There were few certainties in life, with death and taxes being the two everyone always called out.

Incorrectly, of course.

With enough money, it was demonstrably true that taxes could be avoided. And there were companies working on making the other avoidable as well, either through medical marvels or consciousness uploads. Or robotic exoskeletons.

But there were some things that not even money could circumvent.

The estate of Charles Schulz would not accept any amount of money to stop Lucy from pulling the ball out from in front of Charlie Brown. And no matter how much market research or demographic targeting or social media management is done, if two characters so much as stand next to each other in a piece of media, someone on the internet will draw or write them fucking.

Even if they canonically have incompatible alien genitals.

Life, uh, finds a way.

The certainty that Kaldalis was grappling with now - and had been grappling with almost non-stop for the last two days - was that dungeon PUGs were painful.

Not to say that everyone was terrible. But enough people were terrible that every group had a struggle.

For some, it was poor DPS players making the fights run long. Those were a circle of hell he was used to and just gritted his teeth through.

Other groups were plagued by poor healers, which made fights riskier than they had to be. And put more stress on him to perform optimally.

Some of his runs suffered both at the same time, and in those dungeons, he wanted to just turn around and walk out. He didn’t, because this was his job and he was good at it, but they tested his patience.

The runs made him really miss his favorite de-stressing technique: dinner at Hong’s Gourmet with a beer and some great conversation with his favorite server, Amy. While he was sure someone in camp could put together some sort of alcoholic beverage (since it wasn’t entirely difficult), no one had that he noticed and that was a crying shame.

No one also made fried mashi or sesame balls.

It was mostly just fried fish, or some weird jungle creature they butchered up and served over some weird jungle vegetable they’d yanked out of the ground.

Kaldalis still felt he was the lucky one, though. Balrim, Myrin, and Haldir all shared horror stories about their dungeons, and each one included either a bad DPS or a bad tank, with Myrin and Haldir suffering from the addition of a bad healer.

At the very least, all of Kaldalis’s groups had a pretty decent tank.

This was his seventh run through the dungeon.

After so many runs, he had it basically down to a science. This was in no small part due to the help his friends had lent him. Together, they’d determined which route was the most efficient to follow in order to make the dungeon as fast as possible without adding too much complexity. The chiraptor king and the cervis mantid mechanics were both time-consuming to handle, so they had organized checking different paths until they had found all the potential mechanics.

Together they collectively chose the best route.

All told, there were six routes through the middle part of the dungeon. Each route had a different boss at the end.

Kaldalis had been hopeful for the dungeon wombrachyura, a shelled quadruped whose mechanic was to become periodically immobile and immune to damage. He liked the route because the trash mobs along it - the softshell wombrachyura - were the least threatening. It made the trip through that part of the dungeon a breeze.

But everyone else (Myrin, mostly) complained that the damage immunity was slowing them down more than the simplicity of the mechanic was earning them.

Instead, everyone had elected the route that ended with the invading vespulingua. It was a mammoth-like creature that had a massive cone attack for it’s primary mechanic. It was avoidable, especially with Kaia’s Flicker.

Kaldalis hated the route. It was filled with redjackets. They were giant bees that were agile in combat, and their extremely high fire affinity meant they did considerable elemental damage.

But if everyone else preferred it, that was it. He wasn’t going to be a dick and drag all his groups a different way. Not only would a different route vary how many groups he could run through, but it would mean different drop tables.

After all, Kaldalis only had an issue with the redjackets when he had a bad healer.

A competent healer, or even an average one, could meter their healing output. Good timing would help to keep the damage from becoming overwhelming. A bad healer, however, would panic, overreact, and flounder. That put more pressure on Kaldalis to avoid damage to keep his health up between cooldowns.

Which also meant the DPS would have to move to keep up with him. And drag out the fights.

He felt a real hatred for incompetent healers.

You know.

A healer like this one.

The encampment was on its last few runs, finally. This meant that most of the PCs had already run through. While great for morale and also for giving the expendable soldiers time to practice their skills with the Flicker, it was bad for those who had to manage the dregs.

Kaldalis was stuck with an all NPC party. There was one saving grace: Heluna, the foul-mouthed sailor, was one of his DPS.

The other was Bangen, the vathon researcher.

That meant his healer was Sardol, the manager.

Kaldalis had met Sardol once before this. He was a bespectacled human who was part of Onirioago’s inner circle. Sardol was in charge of overseeing and coordinating the teams that were working on replacing the censer that would protect them from the Infernal Horde.

Sitting at the table with Onirioago was tough. Tougher still was corralling the chaotic feline energy of bored adventurers towards productive tasks. Sardol did both with a wry smile and an even tone.

Kaldalis didn’t have reason to doubt the man’s competence.

Until now.

In combat, Sardol was an absolute mess.

He presented a cool, dispassionate front most other times. But when faced with monsters, he panicked. It was as if all his competence and cunning leaked out as soon as weapons were unsheathed.

It mostly seemed to be leaving through his armpits. There were dark stains on the man’s clothes well before they approached the end of the dungeon.

Heluna and Bangen fared much better.

Bangen had needed a bit of coaxing. Her immediate response to danger was to swing her spear around like a baseball bat. But she was nice and friendly to talk to between fights that he couldn’t really be mad at her for her mediocre performance.

Heluna was a treat. She wielded twin daggers, and while her strikes were a bit clumsy and unpracticed, her movements were smooth. The bonus was that she was also hilarious. Every swing was accompanied by a blue streak of muttered curses, some of which were new to Kaldalis.

It took everything he had not to burst into laughter at her every attack.

Really though, he’d had far worse DPS in other runs, so it was nice that the bar of “average competence” was being met for a change.

Except for Sardol.

Despite the struggles, Kaldalis soldiered on. The whole run had become more of a chore than a challenge now. He was almost done, and once he was done, he was done.

All that was left was the doing.

It was really a shame, though. Even the previously-terrifying great white lepidae was routine. He’d mastered the timing of the stone geyser attacks that accompanied the poison pool at its feet. Kaldalis was reflexively calling out the mechanics before they happened, carefully pointing the boss’s new cone attack away from the rest of the group.

It was all so…

Boring.

Kaldalis had to remind himself he wasn’t doing it for fun. This was his duty.

These were three more people who would have Kaia’s Flicker at their fingertips to handle the Infernal Horde. There hadn’t been another attack since that second raid, and the encampment was scrambling to take advantage of every second.

Town-building quests were the primary goal to protect the settlement. The killbox had to be rebuilt, the walls reinforced, and there was plenty of stuff the researchers and crafters needed collected. The secondary goal was Kaldalis and his team - along with any willing volunteers - scheduling dungeon run after dungeon run to get everyone through to the library at the end to protect the individual people with Kaia’s Flicker.

Not that he didn’t gain something from it personally. Each run gave him another round of the repeatable quest to provide Ikzoz with another scroll from the library, which represented a big chunk of experience.

Including the trash mobs and bosses, he received more than half a level worth of experience with every run.

After two days, he’d climbed all the way up to level nine, and was most of the way through it. Not only that, but he had a full set of at-level gear.

He felt truly powerful, even if that power was being used in service to such a repetitive task.

After their run was done - lepidae down, scroll recovered, and Kaia’s Flicker learned - Sardol couldn’t wait to get on the elevator out of the underground city and rush back to the safety of the camp. Bangen apologized the whole way up that she couldn’t stick around and chat, as she had duties with the research team looking at the notes Kaldalis and his friends had gathered from killing the two malum during the second raid.

Heluna, however, seemed to wish they could spend more time in the city. She was glad for the break from the laborious salvage operations of the sunken Persimmon.

Kaldalis wanted to linger with her, but he knew better. They’d discovered that the dungeon wouldn’t reset for the next group until the previous ones vacated the city. And there were only a few more runs to go before he and his friends could be done with this damned place.

They made it outside without incident, and after showing them how to carefully jump down the ledge he pointed them towards the encampment. Kaldalis, however, took Heluna with him back through the jungle to the dungeon entrance. He knew the next group would be waiting, and Kaldalis thought he could buy Heluna as much time away from her normal duties as possible.

What were friends for, after all.

When they reached the opening at the base of the tree that led down into the dungeon’s tunnels, Kaldalis motioned to Heluna to stop. “Hey Haldir, are you here?”

The teal-skinned vathon emerged from the forest with three more NPCs in tow - fellow NPCs, Kaldalis reminded himself, as Haldir was the only member of his original group who wasn’t a PC with a physical body out in meatspace. Ikzoz, the research leader, was among them, as well as the architect bhogad who had done most of the work on the town’s walls, and another of the sailors, who gave a brief wave to Heluna.

“We were just waiting on you,” Haldir said. “Though it looks like you lost a couple of your group. They aren’t still below, are they?”

Kaldalis shook his head. “They had other work to do and had to rush home. And you can call it an act of peerless bravado if you want, but I felt confident that I didn’t need a full party to brave the dangerous wilderness barely outside of camp just to tell you we were clear. I don’t mean to brag, but I almost got hit in the face with a branch earlier. Very dangerous.”

“How heroic,” Haldir said with a smirk.

“I don’t know how to put this,” Kaldalis said, running a hand over his close-cropped hair. “But I’m kind of a big deal.”

“Don’t let it go to your horns,” Haldir said with a chuckle. “At any rate - I’d love to stay and catch up, but the sooner I start this run, the sooner Garyung can start the run after me. And the sooner Balrim can start the run after that.”

“Yeah, and we can’t have him starting too late or we’ll never hear the end of it when he has to walk back in the dark.” Kaldalis laughed, remembering the absolute ass-chewing he got on the first day of this clown fiesta.

“Do me a favor, would you? When you get back to town, let Garyung know I went in. And be sure to thank him for all his help. He’s run almost as many people through as the four of us have.”

“I owe him enough already,” Kaldalis said with a frown. “He’s taking Onirioago in on his run, saving the rest of us the headache. Just saying thanks doesn’t seem like nearly enough.”

Behind Haldir, Ikzoz cleared his throat.

“Sorry,” Kaldalis said with a wince. “It was just a joke. I wouldn’t dare speak ill of the expedition leader-”

“Between us and the trees, she is a trial for us all,” Ikzoz said with the smallest smile. “Not just you. I interrupt not to defend her, however, but to get us back to the business at hand.”

Kaldalis nodded, firmly. He clapped Haldir on the shoulder. “Of course. I won’t keep you any longer. And I’ll grab Garyung for you.”

“Thanks,” Haldir said, leading his group into the dungeon. “We’ll talk later.”

Kaldalis and Heluna left the dungeon entrance and went back around to the encampment. It was early afternoon now, and their time in the dungeon had meant they’d skipped their midday meal.

“I suppose we part ways here, then,” Kaldalis said. “I have to catch lunch, after tagging Garyung to let him know he’s on deck.”

“Right. And I have to check in with the captain,” Heluna grumbled. “But I was hoping for a chance to catch up with you. This dungeon was a little more fucking hectic than I expected. Stupid human should have his glasses checked. Pretty sure he’s supposed to hit the tanks with the heals, not his own fucking feet.” She grinned, not skipping a beat. “I have some time this evening, if you’re not busy.”

“Oh, well… I got both of my dungeon runs for the day out already,” Kaldalis said. “Unless the Infernal Horde attacks this afternoon, I think I can take a break from fishing to have a chat.”

“Dinner, then?”

“Uh. Sure.”

Heluna smiled wide and gave him a friendly punch to the shoulder before heading off to return to her work. She turned halfway back and waved, meaning Kaldalis had to pretend that she hadn’t bruised him through his armor. When she was out of sight, he went off in search of everyone’s favorite bogard tank.