The fish he caught didn’t put up that much of a fight, so Kaldalis assumed (correctly) that it wasn’t the deacon tetra he was after.

When he pulled it up, he saw it was a smaller fish, about the size of one splayed hand, and a drab greyish-brown color. Despite the mundane appearance, the description said that it was prized by cooks, and considered one of the greatest delicacies the jungle had to offer. It was called a dazzling pacu, though he wasn’t sure why. It was a super-plain looking fish, and hadn’t been much of a fight. He supposed the name might be more apt once he saw what it looked like cooked and prepared.

With the first of his freshwater jungle fish in hand, he put his line back out, looking for the next.

“I didn’t know world bosses were a thing, though,” Dalgaard said as they stared up at the starry sky. “It makes sense, though. I mean we did see the Infernal Horde bosses in camp, right? Maybe they’re the same thing.”

“Yeah, I just wish I’d known a bit more about them going in,” Kaldalis said, watching the spot where his fishing line met the water. “They don’t seem to follow the same rules as dungeon bosses.”

“What, because it didn’t drop loot?”

“I mean, yeah,” Kaldalis said, “but I was more concerned about not getting low-man bonuses.”

“Low-man… What?” Dalgaard sat up on one elbow, looking at him with confusion.

“Sorry, low-person bonuses.”

“Yeah, thanks, but that’s not what I meant,” Dalgaard said with a sigh. “What’s a low-man bonus?”

“When I was doing the first dungeon run of the sunken ruins, I got separated from my group in the second part.” Kaldalis grimaced, remembering how much of an idiot he’d been. It was honestly the reason he’d avoided coming out into the jungle alone. “That’s why we did the bit where we sent guides in with everyone. And why everyone was told not to chase the enhydra. You know how every warning label has one dumb fucker attached to it? Yo.”

“So, what?” Dalgaard said with a snarky tone. “You saying that you soloed a boss?”

Kaldalis tried to ignore the flippant comment. “Yeah, I ran the chiraptor wing alone. It was rough, but I had a pretty big edge over the boss. I had some unseen stat bonus that made it possible.”

Something caught his hook, and he muttered a quick “oh, hold on” before focusing on the minigame.

This one put up more of a fight than the pacu had, whipping between the four cardinal directions at a rapid but regular pattern. It felt more like DDR than fishing. It took a few minutes to wear out its stamina, during which time Kaldalis thought he was going to develop a repetitive stress injury.

He hoped this wasn’t the fish Onirioago was after, because if it was, he didn’t want to come back out for more.

Luckily, it wasn’t. Unluckily, it meant he had to cast his line out again. What he caught was an aptly named dancing plec, which looked like a cross between a catfish and a pillbug. It had a broad head with whiskers dangling off the front, and a body covered in overlapping segmented bony plates. It made sense that fish in this region would develop defenses - the first thing he’d heard about jungle fish was that they were aggressive. Though so far he’d just seen a sideways pancake and an armored bottom-feeder. He hadn’t seen anything really threatening yet.

“Alright,” he said as he put his line back out. “What was I saying?”

“The low-man bonus,” Dalgaard said with a yawn. “You mentioned you soloed a dungeon boss with it.”

“Yeah, and I was doing way more damage to it than I did to the other bosses leading up to it,” Kaldalis said. “And more than that, I saw something I haven’t seen before or since. I was landing critical hits.”

“I knew crits were a thing in this game. But I just figured the people I’ve seen land them had gear for it.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Kaldalis said, “like, Myrin especially. You can tell when she lands a crit based on how loud she laughs after.”

“Haha, yeah. I told you I ran a dungeon with her, too, right?”

“Mmhmm.” Kaldalis watched his line. “I’d have thought if the daemonraptor was a boss, we would have gotten a similar boost. But we didn’t. That’s an important detail to know, especially with the Infernal Horde still lurking out here.”

“So what do we do with this information?” Dalgaard asked. “How do we use this to our advantage?”

“I don’t know if we can,” Kaldalis said, slowly reeling his lure in, making it spin enticingly for his next catch. “But we can avoid trying to game the system that won’t be gamed. If the low-man bonus applied in the overworld, we could just make a bunch of two- or three-person parties and attack all together with the stat bonuses. Without being able to cheat that bonus, a full raid party would be the way to go, so that we don’t have to be yelling out our hit point totals to the healers the whole time.”

“Makes sense,” Dalgaard said.

Kaldalis fell silent as he got another bite.

This one put up more of a fight, though it didn’t compare to the rare fish he’d fought before. He could feel the power behind its pull, and while it didn’t feel like it was going to rip the rod out of his hands, he still had to plant one foot forward to avoid unbalancing and falling face-first into the lake. He was hopeful that this was Onirioago’s quarry, but it turned out to be something called a spotted temensis - a larger green-yellow fish with a large mouth and white spots all over its sides.

“At least I’m finding all sorts of new and exciting vendor trash,” he grumbled, putting his line back out in the water.

“You could try moving around,” Dalgaard said. “Rotate around and try to see if there’s a different fishing spot in the same lake.”

“It’s only been three casts. I don’t have a reason to expect to get it in the first ten minutes. My other quest fish I had to keep at it for over an hour.”

“Just trying to help,” Dalgaard said with a dismissive wave.

“No, it’s good thinking,” Kaldalis said with a frustrated sigh. “The quartermaster said that jungle fish could be territorial. Maybe I just need to find its territory.”

“If you gotta move around, don’t worry about me,” Dalgaard said, gesturing around the little clearing. “I’m just making some long-term plans here.”

“Yeah? What are you thinking?”

“Well, I build the cottage right over there,” they said, gesturing towards a spot down where the stream broke out of the lake. “Put a little water mill in the stream. Not sure what for. Maybe just the aesthetic. Build a little wooden fence around it and line up some stones in an inviting little trail. My instinct says to build a hammock, but this grass is so soft. And it’s hard to build a hammock for two.”

“Oh? You have someone in mind to join you in this hypothetical cottage-core fantasy?”

“Not currently,” Dalgaard admitted, “But I’m open to the possibility. It is a fantasy after all. I can have a wife in a fantasy, right?”

“I’m not judging,” Kaldalis said, watching his line out in the water. “I was just curious.”

“And we’ll grow wheat and mill our own flour and bake bread all day. And lay out here in this exact spot and stare at the stars every night.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re asleep, Dalgaard,” Kaldalis said with a smirk. “Because that sounds like a nice dream.”

“Then shut up a minute,” they said, rolling over and giving a dismissive wave. “Because if this is what I get to dream about I’ll kill you if you wake me up.”

“I prefer peace and quiet when I fish anyway,” Kaldalis said with a flash of teeth he knew the kid couldn’t see in the dark.

Dalgaard didn’t respond anyway, and he wasn’t sure if they’d fallen asleep already or were just trying to. It suited him just fine to let sleeping healers lie.

He focused on fishing.

The next hour of fishing filled him with a sense of serenity. As their voices went silent, the sounds of the nighttime jungle came to the fore again. There was the distant shriek of some unknown bird, and the quiet burbling of the nearby stream. It was like one of those ambient white noise recordings. As he relaxed, the two moons slowly made their way across the sky above. Kaldalis tried to keep time using them as a guide.

He caught a lot more of the spotted temensis than anything else. The dancing plec was a rarer catch, but was often enough to give him an arm workout. He even caught three pale perch out here, despite the fact that he was using a lure instead of pickled roe. The dazzling pacu was the rarest, with just that first one sitting alone in his inventory.

As he fished, he followed Dalgaard’s advice, working his way around the lake, moving to the left. The human healer was still within clear view in the silvery moonlight - or, at least, the depressed patch of grass where they were laying was a clearly visible mark in the otherwise-even greenery.

“Maybe I need to take a different tack,” Kaldalis muttered as he fought with another dancing plec. “Or, rather, a different tackle.”

Once he reeled in his catch, he took the spinner lure off his line. After a moment’s hesitation, he attached the metal minnow lure. He checked the knot three times before he even thought about casting it, and then stopped mid-cast to check it a fourth time. This was the only one of these he had, after all. If he lost it he was going to be very upset. He didn’t have a replacement, and it was the most expensive lure he’d bought.

He reeled slowly, pulling the lure through the water, knowing the concave shape of the false fish’s mouth was causing it to jitter and jump, flashing its metallic sides at anything nearby. He kept himself braced for some kind of monster to rip the rod out of his hands, inch after carefully-measured inch of line. At long last, his lure came back to him. He’d reeled it all the way in without getting a bite.

“Fuck,” he said simply, staring out at the water. “Bad lure, or bad luck?”

He weighed his options for a moment and shrugged. He took another step to his right and threw the line out again. The movement meant he was now almost on the opposite bank of the lake from Dalgaard - about fifty feet away - but it had been moving in slow increments over an hour. It didn’t seem like he’d gone that far.

His mind changed about that as a cloud passed before Kaskuh in the sky, blocking out the bulk of the moonlight. As soon as its silvery light was no longer filling the clearing, it went black enough that he found himself enclosed in a bubble of darkvision that didn’t reach all the way back to their resting place.

“Double fuck,” Kaldalis said. He sped up his reeling, intending to retrieve his lure and get back within vision range of the kid.

Just then, something struck at his lure. It didn’t immediately bite, but he felt an abrupt tug. He hoped that he was reeling too fast for whatever it was to catch his lure. He didn’t want to cut his line and lose the lure. Unfortunately, another tug came, and this one wasn’t abrupt. This was a real bite. The sudden tension pulled him forward as surely as if Garyung had shoved him from behind.

His tail flicked, giving him the balance to land on his feet, even if it was up to his ankles in the lake. His first instinct was to cut the line, but he didn’t want to lose the lure. More than that, though, this was a serious fish. What if this was the deacon tetra he was after?

“Triple fuck,” he said through gritted teeth. He hoped Dalgaard would be okay in the dark for a few minutes while he dealt with this fish.