The Kayore cafeteria was almost an identical match for the one Cotanaku, right after the town upgrade. It was basically a mixed indoor-outdoor seating area with an attached kitchen. He identified it as a cafeteria mostly because of the way these two separate spaces connected. There was a bar between the two, where people could approach and either order something specific or take a plate of something that had been prepared ahead of time.

Unlike Cotanaku, though, there was a space at the front that looked oddly like a wait station, where a Talsar man flagged them down before they could approach the food.

“Meal chits, please?” he said, holding out a hand.

“Uh.” Kaldalis stared at the man for a moment, confused.

“We just got here from Cotanaku,” Ess jumped in. “What do you mean?”

“No free meals,” the Talsar said, withdrawing his hand and crossing his arms. “We can’t afford to feed anyone who happens to blunder through here. Especially not people from a foreign country who can just pop by and stuff their faces on Zara’s dime without supporting the town in return.”

“We just did a bunch of quests,” Kaldalis said, “doesn’t that count for anything?”

“You got paid for it, didn’t you?” The man sneered. “How about you go back where you came from and eat there?”

Kaldalis felt a flare of irritation. His first instinct was to pop the guy in the mouth, but at this point that might constitute an international incident. He was pretty sure he’d started more than enough of those this month already.

“So how do we get a meal chit?” Kaldalis asked.

“Right through there,” the man said, pointing towards the building that Kaldalis recognized as a slightly larger version of Cotanaku’s town hall. “You’ll have to sign up to have one issued. The council will give you a job around town that they think is worth feeding you for.”

Kaldalis winced at that. If Jetmorpan was directly in charge of deciding how many hoops Kaldalis would have to jump through to get fed, he imagined it might actually be faster and easier to swim to Cotanaku, eat there, and swim back.

“That shouldn’t be a problem, right?” Ess said. She hadn’t noticed the expression on Kaldalis’s face. The Meal Gatekeeper certainly did, though, and his grumpy glare turned into a sadistic smirk in a flash.

“Yeah,” Kaldalis said, though he put a hand on Ess’s back and started to lead her away. “We’ll go deal with that right now.”

“Kal,” Ess said as he walked her back out of the cafeteria. “He said the council was the other direction.”

“Listen. You’re hungry now, right? If we go over there, the council will make us wait in line to sign a waiting list, give us a meeting time, make us wait for our turn during the meeting, and then give us a job. After doing that job - however long it takes - we’ll have to wait for an evaluation, wait in another line, and then, if they’re feeling nice, maybe we get to eat.”

“You really don’t like the way they do things here, do you?”

“You can do things their way if you want,” Kaldalis said, ignoring the question, “but I’m doing this my way. You can eat in twenty minutes, or you can eat in question mark hours. Your call.”

Ess laughed, and fell in step with him as he walked around the back of the cafeteria. She seemed to be on board with his plan.

Now he just had to figure out what his plan was.

Kaldalis circled around to the kitchen, taking a quick peek in through the windows. They stood open to let the heat out as the assembled cooks were gearing up for the lunch rush. There was a set of large double doors here, presumably where the goods they’d gathered from the quests would be delivered. Kaldalis started to make for the door when he saw his opening.

One of the chefs was a familiar face. It was a Bhogad woman working over a steaming frying pan, methodically and mechanically pan-searing an endless pile of steaks. Kaldalis didn’t know her name, but he knew her from Cotanaku. Before the place had been made a town, he’d taken a bunch of quests from her to supplement the food options for the encampment with fish. Instead of heading for the door, he headed for the window below her work station.

“Morning!” Kaldalis called up to her. This close, he could see that the pile of steaks she was cooking were a mottled brown color while raw. These weren’t animal steaks, but insect. The butchered remains of the cavalette abdomens they’d collected. “Good to see you?”

“Fishing boy,” the Bhogad woman said with a big grin. Even as she turned her attention to him, her hands never stopped moving, whipping seared steaks out of the pan and slapping three more into the big cast iron pan. Even though it was screaming hot, she held the handle with her bare hand. “I was wondering when I would see you again.”

“Having fun with your work?” he asked with a knowing smile. “Happy to be cooking bugs?”

She grimaced so hard her face took on a brief crumpled look, like she was a cartoon character who had bitten into a lemon. Kaldalis knew she much preferred to cook fish compared to other types of meat. Something about the smell. Or, at least, that's what she’d told him whenever she’d given him a request and sent him off to fish.

“You know,” she said, “the cape of the island offers some interesting opportunities for you.” She pointed off to the southwest with her pan, over the water to where the coast curved west before sharply angling back to the east towards Cotanaku. “Some nice fish in those waters.”

“Anything you’re looking for?” Kaldalis asked.

“Maybe,” she said, tapping her chin with her free hand. She could only pretend to think for a few seconds before she had to flip the steaks on the pan with a quick trio of practiced motions. Once again, with her bare hands. “Have you ever caught a Ruddy Praeor?”

“In fifteen minutes I will have,” Kaldalis said with a grin.

“That’s why I love this guy,” she said with a laugh, looking over at Ess. “He’s a peach, isn’t he?”

“I suppose so,” Ess said, visibly distressed at being put on the spot unexpectedly. “Um. I’m Ess. And you are?”

“Kimhan,” the bhogad woman said. “Sorry for not shaking your hand. Little bit full at the moment.” She flipped the three finished steaks off the pan and slapped three more down.

“So you want some Ruddy Praeor?” Kaldalis asked. “Do you think maybe you could fry up a pair of them special for us when I get back with them?”

“Of course, Fishing Boy,” she said with a laugh. “Bring me seven, and I’ll whip off two for you, and five for me!” As soon as she said it, a little chiming sound notified Kaldalis that he’d gotten a quest.

Sea-cret of the Cape (Fishing Daily)

0/7 Ruddy Praeor

Kaldalis didn’t need to check the details. Focusing on it for a moment told him where the fish would be. All he had to do was get out there and put his line in the water.

“Back in a flash, then,” Kaldalis said.

“How can I help?” Ess asked as Kaldalis led them away from the cafeteria and towards the direction of the cape.

“I guess you could watch my back,” Kaldalis said. “Unless you were interested in getting some fishing in as well.”

“Um,” Ess said, offering him a weak smile. “I don’t think fishing is for me.”

“More for me, then,” Kaldalis said with a smirk.

“So how are we getting out there?” Ess asked. “It seems quite the distance when you were trying to save time in the first place.”

“Easy,” Kaldalis said, pulling out his spear. “You have your spear leveled, right? We pop Augment and Jump. We’ll be out there in thirty seconds, tops.”

“Right.” Ess fumbled for a moment before pulling out a spear of her own. It was a simpler one, a sign that it was at a lower level.

“Just follow my lead,” Kaldalis said. Sacrificing a big chunk of his hit points to Nyxlas’s Augment meant it was important to keep aware of any enemies as they went, especially since Ess was going to be so vulnerable after paying a similar cost.

Nyxlas’s Augment was a rarer ability, but it wasn’t unheard of out here. People who had remained here would have had nearly three weeks to run the dungeon before The Contender arrived to shut it down. He didn’t have to hide as he launched into the sky, over the wall and out along the beach.

Jumping along the beach was exhilarating. He hit the ground hard every time, his feet sinking almost four inches into the hard-packed sand before he kicked off, hurtling into the air again. Every time, there was a similar thumping sound of Ess landing just a little behind him as she followed his lead. Occasionally, giant marine monsters - huge shellfish and giant flipper-footed alligators seemed common in this area - would jump at their sudden landing, but no matter how fast they lunged, they were never quick enough to catch them before they were gone again, off on their next leap.

The area where this fish was catchable was designated on his map as he approached. The bulk of it overlapped with the red area that indicated that The Contender had declared it off-limits, but there was a sizable sliver on the beach that was accessible without drawing the ire of his guards.

Kaldalis felt lucky that he could touch down in a spot where he wouldn’t be menaced by either guards or semi-aquatic threats. As soon as his feet were firmly on the ground and no monster was menacing him, he swapped his spear for his fishing rod. Before he could draw it, Ess landed a little hard a few feet from him, and nearly lost her footing. He moved quickly to catch her to keep her from falling face-first into the sand.

“Thanks,” she said with a nervous laugh. Her gunmetal gray cheeks turned a darker purplish shade, which Kaldalis recognized as an embarrassed blush.

“You can thank me by watching my back,” Kaldalis said, offering a reassuring smile. He pulled out his fishing rod, catching the hook to put some bait on. “Because I sure can’t defend myself with this thing.”