After dinner, Heluna wanted to get some drinks with her friends, so they went their separate ways. Kaldalis still had some fishing quests to tackle, and he needed to spend some time wrestling with how he was going to approach Reno and Ess. Before he left, however, Heluna extracted a promise from Kaldalis to meet up later to chat about happier topics when they were done with their respective evening plans.

When Kaldalis got out onto the dock and pitched his line into the water, he found that Reno and Ess were the furthest thing from his mind.

Out here in the darkness, staring out at the vast, inky ocean, Kaldalis’s personal problems seemed to grow smaller and smaller. What did their petty human melodrama matter in the face of what was literally an interdimensional conflict?

He needed to talk to Reno and Ess. There was no getting around that. But bringing back the Lataxinans was more important. He needed to focus on the Contender. And easy as Balrim and Myrin’s plan was - to simply wait for him to fuck up and pounce on his mistake - they needed to do better than that.

The clock was ticking, and every day was one day closer to danger. He wanted to take every opportunity he could to negotiate this peacefully. But if they didn’t have time to make it through the raid before the Lataxinans were overwhelmed, it was all for nothing. Out here on the dock, in front of only the ocean and the moons, Kaldalis had to admit that if it got to the fifth day without making progress, he would need to take drastic measures.

If the only solution was violence, Kaldalis couldn’t afford the luxury of hesitation.

As he skulked over the idea of assassination and open war with the church, he fished. With his new fishing rod, Kaldalis found the fishing minigame an entirely new experience. The amplification to his skill meant that anything he hooked was drained of stamina so much faster, and put up so much less of a fight. He couldn’t just reel in recklessly, though. While the rod was unbreakable, his line wasn’t. Similarly, when the fish jumped, it could still throw the hook if he was careless.

The biggest difference, though, was the Critical Catch rate. One in every four fish he caught was significantly larger than any specimen he’d ever seen. Fish that were palm-sized were as long as his forearm. Species that were a foot long were nearly two.

Examining these fish revealed that they were the same as the others, but were called “Whoppers” in addition to their normal name. They didn’t appear to have any additional use, but judging from the way the text on the side of Kaldalis’s vision reacted to them, they apparently counted as two fish for quests.

He still had a ton of pickled roe, and despite having completed the quest for Pale Perch, he kept fishing with it, pulling up the fish in large numbers. He wanted the skill ups, and he could hold onto them in case someone else could get a quest for them. Or if he was in a dire financial situation, he could sell them all to NPCs as junk and get a few quick crescents.

Kaldalis was hooking and reeling in fish much faster, so he didn’t spend quite as much time thinking and planning as usual. He’d barely gotten to the idea of violence when someone joined him on the dock.

“Evening,” Foturns said, sidling up beside Kaldalis and throwing a line out to join him. “How’s the new rod?”

It took him a moment to parse the question, but he just laughed. “Unbelievable,” Kaldalis said. “I feel like an exiled Atlantean prince. I call and the fish just leap into my inventory.”

“Glad you’re enjoying it,” Foturns said with a chuckle. “Don’t get a swelled head, though. Get too cocky and something bigger than you is gonna grab the line and take that rod out to sea faster than you can blink.”

Instinctively, Kaldalis’s grip on the rod tightened, which made the elderly Suyon cackle gleefully.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Foturns added. “I’m glad to see her getting out and being used by the next generation of fishermen, but I will be angry at you until the day I die if you let my baby get taken back by the sea I pried her out of.”

“Sorry,” Kaldalis said with a weak laugh. “I just have a lot on my mind. Though I feel I have to admit to you that I’ve been using the rod a lot more for holding my breath than anything else.”

Foturns’s face screwed up in a mock grimace. “I don’t need to know the details of what you’re doing with that Finnian friend of yours, kid.”

“No, not for that,” Kaldalis said quickly. He paused for a second, about to correct himself, but thought better of it. “For quest business. It gives me a lot of opportunities.”

“Glad that it’s helping,” Foturns said, tapping his chin absently before returning his attention to his own fishing rod.

“I’ll be honest, though,” Kaldalis admitted. “It’s taken a lot of the challenge out of this.”

Foturns barked a laugh. “Some people take years to learn what you’ve picked up the day after I gave it to you. Just keep in mind that when you go after the legendary fish I sent you after, you’re gonna need every edge you can get.”

“I’ll remember,” Kaldalis said with a smirk. “And I’m not bored with it yet. But I just wanted you to know I understand why you put the thing away.”

“So what’s on your mind tonight, kid?” Foturns asked absently as something caught his hook. “You’ve always got that far-off look when you’re fishing. What’s bothering you?”

“You know, the usual,” Kaldalis grumbled, staring at his line where it fanished into the dark ocean. “I need to play political games and the only plan I have is to resort to violence. And my friends are pissed at me and my only plan there is to just hope that they grow up on their own and the problem goes away. And every attempt to protect people gets thrown back in my face because I’m… You know. A weird respawning guy. Because that’s enough to distrust me to the grave.”

Foturns let out a low whistle. “Sounds like a rough situation.”

“Also I need to solve these problems so that they don’t get in the way of me saving the world,” Kaldalis added. “Can’t forget about the stakes, can we?”

“Can I give you a bit of advice, then?” Foturns asked. “Since the world is at stake. So long as that includes the water, I have a personal investment in your success, after all.”

“I’ll take whatever help I can get at this point,” Kaldalis grumbled.

“Political machinations are the worst kind of challenge,” Foturns said. He finished reeling in his fish, and stared out at the ocean for a long moment before casting his line back out. “Believe me, no matter how frustrated they make you, you’re talking to someone who hates them even more.”

Kaldalis wanted to dispute that, but something in the old man’s voice stopped him from objecting. This was a rare look into the man’s past with the Adventurer’s League. If he said he knew politics, there were probably a hundred stories he could throw in Kal’s face if he wanted to pull receipts.

“The most important thing is knowledge,” Foturns said. “You can have all the weapons and muscle you want, but it doesn’t amount to anything if you don’t know how and when to use them. A lot of people think they can be a political mastermind by pretending to know things and bluff their asses off, but they’re fools.” He knelt down and reached for the ocean, putting his hand in the water. “With enough patience and luck, I could catch a fish with my bare hands, but that doesn’t make me a better fisherman than someone who brought a rod, right?”

“Or being able to catch something with the wrong rod or bait, instead of just bringing the proper tools for the job,” Kaldalis ventured. “Leaning on my luck isn’t a long-term plan. I need to figure out what the puzzle is before I start groping for a solution.”

“Now you’re getting it, kid,” Foturns said. “Knowledge can be powerful in a lot of situations. But that’s true ten times over in a social encounter.”

“So I don’t need to just hurl myself at the Contender and try to knock him out,” Kaldalis said, tapping his chin. “I need information about him. About his organization. About what he’s here for. I can’t figure out how to get rid of him if I don’t understand him, right?”

“I didn’t hear you say anything about the Contender,” Foturns said with a smirk. “But yes.”

“And I need to figure out exactly what my friends’ problems are,” Kaldalis continued. “I can’t rely on luck to diffuse the situation. Just because I don’t feel responsible for the tension doesn’t give me the right to ignore it. I need to figure out what they need and resolve the issue, because I’m gonna need their support in the coming days.”

“Smart thinking,” Foturns said, casting his line back out into the water.

“I appreciate the help,” Kaldalis said. “I haven’t dealt with a lot of this before. At least, not without a guide wiki open on my phone.”

“Just keep the other side of it in mind, kid,” Foturns said, characteristically ignoring the Earth-talk in the conversation. “If you’re looking for information on how to deal with the Contender, he’ll be looking for information about how to deal with you.”

“Lucky for me I don’t have any weaknesses,” Kaldalis said with a smirk. “Unless he’s gonna declare war on all of Cotanaku by attacking my friends.”

Foturns grimaced, but didn’t say anything.

Kaldalis would have found that ominous, but something caught his hook, drawing his attention before he could ask.