After recovering from the monster catch, Kaldalis laid out on the beach to stare up at the sky. Ein seemed similarly pooped from his antics and flopped down in the cook of Kaldalis’s arm and they relaxed on the cold sand. He watched the blue sky through the cracks in the clouds, and tried to organize his priorities, now that he had a quiet moment and a victory to buoy his spirits.

The last item on the list for Sivima’s quest was a low drop chance diamond from mining. He could certainly pour some time into that task, since it would also feed his material needs for charmcrafting.

There were plenty of places only ten to fifteen minutes away from town, too.

It seemed like a good way to spend his time. Mining, crafting, and fishing would make sure he wasn’t wasting his efforts while keeping himself leashed to a 15 minute distance to the council’s meeting chamber.

He lamented that he couldn’t go back to Balrim and Myrin to explore the ruins they’d found.

They’d reminded him a lot of the ruins he’d run into with Dalgaard when he’d been on that quest for Onirioago. He wondered if they were similar. There’d been a building that looked like the remains of a library, just like there’d been in the other ruins.

Were there tablets there, maybe? Or just an empty room and a boss monster spawn trigger?

He considered the possibility that it might be the site of the dungeon entrance, and dismissed that thought immediately. If the game was at all consistent, the dungeon entrance wouldn’t be an hour walk out of town. The sunken ruins dungeon had been literally in their backyard at Cotanaku.

Then again, why was he trying to hold to consistency? Monsoon was known for being formulaic, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t break that mold on this project.

He didn’t have a lot of other information to work on. If he could afford the time to take a trip back to Cotanaku, he could take an hour to fight through the dungeon and then use his Jump cooldown to hop the wall to one of the other parts of the city to try and find the last boss of the next dungeon and then fight his way back through the place to find the inside of the entrance.

He knew it wouldn’t work. Even if he could assemble a full party of spear-users to hop the wall, and even if there wasn’t an invisible wall keeping him to the sunken ruins dungeon end boss area, and even if the dungeon he found was generous enough to let him run it backwards without sharp cliffs, keyed doors, and one-way traps, there was no way for him to tell if he was even in the area of the city that corresponded to a dungeon near Panbu. Or if the Panbu dungeon would even lead to the same city at all.

He wished he had more clues. Having only experienced one dungeon, he couldn’t make any guarantees that his expectations were anywhere near accurate. He had to get down to basics. What could he say about the dungeon he’d seen that most likely applied to this one as well?

The dungeon hadn’t had any roads to indicate the entrance or exit. The entrance had been buried under a tree, and the exit had been jammed into a cliff designed to prevent it from being used as a back entrance.

There had also been a side exit before the first boss’s gear check. He felt like he could safely assume that any subsequent dungeon was likely to extend to players the same courtesy.

He hadn’t explored the side exit in the old dungeon. It had consisted of an underwater tunnel that would likely lead into the ocean. Considering the sea bed around the town of Cotanaku, it was unlikely that the exit would be well-hidden. And because that side entrance wouldn’t even allow adventurers to bypass the first boss, it might not be impassable from the outside.

What if they could find another such exit? They could comb the ocean floor and nearby beach for caves and entrances. They could also search higher ground, and find vine-covered cliffsides that could represent the exit.

Kaldalis sat up so suddenly that Ein gave a yap of alarm at him.

“We can find the exits,” Kaldalis said, looking down at the grumpy puppy. “We can find the exits, and then use that to find the entrance.”

Ein blinked up at him, clearly not understanding.

But the dog didn’t need to understand.

If he could convey it to Balrim and Myrin, it was a short road to finding the dungeon from there.

“Maybe not exactly the entrance,” Kaldalis admitted, struggling to his feet. “But a neighborhood. The dungeon had some smaller twists and turns - especially the maze before the second boss - but if we find where the exit is, and the side exit from the first boss, we can extrapolate. If we get a map of those three points on a map of the area around Cotanaku, and then two points and a map of the area around Panbu…”

He started back towards town, intending to walk through it, out into the forest on the far end. Parts of his map were black. He didn’t have it all mapped out. His map of the area around Panbu wasn’t impressive, and even his exploration of the area around Cotanaku was subpar.

But he knew a pair of people who had made it their business to fill in the map.

Kaldalis got through the gate towards the jungle before remembering the risk involved in heading back out of town towards the ruins to find his friends. He drew up short, trying to consider his course of action.

After no solution presented itself, he stepped to the side and leaned against the side of the gate to wait for them. They’d have to return through this entrance eventually.

It wasn’t that long before a mud-spattered Talsar and Suyon emerged from the jungle. Kaldalis was surprised at how soon they’d returned, considering it had been barely ninety minutes since they parted ways. They usually explored the jungle until the sun went down, with or without him.

“Something wrong?” he asked as they spotted him and rushed to his side.

“Nah,” Myrin said, reaching up and patting the side of his arm as high up as she could reach. “We were just worried about you. Felt like heels about dragging you all the way out and making you sprint back alone, we couldn’t live with ourselves if we didn’t come back and give you a proper apology.” She gave him a hopeful look. “Did you make it back in time? Are we okay?”

Kaldalis was touched for a moment. Her sincere tone actually brought a tear to his eye. “I didn’t make it, unfortunately,” he said at last, reaching down to put a hand on Myrin’s shoulder in turn and then reaching for Balrim. “But I don’t blame you two for this. This was just a freak run of bad luck. If anything, the council should have told me-”

He fell silent as soon as he looked up at Balrim. Despite the inhuman nature of his lizard-like face, Kaldalis could read his expression like a book.

Balrim was as surprised as Kaldalis about Myrin’s heartfelt apology.

“Alright. What happened?” Kaldalis demanded, his tone suddenly as cold as his narrowed glare at Balrim.

“Uh,” Balrim stumbled over his words for a moment. “So, uh, remember how you told us about the ruins you found with Dalgaard?” When Kaldalis nodded, he continued. “Well, there was the same setup here. We got jumped by a boss in some tight quarters.”

Kaldalis allowed a snort of laughter to escape him. He withdrew his hand from his friends’ shoulders to cross his arms over his chest. “Let me guess… You decided to head back here after you respawned.”

“Yup,” Balrim said sheepishly, looking down.

“Well, then you two have a chance to make it up to me,” Kaldalis said with a smirk, shaking off the irritation. “Because I need a favor.”

“Sure,” Myrin chirped, displaying not an ounce of remorse for her earlier dishonesty. “It’s the least we can do.”

“Wait, are we fucked, though?” Balrim cut in, looking over Kaldalis’s shoulder at the town. “What happened with the meeting?”

“We’re real close,” Kaldalis said, holding up his hands with his index finger and them about a quarter-inch apart - roughly the same scale as his remaining approval bar. “All the work I put in sharing laughs with Big Mike and avoiding everyone else went a looong way to keeping us out of the fire. We’re still in the frying pan, though.”

“What can we do to help?” Myrin asked. The sincere tone of voice was back, and Kaldalis honestly couldn’t tell if it was honest or not.

“I need to stay within a fifteen minute jog of camp from here on out, because if I miss another meeting, we’re all hosed,” Kaldalis said, gesturing at the gate behind him. “So I need you two to help me with this next bit, because any time I’m at the end of my leash, I have to stop walking and come back.”

“Next bit of what?” Balrim asked.

“I have a big-brain plan to find the dungeon entrance,” Kaldalis said, rubbing his hands together.

“How does that help?” Balrim pressed, though he couldn’t disguise the flicker of excitement in his slit-pupiled eyes.

“We find the dungeon,” Kaldalis said, “and then we find the tablets at the bottom. And then? We run the council through. We give them the cushiest carry we can. Like they just paid fifty mil for a free raid clear.” He grinned fiercely. “We get my approval bar back by showing them how good adventurers are at adventuring.”

“I see this as an absolute win!” Balrim said, returning Kaldalis’s grin with an expansive gesture with both arms.

“So what do we need?” Myrin asked, looking back and forth between the two men with an arched eyebrow.

Kaldalis grinned. “That’s the big-brain bit. We need to find the exits,” Kaldalis said. He pointed out at the jungle, particularly aiming the gesture up at the more elevated parts of the island. “Both the end exit, and...” He turned around, pointing at the ocean side of town. “The gear check failure exit of shame. We put those on a map and extrapolate.”

“Hmmm,” Balrim said, pretending to furrow his brow, even though he could barely hide the shit-eating grin spreading across his snout. “I think we may be able to help.”

“To that end,” Myrin cut in, reaching up to tug on the sleeve of Balrim’s robe, “I think we know exactly the person to talk to.”

“Yeah,” Balrim said, looking down at her now with real confusion. “Us.”

Myrin laughed. “No, not us. We have a secret weapon.” When Balrim didn’t catch her drift, she started making a rolling motion with her wrist.” Someone who owes us a favor? Considering how today went, I’m sure we don’t mind passing it off.”

“Oh!” Balrim exclaimed, hitting his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Sorry. Duh.”

“Who?” Kaldalis asked cautiously.