The area immediately around Kayore was familiar-looking dense jungle. The ground was much rockier, leading to bare spots and clearings more frequently than around Cotanaku or Panbu, but overall it felt much the same. Even some of the mob types were familiar. Jeotops were prominent in the area, while packs of Wallves were out in force as well.

There were new foes, though.

Acrid-Horned Cavallettes were horse-sized, grasshopper-like insects with hornlike growths in place of antennae, brightly colored to warn of their poison attacks. They were particularly annoying, as when they started to flee after taking sufficient damage - and they were tanky as hell due to their tough carapace - they blasted away into the wilderness with powerful leaps.

Snappers were more of a nuisance. They were wolf-sized pack hunters, like wallves, but covered with dusky brown scales, and without the characteristic climbing abilities. The two predator species seemed to be coexisting comfortably somehow, which confused Kaldalis until Courbois explained that the snappers hunted the Cavallettes, while the Wallves hunted the Jeotops. They simply didn’t compete.

Snappers’ bites inflicted the slow debuff, which was deadly due to their preference for attacking in numbers. Kaldalis found that using his sword and shield became mandatory for dealing with them, even though the Sweeping Strikes of his spear felt exceptionally valuable against their numbers. Without the extra line of defense of the Shield ability, he would be overwhelmed by the debuff. The weapon, coming with its own Slow Affinity and Resistance, was a big help as well for the attacks that got through his defenses.

As much as Kaldalis wanted to be happy to be back to business, he couldn’t ignore the feeling of Zaran oppression looming large over them. They didn’t get far out into the jungle before they could see part of their minimap bathed in red.

“That doesn’t look good,” Kaldalis said.

“That’ll be the boundary,” Balrim said, though he looked to Courbois for confirmation. When she nodded, he continued: “there were areas of the castle in Baimer that were marked like that, too.”

“We were allowed in on occasion,” Myrin added, “but when we were given permission, the red would fade.”

Despite the warning, Kaldalis took the lead, and as they quested, they pushed toward the boundary.

To his chagrin, it wasn’t just a symbolic coat of paint.

There were guards patrolling the border. And not town guards. These guys were dressed in the uniforms Kaldalis recognized from Baimer. This had to be the Contender’s personal force. There weren’t enough to form an impermeable barrier, but it would have been an idiot move to try to sneak past in broad daylight.

“We probably shouldn’t be here,” Reno grumbled. She reached over and elbowed Kaldalis. “You especially, since you’re the idiot they caught in Baimer.”

Kaldalis grimaced and nodded in agreement, though he noticed that was the first time he’d heard her speak all day. His first instinct was to tease her about it, but given what they’d learned - and his assumption that she might feel responsible - it seemed kinder to leave her be.

Unable to explore past the line of guards, they returned to work on the quests.

Most of them were familiar to him. The construction team needed more stone quarried from the rockier regions, and wood harvested from the jungle’s trees. Some of these quests mentioned what they were going to be building with them - wall reinforcements, another pier, and upgrades to the clock tower. There were also some familiar quests to gather food for the cooks. The vegetables and tubers in this area were the same stuff they’d been using the Harvesting skill for since they landed, but there were entirely different categories of fruit. Squat viney plants crawled all over the place in rockier areas where the proper jungle couldn’t take hold and choke them out, and from them the group were able to harvest new fruits and berries.

The other quests, though, felt somewhat soulless. They had three different quests to kill the Acrid-Horned Cavallettes. One was for their abdomens, which were apparently to be cut into steaks, but they needed to be fully intact for the sake of food safety, which translated into a low drop rate. Their horns were alchemically valuable as well, but needed in much higher quantities. And the third quest was to just kill them for the sake of killing them, because of the danger they represented to future efforts to cultivate the region for proper farming.

There were similar quests for everything else they encountered. They had to wipe out their fair share of Jeotops and Walves, too. The Snappers were apparently exempt, because of their predilection to eating the Cavallettes, but Kaldalis knew that aggressively thinning the numbers of their prey wouldn’t be great for their population in the long term.

Despite learning about the brand-new ecology here, there just wasn’t much to be had out here for excitement. Courbois couldn’t even accept all of the quests, as most of the interesting ones that introduced them to the mechanics of the local food chain were one-and-done introductory quests that would not be offered again.

At the very least, experience points were coming. Kaldalis would be level sixteen soon. Before that, though, he got his sword and shield skill to level 75. He had been looking forward to a new mobility option, but sword and shield seemed intent on disappointing him in that arena.

“What is this shit?” Kaldalis cursed as he unlocked it. “This isn’t mobility. This isn’t mobility at all!”

“Huh? What’s wrong?” Balrim asked.

“It’s a passive,” Kaldalis grumbled. “Like your passive move speed. It’s called Duck and Cover, and I take reduced damage while prone or rolling.”

“That sounds useful to me,” Courbois said. “I guess there’s a reason why sword and shield is the iconic tank choice. Being able to eat a fraction of a tankbuster by falling on your face? Maybe I should start leveling my sword and shield.”

“It’s definitely useful,” Kaldalis said, exasperated. “I’m not contesting that. But it’s not movement. I want mobility from my mobility skills. That doesn’t seem crazy to ask for.”

Courbois grimaced with a nod. As much as she was right, so was he. Actual mobility meant taking no damage from avoidable attacks, instead of just being able to give up on dodging and eating a hit for slightly less damage. It also wasn’t useful at all outside of combat.

“A little bit of lazy design, I guess,” Courbois said. “Classic Monsoon. So, are you gonna unequip all your armor and travel exclusively by rolling now?”

Courbois laughed, and while the rest of them joined in, it was a little halfhearted from them. Courbois was the only one who didn’t know that this world was possibly real. Monsoon’s lazy design - and ha ha so funny reference - had translated into the natural law of a whole population of people who never asked for this.

Despite his aggravation at the unimpressive ability, Kaldalis tried to enjoy their time out in the narrow little bit of wilderness they were allowed to explore. It was easy to get over the Duck and Cover ability when his irritation at the giant red border on his minimap redoubled.

They took their time with the quests. Courbois was happy to help them get the lay of the land, and the rest of them were happy to be back in the saddle. As much as the bureaucracy of Baimer had followed them, these monsters at least weren’t in pens waiting to be picked off.

Once their job was done, they turned them in back at town. Once more, Kaldalis was unhappy with the way the Zarans had set up the system. Instead of delivering materials to the relevant individuals, there was a drop-off location near to the job board, where an eerily familiar-looking clerk completed their quests and handed over their rewards.

“Yeah, this is great,” Kaldalis said, wincing as he heard how whiney his voice sounded.

“What’s wrong with it?” Courbois asked. “Seems clean and efficient to me.”

“Yeah, it is,” Kaldalis agreed, rubbing his temple. “But it’s also dispassionate. Disconnected. I don’t know who these things are going to. I didn’t meet with the person building the town or cooking my meals or concocting my potions. Like, I understand that we got shit to do, but there’s a personal touch missing here.”

“We’re building a town,” Myrin said with a sagely nod, “but not a community to live in it.”

“Exactly,” Kaldalis said.

Courbois shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. But at the end of the day this isn’t our town. If the Zarans want to run it like this, that’s their business.”

“Thanks for the quick tour, though,” Balrim said. “But we gotta track down Martok.”

“We should head back out there,” Reno said, hooking her thumb back towards the town’s gate. “We’re just a little tap away from level fourteen now.”

“I’m sticking to town, then,” Kaldalis said. “I should try and meet at least one person who lives here and see if I can make their lives better face-to-face. It’s something I did in Cotanaku and not in Panbu, and I fucking hate Panbu. I figure it might help me adapt to this town if I try it here, too.”

“I need a little bit to recuperate before getting back to the grind,” Ess said. “I still feel jetlagged. Boatlagged. Whatever.”

“I’ll head back out with you,” Courbois said to Reno. Sidling up beside her with a friendly smile. “I’m just a little tap away from level eighteen, myself, so I was gonna go back out, anyway.”

Reno exchanged a look with Ess, but didn’t protest as Courbois led her away. Kaldalis felt slightly anxious about how grumpy Reno had been, and was a bit afraid of what she might say to Courbois while they were out, but the fact of the matter was that he had to trust his friends. If he was going to be anxious about telling them the truth, he shouldn’t have told them in the first place.

“So just us, then?” Ess said with a smile. “How about lunch? I missed breakfast, so I could eat a horse.”

Kaldalis’s anxiety abruptly changed targets.