Kaldalis felt trapped. Like Garyung had cornered him and not given him a way to opt out.

But, technically, this was what he wanted. Sure, he had lost the vote, but Garyung was here because he recognized Kaldalis as a hero. People had decided he wasn’t the best fit for leader, but their chosen, Garyung, had enough faith in him to think he was the right man for the job of helping him lead.

It even took him hours to think through every possibility and he still chose Kaldalis.

Which was a pretty impressive feat.

“Fine,” Kaldalis said with an exasperated sigh. “I’ll help.”

At his agreement, the large Bhogad sagged with a heaved sigh of relief. Kaldalis thought for a moment that he was just going to fall over, but he didn’t quite sag that far down. His breathing suddenly became much more smooth and even.

The pressure of leadership was really affecting him.

Even just the promise of assistance was enough to calm his nerves.

“So what do you need? What decisions do you need help with?”

“Okay,” Garyung said, taking a deep, steadying breath. “At the council meeting, there were five things that came up for discussion. The first one was pretty straightforward, and Sardol walked me through it. That was just the camp upkeep, which-”

“Right,” Kaldalis interrupted, “but that’s handled. And will continue to be handled. Sardol is your point of contact for that, not me. I know you want to ease into it, but you’re just wasting time.”

“Sorry, I’m just-” Garyung sighed and shook his head. “I’m just kind of a mess. The second thing was dealing with Onirioago. The council seemed to want to hold a trial, but couldn’t decide if they should have it here where we have no resources, or wait until reinforcements arrive and send her back to Baimer on the boat’s return trip. Gavinkim wanted her executed outright, and apparently I’m allowed to do that if I want?” The Bhogard’s voice cracked on the rising inflection of the question. “Ikzoz kind of just wants her put on ice indefinitely, but that doesn’t seem like a real solution to me. I just- I don’t know.”

Kaldalis held out a hand to stop the Bhogad before he gave himself an aneurysm. “Okay. Good. I knew Onirioago would be one of the issues. And I’ll be happy to help you approach it. I think you and I - and probably Ikzoz - should talk about what happened, so that your decision is fully informed instead of rushed. But I don’t trust myself to make that decision for you.”

“Why not?”

“Well, something about her swearing revenge against me through chemical enslavement might be a little tiny conflict of interest,” Kaldalis said with a smirk. “I’d love to see her threat ended forever. But I would rather that verdict be delivered fair and square by an impartial judge, not with me pulling your strings.”

“I appreciate your honesty,” Garyung said, though he grimaced. “I’m not ready to make that kind of life-or-death decision yet, though.”

Kaldalis patted the bigger man’s shoulder. “Understandable. And if Ikzoz just wants her locked up forever, it doesn’t sound like there’s a time constraint on dealing with her. So what else do you have?”

“Third, fourth, and fifth kind of all go together,” Garyung said. He counted off on his fingers. “There’s investigating the Infernal Horde threat, which is third. That information will inform our future plans for the expedition, which is fourth. And then our future plans has to include finishing whatever Onirioago left undone for the camp to become a town, which is the fifth thing.”

Kaldalis suddenly smelled blood.

Making the camp into a town was his personal goal. While he didn’t want to take advantage of Garyung’s weakness for sentencing Oniriago, getting the town upgraded was in everyone’s best interest. Pushing Garyung in that direction was Kaldalis’s dream outcome, but it would also mean that the town would receive the reinforcements they needed to help handle all of the other problems.

Everyone would win.

It wasn’t being selfish if it helped everyone else, right?

Deep down, Kaldalis knew he just really needed a personal win. Selfish or not, he wasn’t going to hesitate to take it.

“Okay, so I think we start at the most important thing,” Kaldalis said. “We need to make this camp into a town. That’s going to make everything go smoother, right? More resources, reinforcements, new things to build to generate new quests for everyone… It’s just the most sensible starting point.”

“Thank you,” Garyung said with a relieved sigh. “This is why I voted for you, man. That makes all the sense in the world. I’m just too fucking stupid to-”

“You’re not stupid,” Kaldalis added quickly. “You’re just indecisive. There’s nothing wrong with weighing your options, but it’s been two days since we’ve had any town building quests, and I imagine the cultivation crowd watching our streams is foaming at the mouth for some progression.” He clapped Garyung on the shoulder with a smile. “One step at a time, right?”

“Right,” Garyung said with a sheepish smile. “Okay, so I have a leadership menu now. That’s where I did the upkeep stuff with Sardol. It’s, uh. I wish I could show you. It’s not finished. A lot of the options have percentage symbols in the text because the coders didn’t escape the apostrophes and hyphens and whatever else.”

“Alright, so you’re going to look for something about construction,” Kaldalis said, “Or maybe an overview? I don’t know.”

“I think I found it,” Garyung said. “It’s called Camp, which is pretty basic.”

“Great. From what little I’ve heard from Bangen, there should be a list of requirements.”

Garyung nodded. “Yeah. There’s a bunch of things here, but they’re all checked off. Defensive wall is at one hundred percent. Crafting center one out of one. Barracks one out of one. Guard towers four out of four. Town hall, housing, lumber stockpile… It’s all here. Everything is at one hundred percent, or completed.”

“Okay, good, good. So Onirioago was dragging her feet, but still got us all set up. What still needs to happen?”

There was a long pause as the Bhogad’s eyes roamed across menus and text Kaldalis couldn’t see. “Nothing,” Garyung said, finally. “There’s even an optional category with a bunch of perks. The fountain, the clock tower, the floating dock… She really went out of her way to stall this out.”

“Perks?”

“Yeah, like...” Garyung gestured vaguely at empty space - presumably towards the menu. “Having the floating dock means we’ll get a permanent dock after the upgrade. The fountain means that freshwater wells will spawn. You know. Amenities we won’t have to build.”

“Nice. We’ll have to keep that in mind. I imagine there’ll be another upgrade into a city or something after this, and if these perks pay off, we should pursue them as well.”

“Right,” Garyung said. He flicked his finger in the air, scrolling the menu. “But everything is in order. No wonder we were just dicking around doing nothing. There’s nothing left. Oh, here we go. At the bottom of the menu there’s a button.”

“A button?” Kaldalis asked. “Alright, okay. What does it say?”

“It just says ‘Start Event’ with capital letters and everything.” Garyung squinted at empty space. “There’s nothing else there. No explanation or anything.”

“No hover text or anything, eh?”

“Nope.” Garyung shrugged. “What do you think it means?”

Kaldalis shooed Garyung with a wave of his hand. “I’m trying to think.” His mind was racing, but there wasn’t any traction. It was all just noise. “I mean, there’s a good possibility it might be nothing.”

“Nothing? Why would an Event - with a capital E - be nothing?”

“Do you remember how housing worked in Colossus? Whenever you did a big upgrade, you had to zone in and out in the old days, but then they added the button.”

Garyung’s eyes widened and he nodded. “Yeah, yeah. And it just forces a little panoramic cutscene.”

“So maybe it’s just that? You hit the button and then boom, everyone gets a little cutscene and the camp becomes a town.” Kaldalis scratched his head. “We could wait for morning and talk to Bangen. She seemed to know some basics about town upgrades when I talked to her about it earlier this week.”

“Oh, so, we shouldn’t push the button now?” Garyung asked.

Kaldalis hesitated. “Hold on, let me check something.”

Kaldalis went to his messaging system. Nakala’s messages were still there, and he looked at the one where Nakala had said he had a week to make the place into a town before the next group of beta participants got here.

That was six days ago.

And it had been received in the hours between midnight and dawn.

In a few hours, it would be the seventh day.

“Fuck,” Kaldalis said.

“What?”

“You know, it should be fine, right?” Kaldalis said. “It’s most likely just a cutscene. A big visual upgrade is gonna happen. It has to be a cutscene.”

“Right,” Garyung said. “So yes push it?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Kaldalis nodded, suddenly sweating as he realized how near the time crunch actually was. “It’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Garyung said.

There was a moment’s hesitation, and then the air filled with a roar. It sounded like it was coming from right outside the tent. Kaldalis burst out through the flap. All around him, others were poking their heads out. A few others leaped out of their tent with weapons drawn in various stages of undress.

There was a flash on the right side of his vision.

A quest popped up. It was eerily similar to the one he’d seen only a few days ago.

Wrath of the Horde: Final Raid

Save the town from the third Infernal Horde attack.

This was no cutscene. And it was absolutely an Event worthy of a capital E.

“So, um, Garyung? I think I may have been mistaken.”

The Bhogad groaned.