The rest of the afternoon was pretty uneventful.

It turned out that the crafters had quests for materials for the repair of the gates. That meant that the bulk of the quests were from the engineers who needed a lot of wood to replace the most damaged portions of the walls. There was one more quest to gather some herbs to help replace potions that had been used during the defense.

Fortunately, the commotion of the attack had driven away most of the wildlife, meaning everyone was safe wandering about and gathering materials.

Unfortunately, it meant that what would normally have involved some adventure of dancing around aggro ranges and fighting through the undergrowth became just a bunch of fetch quests.

It was spiced up a little, at least, by the camaraderie of the adventurers working together towards a common goal. More than a few people stopped Kaldalis and asked about the new power he had used, and he used that as an opportunity to do some preliminary legwork hyping people up to be run through the dungeon.

Once all the quests were done, the walls were secured, the gates were erected.

And about half of the camp had shared an inappropriate giggle about the word “erected” being applied to the quest results.

Between dungeon completion and the quest rewards, Kaldalis found himself a little more than two hundred experience points from his next level up.

While he was itching for a ding after the long day of work, he was out of opportunities for the day. Even though there was no way to finish his push, he wanted to review his character sheet.

Kaldalis, Level 6 Bodyguard

HP: 1085/1085

Aplomb: 100/100

EXP: 1502/1750

Acumen: 121

Clout: 127

Vigor: 205

Armor: 138

Attack: 83

His elemental affinities were all at 61, except for Earth, which was at 80. His debuff affinities were at 73 due to the fortitude charm he had, with Gust in particular at 92 due to his weapon. He flicked over to his skills panel and saw that his weapon was capped out at 30. After all of the gathering quests needed for the repairs, his mining skill was at 19, and his harvesting skill was at 22.

He was slightly chagrined to see fishing only at 26, and resolved to get that maxed out again as soon as possible.

It was late in the evening now, and even though many people were going to sleep after their busy day, Kaldalis knew he could stay up for a few more hours. Despite the hilariously long and stressful day, the game hadn’t punished him at all for having only slept a couple of hours the previous night. It was only sunset. As long as he called it a night before three or four in the morning, he’d be just fine.

He wanted to gather materials for healing potions. He’d initially thought that the bundle he’d been handed at the beginning of the dungeon was going to suffer the fate of all healing potions: that they would sit in his inventory until the end of time. But the way this system worked, they were relatively instrumental to keeping him alive after doing something stupid. It seemed like it would be valuable to help with restocking them. Unfortunately, he didn’t remember what materials they’d gathered had gone into them, and as the sun set, he found that nobody he could ask was still out and about. He didn’t want to barge into Balrim’s tent and wake him up just to ask about potion ingredients.

Instead, Kaldalis poked around the beach, gathering whatever he could. He got a few bits of coral and some shells, but he was pretty sure those things had been for the censer and not the potions. He hoped someone would have a use for them.

Once the tide started to come in, though, he made his way to the old fishing NPC’s floating dock and stepped out to put his line in the water. He took a few deep breaths and, for what felt like the first time in months, relaxed.

The ocean waves rolled in and out, rocking the floating dock slowly, and despite the periodic excitement of the fishing minigame, it was becoming routine to him. Not that it was easy, or that he didn’t feel the stakes of failure, but after so many times, it wasn’t new anymore. It was comforting.

As he reeled in a few varieties of fish - including a couple more Pale Perch for his quest - his fishing skill climbed up, and after a little more than an hour, he had twenty more of them, and his fishing skill was maxed out at thirty. One-hundred and thirty-one fish total was still a long way away from the ten thousand he needed. At least they were still the most numerous fish he was catching.

He caught a couple of others, including something called a littoral scorpion. It was brown-green like algae-covered sand, and had visible spines along its fins and gills. He wondered if it would be useful for alchemy, since he guessed from the name alone that it would have some sort of venom in it. He also caught three of a strange eel-like thing called a red blenny. Examining it in his inventory told him that they were sociable fish, often seen behaving companionably with other species, though it had been recorded taking small nipping bites out of its larger “friends” and that these bites sometimes became deadly from infection.

It was kind of interesting to look at the different fish he caught. Not useful, but interesting. What he found more useful was the reflection of the moons off the ocean. It was just so calming, even as the tide rose up past the side of the dock closer to the shore, effectively stranding him.

This was the life.

Fishing in a picturesque setting looking at a moonlit ocean that looked like a classical painting. Some people slaved away their whole lives to be able to afford even just a weekend of this in their retirement. He wondered if people were watching his stream. Was he a fishing ASMR channel now? Were people putting on his stream and falling asleep to the gentle whoosh of the waves?

Then again, why did he think it was nighttime on earth? Did he have any reason to believe that? What if time was passing faster in here than out there?

On the one hand, that made sense. It was how it worked in the LitRPGs he used to read, after all. Something about the speed of thought being faster than real time or whatever. But would that be a watchable experience for the stream? If everyone was blitzing around at double speed, would that be entertaining? Not to mention if it had implications for how long he was going to spend in the game. Five years was a long time already. If it was five years that would feel like ten? They’d have said something before he went in, right?

Then again, if things were going faster inside than outside, it meant that he had a lot more time from his perspective before he needed the town to be ready for Nakala’s deadline. That was something to hope for.

“If anybody is listening out there,” Kaldalis whispered, not wanting to kill the white noise ocean sound vibe he was enjoying. “What time is it out there? Am I moving at super speed? What’s the relation there? Just curious.”

He had a terrifying thought that things might be moving slower in here than out there. The animation here was unnaturally smooth for the level of processing power that would have been necessary for these sorts of graphics. What if they were rendering everything all choppy and slow and his brain was processing it at the right pace to make it look like a smooth 60 fps? What if he had even less time than he thought?

He spent another hour mulling that thought over. It seemed like something had changed in the ocean, as another fish entered the drop table. It reduced the number of Pale Perch he was getting, but it was a larger fish, and put up a bit more fight on the line, so he wasn’t mad at it. The increased challenge might mean that it was worth a bit more. Each one was about a foot and a half long, with a sleek, streamlined body. Examining it told him it was called a slippery tuna, and the description told him it was a species normally caught en masse by career fishermen for food, despite being notoriously hard to carry.

“Because it’s a tuna,” he muttered. “Not everyone can carry a tune-a.”

He tried not to be amused by that. He didn’t quite succeed.

As the tide passed by and the floating dock settled back onto the sand, he had another fifteen pale perch, bringing his total to one-hundred and forty-nine. He resolved to keep casting his line out until he got a nice round number, and after two more casts, he got to one-hundred and fifty even.

“Gotta catch ‘em all,” he said as he tucked away his fishing rod and looked over his haul.

He had a dozen of the littoral scorpions and five red blennies. He supposed they were rarer than the rest, and wondered if that meant they were valuable.

Even though he didn’t start catching them until the tide reached its peak, he had ten of the slippery tuna. He planned to bring them straight to the kitchen staff first thing in the morning. Donating the food to the cause would go a long way to keep him on everyone’s good side. Then again, did he even need to worry about that anymore?

He was a hero now, and from performing giant heroic deeds in front of the whole camp. Why was he still stuck instinctively thinking of the little things he could do?

“Because I’m not doing it for recognition,” he said as he walked up the beach back to the camp. “I’m not doing it for the smiles or the double-helpings of breakfast or the flirty winks or whatever else. I’m doing it because it’s nice. Why do I need motivation to do something nice for someone else?”

As he reached his tent he realized he must have dramatically misread how much time he’d been fishing. He didn’t know the moon phases well enough to tell the time from them, but he’d been out there for basically an entire tidal phase.

That wasn’t three hours. It was more like six or seven.

“Whatever,” he said. “It’s not like there’s any punishment for me getting three hours of sleep, accidentally or not.”

Unfortunately, despite everything he’d been through thus far, Kaldalis had not just thought it, but said it out loud.

And, like every time that happened, there had to be a punishment for his hubris.

Kaldalis abruptly became aware of a fatigue debuff as it hit him.

His body was made out of bricks and glue. And his eyelids felt like they were full of leaden sand.

He focused his clouded mind through the haze that the debuff inflicted on him to see what the fuck was going on.

In addition to making him feel like shit, the debuff also reduced his stats by a flat 10% across the board.

He needed a full eight hours of sleep to clear it.

“Well fuck you, too,” he grumbled, slumping his way into his tent. “I’m going to wake up in seven hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-nine seconds because fuck you. I don’t-”

The debuff seemed to have the added effect of making him pass out as soon as his body was horizontal on the cot.

He didn’t even get his armor off.