Dylan got back to Kaldalis’ body with seconds to spare. It took him a few moments to find where he could stand that the “Respawn at death location” option lit up, but once he did, there were just a few agonizing seconds before his timer hit zero. Concentrating on the button for a moment at that point brought him back.

Resurrection was painful.

He honestly didn’t know why he was surprised.

His ghostly form regenerated from the outside in, which was great because it meant there wasn’t an awkward moment where he was a weird skeleton man.

The problem was that his nerve endings were some of the first things to return, and as everything regenerated, it felt like his whole body was made out of freezing-cold acid that was on fire. And the fire was made out of razor blades. And the acid was made out of needles. And the cold-

The pain stopped once his body was complete, but the regeneration stopped there.

Kaldalis stood in the jungle, alive and at near-full health, but in just a pair of underpants and a thin almost tank top. An instinctive flinch came over him as he expected a flash of cold air, but the jungle was, thankfully, warm.

Just the same, he looked around for where his gear was.

It wasn’t in his inventory, but his corpse was near at hand. The body had turned into a skeleton, and he tried not to linger too long on how macabre it was to see his own horned skull stripped of flesh. His gear wasn’t visible on it, but as he stood over it, another pop-up appeared, prompting him to collect his gear. Concentrating on that had the disorienting result of his gear all respawning on top of himself seemingly from nowhere.

The sight of the skeleton - and its apparent connection to his gear - made him wonder what would happen if something had eaten his body. The Irritator could have devoured him down to the last bone. How would he get his gear back then?

He didn’t have time to contemplate that - or the other myriad mysteries raised by the skeleton he had left behind - the encampment was in danger.

His friends were in danger. They weren’t in a party, so he couldn’t see their health bars.

But it was also bigger than just them. If the Adventurer’s League lost their foothold here, that was two weeks of travel and all of the labor they’d put in gone, not to mention the loss of life it would mean for the NPCs who couldn’t respawn.

Kaldalis took the run back to camp as quickly as he could. Now that he had corporeal feet, he couldn’t hit a full sprint and ignore the risks now. He’d break his ankle, help no one, and probably die again when the beasts were on their way back home after the raid was done.

The pace he set was as fast as he felt safe running. He only hoped it would be fast enough.

Kaldalis concentrated on his movement. If he let his mind wander, he was going to likely start to panic. So he just didn’t. There would be plenty of time for panic and worry when he got to camp.

He burst out of the jungle and was met with the encampment’s wall shortly before him. Kaldalis put his hands up and caught himself on it this time. Corporeality had its pros and cons. He caught himself as expected this time, but now he was on the wrong side of the defenses. Without that weird filter over his ears, he could hear the roar of battle on the other side of the wall.

But Kaldalis knew that if he ran to the nearest entrance, he’d be behind the monsters’ line of attack. Even if he could get to the entryway, he was likely to be cut down without helping anyone. And then he’d have to wait out another annoying death timer. And lose more Aplomb.

That only left the ocean side.

The camp was only slightly more of a mess than it was when he left as a ghost earlier. It looked like Adventurers League folks were running around trying to repair the damaged structures before they collapsed, and groups of adventurers had come together to try and protect them from harassment. There were also a few roaming parties of adventurers escorting healers around, finding the injured and helping them.

Despite their efforts, though, the chaos continued unabated. The monsters seemed to have organized to a degree once the adventurers started to respond to the chaos. The creatures arranged themselves as smaller groups representing a threat that couldn’t be ignored - two of them attacking at once might kill someone outright, let alone four of them together. People just seemed to give them the run of the camp, giving these kill squads wide berth and working on repairing what they dismantled rather than moving proactively.

There were still a number of the monsters running around alone, and Kaldalis tried to make his way to the nearest of these loners as it was attacking someone.

He hoped he wasn’t too late to try and help turn the tide here.

If he could even save one person, it would be worth it.

The nearest victim - the nearest person Kaldalis could help - appeared to be a talsar with a bow. Kaldalis couldn’t tell what they were trying to do. They were either looking for people to help when they were set upon, or the monster had set upon them a while ago and the fight had continued for far too long for someone to go without help.

Either way, Kaldalis was here now, and joined the fight eagerly.

It took him just a moment to realize the person he was helping was the rust-scaled Balrim. The talsar healer was not looking too healthy.

Kaldalis didn’t have time to wonder at Myrin’s fate.

There was too much at stake here.

Kaldalis rushed in and jammed his spear into the syncoresi’s back. He did that same nine damage he had before, but the creature snarled in surprise and anger as if he’d done a lot worse. One of Balrim’s arrows was sticking out of its shoulder, but despite that - and a few other wounds - one strike was all it took to get its attention off of his talsar friend.

He wanted to complain about aggro generation being so far dumbed down that he only had to tag a mob and it was his, but considering the simplification had saved Balrim’s life, it seemed an inappropriate complaint.

“Thanks!” Balrim said, terror clear in his voice.

For a moment, it looked like he was just going to turn and run, leaving Kaldalis with the monster, but the robed talsar was just getting some space before raising his bow and striking the creature with another arrow. Kaldalis didn’t know how much damage the strike had done - and he didn’t know if he could expect it to be more or less than his own blow.

They might be at this for a while.

He focused on his defense.

The creature’s moves were just like the one he’d fought before - in fact, he had to check to make sure it still had five fingers on both hands - which meant he had an advantage. He didn’t have the pattern entirely nailed down, but he knew to expect the other claw to swipe at him whenever it made a lunge. It meant he was a bit slower to attack it, but aggro seemed fixed pretty tightly to him, so he wasn’t too worried.

The important part was being aware and fighting safely.

He took a hit or two during the fight, but Balrim was there. It took two of Balrim’s potions to fully heal the huge damage that the creature could put out with a single strike, but Kaldalis was capable of keeping uninjured for a full cooldown on the potion.

The fight was slow, but progress came. Eventually.

As a tank and healer duo, the beast couldn’t put lasting damage on them. Kaldalis held its attention, and had the hit point pool to take two hits before being at even half health, and Balrim kept hitting him with healing potions to keep his health up. Even if they whittled away at it with only single-digit damage to its huge hits, in the long term, victory was assured.

It felt like they’d been fighting for an hour when the creature broke. Whatever threshold caused the creature to run in fear got pushed through, and the hairy monster turned and fled, running for the jungle-side gate. There was more chaos there than there was in any other direction, so it might cause trouble for someone else, but as it was, Kaldalis wasn’t inclined to give chase now. He needed a moment to take a breath and figure out what to do next, not run heedlessly into a mess that might kill him. Again.

“Are you alright?” Kaldalis asked as Balrim ran over to his side.

“Yeah,” Balrim said as he spiked another potion into the ground at Kaldalis’s feet, topping him off. “Good to see you again. We were worried when you didn’t join the rallying call.” Before Kaldalis could explain, Balrim kept going. “Myrin and I were coming in from the beach when the attack started. I lost her in the chaos.” He shook his bow, giving it a rueful glare. “The problem with this damned thing is that once the melee breaks out, I get left behind.”

“That’s because this game doesn’t give you any tools for sticking together in a proper party,” Kaldalis said with a smirk. “It’s just too easy to get separated, and too hard to come together again.”

Kaldalis sensed the party invite come in, and accepted it. Balrim and Myrin’s health bars popped up in the upper left of his vision. Balrim was mostly fine - he’d been able to heal himself up in between keeping Kaldalis topped off - but Myrin was sitting at around 60%, and her health bar wasn’t moving.

“When we were separated, we were moving towards the mess hall tent,” Balrim said, pointing in that direction. “We should be able to find her if we keep moving that way.”

Kaldalis readied his spear and took the lead, hoping that they wouldn’t see the remainder of that bar flick to zero before they found her.