Balrim and the others had not had more luck finding backup.

Reno was visibly aggravated by this turn of events, quietly grumbling and kicking at the dirt when the group reunited. Courbois seemed the most disheartened, though, presumably because she assumed that if a run were to happen, Kaldalis’s reputation would muscle her onto the incomplete JV team.

“Please,” Balrim said with a pleading look. “Please tell us you picked up someone.”

“Picked up someone alright,” Myrin said quietly with a chuckle. She cleared her throat when everyone looked at her and shrugged. “We discovered some alternatives, but not really anything permanent.”

“My DPS friend put forward some options,” Kaldalis said, shooting Myrin a brief glare. “But like her, they’re NPCs. We could bring them along to dungeons safely, but it’s not a permanent solution. I wouldn’t want to bring them if we’re gonna go blundering in the wilderness, or picking fights with new and exciting monsters who might wipe us.”

“We could also just all party together and eat the exp penalty,” Myrin said, gesturing around the group. “It’ll certainly speed up the run.”

“I don’t think that’s accurate,” Kaldalis said. “When I got separated in the first dungeon, I got a low-man bonus to my stats. Presumably more people will make things proportionately harder.”

“So what do we do?” Balrim asked. “Just have me and one of the DPS run it twice?”

“The way I see it, those are our three options,” Myrin said, looking around the group with her hands on her hips. “We can run it all together, we can double up on our healer and a DPS, or we can send someone back to Cotanaku to borrow some NPCs for a run.”

Kaldalis looked around the group. Courbois looked particularly down, and he knew it was because she feared she would be left behind, if not excised entirely from the crew. Reno and Ess looked a bit agitated as well, and it only took a moment to figure out it was due to Balrim and Myrin being so closely attached; if one of the DPS was going to run the dungeon twice, it was going to be her, putting them even farther behind in terms of climbing the exp ladder.

“We take the hit,” Kaldalis said. He made a beckoning gesture and started to head towards the jungle-side gate of Panbu, not waiting for a response. “We all go together.”

“Why?” Balrim asked, immediately falling in on Kaldalis’s side. “Not that I’m complaining, but I assume you have a reason.”

“We’re building a team, here,” Kaldalis said, gesturing behind himself at the group as a whole. “And that means found family tropes are king. Nobody gets left behind, or forgotten. Right?”

Myrin let out a little cackle at that, but the real reward was Courbois’s face.

For the first time since he got back from Cotnakau, she was smiling.

It wasn’t completely altruistic, however. Like Balrim, Kaldalis didn’t want to be doubling up on every run. If Courbois didn’t feel like she was valued with the group, she’d move on. That was an unacceptable eventuality. He didn’t know her very well, but he knew she was a person, deserving of respect. Especially if he wanted her to be available to take work off of his plate.

“Alright,” Reno said, patting Kaldalis on the shoulder, “that’s all great and everything, but you said it was going to make the dungeon harder, right?”

“Probably,” Kaldalis admitted, “but it might also mean greater rewards? There’s not really any way to tell for sure until we’re there.”

“Then can we take fifteen minutes first?” she asked, hooking her head towards the newly-upgraded crafting center. “I want to make sure we’re fully-stocked.”

“Holy shit,” Balrim said, reaching over and clapping Reno on the back, “that’s the smartest idea I think any of us have had all day. I’ve got mats I haven’t turned into useful shit yet.”

Kaldalis took a moment to assess the potions in his inventory. He still had dozens of potions available, both as leftovers from the last stockpile Balrim had handed over, and the stream viewer rewards he’d gotten dumped onto him. But all of his healing potions were Potions of Minor Healing, which capped out at 500 health. His current health level wasn’t too far past that cap, but if he leveled up in the dungeon, or got his hands on item upgrades, they were going to fall farther and farther behind.

“I agree,” Kaldalis said. “We get pots together, maybe some food for buffs? And then we go in armed for bear. The rest of us can work on our craft leveling, too.”

“Ooh,” Courbois said with a grin, “good idea. I’ve been falling behind.”

The new crafting area was a sizable expansion over the old one, but was much in the same vein. Various crafting groups were more separated, and there were many, many more available stations, but it was all still enclosed indoors. The building had gone from an approximation of an elementary school portable classroom to something closer to a warehouse.

It had also become the busiest part of the town.

Dozens of players were filtering in and out as the group approached, with people outside barking to sell materials they’d collected. Considering how different it was compared to Cotanaku’s few scattered workshops, Kaldalis wondered where the decisions were that led to this outcome. Had the original setup directly led to this one, or had Cerh made some specific decision during the upgrade that caused this?

In the absence of an answer - and in the presence of an active desire to avoid the only person who could provide one - he led his group into the crafting warehouse, where they split up and went to work.

Reno went to work on potions, while Balrim went to the cooking stations. SeventyEight went to the forges, which were the most numerous stations, even though she still had to wait a few minutes for a station to open up as they were the busiest area.

Kaldalis went to the charm crafting workbenches, and shared a nervous laugh with Courbois when she went that direction as well.

For her part, Myrin worked with Balrim and Reno, running around gathering materials. She could get what she needed mostly by running between the group, but Kaldalis pitched in a handful of crescents for her to purchase some rarer ingredients Balrim needed for one of the food items he was making.

Kaldalis and Courbois made small talk as they worked on charmcrafting. She had taken up the craft as soon as Cotanaku had gone up as a camp, wanting to be able to make herself proper gear, since her randomly-generated level 1 gear had been utter garbage. They shared a bit of a laugh when Kaldalis admitted that he’d picked it up basically by default.

The work itself was finally starting to get exciting, however.

Items he crafted were finally at level twelve, exceeding his current equipment, even if it didn’t meet his current character level of thirteen. The pieces he was producing were still basically randomly generated, since even up above charmcrafting level 60, he could only exclude two properties from the items he was making. But the raw number of charms he had to churn out for leveling meant that having a collection of five with acceptable stats was not terribly difficult.

Each of his new level twelve pieces gave sixteen Clout and Acumen, and seventeen Vigor. Pieces stats that he favored gave twenty-five hit points, twenty-seven of either Fortitude or Resistance, or forty-five of either Armor or Attack.

He wasn’t overly concerned with stats like attack speed, cooldown reduction, or critical hit-related stats. Benefit of being a tank. And the game had taught him that while his primary job was to avoid damage, some damage was unavoidable, especially when going into a dungeon, when he couldn’t rely on overworld aggro rules keeping him at the top of the aggro list.

Kaldalis also turned his nose up at the Affinity stat. Having a pile of them was valuable to give him options if a mechanic demanded it, but the more general Fortitude and Resistance were more reliable.

He and Courbois pooled resources to grind out a favorable set for both of them. At the end, his armor value had increased dramatically, with most of his other stats taking a small touch of an increase, even his attack. He lost his specific affinities besides the Earth Affinity on his spear, but he felt confident that the general stats he gained were worth more.

Shortly after getting their options sorted, Kaldalis’s charmcrafting skill reached level 64 - one shy of cap at his level - when the rest of the team sidled up to fetch the tanks.

“We got everything set,” Reno said, visibly sorting through her invisible inventory screen. “Finish what you’re working on and we’ll get going.”

“What do we have?” Courbois asked, affixing bands of cut bone to a charm with a steady hand. “Good food? Good pots?”

“Lesser healing potions,” Reno said, grabbing bottles out of her inventory three at a time and lining them up on the edge of Courbois’s workbench. After setting out ten of them, she moved and lined up ten more on Kaldalis’s table. “We also got a few ire potions, but those are statistically better for the DPS than the tanks, so you both get the lion’s share of these.”

Kaldalis picked up one of the offered healing potions and examined it.

Like the minor healing potion, it restored 20% of his max HP, but the cap was at seven hundred and fifty, well above what 20% of his HP would be right now. No healing would be lost to it.

“I also made food,” Balrim said, though he wasn’t digging into his inventory yet. “I went for a long duration meal so we don’t have to stop halfway through to do a basic campfire thing, but we probably want to wait to eat it until we’re standing outside the entrance.”

“Good thinking,” Kaldalis said, “that’ll save us a bunch of time on the record, too.”

When Courbois finished her charm, the assembled group picked their way out of the crafting warehouse. Kaldalis took the lead once they were out of the town gates, and they headed towards the dungeon. They were as ready as they could be, and he hoped it would be enough.