The giant chiraptor seemed eager to engage with Kaldalis, lunging in at him with claws raised. He danced back, letting the first enormous swipe pass in front before he darted back in. Kaldalis smashed the head of his glaive into the monster’s arm as high up as he could reach. He struck true, and the blade shattered one of the creature’s thick scales. But he had to turn his face away to avoid catching a chitinous fragment in the eye.

Kaldalis was aware that he had scored a critical hit - his first ever - for sixty-five damage. He applied a fourth stack of Gust, and he knew that the debuff was his way to catch up on damage; he couldn’t let it drop off, or else his potential to bring the fight to an end anytime soon.

Despite the critical damage bonus, the boss seemed unphased by the strike. Giant fangs flashed out, and Kaldalis threw himself to the floor to avoid getting skewered. The jaws snapped shut in the air above him, and as soon as he knew it had bit down and missed, he rolled sideways and scrambled back to his feet. The creature’s head withdrew back out of reach before he found his footing, but there was plenty of monster to go around, and he thrust his glaive into its hip, drawing another forty-three damage, though he didn’t get his fifth gust stack.

The creature’s claws swept around, and Kaldalis tried to dance back away from them while sweeping his glaive for one last strike.

It proved to be too greedy.

The fadeaway didn’t work out as he expected, and while he landed the strike across the thinner scales on the inside of the creature’s forearm - getting his forty-three damage and fifth Gust stack - he didn’t get all the way out of the way of the incoming swipe of the giant paw. With claws splayed, the claws ripped across his body, and he gritted his teeth to not cry out in pain. His Endure cooldown had run its course, and this time he took the full hit, suffering ninety-two damage, with another poison debuff ticking away at what health remained.

The force of the blow, along with his attempted backwards momentum sent him scrambling away, but with the help of his tail he managed to keep his feet underneath himself. As the poison ticked down, he reached for his inventory, grabbing a potion and chugging it down. It didn’t top him off completely with the two-hundred and thirteen hit point heal, but that just meant none of it went to waste.

The giant chiraptor tipped its head back and let out another rhythmic chitter, and Kaldalis lunged in on the opening to stab the creature in the gut with his glaive. He got his damage in, and the sixth stack of Gust exploded, knocking the creature off-balance for a much more respectable thirty additional damage. Unfortunately, the interruption didn’t seem to be in time, and four more of the glowing red globes spawned around the room and began pulsing.

From their placement, Kaldalis feared he wouldn’t be able to catch them all in time on foot, and so he popped his Jump cooldown and leaped to the nearest one. It was only about twenty feet away, so a single bound got him almost to it with the cooldown running. He reached out and slapped his hand through it, dispelling it before he changed directions, getting a running start before leaping to the next bubble to pop.

He got to the second one in two giant leaps, covering fifty feet in only a couple of seconds. He ran straight through this one, as the third was on the other side, just beyond the room’s central pillar of dark stone. A series of four leaps landed him right on top of it, and he leaned on the balancing power power offered by his tail to turn sharply right, going around the back of the pillar towards the final orb almost halfway back to the room’s entrance. He was shocked by how far it was, especially considering where he started. The first four globes had been in a relatively small radius, not anywhere near this far. As he leaped towards it, the pulsing of the red globe began to pick up speed.

“I can make it,” he said to himself. “I can make it!”

As per what was typical with the universe, though, as soon as the thought crossed his mind, he was jinxed.

The pulsing picked up speed for just a brief couple of seconds before it burst. There was a wave of red light that emanated from the burst, and it passed over the entire room. There was nowhere Kaldalis could have gone to avoid it. It hit him for an outrageous-seeming one-hundred and twenty-eight damage. The number was less outrageous when he considered that this was a boss fight, and this damage was supposed to be entirely avoidable. The boss’s low damage output from normal attacks made more sense, though; if a party of idiots ignored the mechanic entirely, the total burst from four glowing red orbs would be five-hundred and twelve damage. That was nearly half of Kaldalis’s health, and might one-shot an undergeared DPS player. The boss didn’t need to put out much damage when a burst of hundreds of damage was going to rip through every person in the fight.

Kaldalis whirled to find the boss already nearly on top of him again. Instead of setting for the charge again, Kaldalis intended to get some use out of the last few moments of his Jump cooldown. The lumbering beast lashed out at him with its claws, and he leaped over the top of the attack, hurtling himself at the beast’s face. He worried that it might just open its giant maw and catch him like a dog with a frisbee, but he held his head of his glaive in front of himself; if the monster tried to catch him in its mouth, it was going to get stabbed in the throat from the inside.

The creature seemed surprised by his leap. He supposed it was used to being the one doing the pouncing. As such, Kaldalis managed to crack it in the side of the face with his weapon, damaging it and getting his seventh stack of Gust. His feet came down on the back of the monster’s shoulder, and with it lumbering on all fours, he bent at the knees to lower his center of mass as he tried to balance precariously on the charging, bucking creature. He found his footing just in time for it to rear up on its hind legs again, forcing him to jump back up onto its shoulder. He took the opportunity to thrust his glaive into the scales around its neck, using the shape of the haft to twist the weapon once it had sunk in a few inches.

A giant claw swiped at him, and Kaldalis danced across the giant chiraptor’s shoulders, going from one side of its head to the other to avoid getting knocked clear. He stabbed his glaive down at the beast again, blindly, feeling the damage happen, and the eighth stack of gust apply. He grimaced at that; it didn’t matter how he danced, once the Gust stacks went off again, he wouldn’t be able to keep his footing here. It was time to dismount with style rather than being hurled off by the explosion of his own weapon.

Kaldalis waited for the next swipe of a claw, which attempted to dislodge him, and he leapt straight up. With the last few seconds of his Jump cooldown still rolling, he cleared the reach of the enormous claws easily.

Twisting in the air, he lined up his glaive, and put his weight into the weapon as he came down.

The weapon landed just above the giant chiraptor’s shoulder blade, and with his weight behind it, it ripped straight down through the spiny scales across its back halfway down. He only did forty-three damage with the strike despite the impressive size of the wound he opened, but it applied the ninth stack of Gust for him, blasting the monster for forty-five damage, and sending it sprawling forward.

The monster landed on its face with an anguished chittering roar, and Kaldalis wasted no time. As soon as he hit the ground, he was running to the downed monster, smashing his weapon into its side repeatedly as it struggled back to its feet.

Focusing on quick and evenly-tempoed thrusts meant he got three lucky hits in before it was back on its feet, and with luck on his side for a change, there was another blast of Gust before the monster recovered from the first. Kaldalis considered, briefly, the destructive potential daggers would have with this debuff, proccing it every few seconds reliably.

Then again, it was still possible that he was getting some kind of low-man bonus to his stats for this fight. The proc rate on Gust seemed abnormally high for a boss. This blast of Gust hit for sixty damage, and the creature was blasted away from him, skidding sideways on its feet, clawing at the stone for purchase against the force.

The creature staggered for a moment even as Kaldalis was charging towards it. He didn’t have any idea how much health a boss had in this game, but he had to be getting near to its limit. The fully-stacked damage of his Gust debuff was a dramatic improvement to his damage output, and now that it was fully rolling, it seemed an appropriate time to stand his ground and trade blows with the monster more directly to leverage his advantage.

Unafraid, he charged right into the sweeping claw attack the beast made in a clear attempt to ward him away. He took the damage with barely more than a grunt before plunging his glaive into the monster’s bicep. It let out an angry chittering noise as he landed another sixty-five damage critical hit on it.

That second critical convinced him that he was enjoying some statistical benefit for facing this beast alone. No crits since character creation, but now two in under twenty hits? Something was up.

Regardless, he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Kaldalis followed-up with another strike directly into its armpit - getting the fourteenth Gust stack - before it could stand up straight again to menace him with its claws.

Instead, the creature lunged at him with its teeth. He dodged to the left, but not fast enough, and one of the giant fangs plunged through his cosmetic armor, into the back of his shoulder and out of the front of his chest just beneath the collarbone. He wondered how the attack could debuff him with poison when the tip of the snakelike fang had passed all the way through him, but he hadn’t questioned it when the creature’s claws had poisoned him, so he was in no position to complain now.

He brought his glaive straight up, jamming the blade into the softest part of the giant chiraptor’s neck. It bit through the scales there, and Kaldalis felt a splash of blood run down the weapon over his hands right before the fifteenth Gust stack exploded. The burst ripped the fang out of his shoulder painfully while the explosion did a devastating seventy-five damage to the monster.

The exiting fang didn’t do damage even though it felt like it should have. Kaldalis got something of a notification that this was the upper limit of the Gust debuff’s damage. Like everything else that would have been reported in a chat log, he just knew it. Considering it was nearly double the physical damage he was doing, that was just fine by him. If that much bonus damage wasn’t enough to carry him through this fight, nothing would.

The boss monster stumbled, its breathing labored now. Blood was flowing freely from its wounds - even the wounds Kaldalis had inflicted earlier that had only shattered scales. This was an obvious visual change to the enemy that told him it was on its last legs. As his favorite voice actor might say, the monster was looking pretty rough.

Kaldalis also noticed that it had landed next to a rapidly pulsing red orb. When had those come back? When had it summoned them?

Kaldalis didn’t have time to think back over the previous few moments of the fight before four simultaneous waves of red energy ripped through the room. He took four separate instances of one-hundred and twenty-eight damage.

He was suddenly aware that he had only two-hundred and sixty health left, and a poison debuff still ticking down on him.

It turned out he was looking pretty rough, too.