Three days later, the Panbu council still hadn’t called the second meeting. It was a little frustrating. Not that Kaldalis had expected them to speedrun the meetings just for him. But he had hoped there would be tangible progress, like with the townbuilding.

Just the same, Kaldalis had enjoyed a few opportunities to work on his approval with them, as the quintet were still denizens of the town.

Big Mike seemed to be on Kaldalis’s side from the start. He wasn’t sure if he’d just made a good first impression on the dock when he’d arrived, or if somehow his friendship with Heluna flagged him as a friend to sailors. It was also possible, if Filomena outranked him, that she’d put in the good word just for the sake of stirring the pot with the rest of the Panbu council.

Regardless of why, every time he ran into the big man with the red jacket, he earned a laugh and a slap on the back, and a tiny incremental improvement on his approval bar.

Despite his best efforts, Kaldalis couldn’t stop himself from flinching whenever he saw Demriv. He worried she could read his reaction and might be offended, but it wasn’t hurting his approval rating. Despite her friendly smile and demeanor, he still found himself avoiding her for his own sanity. Each morning, he told himself that he would talk to her to try and build her approval, but her resemblance to Onirioago made him cry off as soon as he actually saw her every time.

Kaldalis only saw the other three rarely. Jetmorpan always seemed to be busily directing workers around town, or rushing between construction sites, and any attempts he made to try and greet him earned him a dismissive gesture at best, and a tiny sliver shaved off his approval bar at worst.

It made him afraid to seek out Cerh, but Kaldalis never set eyes on the Talsar out and about.

Captain Kensah was another matter. She seemed to be everywhere around town, patrolling and organizing the Zaran guard force. And every time she caught sight of Kaldalis she fixed him with a withering glare. The first day, he tried to make nice with her, but she made it very clear that daring to speak with her was going to cost him at least ten percent of his approval bar.

After that, he elected to avoid her entirely.

While the lack of a meeting with them was making him progressively more and more anxious, it gave him plenty of time to tend to his other goals. Each morning started with Reno and SeventyEight gathering the quests of the day and running them all down as fast as possible. It was always a struggle, but every day it was just a little easier, as the pair of newer players levelled up and got a little better.

Every day they found themselves in the white-blossom forest, gathering the large amount of wood that the camp’s construction demanded. The other daily tasks were blessedly varied: hunting local monsters for skins, shells, and bones; combing the jungle for vines, herbs, and fruits; and striking the earth for stone and metal ores. Kaldalis wasn’t lucky enough to see a sanguine diamond on these ventures, but his morning focus was on Reno and SeventyEight, and with that as his goal, he was able to consider himself successful.

In an attempt to keep working on Sivima’s quest, Kaldalis devoted at least an hour a day to fishing. Over three days, this netted him over forty more pale perch, but he was starting to suspect that he’d need to turn to different bait for the likdon, even if it meant arresting his progress on Forturns’s quest.

For now, though, without any progress on the other materials, he wasn’t in a hurry.

Kaldalis was sure to keep his ear to the ground for a sanguine diamond. Despite the number of adventurers spending some amount of time mining almost every day, he heard not a single peep about one being found.

He was hopeful that he might find a jeotops at some point during his afternoons. Balrim and Myrin spent more time combing the jungle than doing quests, and they were happy to have him along if he could catch them on their way out after lunch. They roamed the surrounding area in a way that seemed aimless on the surface, but was actually very carefully directed to uncover as much of the map as they could.

They encountered numerous threats over the course of their adventures. The jeotops was not among them, but there was more to Nos Meles than the monsters demanded by the quests. There were no grizzled dragons, but packs of wallves - tree-climbing carnivorous quadrupeds - were much more common. They didn’t encounter any irritators, but smaller, non-boss daemonraptors roamed the denser parts of the jungle, where the canopy blocked out the sunlight to near-blackness.

Unfortunately, no sign of nearby dungeons appeared. Kaldalis was beginning to suspect that they were putting videogame-like expectations on their surroundings without a full understanding of the systems at work. They’d only experienced the upgrade process one time.

Cotanaku could be special.

On the fourth day, something happened that underlined a major difference between Cotanaku and Panbu. Storm clouds rolled in off the ocean in the night, coating the camp and the surrounding area in sheets of rain. The storm didn’t bring with it high winds, and the rain had slowed, but it was still a dismal morning.

Despite the weather, Kaldalis forced himself out of his tent and tracked down Reno and SeventyEight to pick up their daily quests.

It was apparent, though, that it wouldn’t be happening today.

“Are you crazy?” Reno demanded, still hiding in the dry safety of her tent. “It’s a fucking mess out there.”

“Town still needs to get built,” Kaldalis said, gesturing out at the forest as the rain still pelted him, “and the rain isn’t going to mean you get less exp for the quests.”

“No, really, think about it,” Reno said, looking between the soggy pair of Kaldalis and SeventyEight, before matching Kaldalis’s gesture towards the forest. “What did we see out there?”

“Trees?” Kaldalis asked, unsure where she was going with this line. “A dense forest canopy that will keep the rain off our heads?”

“Maybe,” Reno shot back, “but what did we not see?” She turned her attention towards SeventyEight. “Ess, help me out here, you know how he can be about realizing the obvious.”

SeventyEight started to laugh, but then stopped. “Oh, shit, she’s right,” she said. “No undergrowth. Bare dirt forest floor.”

“Yeah, and?” Kaldalis asked, though the answer hit him as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

“Mud!” Reno announced the issue before Kaldalis could admit the realization. “Acres of forest with only large root structures to keep the soil in place! We’re going to walk out there and find all the spots where we sink in up to our fucking knees! And we’re like seven, eight feet tall in this world! That’s deep fucking mud!”

Kaldalis pursed his lips with a groan. “You know what? You’re right. That does sound kinda shitty.”

“We got the rest of the day, right?” SeventyEight asked, eyeing the forest uneasily. “The storm seems to be petering out. We could run out in the evening for our quests once things dry up a bit.”

“Alright,” Kaldalis said, though he didn’t like to think that his comfortable routine was being interrupted. “So what are we going to do, just go back to bed?” Kaldalis reached up and tried to swipe some of the rain off his horns - the sensitive protrusions felt oddly tingly with water running over them - and then flicked the water at Reno. “Some of us are soaked to the bone already.”

“Alright, fine,” Reno said, grumbling as she stuck just one leg out of the tent. “Now we’re all wet. Happy now?”

“Yes,” Kaldalis said, reaching out and grabbing her by the shoulder, pulling her completely out into the rain. “Much.”

“Augh! God!” Reno flailed free of him, sputtering. “It’s fucking cold!”

“Welcome to the party, pal!” Kaldalis crowed, looping his arm around her shoulders to pull her along. “We’re getting a cold, damp breakfast together, and you’re going to like it.”

“You two are fucking weird,” SeventyEight said, even as she followed behind them.

The breakfast tent setup meant that the food was warm and dry, even if they weren’t. Meals in Panbu were largely a mix of cut fruits and meat, since the lack of undergrowth had led to a lack of root vegetables. The three of them sat down with their food, surrounded by a sparse group of other waterlogged adventurers.

“So what’s the word of the day?” Kaldalis asked. “If we’re not going out into the jungle, what can we do?”

“We’ve got some options,” Reno said. She picked up a piece of fruit that was slightly too large to be just one bite and shoved the whole thing in her mouth anyway. Kaldalis waited for her to stop chewing so she could finish her thought. But when she did, she just picked up another piece.

“Well?” Kaldalis interrupted before her mouth was full again.

“Well what?”

“What options do we have?” Kaldalis said, gesturing for her to continue.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Reno said before stuffing the next piece of fruit in her mouth and speaking around it. “I just know we have them.”

Kaldalis leaned his elbow against the table and rested his chin in the cup of his hand. “You have many redeeming qualities. I don’t know what they are, I just figure if you didn’t have them, we wouldn’t be friends.”

Reno kicked him under the table.

“Well, I think the options are pretty clear,” SeventyEight said after Kaldalis gasped and grabbed his shin. “Leaving town is basically out of the question, so we can’t do questing or gathering. It’s down to dicking around skywatching until the sun breaks through, or crafting.”

“Crafting?” Kaldalis asked. “I’m all aboard for doing anything productive rather than sitting on our asses, but why crafting?”

“We’ve been gathering materials for days now,” SeventyEight said. She flashed Kaldalis with a warm smile. “And this is the perfect opportunity to spend some time with them.”

“I’m sold,” Reno said, thankfully without a full mouth this time. “We’re all starting from almost zero, right?”

“Is it worth the time, though?” Kaldalis asked, trying to keep the whine out of his voice. “I think Balrim is the only person I know really focusing on it.”

“That’s because nobody knows what you can get away with at high levels with it,” Reno said with a smirk. “Trust me. A little work today, and you’ll be thanking me tomorrow.”