There was no time for the curse that Kaldalis wanted to shout. Instead, he yelled: “Adds! Everyone focus on adds!”

“Get that thing away from the fucking pillar,” Myrin yelled back. “We can’t deal with more than this!”

Everyone was already moving before she’d even finished talking. Kaldalis spun the beast away from the pillar and towards the wall, holding it in place outside of the poison pool so that it was in position when everyone else was finished with the eggs. He was having terrible luck with gust stacks, and so he needed to do whatever he could to facilitate their damage output.

Honestly, he wished he could help deal with the eggs, but now he was afraid of moving the boss around too much. What if it knocked into the pillar again? What if it bumped into the walls? They had just been thrown barely more than they could handle comfortably.

How much more could they deal with?

Myrin apparently had her cooldowns ready. She sprinted across the room to the farthest egg with her enhanced move speed, and Kaldalis felt a little surge of pride when she struck and her HP jumped back up from the poison damage. It meant she had held her Breaker ability to use it for recovery. The relieved load on Balrim was going to be nice, especially with the fight starting to go sideways.

“Focus two!” Kaldalis yelled. “Leave the third egg! We can deal with one add just fine. Make sure we don’t have to deal with two!”

Kaldalis turned his attention to the boss, suddenly very aware of where his dodges might cause it to bump or thump the wall behind him or the pillar still on its side. He had to control its positioning more carefully. After a moment, the poison puddle evaporated away, and Kaldalis was grateful for the short duration, since it gave him the space to run back to its right, kiting the giant beetle back towards the middle of the room. He took a moment to pull it a little farther towards the entrance, so that if he had to avoid another poison puddle, he could avoid dragging it onto the pillar again.

Meanwhile, Myrin finished dealing with her egg, and Haldir and Balrim’s damage together took care of the other. The third egg was starting to hatch - the larvae inside was visible as a murky shadow through the gelatin-like substance of the egg.

“Skip it,” Balrim said as Myrin started towards the final egg. “Get back to the boss, we’ll deal with the add instead of wasting time.”

It was good that he said so, as the infant beetle ripped through the surface of the egg only a few seconds later.

Kaldalis worried that the thing would start running around wildly, but Balrim had it under control. The talsar waited until the tiny creature - unrealistically fully-formed as a scaled-down version of the beetles they’d faced already - was on all six legs, and then chucked a healing potion to Kaldalis.

He was grateful for the heal, but slightly concerned when it meant that the add turned and ran straight for the healer.

Balrim was ready, though. As soon as the add focused on him, he started moving. Balrim circled away from the add and ran around the room, putting his movement speed to work.

“Incoming,” Balrim said to Kaldalis as he darted by from behind, with the add hot on his tail.

Kaldalis threw himself backwards, away from the snap of the boss’s pincers and used that momentum to sweep his glaive into the side of the small beetle, carving into it for sixty damage. It was more than enough to cause it to give up the chase and focus on him.

“On the add! Let’s clean it up,” Kaldalis called, but Haldir was already there. Myrin was on the far side of the boss, and so just stayed where she was, hacking away with abandon.

Kaldalis smacked the beetle again, securing his hold on it so that Haldir could take care of it even as the boss lunged in at him again. Haldir positioned himself out the range of the creature’s clashing pincers, but Kaldalis was stuck where he was. He tried to step inside the arc of the attack to avoid getting caught, but the boss adjusted its bite to ensure that he took the attack, taking the full one-hundred and twenty points.

He swept his glaive up at the creature’s face, striking it for another twenty-five damage, and applying a fifth stack of gust. He wished he had better luck with it, having only gotten one blast of damage out of it even now, but knew that the desire there was a trap. The way to improve the proc rate was to invest in gear with Gust Affinity on it, but as soon as he found a weapon upgrade, there was a really good chance that he would end up with a different element or debuff, rendering any heavy investment he made useless.

Kaldalis managed to duck out from under the next attack from the boss, and barely dance away from the add’s snapping pincers at the same time. He was glad they’d focused the adds down. The boss’s attack speed was fast enough that the last thing he needed was more distraction here.

Luckily, the add didn’t stay alive for long. It only took a few moments for Haldir to finish it off, his constant stream of strikes wearing it down until eventually the shell cracked apart and the creature collapsed. The green-hued vathon darted back around to the giant beetle’s rear, getting back to business joining Myrin in burning the giant monster down.

Once all the mechanics were seen, the fight went smoothly from there. Myrin and Haldir took turns peeling off of the boss whenever it stomped to call down another single egg. Kaldalis pulled the creature out of the poison pools when it dropped them, now being cautious to keep the giant beetle away from the walls and pillars to avoid calling down too many additional adds.

It took a few minutes - longer than Kaldalis expected an introductory boss fight to go - but eventually they prevailed. They reached a stable point where Balrim’s healing kept up with the damage Kaldalis was taking, and the damage dealers weren’t overwhelmed by the number of adds spawned, and from there it was only a matter of time.

Despite Kaldalis’s earlier fears, their skill, communication, and coordination meant that they pushed through any deficiencies they might have had in their gear level.

At long last, the giant beetle staggered. Kaldalis hopped back, ready for yet another mechanic, but the creature sagged in place, gave a final chittering clicking noise, and then slumped to the ground, laying still. The cinematic nature of the moment was somewhat spoiled by Myrin still grunting away behind it, unceasing in her efforts to hammer the giant beast with her blade despite the obvious showy death animation.

Kaldalis became aware that it was a leviabeetle broodguard, and it was worth fifty experience.

“God damn, Myrin,” Balrim called from the other side of the room. “Someone had to animate that Shadow of the Colossus-style death animation, and your straight-up disrespect for the boss ruined the drama. You should apologize.”

“Sorry, not sorry.”

As the creature collapsed, Kaldalis heard a little metallic noise. He tried to look for the source of it, and soon found on the ground another one of those perfectly-preserved gears. This one was slick with purple goo, but apparently not enough to inflict a poison debuff.

“What did it drop?” Balrim asked as he approached.

Kaldalis turned and flipped the gear at the healer.

“Great,” Balrim said, looking around the room at how sparse the moss was in here, “I was worried that we may have been hosed by losing the ability to backtrack back there if this door took more than one gear.

The talsar moved to the panel for the gate - clearly visible on the mossless wall - and popped it open.

After barely a second, he let out a low whistle.

“Where was the other gear we found?” Balrim asked as he settled the new gear into place, and then pulled out the other one to set it as well. “If it was before the beetle room, we should do a search here anyway. There’s no way out otherwise.”

“Except the failure exit,” Myrin said. She paused for a moment. “Oh, I bet that’s what it was for. This boss didn’t seem to have an enrage, so I guess it wasn’t a gear check.”

“Nah,” Kaldalis said, failing to suppress a grin as he pointed to the gate. “This gate was the gear check.”

“Oh my god,” Myrin said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Balrim, please stop healing this man. He doesn’t deserve it.”

“Are you kidding?” Balrim said, fitting the second gear. “I love this guy!”

Haldir sighed and put a hand to his temple, rubbing gently. Kaldalis just let his grin show through. Despite the mixed reception, a good pun was always its own re-word.