Fishing off the back of the ship helped Kaldalis calm down. He could still distantly hear the sounds of the city, but the ship muffled it greatly. He couldn’t easily forget about Baimer and all the problems it offered, but being allowed to fish freely with an energetic corgi pup running around at his feet was enough of a distraction to concentrate on the fishing.

Relaxation or not, fishing until just before sunset got him a lot of progress on his quest. With nothing else here that bit on his roe bait, he got nearly twice as many per hour as he usually did. When he wrapped up, he’d added over a hundred and fifty pale perch to his count. If he could keep this rate up indefinitely, it would only be two hundred more hours before he was done!

Only.

Of course, he had other business to attend to. Bangen was buried up to her shoulders in books and notes when he got back to the library. She was glad that he came back a little before she had wanted to leave, since it let her finish up what she was working on, but she got her stuff cleaned up with surprising efficiency once she was finished. Kaldalis was reminded that she was one of the best at what she did.

Once Bangen’s books were returned to the shelves, they returned to the inn. Despite no longer having the library’s resources, she just sat back down at an unoccupied table and spread her notes out again to keep working. Kaldalis briefly entertained the idea of trying to peel her away from her work so that she didn’t burn herself out, but that was probably a task for another time. Back on the islands, he could probably convince her to step out of the research library for a couple of hours to run the new dungeon in Panbu. Here in Baimer, though, he couldn’t think of a single thing he could offer to drag her away from the books.

Instead, he turned his attention to grabbing a quick meal. The muscular Talsar in the kitchen was dishing out bowls of soup, which was enough for Kaldalis. It was a thin vegetable soup, with boiled cabbage, carrots, and potatoes, but it had a good flavor, and the vegetable pieces had somehow been fully cooked without disintegrating into the soup. It was surprisingly tasty for a meatless dish.

But he couldn’t just sit down and enjoy a minute of peace.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Garyung said as he took the seat next to Kaldalis. “Where have you been?”

“Sorry,” Kaldalis said, pausing to noisily slurp a spoonful of soup. “I should have put a sign up that said Gone Fishin’ before leaving. That’s my bad.”

“I’ve gotten the Baimer War Council to call an emergency meeting tonight to discuss Cotanaku,” Garyung said. “I want you to be there to support me.”

Kaldalis grimaced, but pushed down his rejection of Garyung’s plan. “So it’s happening then.”

“Maybe,” Garyung said with a heavy sigh. “It comes down to how well I can make my case with them. They might still turn me down.”

“I’ll try not to get my hopes up,” Kaldalis grumbled, scooping up a big spoonful of veggies.

Garyung shot him a scowl, and Kaldalis had to admit that he was a little bit out of line. At the very least, he could have made his tone slightly less sarcastic.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Kaldalis said. “I just…” He sighed. “I kind of hate it here.”

“I asked you to give this place a chance,” Garyung said patiently. “Didn’t I? Sure, it’s different, but you can see that it all exists for a reason.”

“Sure,” Kaldalis said, blowing on a spoonful of steaming cabbage. “If the reason is sucking the fun out of everything.”

“I get it,” Garyung said with a frown. “You’re a chaotic-neutral tiefling being forced into a lawful-good society. But you have to recognize that laws exist for a reason. Order isn’t a bad thing just because it chafes your little chaos-goblin ass.”

“It’s not that,” Kaldalis snapped. He forced himself to take a deep breath before he flew into another meaningless rant like he’d begun down on the docks. “I’m sorry, I don’t hate the structure on principle. It’s the ends the structure works towards. Questing and dungeoneering have been reduced to a theme park. And everything else has been combined with a heavy dose of a day at the DMV. It’s not fun. It’s not adventurous. People who learn here aren’t going to be prepared for the real challenges we face out on the islands.” He shook his head. “I understand a need for structure to keep people safe and on-task. But the way it’s been built here would have me hitting the unsub button within my first few hours of playtime, if, you know, we had that button.”

“Of course you feel that way,” Garyung said calmly, putting a large hand on Kaldalis’s shoulder. “You were forced to learn all the lessons on the fly that these early quests teach you. That’s how a good videogame works. It helps you learn before throwing you off the deep end. But you have all the familiarity we were building when we did those quests as lowbies. That’s why I asked you to give it a chance. Try not to think about how it’s all dumbed down.”

“Alright,” Kaldalis said, waving a hand dismissively. “Maybe you’re right. But we’re not going to be here long enough for me to get to the good stuff, right? I’m not sure why it’s worth my time to give it that chance when I can just get in a dungeon run and catch a few hundred fish for my quest.”

“Maybe that’ll be a better use of your time,” Garyung admitted. “But keep in mind the need for a learning curve. People are coming to Cotanaku as their first stop now. Without structure, they’re going to suffer. And the ones who aren’t PCs are going to die.”

Kaldalis was about to object to that, but stopped himself. Were there names on the memorial wall that could have been avoided if Onirioago had implemented a little more strict structure on the questing? Were there people in Cotanaku who only got through the early levels because he had provided a difficulty-destroying structure by pushing the builder quests in Panbu as a giant group?

Would Haldir still be alive if a structured system had taught Voker how to be a proper leader?

“You’re right.” Kaldalis sighed heavily. “This kind of system isn’t for me, but I guess I can understand how it could help. Maybe bringing in the Zaran structure is the right call.”

“Don’t worry,” Garyung said, patting Kaldalis on the back. “The biggest benefit to getting Cotanaku under the Zaran umbrella is that we’ll benefit from their resources as well. Once Cotanaku and Panbu are solidly structured, the frontier moves on. There will be another town to build where the structure hasn’t reached. And another town after that. And another island after that. I don’t think this world is at risk of running out of places for you, Kal.”

Kaldalis wanted to say something snarky about the biggest benefit to Garyung was losing the stress the position of authority was putting on him. But the last thing he needed to do was try and turn this discussion into an argument about selfishness.

He knew that was one stone he’d be throwing from within a glass house.

“As long as there’s places I can go,” Kaldalis said at last. “I’m just not cut out for this bullshit. This is a videogame, though. As soon as they run out of frontier for me to flee the bureaucracy on, they’ll just slap another continent onto the world map, right?”

“I’m sure they will. That’s the Monsoon meme, right?” Garyung said with a smile. “I’m here for a good time, sure, but you’re here for real adventure, man. If you’re bored here, it’s because you want to stare danger in the face and laugh. This world will always have a need for people like you. I’m sure of that.”

Kaldalis tried to take comfort in that. He tried not to imagine that he’d spend the rest of his life literally running away from the reach of Zara’s influence, if he was going back to being a citizen of this nation. But he couldn’t force Garyung to keep doing something he didn’t want to do.

Ultimately, he had to do the right thing, and the right thing was helping his friend to turn his new home into a place he wasn’t going to want to be.

“So when’s the meeting?” Kaldalis asked. “Tonight, you said?”

“Because I’m a foreign power, they called an emergency meeting,” Garyung said. “It was the earliest time that all the relevant representatives could be available at once.”

“What time?” Kaldalis said, trying not to give an aggravated sigh. “You want me there, right?”

“Yeah,” Garyung confirmed, “I want all the help I can get.”

Kaldalis gestured impatiently.

“It’s in about an hour,” Garyung finally said. “I wanted to get there early, so we ought to leave now.”