The group spent about two hours grinding away.

Kaldalis worked on assembling random charms, focusing on leveling up rather than making specific gear. Reno alternated between potions and food. She seemed to have an endless supply of fish, but Kaldalis wasn’t sure where they were coming from. SeventyEight worked on making weapons and armor. She too seemed focused on just whatever she had supplies for, and her finished products just disappeared into her inventory with practiced ease.

Balrim flitted between all three stations.

The Talsar was in the zone. Kaldalis watched him for a short time, just long enough to realize there was no rhyme or reason to which craft Balrim started next. It was pure chaos, and dizzying to watch.

Myrin took their grinding literally. She sat and watched and waited while working on grinding down her teeth.

Kaldalis felt like he’d made good progress. He was in striking distance of making at-level charms - one more hour could get him there if he was lucky - but Myrin was threatening bloody revolt, so he made the executive decision to get moving.

“What’s the plan then?” Myrin said, waving her sword around as the group exited the crafting area. “Are we gonna go wander around until my bloodlust subsides? Because I thought we might have other shit to do this week.”

Kaldalis thought for a moment before a good answer came to him. “You and Balrim owe some revenge, right? Some monster at those ruins we found?”

“Oh hell yeah,” Myrin said, picking up the pace. Despite her short Suyon legs, everyone else had to start working to keep up. “Fuck that guy.”

“Uh,” Kaldalis said, turning to Reno and Ess, “this might be a bit out of your league. I’m not sure how monster scaling works, exactly, but you two might be in danger of getting one-shot.”

Reno planted her fists on her hips and gave Kaldalis a grumpy glare. “Maybe so, but we’re not gonna catch up if we just sit around in town while you guys are out farming more exp.”

“That’s fair,” Kaldalis said, flinching back from her obvious irritation. “Just play it safe while we’re out there. I don’t think you get exp if you’re dead.”

“If we need to back off, we will,” SeventyEight promised, putting a hand on Reno’s shoulder as if to try and calm her down. “But we aren’t as far behind as I think you think we are.”

Kaldalis tried to follow that logic for a moment, then stopped and just nodded in agreement. Without any way to see their level, she could be right. He was still thinking of them as noobs, but they had spent a lot of time leveling without him.

The only way he’d know what level they were was by asking, and Reno’s glare made it clear she wouldn’t answer willingly.

They headed out through the jungle gate, and Kaldalis took a moment to acknowledge how much denser and sturdier the walls looked. During the previous build, it had been little more than a palisade - a row of logs stuck into the ground. Now the walls were two layers deep, with the gaps filled with crushed stone and the whole structure reinforced with horizontal bracing up the first three feet, and then diagonal cross bracing up the rest of it.

If the Xorn were going to punch through these walls, it was going to take much longer, affording them a better opportunity to repel the attackers.

The jungle had also been measurably altered by their efforts. As the group made their way through the white-blossom forest, the trees were much thinner, offering better sightlines, making it trivial to avoid the white-blossomed treants.

As Kaldalis led them towards the ruins where they’d fought the geotops, he noticed other differences in the landscape. The lumps and drifts of mud and muck that had been part of the landslide had smoothed out or melted away under the elements. With less trees he would have thought it would have the opposite effect, but perhaps that was just real world logic conflicting with the video game rules.

The group couldn’t avoid every combat encounter on the way out to the ruins, however. One white-blossomed treant aggroed onto them, and a pair of walves stalked them for a quarter-mile before unwisely attacking.

Between the five of them, though, there was no great threat.

Kaldalis felt a bit unstoppable. He was sure that was soon to change.

The clearing that held the ruins was much as he’d left it, with partially-unearthed stone walls still spattered with chunks of dirt and mud. As soon as they came into view, Balrim and Myrin visibly tensed up.

“So what are we up against?” Reno asked, giving Kaldalis a light sock in the shoulder.

“I’m not sure,” Kaldalis said with a shrug. “The last time we were out here, I fought one thing and had to fuck off at high velocity.”

“What happened?” SeventyEight asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kaldalis said, gritting his teeth at the memory. “It’s not important. But we fought one thing called a jeotops. Sort of like a geode dinosaur thing.”

“Right,” Reno said, nodding along. “And then what? You said something about revenge?”

“We got hosed,” Myrin grumbled, shouldering her greatsword and stomping towards the ruins. “Completely robbed.”

“Like I said, I had fucked off by that point,” Kaldalis said, taking a few quick steps to keep at the head of the group despite Myrin’s advance. “So I left these two in the lurch for whatever came next.”

Balrim’s eyes flickered around quickly. “Be on your guard,” he warned. “I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but you’ll know it when you see it.”

“It looks like the jeotops have thinned out,” Kaldalis observed as they approached the ruins. “But we should be careful. These ruins can be tricky.”

Balrim and Myrin said nothing, so Kaldalis led the way into the ruins. Myrin stayed close at his side to point him in the right direction. He thought it would be unnecessary due to his experience with previous ruins, but something about this place was different. It took a moment to figure out why.

These ruins weren’t Lataxinan.

Lataxinan ruins had a very particular style. For the most part, they employed a technology wholly unique to the otterlike race that Kaldalis thought of as “Urban Planning.” All their buildings were arranged in a sensible fashion so as to not create a needless labyrinth. Their architecture style was also very tall for the short race, with a lot of geometric shapes, hard corners, and columns. Lataxinan ruins also left behind much of the construction, since so much of every structure was made of stone.

These ruins had none of that.

The ruins here were much more dilapidated than Kaldalis had first thought when he’d seen them nearly a week ago. Much of each structure was completely gone, with the remaining stone ruins having visible striations and pits that would have served as anchors for other building materials that hadn’t survived.

The parts of the structures that had survived also displayed differences to the Lataxinan ruins. The stone buildings were rounded at the corners, with smaller doors and a lot of curved edges.

Of particular interest was how intact the stone actually was. Unlike the other ruins he’d seen - and even the ruins of the city beneath the dungeon - the stone here was preserved, and while the wooden elements had been destroyed, the mud and dirt that had covered the area had kept the stone here safe from the elements.

Every artfully curved line in the building design was preserved. Every rounded doorway was undamaged. It was beautiful and unique.

Unfortunately, it also meant that the poorly-arranged structures blocked the sightlines on all sides as the group picked their way through the twisted paths between the buildings.

“What do you think lived here?” Kaldalis said quietly, instinctively keeping his voice down amidst the ruins.

“You don’t think it was Lataxinans?” Balrim asked.

“Does this look like their work?” Kaldalis said, running his hand along the nearest wall, following the low and lazy curve of the stone with his palm. “The stuff in the sunken ruins looked way different.”

“What else could it be?” Balrim said with a shrug. “You think there’s a second wiped out civilization of weird animal people? How likely is that?”

“Hush,” Myrin interrupted. “And stop here a second.”

Kaldalis pulled up to a halt and they all turned to watch as Myrin plunged one hand into the thin layer of mud at her feet. After a moment digging around, she pulled a lump from the earth. It was covered in muck, but a quick wipe revealed the object to be a small skull.

“We’re close,” Myrin said. She held the skull up beside her head, showing it was the exact same size - her own skull, left behind by her death and respawning. “This is where it got us.”

Kaldalis flinched back, disturbed by Myrin’s casual molestation of her own skull.

“You can see why now,” Balrim said, gesturing around. “There’s no room to maneuver around here, and if you start running to try and find a clearing, you just get lost. Or worse, aggro a bunch of jeotops and then get lost.”

“Okay,” Kaldalis said, looking around carefully for any sign of a patrolling monster. He couldn’t actually see anything from here, but the quick scan made him feel safer. “What are we up against? What do we need to do here?”

“Like I said, you’ll know it when you see it,” Balrim repeated with a smirk. “And I’ll be honest, I don’t know how we’re supposed to beat it without just stupid-ass numbers. In these tight streets, it’s so hard to keep ahead of it. The fucking thing is huge.”

“How big are we talking? Like, Xorn big?” Kaldalis asked.

“Bigger,” Reno said.

“Yeah,” Myrin agreed. “It could pick up a Xorn and fling it halfway to Panbu from here.”

“So, like, a super-Xorn?” Kaldalis asked.

“No, it’s a-” Balrim began.

“It’s another fucking dinosaur monster,” Reno whispered, shrinking down against the nearest wall. “Only fuck-off huger than anything else ever.”

“Yeah, it’s-” Balrim began but stopped and looked over at Reno. “Wait, how do you know that?”

Reno held up a hand, pointing up over the nearest ruined building, behind them.

Kaldalis followed the pointing finger, and felt like an absolute moron as soon as he had. He found himself staring up directly into the eyes of a giant wedge-shaped head about twenty feet above him, leaning down on a neck like a tree trunk.

Its cavernous maw opened up, revealing rows of finger-like teeth that Kaldalis suspected were not being bared in a smile.