The quartet stood for a moment in spectral form, staring at each other.

They all watched in horror as the monsters milled about for a moment. But the creature returned to their prior activities, leaving the four corpses alone.

Kaldalis was grateful that they didn’t mutilate or consume the bodies. That would have been pretty disgusting to watch.

The firefly ant thing skittered back towards the wall where Kaldalis had aggroed it, dipping its mandibles into a puddle of water there. Meanwhile, the leviabeetle trundled across the room to where it had been nibbling at the moss. The vendragora lingered over their bodies for a moment before folding its spindly limbs back together and planting into a new spot in the mossy stone.

What was more interesting was the smaller ant creatures. As soon as Haldir was down, the dog-sized insects milled around for a moment, clicking their mandibles at the air. After about eight or ten seconds, they dispersed, but dispersed in all different directions, scattering like the lights had just come on. Kaldalis’s eyes followed one of them, and it didn’t actually go anywhere. It fled across the ground to the nearest wall, ran up the wall, and then just… Despawned.

That answered the question of where they came from. They were just spawning out of thin air. Which meant there wasn’t a sneaky solution where they could block their entry to the room, or find whatever hive they were coming from and destroy the reinforcements.

The only solution was the most straightforward.

They had to focus on the firefly thing to burn it down before it could summon its adds. Or, at least, before it could summon too many to handle.

Haldir was the first to move back towards the room’s entrance. As soon as the vathon started to move, Kaldalis realized he was just standing there staring around the room like a fool. He hadn’t even noticed the small message at the bottom of his vision. It had two little buttons on it, similar to the alert he’d seen when he had died in the overworld, but with different messaging, and no timer.

Return to your last safe location in order to respawn.

Respawn for 0 Aplomb (0 minutes)

Respawn for 15 Aplomb

He followed Haldir’s lead to return to the stone archway they’d entered through. Once his spirit body was standing at the door, the message at the bottom of his vision lit up briefly, and Kaldalis felt that rush of stinging pain roar up his body as he respawned.

Resurrection was just as painful as before, but he wasn’t as surprised, having experienced it before. He regenerated from the outside in, and he was grateful for that again. Last time, he was grateful because it meant there wasn’t a moment of being a weird skeleton man. Not to mention the added benefit of not having lungs with which to cry like an infant while his nerve endings burned their way back into reality.

This time, though, he was grateful because his clothes reformed before his junk.

Kaldalis didn’t consider himself prudish, but he was in mixed company, and being exposed was impolite without consent. Not to mention the potential dozens - or hundreds, or thousands, or millions - of eyes watching through three different streams.

Or possibly four, depending on what Haldir was.

Surprisingly, Kaldalis’s body reformed fully geared, wearing his cosmetic armor as well as his charms. With a thought given to drawing it, his spear appeared in his hands.

That was good. He didn’t foresee having the ability to retrieve his gear from his body as he had in the overworld with the monsters lurking atop it.

From the entrance to the room, he could see that his body had already turned into a skeleton. It was still weird to see a strange horned skeleton and know it was his own. It made him very aware of the spots just above his temples where the horns emerged from his scalp.

A moment after Kaldalis rejoined the land of the living, Balrim and Myrin were freaking out just behind him.

“Oh my god,” Balrim said. “Oh my god, oh my god.”

“Nope. Nope, nope, nope,” Myrin said, hugging herself. “No sir. I don’t like it.”

“Better than in the overworld, though,” Kaldalis said, hoping to offer some reassurance. “We got our gear back without having to go pick it back up in here.”

“Ugh, so if it happens again outside a dungeon, I won’t just be burned back to life, but I’ll be naked?” Myrin shuddered. “No thanks. I’m gonna retire and take up farming.”

“Well, not naked,” Kaldalis said, correcting himself. “But I was in my underwear after the syncoresi killed me.”

“Ugh. Wow, that was awful,” Haldir wiggled his hands in the air as if shaking water off of them, “I’d sooner not experience that ever again either, thank you. How about we just do things right the first time from here on out? And for the rest of our natural lives, if at all possible.”

“You’ve never respawned before?” Balrim asked Haldir. “I thought you were an experienced league member.”

“Yeah, but I’m not.” The greenish vathon grimaced. “I’ve been in a more administrative role in Baimer until this expedition. And the rules are different in dungeons when it comes to respawning. Don’t worry about it.”

Kaldalis had to admit that the rules were obviously different - he’d been allowed to respawn with no aplomb cost with some mysterious timer attached - but the feeling of respawning had been the same here.

Frustratingly, Haldir was continuing to dodge the question of him being an NPC or not. If Haldir was an NPC, it meant he couldn’t have died and respawned before - only PCs respawned. Then again, if only PCs respawned, then Haldir should have still been a corpse beneath a pile of bugs on the other side of the room, right? But by Haldir’s own admission, the rules were different in dungeons. Maybe NPCs could still respawn in here?

Kaldalis just didn’t have enough information to be able to discern if Haldir had just outed himself as a PC with his survival, or if the mystery was still alive. Maybe if he’d had time to do the tutorial-

He had to stop regretting that stupid tutorial, though. Having to skip it was not a mistake. He’d had to skip it because if he hadn’t, he never would have made it on the boat. And then he would be stuck in Baimer doing tutorial-like quests rather than out here on a real adventure.

And he wasn’t about to regret his last meal in the real world. If Dylan McIver regretted a plate of fried mashi at Hong’s and a pleasant chat with Amy, it would be a cold day in Baator, that was for sure.

Not to mention how disgustingly uncomfortable he felt in the body of the character used for the tutorial.

No matter how valuable the information was, he probably would have skipped it even if he had all the time in the world for it.

“So, take two,” Balrim said, getting Kaldalis’s attention back to the matter at hand. “Are we ready?”

“Couple notes,” Myrin said, holding up a hand to stop them. “We definitely need to focus on the glowy-ass ant first and foremost. But we also completely forgot to use our health potions. Haldir and I made them for a reason, so use them instead of dying, alright?”

“Sorry.” Balrim grimaced. “That’s on me. I was so caught up in managing my cooldowns that I forgot about the other tools we had.”

“We all could have used that to help,” Kaldalis said. “I could have used a healing potion in a critical moment to keep Balrim from stealing mobs’ attention.”

“We all could have done better,” Myrin said, even though she was nodding. “But we know what we need to do now, right? Are we ready to go?”

Kaldalis checked his character sheet, quickly confirming that his HP and Aplomb were full up after respawning. He was also surprised to see that respawning restored his cooldowns, meaning he had both Jump and Endure ready again, even though Endure should have been a minute or so out from returning.

“I guess we’re ready,” Kaldalis said with a shrug. “We got this this time. The heroes always have to face some hardship on the way up, right? Otherwise there’s no stakes and the whole story falls flat.”

“Ugh, don’t even get me started on stories with no stakes,” Balrim groaned, rolling his eyes. “Like when the protagonist just gets handed some overpowered bullshit and just crushes everything in front of him?”

“Catharsis can be fun,” Myrin said, visibly bristling, “it can be nice to see someone living the dream and smashing all obstacles. As long as it’s not cut through with poop jokes.”

“On that note,” Kaldalis said, “let’s get on to attempt number two.”