I did something risky. I stayed in the tree after Sailboat decided that Torvus was gone. Bleeding, he walked around to the xaptor corpses, and as I watched concealed from the tree, gathered them all into a pile.

The Aspisauruses were gone, by the way. They’d fled after Sailboat’s attack, lumbering away at a slow sprint. It was like I was watching them at half playback speed. Odd.

The Crontos were nothing but piles of ash, but further down the beach, some of them still survived. Sailboat scooped one of them up with his long forearms. He had proto-thumbs.

Lucky…

Without a single care, Sailboat crunched down on the shell, shattering it and swallowing the mushy creature within, as well as several fragments of the shell.

Straight savage.

I examined the other Crontos while he collected xaptor corpses, reading their description again.

Cronto [Lvl 1]

These creatures float down rivers, collecting algae with their tentacles. Sometimes, they wash up on shore during low tide, and wait for the water to pull them back in.

Wait. Did rivers have low tide?

Now that I had caught that sentence, I looked back at the river. It was thinner than last night, when I’d come here with Frieda.

But rivers didn’t just… thin out, did they?

Personally, I’ve never read up much on natural transportation of water, but it seemed logical that unless the source was destroyed, or something blocked the flow, the water wouldn’t just thin out.

I had a bad feeling about it.

Sailboat had finally collected the corpses while I thought on the implications of the river’s sudden change, and he’d piled them near the river. His bleeding had mostly stopped too. But those claw marks would make for wicked scars. He stood before the pile of corpses.

What are you doing, Sailboat?

As if in answer to my question, he tilted his head up to the sky, opening his mouth wide to howl. This time, though, no shockwaves emitted. No heat blasted against my face. No, this wasn’t an attack.

It was a howl of grief.

Very slowly, and with great care, Sailboat ran his hands over the corpses piled on the beach. I couldn’t see if he was crying, but he clearly cared about the xaptors.

Even those trashbags have family, I guess.

A single light breath, like a human would do to warm their hands in winter, and a small burst of flame left Sailboat’s mouth, setting fire to the pile of bodies.

My jaw dropped open.

This guy… can breathe FIRE?!

The titan stood there, watching as the bodies burned, and the smoke crawled high into the sky. While his vision was obscured by the smoke, I made my escape, climbing down the tree and sneaking away.

But I wasn’t going back to Frieda anymore. No, my dino senses were tingling, and I had to follow what they were telling me to do. That river was an open quest, and I was about to complete it.

That brought a thought to my mind. Were there rewards, even though I didn’t get a prompt for a quest? Was the quest simply “there” but not “logged”?

Whatever it was, I was going to solve the mystery of the river.

I followed the river upstream, staying in the jungle to avoid another encounter with a creature like Torvus. There was no way I could fight something that fast.

He almost killed Sailboat, after all. And that was not a level of strength I wanted to tustle with. They were on the level of Rexcelsis, and if they could do that “Nonparticulate” thing, then I wouldn’t stand a chance.

He’d completely obliterated a monster that I hadn’t even been able to resist the charming effects of! Yeah, I wouldn’t be messing with the [Lvl ???] creatures any time soon. Not intentionally, anyway.

And I will stop trying to get information about intimidating things!

Somehow, the Nature Spirit had detected my observation. And I suspected Rex, Sailboat, and Torvus to have done so as well.

Perhaps it was level-based? If they were high enough, they could sense it?

But then why hadn’t Karavos reacted to my observing of him? And Savage Santa hadn’t picked it up either…

Was it a skill?

Hmm. Whatever it was, I’m sure I would be able to gain it at some point.

My journey up the river revealed various kinds of animals that I wouldn’t have expected to see in a world with dinosaurs. Then again, I didn’t expect to see humans, either. Lots of animals drank from the river and, when the coast was clear, I quenched my thirst as well.

Things like deer, foxes, rabbits, and even bears looked at me with alarm as I drank from the river. As tempted as I was to kill some of them for the experience bonus from eating them, I didn’t think it was worth it, since they were all low-level. Plus, I wasn’t hungry. And I’m not a glutton… most of the time.

The further up the river I traveled, however, the darker the water became. It started out with a light tint, so light that I thought perhaps it was the shadows from the trees. But the sun beating down directly overhead wiped that thought from my mind.

Then I realized that the water was becoming more and more red. It was blood. Whatever was bleeding this much had to be big, and it could contaminate the whole river if it kept doing so.

Especially if it was dead.

Another hour or so of walking led me up a winding path, and I could see a mountain, dotted with grass and trees, in the distance, with a beautiful white waterfall cascading from the middle. The tip disappeared into the clouds, and, if this world truly followed the logic of video games, I could tell it was probably a very important location. Perhaps a religion or four worshipped it.

That was typical, right? Pray to the mountain god?

Or… was it sacrifice to the mountain god?

Wait was there even a song about entering the mountain king’s home or something? Or was that real life and not what I was trying to remember?

Whatever it was, the mountain was intimidating. Black pillars of rock jutted out from it like hands held out as though to say “Look. Gaze upon me and behold my glory.”

As I came around a final turn in the river, I was now looking straight towards the waterfall.

And also the thing that had turned the river this far up so deep a crimson that it was nearly black.

Oh, um. Whoops.