Death was, in all honesty, actually kind of a nice change of pace.

Kaldalis - no. Dylan, actually. Dylan had been having a hard time remembering that he was in a videogame and not in the real world. Sure, he knew that in his brain, but the physical sensations and unbelievable realism of everything around himself made the difference between this and real life seem academic at best. Dying actually helped. For the first time since opening his eyes in the big city, he felt like he was actually a man in a pod controlling something, instead of having been actually transplanted into another world.

He was floating over his corpse. As a sort of ghost.

Blessedly, most of his senses appeared to be inoperable in this state. Dylan didn’t feel any pain anymore, which was welcome. He also was suddenly aware that the jungle had had a thick and muggy smell. It really only became obvious now that he couldn’t sense it.

Dylan was aware that he could hear other sounds, but they seemed so distant and faint. Disconnected. Like there was some filter in front of his ears.

The only sense that did seem to be working without flaw was his vision. He could see perfectly well. Dylan also had a ghostly body hanging beneath him, and he could see that it matched Kaldalis’ living appearance, complete with the cosmetic gear he was wearing. He waved his whitish semi-transparent hands in front of his face, but the ghost corpse didn’t move.

Kaldalis was on the ground, and the monster was crouched over it with one claw raised, as if waiting to see if he would get back up.

Dylan became aware that he knew what it was called now. There was a system message that notified him what he had been killed by. It was called syncoresi, though he wasn’t sure if that was a proper name or a species name.

After it was sure that he wasn’t jumping back up, it started to examine him. It turned his corpse’s face back and forth, looking at him closely. Close enough that it made him uncomfortable, even if he wasn’t occupying that body now. He wondered if it was going to eat him, and what that might mean for him when he had to respawn.

Hey! he tried to yell, but there was no sound. He tried to wave his arms at the hairy creature crouched over his corpse, but nothing happened. His hands passed right through it when he tried to smack its arm. Dylan stepped to the nearby edge of the clearing and tried to rustle the brush to get its attention, but his hands passed through those, too. He had no ability to influence his surroundings. Which seemed fitting enough. He was dead, after all.

He remembered that he was being streamed, and that death was supposed to impose some kind of penalty. Did that mean that his stream was stuck just watching his corpse? Could they see what he was doing as a ghost? Or was he just presenting a blank screen to them?

Thinking about the streaming service brought up so many other questions, and none of them had answers. It irked him that he hadn’t been brought into the project early enough to have all the answers. He was playing a game without having played the tutorial, read a manual, or checked out the wiki.

Every moment that he was alive, he had something to do. And now that he was dead and finally had nothing needing his immediate attention, he had no answers. Nor any way of getting them.

On the bottom of his vision, there was a little timer that started to tick down, but he apparently had 30 minutes before that resolved, presumably allowing him to respawn.

Instead of sulking, Dylan wracked his brain for answers he could find.

How could he fight this thing? What could he have done better? Obviously, he could have brought Balrim and Myrin, but he didn’t know he was going to be fighting this thing at all. He also was likely underleveled for it - he was even still using the same level one gear he’d gotten when he started. It seemed certain that the only way he could win that fight would be from preparation. But the creature had to have weaknesses, right? Maybe he could get an advantage when it was time for him to get his revenge.

And maybe he could find something that could stop it from giving chase in the future. That was information he would love to return to camp with. He could save lives with that knowledge.

The creature gave his body a final sniff before it turned and started back into the jungle. Kaldalis had a terrifying moment that he might be forced to watch, as a ghost, as the creature tracked down and slaughtered someone else. But it was heading west, not south back to the camp, so it was possible that he might not have to suffer such a thing. Since he wasn’t going to learn anything by sitting here and staring at his corpse for 30 minutes, he followed the creature into the forest.

Traversing the jungle as a ghost was strange. He was unimpeded by any branches or brush, but at the same time, he couldn’t reach ahead of himself to push branches and leaves out of his face to see where he was going. He didn’t really have a choice in the matter, so all he could do was follow the distant distorted sounds of the beast moving through the brush, and try very hard not to lose sight of it. Despite how noisy it was, if it broke line of sight, he might never find it again.

The creature pushed through the brush, heedless of any threats. It seemed to have no need to hide, and with good reason. The syncoresi was likely one of the biggest threats on the island. It decimated the irritator in short order. And, as he followed it out of the jungle into another clearing, he could see why.

It was the Infernal Horde.

This was a larger clearing, around some sort of barrow. An opening on the side of the hill looked to lead into some kind of cavern, but there was more than enough in the clearing to let him know what he was dealing with.

There were about two dozen of the creatures in the clearing. They appeared to display a surprising amount of intelligence, considering their animalistic appearance, and the instantly violent treatment he’d received from his first meeting with one. There were some crude structures erected around the mouth of the cavern, and a few of them even seemed to be tending some kind of garden.

This was a semi-sentient race of beastmen. One of them had spotted him and run him down for almost an hour, intent on his death. There were dozens more, and that was just here. There could be hundreds more inside the cavern.

The creatures were all only slightly different - there were variations on fur color and hair length, but they were minor at best - but Kaldalis could pick out the one that he’d fought easily. Not only was it a little bloodied from the fight, but it was missing a finger. Even when he couldn’t see the four-fingered hand, the monster was frequently cradling it in its good hand with a toothy grimace.

The syncoresi with the four-fingered hand was going around the crude encampment to the others milling about. Kaldalis couldn’t clearly hear if words were being exchanged - it was all distant and distorted to him, so all he heard was vague grumbling sounds - but after each encounter, one or more of the group the creature approached stood up and followed.

It was gathering friends. Why?

Kaldalis’s first thought was a raiding party. One of the beasts had been indomitable for him alone. Three or four could overwhelm even the three-man party he’d had with Balrim and Myrin. The group it was gathering now, over a dozen strong, was enough to overrun the whole camp.

He put that thought out of his head. It couldn’t be where they were heading... right?

The gathered group didn’t move south, and if he could breathe, he would have given a sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure exactly which direction the encampment was, but he’d led the monster’s chase northwards from it, so when they went east, it meant that his friends were safe. He was slightly disturbed, since the beast with the missing finger was leading its friends to his corpse, but it was better than having to watch as a massacre unfolded.

Kaldalis kind of wanted to venture into the cavern as a ghost, and investigate what was inside. It seemed a smart choice for trying to learn more about these strange creatures, but he found himself drawn towards the group as they headed east. Not by any supernatural force, but because their behavior had him curious. What were they doing? He didn’t want to see it if they made a feast of him, but it would be better to know than return to his body and find himself lying in a pile of gore. He had over 20 minutes, anyway. If continuing to explore the little monster camp seemed smart, he could come back and do that after he confirmed what they were doing.

There was also the chance that they were going to wait at his corpse to kill him when his timer was up.

The thought was like ice water down Dylan’s spine. He’d need to start formulating a plan of escape before his time was up.

It wouldn't be the first time he had to deal with spawn camping, though from his memory it was possibly the first time he was being spawn camped by a monster and not an asshole player.

The group reached his body in short order, and the four-fingered one seemed to be giving some sort of lecture. Or, at least, he was making sounds that Dylan heard as distant grumbling, and gesturing to Kaldalis. The dozen or so creatures gathered each took a turn examining the corpse as the other ‘spoke’ to them. He assumed that it was telling them about the fight, or the chase, but it gave him an intensely uncomfortable feeling.

It was that tingle he felt on the back of his scalp from public speaking.

He tried to ignore it. As strange as their behavior was, they weren’t real people judging him. They were bits of elaborate and sophisticated computer code playing out a scenario.

Plus, he was dead. This was probably the first time in two weeks that he wasn’t being observed.

The last of the group finished poking at his corpse, and they all turned to look at the one with four fingers leading the expedition. Kaldalis only heard a few garbled grunting noises as it finished whatever speech it was giving. There was a moment’s pause, and then the four-fingered syncoresi did something that made Kaldalis’s stomach leap up into his horns while his heart dropped down into his tail.

It turned south, and led the group in the direction of the Adventurers League encampment.

Of course.