The rest of the hunt was relatively uneventful. Kaldalis didn’t make Dalgaard take any more of the fights solo, in case another irritator appeared.

They got lucky in general, though. The remaining fights were only against the grizzled dragons they found. No adds.

Inwardly, he wondered if that told him something about the irritator. Did the presence of only one in a seemingly-fruitful hunting ground mean that they were territorial? Did they carefully carve up the island into hunting ranges for each one? Did killing one irrevocably destabilize local giant poison dinosaur politics?

Kaldalis realized he should have actually read over the report Bangen gave him after the research.

There was likely a lot of useful information there.

Just because the irritator wasn’t Infernal Horde didn’t mean he couldn’t learn something.

With a sigh, Kaldalis resolved to do that later to answer these questions. And any potential future ones, too.

Outwardly, though, he was happy to only be dealing with a few grizzled dragons instead of the occasional rampaging wall of teeth. He put a lot of effort into making as many attacks as he could, even though it made the fights dramatically faster - and therefore more boring.

He got his spear skill up to fifty at long last (he hit a bad run at skill level forty-nine where he got no skillups for several attacks), but the last grizzled dragon Dalgaard needed was enough to get him there.

Like a kid on Christmas, Kaldalis checked his new ability as soon as the fight was over.

It was called Sweeping Strikes.

The text said that, while active, all attacks cleaved to enemies near the target. While the primary purpose was obviously AoE damage, it also gave him a small damage boost while active. That meant it would still be useful in boss fights. He suspected that other weapons’ cooldowns might be more potent for outright damage output, but given his role as a tank, the ability to cleave his damage onto multiple enemies was a dream come true for gathering aggro.

Kaldalis found himself wondering how it would work, though. Would it just supernaturally blast his damage around the target he struck, or would it force his movements into wider arcing attacks to physically strike everything in cleave range?

Was the cleave based from his position or from the position of the target?

Could he stab adds to cleave onto enemies otherwise out of range?

“Exactly what I wanted out of a new ability,” Kaldalis muttered. “Homework.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing,” Kaldalis said quickly, closing his ability menu so he could focus. “Was that the last one?”

“Yup. I got all my bones. Just have to do the crafting, and I obviously can’t do that out here.”

“Did you want to head back?”

Dalgaard glared at him. “Do you?”

Kaldalis looked up at the sky. It was just about sunset, with the edges of the sky just starting to turn orange. “It will be night soon. I’d love to get to the fishing spot before full dark, but if you’re feeling unsafe, I don’t want to make you continue.”

“I’m fine.” Dalgaard puffed out their chest. “You helped me with my quest, I can’t abandon you out here now.”

“Alright,” Kaldalis said with a smirk. “As long as you know that it’s your choice.”

“Yeah, yeah,” they scoffed with a familiar dismissive gesture. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Alright then,” Kaldalis said, turning himself towards the quest marker. “Just don’t put me in a position to remind you that you said that.” He paused a moment. “You got a full night’s sleep last night, right?”

Dalgaard hesitated, as if confused. “Yeah, why?”

“That’s how the fatigue debuff works. If you don’t get eight hours of sleep on two consecutive nights, you get debuffed,” Kaldalis explained. “I learned that one the hard way. The debuff is super annoying, too.”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Dalgaard said. “I even ate a full breakfast too, dad.”

Kaldalis ignored the jab. “Alright. Then let’s go. Daylight’s wasting, and there’s not much left.”

As they pressed forward, the jungle grew denser and denser. Kaldalis soon found himself regretting some of his character customization options. There were places where the undergrowth was so thick he could barely squeeze his bulky frame through, and he kept getting his horns caught on branches and vines.

Meanwhile, Dalgaard easily slipped through behind him without any such trouble.

“Would it have killed them to put some pathfinding in these quest markers?” Kaldalis said as he pushed through a wall of thick fern-like bushes. “Just a little yellow line that will guide me around all this shit?”

“They coulda,” Dalgaard said, “but it would cost us a raid tier.”

Kaldalis snorted. “Can’t have that now, can we?”

“You could just look for your own way around,” Dalgaard said. “You could try and find that stream again and just follow it. It’s gotta connect to your fishing spot, right?”

Kaldalis looked sheepishly at the kid. “Huh, I didn’t think of that.”

“I figured,” Dlagaard said. “But until you complained, I thought you were brute forcing your way through the wilderness for a reason.”

“No, no,” Kaldalis said. “I’m just not very bright.”

“Well, in that case, the stream is probably this way,” they said, pointing off to the west. “We can meet up with it and follow it towards your quest marker.”

“That’s smart,” he said with a laugh. “You’re smart. I’m lucky you stuck with me.”

“I know,” Dalgaard said. Their thin smile was full of sarcasm. “But it’s nice to hear it out loud, too.”

Following his human companion’s lead towards the west, the jungle grew gradually less dense until the trees opened up as they had in the open space where they’d fought the irritator. With the stream beside them, Kaldalis took the lead then, following the narrow rivulet north towards the center of the island.

It was a more roundabout route, obviously, but the space being clear of undergrowth meant they set a much better pace. Kaldalis was satisfied enough with that, especially since he was no longer pulling branches out of his horns.

After a time, the sparse trees reached a hard line where they stopped, and Kaldalis slowed their pace, moving carefully as he approached.

The treeline ended in a clearing much like others they’d seen before. Particularly, it looked much like the clearings where they’d fought grizzled dragons. The ground was a carpet of mixed grassy vegetation, and the area was open to the sky. Kaldalis could see the first few stars peeking out, though there was still a reddish hue to the clouds that told him the sun wasn’t entirely gone yet.

He could still see the whole clearing, though. The darkness hadn’t closed in enough that he was down to his sight radius globe.

This clearing was different, though. In the previous areas, there were only a few boulders and larger stones poking up out of the dirt. This clearing contained true ruins. Entire walls. A few looked like actual buildings, mostly intact.

The stream ran right towards it, and Kaldalis could see where a crumbling stone culvert swallowed it up, taking it under the ancient town.

“What the fuck,” Kaldalis said quietly. “I don’t know what to do with this.”

“Why?” Dalgaard said, “we just pick our way around until we find where the stream comes out and follow it again.”

“You don’t understand,” Kaldalis said, “this is ruins. Ruins. Do you know what ruins means?”

“Loot? Danger? Fame and fortune?”

“Yes,” Kaldalis said quickly. “All of that, but I’ll sum it up with just one word: dungeon.”

Dalgaard seemed unfazed. “Seriously? Why would you think there was a dungeon here?”

“Because ruins! Ruins means there might be a tunnel somewhere around here that could lead to the underground city,” Kaldalis explained. “And if we come out in the underground city in a different place, that means we might find a different library. And a different library means different tablets. Different tablets, different story… Different power.”

Now the kid looked a little more interested. “I don’t know,” they said, looking back into the jungle behind them. As night approached, it was getting darker beneath the jungle canopy. “Is it safe? Shouldn’t we go find some DPS if we might blunder our way into a dungeon?”

“We don’t need to run the whole thing ourselves,” Kaldalis said quickly. “We just need to find out if it’s here. We’ll get the message with the name of the dungeon and that there’s no clear time or whatever, and then we can move on. We can bring some DPS back with us tomorrow, but we don’t want to drag some people all the way out here and then not find anything, right?”

“I guess…” Dalgaard grimaced. “As long as you’re sure it’s safe.”

“Just stay close to me,” Kaldalis said. He put on his most reassuring smile. “Nothing we’re going to find out here will oneshot you, and as long as it has to come within spear-range of me to hit you, I’ll pick it up and stop it from taking you out.”

“Okay,” they said, stepping in a little closer behind him. “Then lead the way.”