Kaldalis took a brief stop by the quartermaster to get two more jars of pickled roe. It was the most effective bait for Pale Perch, and he suspected that he was going to need to provide some for the people who came to help. After that, he went straight to the end of the Cotanaku pier and cast his line out.

A few minutes later, Heluna arrived with her friends. He stopped to thank them for their help as they all cast out their lines. Unsurprisingly, they brought a bunch of alcohol with them, and the fishing quest suddenly became a Fishing Trip.

Fishing did indeed happen, but the sailors seemed to require some amount of constant drinking, tall tales, and raucous laughter to keep their spirits high.

After a time, a few more sailors meandered their way down the pier, investigating the noise. One of Heluna’s friends would explain what was going on, and more often than not the newcomer would grab a bottle of ale, pull out a fishing rod, and settle in to join them, adding their own stories and laughter to the proceedings.

After about an hour, Arnaud quietly excused himself to replenish their stock of alcohol. When he returned, he had another half-dozen sailors in tow, helping to carry an amount of ale that Kaldalis thought was overkill. But when the newcomers settled in and joined in on the fishing and drinking, he realized what was happening.

It only grew wilder when adventurers started to join in.

“What happened to the adrenaline crash?” Reno asked as she and his other friends came to investigate the rowdy fishing going on within plain sight of the town.

“I found a new adrenaline rush to chase,” Kaldalis said. He held out a jar of pickled roe. “I need two thousand Pale Perch as fast as I can get them. You in?”

Without question, Myrin had already found an unoccupied spot nearby and cast out a line. Ess quickly followed suit - though she had to borrow some bait from Kaldalis first.

“Why?” Balrim asked.

“It’s a long story,” Kaldalis began. “The short version is that I found the solution to all of our problems. But it’s on a tight timer. I need the reward from this fishing quest to be able to do what needs to be done.”

“And the long version?” Courbois asked, arching an eyebrow, even as she produced her own fishing rod from her inventory.

“The Lataxinans are alive,” Kaldalis said.

When he let that hang in the air for a moment, Myrin eventually observed: “the long version is shorter than the short version.”

“I’m going to contact them,” Kaldalis said with a laugh. “They used the underlying mechanics of Kaia’s Flicker to recreate her sacrifice, and retreat to the Paths Between Paths. It won’t be easy to get to them, but if anyone knows how to take care of all our problems, it’s them.”

“Well, that’s good enough for me,” Balrim said, looking around at the rowdy gathering of fishers. “How can I help?”

“We should make this a fuckin’ party,” Heluna cut in from her spot on Kaldalis’s other side. “We’re pulling in a shitload of fish we don’t need. Why don’t we get a grill going?”

Balrim didn’t need further prompting than that. From his cooking menu, he fetched a portable charcoal grill - apparently something he received at the quartermaster for his and Myrin’s exploratory camping trips - and suddenly had more fish than he could cook, offered from every direction. He enlisted Reno’s help with handling the sudden demand, and sent Courbois back into town to fetch needed herbs and seasonings to keep up.

After that, it went from a fishing trip to - as Heluna said - a fuckin’ party. The smell of grilled fish filled the air, spirits were raised by a seemingly endless supply of beer and ale. Occasionally one sailor would call out the opening line of a sea shanty, setting every sailor among them off to join in as boisterously as possible. The group continued to grow as people came down to investigate the disturbance. Some of the newcomers - adventurers mostly - seemed to want to enjoy the food and drink and company without fishing, but Balrim was indirectly producing as many Pale Perch as anyone else when he started to ask for two Perch as a “cover charge” for partaking in his food.

Kaldalis was just ecstatic that the goal he was working towards was so close. It made him feel a little foolish that he had planned on trying to make it all that way alone, to see how much faster it could go with a little help.

Every time he thought about it, he felt the urge to thank Heluna.

If it wasn’t for her thoughtfulness, he would have needed four times as many fish to cross the finish line - an impossible task, given the time pressure.

She had also been responsible for the beginning of the snowball that this fishing trip had become. Her friends had created the initial disturbance that had attracted more help, and the growing spectacle had been what had caused the group to continue growing.

He suspected that when it came his turn to give her his gift, he was going to have to do better than a stuffed animal and a handful of flowers.

The party started to wind down after about two hours in full swing, when the sun hit the horizon. Some of the sailors came to Kaldalis to hand over their haul before heading back to town to rest up for the next work day. Heluna gave a few of them a hard time about it when she knew them by name, but Kaldalis reassured them that he was grateful for the time they put in.

Once people started to leave, though, the group shrank pretty quickly. The first few leaving seemed to act as a signal to the others that things were coming to a close. Most of the adventurers filtered out, needing their rest to get a good start on the morning grind, including Courbois, Reno, and Ess, though Balrim and Myrin stuck around.

With the right bait and a little luck, each fisher could gather about twenty or so Pale Perch an hour.

Kaldalis, with his higher fishing skill, was doing a little bit better than that.

Even so, by his calculations, he needed at least eighty man-hours of fishing. Obviously, not all of the partiers were fishing the whole time; more than a few took breaks from casting out their line to eat, drink, and sing along with the rest.

But they had numbers in their favor. Heluna had brought her friends, and they’d stuck by her side - and by extension, Kaldalis’s - the whole time. With Myrin doing the same, that was eight people non-stop fishing the whole time. And with anywhere from ten to twenty extra sailors putting a few half-assed hours in over the course of the night, success was inevitable.

About an hour after sunset, Kaldalis called a stop to the fishing to total up what they’d gotten.

By his math, they should have been done around then. They’d put in thirty total man-hours amongst the dedicated fishers, and if fifteen-ish sailors, plus Balrim’s “cover charge” didn’t add up to fifty more, he was going to have to review his math.

“That’s ninety-five hundred and thirteen,” Kaldalis said after gathering all the fish from Heluna and her friends. He furrowed his brow in dismay. They’d fallen a little short of his math. “This is a lot of fish, don’t get me wrong. But we might be a little short, unless Balrim and Myrin exceed expectations.”

“Please,” Balrim smirked. “Look who you’re talking to.”

Myrin had about a hundred and fifty Pale Perch - far more than his math predicted, given the time she’d been fishing.

But Balrim had way more than Kaldalis expected.

Just shy of four hundred - more than enough to get them the rest of the way there.

“We did it,” Kaldalis said, watching as his quest tracker capped out at 10,000/10,000 Pale Perch. “We got there!”

A great cheer went up at that. With his quest now directing him back to Foturns, Kaldalis led the way as the group of fishers became a celebratory procession. Heluna’s friends seemed a lot happier about this than Kaldalis himself felt.

But then again, they weren’t looking ahead at the challenge coming next.

Foturns had quarters among the adventurers in Cotanaku. It was a very nice house compared to all the others, though given what he’d learned about the man, that shouldn’t have been surprising. If he was retiring here, he must have had the resources to invest, and the intent to settle in permanently. In the absence of any other option, Kaldalis knocked.

“Who is it?” came the groggy voice from within.

“Kal-fuckin’-dalis!” one of the sailors crowed. “Victorious at last!”

The elderly Suyon man opened the door in a red bathrobe, with an expression somewhere between grumpy and half-asleep. Kaldalis couldn’t see much behind him.

“Can you keep it down? It’s late,” Foturns said.

“Sorry,” Kaldalis said, “I would have waited until morning, but I’m on a bit of a deadline here.”

“What’s going on, kid?” Foturns asked, looking around the group of excited - but now slightly subdued - sailors. “Some kind of party?”

“You might say that,” Kaldalis said. “But the long and short of it is that I’ve got ten thousand Pale Perch burning a hole in my pocket.”

“Really?” the old man asked, eyebrows shooting up. “Already?”

Kaldalis could think of no better response than to just start handing over fish. The claim that he was done had gone a long way towards perking the man up. Now that he was actually providing the fish, the grumpiness was replaced with excitement.

As much as the mood had mellowed after everyone just watched Kaldalis hand over thousands of fish over several minutes, there was still a bit of a cheer once he was done and the quest completed with a little chime.

“So you have,” Foturns said with a smile once it was done. “You’ve proved your tenacity and dedication. And I guess you’ve also proved the love and loyalty of your friends. Come on in. You’ve earned this reward.”

Kaldalis followed Foturns in, and the old Suyon led him to a room in the middle of the small house. It looked like a trophy room, decorated with fishing trophies, fish mounted on the walls, and a giant disembodied beak in the middle of the room that looked like it had belonged to a Nautilobster at least twice the size of the boss monster Kaldalis had fought.

Hanging on the back wall was a fishing rod. Foturns led him there and reached up, carefully pulling it down. It looked to be made of fiberglass, which was odd to see in this world, but the length of it had a gentle blue glow. Kaldalis wasn’t sure if it was simply reflective, or if it was imbued with some mystical power.

“I’ve carried this for a long time, and in my retirement, it’s going to fall into disuse if I don’t do the noble thing and pass it on to the next generation of fishermen,” Foturns said, cradling it in his hands for a moment before holding it out to Kaldalis. “I thought I would hold it for a century more before a worthy heir came along. I’m glad I met you so soon. It was depressing to see it sitting here unused for this long.”

Weichen’s Fishing Rod

Relic

Item level: 100

Increases fishing skill by 25

Increased Critical Catch rate by 25%

Unbreakable

Endless Breath

“Thank you,” Kaldalis said, relieved to see that Heluna’s tip was accurate. More than that, he was astounded at the other statistics on the rod. This was a powerful item. “Truly. I’ll do you proud.”

“See that you do, kid,” Foturns said with a grin. “Now get outta here. I need my beauty sleep.”