Reno and SeventyEight were hard at work when Kaldalis tracked them down. Slightly to the west of the center of town was the barracks building he had helped build. The upgrade to a town had modified this, too. The barracks’ wooden walls were now augmented with stone supports. It was quite a fetching look.

The more relevant improvement, though, was an attached training ground. Reno and SeventyEight were sparring with some wooden training dummies in the fenced-in yard.

“I didn’t even know we had this,” Kaldalis called from outside of weapon reach.

Reno waved at him with her free hand. “Hush. I’m trying to figure this shit out.”

“What are you doing, even?” Kaldalis asked. He narrowed his eyes at the training dummy. “Looks to me like you’re just smacking a stationary dummy. Does it give you a DPS readout or something?”

“It’s part of the tutorial,” SeventyEight explained, taking a breath and stepping away from her dummy. “We’re learning about the combat system.”

“We have a tutorial? I didn’t get a tutorial.”

“You did, but apparently you skipped it.” SeventyEight grinned at him and wiped a hand across her brow. “I guess this is all part of the place being a town. You had a starter quest in Baimer, right? One you didn’t get to finish?”

“Oh, yeah,” Kaldalis said. “I guess you’re right. Maybe I should look that stuff up.”

“It’s pretty basic,” SeventyEight said, turning back to her dummy and readying her weapons. “I’m pretty sure you’ve picked up on all of it by now. There’s just a challenge component that we’re getting exp for.”

It was interesting to see them at work. SeventyEight had chosen twin daggers, while Reno was wielding a staff, but Kaldalis knew that at this level, the two of them might try a variety of options before settling for any one. Hell, Kaldalis himself might still try out another weapon or two, if he had the chance to skill them up without being in the midst of a life-or-death struggle where denying himself access to his cooldowns might lead to his death and the destruction of everything he’d helped build.

That seemed pretty unlikely, given how his time so far had gone.

“Besides,” Reno said as she did a whirling maneuver that looked good, but likely didn’t do much for her attacks’ efficiency, “don’t you have like five other NPCs who will literally die without your direct intervention?”

“First of all,” Kaldalis said, “Garyung isn’t an NPC. He’s an alpha player and he needs help or else the whole social construct of democracy will crumble, and then we’ll be covering our faces with each others’ blood while a pig’s head on a stick calls the shots. And second of all, fuck you.”

Reno laughed at that, even if SeventyEight seemed slightly off-put by the profanity.

He inwardly chastised himself for falling into old habits with Reno.

As Dylan, he and Nakala had a very cavalier interpretation of appropriateness in their friendship. But now he was Kaldalis, though, so he’d have to do better. He had an audience, after all.

And not even just his audience.

There were possibly thousands of fans who might be watching the glorious return of the famous RTS celebrity. They’d all be judging his every move.

“I’m sure the tutorial is good exp,” Kaldalis said, yanking himself out of his thoughts before he got lost, “but you’re not wrong about there being demands on my time. So let’s blow this pop stand. I’m available to take you two out of town and help you farm some exp and mats and such.”

“You could wait until the tutorial is over,” Reno said.

Kaldalis grinned “I could, but it’s possible that like five other NPCs might literally die without my direct intervention between now and then. If I help now, I know I have the time. Who knows what happens if I try to wait? Maybe Garyung will need me to help deal with the Zaran diplomats. Maybe the Infernal Horde are on the move and I need to help track them back to their new hideout. Maybe something new and horrifying happens, I don’t know. But I can’t say I won’t need to be there in the middle of it stabbing things.”

“Ugh, fine. You’ve made your point,” Reno said, grimacing as she stepped away from the training dummy. “Maybe a little practical experience might give us a head-start on the rest of the tutorial junk.”

“As long as numbers go up,” SeventyEight said with a cheerful smile. “That’s all I need.”

A long, long time ago, a couple of alpha players had mentioned they had a way to powerlevel people. But in the absence of any who might share that information with him (or who might share that information without pulling him into an hour worth of council meeting) he just had to do what made the most sense.

In order to level like a munchkin, one had to act like a munchkin.

Kaldalis took the pair of them out into the jungle. As a group they went looking for trouble. Reno and SeventyEight ran around aggroing things and Kaldalis beat them down for experience points.

Understandably, changing the camp into a town had affected the wildlife around. There were fewer grizzled dragons this close to town, and more of the flytraps and kismeleons that had been treated as nuisance pests. While that meant they didn’t get a lot of high-value scales and bones from the grizzled dragons, they got a lot of skins and vines that would still prove useful.

The scaling system in this world meant that Kaldalis wasn’t bored to tears by this. Enemies here were no true threat to him, but he didn’t sweep them away with a single strike like he could have in other MMOs after returning to a starting area. But the growth of his survivability far outstripped whatever scaling had happened to their damage output, even if he was more than capable of avoiding their damage in the first place.

In no time at all, both Reno and SeventyEight reached level 2. Emboldened by that, they moved farther into the jungle, seeking more threatening mobs.

Kaldalis took the lead in hunting down an Irritator, holding it for them to whittle down, and then tracking it when it fled to finish the job. He tried to teach his friends whatever mechanics they hadn’t picked up from just watching streams.

As they got farther and farther from the town, the population of Grizzled Dragons increased as well, and Kaldalis went out of his way to farm them as much as possible, knowing that they were a treasure trove of materials for crafting. Not to mention that their varying elemental affinities made for a good learning experience for the newbies.

All in all, it was a pretty decent outing. Not the adventure he craved, but something like it.

“This is all well and good,” Reno said, after she and SeventyEight reached level 3, and Kaldalis was only a thousand exp away from level 11 himself, “but I can imagine a better way to use this time.”

“What do you mean?” Kaldalis asked, leaning his back against a tree, trying to look nonchalant about catching his breath after the last fight.

“We’ve got bigger bugs to fry than this, don’t we?” Reno said, making a broad, expansive gesture. “Like, beetles and silverfish the size of buildings?”

Kaldalis winced. “You mean the dungeon? That seems a bit ambitious, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” SeventyEight said with a smile. “I think she’s got a point. The sooner we get the dungeon done, the sooner we have Kaia’s Flicker available to us.”

“Oh, right. I was thinking about the exp and gear, since that’s all Kal got out of it for most of the runs on the stream, but that’s a good point. If we’re gonna be out here, we might need that in case we run into real trouble.”

Kaldalis rubbed at his face, suddenly very tired. “I was going to say we should do it tomorrow. Particularly once you were both level five and got your mobility tool from your weapon skill. But now that you mention Kaia’s Flicker, there’s a real possibility that it might be necessary at some point.”

“We’ll absolutely need it,” Reno said, nodding sagely. “One hundred percent chance. Like, if we don’t have it then we’ll fail in a critical moment, and by failing, the town - no, the whole island - will crumble into the sea.”

Kaldalis groaned. “Don’t push it. I was already on board. Don’t make me regret it.” He pushed off the tree he was leaning on and angled towards town. “We just have to find a healer.”

“Oh, yeah. We should grab someone else who was on the boat with us. Just like you were doing before, we can get more Flicker for our buck out of it.”

“First off,” Kaldalis said, holding up a hand, “I’m not doing that again. I spent fucking days running the dungeon over and over again. There were like two groups I had where everyone was competent, and every one of them was like nails on a chalkboard the whole time.”

“You know we’re competent, though,” Reno said, with a goading smile.

“Second off, if the goal is to farm exp, and the dungeon is on the table, then when we get out, we’re rolling right back in at the end, which means you both need to be committed to it. Trust me when I tell you it’s not as much fun the second time, but we’re doing it anyway, got it?”

“Okay, okay.” Reno snorted. “Jeeze, you’re taking this really seriously.”

“I lived and breathed this dungeon for four days, Reno,” Kaldalis snapped. “And unless we go in there and the exp has turned to shit, things might be going that direction yet again.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It was not a fun time the first round, and so help me, if I have to go through the exact same experience for another week, I’m going to completely lose it.”

“Don’t worry,” SeventyEight said, putting a hand on Kaldalis’s shoulder. “I know a guy. Er, gall. She’s great. We talked a lot, and she seems really cool. She’ll do awesome and the dungeon won’t be as painful as it used to be. Promise.”

Kaldalis forced himself to smile. “Alright. If you vouch for them, I trust your judgment.” He took a deep breath, trying to force down his anxiety on the matter. “Let’s go pick her up and get to it, then.”