could also see that there were only two quests glittering in the middle of town, according to his minimap. Perhaps that meant it would be a light morning, and that there would be plenty of time for him to find Balrim and Myrin. And, you know, make things up to them.

Moving towards the mess tent, he noted that the Adventurers League had been busy, either overnight or in the early hours of the morning. A rudimentary wall had been erected around the camp, mostly made of whole logs with sharpened tops. It was barely six feet tall - the irritator that Kaldalis had faced the day before would be able to climb right over it - but the thickness of the wall might keep anything smaller at bay for a long while.

There were also no proper gates; the walls stood open on two sides. Beach side, there was nearly thirty feet of open space between the ends of the wall. The other side was more prudent, with a gap that looked like a gate would fit into it later - maybe ten or so feet wide. A few wooden buildings had been erected as well, and the watchtower on the beach was mostly finished, if a bit rickety-looking.

Myrin and Balrim were easy to find when he reached the makeshift mess hall. Despite her size, Myrin’s appearance stood out in any crowd. She may have been short, but her light skin tone and burly arms - along with her habit of speaking animatedly with hand gestures - drew the eye easily. She was locked in conversation with a purple-skinned vathon, apparently describing some event that involved snapping jaws, which she mimed carefully. On her other side, Balrim was talking to the bhogad with the sword and shield from that first day on the boat.

Kaldalis thought he should probably learn his name.

Or, you know, everyone’s name. Eventually.

“I wouldn’t make a choice until level 5,” the bhogad said as Kaldalis approached. Not that he was noticed. “That’s when their playstyle really starts to emerge.”

“What happens at level 5?” Balrim asked.

“Your weapon skill cap increases to 25,” the bhogad explained. “You get your first weapon ability, and the first one is mobility. It’s the first step that informs the fighting style of each weapon. You’ll get offensive abilities at level 10 - weapon skill rank 50 - but those are generally just numerical bonuses that will improve your combat effectiveness, not really affecting playstyle too much.”

“I was just thinking I should be skilling up a secondary weapon,” Kaldalis said, interrupting the conversation. “I guess there’s some merit to that?”

“Kind of,” the bhogad said, turning in his seat to include Kaldalis. “You’ll struggle to keep two weapons capped at all times unless you waste time specifically to skill one of them up. But at the same time, having a half-skilled secondary weapon is a fair bit better than having no alternative if your weapon of choice is unsuited to an encounter.”

Kaldalis hesitated as Balrim regarded him with a suspicious glare. He knew he had to push through the awkwardness if he was going to make this right, so instead of avoiding it and engaging with the bhogad, he went right in on it.

“Hey, by the way… I wanted to apologize to you and Myrin,” Kaldalis said quickly. “I was in the wrong yesterday. Kinda got a little reckless and I have no excuse. I’m sorry.”

Balrim tried to maintain the glare, but the scales on his cheek twitched, betraying the grin that was hiding behind the stoic expression. A clawed hand reached out and clapped him on the arm, making Kaldalis jump. “Alright. As long as you recognize that you were acting dumb, I can’t ask for more than that.”

The two of them shared a momentary smile before the group around them started to laugh. Kaldalis knew it seemed absolutely silly to be embarrassed - the laughter was good-natured after all - but he felt his skin flush.

What color did his cheeks turn when he was blushing? Was it a deeper indigo, or did he cross into the fuchsia category?

Asking would have been more embarrassing, so he just shuffled his feet and waited for the group to return to their conversations.

“Myrin. You’re missing our victory.”

“Oh, are we cool again?” She turned around in her seat and looked up at Kaldalis with an exaggerated glare. It was cute, in a threatening way. “Finally. I was starting to think you were gonna be a grump forever, Balrim.” She waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “No harm, no foul. Just try and keep us in the loop if we’re supposed to be sticking close together and you decide to split away.”

“Of course,” Kaldalis said with a nod. With that out of the way, he turned to the bhogad. “And, I’m sorry, but I keep meaning to introduce myself to you but it just doesn’t come up. I’m Kaldalis.” He offered a hand in a traditional Earthen greeting before realizing his mistake.

“Ah, the Kaldalis at last,” the bhogad said, shaking his hand with a firm grip. “The camp was abuzz with that name yesterday after what you pulled off.” He made his way to his feet, offering Kaldalis his seat at the table. “I’ve got to be going now, but it was nice to finally match face with name.”

“Hey, wait,” Kaldalis said quickly as the bhogad started away. “I was hoping to match a face with a name for you, too!”

“Garyung!” the giant called back with a laugh as he headed off towards the beach. “But don’t shorten it to Gary unless you want a face full of my shield!”

It hadn’t occurred to Kaldalis to shorten the man’s name to Gary, but now that was all he was going to be able to think about. Great.

With a laugh, Kaldalis took his seat. Someone put a plate of breakfast in front of him, and he found himself happy to dig into the plate of pan-fried egg mixed with miscellaneous wild vegetables.

“So have you two picked up the quests for the morning?” he asked between bites. “Seems kinda thin, after yesterday.”

“It’s actually a branching questline,” Balrim said. “One of them is to help recover more stuff from the ship to get the crafting stations underway, and the other is to harvest more new materials for the rest of the camp from the jungle, like the vines and hides from yesterday.” He gestured around the camp. “Apparently this is the town building part of the adventure. I’m just glad it’s actually woven in with the expedition’s progression, instead of a bunch of annoying side quests that don’t move the story forward.”

“The camp does need all the help it can get. We’re going to need things to be a lot sturdier if any of the Infernal Horde show up here, or else even if we win the fight, we’ll have to rebuild half the place in the aftermath.”

“We can’t tell you the specifics of that one,” Myrin said. “We took the other path. Balrim has an in with the one for gathering stuff from the ship.”

“A friend I made aboard the ship had a quest for me this morning to gather some seashells and wild crustaceans,” Balrim said with a hint of a grin. “Apparently he can generate some sort of water breathing effect.”

Myrin wrinkled her nose. “Considering one of the things we need to recover from the shipwreck is a fucking anvil, I think this might be a mandatory side quest.”

“That does sound amazing,” Kaldalis said, scratching his chin. “But… eh… I think I should take the other quest. I want to be sure we get the camp built up beyond just the usual adventurer stuff. I want some solid defenses around here or else Onirioago is going to be calling us up every five minutes to warn us.” He held up his hands in mock surprise and did a voice impersonating a particular videogame character: “a settlement is under attack!”

Myrin snorted. Balrim shook his head, but with a grin. Neither of them looked irked by his declaration to do a different quest, but maybe that was because of his timely joke.

“I also want to explore the jungle a bit further,” Kaldalis continued, testing his freedom. “If I can find more new monsters out there, I can get the researchers going on them. Or speed up the ones I’ve already got going with them now. I think that’s where the real benefit is for the expedition. More intel.”

“Suit yourself,” Myrin said, “as long as you’re smart enough to thank us for our trouble when you’re able to upgrade off of your level one gear because we got the charm crafters up and running.”

“You know it,” he said, giving a deferential nod to Myrin, and then another to Balrim. “But all the work has to get done.”

“Try not to go too far out,” Balrim warned. “You may have only found challenges within your ability yesterday, but you don’t know how much farther you can go before you’re in over your head.”

“Of course,” Kaldalis said. He added a bit defensively: “I’m not stupid.”

But he was. He had faced down a creature of the Infernal Horde alone.

Although… He didn’t say it out loud, but he was confident that the game wasn’t going to throw a challenge at him that he couldn’t face down. He didn’t know what scaling was at work here that alpha players like Garyung weren’t getting bored, but he could 1v1 one of the scariest things on the island.

Kaldalis didn’t intend on pushing his luck too far. But he wanted to push a little.

Sometimes the only way to find the limits of your abilities is to keep pushing until you hit the edge.