The giant chiraptor’s movements were halting and slightly clumsy, like that of a grizzly bear standing on its hind legs rather than the gait of a true biped. Kaldalis thought that meant his hit-and-run tactics would be super effective, letting him dance around the beast, but its giant arms meant that he didn’t have the range advantage to get the first strike.

He tried to step in to stab at it, and instead of waiting for him to get in bite range. But one of those long-clawed paws swiped out at him, forcing him back. If he hadn’t been alone, he might have tried to duck under and dodge the hit in order to get his first touch of aggro, but the risk wasn’t worth it without DPS to enable. He was glad he didn’t risk it as its claws splayed out at the apex of the swing, the presumed hitbox of the attack going from dangerous but manageable to a true nightmare.

Kaldalis’s only opening was right after the swipe went past, and he lunged as soon as he could. He jammed the head of his glaive straight forward into the beast’s gut, and the head briefly skidded off of one of the chitinous scales before jamming in between two of them and scoring a hit. He only did forty-three damage, but he knew already that his damage output was going to be lackluster as a solo tank. The stack of Gust he applied helped him feel a little better about it, though.

The creature’s other claw lashed out at him, smashing straight down, and Kaldalis hurled himself to his left to juke the attack. The claws splayed out again and one of them nearly caught his arm, passing barely more than an inch from cutting open his shoulder.

In retaliation, he smashed his weapon into the monster’s stubby leg as hard as he could. The strike took a chunk out of one of its scales, doing his forty-three damage and getting a second stack of Gust. The creature let out another clicking chittering noise and swiped its thick arm around in a sweep too wide to dodge.

Kaldalis braced for the strike by activating his Endure cooldown, since he couldn’t hope to get out of the way. The strike sent him scrambling back, only keeping his feet thanks to the counterweight of his tail.

He was slightly shocked that he only took seventy-four damage. That seemed low. Even with the Endure cooldown, that seemed like too little damage for a real boss that had enjoyed such a dramatic reveal. Perhaps it wasn’t a true boss? Or maybe it was getting some kind of stealth nerf because he was fighting it alone.

It almost made sense, then, that he hadn’t encountered a way to reunite with the rest of his party. He’d guessed there were a number of different paths to the same end, and the notifications he’d received had confirmed that the path he’d taken and the ones his friends were on had different mob types. They were fighting trench ants while he was fighting chiraptors. It made sense that the paths would culminate in different bosses. Assuming that they were fighting actual ants, he wouldn’t be surprised if they were fighting some stereotypical ant queen. Dylan had never in his life of gaming seen an ant queen boss that wasn’t heavy on adds, and so he hoped the party would be able to fare alright without him to control their aggro.

Then again, after fighting a bunch of pangolin snake bats, he would have expected some kind of sandslash yuan-ti Dracula instead of a gorilla being added to the animal scramble the chiraptors already were, so he had to temper his expectations.

Kaldalis danced away from the boss’s follow-up swing, finding himself forced away by its superior reach. He waited until the next opening and dove in, striking it again. He didn’t get his third Gust stack, but he got his damage in. As much as he wanted to stay in close, he ducked back out of the monster’s reach, barely avoiding another hit. He needed to avoid the giant chiraptor, as it had already shown that he couldn’t get inside of the range of its enormous claws and avoid damage. If he could just dance in and out of reach every few seconds, he would whittle it down eventually. At least it didn’t seem to have any mechanics that would require multiple people to handle.

In hindsight, Kaldalis realized that he needed to start expecting the worst to be only moments away instead of celebrating that it didn’t seem to be happening right that second.

The chiraptor let out a chittering sound that felt like it had physical weight to it. Each chirp resonated in his chest cavity, like the beat of an enormous drum, despite the high pitch of the sound. Kaldalis worried that it might be an unavoidable pulse of damage, like the Syncoresi’s howl, but he wasn’t so lucky. Around the room, four red lights formed, floating about a foot off the ground and pulsing in time with the monster’s chittering.

Kaldalis couldn’t tell what they were or what they did, but he knew that ignoring them was the worst possible solution. The only way he was going to figure it out was by rushing to the nearest one and seeing if he could damage it.

The nearest one was only a few dozen feet away, and he ran to it, kiting the boss along. Its enormous claws churned the air just behind him, but with no intent to stand and fight, he wasn’t too concerned.

Up-close, the light looked like a spherical bulb of light, roundish and roughly two feet in diameter. Was it a wisp that just hadn’t started attacking him? Was it some kind of resonance point in the room that was going to do an AoE in its immediate vicinity? He didn’t know. All he could do is smash his glaive through it and hope for the best.

His weapon met no resistance as it struck the glowing surface and passed right through, and Kaldalis almost tumbled to the ground through the globe of light. Luckily, that was just what he needed to do. As soon as his body touched the surface of the globe, it popped like a bubble, vanishing without a trace.

The moment’s lost footing meant that the boss’s claws raked across his back, dealing seventy-four more damage, and applying a poison debuff to him, but he had other concerns. With three more of the floating globes, he had to be fast.

Despite the reduced damage output of the boss’s regular attacks when compared to the giant beetle they’d fought, this sort of mechanic usually had a very small window to disrupt the ability. Usually small enough that the whole party would work together to manage it.

Alone, this was going to be an incredible challenge.

Just the same, Kaldalis knew how to get himself the opening to take care of it. He whirled on the giant chiraptor and met the next swipe of its claws by holding his ground and bracing his glaive to intercept it. The creature impaled its hand on the polearm, taking forty-three damage and the third stack of Gust. Kaldalis had anticipated having to accept a hit from the beast, but the proc of Gust blasted the creature’s hand back in ridiculous disproportion to the twelve damage the blast dealt. The creature staggered sideways, dropping from its bipedal stance to support itself using its enormous arms, more like the chiraptors he’d fought previously.

It was the opening he needed.

He actually returned his glaive to his inventory so that he could full-on sprint, pumping both arms. Kaldalis arched his charge slightly so that he could line two of the remaining orbs up and smash through one on the way to the other without losing any speed. He hit the first without trouble, and went on to the second.

Skidding to a momentary stop to change directions, Kaldalis found that the giant chiraptor was charging at him on all fours like an enraged gorilla, snakelike fangs bared and ready to strike. He made a sharp turn perpendicular to the charge, scrambling out of the way barely before the creature would have barreled into him. Kaldalis heard the snap of jaws closing right behind his head as he gained speed to head to the fourth of the red lights.

He crashed into the light, dispelling it before they did whatever they were going to do.

Kaldalis felt pretty good about that. Despite being all alone, he handled the mechanic, and didn’t even use his Jump cooldown to do it.

He didn’t even feel that terrified as the giant chittering boss monster charged right at him again.

Kaldalis wanted to duck to the right, moving towards the nearest of the big black pillars in the room to use it for cover, but he remembered what happened when he had done the same with the giant beetle boss previously. Instead, he pulled out his weapon and stood his ground, taking a knee and setting his glaive again to intercept the charge.

The giant chiraptor had learned its lesson from last time, and pulled up short, scrambling to not impale itself on the weapon. It let out an aggravated chitter and reared up on its stubby hind legs again, raising its claws threateningly.

“Ready for some more?” Kaldalis taunted, standing back up and giving his glaive a whirl, trying his best to put on a show for the stream he knew was watching. “Good. Come get some.”