The blade of Myrin’s glaive came in straight-on, and while Kaldalis was certain that he was about to be skewered, it seemed her hands were about as confident on the weapon as his were with the daggers he held. While he didn’t really dodge or parry, his instinctive flinch got him out of the way of the clumsy thrust.

Kaldalis’s first instinct was to get mad and start protesting - he wasn’t ready for a duel, was he? - but he had to admit, it seemed the most reasonable way to get a feel for the combat. Against his better judgment, he decided to just roll with it.

He did his best to dart in quickly with the twin daggers in his hands. It was a challenge, as Myrin was small and quick, but she seemed about as comfortable and confident in combat as he was. Which was to say not at all. The blades felt feather-light in his hands, despite their size, and he swept them both in at once like he’d always seen characters do it in videogames, as if his arms were the jaws of some creature, directing the two canine teeth to meet in the middle.

One of the blades landed on a thick part of Myrin’s armor, but the other bit through. Kaldalis felt the damage happen more than he saw it. He didn’t see a text pop-up as much as he knew the numbers as they happened. The dagger inflicted ten physical damage and two water damage.

Myrin flailed the polearm in his general direction, reacting to the sudden stab of pain, and Kaldalis backed off, taking the opportunity to look at the weapons. He wondered where the water damage had come from. They didn’t look magical, or even wet. Had Myrin thrown him something beyond a starting weapon?

“All weapons have an Affinity on them,” Balrim called out from nearby as if he’d asked out loud. He still leaned against the nearby mast with a toothy grin, even though his friend had just been stabbed. “It makes them do damage of that element in addition to what they already inflict.”

Kaldalis almost asked if Myrin was going to be okay after being stabbed, but before he could, she came in hard and fast, smashing her glaive into the left side of his torso while he was distracted.

Again he knew what had happened. The weapon inflicted twenty-eight physical damage and four wind damage. His immediate reaction was to wonder why her attack did so much more.

His second reaction was that it fucking hurt.

Not, like, broken bone hurt, but it really felt like someone had just hit him with a big metal stick. His cotton shirt was torn where he had been struck and blood was staining the garment already.

“What the fuck?” he exclaimed, taking his turn to flail wildly in reaction to taking damage. “How come you do almost triple my damage?”

“Weapon multipliers,” someone said. Kaldalis looked over and there was one of those rat-ogre guys - a bhogad - standing near at hand. He was wearing chainmail that looked like it was enough metal to have built a small car, with jewel-pommeled scimitar at his hip and a metal kite shield on his back. “Daggers move faster, and attack more often. They do less damage.”

“Well, fuck that.” Kaldalis tried sheathing one of them, holding up a hand to stop Myrin from coming back in. “I didn’t want to use these, and now I really don’t. It’s just not my style.”

“Alright, alright, sorry,” Myrin said with a chuckle. “I kind of forced you into that one. I thought they were fine while I was running around questing in town with Balrim, but then I didn’t really experiment much.” She hefted the spear. “I like this, though. Big numbers have always been my thing.”

“If you like big numbers,” the bhogad said, “then try a greatsword. It moves like you’re underwater, but it has the biggest multiplier in the game.”

“Didn’t they nerf it?” someone else asked. Another talsar approached, this one in leathers like Myrin’s, with scales that were dusty grey-brown instead of the reddish color of Balrim’s. “I thought the alpha to beta update did a bunch of weapon re-balancing.”

Kaldalis winced, but no one seemed phased by the words ‘alpha and beta update.’

“They nerfed the multipliers on the weapon skill abilities,” the bhogad clarified, “but not the base multiplier. It should still be good. Not like staff.”

“Ugh, staff.” The talsar shook his head. “What a waste.”

“I didn’t get a greatsword,” Myrin said, “can I borrow one?”

Kaldalis went to his inventory and found that there was one there, so he drew it out. He thought about tossing it to her, but thought better of it, instead handing it more carefully over.

“Did you want to try the spear? It’s pretty good.”

“Let me try the classic, and then we’ll see,” he said, grabbing the sword and shield and dropping it onto his character page. It bothered him slightly that the injury to his side wasn’t bothering him now. He supposed that was because the damage was already done. He wasn’t taking damage, so he felt very little discomfort. Apparently in this world, your pain receptors only responded to new damage, and stopped warning you about damage you’d already taken.

Which… honestly, pretty nice. It meant he wouldn’t be hampered in combat.

But also that he’d forget about his own wounds a lot.

“Okay,” Myrin gave the greatsword - which looked comically large compared to her tiny suyon frame - a test swing. It did seem to move impossibly slowly. “Are you ready this time?”

“Yeah,” Kaldalis said. He took a minute to get the shield situated on his arm before drawing the sword. They were both very simple items - the shield was just a circular piece of wood with a leather hide stretched over it, and the sword was a simple straight blade, perhaps two feet from tip to crossguard, with a leather-wrapped grip and a rounded pommel. It was a far cry from what the bhogad nearby had. “Let’s see what we can do here.”

Myrin gave a grunt of effort as she tried to force the enormous weapon around in a horizontal slash. Dylan felt like he had forever to contemplate how to deal with it. In the end, he decided to give a quick backstep, let the blade sweep past him, and then step back in with his own sword. Myrin gave a little yelp as he ducked in and delivered the blow. It did seventeen physical damage and three dark damage. It didn’t feel like a lot more than he’d done with the dagger, but the accountant in his head reminded him that a 50% increase was quite substantial.

Myrin seemed to take a long time to stop the horizontal slash she’d begun approximately six hours ago, and Dylan got in another strike before he even had to start thinking about moving. This time, though, she ceded some ground, stepping back to avoid his attack. She redirected her sword’s momentum slowly, but brought it up overhead, seeking to drive it down in an overhead chop.

Kaldalis elected to stay in melee range this time, raising his shield with one arm and lashing out with his blade at the same time, inflicting that same twenty total damage. The greatsword met his shield and he knew instantly that he’d made a terrible mistake. The blow from the greatsword did a total of fifty-five physical damage and thirteen dark damage. Combined with the damage he’d taken earlier, he knew his health was nearly depleted.

At the same time, it felt like his arm was broken. The shield had done very little to protect him.

“What the fuck!” he exclaimed again. “The shield did nothing!”

“You have to learn how to block by gaining weapon skill,” the bhogad explained, reaching over his shoulder and rapping a knuckle against the metal shield he had there. “Until then, you need to get out of the way.”

“Okay.” Kaldalis threw up his hands, exasperated. “When? How much do I have to sword until I can pretend this giant hunk of wood weighing me down isn’t decorative?”

“Twenty-five skill,” the bhogad said. “Means you’ll need to gain a few class levels before your weapon skill cap gets there, though.”

“Are you a sore loser, or what?” Myrin asked, resting the tip of her blade on the deck of the ship. She tried to lean against it nonchalantly, but the hilt was above the top of her head, and she couldn’t quite manage a pose that wasn’t either awkward as hell, or threatened to send her to the deck face-first.

“Tanks scale well with levels and gear,” the dusty-scaled talsar said, his tone trying to reassure Kaldalis. “Slugger damage starts off very high at level 1, and so it can be frustrating to compare yourself directly.”

“Sword and shield also has a damage penalty,” the bhogad added, “because it attacks almost as fast as daggers, not because it’s got the shield. Sword and shield is really good damage, once you unlock the first tier of all of your abilities.”

“Well, I don’t want a damage penalty,” Dylan said, “especially not if it’s going to be two weeks before I can even imagine learning the most basic ability.”

“That’s fair,” the bhogad said with a chuckle. “Obviously, the greatsword has the biggest multiplier - it’s the only weapon with a positive multiplier, in fact - but it’s hard to use effectively. It’s also terrible for tanks; the slow speed means infrequent attacks. Which means you won’t hold enemy attention very reliably.”

“There’s only one weapon that fits your criteria,” the talsar said with a conspiratorial smile. “Try the spear. It has no weapon penalty, but is still good for tanks.”

“The staff also has no penalty,” the bhogad pointed out, his nose wiggling slightly, as if irritated by the omission.

“The staff isn’t a weapon anymore,” the lizard snapped, scaled lips twisting into a grimace. “Not since the patch. Now it’s a self-imposed hardmode, or a cosmetic item.”

The bhogad’s fur bristled at that, but he didn’t disagree. Dylan wondered what had happened to the staff to render it so awful, and how overpowered it had been to deserve whatever nerf had so utterly destroyed it.

“Try this one,” Myrin said, tossing him the glaive she had been using earlier. “Because I’m not giving this sword back.”

Kaldalis equipped the spear and gave it a few test swings. It was definitely heavier than the other weapons, and slower as a result, but it felt significantly more solid in his hands. It was of a simple design, looking like an oversized butcher knife on a stick, rather than a fancy RPG weapon.

“Before you two get started,” Balrim said, reaching behind himself and producing a potion. “We should probably make sure nobody dies, especially after that last hit.”

Kaldalis turned to move towards him and take the potion, but someone beside the red-scaled talsar held up a hand. Kaldalis hadn’t quite realized that they’d attracted a small crowd until he noticed the people who hadn’t spoken before. It wasn’t necessarily a full audience, but a handful of folks had formed a loose ring.

The person who stopped Balrim was an elf with slate-grey skin. Finnian, they were called. Instead of simple clothes, he was dressed in a flowing robe with a hood that didn’t entirely contain his long, silver hair. Obviously another of the higher-level alpha players. He produced a potion as well and, instead of handing it over, threw it to the ground between Myrin and Kaldalis. The flask burst and green fumes exploded from it, filling the air. Kaldalis flinched back, but stopped when he realized that the fumes were not damaging him, but healing him. The high-leveled healer had him back at full hit points nearly instantly.

“Alright,” Myrin said, slowly whirling her greatsword with a flourish. “Third round?”

“Fight!” Kaldalis said, lunging forward, thrusting the blade of the glaive at her.