The enormous feathered beast let loose another trilling roar. It was less humorous now that he was feeling like he’d gone a bunch of rounds with a demigod.

Kaldalis shook himself, trying to keep his muscles loose to respond to the next attack it threw at him. His health was ticking away little by little from the poison, but the icon appeared to have a duration, and he would survive it with a little more than half his health remaining. Not ideal, but better than some games, where poison ticked indefinitely and could kill you if you didn’t carry an antidote.

The poison damage itself seemed relatively minimal, at least. The damage number he suffered on the bite painted a very clear picture of the level disparity, but the fact that he’d stabbed it three or four times before taking his first hit meant that he could get it done.

He just had to fight defensively.

Patience was the name of the game.

He was a tank, not a DPS. His goal is to outlast, not race damage.

The creature charged teeth-first again. Instead of backing away, Kaldalis ran perpendicular to its path. It turned its course to follow, charging in a slowly-expanding spiral towards him. The circle Kaldalis’s path traced grew tighter as the beast charged closer, but he was just barely able to keep ahead of the snapping teeth.

He felt his heart racing, both from the exertion of the run and from feeling the heat of its breath on his back as its jaws snapped shut barely two feet away. And then the next bite was one foot away. The next one-

Kaldalis reversed direction right as the creature’s jaws snapped closed. Its bite was just shy of his back, and while its maw was still closed, he darted past it the other way.

The beast snapped at him as he passed, but too slow.

He got to the other side of it and stabbed his polearm into its side. He was rewarded with fourteen points of damage, and the beast staggered. Not from the blow, but from trying to reverse momentum. Its jaws snapped at him again, but not even close to reaching.

Kaldalis kept moving even as the beast whirled, trying to keep ahead of it orienting on him. If it couldn’t bring its jaws to bear, it couldn’t kill him, right? He darted past its left leg, stopping just long enough to rake the blade of his glaive along the feathered hide there. It didn’t do damage, but the shower of feathers that fell from the blow felt satisfying enough.

Despite the pounding of his heart in his chest, he didn’t quite feel out of breath yet.

The creature turned as fast as it could, snapping at the air, but Kaldalis kept moving. He stayed really close to it, ducking under its lashing tail rather than trying to get distance. He stabbed his spear up, not really aiming for anything, but he felt an impact of the weapon striking something solid, and his awareness processed another fourteen damage inflicted.

It didn’t even look staggered.

How much health did this thing have?

Then again, he was asking that as a tank. He’d done maybe 60 or so damage to it. It wasn’t that weird that it was tankier than that when he had a few hundred hit points himself.

There was very little warning for its next attack. Its leg lashed out in a surprisingly birdlike motion, wicked talons at the end of each long toe raking at him. Kaldalis threw himself to the ground at the sudden motion, and the attack barely missed. One of the talons caught his shirt briefly, but it didn’t find flesh, and so he suffered no damage.

He considered that he perhaps should put on the cosmetic armor. It might not have had explicit stats, but perhaps the chainmail would give him a feeling of security against the incoming attacks.

He changed his mind as the taloned foot came up and down again. He barely scrambled out of the way of getting stomped on. If chainmail had enough weight to give him some security, it would have slowed him down too much to escape the creature’s blows. He hoped that it wouldn’t impede him at all. Considering how important it seemed to keep moving, it would be a shame if it lended a serious detriment to him without providing beneficial stats.

Kaldalis had to keep moving. The feathered monster was already whirling to bring its jaws to bear on him again, driving him to duck back under its body, darting around its legs again. It let out a trilling roar and its leg lashed out again, but now that it wasn’t unexpected, Kaldalis darted aside. He wanted to try and stab it again, but he wasn’t sure what was coming next, and so instead kept his wits about himself, ready to respond. It was good that he did.

The creature tried to step back to bring its clawed arms to bear against him. Each arm was about four feet long, and while spindly from the scale of the beast, they were still much farther around than Kaldalis’s own thighs, showing no small amount of strength on its part. Kaldalis avoided the potential for attack by staying close to the legs. Even as he feared being stomped or kicked, if he stayed right next to the feathered carnivore it couldn’t get at him with tooth and claw.

Its legs were powerful, but when it kicked with them, it had to shift its weight, giving him time to react. Given the choice between all of its attacks, the most easily avoided was the only one he wanted to deal with.

The beast gave a trilling roar of frustration, and it turned to anger when Kaldalis drove his spear into its ankle. The blood drawn from that cut came out in a gushing spray that ran down the haft of his weapon and over his knuckles. It was a dark red, the color of some sort of berry jam.

He withdrew the weapon and the blood ran down its leg and over its foot, staining the feathers there. The beast staggered from the blow, and he lunged in for another attack, slashing the blade edge of his glaive along its ribs. The cut was shallow and the blood didn’t flow so freely, but he dealt the full fourteen damage.

The feathered monster gave a different cry this time. Its weight shifted, but when Kaldalis prepared to dive out of the way of another kick, it didn’t stand and fight, but turned to run. The ground shook under its weight as it fled, slamming into a tree on the edge of the clearing and muscling through the vegetation there to vanish into the jungle.

“Hey!” Kaldalis yelled. He blinked a few times, slightly disoriented from all the dodging and running in circles against the creature. He lowered his spear and yelled again after the creature: “I’m not done with you yet!”

He didn’t get a pop-up informing him that he had randomly learned the taunt ability just by yelling.

Ahead of him, the creature didn’t turn around, and instead kept on crashing through the jungle away from him. Kaldalis cursed under his breath and gave chase. Of course that didn’t work. This wasn’t a litRPG, this was a real videogame.

He needed to actually level up to get his abilities.

Chasing the creature was child’s play. Even if he couldn’t feel its thundering footsteps reverberating through the ground, the cut on its ankle had made every step of its right foot a bloodied mess. As Kaldalis followed, he noted that it was moving away from the camp, and following it was taking him even farther away from safety. If it led him back to a nest or something, he was going to be in real trouble. But as he followed, he opened his inventory. No research notes quest item meant he wasn’t letting the monster get away. If he had to deal with a mob of them, he’d have to work to peel that one away from the crowd to finish it off.

He hoped to find it in another clearing, but it seemed to have stopped in the jungle itself. The stream that he’d been following earlier was wider here, and the beast was leaning down over it, lapping at the water. It made sense to him. With the run, and the injuries, it was probably feeling dehydrated. He had to consider that drinking like that might give it some healing, as well. His first thought was that he had to stop it, but as soon as he saw it, its yellow eyes saw him as well. It straightened up, the water dribbling from its lips tinged by its purple venom.

“Hey!” he yelled again, breaking into a run through the underbrush, hoping to catch it and put some damage onto it before it ran off again.

The creature didn’t run, though. It lowered its head and bushed out its feathers, letting out another trilling roar.

It was standing to fight. That suited Kaldalis just fine.

It charged him, stomping through the stream and snapping its jaws as it came. Kaldalis considered trying to dodge to one side or the other, but the jungle was relatively dense here, so close to the water. If he tried to break into a full run, he was likely to trip and fall. If he tried to dive out of the way, he might collide with some brush or fallen branch, slowing down his recovery.

The environment was becoming his newest struggle, and the fight wasn’t even joined yet. Kaldalis readied his spear and resolved to turn the environment to his advantage instead. For now, though, he had two choices. He could try to dodge the beast’s charge, or he could accept the attack and meet it head-on.

He had plenty of hit points left. Sure, he was below around 60% after that poison had run its course, but that meant he had over 200 left, right? If he had to trade them for blows against this beast, he was willing to bet that going one-to-one was in his advantage now.

He planted his feet and raised his glaive, lining it up with the creature’s charge.

Head-on. Apply directly to the spearhead.

The creature was either not intelligent enough to understand, or else was of the same mind. It twisted its head out of the way of the head of his glaive, but the weapon plunged into the side of its neck even as the teeth snapped down on Kaldalis. They exchanged damage - fourteen points for thirty-two and a poison debuff - but the creature thrashed, letting go rather than shaking him around again in response to the pain. It let out another trilling bellow of pain, staggering back.

Kaldalis didn’t wait for it to recover. He pressed the advantage, keeping close and thrusting the point of his glaive at the feathered beast quickly. The first two strikes glanced off, cutting away swaths of feathers, but he straightened his stance and put more power behind the next thrusts, and he stabbed it two times in the chest before it surged forward, raking at him with its claws. Kaldalis ducked down, dropping to one knee.

He slapped at one of the claws with his glaive, parrying it aside before it could scratch his arm, and then jammed his weapon up into the monster’s armpit. A spray of jam-colored blood spattered down, and as he withdrew the weapon he had to throw himself into a roll to the right as the beast staggered. For a moment, he thought it was leaning down to reach out with those claws again. But as he got just barely out of the way, the monster’s flank crashed into his back, sending him sprawling. He thought it had body-slammed him, and he scrambled to his feet as fast as he could, whirling.

The creature was on the ground. Its eyes were glazing over even as the last breath wheezed from its deflating lungs.

Kaldalis blinked.

It was dead. He’d done it.

His awareness notified him that he’d felled an Irritator - an apt name for something that was still dealing damage to him after death with its poison - and worth 32 exp. He wondered if that meant it was actually close to his level rather than too far beyond him. Or, perhaps, if there was a cap on exp per kill. He got his precious research notes, too, along with a thighbone, a poisoned fang, and two bird meat. Quite a haul, compared to his other kills.

The poison fang was marked as rare, and he wondered what he could do with it. If nothing else, the rare status cemented his suspicion. This was one of the Infernal Horde monsters they were afraid of. And he’d bested it. He was going to return to the camp as a hero, with valuable information about the greatest threat to the expedition. Kaldalis was pretty happy with the promise of glory, but also with the fight itself. It was a real challenge, and one that he’d overcome with equal parts grit and intelligence. He felt unstoppable.

“Yeah!” he crowed at the forest canopy, “if that’s all the Infernal Horde has got, then bring it on! Let’s fucking GO!” He blew out a breath and felt the aches and pains of his body report in as the adrenaline started to drain out of his system. “Maybe… Maybe not right now,” he said with a chuckle as he checked his minimap. He turned and started to make his way back towards his remaining quest areas.

Forget the hunt. After all that excitement, he was actually looking forward to gathering some much less challenging dirt.