Kaldalis didn’t have time to waste.

Despite how well Dalgaard handled themselves one-on-one against the grizzled dragon, the irritator was too large a threat to let them handle on their own. He remembered it being incrementally stronger than a grizzled dragon, but from what he’d heard from others who had encountered them, their scaling was much higher than other monsters, meaning it was going to be a real fight anyway.

Not as severe as a dungeon boss - or an Infernal Horde mob - but certainly only one step down from that.

The giant feathered monster sprinted straight for Dalgaard, but Kaldalis had been prepared to intervene. It had originally been because he had been afraid of their quarry putting up a larger fight, or for another grizzled dragon to enter the fray, but the change in aggressor didn’t change the needed tactics.

He activated his Jump cooldown and lunged, leaping forward.

The scattered trees made jumping less effective than an equivalent move speed increase would have been. He couldn’t hurl himself through the air straight onto the beast, or he would have glanced off of a tree branch.

But three well-controlled hops let him zig-zag his way into position between the venomous dinosaur and his new friend.

He thrust his spear forward, jabbing the giant monster as fast as he could. Kaldalis just needed to secure the hit.

Once it was on him, Dalgaard would be safe.

Despite his sudden appearance, the irritator was ready for prey to appear before it, and so while Kaldalis struck with his spear, giant teeth lashed out, raking against his right arm. Dylan’s blow dealt thirty-three physical damage and seven wind damage, while the bite he took in return inflicted seventy-nine damage and a stack of poison that got busy ticking away at his health bar.

Kaldalis managed to wrench his arm free of the bite as the monster reared its head, letting out a trilling roar that filled the air.

The giant feathered monster oriented on Kaldalis - Dalgaard forgotten - and it lunged at him teeth-first.

Dodging the attack was trivial with his Jump cooldown still rolling, letting him leap back with superhuman speed. Tanking instincts made him circle the beast to the left, pointing its tail towards Dalgaard.

He knew the creature didn’t have any AoE attacks that he needed to bait away from his party members. It was wasted effort. But some habits were going to stick with him to the grave.

Being a good tank just happened to be one of them.

With both Dalgaard and the monster in front of him, he could see the young healer run up to help, daggers flashing at the giant feathered tail. Carving into it.

Kaldalis wanted to limit his attacks to keep attention on avoiding its attacks, but he had just reached level ten. He needed to get his spear skill capped so that he could unlock whatever new ability was to come. As such, he accepted taking another bite - and another stack of Poison - in exchange for slamming the edge of his spear’s head across the side of the monster’s face, dealing out another forty total damage.

It was a bad trade.

When counting the poison, he was taking more than twice as much damage as he was dealing. But he got another fractional increase in progress for his weapon skill.

He had a healer as well, right?

As if on cue, a potion tumbled through the air to crash against Kaldalis’s knee. It topped him off successfully, though as soon as his HP bar was full, it started ticking down again from the poison. Just the same, he felt emboldened to keep trading blows, knowing that Dalgaard had his back.

The irritator was still a fearsome foe.

If Kaldalis tanked all of its attacks Dalgaard wasn’t going to be able to keep up with the healing required. Their healing was for just shy of two hundred hit points, and the cooldown was far too long for that to keep up with more than eighty damage per hit.

So Kaldalis did what he could to mitigate, using his remaining Jump cooldown to keep moving while it was up, and activating Endure as soon as it ended to reduce the monster’s damage to sixty-four, plus the stack of poison.

He wondered at the accuracy of the Poison debuff. Even though the feathered beast wasn’t a boss, every strike inflicted poison on him. He hadn’t looked at the information sheet on the irritator after the researchers finished, so he didn’t know how high its affinity was.

Did he need to get his hands on debuff-specific charms to be ready to swap them in against specific enemies?

It seemed like a lot of effort, especially since all drops were random, and he’d need to frequently replace them as he levelled up. Not to mention the whole awkwardness of swapping mid-combat.

Did he really care about min-maxing? It wasn’t his style. But some of his viewers might care, and he wanted to keep them happy.

He wasn’t going to worry about it for now, though.

It was Future!Kaldalis’ problem.

For while Kaldalis felt like the fight was already in their favor, it took a hard turn when Dalgaard’s Gust debuff got its first proc. It took a while, and Kaldalis took that to mean that there was a sizable disparity in affinities, especially given how ridiculously fast they were able to attack with their small, light weapons.

Dalgaard’s Gust proc blasted the beast from the side. Despite its size, it was hurled three giant steps to the left and slammed into the nearest tree. Both Dalgaard and Kaldalis pounced on the opening, laying into the vulnerable creature as it scrambled. Enormous taloned feet churned the air as it tried to get back up. Kaldalis stayed to the front end, driving his spear into its chest and shoulders, while Dalgaard got dangerously close to those kicking legs in order to slash away at its vulnerable underbelly.

The next Gust proc came before the monster even got back up. It was on its side with one foot under it when the blast went off, smashing it back to the ground. The creature had already been vulnerable from the first blast, and this one almost flipped it all the way onto its back. Kaldalis took the opportunity to do some real damage with his spear, slashing at its head with the sharp edge of the weapon.

It didn’t take long to finish the irritator off after that.

The irritator wasn’t a boss monster; it didn’t have oodles of health. It was just large and had strong defense stats for an overworld mob. Eventually Kaldalis’s spear sank into the monster’s neck and an arterial spray jetted from the wound. The irritator was down, and while he only got a meager-feeling forty experience points for the kill, given the time investment required, this fight wasn’t for experience. It was for survival.

“Nice work,” Kaldalis said, stepping over to pat Dalgaard on the shoulder.

They were breathing heavily, and it took them a moment to compose themselves. “Right. Thank you. Okay.”

Kaldalis frowned. “It’s okay. We’re fine. I’ve got your back, and you’ve got mine. That’s the purpose of this operation, right?”

“Right, right.” They took a deep breath and straightened the collar of their robe. “Yeah, that’s the deal. I just didn’t think I’d see something this big.”

“Life comes at you fast, kid.” Kaldalis laughed. “We’ll get some gray in your hair by the end of the day.”

They put their hands to their short hair, as if trying to protect it. The look of horror drew another laugh from Kaldalis.

“We’ve got more work to do,” Kaldalis said when he recovered. “How did you come out of that?”

“I got a poison fang,” they said, “and some meat. And a rare feather?”

“Oh, yeah,” Kaldalis said, checking his inventory. “Me too.” He paused and shook his head. “Shit. I’m just starting to tune out the drops. That’s probably going to come back to bite me later.”

“Eventually.”

“But I was talking about the grizzled dragon. You need more bones, right?”

“Oh! Right. Yes.” They waved a hand in the air. Kaldalis suspected they were flipping through their inventory with the motion. “Only two more to go.”

“Alright… well, there must be a good population here,” Kaldalis said. “Irritators hunt them, and if they’re plentiful enough to draw predators, we shouldn’t have too much trouble finding them.” He looked around the clearing, and noticed that the wildlife sounds had just started picking up, now that the irritator was dead. “As long as we don’t hunt up this thing’s backtrail.”

“I was hoping to pick up some extras, too,” Dalgaard said in a thin voice. “You know. Beyond just what I need for the quest? Crafting is expensive.”

Kaldalis looked up at the jungle canopy. The sky was starting to turn orange, which meant his window would be opening soon. “As soon as we have what you need for the quest, we need to get going towards my quest. But any dragons we find on the way, we’ll kill rather than evade, alright?”

The kid grinned. “What are we doing standing around, then?” Dalgaard asked, taking off towards the jungle, “we haven’t got all night!”