As Kaldalis watched that sunken-eyed face, framed by stringy, greasy hair slowly advance, he was extremely sure of two things. The first thing was that it somehow knew where he was despite the brush that gave him cover from it. It was looking right at him and was coming right towards him.

The second thing was that he should be running. But wasn’t.

He told himself that it was his imagination. It couldn’t possibly be able to pick him out, keeping low in the foliage as he was. Instead of giving into animal instincts and bolting - giving away his position - he took the more measured and rational route, creeping back away from it slowly.

He took a path that was perpendicular to its approach, watching its response carefully. At first, he thought that it was continuing on its course towards where he had been. He stayed low and stopped to observe for a moment. It didn’t take long to realize what was wrong. It was still heading towards where he had been, but its baleful gaze was still locked on his current position.

The desire to break into a full sprint was overwhelming, but Kaldalis kept it down. Sprinting in the jungle was a good way to turn his ankle - or even break it. He tried to just sneak away. It only took two or three steps before the terrified trembling he felt in his knees forced him to abandon pretense. He stopped trying to sneak - the creature seemed able to see him even when he was entirely obscured anyway - and just set a brisk pace in the opposite direction, heading back towards camp.

Kaldalis tried to keep his cool as he retreated. He wasn’t sure what that thing was, but it certainly was out of his league - it had obliterated the irritator in something like two hits, which had taken him a long time to whittle down the previous day. There was no way he could fight something with that much power.

The mood of his retreat changed significantly as soon as the creature left the clearing and entered the foliage. It wasn’t quiet. The sound of snapping branches and rustling leaves sounded like it was right behind Kaldalis, inspiring him to pick up the pace into something a little closer to a run.

His first reaction wasn’t entirely rational. A part of him believed that it would, eventually, leash. If he got outside of its normal roaming range, it should just give up the chase, right? It was videogame logic at its best, but he was playing a game. Sure, it was unrealistic to expect a real hunter to stop chasing prey, but if mobs chased forever, then as soon as a high-level enemy saw you, you were dead no matter what. All running accomplished was choosing where you’d die.

Not leashing was bad design, and it would kill the enjoyment of the game for new players. Monsoon knew better.

Just the same, it wasn’t realistic, and as time went on, it seemed realism was winning out. After a full minute of running, with the crashing sound of the monster’s pursuit staying right behind him, he had to admit that it seemed like that wasn’t going to leash.

“Okay, plan B,” he said to himself, grateful that he was able to run for so long without running out of breath. “As soon as I think of a plan B.”

In the end, plan B came down to trying things that worked in other videogames. He tried a zig-zag pattern to try and get it caught on terrain elements or trees. Then he ran back and forth over the stream - in some games, crossing water could cause an aggroed mob that “tracked by scent” to drop aggro. Then he just picked up the pace as fast as he dared, hoping to outrun it. He found that he could actually extend his lead if he pushed himself, but when he stopped to listen, the sound of pursuit eventually picked back up and grew louder and louder again.

“Okay, what else is there?” Kaldalis asked himself. “There has to be some way to lose it. The only thing I haven’t tried…” He looked at his minimap. “Is leading it to town to get city guards to fight it.” He shook his head. “Absolutely not. That would-”

He jumped as the sound of the approaching monster grew dangerously close, and he decided to do the rest of his planning on the move.

He had no guarantee that there was anything like a city guard in the camp. Some nigh-immortal faceless nobody who would murder even the scariest monster in the area in order to keep questgivers and merchants safe. But beyond that, the creature had demolished an irritator - something the whole camp was afraid of - he had no desire to test any defenders against it. He still remembered the early days of Colossus, when a random world boss could get kited to a nearby town, where it would cause chaos for hours - decimating quest givers, obliterating new players with AoEs that were scaled to veteran raiders, and even massacring other important NPCs, like those that allowed access to the auction house or mail systems.

The encampment wasn’t on his minimap yet, but he could see a bit of beach in the distance, meaning he was somewhere roughly nearby. His sense of direction told him it was a bit farther south along the curve of the beach, not too far. If he didn’t want it to end up in the camp, that meant he should turn and run north, leading it away. If it did leash, or stop chasing him for whatever reason, then the last thing he wanted was for someone else to pick up its attention. He was a tank. He was responsible for protecting others, and that responsibility extended beyond the confines of combat.

Kaldalis ran north.

A part of him quailed at the decision. This might mean his death, if he couldn’t figure out a way to handle the monster. But discipline cemented the decision. Considering the possibility of death, he recognized that he was a Player Character. Furthermore, despite Balrim and Myrin’s assurance - and the behavior of a number of others - he couldn’t be positive that the people he cared about weren’t also just NPCs programmed to pretend to be PCs.

If the price of aggroing this creature was death, a PC should be the one to pay it. He wasn’t sure if it was Descartes or Asimov who said it first, but the only person he could say for sure was a person was himself. His death wouldn’t be permanent. If it got loose in the settlement, it could decimate the Adventurers League personnel they were all counting on to build the camp.

If he understood the way this game worked, they wouldn’t come back.

Kaldalis would just have to take an honorable death over survival if it meant that he saved a dozen lives in the process. Especially when those dozen lives would mean the continued survival of the rest of the expedition. And that went double since he knew his honorable death would just be a temporary inconvenience compared to the permanent loss of any NPCs caught in the chaos.

Mind made up, Kaldalis continued his trek north. He wanted to do a full run, as he had before. If he could outdistance it enough, perhaps it would give up? But he held himself back. If he finally leashed it now, it was still only a few moments’ walk away from the settlement. Anyone else could come upon it.

He wanted distance. And to do that, he needed to exhibit one of the oldest and most time-honored skills every tank needed to learn in the oldest MMORPGs as a central strategy for many enemies.

It was time to kite. For the safety of his friends, he had to kite. He would kite as though lives depended on him.

Because, of course, they did.