After they left the meeting, Courbois excused herself to go grapple with the existential dread of learning that the videogame world was a real world. Kaldalis couldn’t blame her, considering that he hadn’t really come to terms with it yet, either. Though at this point, he had to admit that he’d pushed his feelings about it down so hard that he passed through to the other side by now.

He found himself with time to kill now, though. He was alone for now, and he couldn’t predict how long it would be before everyone came back from grinding exp with Reno and Ess. He also couldn’t predict how long it would be before Garyung and the council got finished with their end of things and pushed a big flurry of quests out to everyone.

Though on the topic of exp and quests, Kaldalis pulled one of his armored gauntlets off and examined the ring he wore beneath it.

Dedication Ring

Adornment

Use effect: Grants 150% experience gain from kills.

Duration: 60:00

Cooldown: 6:25:12/20:00:00

Kaldalis still had over six hours before this new tool was charged and ready for its first use. With good planning, he could get it rolling as soon as possible. If he used it right when it came off cooldown every day, he could get seven total uses out of it over the next six days before the deadline to get the Lataxinans back. Hopefully he could squeeze enough experience points out of his new cheat to carry the day when it came time to venture into the raid.

For now, though, he just had to fill some time. There were still some quests around town unrelated to upgrading defenses. They were older quests, related to maintaining the town’s provisions and helping adventurers to level their profession skills. But they were still useful to pass the time.

Idle hands or something.

Kaldalis went out into the jungle around Cotanaku with a handful of crappy quests. He kept his eyes open for his friends, but it seemed they’d gone deeper into the jungle than he needed to go, so there was no sign of him.

He started with the provisions. The area around Cotanaku had a lot of Lontra and Cougadile, and so their meat was making up a large portion of the protein provided in the public cafeteria. The only challenging component was finding them, as they were ambush predators, and thus spent a lot of their time skulking and hiding.

This close to town, though, they were low enough level that they provided no threat to Kaldalis. When a giant tube of furred flesh dropped out of the trees on him - leading with the poisonous fangs - the Lontra did nearly negligible damage to him, and he was able to swat it down quickly.

The same went for any monstrous cats that lunged at him out of the nearby river where the quest brought him to hunt for the Cougadile.

It didn’t take long for Kaldalis to amass a big pile of resources - not just the meat the quest called for, but bones, teeth, and pelts for crafting. He had been selling these materials for quick cash this whole time, but now that he was looking to organize a raid, he swore to hold onto them in case they became useful.

After that, Kaldalis went to follow up on the Harvesting and Mining quests. He set about gathering fruits, root vegetables, and fibrous vines from the surrounding flora, and then moved on to gathering ores, salts, and clay from rocky outcroppings wherever he could find them.

Still so close to town, he felt himself growing bored.

The only threats he faced were occasional Vendragora and Trench Ants, but, as with the Lontra and Cougadile, they were too low level to be exciting to deal with. Even a half-dozen Trench Ants charging in response to the rapping of his pick on stone was more annoying than anything else. Their Slow debuff affinity was not strong enough to reliably overcome his resistance, and so they only slowed him down just enough to impede his progress, but not enough to be an actual threat.

And the Vendragora’s poison was no more a threat than that of the Lontra.

Just the same, though, Kaldalis stuck with his tasks. It was easy to draw the line between these quests and the ones he did on his trip back to Baimer. The threat level was about the same, but these quests gave him a sense of purpose. This wasn’t just pointless busy work. The materials he was gathering would go to help the whole town. He was feeding the normal folk who couldn’t go out into the jungle and hunt for themselves, like the crafters and town guards.

Some of these resources would no doubt become trade goods that would be sold for a profit, helping to pay off whatever debts Cotanaku might have. Especially once they started to invest more and more into infrastructure.

When he returned with the quests completed, Kaldalis had capped out his mining and harvesting skills, and had not just the required materials, but a pretty decent pile of extra stuff for crafting.

Turning it all in got him just shy of level 16 as well.

Once the next batch of quests appeared, he’d likely get his next level up off of the kills from them even without his new ring active. He took a moment to go over his stats.

Kaldalis, Level 15 Bodyguard

HP: 3277/3277

Aplomb: 100/100

EXP: 3902/4000

Acumen: 285

Clout: 300

Vigor: 486

Armor: 419

Attack: 334

With his normal gear on, his Elemental Affinities were at 177 each, except Earth, which had an extra 64 from one of his charms, for a total of 241. His Debuff Affinities were at 181, except for Poison, and his poison-inflicting spear raised that to 237. If he switched to his sword and shield, though, his Elemental Affinities would be increased by the added Resistance on that weapon, though he would shed an equivalent number of hit points in exchange, and his extra Affinity for Poison would swap for Slow, in accordance with the weapon’s stats.

But with his quests complete, he had nothing to do for now. Unless he was just going to bolt out into the jungle on his own to fight random monsters, he needed to find a way to fill time until the quests were ready.

He wanted to go try and find his friends, but they knew the plan. Once the new quests came, it would be go time, and they’d be here. He trusted them. And the last thing he wanted was to blunder into the middle of whatever they were doing and get embroiled in more drama with Reno and Ess.

Besides, he had other objectives to work towards.

Instead of heading back out, he went back to his quarters. He had a fistful of crescents to put towards building it up, and after seeing Courbois’s place in Kayore, he’d wanted something a little bit nicer. Furthermore, a bunch of the harvesting results that would have otherwise been junk could be put forth as materials to reduce costs on his upgrades. And considering how far he had to go, every little bit would count.

He started by designating a little more area to be a larger non-bedroom room. For several reasons, the studio apartment lifestyle was not one he wanted to continue with. For this new den area, Kaldalis got a nice long dining room table and a lot of seating. He didn’t foresee hosting meals here, but it wasn’t too much of a stretch to guess that he might need this space for private meetings in the near future, just as they had needed to use Courbois’s place.

“Relax, relax,” Kaldalis said, absentmindedly addressing his stream viewers as he started placing the chair orders. “I’m not an idiot. I know what I’m dealing with here.”

He pointedly placed at least one chair that was designed to put Myrin on the same level as everyone else, and one chair that was lower so that if Garyung was involved, he wouldn’t be looming over everyone with his kneecaps pressed against the bottom of the table. The two of them had needed to make do with one-size-fits-all furniture options for much of their time in this world, and just a few seconds of thoughtfulness on Kaldalis’s part was a small price to pay for their comfort.

Kaldalis wanted to put some cozy seating on the other side, surrounding a big fireplace, so that more informal gatherings could be comfortable, but fireplaces were very expensive. He had more personal plans that he wanted to make sure he had the funds for before he indulged in such an expense.

Instead he just designated space for two couches and a loveseat, and planned to come back if he had the budget left for something.

The big plan went in the back of the property, right next to the bedroom. After visiting the Lataxinans, Kaldalis had promised himself the luxury of a shower.

In a world with no need for such things, he was surprised to find all manner of bathing options in the quarters customization menu. They weren’t cheap, obviously, and he had to add plumbing and a water heater somewhere on the property to have warm water, but this was the big ticket item he was very intent on having, and he spared no expense in making sure a long hot shower was in the cards for him. A freestanding pump house out back would provide more than enough water pressure to handle his needs, and it turned out that a Malum Core he had floating around in the depths of his inventory could be used as a power source to heat the water. He could even put a few more crescents towards a rush order, and have the little bathroom done by tonight.

“Don’t read too far into this,” Kaldalis muttered to his stream, trying very hard not to blush as he nearly doubled the cost of building the shower by making it larger. “This is just a comfort thing. This is what I’m used to. I didn’t grow up with a tiny little shower stall. I had to adapt to it later in life. Big tub shower is what I want, so that’s what I’m going to get. Not for any other reason.”

With his purse feeling a lot emptier, Kaldalis had to forgo the fireplace altogether. The trade off was that he had running water now, and so he was able to add other familiar facilities to his bathroom. As soon as he did, he was very aware of how long it had been since he’d actually washed his hands.

Literally months.

As much as passive videogame systems had naturally cleaned him, it still made him feel kind of gross.

“Just don’t think about it,” he muttered to himself as he placed the sink, knowing it would be hours before it was ready. “I only feel weird because I’m thinking about it. It wasn’t weird five minutes ago, and it’s not weird now.”

With the construction designated, all that was left was to wait for the systems to do their work.

He wondered if there was a workshop somewhere where his crescents would magically appear in their pockets and they would craft pipes and pumps and other fittings that would vanish into the system and magically appear in Kaldalis’s quarters. That was a question for another day. Or, rather, for six days from now. If the Lataxinans could unmake the system, there was no telling what parts of it were actually native to this world and what parts would cease to function altogether.

Until then, though, he made his way back towards the center of town, hoping to run into some way to kill what time remained before the quests began to drop.