Balrim had apparently made simple roast apples. Or, at least, an apple-like fruit. Kaldalis thought it was pretty good, considering how low Balrim’s skill had to be at this point in the game. The meal was hot and sweet, but in need of some cinnamon.

Upon finishing, Kaldalis’s awareness told him that he received a buff. It was called “Sweet Dish” and gave him a bonus to his attack rating.

A moment later, Myrin finished her apples and, upon discovering the effect of the buff, made a pleased sound, slapping Balrim on the shoulder. “Thank you!”

“It’s what I have,” Balrim said, mumbling around a mouthful of fruit. “Low levels, this is the one good recipe. I can do this, or I can do like three different affinities, but they all need ingredients from back in Baimer.” He gestured briefly to Kaldalis. “Though if you catch anything called a Skipjack, I can turn them into food for armor.”

“I’ll keep an eye open. Ocean, or freshwater?”

“Fuck if I know.” Balrim laughed. “All I got is the name.”

“Alright then.” Kaldalis laughed as well before struggling back to his feet. “So are we ready to go?”

“Hell yes. Let’s squash a bug,” Myrin said, thumping a fist into her other hand.

Balrim put away his little stove and Kaldalis led the way down the hall back to the boss room. The giant beetle was still sleeping, and he took an opportunity to look around the room to see if he could spot any clues about what was to come. The room was not huge, compared to the size of the giant bug, so it was possible that some spacing issues might be part of the fight. He couldn’t tell how, and he couldn’t predict what kind of mechanics would cause those issues.

“Nothing to it but to do it,” Kaldalis said, finally.

“Seriously? That’s the battlecry you’re going with for the first boss fight of the game?” Myrin asked.

“Alright, then,” Kaldalis said, lowering his voice to a growl. “Today is a good day to die!”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t!” Balrim called from behind him.

“Not for me,” Kaldalis clarified. “For the boss. The boss is the one that’s going to-” He shook his head and turned on Myrin. “Don’t criticize the battlecry. You’re throwing me off. Now we’re stuck with this.” He charged into the room at the giant beetle. “Hope you’re happy!”

The beetle started to stir as Kaldalis approached, but not fast enough to avoid him getting the first strike. He slammed his glaive into its side, dealing twenty-five physical damage and applying the first stack of gust. The giant beetle let out a chittering roar, quickly standing up and smashing its pincers against the ground in what would no doubt be an amazing shot for the game trailer. From where Kaldalis was on its flank, though, he didn’t have a good view of it.

“Intimidating display,” Kaldalis said, quickly ducking under the giant bug’s low belly to get to the far side of it. “But it just means I get the second hit for free.” He dragged the serrated back of his glaive’s head across the underside of the monster’s shell, causing another fifty-nine damage, though no stack of gust this time.

The second hit was the cue for the DPS to start doing their thing, and while putting the boss between him and his friends meant he couldn’t see them at work, he could hear Myrin start cackling as the sound of cracking carapace reverberated off of the walls.

As the giant beetle finished its over dramatic aggro animation and got to the business of trying to smash Kaldalis to paste, he was surprised at its speed. Despite its enormous size, it moved and attacked about as fast as the normal leviabeetle. Combined with the large area each attack filled, it meant Kaldalis had to do a lot of work to keep ahead of the attacks.

He managed to hurl himself out of the way of the giant pincers the first time they attempted to clamp down on him. It meant the monster caught him off-balance with its follow-up attack, sweeping the pincers across the floor to slam into him sideways, nearly bowling him over. Only the instinctual movement of his tail kept him upright.

The strike did an unimpressive fifty-five physical damage, but what scared him was the sixty-five water damage that accompanied the strike, taking the total damage to one-hundred and twenty. It was the most damage he’d taken at a single stroke in this dungeon, but not by much - the vendragora had been hitting him for ninety-ish - and while that meant he could tank through the damage with very little trouble, it made him nervous.

If this boss wasn’t scary from its normal attacks, it meant there were mechanics on the way.

As if on cue, the giant leviabeetle stomped its rear legs, and something fell from the ceiling to land nearby. It was a yellowish blob, smooth and oval. One end stuck to the ground solidly with a wet thump, and the other end bobbed back and forth.

“What the fuck is that?” Kaldalis yelled.

“It’s either going to explode for damage around it,” Myrin yelled back, “or it’s going to turn into an add and try to kill Balrim.”

“Thanks,” Balrim called from the back of the room. “I hate it!”

“Myrin,” Kaldalis barked, “run over there. If you can damage it, take it out, and if you can’t, get clear of it as fast as you can and get back to the boss. If it’s an add, I’d rather lose the damage than lose the whole fight.”

“Why not Haldir?” Myrin groaned, though she was already peeling away from the boss and running for the little yellow punching bag.

“You’re faster,” Kaldalis called after her. “You’ve got the mobility cooldown!”

“Oh shit, you’re right,” Myrin said, and as she charged across the room she abruptly accelerated. Kaldalis didn’t have a clear view from behind the enormous beetle, but he could see her legs from beneath the monster as they went from a light jog to a full sprint. In a moment, she was beside the yellow blob, and she slammed her greatsword into it with the force of her charge. Kaldalis knew from experience that it wouldn’t add damage, but the strike cleaved into the squishy surface, and a chunk of yellow gelatin broke away from the shape and scattered across the floor.

“It took damage!” Myrin yelled.

“Then sweep the leg!” Balrim called back. “No mercy!”

It took two more strikes, and Myrin’s third blow cleaved the little yellow balloon in half. A half-formed larvae looking thing fell out of the liquefied interior in two pieces.

“It was an egg!” Myrin said, sprinting back to the boss beetle, still benefiting from her Aggressive cooldown. “We gotta get them down quick!”

“If you see another, get on it!” Kaldalis said, “we probably don’t have Myrin’s dash to deal with the next one, so Balrim, open fire as soon as the next drops, and someone peel off and help him. If we can get through this without having to deal with a single add, I’ll consider this a perfect run.”

For his part, Kaldalis kept smacking the giant beetle. His gust stacks were slow in coming, showing that the boss had a higher resistance to gust than the other beetles. He felt like his damage was barely chipping away at it, too. His swings left some cracks in the creature’s shell, but ticking away for twenty-five damage at a peck felt paltry.

He just had to remind himself that damage output wasn’t his job. It was on Haldir and Myrin to actually beat the monster down, even if one of them had to peel off every thirty seconds to deal with an egg dropped from the ceiling.

Besides, he was doing enough already. The enormous pincers smashed and snapped at him fiercely, and it was a huge effort to keep ahead of them. Every strike was one hundred and twenty damage, and while each of Balrim’s heals were larger than that, they were slow in coming, and Kaldalis couldn’t afford to tank every hit.

Eventually, he got his third stack of gust, getting the proc that blasted the boss for an extra six damage. Despite the tiny number, it staggered the boss, briefly pausing its otherwise-relentless assault. The blast put a crack in the creature’s shell right next to its snapping mandibles, and through the gap he could see that there was some kind of sallow interior skin beneath the exoskeleton holding the beast’s vitals in. He imagined that with Myrin and Haldir hacking away at the beast from behind, it’s rear end was likely nothing but that sallow flesh.

As the creature recovered from the blast, it turned its attention back to Kaldalis with another chittering roar. Instead of stomping its feet to drop another egg, as he expected, the beast shook itself, and a dense purple fluid sloshed out of it from between the natural segments of its carapace. As it hit the floor, it spread rapidly across the smooth stone. Kaldalis trusted his instincts and scrambled away from it, barely avoiding getting splashed.

In the blink of an eye, the creature had created a puddle about fifteen feet across right beneath it. Just like Kaldalis, Haldir had also scrambled back in time to avoid it, but Myrin had probably been mid-swing when it happened, and was either unwilling or unable to abandon the sweep of her giant weapon. While the puddle didn’t do a big chunk of damage to her, he saw a debuff appear next to her health bar in the upper left of his vision, and her HP began to slowly tick down.

It seemed this boss had more than one mechanic up its chitinous sleeve. A nasty trick to pull for the first boss they’d ever encountered. Now he was separated from his friends by a pool of poison, and as the beast stepped up to sweep its pincers in at Kaldalis once more, he realized there was nowhere safe for his friends to stand and fight the creature without taking the poison debuff that was already wearing through Myrin’s health at an alarming rate.

Kaldalis had to move fast. Bosses dropping AoEs beneath themselves was nothing new to him, but it was an unfamiliar challenge to reposition the boss while having to dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge to keep himself clear of avoidable damage from its thrashing pincers. He lured the creature straight to the left, getting it out of the poison puddle as fast as possible. They only lost a few moments of uptime from Haldir and Myrin. It seemed, for a moment, that things were going to be alright.

Kaldalis stopped next to the nearest pillar, choosing that place to stand and fight. The monster’s pincers lashed out, as the creature swept them at him like a bull’s horns he bent down as low as he could, dropping in a deep squat and letting the attack pass just over his horned head. The attack smashed into the pillar, and the creature let out a chittering snarl.

Before Kaldalis could feel gratified by causing that little irritation, the shaking of the room from the blow caused three of those yellowish eggs to drop from the ceiling to the floor.