Until after the first room, Kaldalis hadn’t been that confident in his ability to outright solo the whole dungeon without it being a slightly embarrassing process. But as soon as he engaged the first group of bugs and ambulatory plants, he realized how far he had come since the last time he had been in here.

But it was like a whole new world.

Kaldalis’s damage had increased tremendously. Sweeping Strikes let him gather the enemies up, but he suddenly was doing significant damage. Instead of hitting for barely double digits, his strikes dished out over six hundred damage per strike to these dungeon mobs. And their strikes in return were on the order of fifty or sixty hit points. It was similar to the amount they’d dealt before, but considering how much his hit point total had scaled up, it was amazing that his armor was outpacing their attack so significantly.

And that paltry damage only came when they could strike him.

His spear applied Slow to the targets with great accuracy, and the already-sluggish leviabeetles and skittering vendragorae became almost trivial to dance around. He was able to use the reach of the spear to batter them down with brutal efficiency.

He wasted no time moving on once they were down - he had to maximize the use of his Dedication Ring’s buff as much as possible.

And the Dedication Ring’s effect was tremendous. Each of these monsters was worth two hundred and ten experience points. At this rate, he’d be leveling up before he got to the second boss, unless his math was wrong.

The first real hurdle was the Firemicid enemy. It was a DPS check trash mob that would call down more enemies endlessly until it was killed. DPS races were a major concern for a solo tank, especially when the additional little ant mobs were reasonably dangerous. But when the time came, Kaldalis’s spear ripped through that foe as well. He had to deal with two sets of the extra adds - more than he had in prior full-party runs - but a manageable number, given his tremendous defenses. He cleaned them up without trouble.

For his part, Brother Gnider seemed tremendously uncomfortable. He had his staff held out before him, clearly ready to fight if it was required, but was visibly uninterested in jumping into the fray. Kaldalis wasn’t sure if it was out of fear of death, or if he didn’t want to take part in adventurer business.

It wasn’t Kaldalis’s concern. He had things well in hand all on his own.

The giant poison beetle that was the first boss presented a unique challenge. Its poison puddles were a soft enrage timer, and the eggs it flung around demanded a rapid response before they became new monsters joining the fight. Instead of dealing with it, though, Kaldalis swapped to his Sword and Shield, and went all-in on beating it down as fast as possible.

It wasn’t even close.

The combination of the Gust debuff, Combo Strikes, and raw stats turned Kaldalis into a one-man wrecking crew. Opening the fight with his Multi-Strike cooldown was hilariously effective, with Gust stacks proccing the first stunning blast within seconds of starting the fight, and ramping them up at alarming speed. The monster didn’t even have time to deploy the egg adds before Kaldalis downed it.

“I suppose you expect me to be impressed,” Brother Gnider said as he picked his way over the mess the dead bug had left behind.

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Kaldalis said, switching back to his spear. “I’m impressed enough for the both of us.” He gestured ahead. “Now stay close. If we get separated in this next area, we’re going to have a very bad time.”

“Separated?” Brother Gnider asked, his tone taking on a note of fear.

“Yeah, the first time I was in here I got separated by a gate closing behind me,” Kaldalis explained as he led the way down into the Lataxinan ruins. “There wasn’t a way for my friends to rejoin me, so I had to tackle a whole wing alone, including a boss. It was a rough time.”

“No wonder you seem so fearless down here,” Brother Gnider said. “It sounds like this is less dangerous than I was led to believe.” Even though the priest’s demeanor was back under control, he was walking much closer behind Kaldalis now.

Instead of teasing the man for the sudden fear, Kaldalis focused on finding the right path through to the second boss he wanted. He had a quest to fight the Horned Musk Dragon, and gratefully, the quest gave him a pointer in the right direction on his minimap. He wasn’t interested in running the dungeon a bunch of times to find the right way, so being able to navigate properly was exactly what he needed.

The route towards the Horned Musk Dragon required Kaldalis to solve a simple block puzzle. It was almost insultingly easy, but he remembered how much people could overcomplicate these sorts of things. He just needed to push a giant hollow metal box onto a patterned part of the floor, where it sank in about six inches to trigger a mechanism that opened up a hidden stone door. But he wouldn’t have been surprised if someone would just gather their party’s body weight onto the switch and then try to rush the door before it closed again.

Kaldalis had been slightly intimidated by the idea of fighting a dragon, but when he encountered the first group of adds, he was able to dispel his fears. The lesser foes here included numerous vendragorae, but new monsters he saw were strange stubby creatures covered in thick red scales. They had pointed faces and sharp teeth, and were viciously relentless in combat, but if Kaldalis only had one word to describe them, it would be “round.” With the exception of tiny webbed feet, their pointed conical heads, and a wide tail that appeared to have been adapted to an aquatic environment, the creature’s body was a perfect ball of muscle and fat, about four feet in diameter, wrapped in reptilian scales that served as tough armor.

Their attacks were pretty damaging, dishing out just shy of a hundred damage total - with a significant amount of it being fire damage - but their defenses weren’t much higher than the other foes in the dungeon. When Kaldalis killed the first few and saw that they were Musk Dragons, he figured out what was going on.

“So this system just calls anything a dragon if it’s fierce and scaly,” Kaldalis observed. “Kind of a let down. I was expecting an epic battle at the end here.”

Brother Gnider didn’t have anything to say about that, and just let Kaldalis deal with the foes as they made their way out of the ruins and into muddy dirt warrens dug into the walls. Kaldalis felt the urge to explore rising, but forced it down. Getting lost down here would be a disaster, even if only for a few minutes. If he wanted to make Brother Gnider into a lasting ally, he needed to put forth the image of being a competent adult.

The fewer ADHD symptoms he let slip out, the better.

Dank tunnels wound on, serving as a den to the musk dragons. They were dark and twisted, punctuated by larger rooms, but Kaldalis frequently found himself fighting in the tight tunnels instead. The monsters were highly aggressive and protective of their territory, and Kaldalis’s armored boots in the muddy tunnels made loud squelching sounds, warning them of his approach. He was forced to switch to sword and shield in order to hold his ground effectively in the tight quarters. The fights were still manageable - his raw stats were just too much for this lower-level dungeon, even though it had scaled up from his previous runs - but they were annoying.

The end boss, at least, he was able to fight in its traditional giant boss room. The chamber wasn’t perfectly round, with the dug-out mud walls being uneven, with a lopsided low ceiling on the right side. It reeked of rotten flesh and animal droppings, though there wasn’t a visible source for the smell.

The Horned Musk Dragon was about five times larger than the other Musk Dragons, and slightly more oblong than round. True to the name, it had horns. Two on each side of its scaled head, swept forward like those of a bull. The air around it wavered slightly from the heat coming off of its form, warning Kaldalis of the fire damage to come. Without knowing what else to expect, Kaldalis readied an Ire Potion, downing it to multiply his attack stat before engaging.

The Horned Musk Dragon had an interesting attack pattern. Its teeth and claws were formidable attacks - though Kaldalis’s Shield Block was strong enough to mitigate it - but its special attack was a flaming charge. The beast let loose a squalling sound that was almost a roar - something like a bass-pitched pig squeal - and charged with its horns. The charge itself wasn’t a threat. Kaldalis could easily avoid it because it was so telegraphed by the roar. But when the monster charged, it left behind a trail of roaring flames that persisted as the fight went on, eventually carving the arena’s usable area down to a small section before Kaldalis killed it with a high-damage Gust proc.

“Was that it, then?” Brother Gnider asked as the flames died down, allowing the man to cross the arena back to Kaldalis’s side.

“Almost,” Kaldalis said, looking around and finding the muddy tunnel that continued down into the earth, back in the direction of the Lataxinan ruins. He pointed the tunnel out before walking towards it. “This is when the fun begins.”