In all honesty, Kaldalis suspected he already knew how the search had gone. It was written all over Balrim’s face, and confirmed by his wince at Myrin’s question. But Kaldalis needed to know the specifics before he could think of their next move, so he let Balrim suffer the indignity of being questioned by the tiny Suyon.

“It went great,” Balrim said glumly. “I found out that everyone I know already has their own in-groups set up. If we want anyone I’ve talked to about healer stuff, we need to absorb their whole groups, and none of them are set up to fit nicely into our needs. We either need more damage dealers, or another healer anyway.”

“A lot of the rest of them are, to put it bluntly, kinda assholes,” Reno added, crossing her arms. Her brow was deeply furrowed in irritation. “Like, the sorts of guys who would be glad to join because we’ve got a, uh...” She paused, gesturing around at herself, Myrin, Ess, and Courbois. “What they’d call a favorable ratio.”

Myrin visibly shuddered. Ess gave her small shoulder a comforting squeeze.

“Dev team girls gotta look out for each other, right?” Reno said with a wan smile, giving Courbois a gentle sock to the shoulder.

“The dregs left over after that are a bunch of losers,” Courbois said for her part. “The kinds of healers you dread because you know you’re gonna do all the work.”

Kaldalis raised a hand with a grimace. He didn’t need her to elaborate. He’d had more than his share of terrible healers of one stripe or another, either incompetent, poorly-geared, panicky, or whatever else. With backup of that caliber, he may as well just go in as a 3-man group with a bucket of healing potions from Reno.

“We don’t have a lot of options,” Balrim said at last. “We could keep digging here, because maybe there’s one person here we haven’t talked to yet, but the more we look around without finding them, the more likely it seems that the silver bullet for our team doesn’t exist.”

Kaldalis ran a hand over the close-cropped hair beneath his horns. “We can figure something out. Even if we just all cram into the dungeon at once. Or surrender to the idea of Balrim running it twice.”

“Ugh.” Balrim groaned, long and exaggeratedly. “Not again…”

“We’ll figure something out long term,” Kaldalis repeated, patting the Talsar on the shoulder, “but we gotta get through the dungeon in the meantime, right?”

Balrim shook his head. “Give me a little more time. I don’t think we’ve completely exhausted our options here.”

“Alright man. I want us in that dungeon before the end of the day, but we can take some time, yeah.” Kaldalis looked towards the shoreline. “But like, speaking of which… I was thinking about checking in Cotakanu. I might have some connections there.”

“Yeah, you mentioned a DPS NPC friend,” Myrin said. “I think it might be worth checking with them so we aren’t just assuming that your friend is gonna jump on board with us if we need them.”

“Right. I also wanted to see if I could touch base with Dalgaard,” Kaldalis added, “I’m not sure if they’ve gonna want to talk to me, or even see me, after what we went through. But if they’re available, I can vouch for them.”

Myrin looked up at him, knowingly. “I’ll go with you. I was a dungeon guide for a bunch of alpha players for the first dungeon, so I can see if any of them are game.”

“There are way more people in Panbu right now,” Balrim said, patting Ess on the shoulder, “so the rest of us will stay here to work on that while you follow your leads.”

With all that settled, the group split up once more.

It was interesting to see the changes in the newly formed town. The town hall was now a huge and imposing stone building, causing Kaldalis to wonder if Cerh’s management style had some influence on the architecture. There were already people milling around the surrounding areas where their tents were arranged, applying customization options.

“Oh yeah,” Kaldalis said, turning over his shoulder towards Myrin, “I also wanna see how my quarters look in Cotanaku. I set up a bunch of upgrades and walked away before they were done.”

“Oh shit. There’s housing bullshit?”

“A bit. It eats a lot of materials and crescents, but it’s there.”

“Fuck,” Myrin said, eyes glazing as she looked into the middle distance, presumably pulling up her inventory. “Uh, can you spot me some mats? I’ll tell you what I need when I figure out what I want.”

The pair of them left through the beach-side gate, which had the same gate-and-portcullis setup as the jungle-side gate, but with the portcullis made of tarred wood instead of metal, presumably to protect against the corrosive sea spray.

The floating dock was still just that - a badly damaged row of wood planks poorly anchored to the beach. The longboats present were still resting on the sand instead of using the unstable dock. Kaldalis and Myrin secured passage on a boat back with a number of other adventurers who were headed back to Cotanaku as well. On the trip back, Kaldalis and Myrin chatted amongst the group, in case they could find a healer to recruit. They had no such luck, but they got the word around that they were looking, which might serve them well when they arrived.

Cotanaku was much as Kaldalis had left it. It seemed a bit emptier right now, but with people still filtering back from Cotanaku after the big event, they figured it would fill out in time. They could still make use of the time now to catch anybody that their friends couldn’t possibly have met with, since they hadn’t been in Panbu at all today - or if they’d returned with Garyung’s group.

The pair of them took a brief stop at Kaldalis’s quarters, where the requested changes had been made. It looked like the midpoint between a cozy camping cabin and a toolshed. The interior was just like he wanted, and the whole thing had an unused new look to it that lent it a sense of cleanliness that he knew wouldn’t last if he ended up spending time in Cotanaku again.

Myrin made appropriate oohs and aahs at what he’d done, though she gave him a sidelong glance at the size of the bed, which took up nearly a quarter of the space. She did provide some helpful advice about how to arrange the furniture to optimally use the space, with undisguised excitement that made him make her promise to actually look for people to recruit instead of running right to her quarters to get her own upgrade underway.

She agreed, but only grudgingly.

Kaldalis began the search hopeful that his reputation could get him what he needed here.

That didn’t last long.

It wasn’t that his reputation didn’t mean anything - it certainly did - but it was the prospects here.

The people in Cotanaku were in Cotanaku for a reason.

A large number were lowbies from the latest wave of players who hadn’t been able to hack it in the wilderness around Panbu. Most of the rest were alpha players, and those who didn’t have solid groups together were looking for people who were pushing progression - grinding levels and waiting for raids to be uncovered - rather than getting involved in the actual work of the expedition out here. Kaldalis would have called them assholes if he didn’t think the ensuing argument would be a waste of his valuable time.

Touching base with Garyung wasn’t an option, either. The man was nowhere to be found. Kaldalis guessed he was tied up in council meetings after the completion of Panbu.

But he also had no luck finding Dalgaard. A couple of folks he talked to knew of them, and pointed him to where they might be, but wherever he looked, he couldn’t find them. After the fifth person pointed him to a dead end, he figured that they didn’t want to be found, and left it at that.

One thing that did strike Kaldalis as odd was the number of people wandering around town, apparently running errands. There were so many adventurers he didn’t recognize. Where did they come from? Were they really people, or did they only exist to flesh out the town and make it seem populated while all the actual players were still in Panbu?

He was wondering about that when someone grabbed his hand.

Strong, calloused fingers wrapped around his own and pulled to turn him around. He nearly jumped out of his skin at the sudden intrusion on his thoughts, and only the quick lash of his tail kept him from losing his balance and falling over.

“Easy, big boy,” Heluna said, her other hand catching his shoulder and stabilizing him. “I fuckin’ thought that was you.”

There wasn’t time to greet her with more than a smile before his arms moved nearly of their own accord, sweeping her into a hug. He didn’t know why he was surprised to see her, but it was a pleasant one as his racing heart started to return to a normal pace. She made a soft pleased sound into his shoulder as she hugged him back, and his heart rate started to cycle back up again.

“What the fuck are you doin’ back here again?” Heluna said as they parted, “I thought it was all doom and gloom over there, and they needed your handsome mug to brighten things up.”

“It’s a long story,” Kaldalis said, smiling as her hand found his again, lacing their fingers together.

“I gotta catch lunch,” Heluna said, gesturing at the sun high in the sky. “Want to talk about it over a meal?”

Looking into her hopeful eyes and charmingly crooked smile, Kaldalis couldn’t have said no even if he wanted to.