No one seemed very impressed.

“I mean, we all had a plan for this,” Myrin muttered. “You aren’t special.”

“Hush. Just be ready!”

“We shouldn’t squander this opening,” Haldir said. The teal-hued vathon lunged in towards the nearest undulating malum, laying into it with his blade. “We need to make some space for when this part is done!”

Despite her smartass remark, Myrin didn’t hesitate to follow Haldir’s lead. Kaldalis wasn’t surprised; she could always be counted on to jump on any opportunity to hit things.

With a half shrug, Kaldalis lunged forward with his glaive. He aimed to do as much as he could without losing track of his internal timer on the upcoming blast. Kaldalis managed to stab two more of the gelatinous figures before his instincts screamed at him that it was time to get out.

“Go,” Kaldalis bellowed, raising his voice as loud as possible - not for the benefit of his friends, but to draw the eyes of those watching from above. “Flicker now!”

For a brief instant, Kaldalis actually heard the roar of the dark blast, and he was afraid that he had missed his dodge, but when he found himself floating in empty space his health bar was still intact.

As were the health bars of his friends, who he saw hovering in the void around him.

He wanted to say something. If he had the ability to speak, this would have been the perfect time to privately apologize for tipping their hand about the Flicker ability in the earlier fight. He also wanted to explain his plan here, that he wanted them to showboat as much as possible to establish the value of the Flicker ability before Onirioago could turn the camp against them for having it.

Unfortunately, the empty vacuum meant that he couldn’t communicate.

All he could do was appraise the mental state of his companions. Myrin seemed fine, just as relaxed as ever. She seemed to always be just shy of openly revelling in combat.

Haldir seemed to have broken through whatever terror he’d experienced when he’d almost died against the malum earlier. Kaldalis wondered if it was out of some kind of misplaced trust towards the party, or if he had just rapidly become numb to the danger.

Balrim had a grim look on his face. Kaldalis realised that the talsar had always been a bit more used to keeping enemies at arm’s reach - or, rather, bow’s reach. It was possible that he hadn’t been faced with monsters within punching range of him unless things had gone horribly wrong.

If Kaldalis was going to pretend to be party leader by yelling things like “with me” and “let's go” and “do this” then he was going to have to take more responsibility, particularly for keeping his healer safe.

And keeping his healer safe was a necessity that existed outside of just hoarding aggro.

He wanted to vow to do better to give Balrim some reassurance, in particular because he looked like he’d just bit down on a lemon full of nails and insects. But in this airless void, he couldn’t even reassure him that they’d get out of this mess okay. He had to wait until they were returned to the real world.

And once that happened, he’d have bigger things to worry about.

Indeed, once he popped back and saw the army arrayed against him, thoughts of a few kind words to his friend left his head immediately.

All that was left were a few unkind words to the game designers who thought this was an appropriate gameplay loop.

The scene on his return was pretty grim. He and his friends had avoided the damage of the blast, and the adventurers on the walls had outranged it, but the walls themselves weren’t so lucky. The sides of the killbox were scored and burnt. The wood was cracked and visibly splintering.

Kaldalis feared to look back and see the state of the door.

There was good news, at least.

The mob of monsters had thinned considerably; the whole group performing the blast attack had allowed the ones fleeing to squeeze past their fellows and escape. He had to stop himself from thinking that the fight was nearly over, though. There had been more than this charging the encampment before; the rest were probably smashing at the walls outside of the killbox. And there were fifteen or sixteen in the killbox itself, still more than could be reasonably handled.

As if to underline that point, the entryway at the far end darkened as a shimmering gelatinous form filled it. Another of the twenty foot tall malum captains stepped into the killbox. Its giant fists were balled up as it stomped towards Kaldalis, roughly shoving and kicking the smaller creatures out of its way.

“Shit,” Kaldalis said.

“F-fuck,” Balrim stammered.

“Ass?” Myrin added. She then paused and looked towards Haldir. “Are you allowed to swear?”

“What?” Haldir asked, almost as if in a daze. “Sorry, I wasn’t listening. I was too busy coming to terms with my impending demise.”

“We’ll be fine,” Kaldalis said, and then raised his voice to be heard by the archers on the wall. “We focus on the big one! Get him down and gone, and the rest will follow!”

“Are you sure about that?” Haldir asked.

“Not in the slightest,” Kaldalis said, much quieter, “but we have to start somewhere.”

There were still a handful of malum near at hand with their attention on Kaldalis. But there was a rumbling growl from the captain as it approached. While the smaller creatures looked like they wanted to rush in at him, they backed up, clearing a path for the obvious leader.

It struck Kaldalis as odd. He thought that the ones he’d struck would be forced to attack him exclusively.

“That’s more sophisticated than I thought possible,” Haldir said. “We knew they displayed signs of a leadership hierarchy, but we didn’t know they could violate overworld monster logic for it.”

“Yak yak yak,” Myrin said before swinging her weapon impatiently. “I’d follow that up with the ‘get a job’ reference, but I’m pretty sure you’d take me seriously.” Myrin looked pointedly at Kaldalis. “We’re waiting on you, fearless leader. You gotta hit it before we can.”

The adventurers on the wall above didn’t have a similar hesitation. A mass of arrows flew from their bows and smashed into the giant monster. It seemed unaffected by the attacks, but Kaldalis knew it would all add up.

This was going to be a nasty fight. And, for some reason, he ran forward to meet it.

A giant fist swept down at him, aimed to smash across his upper body, and he halted his charge to pull up short. The fist sailed through the air in front of him. He wanted to lunge forward immediately, but he remembered the earlier fight. This creature’s attacks came in twos and threes. Sure enough, its other fist slammed straight down, and he dove to the left, narrowly avoiding being slammed into the ground like a tent stake.

The creature took a half-step towards Kaldalis, and he knew this was his chance. He lunged in and drove the tip of his glaive into the creature’s knee. A part of him expected to be able to damage the joint and trash its mobility, but, of course, no such luck. The blade sank in all the way and struck no bones.

Of course it didn’t.

He could see almost completely through the clouded gelatinous mass. There were no bones in there to strike. He was happy to take his eleven damage, along with what he knew would be the creature’s undivided attention.

Its arm swept down, fingers splayed to either slap him or grab him, and he lunged forward. He tucked into a roll as he went between the creature’s legs, getting to the far side of it quickly. As soon as his feet were under him again, he jammed the head of his glaive into the monster’s calf and used it for leverage to stand and spin, ripping the weapon out of the wound on the way. The creature whirled on him to make its second attack - a lightning-fast left hook that Kaldalis scrambled back away from - leaving its back exposed for Haldir and Myrin, who were already running up behind the beast.

Another hail of arrows came down, and Kaldalis had a brief moment of panic where he thought he was about to be showered with friendly fire. Fortunately, he was in the ‘rain shadow’ in the form of a twenty-foot shimmering asshole. Arrows sank into the gooey creature’s back, head, and shoulders, and while it had accepted the first volley without complaint, it flinched this time, though perhaps it was from the sheer weight of that many arrows instead of in response to the damage.

Kaldalis didn’t have time to think about that. The creature was attacking again. It started with a straight jab, and Kaldalis ducked under it, almost dropping to his knees to let the blow go over his head. He raised his glaive and slashed open a wound on its forearm in return, getting his sixteen damage and first stack of Gust. He regretted it immediately as the next attack was a kick, and while he managed to roll to the side to avoid the damage, a rain of dirt and dust followed soon after, blinding him.

Regret intensified when he found this was the three-attack cycle as an open palm slap came straight down on his back, smashing him into the ground like a bug.

Two-hundred and thirty-five physical damage, and forty-eight fire damage taught him a valuable lesson.

Dealing damage wasn’t his job.

Avoiding and mitigating it was.

He scrambled to his feet quickly, and one of Balrim’s potions crashed to the ground at his feet, its healing vapors restoring a decent chunk of the damage he’d taken. A second potion came down shortly after, hurled by one of the adventurers on the wall. It healed for a lot less than Balrim’s, probably thrown by someone still wearing starter gear. But then a third came, topping him off. He was at full health again and the monster’s next attack animation hadn’t even started.

It turned out that when the entire camp is focused purely on your survival, you can get away with a lot.

He supposed it was time to contribute some damage to the cause, then, if everyone else assembled was going to carry his carelessness.