Despite getting less than five hours of sleep, Kaldalis felt ready to go in the morning.

It was weird. Just like that last day before the dungeon, when he’d stayed out all night fishing. He knew it wasn’t without consequence - if he stayed out all night again tonight, he’d regret it - but it was still nice to have that wiggle room. The allowance for extenuating circumstances was appreciated, especially considering how extenuating the circumstances had turned out to be.

He grabbed breakfast first thing, looking to meet up with his friends before picking up the morning quests. Kaldalis kept an eye out for Dalgaard as well, but didn’t see them.

If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t expect to, either.

He wouldn’t be surprised if they avoided him for a while. Seeing him again might be a reminder of the horrors of the previous night. It would make sense to avoid facing down that trauma all over again.

Kaldalis was surprised by the expression on Balrim’s face when he turned up, though. The talsar didn’t even have a plate of food as he hurried over.

“There’s nothing,” Balrim blurted out as soon as he approached Kaldalis.

“What nothing?” Kaldalis asked, mostly around a mouthful of fruit.

“No quests,” Balrim said, loud enough that a few other people looked up blearily from their meals. The talsar ignored them, keeping his attention on Kaldalis. “There are no new quests for building up the encampment this morning.”

A wave of panic crawled up Kadalis’ body and he pushed himself away from the table. “Seriously? What do you mean no quests? The place isn’t a fucking town yet!”

“There’s nothing! There’s the gathering and crafting quests like normal, but none of the construction stuff.”

“Bullshit. Did you check the other end of camp?”

“Just got back,” Myrin said, approaching from behind Balrim. “There’s nothing there, either. We’re bone dry.”

Kaldalis tried to ignore the mounting dread. Did he fuck something up? “Okay. Okay. There’s gotta be a reason. The quests wouldn’t just randomly go away, right? At least, not this abruptly.”

Balrim shrugged. “I mean, sure, there’s gotta be a reason. But, uh, what?”

“Let me think a minute.” Kaldalis put a hand to his forehead. He drummed his fingers between his eyes in a steady rhythm.

His mind was such a mess. Nakala had said he needed to haul ass. But what ass could he haul without a little direction? The quests were the only thing he knew for certain… and now they were gone.

“We shouldn’t freak out until we know more,” he said, finally, the words quietly tumbling out of his lips. “There has to be a reason, right? Maybe not enough people completed yesterday’s quests? What day would it be back on earth? Maybe daylight savings kicked in and the quests haven’t spawned yet. Or it’s maintenance day or something.”

“Or we have to talk to the expedition leader about it,” Balrim said.

Kaldalis had a sudden memory of Onirioago’s murderous expression the previous night.

“Nope,” he said, holding both hands up in front of his person. “Total nope. The quick and the nope. The dark nope rises.”

“You merely adopted the fear of authority figures,” Myrin said, a hand over her mouth to muffle the words. “I was born in it. Molded by it.”

In any other situation, her impression would have been hilarious. But Kaldalis was trying to hold back the panic. “There’s a lot of possible explanations,” he said, trying to convince himself. “It could be that this is the wind-up to some event later today. This might be good news. Maybe we’ve done all we need to make it a town, and Onirioago is - as usual - waiting for the most dramatic and profitable moment to pull the trigger.”

“Alright. Maybe you’re right. But then what are we doing until then?”

“We have two options.” Kaldalis looked off towards the expedition leader’s tent. “One, we confront Onirioago, talk to her about what’s going on and why the place isn’t a town. Most likely get threatened and or killed. Two, we do our other stuff. Tun whatever random errands we can come up with, and wait to see if she makes an announcement herself.”

Myrin looked in that direction as well, although Kaldalis knew she was too short to see Oniriago’s tent without a boost. “On the one hand, I don’t like doing nothing with the clock running down on you. On the other hand, the thing we can do is talk to the expedition leader.” She shrugged and sucked a bit of air through her front teeth. “Maybe we should use this as an opportunity to take advantage of the extra time. It was nice having all the extra hours in the day yesterday, after we finished the dungeons.”

“It might be irresponsible,” Kaldalis said, “but I think we give it a day. We should be ready for whatever comes next, but we know Onirioago well enough at this point to expect that if she has the ability to upgrade the encampment into a town, she’ll make a self-serving show of it as she can, rather than just quietly flip the switch.”

“And if nothing happens?” Balrim asked.

“We confront her tomorrow,” Kaldalis said, though he couldn’t stop his face from twisting into a grimace at the thought. “If nothing changes by tomorrow morning, we’ll have no choice.”

“Alright… if that’s your choice. But I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else talks to her today.”

Kaldalis laughed sharply. “Dude. Let them. That’s the dream, actually. Someone else deals with her? Shit, I don’t care if they get in on the ground floor of lucrative town leadership positions. Getting the place upgraded without me, personally, needing to confront her face to face is literally my ideal.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Myrin said with a shudder. “But then what are we doing with the rest of our day?”

“Well, there are the gathering and crafting skill quests,” Balrim said. “And after that… We could do some exploration for the stream?”

“I really want to check out those ruins you found yesterday,” Myrin said, punching Kaldalis in the arm. “If there is a dungeon there, I want to find it nice and early.”

Kaldalis was about to agree, but stopped himself before he said anything. He felt his eye drawn towards the quest to kill the four-fingered syncoresi. It had been days since even a sighting of the Infernal Horde.

And if the horde attacks were a trigger for the town upgrade, they would show up sooner rather than later.

“You two can investigate that if you like,” Kaldalis said at last. “I don’t want to get too far from town today. If the upgrade to a town spawns some event, I want to make sure I’m here to get it done, in case Onirioago’s sense of drama makes her hold off until the worst possible moment.” He looked around, seeing that everyone seemed to be discussing the lack of quests now. “If everyone runs out on their own little adventures, someone will need to be here to hold the line.”

“Sounds like the perfect middle ground for you,” Myrin observed. “You get to be the responsible one, but you don’t have to talk to Onirioago.”

“And I get to do some fishing. Don’t forget about fishing.”

“Right. You’ll do anything for your fishing, won’t you?” Balrim asked, his snide smirk almost mean spirited.

Kaldalis grimaced and said nothing.

Myrin smacked Balrim in the arm. “Too soon, dude.”

“Sorry,” Balrim said quickly. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No, it’s fine,” Kaldalis lied. “I’m still trying to deal with that in my own head.” He shrugged. “I think maybe some quiet time by the water is the best way to work my way through it.”

“As long as you’re okay without us,” Balrim said, clapping a hand to Kaldalis’s shoulder. “This is too big an opportunity to investigate those ruins. Getting all day to do it - and during the day as well - is exactly the sort of thing that we need to boost our streams. If you need us, we’ll stay.”

“I’ll be fine. Just watch out for daemonraptors,” Kaldalis said. “Without a tank, you’re going to have a rough time if you aggro the boss.”

“Thanks. And you watch out, too.” Myrin looked up at him with a soft expression. “Depression can be a rough boss fight, too. Don’t get too far in your own head.”

“I won’t. I just… just need to mull over all the things I did wrong and figure out how to not repeat them.” He ran a hand over the close-cropped hair on the side of his head. “And I made a lot of mistakes. It’ll take me awhile to get through them all.”

“You do what you need to do, man,” Balrim said. “If there’s anything we can do, hit us up when we get back.”

With that the trio separated, heading off to their own adventures.

Kaldalis wondered if it was the right choice to split up, but they were heading out into the jungle. Even if a day with fewer quests at the start wasn’t identifiably in the Monsoon playbook for a timed event, he felt like the tension was going to break soon. The Infernal Horde had been quiet for too long.

That quest for the syncoresi major - his four-fingered rival - kept catching his eye. Was the text flickering? Was something else catching his eye there? Or was it just paranoia?

Besides the risk of the Infernal Horde, Ara had sworn that it wouldn’t be the last time he saw her. A small part of him, deep down, hoped that she was right. Maybe he could just talk to her now that she wasn’t going to catch him off-guard with her monster form.

Or with her handsy behavior.

If she was truly a person - not necessarily a PC, but a thinking individual capable of empathy and understanding - she might represent a native population on the island. They could help each other. The expedition and any civilization native to the island could come together against the Infernal Horde.

But he wasn’t in a mental state to tackle such a task. If he saw her again he might panic. Especially if she came at him with intent for violence - or worse.

Instead, he went around camp taking care of simple chores. He had some fish to distribute.

The dazzling pacu he’d caught went right to the cooks. While he was there, he picked up his daily fishing quest. From there he found out that the plated scales on the dancing plec were apparently a potion ingredient, so he was able to find an NPC to hand those off to for guild credits.

It turned out that the rest of the jungle fish were just vendor trash.

Kaldalis almost sold that second deacon tetra, too, but stopped himself before he could grab it from his inventory. Onirioago had warned that anyone finding out about this fish could be some kind of disaster.

He’d keep it under his hat for now. Maybe it would be useful later.

To wrap up his adventure around town, Kaldalis also handed Bangen the notes he’d acquired from the daemonraptor kills, as well as Ara - the jormungumo - in order to get her started on her research work. Apparently nobody else had dropped off their copies of the same notes. It made Kaldalis concerned for Dalgaard.

The kid had to be desperate for experience points. And research notes were easy payouts for work you’d already done.

It was still early, though, and Kaldalis figured that he should get some introspection done. A nice relaxing morning of fishing sounded like just the thing to recover from the previous night of trauma and remorse.

He’d check in on the kid later.