Entering the jungle wasn’t really scary. The area immediately around the encampment was well-tread, and he was likely to be within earshot of another adventurer for the first hour of picking his way through the wilderness.

Even with the threat of the Infernal Horde lurking around every corner, the jungle just wasn’t threatening. At least not when he could periodically hear someone else crashing through the undergrowth hunting for fruit. Or snippets of conversation interspersed with the crack of some tool striking stone.

Unfortunately, the quest marker was going to take him far beyond the ring of wandering adventurers.

Way beyond.

After the first hour picking his way through the dense jungle, the sounds of human influence fell behind him, and Kaldalis found himself in near-silence, only interrupted by the occasional call of some unidentified wildlife. He found himself slowing down and watching his step, responding to the change in atmosphere by attempting to quiet his own movements.

He didn’t know why he was trying to sneak through the jungle. There were basically only two things he could run into: natural wildlife and the Infernal Horde. He didn’t feel like the natural wildlife he might encounter would represent a real threat, since he was a well-geared tank with an inventory full of potions.

As for the Infernal Horde, he remembered very clearly his first encounter with the syncoresi. It had picked him out of the jungle like he was a neon sign and followed him to the ends of the earth.

Unless there was a hidden stealth skill in the game that he was building, he didn’t anticipate taking more careful steps as having an effect on his ability to evade them.

Just the same, natural instinct was natural instinct. His gut was telling him to watch his step and move quietly, and he wasn’t about to ignore that. It was possible his inner lizard brain was detecting something his civilized mind wasn’t attuned to.

Of course, all his caution went out the window when he heard a wordless cry out of the jungle.

It wasn’t exactly a cry for help. It was a definitely-human scream, and it had a plaintive quality that hit Kaldalis’s hero instincts in a way he couldn’t ignore. But it wasn’t something so simple as screams of “help help I’m being repressed.”

Running towards the screaming, Kaldalis burst through a wall of vegetation into a clearing.

There was a moment where his eyes had to adjust to the sudden light, now that he was no longer beneath the jungle canopy. During that moment, there were just a couple of blurry shapes on a green field, and he rushed towards them, spear at the ready. It was only when he acclimated to the light that he saw what he was dealing with.

It was three figures. Two of them were grizzled dragons. One had bluish scales, while the other was the red hue he remembered.

Not only were there two of them, but they were in different elements. It would make them unpredictable, and getting accustomed to the behaviors of one of them would leave him open to the other. Not an indomitable fight, but nearly a challenge. At least, for Kaldalis alone.

The third figure was a human. They were a shorter individual with a youthful appearance - maybe seventeen at the oldest. Kaldalis tried not to think of them as a kid. Given the depth of the character creator, they could have been an eighty-year-old man in real life, and somehow pushed through the vertiginous feeling of being in a strange body that Kaldalis had experienced in the tutorial.

Then again, Balrim and Myrin had said they hadn’t suffered any such effects, so maybe he was just oversensitive.

The kid - er, the adventurer of nonspecific age - was obviously a healer. They were wearing a cloth robe much like what Balrim wore, and as Kaldalis charged to their defense, they produced a potion and spiked it to the ground at their feet. Unlike the bow Balrim used, they wielded twin daggers, though the weapons themselves looked very simple. The weapons appeared to be unadorned metal spikes with handles wrapped in leather. Kaldalis had come to understand that as weapons climbed in level requirement, they became not just better-constructed, but also got a few decorations. His own spear, while only level ten, at least had a wrap of green cloth on the haft where his hands naturally rested.

He could only conclude that they were lower level.

Kaldalis couldn’t stop to wonder how someone at such a lower level ended up way out here by themselves. Ultimately, this was a relatively straightforward situation with a simple and obvious answer.

He was happy to have one of those for a change.

“Get behind me!” Kaldalis yelled, throwing himself between the kid and the monsters. He lashed out with his spear and struck the nearest of the grizzled dragons. It was the red one, and he struck for seventy-two physical damage and twelve wind damage.

Kaldalis wasn’t concerned about his damage, though.

What he needed was to just strike it. Now that he’d hit it, overworld monster rules meant that the kid was safe from further attack by the beast.

The blue-scaled dragon lunged past Kaldalis at the healer, and he whirled, ignoring the red one. He could take the hit - he could take many hits, if he were being honest with himself - but without being partied up with the kid, he didn’t know if they had the same luxury. He jammed his spear into the monster’s side, throwing his weight into the attack to unbalance the creature. An enormous claw ripped through the air just shy of the smaller adventurer, and when the dragon recovered from the impact, it oriented on Kaldalis instead.

The selfless act wasn’t without cost.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true.

He accepted a hit from the red-scaled monster, taking only twelve physical damage and three fire damage. The damage was so trivial he almost couldn’t detect it looking at his health bar.

“Who are you?” the other adventurer demanded. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m just a guy who’s a hero for fun,” Kaldalis said. “And it looks like I’m saving your ass. You gonna complain?”

“I guess not,” they said. “Thanks?”

“I’d say to save it for when the fight’s done, but it’s over already. These beasts just don’t know it yet.”

“Cocky.”

“Accurate.”

Kaldalis planted his feet as the grizzled dragons lunged at him.

He knew he should have been avoiding their strikes, but he had nothing to fear from them. Kaldalis had almost two thousand total hit points. They could beat on him all they liked and it would still take over a hundred attacks to drop him.

And anyway, he’d also just made a grandiose boast. He was absolutely going to back it up.

Enormous claws crashed against him, and every blow he took, he dealt one out in return. The blue-scaled dragon only hit him for one additional damage compared to the red-scaled one, due to his fire affinity charm. It meant he was more resistant to the fire damage than the water damage, but it wasn’t enough to change his course.

He tanked through five hits from both of them before he managed to hammer enough damage into the blue-scaled dragon to cause it to break and run.

Kaldalis’s instinct was to let it go - he was here to protect the kid, not kill monsters. But when the other adventurer cried out in dismay, he realized that they probably needed the kill for a quest. He activated his Jump cooldown and hurled himself after the fleeing monster. Two hops, and he came down on its back, driving his spear into it deep enough to establish a grip. He leaned hard to the left, and his weight dragged the grizzled dragon down, sending them both into a tumble.

The monster thrashed around, striking Kaldalis viciously. But he shrugged off the paltry damage, and smashed the edge of his spear into the monster’s head. The blow carved away scales and a layer of muscle. A curtain of blood fountained over the grizzled dragon’s face, and as it shook its head, Kaldalis drove his spear straight into its chest. It was the killing blow, and Kaldalis felt the vibrations of the monster’s racing heart running up the haft of his weapon for a second before it went still.

The red-scaled beast was charging after him, and once Kaldalis had his weapon freed from the carcass of the blue one, he leapt forward to meet the charge.

It wasn’t long before it broke and ran.

Kaldalis wanted to chase it, but his Jump ability was still on cooldown. If the kid wanted to finish the job, the spatter of blood from its perforated sides would leave an easy trail to follow.

Now that the fighting was done, Kaldalis turned toward the kid in question. They were staying out of the way - which was nice - and just using their healing potions on cooldown to refill their drained health bar - which was smart.

But just the same, there was a behavior here that he wanted to discourage.

“Don’t you know it’s dangerous out here?” Kaldalis asked, waving his arms around. Blood scattered from the head of his spear, and he tried not to be distracted when a few droplets struck his cheek. “What the fuck are you doing alone this far from camp?”

“I don’t know,” they shot back with a smirk. “What are you?”

Kaldalis decided, in that moment, that this person was a smartass.

Great. Another one.