For a moment, Melon looked entirely trapped, and he actually felt a little bit bad about it. But it still felt like a much better idea to try and handle it all now, before anything bad could get further entrenched.

“You seem very tolerable, and it’s not that I don’t want to,” Melon managed, “It’s just—”

Melon trailed off, unable to vocalise what she was thinking, and in order to avoid letting her silence steer them away from the subject, he remained quiet, crouching down to snag a few of the errant nails that had escaped his first pass.

“You’re really not a Child of Gaia,” Melon mumbled after the moment had passed. “They would never make such an outrageous offer to one of us.”

August glanced up at her, the last of the nails pinched between his fingers—she looked genuinely lost.

“I did tell you that I wasn’t one of them—quite a few times, actually,” August said, pushing himself back to his feet again. “You said you had no idea what you were supposed to do—that’s still the case, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Melon said, voice quiet. “Haiko has said that none of us has been given any kind of permanent assignment and that they have—chosen what they wish to do to contribute?”

“Let’s zoom out for a moment: we’re stuck on this island, and it’s pretty dangerous for a variety of reasons.” August said, “As a group, we have some shared needs we need to try and fulfil if we want to survive—a sustainable source of food and water being the most obvious ones.”

August moved past her to get to the area where the wall was still unfinished and indicated the lake.

“We’ve got a source of fresh water, and there are experiments in the lake that can be hunted for meat,” August said, “There are also fruit-bearing trees in the forest, but the experiments in there are much harder to deal with—they are the same type as Ladybug and Morningstar.”

Melon turned to look at where the two Efkini were messing about, chasing one another around the base of the nearest pillar.

“Keeping our needs met is the primary objective, and anything that contributes towards maintaining that is a positive thing,” August said, “This isn’t an assignment or a task anyone is expected to do; it’s just the basic requirement to keep us all alive.”

“The others explained the basics of our situation,” Melon said, turning back towards him. “Are there other objectives to consider?”

“Yes, and one of them was mentioned last night—that is, finding out more about Devil’s Nest and discovering why we’re even here,” August said, “To make that work, we need a permanent shelter, and we need to either wipe out or tame the experiments roaming around the island.”

August tapped a knuckle against the nearest pillar.

“We also need to figure out how to scale both the shelter and our access to resources for a steadily growing population because we’re also attempting to save the rest of the Voithos from Limbo,” August said, “We’re building a community from the ground up, and that means we have a whole bunch of things to consider.”

“You’re going to bring all of us back?” Melon managed.

“That’s the plan, although, Rittan and Kalter are the ones pushing that goal—there is a little bit of friction on exactly how to go about doing it,” August admitted, “Rittan wants to bring everyone back as quickly as possible to save them from Limbo, and Kalter wants to keep our group smaller for longer, to maintain stealth until we’re ready to deal with being found.”

“This situation is—” Melon said, “There is so much to consider.”

“You’re not wrong, and it’s why I want to cooperate with everyone as much as possible,” August said, “None of us can do this on our own, so we’re going to need to pool our strength to make things work.”

“My strength is my knowledge of the runic language?” Melon said, hesitating. “I don’t possess even a fraction of the understanding that Junil had—I’m certain you’re going to be disappointed.”

“Then how about we actually check,” August said, “I have an internal mana source that refills over time, but it stops regenerating once it’s full, and that’s a total waste—I need a way to put that excess mana into storage, so I can access it when I actually need to.”

Melon breathed out for a moment, the tension in her shoulders coming undone.

“I can hardly believe that you are able to activate such complicated runic systems without possessing an understanding of the most fundamental aspect,” Melon said, “Storing and retrieving mana is the most basic use case of runes that is possible.”

“So you know how to do it?” August pressed.

“Of course I do,” Melon said, “I can’t actually activate the necessary runes, but you should be able to.”

“Then you were completely wrong, Melon,” August said, feeling more than a bit relieved. “I’m not disappointed at all.”

Melon looked about ready to protest the comment—but he removed three Sad Apples from his inventory and underhand tossed each one towards her, something which seemed to distract her a bit.

“I usually leave a bunch of fruit near the huts in the morning for everyone when they first wake up,” August said, sliding around her with a bit of quick footwork. “I’m going to do that now, so make sure you eat as much as you want—if you want to bathe, you can use the lake, but make sure Neptune is around.”

“Neptune?” Melon asked, turning to follow him. “Haiko mentioned an experiment that patrolled the lake?”

Given the presence of the wall, she wouldn’t have had a good view of the lake from where she’d spent most of yesterday with Haiko.

“Just the first fifteen meters from the shoreline because he’s not big enough to fight off any of the really big things in the lake,” August said, “I wouldn’t go anywhere near that far in, though, because there is at least one massive experiment in there—and probably a lot more than that.”

August made the trip to the huts and recreated the tower of sour fruits before retreating again, the conversation petering out in an effort to avoid waking the others up.

“I’ll introduce you to Neptune later, or you can ask one of the others to do it,” August offered, “My original plan for today was to make a bunch of tools for everyone to use, but if you’re willing to teach me how to store mana, it will speed up that whole process.”