Hunt: Great Jagras

You stand on a rock ledge, looking down at your quarry. The Great Jagras isn’t exactly difficult to track. It’s a noisy monster that devours aptonoth in plain sight. Equipped with your trusty sword and shield, along with your flexible leather armor for high mobility, there’s no way you’ll lose to such a monster.

You jump down from the ledge, delivering a devastating helmsplitter to the Jagras! …Or rather, the ground directly next to the Jagras. It was an intimidation tactic. It seems to have worked, as the monster lurches away from you, then roars. You cover your ears at the loud sound, giving the monster just enough of an opening to move forward and claw at you. Ngh, just a scratch, nothing major.

You gain control of the battle after that, able to predict the monster’s movements without much issue. It habitually lunges forward a bit before attacking, allowing you to dodge towards it and get clean hits in against its tail. At this rate, you’ll be able to sever it in no time. The monster must sense this too, as it turns to flee from your impressive combat prowess. Hmph. Typical cowardly monster.

You give chase, but temporarily lose track of it through some trees. When it comes back into sight, it has just finished consuming another aptonoth. Its stomach is bloated immensely after eating a monster nearly as big as itself. It may plan to regain strength like that, but being so heavy will undoubtedly make it slower. You decide to take the opportunity for some extra damage on its tail, but right before your swing, it whirls around to face you just as quickly as ever. Crap.

Fortunately, you’re equipped with a shield just for this situation, so you raise it to block whatever attack the Jagras may have stored. It balloons its front pouch up even further, now looming over you and your – now seeming rather small – shield. Just as quickly as you regret blocking, the monster brings its full weight down on you, knocking you to the floor regardless of your meager buckler. You struggle beneath the monster but you’re unable to get free. Not content to just pin you, it then begins lifting off of you slightly, only to drop its stomach down on you again full . Kuh…! With the wind knocked out of you, all you can do is lay there and feebly try to crawl away as the Jagras repeats its motion over and over. Somewhere between the 7th and 8th attack, your vision goes black.