His first Jump covered most of distance to the boss, so Kaldalis’s second leap was on a diagonal. He was being reckless, sure, but even reckless wasn’t dumb enough to dive directly into a frontal assault on a monster with giant muscular-looking crab claws.

Instead, he lunged towards the giant copper dinosaur statue, planting his feet on its side and launching himself at the boss monster at an angle.

The crab-beetle was deceptively fast for its size, but not fast enough to catch him with claws before the head of Kaldalis’ glaive struck.

His blow landed on its shell like striking a boulder. Sparks flew from the strike, but he left behind a deep scratch in the shell, along with fifty-seven physical damage and nine earth damage. And as his momentum carried him over the top of the monster to land on the far side of it, he took with him its undivided attention.

It whirled on him with its claws. The first swept out in a straight thrust, more of a piercing attack than a pinch, which was easy enough to hop aside from. Its other claw whipped out in a hook that was more like what he expected, claws wide to grab, but with his Jump cooldown running, he was able to leap over it, letting the claw sweep beneath him.

Kaldalis felt the rush of wind of the passage of the strike, and a second gust as the claw snapped shut where it would have closed on his waist if he’d stayed still.

He lashed out with his glaive, striking sparks on the side of the claw before it swept out of reach, hitting it again. It seemed unbothered by the damage - as they manifested as only small scratches on its shell - but he was keeping its focus. He hoped it would be enough, as he could see his friends in his peripheral vision closing the distance.

The first of them closed the distance like a cackling comet, shooting across the courtyard. Myrin’s laughter paused just long enough for her to down a potion with one hand before her other hand guided her enormous sword into the creature’s side.

Shortly behind her, Reno dashed in, sliding on her knees to pass under the creature’s huge body, her twin dagger slashing and cutting at its underside as she went.

An arrow shattered against its wing casing as Balrim got into bow range, though the Talsar was still moving in close with the rest of the group, presumably for the sake of his potion-throwing arm.

Ess and Courbois were bringing up the rear at normal move speed. Ess’ Jump ability was likely still on cooldown, since she still had the vanilla version and not the double charge modification. And Courbois was likely holding her cooldown for if she needed to pick up adds or otherwise speed around the field during the fight. Like a smart off tank.

Kaldalis didn’t have any more time to consider his friends joining the fight. The beast surged towards him, its claws snapping, trying to grab him. First it went for his leg, and then for his throat. He ducked under the upper strike, and rolled aside from the other, and while neither claw grabbed him, the side of the shelled claw clipped him. It turned his dodge roll into a tumble, and slammed two hundred and sixty-six physical damage and forty-five fire damage into him.

He managed to get to his feet before the next attack, but only barely.

“Maybe don’t stand in front of that end,” Balrim suggested, chucking him a healing potion.

“Yeah, let me spin the boss around wildly,” Kaldalis shot back, using the last few seconds of his Jump cooldown to hop clear of the next strikes of the giant bug’s claws. “I’m sure the DPS are gonna love that!”

He expected Myrin to comment on that, but she was engrossed in dancing with her greatsword, the weapon carving against the boss’s side over and over. The others were busily engaged as well, and while they didn’t have Myrin’s single-mindedness, the other two damage-dealers didn’t have a level of comfort with the game’s combat to engage in their banter during a boss fight.

In front of him, the giant beetle planted its claws on the ground, its raised abdomen starting to twitch and shake. It was preparing a special attack, and Kaldalis wasn’t sure what to expect from it. He remembered the beetle boss from the first dungeon dropping a puddle of poison at its feet, but this was the end boss of this dungeon. If it followed the pattern, its mechanics would be borrowed from the previous bosses, right?

His expectation was for it to make some buzzing sound to call for aid, bringing a swarm of tiny crab-beetle adds down on them.

With Courbois near at hand, he had no concern for that. The other fights had ended so quickly before their superior numbers, his only real fear was that the boss would use a special ability that the previous enemies hadn’t had the time to use.

Of course, the one mechanic he didn’t consider was the one that happened.

The glowing red bubble sprouting from the boss monster’s abdomen broke free and floated through the air. As soon as it was gone, another bubble of the glowing red fluid formed and broke free. And another. And another. They floated down like big glowing soap bubbles, drifting to and fro as they descended towards the floor.

“Bombs!” Kaldalis barked. He started to move, dragging the boss away from the rain of bubbles. “Repositioning!”

The boss charged after him, snapping its claws just a hair behind him again and again. Kaldalis expected to hear a series of explosions behind it, but unexpectedly, no such noise came. He saw the red bubbles were no longer floating, but he took a moment mid-dodge to peek around the monster’s bulk, and saw that the bubbles had touched down on the ground of the courtyard, lingering there.

“Looks like it’s a soft enrage,” Kaldalis called to his friends. “Gotta finish the fight before the whole courtyard turns into a minefield!”

“It might be more complicated than that,” Balrim called back. “If they’re not blowing when they hit, then there’s more to it!”

When the boss started shedding another shower of bubbles again, Kaldalis started to realize his healer was right. The bubbles were coming too frequently and spreading out too far as they drifted down. There were wide gaps between where they landed - possibly far enough to navigate the resulting field of bubbles - but that meant that the arena would be full of them in under a minute.

“Alright, just watch positions,” Kaldalis said, correcting himself. “We need to build up more bombs here before repositioning. Space is too valuable to waste!”

The red bubbles came down over them, and Kaldalis had to rotate the boss slightly to avoid one that was coming right down on top of him.

Up close, the membranous surface of the bubble was much thicker than a soap bubble. The whole thing was about three feet in diameter, with the first several inches being glowing red fluid. Having moved a few feet away from it, it seemed like he was safe. He suspected that breaking the surface would detonate it, meaning they could let them build up pretty densely before moving.

“We’re fine as long as we have space to get out, we let them pile up here, right?” But, as was typical for his luck, as soon as Kaldalis thought he had a grip on things, something had to go wrong.

The crab-beetle created another rain of bubbles, but as Kaldalis was focused on them coming down, the next strike of its claws came in - not at him, but at the bubble nearby him.

As soon as the outside of the bubble was breached by the shimmering claw, it unleashed a blast of flames.

Kaldalis was sent reeling away from it, taking four hundred and twenty-six fire damage.

He had a vain hope that the creature might have taken damage to its claw from the strike, but the shell was unharmed. It must have been designed for this. The bombs weren’t just to cut off areas, they were to augment the boss’s attacks, allowing it to cleave in a large area around wherever the bombs landed. Its shell was specifically keyed to the explosions, keeping it safe from its own attack.

They also augmented its attacks by how much the blast set him off-balance. He couldn’t get his feet under himself properly before the next claw whipped in at him. It slammed against him, dealing its three hundred and twelve total damage, and the appendage snapped closed around his waist, his armor screaming in protest as the air was squeezed out of him.

The monster picked him up off the ground, and Kaldalis started to see where this was going. He raised his glaive up and stabbed straight down into the claw over and over, trying to get the giant bug to let go of him. He did damage, and scraped and scratched the shell, but it was too dense. Too thick. He couldn’t get through to the muscle beneath to try and force it to let go.

Meanwhile, the chitinous plates on its buglike face parted, revealing a dark and slimy opening that had to be its mouth. Kaldalis had hoped that the claw would just squeeze him in place until he could wiggle or stab his way free.

Instead it seemed he’d identified what mechanic from the sea monster boss this one had borrowed.

He was about to be swallowed whole.

Again.