The Irritator bore down on Kaldalis with teeth bared, but he had to throw caution to the wind now. His blade struck the side of its face, dishing out five hundred and thirty-five damage, and the fourth stack of the Slow debuff. The monster’s next attack would have been blindingly fast without that debuff, but now he was able to drop to the ground and let the jaws catch only air above him as he rolled away.

Jaws kept snapping at him as he rolled, and the teeth caught his shoulder briefly, tearing into him. He was rolling too fast for it to get a grip on him, but it was still enough to deal damage to him. His defensive-focused stats meant that it didn’t hit him that hard, but also his Duck And Cover passive from wielding a sword and shield reduced the damage further because he wasn’t standing. He only took five hundred and fifty damage, and he managed to avoid a poison debuff proc as well.

The feathered behemoth snarled, and Kaldalis rolled to his feet, leading with his blade. He struck for five hundred and forty-five damage this time - the combo stacks and Ire Potion nearly brought him to the point where he could trade blow-for-blow with the monster and win.

But he didn’t have to get that reckless.

Not yet, anyway.

The Slow stacks were piling up now. The feathered theropod tried to do a quick spin to hit Kaldalis with its thick trunk of a tail, but the debuff made it almost impossible for Kaldalis to be hit by it. He didn’t have to dive back. He just had to duck under it and smash the attacking appendage with his sword on its way past, dishing out five hundred and fifty-six damage.

As the monster whirled around, Kaldalis charged in, slashing along its side. As he applied another stack of slow, he started to dance around the monster, keeping to its right. It turned to try and bite at him - or at least to reach at him with its stubby clawed arms - but it was too slow now. Kaldalis could run faster than it could spin, and so he carved at its side for as long as it would let him, continuing to hack away at its shin, knee, and thigh.

The monster grew slower and slower as he went, and all the while his attacks hit harder and harder. His Combo stacks capped out at 10, when he was dishing out six hundred and six damage per hit, carving away at it furiously. And as he went, the monster grew slower and slower.

Kaldalis remembered being on the receiving end of the debuff. First, from the giant sand monster they’d fought in the ruins outside Panbu, but more recently at the hands of Heluna preparing him for his jump into the Lataxinan vessel. Against Heluna, he remembered how surreal and strange the slowness in his body felt, but in combat, it had been terrifying. So much of this world’s mechanics were based around avoiding damage that the slow was disproportionately powerful compared to all other debuffs.

It actually made him pity the Irritator. If this world wasn’t a videogame, then the animal intelligence controlling the beast was real, no different from that of an irate grizzly that happened to be within striking distance of the spread of civilization. Did it understand why its body wasn’t responding the way it wanted? Or did it just think that the small morsel that had charged headlong towards its jaws was growing faster and faster?

Eventually, the stacks of Slow reached their limit. Kaldalis struck the monster when it had nine stacks three times before it applied the tenth stack, but when it did, the results were devastating. Kaldalis was aware that the ten stacks were consumed, but as the monster was returned to normal speed, it was afflicted with stun for a few seconds, leaving it wide open to attack.

“Yeah,” Kaldalis muttered as he planted his feet and hacked away at the monster’s belly with his sword. “This is balanced.”

He dished out almost two thousand damage total before the stun wore off. More than enough to get the monster low enough on health to send it fleeing into the jungle away from him once it could move again.

“No, no, no,” Kaldalis snapped, yelling after the monster. “Come on! I’m on the clock here!”

With his sword and shield equipped, he didn’t have the ability to give chase effectively. In the time it would have taken him to switch back to his spear, the beast was already out of sight in the undergrowth, too far to even hear it crashing away as more than a vague rumble, muffled by the trees.

Leaping after it wouldn’t be productive. He would either lose the trail entirely, or he might end up coming across a new trail for a different Irritator and end up fighting a fresh monster with no hope of beating the clock before it took its turn to flee.

Kaldalis ran after the giant theropod as fast as he could. In its haste to escape, it was leaving monstrous tracks that were easy to follow, but its enormous strides meant that it was gaining ground. Kaldalis wasn’t going to see it again until after it stopped.

And as he pursued it, he was approaching the last few minutes of the exp bonus on his ring. The time crunch was getting tighter and tighter as he reached for another Ire Potion from his inventory. He needed to have one ready to go when he found the monster.

After about a minute at a dead sprint through the forest - while counting himself lucky that he didn’t break his ankle for running through the undergrowth - he burst through a patch of tall grass that marked the edge of a clearing. Before his eyes could adjust to the sudden change, there was a roar of challenge. Kaldalis hurled himself to the left, but not quite fast enough to avoid getting bitten by the monster, now that it was no longer slowed by his weapon’s debuff.

Suffering almost seven hundred damage, and getting hit with the Poison debuff hurt. But what hurt more was the sudden tug sent his ire potion tumbling to the ground, where it promptly disappeared in a sea of grass. As much as Kaldalis wanted to dive for the dropped bottle, he had to defend himself first, raising his shield to avoid getting chomped again by the giant jaws of the feathered behemoth. Teeth scratched against his shield, buying him the time to smash the monster’s snout with his sword, dishing out three hundred and sixty-eight damage, and getting the ball rolling on his next batch of combo stacks.

“How am I still alone on this?” Kaldalis yelled, looking around the clearing. There was just no one around.

He smacked the irritator again, driving his blade up the monster’s snout towards its eye. On instinct - from his skill rating - he flicked his wrist. The movement sent blood into the dinosaur’s eye, and it flinched back from him. It was just enough of an opening for Kaldalis to dive for the dropped potion, quickly popping the stopper and chugging it before the giant beast could come back at him.

When the monster lashed out at Kaldalis again, he was ready to roll, and roll fast. He only had two minutes to finish the fight, and he didn’t know how much longer this would take without assistance. He focused all his efforts on building his combo stacks and maintaining them, sacrificing his hit points when he had to. Ignore Pain was a critical resource as well. Jaws, claws, and tail lashed out at him, but with judicious use of his shield, he was able to get a few stacks of slow applied, and it was back to the business of dancing around the monster and striking it again and again as it grew more and more sluggish.

And still time ticked down. The exp buff from his ring became more and more of a distraction as he fought, forcing him to push himself harder and harder.

One minute left.

Thirty seconds.

Ten seconds.

None.

Just after the timer ran out, he dealt the killing blow. It was maybe thirty or forty seconds away from counting. He only got 128 experience points. Not the 300 per mob he was getting while the buff was active.

Kaldalis was caught between the warring urges to curse or cry. A part of him wanted to find the nearest adventurer and shake them silly for not coming to his aid in time. Instead, he took one deep breath after another.

This was a failure.

But it was one he could learn from.

“Okay,” Kaldalis said carefully. “The buff only applies if the monster dies while it’s active. I suspected that, but now I know for sure. That’s okay. It’s also way better to stick with my friends and fight with them. Anything strong enough to give me big exp is too strong to solo quickly and efficiently.” He shook his head. “I’m an idiot. I’d be halfway to level twenty by now if I’d just stuck with my friends and farmed the underwater crap.”

Taking the high road and focusing on this as a learning opportunity wasn’t going to make up for the missing 200 experience points. But it helped a little bit to remind him that he was trying to grow up and be an actual adult here. Throwing a temper tantrum because he played himself wasn’t a productive course.

“Okay, focus,” Kaldalis told himself. “I came here for selfish reasons and got punished. So let me focus on the unselfish cover story.”

He switched to his spear and hopped up as high as he could without burning Nyxlas’s augment, and activated Slowfall to give himself the time to look around. With the time up here in the sky, he noted two things. First, he was way farther from Cotanaku than he thought he was. Second, he was truly alone out here. No other adventurers. No signs of combat. He spotted another Irritator in a clearing only a few hundred yards from where he was, but it was waddling northward, heading away from Cotanaku. It seemed that the community had completed this quest, and the monsters were in retreat. There wasn’t anyone left to help, anyway.

It was also a little later than he thought, with the sun dipping so low in the sky that one of this world’s two moons was faintly visible in the blue sky above. Kaldalis cursed. When he hit the ground, he had to activate his second charge of Jump with Nyxlas’s Augment. He had to get back to Cotanaku fast.

He had a date to keep.