It’s a relatively peaceful night. A couple of zombies groan in the distance, a few eyeballs fly overhead. 

One of the eyeballs seems to be getting bigger. No, it’s just coming closer... and closer...

It’s a flying eyeball the size of a Mack truck, and it’s ready for a fight. 

Margaret takes to the air to give it one. "You!" staff blast "Should not!" staff blast "Exist!" staff blast  "This universe" staff blast "needs" staff blast "to get over" staff blast "its eyeball obsession!" staff blast staff blast staff blast.

It charges through the air towards her. It’s pretty fast, and really big; someone who didn’t have foresight might have a tough time dodging it. 

Margaret knows what it's going to do several seconds in advance of the doing, and she made herself lighter again when she took off; it would have to be really zippy or have a good ranged attack to connect. The question is, are her attacks doing anything other than making it madder?

There’s a few spots where a particularly good shot has pierced the membrane of its skin and it’s leaking rapidly evaporating aqueous or possibly vitreous humor! It’s got a lot of humors to go, though, and she’s only got so much mana to shoot with before she has to recharge. 

The next time she has to recharge, she gets altitude and dive-bombs it, swooping down and slashing at it with the sword.

God, it’s such a shitty sword. It scratches the cornea slightly anyway.

After a few more rounds of this the giant eyeball is looking significantly the worse for wear. It stops moving, just hovering in midair and spinning around faster and faster as its cornea begins to disintegrate.

It’s not dying, though. Dangersense says it’s getting more dangerous.

When the sword demonstrates its awfulness, she tries a handful of foot-long razor-sharp titanium claws during the next recharge.

When it starts getting more dangerous, she opens the range a bit farther and starts jinking unpredictably between shots in case it's about to sprout laser guns or something. "Guess I should have joined the Paladins after all, then I'd be totally used to this!" she yells. 

The claws work very well! 

Once the cornea is gone entirely, the eye reveals its upgrade: there's two rows of awful, foot-long teeth where the cornea was, gnashing and flicking spittle (or possibly more aqueous humor) everywhere. It charges at her, noticeably quicker but not enough so to actually catch her.

"HOW did you manage to get EVEN MORE DISGUSTING?!" blast blast blast blast claws blast blast, circling a lot to send some shots into the mouth and others into the back and trying to judge which side is more vulnerable. The melee attacks while she reloads are of course all aimed as far away from the teeth as possible.

The inside of the mouth is pretty vulnerable! It's not much longer until she fires off a blast that punches right through the back of it and the whole thing detonates in a shower of clear jelly and blood.

It drops three gold coins, a handful of strange red seeds, and a stacked lump of that red-and-black ore she found the other day.

Some of the jelly and blood gets on her; it doesn't vanish fast enough for her liking, so she deletes the outer layer of her shirt and skirt and puts them back minus the filth. The loot gets collected once it's definitely for sure clear of goo, and even then she holds the coins in a fire before putting them in her bag and keeps the rest on the ground near her door pending figuring out what they are. Then she sits at her workbench and lets the exhaustion of the fight catch up with her for a while.

The new ore turns out to be called "Crimtane". With Crimtane bars, she can make a sword, an axe, a bow, a... fishing rod? and... a yo-yo????

"More advanced Crimtane equipment requires Tissue Samples from the Brain of Cthulhu," Eric informs her. "Now that you have defeated the Eye of Cthulhu, I know a Dryad who might want to move into town!"

"Oooh, are there fish around, I want some fish." She makes the fishing rod, and everything else if she has enough crimtane for it, because why not. "The Brain of Cthulhu, huh, oh that's just great, more boss fights against pop culture references. I would love to meet a dryad even if she's another one of you, Eric, anything with the right size and number and connectedness of eyeballs and some kind of language is a friend of mine."

“Two people won’t live in the same dwelling, so as our community grows you’ll have to build more homes.”

Also, the diamonds she found while mining are enough to make a Diamond Staff. Probably useful, in case she has to fight another kaiju. 

She's definitely making a diamond staff, plus swords in every material she has enough of. All of the above will get tested versus the regular nighttime nasties, with her claws as the standard of comparison. She'll also build a few more houses, all the same as her own unless Eric expresses a preference on his or the dryad's behalf.

Eric could not possibly have fewer preferences. 

The Crimtane sword, called the Blood Butcherer, is definitely the best available. Her own claws are pretty damn effective, but the sword’s got better reach and it cleaves zombies like nobody’s business. The diamond staff, meanwhile, is a much improved version of the already pretty fantastic amethyst staff; it uses more mana, but it fires faster, does more damage and can pierce through one enemy into another. Plus, the staff itself matches her outfit.

The diamond staff is quite possibly her favorite possession, since her outfit is really more of a body part. She loves it and pets it and names it Daphne. It and the Nobody Can Make Her Call It The Blood Butcherer become her go-to monster-fighting gear, since the sword does have better reach and also has the advantage of not being as gross to temporarily get zombie all over.

The Dryad, whose name is Faye, moves into the new house as soon as Margaret's out of earshot. She operates a little shop out of it, selling various seeds, a flower called Nature's Gift which Eric mentions can be combined with a mana potion to make a "Mana Flower" which will reduce mana consumption, another flower called Jungle Rose which can be combined with five Moonglow flowers (which grow in the Jungle) to form a magic weapon, and, of course, suspicious-looking eyeballs.

"The Suspicious-Looking Eyeball can be used to summon the Eye of Cthulhu," Eric says.

Margaret is very happy to meet Faye and buy her flowers! Presumably she takes coins.

Upon hearing about the Suspicious-Looking Eyeballs, she says, "Eric. My friend. Please dig in the bottoms of your pockets and behind your sofa, and scrape up some Theory of Mind, and tell me why on Earth or anywhere else I would ever want to do that."

"Many useful items can be made from Crimtane," Eric shrugs.

"You know what? Fair. But only if they're really useful." She still puts a spare bolt of silk over Faye's tray of eyeballs.

That afternoon, she decides to fly past the edge of the island. At first she was sticking near her house in case someone from Earth came to rescue her, then she was sticking around to be near Eric and her house and her mine, but she really ought to see what else is out there. She decides to go north, because why not north, and sets out.

To the north, there's a jungle. It's extraordinarily green. There are massive pits leading into the ground, which would be unusual in an Earthly jungle.

There are three more clouds. One has a decently sized lake. The others have houses. None have signs of habitation, all have conspicuous treasure chests.

She comes across a sphere of rock about ten meters across with a vein of diamonds peeking out the surface; when the diamonds are mined out, they lead to a compartment made of gold bricks with a crystal heart inside.

The edge of the island tapers off into a sandy beach, with an ocean of sparkling blue water extending into the distance. Not much distance, though. There's a swirling bank of completely opaque fog about fifty meters out.

So many cool things to discover! She'll check out the fog bank, but first, what's in those pits?

They're massive. And, as usual, deeply structurally unsound. There's a good number of giant bees, spiky green slimes, and carnivorous plants with unreasonably long and flexible stems. There's also a couple of treasure chests, one at the bottom of a pond and the others in strange little iridescent shrines. In the chests she finds one pair of boots which promises to let her walk on water, one pair which promises to enhance her speed, and an anklet made of vines which also promises to enhance her speed. There's also a wooden chest close to the entrance of the first pit containing a shiny brass aglet, which promises to enhance her speed further, if she can figure out how to actually equip it. (It would probably involve some shoe surgery.)