The creature reared up and struck at him.

Not with its fanged maw, but with its claws.

The combination of the sudden shock of fear and the unexpected angle of attack meant that his attempt to dodge was both sluggish and in the wrong direction. Claws raked across the front of him, and the extremely high damage confirmed his theory. It hit him for one hundred and seventy-nine physical damage, with an additional eighty dark damage.

A total of two hundred and fifty-nine damage. It was an enormous chunk of his HP, nearly an eighth of his maximum.

At the very least, he had a healer with him.

“Holy fuck!” Dalgaard shouted. “What the shit?”

“I know!” Kaldalis yelled back. “Somehow this is a boss monster. Less cursing more fighting!”

Dalgaard started running across the room, but the distance meant that there would be a few seconds before they joined the fight.

Luckily, Kaldalis had plenty of hit points to spare.

He just had to make them count.

Kaldalis landed another strike with his spear, eking out another paltry seventeen damage with a vicious thrust at the feathered raptor’s shoulder.

It lunged at him again, this time with teeth instead of claws. Its jaw unhinged like a snake’s, and he saw there were three different rows of serrated fangs in its maw. He went to duck under the attack, but the size of the open mouth meant he almost had to throw himself to the ground to let it snap shut above him instead of on him.

Kaldalis came up swinging, though, slashing straight up with the side of his spear as he stood up. The slash landed on the monster’s chin, slapping its jaws shut with another seventeen damage.

He wondered how much remained.

People had mathed out the HP of the bosses in the dungeon, but the exact numbers hadn’t been terribly useful.

The way enemies scaled compared to player levels meant that the numbers were unique to players of that level. Since it was alpha players running those numbers, they weren’t going to be applicable until he was in the level twenty range.

The monster reached out at him with the knife collection sprouting from the ends of its feathery fingers, and Kaldalis threw himself to the left, letting the claws churn the air rather than his gut.

Kaldalis reversed direction as fast as he could, lunging in at it with his spear. He drove a thrust at the beast, but the low slope of its back meant that the spearhead skipped off of the thick hide beneath the feathers.

Missing the attack felt bad, but it was more important to avoid the incoming damage than to focus on output.

With only a tank and a low-level healer, this was going to be a long fight no matter what.

Dalgaard joined the fray right after that, and a potion sailed over the monster to smash against the back wall of the room right behind Kaldalis. The restorative vapors healed an even two-hundred hit points of what was lost, and Kaldalis realized he had to use that as a baseline for how much damage he had to avoid. He had to keep ahead of the damage enough for their lower-level numbers to keep up.

The healer lashed out at the monster with their daggers, jabbing at its tail with a quick and even tempo. They were likely going to struggle to get a Gust proc due to their low stats, but if Kaldalis could keep the monster still and focused on him, it was only a matter of time. Low stats would make each debuff stack rare, but not impossible.

When the blast came, that would be the key moment to stack up some real damage.

The creature lunged at him again with unhinged jaws, and he restrained himself from leaping straight back. It was the safest move to avoid the strike, but it might have drawn the monster away from Dalgaard’s attacks. Instead he dropped to one knee, ducking down to let the jaws snap shut above him again. The creature didn’t pause between attacks this time, and lashed out with its clawed hands, now that they were perfectly placed level with his face.

He didn’t have time to think.

Kaldalis threw himself to the right in a dodge roll, trying to keep himself at a fixed distance from the monster to keep it still.

He came up to his feet again a moment later, and he came up swinging. Kaldalis thrust the head of his spear into the monster’s side, right below its right armpit. His instincts told him that the attack would perforate its lung and bring the fight to an end, but videogame logic was in effect, so all he accomplished was the same seventeen damage of any of his other strikes.

The monster reared its head up, and Kaldalis prepared to dodge another sweep of its claws. Instead, though, its chest puffed up as it inhaled deeply through the narrow nostril slits at the end of its muzzle.

Kaldalis immediately abandoned his next attack and hurled himself forward and to the left, falling fully prone.

The maneuver was clumsy, but just in time as the feathered monster made a sound that was a cross between a sneeze and a shotgun. An eruption of energy ripped out of its mouth, filling the room with a flash of light the maroon color of dried blood. It was there and gone in an instant, leaving an entire wedge of the room blackened and full of steam. Dalgaard let out a stream of curses that Heluna would have been proud of. They stared incredulously at the steaming ruin of that corner of the room.

“Bless you,” Kaldalis said. He scrambled back to his feet, ready for the next attack. But the monster seemed to share Dalgaard’s stun, shaking its head with another catlike hissing sound.

“I didn’t sneeze,” Dalgaard said, unhelpfully.

“I wasn’t talking to you.” Kaldalis focused on getting his feet under him and whirling his spear into position for another attack. “Just because it’s trying to kill us doesn’t mean we can’t be civil.”

“Such a gentleman,” Dalgaard said dryly. “I suppose you have a plate of cheese and crackers to go with your thinly-sliced ass when it finishes ripping you apart?”

“Great zinger, kid,” Kaldalis said, “but don’t get cocky.”

The remark seemed to remind Dalgaard that their daggers were in their hands. They jumped to resume their attack. Kaldalis followed suit, smashing his spear straight down onto the feathered beast’s head, cutting into it with the edge of the leaf-shaped spearhead for another seventeen damage.

The monster lashed out at him again with its claws, and he sidestepped to the right, letting it rend the air six inches to the left of his shoulder. He whirled his spear above his head and drove it down with both hands, thrust it into the back of the monster’s neck. Despite the dramatic attack and the deadly target point, it was still just seventeen damage.

Ivory-toothed jaws unhinged and lunged towards him again, three rows of teeth against his armor made the shrieking sound of tortured metal as he took another two-hundred and fifty-nine total damage.

“Shit,” Dalgaard said. “Heal is in five seconds, watch yourself!”

“Just relax. We’re fine. We got this,” he said with a grimace, “I’ve got hit points to spare. A hit or two isn’t going to kill me.”

“Not yet,” Dalgaard grumbled, though they focused on their attacks, trying to push out as much damage as they could.

Kaldalis ducked under another bite, and came up with another seventeen-damage strike to the beast’s feathered chin. Another bite came out in rapid succession, and he had to leap back quickly to dodge in time. The monster surged towards him, and as he reared back for an attack, the butt of his spear banged against the wall of the room, spoiling the attack.

“Shit fuck ass,” Kaldalis blurted. “Repositioning!”

“Just don’t end up in an unintended location,” Dalgaard shot back.

Kaldalis took a quick step to the left, and hissed in pain as he stepped into the steaming ruins of the monster’s conal sneeze attack. Just standing on the blackened floor caused him to take little chunks of dark damage. It was only fifteen at a time, but it was at a rate much faster than once per second, and he hurried to get clear of the area.

“Fuck fuck, fuck fuck, fuck fuck fuck,” he cursed, dancing across the scorched stone. “That’s bad. Real bad. That hurts.”

“No no no!” Dalgaard yelled, panic obvious in their voice. “Don’t stand in the fire! You’re going to fucking die and then I’m going to die. Jesus Christ, get out of the fire!”

“Ha ha,” Kaldalis said once he was clear on the other side of the cone. “HP bar go brrrr.”

He kept moving, positioning the monster away from the steaming area of the floor, but not too far towards the center of the room. Kaldalis put his back to the nearest wall, to minimize the area the next cone would affect. Now that he knew how the attack worked, and what the long-term effects would be - as well as the implied “soft enrage” when the whole room was covered in void zones - he knew where he wanted the monster to stand.

“We’re fine,” he said again, “we got this.”

Dalgaard finally got a Gust proc right then, and the blast of wind hurled the monster sideways. Kaldalis had a brief moment of terror where a vision flashed before him of the feathered raptor sneezing back at them from its new position, covering fully half the room in steaming blackness. He lunged forward, not towards the monster, but alongside its movement, trying to keep between it and the nearest wall, just in case. At the same time, Dalgaard went in with single-minded fury, slashing at its flank with both daggers.

Instead of the sneeze blast, the monster unhinged its jaw and let out a new sound. It started piercing and shrill before tapering off to a trilling sound, sounding like a cross between a shrieking woman and an up-pitched goose honk. Kaldalis smashed his spear into the side of the monster’s jaw, getting his seventeen damage and causing it to stagger back the other way.

“What the fuck was that?” Dalgaard said. “That was some fucking demon scream bullshit.”

“Either it was a special attack that was supposed to do damage,” Kaldalis said, smacking the beast again with his spear, “like the syncoresi’s howl. Or it was-”

There was a clatter of broken stone from the stairwell, and two feathered heads poked up out of the opening in the floor. They looked smaller than the one they were currently fighting - perhaps only seven feet long and four feet tall from the ground to the tops of their heads. But they were otherwise identical little feathered blenders.

Their giant black eyes orienting on the adventurers as they charged into the room.

“Or it was adds,” Kaldalis yelled. “Of course it was adds. This shit just went from bad to worse.”

“Monsters, monsters everywhere,” Dalgaard said with a grimace, moving around to the far side of the boss monster away from the adds. “And not a DPS to pocket.”