Kali is dangerous for two reasons:
- By dealing enough damage with her combat pages (Upstanding Slash, Spear, and Level Slash), she can reduce the light cost of the same pages down to 0, allowing her to unleash an onslaught of attacks every turn.
- Once she drops to half health, she manifests her EGO, granting her +2 power to all dice rolls, and gains access to her iconic attack: Greater Split: Horizontal - a [28-42] summation mass attack that will most likely stagger your whole team and allow her to wipe the floor.

However, as much as she is powerful, Kali also has two major weaknesses:
- She does not have Shimmering, meaning that she has to pay the light cost to use all of her combat pages, including Greater Split: Horizontal; and other than Level Slash, she has no method of recovering light.
- She will manifest EGO and use Greater Split: Horizontal when and only when she drops down to half health.

Additionally, Kali's EGO form has one major weakness:
If Kali does not deal enough damage while in her EGO form, she takes a significant chunk of stagger damage.

This means that, if we can:
- Prevent her from reducing the light cost of her combat pages
- Bring her to Emotion Level 5 and let her spend all of her light before bringing her down to half health
- Prevent her from dealing more than 40 damage per turn while she's in her EGO form
We would be able to lock her in a perpetual state of being unable to use more than 1-2 combat pages per turn, unable to use her Greater Splits, and getting staggered within 2-3 turns after she manifests EGO

With that in mind, let's prepare:

Before we can tackle Kali the Red Mist, we need to have completed the following battles:

- Floor of Philosophy Abnormality Battle #1: Big Bird
By suppressing Big Bird, we gain access to Eternally Lit Lamp, which will be essential in stopping Kali's onslaught with Binah.

Binah, who is unlocked upon fighting the Red Mist, has two things that makes her the perfect counter:
- Innately, Binah has [Endure] and [Ineffective] against slash health and stagger damage, allowing her to tank Kali's Level Slash, Onrush, and Greater Split: Vertical, which all deal slash damage.

- One of Binah's combat pages, Degraded Pillar, has this specific effect on its first die: "Target's current die cannot be recycled"; it also has a decent block die at the end. This allows Binah to completely stop Kali's powerful yet single-die pages (Onrush and Greater Split: Vertical), and practically stop Upstanding Slash and Level Slash from dealing enough damage to trigger their effects.

- The Thumb, II
The only thing we really need here for are Boris and his Ferrous Guard, but Kalos and the Thumb's combat pages are amazing anyway, so might as well get two birds with one stone.

- Liu Association Section 2, II
What we need here are Mei's (and Cecil's) key and combat pages, for several reasons:

- Mei has [Endure] against pierce health damage and slash stagger damage; this allows her to better defend against Spear and not get staggered by Onrush and Greater Split: Vertical.
- Mei also has the innate passive Remain Vigilance in Peace, allowing her to recover her stagger resist as the fight goes on; this is essential because getting staggered while facing the Red Mist means near-guaranteed death.

You want to then load Mei up with the following combat pages and passives:
Your Shield and Liquefied Flesh grants +2 to defensive dice, which are essential for our strategy
Puffy Brume allows us to use Smoking Pipe without increasing the damage we take, which is extra bad against the Red Mist.
Stimulating Fumes acts as an extra layer of safety - if you get really unlucky and Kali decides to focus her attacks on one Mei (and you are unable to divert the attacks), having one more block could reduce the damage dealt just enough for Mei to survive.
You want to save Tieshankao for later ;)

With all that, we are now ready to face Kali the Red Mist, and make her into a laughing stock.

Your lineup would be Binah plus 3x Mei on the Floor of Philosophy

To recap, our goals here are:
- Prevent Kali from dealing enough damage
- Bring her to Emotion Level 5 before bringing her to half health

As such, we want to clash against Kali's attacks with defensive pages (if targeting Mei) and Pillar (if targeting Binah), and not attack her just yet; It does help to target her with one more page per turn (Smoking Pipe from Mei or Fairy from Binah) to clash against her counter, creating more emotion coins for both sides.

We want to get to Floor Emotion Level 1 as soon as possible, so Binah can have Eternally Lit Lamp, allowing her to divert Kali's attacks.

Once Kali gets to Emotion Level 5, we can give Binah free reign in attacking Kali; Fairy is a debilitating status effect, and will eat away Kali's health in no time.

Once Kali gets to half health and manifests her EGO, this would be the ideal situation you want to end up in:
Emotion Level 5, combat page light cost hasn't been reduced, Kali has no light to use more than 1 attack per turn, less so her Greater Splits

From here, you want to continue to defend against Kali's attack(s), and simply wait for her to become staggered.

Remember that Tieshankao that's been in Mei's deck forever? Remember that we have Puffy Brume and have been using Smoking Pipe to build up (albeit a little bit) of Smoke, which increases damage output?

Once Kali is staggered, go ahead to unleash 3x smoke-powered Tieshankao, plus all the attacks from Binah, and watch the legendary Red Mist die a pathetic death, unable to unleash the true strength of her EGO.

Aaaand that's it! You have defeated the legendary, the strongest fixer in the history of the City, and gained access to Gebura the Red Mist for your own usage! This is especially huge early on in the Star of the City chapter!

Once you have completed this fight once, you may upgrade Binah further with passives (I recommend Empowered First Shot from Katriel and Dark Cloud Blade from Sayo) to make this fight slightly easier. Although, you really only need to complete this fight twice, maybe three times, to burn enough books to get everything for Gebura.

I made this guide for a friend of mine who just recently started playing LoR, and I hope it can help many new players as well! Enjoy the carnage with Gebura!

p.s.: I highly recommend going for Cane Office and R. Corp. afterwards so you can get Myo's passive for Gebura, which grants her a guaranteed +5 power on her Strongest speed die every turn!