The quest objective to survive went away when Kaldalis’s feet finally felt the sand beneath them. During the swim, the storm abated a bit, and all around he could see adventurers and crew alike scrambling to recover as much as possible from the wreckage. The quest vanishing had a little chime, and Kaldalis realized he hadn’t checked his character page for his progress towards level 3 in a while. He popped it open now as he staggered out of the water and onto the drier parts of the beach.

Kaldalis, Level 2 Bodyguard

HP: 378/378

Aplomb: 100/100

EXP: 455/750

Acumen: 54

Clout: 52

Vigor: 84

Armor: 46

Attack: 34

His affinities had proportionately increased since his last check as well. His elemental affinities were thirty across the board, except for light and wind, which were at thirty-four. His debuff affinities were all at twenty-seven. Without a frame of reference, he wasn’t sure how good or bad the numbers were. But they were a dramatic increase from his level 1 stats. He also was grateful for the quest from Heluna getting him level 2 before all the fighting that was involved with this event, but with that much exp gained from what he’d done so far, he realized he’d have been level 2 before the boss fight no matter what.

The back half of the ship was sticking partially out of the water a few dozen yards out from the waterline. Sailors could be seen gathering supplies from the wooden carcass, with a stream of crate-carrying foot traffic leading up the beach. A little farther up was a small grassy clearing, where supplies were being piled and people were starting to clear back the tropical forest to make space for whatever encampment was to come. Even from here, Kaldalis could see that most of the people in the camp had that same glimmering rainbow outline that Heluna had that day in the mess hall.

“Finally,” he muttered as he ran a hand over his face, wiping away the water that kept running into his eyes. “A quest hub.”

“Jeeze,” Myrin said, “I hope that’s not ordinary. My minimap looks insane. If that’s what town is gonna look like whenever I’m in range of it, I’m not going to be able to look away.”

Kaldalis was about to ask about the minimap, but thinking about it popped it out in the corner of his vision next to the quest log. It was a little circular overhead map. At first, he noticed basically just the blue of water behind him, the yellow bar of sand he was on, and then a featureless green bit ahead of him. But as he watched, the map populated itself quickly, and he saw what Myrin was talking about. About half of the green field ahead was taken up by glimmering rings that flashed and spun, drawing the eye.

“You’re right,” Kaldalis said, almost tempted to hold up his hand and block that part of his UI out. Instead he focused for a moment and willed the minimap away, for now. “Let’s go accept all of those quests, if only to get them off the map.”

The questgivers were mostly sailors, but there were more than a few people who Kaldalis had met on the boat and assumed were adventurers, who now identified themselves as Adventurers League officials. Kaldalis overheard what most of the quests were for as others accepted them. By and large, they were for gathering supplies, and Kaldalis went around the nascent camp accepting them for himself, his quest list populated gradually with the required supplies. He finished by talking to the vathon quartermaster from the ship, handing over the collected parcels from the quest he’d already had. The reward for that was his first batch of Guild Credits - only fifty of them, which he found wasn’t enough for anything of real value - and a little chime that he came to associate with gaining EXP.

“Alright, so we should split up for this,” he suggested once the trio of he, Balrim, and Myrin reconvened. “It’ll maximize our collective EXP gain if we don’t take a penalty for being partied up.”

“I don’t know,” Balrim said immediately, his scaled tail flicking anxiously. “Everyone’s talking about the Infernal Horde now that we’ve landed. We don’t want to be caught out alone, right?”

“Listen, after being cooped up on a boat for two weeks, I’m ready to fucking burst,” Kaldalis said, stretching his arms. “And being bottled up with no chance to scrape up even the smallest bit of EXP out of anything has me a bit antsy. What if after this we put the boat back together and get back out on the water for another two weeks?”

“We’re not going to pretend you didn’t just save our asses back there,” Myrin said. “I don’t want to owe you my life for the rest of this trip. Give us a chance to pay you back, why don’t you?”

“We’ll have plenty of chances for that.” Kaldalis waved dismissively. “We’re going to be a team here, right? We’ll be saving each other's lives time and again over the next five years.” He gestured around, encompassing the people already spreading down the beach, diving back into the water, and pushing their way into the forest. “It also looks like we’ll be more than capable of staying in a loose group. I don’t think there’ll be any real danger here. And if there is, we won’t be far from each other.”

Balrim made a noise of protest in his throat, but, with a grimace, acquiesced. “Alright, as long as we work together. If we work on the same quest at the same time, we can be sure we’re close enough that none of us get unlucky, isolated, and in trouble.”

“Alright,” Kaldalis said, willing his minimap back up. There were visible circles on the minimap now, and by focusing, he could tell which quest on his list corresponded to each circle. “So where do we want to start?”

They decided to start working close to camp and then spread out, as everyone else seemed to be doing the opposite. There were quests to clean up the camp, quests to gather more supplies from the shipwreck, and quests to go into the forest to hunt for new supplies from the wilderness. It seemed like everyone was eager to explore their new surroundings rather than help develop the campsite, and Kaldalis was partial to working where he wasn’t going to be jostling people and constantly competing for quest drops and gathering nodes.

Clearing the camp was easy. There was a lot to do, but none of the tasks were challenges. They gathered the scattered wood and branches across the ground and collected them in one pile - to be used for firewood and kindling later - and then took a second pass, pulling out shrubs and leafy brush to reduce the area to just grass and low creeping vines. After that, all that was left was to find the rocks and bits of stone, adding those to their own pile. There were some of the ship crew already setting to work pitching tents on the now-cleared area, while a few of the Adventurers League folk had some farming implements and were flattening out the lumpier parts of the ground.

Balrim and Myrin moved onto the beach for the next quest, and Kaldalis followed suit. There were three different quests for the area: locating a little natural driftwood, securing a few planks of usable salvage wood from the ship, and then collecting meat samples from any lingering nautilobsters that were still picking over the wreckage. All of them were trivial tasks, but were significantly complicated by the sheer numbers of folk vying for the same resources. More than once, Kaldalis reached for a piece of driftwood just as someone else snatched it away. And more than once he reached for a bit of ship debris and stopped himself, allowing someone else to take it first rather than become the snatcher he had so come to despise.

The questing group as a whole began to move clockwise around the camp, heading towards the first quest objective that was located in the forest. Balrim and Myrin were heading in that direction as well, and he was reluctant to follow. The quests had all taken so much longer just by virtue of the crowd all working on them at once.

“I’m not about that quest train life,” he muttered to himself as he turned and faced the other way.

He wasn’t the only person moving counterclockwise around the camp to the quest markers on the other side, but it was definitely the road less traveled. Something told him that this decision would make all the difference. He was hopeful that it would be for the better.