Walking back up the beach, Kaldalis realized how far they had gotten from Cotanaku. It was a speck in the distance when they turned around. The whole walk back, Heluna was careful about other attempts at physical affection. Whenever she leaned in close to him, she asked permission or watched his face carefully to gauge his reaction.

He thought it was kind of silly at first, but as it continued, he started to get a warm fuzzy feeling. It drew attention to how often she wanted to do something as small as put a hand on his arm or around his waist when she sought permission. Despite the unfortunate reason for her to feel it necessary, it made him feel good. He felt desirable. These gestures weren’t just the expectations of their budding relationship. Heluna didn’t feel obligated to hang off of him just because they had shared a kiss. She wanted to touch him, even if the needs of his traumatic experiences might make it mildly inconvenient.

The long walk back to Cotanaku gave them time to talk about less heavy things. The lighter conversation from dinner continued, and Kaldalis chatted with her about his plans with Balrim, Myrin, Reno, and Ess to put together a more complete group.

But the conversation wasn’t one sided. Heluna chatted with him about who had and hadn’t been taking the time to upgrade their home plots, and she eventually confessed that she had been saving up because she wasn’t sure if she was going to stay once the boat was finished. It seemed a waste to throw materials at a home that she might be sailing away from in a week.

After a few minutes of walking, Kaldalis opened his pet menu to summon Ein, the corgi puppy that had brought Heluna and Kaldalis together in the first place. The energetic dog was happy to run up and down the beach, yapping at the waves as the pair walked hand-in hand alongside the surf.

It was a period of idyllic calm that Kaldalis found himself hoping would never end.

He was taking a long walk on the beach with someone he cared for. It was like something out of a dream. He feared that the next time he thought back to this moment, he wouldn’t be able to believe it had really happened. It was too nice to be a thing that had happened to him.

They slowed their pace, letting the walk become a stroll.

And then an amble.

It took so long to get back to Cotanaku that Ein was sleepily trotting along at Kaldalis’s side by the time the town came into view. A part of Kaldalis wanted to drop Heluna’s hand, feeling a little embarrassed at the idea of anyone seeing him with an NPC. But he took a deep breath and held tight. Heluna had stood by him and treated him with respect when he had expected the worst. He owed her that same respect in return.

They shared another brief kiss when he walked her to her tent. Kaldalis could sense that she wanted to invite him inside - for “coffee” no doubt - but even if she had asked, he knew he wasn’t ready for that.

It wasn’t just fear of reliving the trauma he’d suffered. He considered himself a gentleman. And a gentleman didn’t give it up on the first date. He did, however, promise her another dinner date as soon as the work getting Panbu upgraded was finished.

Kaldalis went back to his own tent, enjoying the quiet that had fallen over the town. He wasn’t the only one awake at this hour, but the only people he saw walking around were the uniformed guards on patrol.

A part of him thought about returning to spend the night in Panbu, but now that he was alone, all the concerns of the world crashed back into him. Garyung had asked him to return to Cotanaku to keep him off the minds of the Panbu council. If work was still underway repairing the damage there this late into the night, showing up would make his absence through the evening suddenly conspicuous.

At his tent, he searched around and found a menu that would allow him to upgrade elements of the space using materials and crescents from his inventory. He almost pulled the trigger on a few creature comforts until he saw that the upgrades would take time as well. Upgrading his cot to a proper bed seemed a brilliant idea until he realized that it would have taken until just before dawn for the upgrade to complete, leaving him without anywhere to sleep for the night.

Instead, he undressed and laid down on the cot, and scrolled through furnishing options until he fell asleep.

When he awoke in the morning, he took the opportunity to start the upgrades he most wanted so that they’d be here waiting for him when he returned. He almost left the “building” as a tent, but once he started to think about having a big soft bed, he knew he’d be uncomfortable getting into it from a floor that was patchy canvas spread over dirt.

Luckily, he had a ton of materials left over from his big push in Panbu, and crescents to spare.

In the end, he got a small table and two chairs, a dresser, a few candles for light in the evenings, and the simplest walls, roof, floor, and door he could. He didn’t want to waste too much on this, since he was likely going to spend the next three days tethered to quest detail in Panbu, but even those simple options were a pretty hefty expense.

It was satisfying, though, when he thought about returning and having a proper room to stay in.

He even managed to select a queen-sized bed without his face heating up too much. Back in the real world, Dylan had had a queen-sized bed to himself, right? It wasn’t that weird. He hadn’t selected it for any particular reason.

Nothing on his mind but the comfort of sprawling out in his sleep. Alone.

Having successfully pushed his motivations aside, Kaldalis went to the mess hall for breakfast. It was surprisingly empty, and for a moment he was confused about the hour. It didn’t take long for him to realize that the majority of his fellow adventurers were likely in Panbu, chipping away at the work there. The only people still around here were the more insular groups of Alpha Players, and the trailing newbies who needed the protection of the town to be out in the wilds alone.

With his quarters upgrading and his belly full, it was time to get to work. A part of him warned against returning to Panbu at all - a single night wasn’t long enough to get the council to forget about his failure - but that wasn’t the sort of person he was.

Kaldalis needed to work. He needed to make progress.

He rode in a longboat back to Panbu while carefully perched among crates of supplies. Garyung was apparently emptying Cotakanu’s storerooms and shipping it to Panbu. When this was all over, the nascent nation was going to have nothing left if the Bhogad wasn’t careful. But then again, being broke and in debt to a foreign power was preferable to being at war with Zara.

There weren’t many options available.

Panbu was abuzz with activity upon his return, and it didn’t take long to see why. Repairs on the walls were finished, but they were still surrounded with scaffolds and swarming with workers. The council wasn’t just rebuilding, they were reinforcing. Given how quickly the Xorn had cracked the original walls, it seemed an intelligent choice.

As he wobbled his way off the boat and onto the floating dock, he wondered if perhaps some of the efforts could have been better-placed. The floating dock had been salvaged, but not a single plank had gone into repairing it. He felt like it would have been easier for the boatman to beach the longboat instead of trying to unload here.

When he got off the beach and into the town, there were quests in plenty waiting. Kaldalis’ first instinct was to group up with his friends, but given the amount of work obviously before them here, it seemed prudent to get straight to business. There was also the very real danger of giving the wrong idea if the Panbu council saw him and interpreted his search for his friends as loafing around and shirking the tasks at hand.

The quests were largely normal. In the wake of what had happened, the thinned ranks of the white-blossom treants in the forest had encroached again on the area that the earlier quests had cleared.

There was also the same huge demand for wood, stone, and various monster parts.

“About time,” someone said as Kaldalis started jogging out the front gate.

He turned to see a small knot of people, led by Teebu, the generous Talsar who had given Kaldalis the rare gemstone he’d needed for Sivima’s quest. The group broke into a scrambling jog to follow behind him.

“What do you mean?” Kaldalis asked, though he didn’t dare slow down in case Captain Kensah was patrolling the wall and saw him not just dawdling, but dawdling with a huge group of would-be workers wasting time with him.

“C’mon, man,” Teebu said with a grin of serrated teeth. “Everything goes easier when we all run together as a mob, right?”

“I don’t know if word didn’t get around,” Kaldalis said as he led the group into the trees, towards the white-blossom forest, “but the Panbu council kinda fired me. I’m not an envoy anymore. You all can do your own thing now.”

“Nuts to that,” a Bhogad woman behind Teebu said, letting out a cackle. “We all like working together like a well-oiled machine. And you’re the most recognizable face we’ve got to keep us moving forward!”

He found himself suddenly very worried that becoming a de facto leader among the adventurers here would come back to bite him. Considering the horrible grinding noise that had come from Jetmorpan’s jaw the last time he’d seen the Panbu council, he could only hope the bite would be figurative and not literal.