Out of the fire...

“So,” Kaldalis said, trying to ignore their glares. “Myrin. Why, uh, why did you say something?” The question felt weak, and he knew already he was going to regret asking it. Just the same, he had to press on. “If you’d just accepted the praise, you might have gotten something out of it, too.”

“And split your grand reward for your stupid risk?” Balrim snapped. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“I was thinking more about how any reward would have felt empty,” Myrin said, elbowing Balrim in the hip. “I’m not about receiving a reward I didn’t earn.” She crossed her arms with a grimace. “And she was staring at my chest instead of my face the whole time I was in there... I would rather avoid the attention of that kind of leadership. Ugh.”

“If you wanted to share,” Balrim said, choosing his words more carefully with a glance at Myrin, “then we should have stayed as a group and gone together. And then it would have been smarter and safer.” The talsar reached out a clawed hand and put it on Kaldalis’s shoulder. “You could have been hurt. Or even killed.”

“I was fine, though,” Kaldalis said, though he didn’t shrug off the friendly grip on his shoulder.

“But you might not have been. And then where would you be? Miles off the beaten path, a feast for some monster?” Slit-pupiled eyes narrowed. “Sure, you would have respawned, but there are costs associated with dying. I’m sure you’d rather avoid them.”

“But being in a party wouldn’t have avoided anything,” he protested. “I was in the right place at the right time, that was all. And without any sort of party chat, I wouldn’t have been able to get your help anyway.”

“So you meant to split off from the start?” Myrin asked. “Then maybe he’s right.” She reached up and grabbed Balrim’s elbow, pulling him away. “We should just leave him to hunt all the glory he wants without us.”

“Come on,” Kaldalis said, “we can stick together for the next round of quests, then, if you want a part of the next reward.”

“You misunderstand,” Myrin said, “we’re not jealous. We’re disappointed.”

And with that, they walked away, vanishing into the camp. Balrim looked over his shoulder once, saw Kaldalis was watching, and looked forward quickly instead again.

That suited Kaldalis just fine. If they were going to pull the good cop/bad cop routine on him like they were his parents or something, he didn’t have the time or the patience to coddle them into thinking he was okay. And anyway, as they had spoken, whatever timer the meeting had corresponded to expired, and there was a bunch of new available quests scattered around the camp.

A flurry of activity had begun around him of others grabbing quests and heading back out into the wilderness again. Kaldalis had already gotten his first taste of sweet sweet character progression, and he wanted much, much more.

But, speaking of progression, Kaldalis hadn’t noticed how much the little camp was starting to become an outpost. The tents were set up into a kind of living space with crudely-constructed cots. A large canopy-like tent had been erected above a long table lined with chairs, making a sort of outdoor mess hall. Right next to that there was a hastily-prepared cooking area, where a trio of cooks were working with the meat and fruits recovered by the first round of quests.

Near at hand, it looked like more permanent structures were starting to go up. Recovered planks and timber from the ship were being repurposed, hammered together in the rough wooden skeleton of a watchtower. Nearby that, next to the big red-canvas meeting tent, a building was being plotted out with roughly the same dimensions at the tent. Unlike the hastily-built watchtower, this one was being built more properly, with a solid foundation area being dug out of the dirt to anchor the structure before any other actions were taken.

Kaldalis recognized that the work underway would need far more resources than that first round of quests had given the camp. He determined to track down the quests that would help keep construction going so that these tasks wouldn’t be interrupted by a need for more resources. Nevermind that there were dozens of other adventurers doing the same quests.

And nevermind that he was going to take all the quests anyway.

He had to get leveled up before Nakala joined.

Two weeks on a boat was a really long time to not be leveling.

Before getting to the quests, though, he wanted to get on his new cosmetic gear to give it a try. The kampfplatte armor looked imposing, but not necessarily protective, with parts of his body protected more by leather and padding than by the metal plates, especially his joints. He would have been grateful for the freedom of movement, but the armor didn’t seem to impede him at all.

Once it was on, he didn’t feel the weight of it. He could jump up and down just fine in it, and doing a few stretches - rolling his arms and doing a few squats - didn’t find any resistance to his range of movement, even when the plated metal pauldrons should have scraped together and stopped him from reaching up.

Then again, he had heard that videogames and popular culture had severely overstated the weight and impediment offered by plate armor.

Perhaps he was expecting an inconvenience that wasn’t realistic. It was a videogame, and cosmetic gear should never impose a disadvantage. He was determined to make this his first experiment with cosmetic gear to see how it served.

Despite a few uncomfortable elements - the molding of the body of the armor really enhanced his hourglass figure, making him think of Myrin’s words about the Expedition Leader’s attention - the half-plate armor made him feel like a real tank.

The next round of quests was more of the same.

Kaldalis wanted to reserve judgement, but it felt kind of lazy, and he hoped the quests would be spiced up in the future. There were ten quests total this time, but with a similar split and design. Four of them were to kill various monsters for drops. The camp needed more hides and vines, naturally, since they were critical components in repairing the tents. Or building more.

The first of the new quests involved fighting something called a lontra, a large vermin common the world over, described affectionately as a danger noodle. It was, effectively, a furred serpent, complete with venomous bite. According to the quest, they were a pest, and would infiltrate the camp’s food stores and gorge themselves if left unchecked. Apparently domesticated lontra were sometimes kept as pets - with their venom sacs removed - but wild ones were not to be underestimated just because they were cute.

Kaldalis didn’t have a problem fighting them after the first one reared up and bared its huge dripping fangs at him. It cured him of the notion that it was an innocent furry friend.

The fourth monster fighting quest was disguised as a gathering quest, instructing him to harvest eggs from small nests hidden in the trees. This brought on attack by a bobcat-like tree-climbing beast, called a kismeleon, which were always hiding nearby using their camouflage, and only attacked when the nests were disturbed. Kaldalis suspected that they were just being spawned by the act of searching the nest, but when he did a thorough search of a nest area, he was able to spot it first, and ambush it before he could get hit with its tongue attack.

A kismeleon’s tongue attack inflicted a new status ailment, called “burn” which had some interesting implications. It did negligible damage, especially considering his brush with poison, but if he moved around, especially to dodge the follow-up attacks, the debuff did double damage. An interesting mechanic, but it was one he would have expected to come from a boss fight, not from a random quest mob.

Annoying.

The other quests involved gathering various other materials for the camp.

Kaldalis favored doing the mining quests over the harvesting ones. The harvesting quests involved fetching more medicinal herbs, fruits, and even a few edible flowers. Certainly it was important to gather fresh food and not depend entirely on the recovered stores from the ship. But the mining quests involved gathering valuable materials for building the camp.

Stones were needed to help build the foundations of the permanent structures, and the first mining quest sent him farther down the beach to where the sand turned rocky, where a rocky cliff could be seen climbing up out of the ocean. The quest had him using the heavy hammer in his mining toolkit to break pieces off of larger rocks and gather whatever pieces were small enough to put into his inventory. Some of them were fragments, and would be used for skill up turn-ins, but more of them were the desired quest turn-in, thanks to the skill he’d accumulated by the first round of quests.

After that was done, he went into the jungle to find the streams running through the wilderness. His next mining quest was to dig into the streambeds for clay, which he hoped were to be put towards construction rather than pottery.

The last quest was to circle all the way around to where he’d been panning for metal fragments, looking to uncover vine-choked boulders. It was his first feel for what his gaming senses had trained him to recognize as actual mining, as the quest was to use a pick to break apart the large rocks to recover nuggets of raw ore.

When the quests were done, he was feeling a bit better about the cosmetic armor. It felt like he was just wearing a slightly heavier shirt when compared to his starter clothing, and that might have just been because it didn’t bare his arms. He didn’t feel like it offered all that much protection, though.

Or any at all.

When a lontra hit him with its venomous bite, trying to protect himself with the plated gauntlet just got him hit when he could have dodged, dealing the damage and inflicting poison even without the blow sinking into his flesh. Just the same, if it offered neither advantage nor drawback, he didn’t hate how it looked. He’d keep it for now.

When he returned with those quests, turning the first two in got him another level, bringing him up to four, and then the remainder got him a healthy chunk through the rest.

But that didn’t compare to the sense of satisfaction of a day well-spent.

After two weeks on a boat it felt so good to have used his muscles all day long.

At the same time, though, he didn’t feel tired like he did after a day at the gym. Despite his stats not being all that high, he could feel their influence on his body’s function. The day had been one of hard work - hiking through rough terrain for hours, fighting, and using heavy tools - but his high level of vigor made him feel like he could keep going.

However, Kaldalis knew better. If he went back out, he would regret it in the morning. And anyway, it seemed like there were no more quests for the day, so he decided he could wait for the morning.

His stomach growled right on queue, and Kaldalis angled towards the mess hall.

Dinner was some kind of seared fish, served with a topping of a fruity salsa made from the pearpayas the adventurers had gathered. It was a nice hot meal, and it was amazing to taste fresh fruit again after eating aging apple mush in the last few days of the ship’s journey.

He looked for Balrim and Myrin in the crowd at dinner, but he didn’t see them. Perhaps it was their turn to go on a wild adventure and return to an audience with the expedition leader.

Kaldalis supposed he would find out in the morning.