Tristan had never been chased by a giant, armored, flesh eating sloth before. It was not an experience that he would recommend, but it was one that he intended to turn into an opportunity. Tristan entered the ravine at top speed, jumping over obstacles and dodging around boulders. Moos and hisses followed him as the bone sloth scrambled over everything in its way. Its long arms and sharp claws made it easy to scale an obstruction, barely losing any speed.

While Tristan was not built for speed, he would not consider himself slow. Still, his stamina was reaching its limit, adrenaline was the only thing that had allowed him to sprint this hard. He scattered spiked balls for the sloth to step on, but the bottoms of its feet were also armored, allowing the beast to ignore the sharp objects.

There were a few things he could have attempted with a bit of preparation. Things like pitfalls, trip wires, and dead drops. Unfortunately, the sloth was not willing to stop and let Tristan dig a hole for it to fall into. So Tristan did the next best thing. He threw some tortoises at it.

He barged into the stone clearing with the four tortoises. They were ready for him, taking defensive positions, one went and stood over the ore and another moved to block off the exit. The other two prepared to go on the offensive. None of them were ready for a nine foot tall sloth to violently charge after Tristan.

The tortoise blocking the entrance was rammed into. There was a roar from the sloth when it realized the tortoise's mass made it difficult to push around. The sloth did the next best thing, it hooked its claws under the tortoise and flipped it over. Four feet waved impotently in the air, too shocked for the moment to realize it needed to tuck itself into its shell. Hissing in frustration, the sloth shoved its claws through the tortoise's doughy neck, just behind the skull.

Tristan hoped the sloth would take the time to slurp up its insides, but it only had eyes for Tristan. So he sprinted straight at the tortoise standing over the glowing red rock. The tortoise was smart enough to realize what was about to happen but not fast enough to do anything about it. It snapped its serrated bone jaws closed, trying to cut Tristan in half.

He jumped, letting the surprisingly fast maw chomp close beneath him. Landing on the base of the neck, Tristan scrambled up onto its shell. The dome of hard material turned a similar red to the ore where he touched it. Vulcan claimed this was most likely from them being raised in an absorption biome, the redshift being a sign that force was being absorbed and released as heat.

Tristan could not prove or disprove this hypothesis, all he knew was that the hexagonal joints on the shell gave him an easy way of holding on. The tortoise backpedaled as the sloth charged it. Unlike the first tortoise, Tristan was on this one's back. Instead of flipping this one over the sloth tried to claw at Tristan and pull him down.

While the tortoise probably disliked Tristan, it had to like the sloth even less. Tristan had irritated them, it had killed one. Just as he was scrambling around the far side of the shell to stay out of reach, the tortoise’s head shot forward like a snake, clamping onto the sloth’s hip. The sword like claws of the sloth scraped harmlessly off the tortoise's shell as it dragged it to the ground.

“Bite his leg off!” Tristan cheered.

“That’s a bit dark,” Vulcan commented.

“How can you not see that this thing is evil?” Tristan asked while he hung on for dear life. The tortoise had spun, using its body weight to drag the sloth around and into the path of one of its friends.

Tristan cheered again as he watched the sloth get stomped into the ground. This monster more than any other was proof that evil alchemists had polluted the world’s ecosystems with evil creatures. The tortoises were very docile until you tried to take their rock. The wroughwilers were loyal to an unreasonable degree. Even the ghost crabs could be given a pass, as all parasites were awful. This bone sloth tore things apart and drank them like one of Luke’s protein shakes.

His cheer died when he saw the sloth rise. It bellowed in rage, like some kind of angry bull. The tortoise’s charge had given it a number of broken bones, unfortunately, they were all on the outside. While getting trampled, the bone sloth had managed to cut a few important tendons on the tortoise's front leg. It limped as it made its way to the wall.

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The sloth made to chase the injured tortoise down, but the one Tristan was clinging to had other ideas. It rumbled towards the sloth like an angry runaway cart. Four claws raked across its face, ruining an eye and cutting to the bone, but it was nowhere near enough to stop the tortoise.

For the second time in as many minutes, the sloth was trampled. Mostly. The bone sloth had learned what to do from the first attack, its razor claws sliced into the forelegs of the tortoise. To Tristan, it felt like his ride smashed into a wall as it pitched forward and its face hit the ground. Positioned on the back, he was almost thrown into the air.

With a grunt of exertion, the bone sloth shoved the tortoise aside. The amphibian hissed in pain as it was jostled. Before the sloth could sever its brain stem, it tucked its bloody head and all four legs into the shell. The sloth slashed at it a few times to no effect, before going at the shell like a wood chipper. Tristan wondered if it would keep slashing all night, and it might have if it did not notice Tristan dismounting the tortoise.

It started scrambling over the shell, not slowed in the slightest by the broken armor that was seeping blood. Tristan was too slow and would have had his chest gored, but a blast of rock and wolframite shrapnel hit the sloth in the side. Both of the other two tortoises had started taking bites out of the cliff to spit at the bone sloth.

The rocks were fast, but not particularly dangerous to anything in armor. Grunting in irritation, the sloth looked from the spitting tortoises to Tristan. It crouched and lunged. Tristan had hoped it would target the other two beasts, but it had decided that he was the biggest problem. He sidestepped the sweeping claws and then utilized an attack he hadn’t needed in quite a while.

Tristan let the claws inbed themselves in the ground. In the split-second, before they were drawn back, he flicked some decay alloy onto the sloth’s wrist. The bone would rot, just like everything else. Unfortunately, bone was the slowest part of the body to rot, so while the bone was being eaten away, it was at the slowest pace he had ever seen.

This decay alloy attack was a borderline unstoppable move when everyone wore gambeson and leather. He had quickly run into the issue that every competent opponent had a counter. Whether that was being undead, nonorganic armor, or creative applications of their kern. Luke had once even used compressed air to blow the mercury like alloy back onto Tristan.

Now, nearly two and a half tiers later, he had found a use for it again. Tristan skirted around the hunkered down tortoise and the sloth limped after him. The bite to its hip and subsequent double-trample had done nothing good for the sloth. He made sure to keep the injured leg towards the tortoise, as it would be supporting more of the sloth's rotational movement that way.

It slashed, then got hit by a flurry of rocks. Tristan hopped back, letting the shell take most of the blow, and then he placed his hand on the beast's armored wrist. His own decay burned into his skin, but the move allowed him to transfer one hundred percent of the alloy at the cost of the top layer of his skin.

The sloth roared in pain raising Tristan’s guttering confidence. It was hurt, he could win. The sheltering tortoise was flipped out of the way, leaving Tristan completely exposed. Before he could respond, a four fingered claw cut towards his torso.

“SHIELD!” Tristan screamed at Vulcan.

“No time, use me,” came Vulcan’s response.

Tristan did not argue. Vulcan was summoned in the path of the claw swipe. The blades hit the lamp post, and the lamp post hit Tristan, tossing him backward a handful of feet. He landed hard on his back, and there would be a suspiciously Vulcan shaped bruise on his side if he survived. A possibility that seemed faint when a shadow loomed over him.

The bone sloth looked horrible. Cracks that leaked blood covered its body. Its hip was badly damaged and the bone armor failed to hold up to a tortoise’s jaw strength. Tristan saw one set of claws twitching as decay reached the tendons, rendering the limb inoperable.

Would this strike kill him? No. He still had enough of Vulcan’s essence to make that shield, and he would fight for every second he had left. The claw came up, a sadistic gleam in the bone sloth’s eye. Tristan started calling upon the essence needed for an adamant shield.

Then a second shadow loomed behind the sloth. Tristan’s eyes widened when he realized that one of the tortoises had snuck up behind them in the chaos. They weren’t quiet creatures, but it had been quieter than their fight. It reared back on its hind legs, all of its weight ready to come down on the bone sloth’s back.

Tristan doubted even that would be enough to kill the sloth. So he changed his mind, instead of making a shield construct, he made a winged spear. It was slightly different, as the wings were just above where Tristan was gripping it as opposed to just behind the head. The blade was large and rectangular, a design made to cause maximum bleeding.

The sloth paused at the spear’s creation, but when it was not used as a weapon it hissed and swung. At the same time, the tortoise came down on the sloth’s back, smashing both their bodies down onto Tristan.