Dusk (BL Light Novel)

After the Minchan Duo rejoined, we cleared the second mob corridor in silence and entered the second boss room.
The room was even more of a mess than the temple that housed the Muddled Spirit. In the center stood a suspiciously dirt-covered hill, and at its peak bloomed a single, pristine white flower. That flower was the second boss.
“I’ll tank again,” the main tank said, stepping up to aggro the flower. The flower, which had stood tall in full bloom, suddenly moved, gathering its petals and striking the tank. And with a low rumble, something massive began rising from beneath the mound of dirt.

[System] The Wisdom Chamber sector has been sealed.
The enormous body connected to the flower’s stem emerged: a mud-covered scorpion. According to lore, this scorpion disguised its tail as a flower to lure in Shinjok and other creatures before devouring them. Its name floated above its head: .
It lashed out at the tank with its claws and the venomous stinger hidden within the flower. The tank seemed to be blocking well, matching the basic attacks with his shield, but maybe his gear wasn’t up to par—his HP dropped sharply. As a result, Gonyanyanya, who stood nearby, had to wedge in healing skills between her attacks just to keep up. Compared to the first boss, she was overwhelmed from the start.

The scorpion pulled its pincers back and slammed forward twice, hard enough to crack the ground. The tank’s HP, which Gonyanyanya had fought to fill, dropped like a stone to around 10%.
The moment she unleashed a burst of glowing effects to patch him up, the next mechanic hit. The boss began casting and coiled its body. Like the Muddled Spirit’s circular AoE, this was a mechanic that had to be dodged either with a well-timed evade or by moving out of range.
As the cast ended, the scorpion launched itself into the air. I used my evade skill to dodge. The Minchans, probably because it was the first and simplest mechanic, managed to avoid it too. After slamming down and flattening the ground, the scorpion reared up again to resume its assault on the tank.

It launched into a flurry of attacks with its claws and tail. Some gave [Poison] debuffs, but aside from the guaranteed hits, Gonyanyanya and the DPS were dodging well enough to avoid them.
Guess the Minchans are clenching their jaws and gaming for dear life now that I chewed them out…
Soon after, a visual cue showed the boss’s Fortitude breaking.
This didn’t happen with the Muddled Spirit, but most dungeon bosses with Destroyer or Slayer stances have a threshold—once they take a certain amount of damage, their Fortitude breaks. In other words, their “hyper armor” shatters, like the unflinching stance bosses in other games use to resist stagger.

When Fortitude breaks, you can apply up to three crowd control effects. Depending on what status is inflicted, different skills become usable, so for DPS, this moment is huge—a full burst window.
Inflicting status was the tank’s job. And the meta was clear: Stun → Groggy → Knockdown. In PvP, not following this order would halve the effect durations, so everyone was used to this rhythm when bursting.
I was sub-tank, but I was in Destroyer stance, so based on the status effects the tank applied, I started unloading the appropriate burst skills in sequence. The time window was tight, so I went in with my highest-scaling attacks first.

While I was dumping out DPS, the scorpion’s Fortitude recovered. It shook off the status effects and stood again—then spun around and locked its gaze on me.
Ah. Crap. I went all-in without thinking and stole aggro. I’d been so focused on bursting as a priest for the first time in a while, I forgot the main tank’s gear was lacking.
I quickly used to drop my aggro ranking and return hate to the tank, then sent a quick apology in chat.

[Party] Honeybread: sry sry
After that, I deliberately slowed down my skills to avoid stealing aggro again. Just like with the Muddled Spirit—what a joke. Here I was, a fully geared Destroyer in +25 gear, forced to hold back like this. It was frustrating.
While I watched Gonyanyanya frantically healing and chipped away at the scorpion’s side, the next phase kicked off. The flower on its tail began to glow, releasing a burst of white pollen that spread across the room. Every party member was immediately afflicted with a Poison debuff.

And this… this was where healer hell began.
Poison dealt HP-percentage-based damage over time, so unlike the earlier phase, which focused on keeping the tank up, now Gonyanyanya had to manage the entire party’s health.
To make it worse, the pollen thickened over time, stacking multiple Poison debuffs. In the following phase, the scorpion’s pincers would be buffed, dealing more damage to the tank. Combine that with the constant mechanics like Body # Nоvеlight # Slam, and there’d be no time to breathe.

Sure enough, Gonyanyanya stopped trying to cast attack skills altogether. She was fully focused on healing. The tank wasn’t bad, but his blocks slipped now and then, and his gear wasn’t great—his HP kept getting chunked. Add to that the entire party slowly bleeding from the uncleanseable Poison debuffs… healing was the only option.
She’d already picked up the Stress debuff ages ago, and the boss’s HP had barely dropped below 80%. The deeper we got, the worse it got.
The scorpion pounded one player, then spun its body to spray venom, all while Gonyanyanya was being hounded by the pace. Fortitude broke two more times during that, and thankfully, with enough DPS, it shattered quickly each time, giving her precious moments to breathe.

Still, the scorpion kept slamming its tail into the ground, burrowing underground, rolling around like a wheel, crushing players left and right.
Then it used one of its legs to spray mud everywhere, darkening the screen like it had been smeared over the camera. It was a blinding mechanic meant to obscure vision.
I instinctively pressed my attack skills with my left hand and jiggled my mouse with my right to shake the screen. As I did, the mud began falling off in chunks, and my vision gradually returned. When I could see again, I spotted Gonyanyanya’s character also shaking her head from side to side.
We clawed our way through the mechanics, bit by bit, and before long, the scorpion's HP neared 30%, signaling the final phase.

At that point, the Poison debuff had stacked to 11. The pincers were visibly sharper, buffed. The pollen floating across the screen thickened, messing with our field of view, making AoE zones harder to read—just like the mud spray.
In a screen that looked like a hay fever nightmare, Gonyanyanya clung to the edge, managing the tank’s HP while keeping the party alive through constant Poison damage. The silver lining was that all the unavoidable damage was HP-percentage-based. As long as we dodged mechanics, we didn’t need to worry about Stress-induced defense drops, so she could focus solely on healing.
The scorpion crouched to cast Body Slam again. This time, the pincers were empowered, making the move more dangerous. Lose focus, and you were toast.

I used my evade skill to dodge as the scorpion leapt—and waited instead of jumping in right away. As expected, after crashing down, the scorpion immediately spun, using its tail and pincers to rotate twice. Getting hit meant a knockback, another Poison stack, and a lot of damage.
Fortunately, no one was brain-dead enough to eat that one. Everyone stayed on their toes. Gonyanyanya, if anything, used the lull to dump heals into the tank, since the boss wasn’t attacking during its spin.
I checked her status. She was spamming mana potions on cooldown, pouring out heals—and her Stress debuff had hit 13 stacks. One wrong move and she was toast. Her defense was down 26%, and yet she hadn’t died once. That meant she hadn’t gotten hit by a single mechanic.

“….”
Wait. A level 43 first-timer healer had solo-healed through phase three of the second boss, without ever getting clipped?
Just as the thought struck me, the scorpion reared its tail. A fan-shaped instant-cast AoE aimed at its rear. The damage was high, and it knocked players back—if you saw the tail lift, you had to dodge.

Gonyanyanya and I were flanking it, so we kept attacking—no need to move. It was the rear DPS’s responsibility to handle the mechanic.
Then I saw it: as everyone evaded the tail swipe, one silhouette stayed behind.
Assassin Minchan.

Still standing right there on the scorpion’s ass, trying to sneak in “just one more hit” before dipping.
That one more hit was about to cost him everything.