Four huge fists lashed out at Kaldalis one after the other.

The Xorn Major struck with incredible speed, and it took all of Kaldalis’s focus to dance away from the blows. He knew that each one represented a potentially indomitable amount of damage, especially while Balrim was still catching up to him as the damage dealers finished off the final normal Xorn.

Kaldalis marveled at his foe. The Xorn Major had seemed huge and monstrous from across the chamber. Now that he was right under it, its size was so much more imposing. It wasn’t just an upscaled enemy model that some dev drag-and-dropped into the arena. It was a literal giant. The stuff of legends. And he was now in its shadow, with his eye level barely even with its freakishly defined abs.

Its fists continued to descend with terrifying speed. It was a continuous stream of attacks, and Kaldalis used his jump cooldown to keep hopping to the left, turning the monster towards the back wall of the chamber - where no one would be afflicted by the sleep cone attack, if the Xorn Major still had it.

He got the notification when the last Xorn fell, awarding him some experience points - and another sheaf of notes. Myrin shouted something indistinct as she hurtled across the chamber at the Xorn Major’s back, with the rest of Kaldalis’s friends right behind.

But despite Myrin’s hefty lead on them, it was Balrim who struck the first follow-up blow, an arrow hitting the beast’s lower left bicep and drawing another spray of pressurized silver blood.

With his friends incoming, Kaldalis put all his effort into avoiding the incoming damage. He knew from fighting the lesser forms of the Xorn that a single strike would likely take him off his feet, and if he got knocked down, the monster’s constant stream of attacks would hammer him into paste in seconds.

He had to keep ahead of it at all costs until the healers from the other parties caught up.

Courbois’s group was the second to finish with their foes, being the first to join Kaldalis and his group in attacking the Major. Courbois herself stayed back, not wanting to complicate the aggro game, but her backup was a huge crowd of archers, and a downpour of arrows joined Balrim’s.

The Xorn Major didn’t appear to have the sleep cone attack, and in the scant moments between attacks, Kaldalis reckoned he knew why. This particular Major had never been a Captain. The special abilities were imparted by their upgrades, and they had killed the Captain who had been left behind in the ruins for the reclamation quest. This Major had been spawned at this ranking specifically for the end of the upgrade quest.

All it had was the rock throw ability, and as long as he was in reach, it exclusively employed its fists - which struck him for over four hundred physical and one hundred darkness damage when he failed to evade them.

A rock throw ability that the AI didn’t proc against melee targets didn’t seem like that impressive of a special ability. After the Xorn Captain’s sleep attack had left him at its mercy, the ability to chuck a rock seemed boring and mundane. But as he forced himself to stand toe-to-toe with the giant monster, ducking and weaving around its constant flurry of fists, he found himself wishing that he could kite back away from it, even if it would slow down the group’s damage output. If he was out of reach of its fists, that might trigger it to grab a big rock and launch it at him like a bullet. The attack had been too fast for him to dodge, and too much damage for the healers to keep up. It wasn’t a threatening addition to its arsenal when it was already in melee range, but it was the perfect tool to punish the way Kaldalis had been dealing with the Xorn thus far.

Kiting had been his go-to move in a crisis against more than just Xorn, and he felt a sense of pressure now that he realized it had been slapped out of his hands. He tried to take some comfort in the support he had around him - not just several healers, but a back-up tank at the ready, and more coming as the other parties finished their foes and joined the boss fight - in case things went wrong.

Even if he fell, it wouldn’t be the end.

The fight would continue, and given the raw numbers they had, victory was assured.

Kaldalis expected there to be an enrage mechanic, like there had been for the Syncoresi Major. Considering the rough ceiling, it seemed well within the realm of possibility that it would reach up and smash down a rain of stones on them all.

But it turns out when you have five times as many players, and the bulk of them are DPS, you don’t hit enrage.

It still took a long time, and Kaldalis had to use Kaia’s Flicker more than once to keep ahead of the attacks, but eventually, the beast started to falter.

As gross as its normal form was, once open wounds appeared on its body, it looked even more monstrous. Its exposed muscles looked like woven steel cords, and where they were cut, the threads visibly frayed and curled out of the monster. As its silvery blood filled the cloud of sand around its face, bits and flashes of the vase beneath became visible, but just enough showed through that the openings in the head looked like flickers of screaming mouths and wild eyes.

At long last, the beast staggered, the stream of fists stopped, and - even as the more bloodthirsty DPS kept attacking - it listed to one side and fell.

The roar that went up at their victory was deafening in the cavern.

Kaldalis’ quest completed, and no new challenge replaced it.

They’d done it.

Now there was just the matter of dealing with the consequences.

Kaldalis frowned. He didn’t know what to expect from the Panbu council when they returned. Part of him suspected that he only got away with this whole plan because of the time pressure that the whole crisis had put on them - particularly since the council had sat down and chose death rather than risk Kaldalis going unpunished for doing nothing wrong.

While that was on his mind, he diverted course and made his way towards Voker.

“Hey,” Kaldalis said, omitting any of the insults he wanted to hurl, “we need to have a talk about next steps.”

“Fuck off,” Voker said, waving dismissively. “I don’t owe you shit.”

“Can you just-” Kaldalis snapped, but stopped himself, taking a breath. “This isn’t about me. This is about the council.”

The man in black armor rolled his eyes and gave an impatient huff. “Give me a break. They aren’t going to do anything.”

“You’re right, they aren’t,” Kaldalis said, trying to keep a grip on his temper. “Because you’re going to own up to what you did and apologize before they decide to be a giant sack of dicks about this.”

“Fuck off,” Voker said again, walking away towards the nearest passage back to the surface.

“Voker,” Kaldalis snapped, “this isn’t a joke. You made the decision to run the dungeon despite explicit instruction not to. All I’m asking is for you to make the decision to soften the consequences of your selfish bullshit!”

But Voker didn’t turn around. “I thought I said fuck off. We were all thinking about it. I was just the only one with the balls to do it. If you want to go suck off a bunch of NPCs, don’t let me stop you, but I’m not gonna join in.”

Kaldalis felt his teeth grinding together, but he couldn’t hear the sound over the rush of blood pounding through his head.

He couldn’t remember ever being this upset with another person.

He took one breath, and then focused on making it to the next without physically lashing out.

It helped that Voker was walking away.

Kaldalis managed to calm down after a few dozen breaths. He repeated over and over to himself that when the council came calling for comeuppance, Voker would regret not listening.

Deep down, though, Kaldalis didn’t believe that for a second. When the Panbu council decided it was time for someone to pay for the disobedience, he knew, deep down, that he would be the one receiving the invoice, not Voker.

“Kal?” Balrim said, interrupting his seething. “Everything alright?”

“For now,” Kaldalis said, trying not to snarl. “We’ll have to see what Cerh decides what he and his minions think.”

“Optimistic,” Balrim observed.

“So what’s our plan?” Myrin asked, stepping up beside Balrim. “Are we doing a thing now?” She had an antsy look on her face, and Kaldalis knew ‘a thing’ meant the dungeon. For someone who’s energy had been flagging during the fight against the Xorn, she was raring to go now.

Kaldalis looked around. Reno and Ess were catching up now as well, with Courbois in tow. The trio looked to be sharing a joke about something.

With his would-be team coming together, there were some finishing touches to make.

“We’re going to need to run that dungeon,” Kaldalis said, smacking a fist into his other open palm. “And we need to smash the clear time. I want everyone who sees his time as the first clear to think he’s a total fucking loser when they see ours - or anyone going faster.”

“Dungeon time?” Myrin said, suddenly bouncing in place. “I’m down for dungeon time.”

“Well,” Balrim said with a grimace, “then we need to figure out what our party setup is going to be. For better or worse.”