The presumed jeotops charged, the jagged crystals on its frill menacing Kaldalis as it approached. His instinct was to get out of the way as fast as possible, but that was fallible logic. It spawned from him being more accustomed to running with Reno and SeventyEight, who couldn’t provide healing.

With Balrim behind him, it was smarter to trade blows at the start. It would help get him aggro before anything could go wrong, and tell him how much damage this monster was capable of.

He set his feet and raised his spear to meet the charge.

The creature crashed into the head of his spear first, the weapon jabbing into the frill about six inches above its left eye. As expected, it was more like striking rock than flesh, but the purple crystals there chipped and cracked under his spear’s tip, inflicting one hundred and seventy-nine physical damage, and fourteen wind damage.

Shortly after that impact, there was another as the monster’s snout struck Kaldalis’s midsection.

The monster’s head was the size of a refrigerator, and on impact the rough crystal formations that made up its face caught him and flung him upwards. Despite his feet being set against the charge, he rolled across the jagged crystals like he was rolling over the hood of a car.

Even with the world spinning around him as sharp purple crystals scraped noisily across his armor, it only counted as one attack. The physical component of the damage was only one hundred and fifty-six damage, but there was another eighty-one earth damage on top of it. It was consistent with the power level of the monsters out here in Nos Meles, but between his damage and its damage, the attack did tell him something important.

“High affinities,” he grunted as he hit the ground behind the monster. Its charge continued past him, but it was circling around quickly for another go. “We’re leaning on physical damage for this fight.”

“Great callout,” Balrim said in a smarmy tone. He raised his bow in a half salute. “Or, you know, it would be. If we had a strategy for dealing with that.”

“It’s helpful for my strategy,” Myrin said, stepping up and raising her greatsword. “My strategy is very reliant on physical damage.”

“Your strategy is to just hit it until it falls down,” Kaldalis said with a laugh as he scrambled to his feet, ready for the next charge.

“It’s not my fault if you don’t understand my tactical genius!” Myrin tipped him a wink. “And anyway... sometimes I keep hitting it after it falls down. Didn’t think of that, did you?”

Kaldalis didn’t have time to think of a comeback for that one. The rock dinosaur was on top of him already, and he was forced to hurl himself to the left, dodging the next charge. He wanted to lash out at it again to confirm his aggro, but they were operating under overworld rules.

It was stuck to him like glue now, so he didn’t need to strike it besides to add damage.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to worry about adding his own damage. Myrin was waiting right behind him, dragging her blade along its flank as it passed her by.

The creature let loose a pained bellow that sounded like a cross between a cement mixer and someone stubbing their toe in the dark. It staggered to the left away from her, losing the momentum of its charge, though the stagger meant that its tail whipped at Kaldalis, forcing him to scramble to avoid the stony appendage from battering him across the head and shoulders.

There was a cracking sound as one of Balrim’s arrows struck the monster’s crystal frill, shattering into splinters. Kaldalis imagined the attack probably still did damage, but it didn’t seem terribly effective against a creature that appeared to be made partially of rock.

The monster whirled with speed that Kaldalis hadn’t expected from a beast that size, lunging at him. It whipped its head side to side, flailing at him with the jagged crystals of its frill. Kaldalis was still off-balance, and hadn’t been expecting the sudden attack. He suffered another two hundred and forty-six damage from the creature as the hornlike spikes smashed into his armored shoulder, causing the metal to squeal in protest.

Kaldalis got his feet under him in a proper stance quickly after that, recovering from the sloppy start. The monster’s next lunge led with its beak, but Kaldalis was able to slip aside to let it snap closed on air instead of his thigh. He whirled his spear and smashed it straight down into the monster’s snout, making it growl and snarl again as he dealt another one hundred and ninety-two damage back for its earlier strikes.

Another arrow struck the monster, this time landing on the pebbled hide of its shoulder, punching in and sticking fast. The beast snarled and shook itself, but before it could surge towards Kaldalis again, Myrin’s heavy weapon chopped down into its hindquarters. The huge sword bit deeply into its hip, and a gush of deep crimson poured down its hind leg from the wound.

“If it bleeds,” Myrin said, putting on a gravelly voice, “we can kill it.”

Kaldalis managed not to roll his eyes.

Despite the attacks hammering against it, the monster was already lunging at him again, and the moment’s distraction could have cost him another hit from the monster. He ducked to the right to avoid the attack, strafing around and back to force it to turn and move. He knew, logically, that in a hit point based system it wasn’t actually hurting it to make it move the hip that Myrin had just carved open to the bone, but his instincts were gratified by the rasping snarl of stone-on-stone that came from its throat as it stomped after him.

“Can you not?” Balrim called, clearly aggravated.

It took Kaldalis a moment to realize what the man meant. When he realized that the Talsar was scrambling around as well, it made sense. Kaldalis strafing right had put him in Balrim’s line of fire, behind the monster, forcing him to move so that his arrows wouldn’t hit Kaldalis if the monster stumbled or staggered out of their path.

“Sorry!” Kaldalis called back as he lashed out with his spear again. “Won’t happen again!”

Myrin, meanwhile, was letting out a gleeful cackle as she whipped her greatsword in a horizontal slash into the monster’s tail. There was a flash of energy as the fire effect on her weapon flared, betraying the attack as a critical hit.

Kaldalis hadn’t expected much from an attack on the tail - the appendage had appeared to be made of stone rather than pebbled flesh - but instead of bouncing off or simply scoring the tail, the critical strike shattered it. Fragments of rock and red droplets filled the air as Myrin gave a wordless crow of triumph.

The strike was more than just damage, apparently. The monster let out a howl of pain that sounded more like tortured metal than grinding stones. It sagged and staggered, and Balrim’s next arrow seemed to hit it with almost enough force to knock it off its unbalanced feet.

Kaldalis took advantage of the momentary stun, ducking to the left and stabbing his spear into its foreleg. While he did the same one hundred and ninety-two damage, this strike was much more satisfying. Instead of chipping away at rock and crystal, it sank into the hide there, drawing a spurt of blood.

The creature surged, lunging, but not towards Kaldalis this time. Myrin’s strike was forcing it to retreat. For a moment, he considered letting it go. If it was running, then it was going to be out of their way for the foreseeable future while they cleared out the rest of the ruins. But his eyes wandered to his active quests. Sivima needed a jeotops frill, and if this wasn’t a jeotops, Kaldalis had no idea what one would be.

Activating his Jump cooldown let him hurl himself into the air after the beast. With the ground rough and uneven in the aftermath of the landslide, the creature wasn’t actually able to run that fast. In two hops, Kaldalis landed on its back. The bulky creature wasn’t built to deal with a rider. It was too heavy to move in a way that might buck him off, and there was no way for it to turn its head in a way that could menace him with its frill. He took the opportunity to drive his spear down into it, getting his one hundred and ninety-two damage in and securing a handhold.

The monster let out a sharp roar and jerked to the left at his strike. It shook itself, but Kaldalis held fast. Clinging to its back was weighing it down even before it tried to shake him off, and the extra effort to try and dislodge him was making it even slower.

It proved to be more than enough for the desired effect. Myrin’s charge ability meant that she collided with its backside like a meteor made of condensed gleeful fury. Her first attack cleaved into the back of its knee, and drew another tortured shrieking sound. It staggered, and for a moment, Kaldalis thought it might recover and start running again. Instead, Myrin’s blade whipped in at it again, striking it crosswise to the earlier cut she’d opened in the monster’s hip.

The creature’s death confirmed that it was a jeotops. It was worth sixty-four experience points, and in addition to a jeotops frill - ticking up Sivima’s quest - it dropped a number of stones and ore, thanks to its presumed rocky origin. Additionally, there was a sheaf of notes to be had from the first-time kill.

As it fell, Kaldalis was forced to hop away to avoid being crushed under its corpse, but he landed with a smile on his face.

One more objective completed for that quest was very satisfying.

It meant he just needed to take the fishing seriously, and then wait to get lucky on mining - an activity he was going to need to devote some serious time to in order to have more rock for charmcrafting.

“Aww,” Myrin complained as she raised her greatsword to rest across her shoulder, cutting a dramatic figure above the fallen jeotops. “Was that all?”

“Fossil evidence indicated that ceratopsians were herd animals,” Balrim said as he caught up to them at a light jog. “I assume that these things put up a lot more of a fight when they’re all together rather than isolated on the edge of the herd. It was suspected that they could line their frills up together to form a defensive shield wall against large predators, but there’s no evidence in the fossil record to back that up. Just nerds being nerds.”

“What are you talking about?” Kaldalis asked.

“The Natural History Museum had free admission on Saturdays,” Balrim said with a shrug, obviously trying to hide his defensive tone. “So I was a dinosaur kid growing up.”

“Alright,” Kaldalis said, waving the question away as he looked over the monster a bit closer. “If that’s the case though, we should try and pick them off one at a time instead of blundering into the whole mess of them.”

“Lead the way then,” Myrin said, gesturing grandly with her free hand. “We’re right behind you.”

“We should-” Kaldalis began.

He was interrupted by a little flash on the left side of his vision as a new quest appeared there.

Progress Report

Attend the second Panbu meeting.

It was accompanied by a little timer ticking down, presumably to the start of the meeting.

15:00

14:59

14:58

Kaldalis was suddenly aware that they’d wandered about an hour out of town. Even at a full sprint, thirty minutes was an optimistic return trip. Fifteen? That was impossible.

“Oh,” Kaldalis said, looking back towards the jungle and doing the math over and over in his head and hoping to get a different result somehow. “Fuck.”