At the far end of the square room, there was another stone archway. This one didn’t lead into a hallway, but instead into a stairwell. They couldn’t see all the way to the bottom, and the stairs were in no way ADA compliant. Some had wider treads than others, and there was no handrail.

Kaldalis took the lead, but picked his way down the steps carefully.

The moss on the stairs wasn’t slippery, but he was afraid that it might become so. And while he could just activate his Jump ability to survive any type of fall, the others with him wouldn’t have such an ability.

In reality, though, Kaldalis was even more afraid that the moss was hiding something. He had a nightmarish flashback to his high school era D&D group. His DM was one of those “DM vs Players” types of guys, and Kaldalis lost more characters to decapitation by spinning blade traps than to any monster.

The dungeon design team was apparently of a different school of thought from his old DM. Apparently a man didn’t have to be penitent to pass.

At the bottom of the stairs was another square room. One of those Lesser Leviabeetles was clinging to one wall, nibbling on some moss. For a moment, Kaldalis thought the room might be empty otherwise. That wasn’t the case, though. Just before he charged, he saw two more of the thorn bushes that would become Vendragoras once battle broke out.

Kaldalis charged. But not at the beetle. He smashed his glaive into the nearest bush. It let out a rustling sound and stood up to defend itself, but Kaldalis was already moving past the creature. Towards the other bush. The creature there was already unfolding its spindly legs in response to the attack on its comrade, but Kaldalis managed to land a clean strike across its branches to establish aggro on it - and a stack of gust. The first one caught up to him and lashed its thorned forelimb across his back for ninety-one damage - and a stack of poison debuff - but he paid it no mind, turning his back on both of the vendragoras to rush to the wall with the beetle on it.

Activating his Jump ability, Kaldalis leaped into the air and thrust his spear into its side, knocking it off of the wall and giving it its own stack of gust. He kicked off the wall, sailing over the tops of the trio of angry monsters to get them all in front of him.

One of the vendragoras reached him first, and the head of his glaive ripped through a handful of thorny branches even as he danced back from its swipe, tagging it with the damage that would secure its attention, and a second stack of gust.

“Show-off,” Myrin said as she arrived at his side. She swung her greatsword into the creature he’d struck twice.

“Just because I’m the tank and not getting all the kills,” Kaldalis said with a grin, “doesn’t mean I can’t do something flashy once in a while.”

Haldir joined them shortly after, and the three of them went to work.

Kaldalis focused his attention on the beast he’d struck, but periodically lashed out at the other two, keeping their attention so that Balrim didn’t accidentally pull their attention when he healed the few slaps of damage Kaldalis failed to avoid. Once he got his third stack of gust on each of the three enemies, Kaldalis was confident that he could hold their attention for the rest of the fight, and so he was able to help focus down the kill target.

All in all, with their plan of action fully enacted, the fight went smoothly. The trio of enemies fell one after another, and in a moment the quartet had conquered the room. All the damage had gone onto Kaldalis, and while it had outstripped Balrim’s healing output slightly, his health pool was more than large enough to get them through the fight. They waited about thirty seconds for Balrim’s heal cooldown so that he could top Kaldalis off before the next fight.

“Better,” Kaldalis said with a nod in between heals. “Much smoother.”

“Yeah,” Myrin said, “but can we do it again?”

“And again and again and again?” Balrim added with a grin.

“I suppose we’ll have to.” Kaldalis pointed forward with his glaive. “Let’s get started, then.”

The room where the encounter had taken place stretched off into blackness ahead, and as Kaldalis led his party onwards through the room, the darkness retreated ahead, eventually revealing the next encounter.

This fight was only slightly more challenging. There were two each of the Lesser Leviabeetles and the Vendragora.

The damage output of four monsters together meant that Kaldalis had to focus on avoiding attacks a bit more, forcing him to keep retreating and repositioning. It made it a little harder on Myrin and Haldir, who had to keep moving around as the monsters followed Kaldalis’s retreat, jockeying for position near him.

He could tell by their sighing that they were not happy with all the movement.

The benefits outweighed the penalties, though; moving around and avoiding damage meant that Balrim’s healing was keeping Kaldalis’s hit points stable, instead of slowly wasting away. While it meant the fight went a little slower, they wasted less time after the fight restoring what Kaldalis had lost, and moved on quickly.

“Better, or worse?” Kaldalis asked as he led them onwards.

“Worse,” Myrin said.

“Better,” Balrim said, almost at the same time.

“Okay. Good consensus, team.”

“You only think it’s better because you’re the healer,” Myrin said to Balrim. “Less tank damage means less healing, which means you’re doing more damage.”

“You only think it’s worse because you have to work harder. All that moving around cuts into your parse, huh?”

Despite the bickering tone, the both of them were all smiles.

Kaldalis’s instinct was to interrupt. But they genuinely seemed to be poking fun at each other, and weren’t actually fighting.

There was no harm in letting them joke about.

“Real talk, though. Messing with our uptime is slowing us down, though,” Myrin said. She reached over and smacked Haldir’s hip. “Back me up, melee friend. Moving around is costing us time, right?”

“We could try it again both ways, and time it to compare,” Haldir said. He paused, and then shrugged. “But with less downtime afterwards, it feels like we’re moving faster, not slower.”

“That fight was more monsters, too,” Balrim added. “It was going to take longer anyway. If we did it the first way, standing still, Kaldalis takes more damage. And if some patrol comes our way at the wrong time, we’re hosed. If something might go wrong, we ought to be handling it this way, so that I can keep our tank out of the danger zone.”

“Zone of danger,” Kaldalis said quietly to himself.

Myrin had already inhaled for her counterargument, but Kaldalis’s interjection caused her to blow it out in a near-honking bray of laughter.

Balrim snorted at the sound and the discussion devolved into a giggle fit.

“We’ll try it on the next pack as well,” Kaldalis said when the two of them were done laughing. “Even if it’s slower, safety is a concern here. We can’t afford to lose thirty minutes to someone dying.”

“Oh, death in dungeons isn’t the same as out there,” Haldir said. “There will be a brief downtime, of course, but that’s more to slow down run times. We’ll be able to revive around the last location we were at before we entered combat.”

We. Did that mean Haldir was like them, or did the changed death mechanics apply to everyone?

It made sense if it was everyone. Otherwise NPCs wouldn’t be useful in dungeons at all. But Kaldalis still wished he had an answer either way.

“That’s a relief,” Kaldalis said, eventually, drawing himself back to the conversation. “We still shouldn’t waste time, but it’s nice to know the lost time from a few fumbled fights will be in minutes instead of hours.”

“Why the rush?” Balrim asked. “You all are talking about saving time, and I don’t understand why.”

“One word for you, there: Onirioago.”

Haldir nodded. “We haven’t seen or heard from her in an entire day. She’s gotta have some demands for us by now.”

“We also have other shit to get done,” Myrin said with a huff. “We gotta get mats together and get you on the charmcrafting grind, right? The sooner you can make us the good shit, the easier everything becomes. And Kaldalis has an orphanage to save, or whatever other heroic act he’s going to do next.”

Kaldalis stuck his tongue out at her, but let the conversation drop, otherwise.

Mostly because the far end of the room had finally come into view.

Another stone archway led to more stairs down, deeper into the ground.

The moss here was starting to get patchy, when compared to what they’d seen so far. The bare patches were greenish hued, enhancing the delicately carved patterns in the stone. They looked almost floral.

Kaldalis paused for a moment to lean closer, and noticed that the greenish hue seemed to be paint, or some kind of thick stain, rather than the color of the stone. He was tempted to linger to examine closer, but after their discussion of the time constraints they were under, it seemed prudent to get a move on.

At the bottom of the stairs there was a brief hallway that curved around, pointing them back the way they’d come. Kaldalis kept a close eye on the walls and ceiling, since they were now moving back towards the ocean. If things got soggy again, they’d have to be careful.

At the end of the curving hallway, they came to another room. This one was a square shape again, and while it only held one of the obvious Vendragora brushes, and one Lesser Leviabeetle, there was a new resident.

A bright one.

His eyes were momentarily dazzled by seeing actual light in this pitch-dark place. At first, Kaldalis thought it was a will-o-wisp or other mysterious spirit - or perhaps just a decoration of the dungeon, like a lamp or hanging lantern - but as his eyes adjusted, he saw that it was something like a wingless firefly.

The light emitting from its back end dimmed slightly, and Kaldalis could finally see some details of it.

It wasn’t a wingless firefly, it was an ant with a firefly’s glowing butt. It was a little larger than the Leviabeetle, comparable to a large boar or a particularly small horse.

He wondered what new challenges it would bring to the fight.

“Are we ready?” he asked, turning to look back at his party. When they all nodded - and Balrim didn’t have another stalling prank to pull - Kaldalis turned back to the monsters. “Alright then. Transform and roll out!”