The cart had stopped in a corridor, with plenty of track left. Kaldalis guessed that the cart probably finally came to a full stop at varying points on this brake section based on the combined weight of the party. They had to walk the remaining length of the track in this room to find the passage forward.

The track raised more questions about how dungeons worked in this world than Kaldalis could ever hope to have answers for without the help of a team of dataminers. Had the minecart always been here? Had Baimer officials installed it later? Could they make other adjustments to the dungeon? Is that how the frankly impossible record time had been set? Someone politically powerful could have paid for a cart track to be installed to instantly zoom them and their friends to the end of the dungeon in 15 minutes. The secret tunnel to the shortcut might even still be there, for use by the dungeon’s administrative staff for safety purposes.

Or maybe not. Maybe he was thinking too hard about this. Why would Monsoon go through all that trouble to put together an in-world explanation for these things?

His more immediate concern was Iarsa. He’d thought having the cart ride go as planned would have placated her, but she was still watching him with a close eye now, even as she delivered the next scripted speech about the minecart’s historical use to transport goods at a much more controlled pace back when the tunnels were still fully intact, but the necessity of its use as an exciting ride for adventurers when a huge section of the mine had collapsed into a previously-undiscovered fissure.

The far end of the track had a big pile of sandbags, presumably in case of an absolute emergency. Kaldalis wondered what could cause those sandbags to be necessary, but supposed that if there was one benefit to bureaucracy it was safety. As much as he was looking for danger, it was much less interesting to risk dying horribly after getting into a vehicle where corners had been cut on safety measures. He wanted the kind of danger you could be in a fight with.

To that end, they entered the next room of the dungeon, where the next boss monster waited.

The room was another larger chamber, and at the far end of it, they could see daylight coming in through the next passage. Distantly, Kaldalis heard the shriek of a seagull. The chamber itself was a threatening scene, though. There were scattered humanoid bones across the floor, and the place stank of death and animal musk. This was the feeding ground of a vicious predator. For a brief moment, Kaldalis stared horrified at a too-small skull, believing it to be the body of a child for a long moment before Voron peeked out around his left, reminding Kaldalis that any smaller skeletons might have belonged to an adult Suyon adventurer.

Along one side of the chamber was a great beast. It was an aquarius vulpes scaled up until it stopped being cute entirely, and became frankly terrifying. Though as Kaldalis got a god look at it in the light streaming in from the far end of the chamber, it seemed like a more accurate description might have been “fucking metal.”

The creature was curled up in sleep, but Kaldalis estimated that if it stood, it would have been nine feet tall at the shoulder. Its fur was a deep royal purple, and where it darkened at the ends of its legs, and the tips of its ears, nose, and tail, it was as dark as the sky in a nightmare: pure darkness, moonless and starless. Even in sleep, its enormous gleaming teeth were exposed, as if its lips’ natural state was peeled back to snarl. Where the other beasts he’d seen had only small little nubs of horns only a few inches long, this creature had huge sweeping horns, turning from black at the base back to a lighter purple at the tip. If it were awake, Kaldalis suspected it would have been right at home on the cover of a black metal album. A snarling fox the color of nightmares with pointed horns - evoking a predatory depiction of Baphomet - amid piles of mismatched humanoid bones.

“That must be the pack leader,” Iarsa said, reciting the next part of her script quietly. “And the exit is right there. If it’s asleep now, we might be able to sneak by and get out of here without fighting it.”

“But why?” Kaldalis asked. “Don’t we want to fight it?”

“Look at it,” Iarsa said, clearly still very clearly on-script, “it looks far fiercer than what else we’ve seen here. Trust me. Most groups move to avoid it. And the ones who fail face a hard fight.”

“Good,” Kaldalis said. “I’m looking for a hard fight.”

He rushed the monster.

Isarsa hissed something that sounded suspiciously like a curse. Kaldalis ignored her, charging at the giant monster ahead of him.

His feet crunched over bones, and Kaldalis saw through the scenery. He could guess at what the script probably said, and what Iarsa probably wanted. There was a path through the room that appeared to have been already cleared of bones to allow a sneaky passage through the room. There were a couple of places where a single femur or rib lay across the path, presumably to be stepped on to trigger the conflict anyway. If Iarsa took up the rear of the group, she could have stomped a bone at any point if it looked like they were going to avoid the fight. Establishing for the players that they wanted to avoid fighting this boss meant that when the fight happened anyway, the stakes would feel higher and the subsequent battle more intense.

He hoped the fight would be an actual challenge, and didn’t depend on the narrative to be fun.

As he crashed across the field of bones, the boss awakened. When its eyes opened, they were feline, with slitted pupils that immediately widened in excitement when it saw him coming. The rest of the eye was a deep hazel green, popping out against the purple fur. It moved calmly and confidently, with speed that Kaldalis thought looked unnatural on a beast that size. The rumbling snarl that met his charge was almost threatening enough to make him flinch. But he kept going, leading with his saberlike sword.

Before he could strike, a clawed paw lashed out at him like the swat of a feline. It was an adjustment he was going to have to get used to with the shield. When he wasn’t wielding his spear, it was more likely for foes to have an advantage of reach against him. The shield was more than enough to absorb three hundred and eighty physical damage from the blow.

He stepped in as close to the beast as he dared, and slashed the edge of his blade up, catching the underside of its jaw. He shaved a hundred and twenty-one hit points off of the beast with his first attack, and while the relatively low damage made him hopeful that the fight might be a good one, he knew that the sword and shield’s Combo ability was going to ramp his damage up as the fight continued, now that he was in a boss fight and could focus on one target.

The monster’s attacks were as vicious as its appearance led him to believe. Jaws snapped at him with a ruthless speed that forced him to back off. Within the space of three seconds, he accepted another blow to his shield, dodged to the left a bite, and was caught by a third before he could register that it was still coming at him. In addition to the damage, he was also poisoned by the strike, his hit points slowly bleeding away. He was far from actual danger right now, but he knew from experience that poison damage added up a lot as a fight went on.

His allies were starting to catch up now, and Voron’s arrows started to pepper the giant horned fox’s flank. Despite having only been hit once, Jerporbernit had already launched a potion as well. Kaldalis strafed around the monster quickly, making sure that as Myayuan charged, she wouldn’t be attacking from the front of the boss.

Despite how she’d behaved in previous fights, Iarsa had no speech for this. The monster’s attacks were too fierce and frequent for him to spare the time to look around for her, but she didn’t inform them of the monster’s history or behaviors, or warn him of its mechanics. Kaldalis got Seal applied to it after only the first few attacks, so he suspected he might be safe, as long as he pressed the advantage and didn’t fall back defensively for long enough for the debuff to fail.

“You’re gonna get us all killed!” Jerporbernit snapped as soon as they scrambled into earshot. “Iarsa said to avoid this one!”

“Come on,” Myayuan grunted in between swings of her greatsword. “Don’t be a stick in the mud. We’re here for a good time, not a long time, right?”

Kaldalis was suddenly struck by the idea that these people might not be NPCs. He had kind of assumed, but the NPCs in this world were deep and real enough that telling the difference was a bigger challenge than it should have been. Jerporbernit had mentioned having been sent by their father, but they might have just been an RPer leaning into a character, making up a backstory. It wasn’t relevant right now, but he would have to remember if they were PCs, he might be seeing them again in Cotanaku and Panbu, if they weren’t tied down to a life here in Baimer.

For now, though, the fight was a bigger concern. The boss wasn’t using special attacks, but its attacks were an unceasing stream of teeth and claws. He found himself struggling with the Combo mechanic, though. The window for the buff was very short. It felt like he was forced to fight extremely aggressively, riding the very limits of his shield HP in order to maximize his combos.

As soon as he started to feel it out, he began to make sense of it. It would have been dramatically overpowered if he could just get a flat 20% damage bonus at all times, in comparison to the cooldown-based damage boosts of other weapons. As he explored it through this fight, he started to like it. He liked how much it turned his shield block ability into a tool to support his damage output.

After all, shields are nice, but not if they engender passivity.