By the time he finished dinner, it was just about sunset. Despite being denied his nap, and the exhaustion he still felt in his bones, his mind wasn’t about to cooperate and let him sleep. While his earlier struggle was from fear of what he had already faced, he could tell already that he was nervous about what was to come. What if the Infernal Horde returned before the new incense was ready? What if the defenses they were building weren’t enough to hold off such an attack? What if their victory today was just delaying the inevitable?

Kaldalis needed a distraction. Considering it had been a couple of days since he had been out on the water, it seemed a proper time to get some fishing done. Sunset was prime time, right? Then again, his experience was primarily with lake fishing. The ocean might be a whole different thing.

When he reached the beach, he saw that someone had anchored some thick logs into the sand and built a floating dock out of what looked like shipwreck detritus. Considering the gentle incline of the sand out into the water, it meant his fishing wasn’t limited to the nearest few feet of shallows. Though it looked like if high tide came in, he’d have to swim back to shore, since the near end of the dock was well below the high tide marks on the beach. He wasn’t planning on staying out all night, so he resolved to just fish a little while; just until the tide would start to make the trip back to dry land a challenge.

He tested his weight on the dock carefully before committing to it.

At first glance, it was hastily lashed-together. It was made of a bunch of different planks and pieces of differing colorations and ages that had been lined up carefully and fastened together with algae-covered rope. But once Kaldalis was standing on it, it felt relatively solid. Despite the ramshackle appearance of the materials used, whoever had put it together had taken their time to get it right.

Standing out at the far end of the dock, Kaldalis felt a sense of calm. He could hear the ocean lapping at the bottom of the dock just below his feet, and with each sound, he could feel the gentle movement of the waves in the dock itself, and his tail shifted back and forth along with it, keeping his footing steady. The sunset was behind him, and as he looked out over the ocean, he could see the first few pinpricks of stars above the horizon.

Behind a few scattered clouds right above him, he could make out the moon just barely peeking through. And then beyond it, nearly on the other horizon, there was a second moon rising, larger than the first.

He took a deep breath of the sea air, feeling the cool wind on his indigo skin. Whether or not he could catch anything was immaterial. This was the relaxation he needed to clear his head and calm his nerves.

“Beautiful night, huh?”

Kaldalis almost jumped right off the dock at the sudden question. The only reason he kept his feet was the instinctive whipping of his tail, maintaining his balance despite his surprised jump. Behind him was an elderly-looking suyon, equipped with a fishing pole and wearing dark green waders.

“Sorry, kid,” the suyon said with a chuckle, “I thought you heard me coming.”

“No, it’s my fault,” Kaldalis said, running his hands over the close-cropped hair on the back of his head. “I got caught up in the calm out here and wasn’t paying attention. I think if you hadn’t walked up I might have fallen asleep on my feet and dropped right into the drink.”

“I picked a good spot for this, eh?” the old man said, patting the nearest of the dock’s anchoring posts. “I wanted to set it somewhere where, if you faced just the right way...” He raised his hands, forming a frame with his fingers. “Then you could look out at the ocean and not see any sign of land.”

“You built this, then?” Kaldalis asked, turning back around and regarding the sea. “Well, you certainly accomplished what you set out to do.” He turned back and gestured at the old man’s fishing pole. “How’s the fishing out here?”

“Great, at the right times of day. You a fisher, too?”

“A bit of a dabbler,” Kaldalis admitted, opening his inventory and equipping his own rod. “I used to when I was a kid, but my dad was the one who knew all the tricks of the trade. I didn’t really retain much of it, so I’m kind of making it up as I go now.”

Kaldalis didn’t really know how to explain how his other experiences with fishing - the reason he was driven to pursue it now - happened in other videogames, especially without explaining that this world was a videogame, too.

“So when is the fishing best out here?” Kaldalis asked.

“It’s always best at-” The suyon trailed off a moment, and looked up at the moons. “Well, at Arma tide, but I’ve met more than a few landlocked anglers who never knew what that meant.”

“Well, you can count one more. What’s Arma tide?”

“Well, naturally, it’s named for the moon.” The old man pointed up at the smaller of the two bodies in the sky. “ If you didn’t grow up on the ocean, you might never have learned more than the tides themselves. As the moons move, so too does the water level of the oceans. High and low tide are made by the motions of Kaskuh,” he said, pointing at the larger moon on the horizon, “and when tides are the highest and lowest, it’s when Arma and Kaskuh work together. But in between those farthest extremes, once every day, there’s a time when Arma pulls against Kashuk, and the tides wobble in between, never coming all the way in or going all the way out.” The old man pointed back at where the water was just lapping around the shore-side end of the dock, not quite lifting it off of the sand on that side. “And that’s when the fishing is best. The water moving in and out several feet at a time every hour or so stirs up the bottom. That’s when the fish are most active, looking for food.”

“I never noticed the tides being so-” He coughed, stopping himself before he could say that they were weird. “Uh, interesting. And we were on that ship for two weeks.”

“Well, you wouldn’t notice on the boat unless you were steering it,” the man said with a laugh. “To the untrained eye, the water is just water if you’re not on the shore to see the way it moves over the course of the day.”

Kaldalis had to admit that it did make sense. Without land or a dock to act as a frame of reference, the tide rising and falling would just blend in with whatever other motions the waves were doing.

“So, kid,” the old suyon said, “if you’re going to be fishing out here, maybe I could talk you into doing some work for me.”

Kaldalis perked up at that. As soon as the old man said the words, that rainbow shimmer outlined his figure.

A quest? No. A fishing quest?

This was something he could get behind.

“Oh, absolutely,” Kaldalis said immediately. “What do you need, old timer?”

“There’s a breed of fish out here around the island,” he said. “It reminds me of something we had back home on Round Island. We called them ‘fisher’s bane’ not because they’re hard to catch, but because of their diet. They eat the eggs of other fish, thinning their populations. They’re also a garbage fish themselves - not worth wasting the time cooking, and not useful for anything else.” He waved his hand first at the ocean, and then back at the island. “They thrive anywhere, too. Freshwater, saltwater, brackish estuaries, salt marshes, anywhere. They mystify conventional logic, and reproduce in such numbers that no natural predator keeps up.”

“So you want me to catch a few and thin them out in turn,” Kaldalis guessed. “Show them the results of some unnatural predation.”

“Bingo,” the old man said as he snapped his fingers. “Back when I was young, we were throwing them back when we brought them in. It meant we were killing off the precious fish we wanted, but not culling the little buggers in equal proportion. Nearly drove the local varieties of gar to extinction.” He shook his head. “We managed to catch our mistake in time, and by culling them, we saved our traditional industries for food and potions.”

“How many should I get for you?” Kaldalis asked.

“As many as you can.” The old man laughed, but held up a hand before Kaldalis could say anything else. “But that’s not a useful number, is it? If you want to make a real difference, and warm this old man’s heart, reel in and bring to me a whole brood’s worth.”

“And a brood’s worth would be…?”

“A single female can lay as many as ten thousand eggs. So if you bring me ten thousand of them-”

“Ten thousand?” Kaldalis almost staggered back off the edge of the dock. “That many?”

“You don’t have to get them all at once,” the old man said defensively. “And if you just catch a few dozen here and there, it’ll add up. Anything less, and you’re not putting a dent in their numbers. Instead, you’re just milking me for a fistful of crescents.”

“For ten thousand fish, I hope you’re offering more than a fistful of crescents.”

“Don’t you worry, kid,” the old man said, the defensiveness leaving him and a peculiar glint coming to his eye, “the reward is well worth the arduous task. Legendary, even. Considering how few people have even taken me up on the offer - and how few have returned with more than five or six after that - you might have a chance at earning it.”

Kaldalis paused at that. Reward for an arduous task? Something legendary? Round island? He was skeptical, but intrigued.

“You know what? I’m in,” Kaldalis said at last. “What’s the worst thing that happens? I eventually become a master fisherman?”

“There are worse ways to spend your time,” the old man said with a grin. “So the buggers you’re looking for are about the size of my hand. White-scaled sides, with some blacker scales on top. Too thin to have a mouthful meat on ‘em, even if they didn’t taste like earwax and pocket lint. While they call ‘em ‘fisher’s bane’ where I’m from, other places have called them pale perch.” He gestured at the water. “Just throw out a line, and you’ll get a dozen of the voracious little bastards in an hour, I guarantee you.”

Yet another quest appeared on the right side of Kaldalis’s vision, beneath the rest.

Bane’s Bane

0/10,000 Pale Perch

Seeing the actual number, it hit him just how many ten thousand was. If the old man was right and he’d have a dozen in an hour, that meant over eight-hundred hours of fishing.

That was over a month of fishing non stop twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.

If he fished in viable waters for two hours a day, it would still take more than a year to-

He shook his head, getting the inner accountant to shut up. He was in this world for at least five years, right? He’d only need to make a bit of an effort, and he’d get there eventually. Putting it into that kind of perspective meant that if the reward was supposed to be worth it, it had to be worth nearly a thousand hours of grinding, and potentially months - or years - worth of effort.

With his decision made, he settled in and started fishing. He wondered if the old man would want to chat while they did it, but he kept quiet, and the fishing became almost a meditative experience. He used the pickled roe bait he’d bought aboard the ship, and as suspected, the egg-eating pale perch were drawn to his hook almost as soon as it hit the water. The small fish also didn’t put up too much of a fight in the reeling minigame. It was a bit time-consuming, however, since each fish took only a few minutes to reel all the way in. Within an hour, he didn’t have a dozen, he had nearly a score. An hour after that, he had thirty-five of them. A fair bit better than the old man’s estimate.

By then, the tide was starting to rise again, and Kaldalis felt ready to get a bit of sleep. As much as he wanted to chase this down and get a real head-start on what would become a mountain of fish, tomorrow was going to be busy, and he didn’t want to spend all night out here. It was late enough already.

“Done already?” the old man asked.

“Yeah, I have a lot of business to deal with tomorrow. If I don’t get enough sleep, it could be the end of the whole camp.”

“Kids today,” the old man said with a grin and a shake of his head. “Youth is wasted on the young, if you’re just going to sleep it all away.”

“Yeah, but we can’t all be at our peak like you.” Kaldalis laughed. He hopped off of the dock and over the foot of water between the shoreside end and the sand before making his way back up to the camp to catch his much-needed shuteye.

The old man shouted something, but Kaldalis only flipped him a wave in response.