Watching Haldir walk away, Kaldalis decided he was pretty much done with the day.

The last thing he wanted to do was try to talk to anyone about the election.

If one more person mentioned Garyung to him, he was probably going to sock them in the face, too.

He was a hazard to the safety of those around him.

Kaldalis just wanted to find somewhere to hide.

Luckily, he had a place. With his eyes glued to the ground so as to not attract anymore attention, Kaldalis went to his tent and laid down.

And did nothing. In fact, all he did was spend a while just stewing in his own aggravation.

The longer he sat there the worse he felt. He felt like garbage after literally all his friends seemed to abandon him.

It felt just like high school. Popularity was what mattered. Even the people who knew how much he contributed to the camp were on the side of the guy who was doing less, but happened to be more frequently in their field of view.

And that made him start to doubt himself. Had he actually been contributing? He’d found the dungeon and helped people through it. He was the tank most centrally on the scene for the big fights against the infernal horde.

But Garyung was doing all the little things.

People seemed to like that more.

Was that what was needed? Was that the bigger help? Would that have been a better use of his time?

But if he had been focused on the little things, no one would have taken care of the big things. The dungeon wouldn’t have been explored, right? Onirioago would still be in charge, right?

What he did was necessary.

He supposed, then, that he was a sacrifice. The faceless nobody on the front lines that everyone forgot about once the battle was over.

Kaldalis’s shoulders heaved with a sigh. The whole train of thought was depressing him. And after too much longer, he’d request a log out from Monsoon. He’d throw away his shot, all over a bit of disagreement.

As soon as he realized he’d trapped himself in an emotional downward spiral, he got out of bed and left his tent.

What he needed was calm. And there was something he could do to guarantee it.

He avoided meeting anyone’s gaze as he made his way out the beachside gate and beelined for Foturn’s floating dock. A part of him hoped the old man would be there, and would impart upon him some reassuring wisdom, but the beach and dock were vacant. He saw Heluna was gone from her resting spot up the beach, too.

In the end, all he needed was some peace. A sense of purpose would be nice, but he could honestly just sit and watch the waves.

Kaldalis was surprised how much the simple sound of the ocean eased his mind. He was glad he wasn’t mentally associating it with Heluna dashing his hopes earlier.

It meant he could put a pinch of pickled roe on his hook and cast the line out.

After the first few casts - and a couple of pale perch - he opened the pet menu and summoned Ein, letting the corgi puppy run off some energy. The sound of the sea was joined by little doggy claws clacking their way up and down the dock, and the occasional yap whenever a sea bird landed on the beach within the corgi’s line of sight.

It cheered him up considerably. Despite the awful morning, the distraction was welcome. He was still able to reflect, but it was no longer a vicious cycle of despair.

At the end of the day, he was who he was.

In the real world, Dylan had never been super popular. And he’d never wanted to be. He’d pick a handful of close friends over a larger group he didn’t have a strong connection to - or a city worth of sycophants like Garyung seemed to have - any day. Balrim and Myrin would be on his side through anything, and he wouldn’t have traded them for every alpha player on the island.

And technically, Heluna had only rejected him out of concern for his well being. She was doing what she thought was best for him. If he could have explained how the Expedition Leader position could impact his stream, and how desirable an outcome that was, she probably would have been with him. But he didn’t want to shatter her worldview.

In the end, the choice of Expedition Leader was just outside of his ability to influence. He wasn’t sure if it was an impossible goal, though. Bangen had said that she expected the research team to be on his side. On top of that, the whole inner council knew he was the reason Onirioago wasn’t starting their regiment of fish poisoning today.

And all of this was besides his other activities. Despite everyone fawning over Garyung’s little acts of kindness, he’d been there at every major event in camp, swept into the center of it. People knew him. He might have just happened to talk to exactly the wrong people.

Knowing how his luck had panned out the last few days, it didn’t seem that unlikely.

Not to mention that Heluna had given him some insider knowledge. Onirioago had gotten the position for the same sort of daring heroics he was known for. He might have the NPC vote in the bag. He still had a shot.

In fact, he just had to stay calm and collected. If he ran around yelling at people and punching them, he was going to drive them away.

What he needed was to just quietly relax. Not make an ass of himself.

If worse came to worse, though, he’d always have his fishing. Like, if everyone wanted to forget his contributions, then maybe the next time the infernal horde attacked, he’d stand aside and let someone else do the thankless job.

He’d just sit in the back with everyone else, and then go back to his fishing.

It wasn’t the most glamorous fate, but he wouldn’t mind it that much.

Kaldalis focused on fishing for a while, leaving his thoughts to be drowned out by the waves.

Even after his shitty morning, fishing was calming. The long periods of sitting and listening to the waves. Even hooking a fish was relaxing. His skill was surpassing what he could catch with this bait, and so nothing was a challenge anymore. Without a quest putting something difficult on the spawn table, he just calmly reeled it all in one after another.

Red blennies were starting to feel like reeling in an empty hook as they struggled in their boring predictable pattern. Littoral scorpions’ broad arcs weren’t any more difficult. Pale perch’s wild zig-zags were the closest he got to work, having to tip his bamboo rod back and forth as it changed directions.

Eventually, though, something else grabbed his hook. Something that had enough strength to wake him up. It wasn’t as powerful as the deacon tetra had been, but in his current state he was glad for the change. This fish moved on a diagonal, and had the strength to resist the pull of the line enough to not arc as he yanked and reeled. It wasn’t at risk of yanking him off the dock, but its stamina bar seemed interminable. It wasn’t until he started to wonder how long it’d been that its energy finally flagged, and he was able to draw the fish closer to the docks.

The fish was pretty large when he pulled it up. Its body was narrow, but it was almost three feet long. It had scales that were a lightish blue along the belly, and a very pale green on top, the color of the undersides of pine needles. Its fins were a dusty grey color in contrast, and along its body down by the tail, there were a number of small grey dots of tiny finlets.

According to his UI, it was called a greenback scomber. The tooltip for the fish explained that in the talsar city of Zrarc, the signature dish was greenback scomber fried with nothing more than citrus and salt.

Kaldalis didn’t care that much what the fish was for. What he liked was that it presented a challenge. It was enough to wake him up and keep him engaged.

He fished the entire day away. It was probably the longest period of time he’d ever spent continuously fishing.

Ultimately, he felt guilty that he did that instead of tracking down Haldir to apologize for his behavior, but he couldn’t argue with the results.

Kaldalis spent over six hours straight just sitting here fishing. He had three dozen littoral scorpions and about fifty red blennies. The new greenback scomber was rarer, and even after six hours, he only had sixteen of them. He had lost track of how many pale perch he added to his pile, but it was more than a hundred and fifty, putting him at eight-hundred and twelve now. His increasing fishing skill - and the upgraded rod - were improving his haul tremendously.

If he gave up on trying to advance the plot at all, he could get the quest done in only a few more weeks.

Then again, that would mean giving up on getting Nakala here quickly and efficiently. Despite his desire to give up on everything and everyone else, Nakala had never let him down. The last thing he wanted was to be a bad friend to the one person who didn’t deserve it.

At that thought, he grimaced.

Haldir also didn’t deserve Kaldalis’s earlier behavior.

He had to track him down and apologize later.

But he was out of time for that now. It was almost suppertime.

Which meant the vote was about to start.

Kaldalis dismissed his now-sleepy corgi pup back to the pet menu. With barely a glance back at the ocean that had absorbed all his anger and frustration, he made his way into the encampment.

It was time to exercise his valuable and inalienable right to have a say in the governance of his home.

This was going to be a shit show.