Kaldalis ran into the middle of the group of water elemental dog monsters with gusto. The cavern floor was uneven natural stone, but he trusted his tail’s unconscious movements to keep his balance. Activating Sweeping Strikes let him hit the monsters all at once to establish aggro, and they all immediately returned his eagerness for battle, jaws snapping at him, flinging water in every direction from their slavering mouths.

As the fight broke out, Kaldalis had to do a double take at the damage numbers. His strikes with Sweeping Strikes active did three hundred and sixteen physical damage, and ninety-eight earth damage. He was so surprised he let one of the monsters chomp down on his shin, and was equally surprised when he only took fifty-three physical damage and eight water damage. Even in a dungeon, Kaldalis wouldn’t be in measurable danger even if he just stood here and let himself be a water doggy chew toy for a solid minute before he even had to look at popping a cooldown.

He just had to assume that the dungeon was lower level, either by nature, or through Baimer’s manipulations for safety reasons. It unfortunately meant that the rewards would be lower and he wouldn’t find any sort of challenge here, but at least he could have some fun and cut loose. He’d paid to be here after all.

The rest of the party joined into the fight, though none of them seemed quiet as excited as he was. Kaldalis figured it was because they’d been adventuring in Baimer for a while now and this was routine for them.

The Bhogad rushed in to join the fight with a greatsword, while the Suyon drew out a bow to pepper the monsters with arrows. The healer just stood aside and did nothing. Kaldalis didn’t even see them draw a weapon. They just waited at the edge of the fight to throw potions when needed.

Considering the enemies’ low damage output, that need might never come.

Despite the low-grade outrage he felt on behalf of all the healers he called friends - the ones who loved to take advantage of his indomitability by outputting damage of their own - he couldn’t find it in him to bother to correct them. The challenge here was simply too low to try and pressure them into doing it right. More than anything, it made him miss Balrim, who was reliable in ways he had grown far too accustomed to.

The dog monsters lunged and snapped at him, and Kaldalis gave a halfhearted attempt to avoid them. The damage they represented was almost not worth the effort. His glaive slashed back and forth for the duration of sweeping strikes, dumping damage into them that felt horribly overtuned. The Bhogad woman - Myayuan, he reminded himself of her name - was hacking away wildly. Kaldalis suspected she was putting out devastating damage, but she struggled to keep her damage to the same target, just hacking her weapon away at whatever was within reach of her slow, dramatic sweeps of the blade.

He’d always thought Myrin was fucking around in combat, having fun and uncaring about the results, but he had to admit - now that he was watching someone really just fucking around - Myrin was more competent than she appeared.

The Suyon - Voron - did slightly better at focusing a target, but not by much. For no particular reason, he was strafing around as he fired, showing off his ability to shoot on the move. Just dancing around the fight. There weren't any attacks being thrown at him, so there was no purpose to it, besides clumsily making one shot out of every three go wide as the uneven stone floor unbalanced his aim.

Iarsa wasn’t contributing to the fight directly, which he kind of expected. Instead, over the sound of combat, Kaldalis could hear her filling them in on tidbits about these monsters. They were called Soakanines, and they exclusively survived in this cavern. Their life cycle demanded the exact mineral composition of this underground river, and if it were to become polluted, or be diverted, they would die out within three years of the disruption. The fluid that came from their jaws was apparently perfectly purified water, suitable for drinking, and she cracked a joke that there were notoriously few takers for drinking water dog spit.

Despite their low offensive and defensive stats, the soakanines had high enough HP that the fight went on for a reasonable duration. Either that, or the rest of his team was doing literally no damage. Either way, the fight went on just long enough for Kaldalis to fall into the attack and defense tempo of the battle so much that his mind could wander. The stat spread of these monsters seemed unrealistic to be natural. Did encompassing the dungeon give the Zaran government some ability to manipulate its contents? Were these monsters’ stats under review by government officials to maximize profit as an income stream? Was this really a curated theme park, and not just the illusion of one?

When the first of the soakanines died, Kaldalis shook the train of thought away. Of course none of that could be the case. Monsoon devs had built this dungeon. They’d probably built it before designing any other content, before reaching any kind of idea of their design philosophy. With the damage having been spread out over the group of monsters, they all fell shortly after that first one.

“Amazing work,” Iarsa said, giving a brief one-person applause. “Yours are going to be names to remember in the coming years!”

Kaldalis managed to avoid rolling his eyes too hard at that. Everything she’d said so far had sounded like she was reciting a script, and this was no different.

“Onward and downward, then?” Kaldalis said, gesturing at the side of the chamber, where the tunnel followed the river farther down into the earth.

“Right,” Iarsa said with a big smile. “Let’s worm our way down and see what awaits us!”

The tunnel followed the river, and as Iarsa monologued about the river’s above ground component having cultural significance to the Talsar tribes that had first settled this land, Kaldalis kept his head up and his eyes on the path ahead. Unlike the previous dungeons he’d seen, this one didn’t appear to have any real tricks to it. No gears to pick up or traps to avoid. He wondered if they might end up doing an underwater boss fight, which would be a challenge if the fight was going to drag out in proportion to these trash mobs.

The next trash pack revealed the joke Iarsa had been making. Along with two more of the soakanines, there were two more enemies that looked like huge headless snakes with shimmering purple scales. Iarsa warned that they were going to complicate the fight to come, and Kaldalis was ready to welcome that. He tried not to get his hopes up as he rushed forward to battle again.

This fight was much the same as the other. He did slightly more damage to the worm things than the dog monsters, but they dished out more damage back to him. They took over three hundred damage from his attacks, but dealt nearly one hundred and thirty in turn by rearing back and striking with their blunted mouthless heads. It was still a far cry from what he’d gotten used to in dungeons, even with the poison effect their attacks occasionally dealt out to him. Though with the healer - Jerporbernit - basically asleep at the job, the increased damage might actually be a threat to him. The kid had pulled out a small paperback novel, and was reading instead of paying attention to the fight.

Shake It Off performed admirably, soaking up a ton of the trash pack’s damage. As long as he didn’t willingly take every attack they threw at him, their damage couldn’t eat through the shield in its duration. He considered drinking a potion to make up the difference in what Jerporbernit wasn’t doing to help, but he was no stranger to dungeon hardships. He could accept a death to teach the healer that the job of healer wasn’t a joke.

The worms - Iarsa called them Reservoir Annelids - also had a special attack. She warned of it just before it happened, calling for Kaldalis and Myayuan to look out in a way that felt painfully scripted. The snakelike creatures leaped up, burrowing into the solid stone a few inches before making themselves look like purple stalactites. As soon as they were securely positioned, they started to spray out purple fumes - no doubt more of their poison. Kaldalis was easily able to get out of the way, but Myayuan inhaled some of it, and he could see her hit points dropping on the party menu. She didn’t get all the way down to the halfway point, but she panicked in overreaction, standing back out of melee for nearly half a minute, and only returning tentatively, well after the worms dropped back to the ground.

It turned out he was wrong about the healer job. Without Jerporbernit doing anything, a flask of liquid flew out from behind a nearby natural stone pillar, smashing across the backs of Kaldalis’s shoulders. It instantly refilled his flagging health bar, and the fumes wafted towards Myayuan, restoring her as well. The job of a healer in this dungeon was absolutely a joke. He couldn’t even die here to try and get the kid to regret his decisions.

When the battle was finished, he almost turned around and walked out. The dungeon was literally a playground. If anyone who trained here came out to Cotanaku expecting the same, the Sunken Ruins would reduce them to a fine red mist so fast it could only be caught by a high-speed camera.

But he paid to be here. He even had a deposit on the line. And they hadn’t fought a boss yet.

And he might still be able to make things interesting.