Kaldalis didn’t have a lot of options available. He carried around a few lower level weapons from what Ess had made on her grind up the ladder, but nothing was anywhere near his actual level. Using one wasn’t that much of a downgrade, though, since his glaive wasn’t at level, either.

Just the same, his only real option was one of the Seal weapons Ess had insisted he have on hand after the whole mess with the globin.

It wasn’t a weapon type he’d considered picking up when he last thought about skilling up a secondary weapon. It was an item level 9 sword and shield. It represented a nontrivial drop in damage, but Kaldalis had to do something to spice up the dungeon, or he was going to be bored out of his mind.

Besides, sword and board was a classic, right? It was his preferred way to play other games, whenever it was an option. And as much as he’d liked the idea of having more mobility skills, as soon as he’d learned that Shield Block was a cooldown from weapon skill, he’d suspected it might be a mandatory option when the time came for higher level content.

As much as he’d enjoyed being a little bit unique, sometimes there’s no getting around the need to be a stereotypical tank.

The weapon and shield itself were well-crafted pieces. The shield was a wooden disc reinforced with three riveted iron rings, while the sword had a curved blade that was a bit too wide to be called a saber, but a bit too narrow to be called a scimitar. Then again, if Kaldalis’s memory was right, the definition of scimitar was regional rather than based on a weapon’s design. The inventory menu called the pair a talwar and targe, and described them as “Soldering” which was an interesting word choice to allude to the Seal attribute.

Iarsa was telling them about how these caves had been formed by millions of years of erosion by the underground river as Kaldalis fiddled with his equipment. He had to make a note that swapping weapons in combat was not going to be a viable choice, but he felt it was a better use of his brain power than trying to retain what exact sort of rocks in this tunnel had been resilient to erosion, causing the river to divert in such a way that these caverns were shaped to allow their passage through here.

They stopped briefly as Iarsa “found” an unusual pattern in the rocks, and Voron leaped into action, finding a narrow passage through the stalactites and stalagmites, revealing a hidden side chamber. The chamber slanted upwards from the main tunnel they were in, and Myayuan and Voron were both entranced by what they found there. It seemed that this tunnel had once been occupied by an ancient culture, who had painted the walls and erected a small ash-covered altar.

Iarsa “wondered” out loud if this place had held some religious significance to the original inhabitants of this region.

Kaldalis almost wouldn’t have paid any attention, but something struck him as slightly funny, in a dark comedy kind of way. There were cave paintings on the walls in shades of red and brown, looking very much like the work of prehistoric cultures on earth, but accompanying the figures of strange monsters and tiny humans, there was a larger figure painted with green and gold flecks, accompanied by a rabbit and an eagle. The three appeared to have been painted by a different hand, in a different style to the rest of the cave paintings.

It reminded him of something Heluna said rarely, referring to “The Glorious One” in tones that indicated the use as a curse was blasphemy. The obvious conclusion that he guessed he was supposed to draw from this was that the church of The Glorious One was a more recent religion, and that it had been painted into this room by modern followers with modern tools.

He almost blurted out something about it, but decided he didn’t want to get into a religious debate. From the way Iarsa was talking about the “discovered prayer site” she was probably required by her job to defend The Glorious One’s religion, and Kaldalis didn’t know a damn thing about it to put up a reasonable argument. For all he knew, the addition of the green-and-gold figure had been a part of a lore retcon by Monsoon Devs, and he was drawing the wrong conclusion altogether.

Regardless, they moved on from that after a few minutes, and headed down the main passage until it opened into a larger room. This was the first boss room, and Iarsa had dropped the discovery act in order to actually describe and warn them about what was coming.

The room was lower than the mouth of the tunnel they were emerging from, and so the floor was about a foot below the level of the river. The river itself still rushed along to their right, and so the water in the room was still moving gently, the natural stone guiding the current around to stop it from becoming stagnant standing water. There were no obvious foes here, but Kaldalis expected that wasn’t going to stay true for long.

“This room looks empty,” Iarsa said, “but there is a slumbering beast beneath the water’s surface.” She reached over and tapped Kaldalis on the shoulder. “As soon as Kaldalis breaks the surface tension of the water, it will awaken and attack.”

“Any details you can give me?” Kaldalis asked, readying himself for the charge. “Special attacks? Weird fight mechanics?”

“Just watch for the eyes,” Isara said with a smile. “You’ll know what to do.”

Without any further prompting, Kaldalis leaped out into the knee-high water. As soon as he hit the surface, there was a rumbling that was too low-pitched to be an audible sound. The gently-moving water in the stone chamber rippled, as if there was a powerful subwoofer under the surface cranked up to 11. The disturbance in the water radiated out in a shape like a star, and Kaldalis started to slog through the water towards its center, where whatever boss monster was here would arise from.

It didn’t emerge from the water, though. It was the water.

In the middle of the room, a column of water rose out of the surface. It was the size of a large truck, so much so that the water level in the chamber dropped nearly six inches as it drew itself up to its full height. The chamber was about twenty feet tall, and when the thing stopped rising out of the water, it nearly reached the ceiling. For a moment, it was just a dome of water, flowing and pulsing as it continued to rumble. But then water started to compact into its form, defining features and adding resolution, turning the formless shape into something that looked more like an animal.

Four legs resolved themselves, though the bottom of the creature’s body still touched the water. It didn’t have a separate head from its body, but a shape came into form on the side facing Kaldalis that looked like an elephant’s face, with four beady eyes and an unnaturally prehensile trunk-like arm sprouting from just beneath those eyes. It didn’t have ears or tusks - or any other features - which meant Kaldalis’s brain just interpreted it as a really lazy drawing of an elephant with four eyes.

It charged, and its charge was strangely disorienting. It didn’t really run, it just slid along. Kaldalis could guess that because it was made of water, it didn’t need to move its legs. It could just flow through the room by controlling the water currents. He didn’t know what that would mean for the fight to come, but he was more concerned with Iarsa’s warning. She’d told him to watch the eyes. Was the weird elephant dome about to shoot eye lasers at him?

Regardless, he rushed to meet its charge with his sword. It felt strange to be handling a one-handed sword instead of a spear. The short weapon felt insanely maneuverable compared to a polearm, and the balance on it placing the center of mass near his hand made it feel impossibly light, despite it being solidly constructed. The monster’s reach was larger than his, but it was trying to batter him with its body, not just rushing into range to slap him with its trunk. Kaldalis floundered for a moment in the water, but managed to get out of the way of the charge before slashing the weapon along the creature's flank as it passed.

Water sprayed him from the point of impact as he dealt two hundred and ten damage with the blow. More indication that this dungeon was lower levelled; even though he was at a huge deficit in Attack stat, he was still doing relatively significant damage. The weapon was so light and fast that as the monster’s charge stopped and it whirled on him, he carved a second wound into its shoulder before its trunk to lash out in a counterattack.

The second strike afflicted the monster with the Seal effect, but that didn’t seem relevant. What was important was establishing aggro and keeping on his toes. He knew some unseen healer was removing any actual danger from the fight, but that wasn’t any excuse for his pride as a tank.

As the rest of his party started to waddle out into the water - shin-deep on Myayuan, waist-deep on Voron - Kaldalis resolved that he wouldn’t let the safety Baimer offered make him soft.