There's stunned silence from the Merry Band.

"That... that was a Greater Daemon."

If any of the weaker creatures remain around, Liliane will glow menacingly at them for a moment, then glance over at Zerri.

"I can only safely take on three of those a day, probably less if they hit as hard as I do, if I get unlucky, if I need to use any third level spells, or if one ambushes me, and I wouldn't want to get surrounded by them. I suspect we won't want to stick around much longer?"

"Yeah, we should get out of here now. Don't want to attract any more local attention. We've got a good haul of soulstones though.

Three a day-- put it this way: it usually takes a fair amount of people to take down a Greater Daemon. Even if you just got lucky because you got the first hit in, that's still impressive."

"Thanks. And it might be a power level difference between worlds, but - I'm upper percentile of an upper percentile in terms of power even back home."

"In my world - it's not that hard to get a sense of someone's relative power, something that couldn't take me and had any intelligence would have slunk off or brought friends. 'Friends' is usually what happens, and I'm at a comparative disadvantage against mobs, especially if armed with anything armor piercing. Which, you'd think that's something there wouldn't be that many of in the jungle."

"...I usually don't get first hits in, too, and I don't know how hard those things hit, one might be able to bring me down if it's anything resembling prepared."

"You may have been unexpected enough? And it did bring friends, in a sense, we just tore through them.

Greater Daemons tend to mince people, and the glamour is pretty strong. So if one was prepared, and knew it was up against you, it might not go so well."

"I will try to be more stealthy about power levels then in the future. No sense in tempting fate."

"Ehh, it's a big galaxy, and I don't imagine news of you would spread that fast.

--But maybe sneak up on future Greater Daemons from behind or something."

And now they're back on the ship, with a fair haul of soulstones.

"Will do."

She evaluates herself. Two hits to go down at her power level's actually relatively rare in terms of percentage of the population - that Greater Daemon must have either been ridiculously tough, somewhat divine, or both.

She needs to know more about the dangers of this world. The Greater Daemon makes a good comparison point, at least.

"Is there anything on how different creatures measure up to one another? Say, how quickly a Greater Daemon can kill another of its kind?"

"I'm not an expert, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. There's four kinds of Greater Daemons, one for each Chaos God. The Khornate ones are tougher and hit harder, the Tzeentchian ones have better psychic ability. In a mirror match, between two of the same kind, it'd probably take between six to eight hits to take the other down, but they hit pretty fast. A daemon from one of the other gods would take a few more hits to take down a Khornate one.

It'd take one hit from a Greater Daemon to kill something normal, maybe two or three if they were particularly tough."

Well, then, math time. She does not like math.

"Huh. If it's less divine than me, it would've basically taken one and a fourth of those hits for me to down myself, but it'd be doing a lot less damage to me than I was doing to it. If it's as divine, around five hits? It seemed like I did half its capacity with the first strike, so probably... There's a lot of variables for exact numbers of hits, but I think it'd be hitting comparatively less hard than I do? It'd probably take it anywhere from eight to fifteen hits to kill me. But my damage drops dramatically after six full hits in a day, and I can sustainably heal less at a go than it can hit."

"Yeah, Greater Daemons tend not to mince each other in two hits, so you probably hit harder. But be careful. Especially against Khornate daemons. Those are particularly nasty."

"I'll try to avoid picking any fights."

"We probably want have to deal with any for awhile. We've got enough soulstone to pay for attuning some for us, so there's no need for us to go back to the Eye of Terror."

"Alright. What's next?"

"Probably Ulthwé. They're the nearest Craftworld. While we might not get best price for the soulstones there, I'd rather not spend any more time with my soul at risk of being eaten than I need to."

"Reasonable."

They travel to Ulthwé.

From the outside, it looks something like this. The inside of the hangar bay they land in is no less impressive. Gleaming pillars of... bone? support a clouded crystal roof, with jet filligree on the walls showing the tales of Aeldrari mythology.

As the step out of the ship, they are met by an Aeldari woman, in robes the same bone-white and jet black as the room. "Welcome to Ulthanash Shelwé."

Fascinating. It looks magical, but - magic doesn't seem to be the same type of thing, here, so she wonders briefly how they did that.

"Glad to be here," is all she says.

The woman cocks her head, evaluating Liliane.

"Is there a reason you are here?"

Zerry holds out the bag of soulstones. "Yep. Soulstones."

The woman's head cocks at an even steeper angle.

She tries to look pleasant, but isn't sure what Zerri wants her to say. She maybe should've kept her mouth shut in the first place, whoops.

Still no idea what Zerri wants, they maybe souls have discussed this, but: "Your - station? - is very pretty."

The woman smiles. It seems forced.

"If it's all the same to you," Zerri says "We'd like to be paid in some of those soulstones getting attuned to me and my crew."

"I'll have to see if the Farseers consider that acceptable, follow me." The woman says. She starts walking out of the hangar, and Zerri follows.

Zerri whispers an aside to Liliane "Here's hoping the farseers don't take a centure with this. ...Or that we don't get Eldrad."

"Who's that?" she whispers back.