The quests to strengthen the settlement were straightforward, as Kaldalis expected. Hides and vines, as before, along with using harvesting to gather timber, and using mining to gather more soil samples in order to plan for setting up farming in the near future. The quest markers were farther out in the jungle than the ones from the previous day, though, giving him the chance he wanted to hunt down another irritator. Or, failing that, at least a grizzled dragon or two.

Doing the quests on the way out into the jungle was nearly negligible. The gathering quests were much easier thanks to his higher skill, and while it seemed the cougadiles and flytraps looked a little bigger - possibly scaled up from the previous day - they presented about the same threat. Two quick strikes took each one down. He finished each one in turn on his way out into the jungle.

When he finished gathering the final soil samples, he was almost tempted to turn around and turn them in.

Unfinished quests always felt like uncashed checks to him, and he wanted to get his payday. Especially since Myrin had mentioned something about branching quest lines.

He knew that the four quests he had right now - along with the exp gained for hunting cougadiles and flytraps out here - would get him the last 300-ish exp he needed to get to level 5. He was especially eager since he had been led to believe that that was when he was going to start unlocking new abilities.

Just the same, the whole reason he was out here in the jungle alone was for the chance to find more information for the expedition. He might not have had a quest for it, but it was still an objective on his personal list. Kaldalis couldn’t find a timer for the research turn-ins in his quest journal, but he knew that a clock was rolling, and that there was as much as a week remaining.

Not only would it be a benefit of the whole expedition to have this information, it would help him out, too. He didn’t know how big the payout would be for the research when it was done, but every little bit of progress was a step closer to the level cap.

Assuming there was one.

And so he pushed forward into the jungle, just deep enough to find what he sought. The first footprint was four feet across, and while he couldn’t tell details, the size alone gave him a pretty good idea what he was looking at. Only the irritator had left prints this large. And with prints this large, following it would be easy.

Or so he thought.

This trail was not fresh. There were certainly places where he could find very clear imprints in the dirt from giant taloned feet, but there were long spaces between them where he could find no sign telling him where it might have gone. His early progress was more by persistence and luck than skill. He managed to find some dirty feathers that had been mashed into the mud to lead him down one path. There was a fork in the path and he guessed it had gone one direction just because the space between the trees didn’t look wide enough the other way.

It was annoying to inch through the jungle, knowing that he was moving slower than even the slowest walking pace of the beast he tracked.

“This is natural,” he told himself - keeping his voice low as he remembered the preternaturally sharp hearing of the irritator. “Bipeds are masters of persistence hunting. It’ll tire long before I do. It’ll rest. Hunt. Eat. Sleep. And I’ll just keep coming up behind it.”

He just kept telling himself that even as the cold trail drew him deeper and deeper into the jungle. It would just take time, and he’d catch up. And then a challenging fight, and he would be on his way back to camp with new research notes.

Eventually, Kaldalis found that the jungle grew quiet around himself as he continued. He lowered his stance, keeping low to the ground as he continued, seeking to stay quiet to avoid being heard and set upon by his quarry.

As he crept through the jungle, he heard a trilling roar. The high pitch of the sound carried through the trees, and Kaldalis immediately threw himself to the ground and ducked behind a bush, hoping it would be enough cover to hide him. And if it wasn’t, he hoped that it might give him some cover during the fight.

But there was no sound of stomping feet. No oncoming crashing through the forest. Nothing.

Kaldalis warily started to creep towards where he thought the sound was coming from. A few steps from his hiding spot, and the roar came again. He tensed, resisting the urge to leap back into hiding. The creature wasn’t coming for him. It was fighting something else. He would have to hurry to make sure someone else wasn’t in danger out here - and that he wouldn’t miss out on some credit for a kill he’d been tracking for so long.

He didn’t break into a run - he didn’t want to draw its attention until he saw what it was fighting - but he set as quick a pace as he could while still moving quietly. It didn’t take long until he found the fight, and he relaxed when he saw it.

The fight was happening in another clearing, much like the one from the previous day. He still couldn’t tell why this space was devoid of trees, but it was an open area of ankle-high brush that served as a really functional fight arena. The Irritator stood in that space, feathers puffed out, posturing.

It was fighting against something that looked like a grizzled dragon, but wasn’t like what he had fought. Instead of sea green scales, its scales were a dirty brownish hue, and instead of its claws leaking water, they smoked and smoldered. An intuitive leap told him that it was an element and palette swap of what he’d fought before. Kaldalis wondered if, perhaps, the scaled creature was indeed a grizzled dragon, and like fantasy dragons, they came in different colors with different elements, even if they looked a bit more like old dinosaur drawings.

As he watched, crouched in the brush at the edge of the clearing, the “grizzled dragon” reared up, clawing at the air defensively. It had a few bloodied wounds, a few from bites and a couple that looked like the raking of the irritator’s claws. Even from this distance, Kaldalis could see purple ooze dribbling from the wounds. The irritator itself wasn’t unharmed, though. There were a few scratches on its legs, and the side of its snout had a long raking clawmark.

Yes please, Kaldalis thought, fighting the urge to speak aloud, soften it up for me, dragon friend.

As they postured, and traded blows again, Kaldalis actually got a good chance to observe the irritator. He hadn’t noticed before that it had something of a short sail of webbed spines on its back - barely a foot tall, compared to its height, but present. It looked like a potential vulnerability. More than that, though, as the beast went into its ferocious charge of snapping jaws, the sail twitched and shuddered.

That was a tell.

The sail was a tell. When it shook, it was going to go into a full charge. When it didn’t, it was just going to snap. That was useful. Even if Kaldalis couldn’t add that to a research report, it would be useful information for the fights to come. He could spread the word himself.

Naturally, the irritator won the fight. It was pretty one-sided. The grizzled dragon eventually tried to flee, but the enormous feathered monster leaped on it in a birdlike pounce, driving it to the ground and tearing into it, not even waiting for it to finish squirming before it started ripping into its meal.

This was his chance. Kaldalis coiled, ready to lunge into the clearing and charge. The irritator didn’t look to be as softened up as he would like, but any damage on it was more than no damage on it. And if he jumped in now, he could interrupt its meal, in case eating would give it some healing.

If he could ambush it before it knew he was coming, he might also get a free hit or two before it could retaliate.

The irritator’s head snapped up. Kaldalis put a hand over his mouth, hoping that he hadn’t given himself away before he got his sneak attack. But the creature’s head turned the other way, to the far side of the clearing.

Someone was standing there. Kaldalis squinted across the clearing, trying to see if he could identify them. But they were too far away. So there was a person standing in the brush there, making no effort to hide from the giant monster feeding only fifteen feet away from them.

The irritator squawked and returned to its meal.

The person stepped out of the brush as soon as its attention was away, and Kaldalis had to amend his assessment.

That wasn’t someone, that was something.

It wasn’t that tall, but its limbs were lanky and long, with its torso strangely abbreviated for its height. It was hairy, like an ape, with the long fur an eggshell color, and the exposed skin a pinkish shade. The hair around its head was not the same as the fur on the rest of its body. It came down to the creature’s shoulders and was a darker shade of grey. Its face was almost human, but something was just… off about it. He couldn’t tell from here, and its unsettling appearance made him feel an intense unwillingness to get closer.

The irritator’s response to it was immediate. It gave a trilling roar, puffing out its feathers and taking a defensive stance, obviously wanting to defend its kill from the oncoming beast.

The creature paid no mind to its stance, walking towards it with freakishly long strides. Despite the size disparity, the irritator gave a trilling hiss and started to back off, yielding ground to the strange humanoid. It reared up and gave another trilling roar of challenge, though from the feathered beast’s body language, Kaldalis wasn’t sure if it was preparing to attack or bolt.

The furry ape-monster gave a huffing sound that sounded more like irritation than a battle cry, and launched itself at the irritator.

Kaldalis gawked in horror.

The fight was over in an instant.

The new creature leapt ten feet straight through the air and latched onto the irritator’s face. Previously unnoticed claws ripped apart the irritator’s face before it swung under the enormous head, ripping open the giant beast’s throat. The irritator fell, its lungs deflating before Kaldalis had properly registered that the fight had started.

Kaldalis braced himself for the expected horror of the creature ripping apart the irritator to eat it, but it didn’t even spare a glance for the giant body.

The humanoid turned away from it the moment it was dead.

Towards Kaldalis.