Kaldalis’s body was starting to wear down immediately. The strange jerky pattern of sprinting and diving to stopping short and reversing direction was a nightmare on his knees and back. If it weren’t for the counterweight of his tail, his body would have failed time and again to keep him upright.

And losing his feet for even a second would be deadly.

Arrows shot up at the monster in large numbers. But Kaldalis knew that they were only ticking away for minimal damage.

The floating chandelier-monster was absolutely overpowered.

Its high stats meant that it wasn’t going to take much damage. Killing it would take forever for even this many archers. And unlike other monsters Kaldalis had encountered with such powerful defenses, this thing had offensive power to match, since it had smashed away a huge chunk of Kaldalis’s hit points in one blow.

If he had still thought this world was a videogame, he would have supposed that there was a boss mechanic they were missing. Something they’d done to enrage it and inflate its stats, or a way to properly weaken it before fighting. But knowing this wasn’t a videogame mollified his agitation.

This was a real world, just like Earth, and sometimes things aren’t fair.

Furthermore, this wasn’t a curated experience.

There was no designer behind this to be frustrated at.

He just had to hold on. It was his job to protect everyone. If he could keep himself alive while holding the monster’s attention, then eventually all the little damage would add up. It was a battle of attrition, and time was on the monster’s side as the scratching and pounding on the town’s gate grew louder and more insistent.

He just had to hold.

Blows rained down on him from the enraged monster. Kaldalis kept darting around the courtyard, doing his best to keep the attacks from coming down on his head - or too close to any nearby buildings - but he was running out of room. The stone courtyard was becoming rougher and rougher terrain by the second.

Giant hooked metal arms chopped down at him. When he avoided them, they left huge gashes in the stone, scattering rubble that made him stumble when he scrambled over it. Blasts of yellow-white energy streaked down at him. When he hurled himself out of the way, they left scorched craters that he nearly fell into again and again. The added balance of his tail was the only thing that kept him alive for so long.

There was a finite amount of time he could keep ahead of these attacks. In just a few more seconds, the narrow strip of courtyard he could use without putting others in danger was going to be impassible.

What was he going to do then?

It seemed that he wasn’t going to need to figure that out. A giant metal arm swept down at him on a slight angle, and when Kaldalis went to throw himself out of the way, a large chunk of stone gave way under his foot, falling into the crater from an earlier energy blast.

The hooked arm crashed down on his midsection.

As before, he got no damage readout.

One-thousand-two-hundred hit points were removed from his HP bar without explanation.

The giant arm didn’t withdraw. It pinned him to the courtyard like a cat with a mouse. The metal monstrosity still made no sound, but the shaking with rage stopped. It didn’t communicate in any visible way - it couldn’t exactly have body language without a recognizable body - but Kaldalis felt a sense of intense satisfaction radiating from the thing during the long pause as it held him down. It didn’t understand why overworld aggro rules meant that it had to ignore all the other threats to focus on this despicable little flea. But it understood perfectly well that the fight had run its course now.

There was a glimmering at the core of the monster, and Kaldalis activated Shrug Off before the coming bolt of energy hit. The bulk of the blast that streaked down at him was absorbed by the shield, but there was overflow damage that shaved another few dozen hit points off of him. Rock erupted around him as the crater blasted through the courtyard’s layer of stone, and the metal arm pinning him shoved him down through the blast and into the scorched dirt beneath.

When the smoke and debris cleared, the hooked arm was clearly damaged. It was scorched, and the fluting showed some cracks and cuts. Peculiarly, there was even a trickle of orange fluid coming from one of the cracks. It had damaged itself to strip his defenses, and even with its badly damaged limb, it was insistent on holding him down. This thing was going to finish the job.

Kaldalis had done all he could. He spared a last moment to look around, trying to see if the fight was going well outside of his direct attention. The archers were still pelting the beast, but it looked like the syncoresi had been handled. A small group were directing the melee forces and trying to organize a defense of the walls that didn’t include the archers.

Wait. Was that…?

Salvation came at the last moment. There was a burst of energy from the monster above him, and right before it struck, there was a shattering noise near at hand. Suddenly, Kaldalis had the hit points to spare when the blast struck him. Just shy of two thousand damage total was ripped out of him, but at the last instant, he was healed for a little more than five hundred hit points. The blast still reduced him to a narrow sliver of health - one hundred and twenty-four hit points - but he was still alive.

“Ride for ruin and the world’s ending!” Myrin bellowed from nearby, her voice shattering the peculiar silence of fighting the floating monstrosity. “Death! Death! Death! Forth Eorlingas!”

Her greatsword smashed against the monster’s limb. The cracks and damage of its own energy blasts had been redoubled by the second strike, and when the greatsword landed, the cracked and bleeding metal shattered. Orange fluid gushed in a great gout from the wound, but only once. As it did, the pressure pinning Kaldalis down was suddenly gone, and he scrambled out of the crater that had formed around him.

“Yeah, what she said,” Balrim said from near at hand, “fourth earl-things!”

Despite his half-hearted addition to Myrin’s battlecry, he produced a second potion and nailed Kaldalis right in the shoulder with it. It didn’t immediately heal for as much as the other, but it had an added heal-over-time effect, which would heal for more overall if he could stay alive for it to run its course.

As Kaldalis found his feet, he spared a glance to confirm what he’d seen. Courbois, Reno, and Ess were the ones organizing the forces at the wall. Near at hand, the forces from the beachside gate were arriving. Those with better mobility abilities had arrived first, while the others were just now reaching here. Garyung, with his sword-and-board toolkit, would likely take another full minute to arrive.

The shattered arm withdrew. The break showed some kind of cartilaginous flesh under the metal surface, and the hook that had held Kaldalis down flopped around clumsily on the end of it. All of the floating arms shuddered and twisted.

One of its arms angled towards Myrin, but it struggled to make it move.

It couldn’t lash out at her in retribution so long as Kaldalis - or any tank - had struck it and lived.

Kaldalis wasn’t sure if this was indicative of the monster being more or less sapient. It certainly was a sign of sentience that its emotions were more powerful than the directives of the system. It was so enraged by Myrin’s strike that it was trying to ignore this universe’s natural laws, like a child flapping their arms and trying to fly in defiance of gravity.

But more intelligent monsters under the system, like Ara, knew better than to fight it. Ara had known that she couldn’t do anything but attack Kaldalis, and so she hadn’t given him a moment’s rest. The abstract’s hesitance was giving Kaldalis and Balrim time to let their cooldowns refresh. Balrim’s heal-over-time effect was restoring Kaldalis with every second that it glared down at Myrin.

Then again, down on the ground beneath it, Myrin was doing the exact same thing. Greatsword raised, waiting for any of its arms to come within reach so she could smash them, too. Perhaps this wasn’t the most conclusive test of intelligence.

“You might want to do something,” Balrim said, backing away from Kaldalis with a wary look at the floating monster. “I don’t know how long that’s going to keep it busy.”

As if on cue, the monster’s floating pieces started to shake with rage again. Even without eyes or a face, Kaldalis could sense the attention of the thing turn back to him with renewed animosity.

“Don’t worry, I have a plan,” Kaldalis lied.