Kaldalis landed first. There was a bit of space between the group of monsters physically attacking the walls, and the next row behind. It made the perfect landing spot.

His first order of business was to clear some space, so he popped his Sweeping Strikes cooldown.

As before, he felt a sudden surge of spatial awareness. When he lashed out with his polearm, he felt unknown wisdom guiding his hands, causing the head of the weapon to slash across every target in his immediate vicinity.

He struck at least eight of them.

Maybe more.

The storm of damage numbers rushing through his awareness disguised their exact number. He struck at least three syncoresi, each blow dealing eighty-nine points of physical damage, and seven points of wind damage. There were also five rounds of eighty-one physical damage and twenty wind damage that was dealt out to the malum immediately around him.

It caused the mob around him to step back, and frankly he didn’t blame them. That was way more damage than he expected. He supposed his attack scaling was outpacing their defense scaling.

He was, after all, nearly twice the level he’d been when he last encountered them.

“Run, little hordelings!” Kaldalis bellowed into the faces of the enormous monsters surrounding him. “I wake once more!”

The monsters who had been smashing and clawing at the wooden gate turned on him. It was just in time for Myrin to land behind him. She let out a cackle of excitement tinged with violence as she slammed her weapon into one of the malum that Kaldalis had struck. It still kept its attention focused on him - he was the tank, after all - but its form shuddered, the jello-like body rippling under the fiery impact of her greatsword.

Aurigeant landed right at Kaldalis’s back, and the Finnian’s polearm - a long-bladed glaive - carved back through the monsters around them. The terse fisherman had apparently also popped the Sweeping Strikes cooldown, and his weapon slashed through every target around just the same as Kaldalis’s simpler spear had.

Visually, the syncoresi were the more threatening of the two types of Infernal Horde. They looked like a cross between a gorilla and a comic book hero, covered in bone-white fur with beady eyes, but standing tall and upright. Their limbs were wiry more than muscular - but that descriptor only applied to these weaker specimens.

Kaldalis could see the stronger variety - the captains - still lurking outside the walls, with much burlier arms and shoulders. Each hand and foot were equipped with long, clawed fingers, and Kaldalis knew they were capable of putting out significant physical damage. Their attacks had no elemental component, which was good. With their inflated affinity stats, any elemental damage on them would be devastating.

The most annoying thing about the syncoresi was their defenses. First and foremost, they were incredibly resilient. According to even the alpha players, they appeared to have impossibly high defensive affinities, taking very little elemental damage.

What was worse, though, was their behavior when damaged. Like all overworld monsters, they would flee when reduced to a certain hit point threshold, but by all accounts, that threshold was very high for syncoresi.

No one had actually killed one yet, since they had too many hit points to burst down before they escaped, and once they did, you’d be lucky if you ever saw that particular syncoresi ever again.

The second mob type, the malum, were less visually threatening, but a larger threat in outright combat. Their physical defense was higher than that of syncoresi, but not enough to counteract the elemental resistance the malum lacked.

But their damage output was terrifying. Not only did they have higher attack, but they had added fire damage.

Their behaviors when overcome in combat were more manageable; they would flee like every other enemy, but they got over their fear faster than anything else Kaldalis had ever seen. Every time, they ceased running and returned to normal behavior while close enough to the battle that they’d usually just re-engage whoever they’d been fighting. While it meant more than a few had been killed in the last raid on the camp, it also meant that smashing one hard enough to make it flee didn’t earn you a long reprieve from its attacks.

Despite their fearsome stats in combat, the malum looked kind of silly. They resembled a muscular man, but they were made out of red-orange gelatin-like substance. Without any real features, they looked like bad cartoon mooks that a Saturday morning cartoon hero would mow through en masse. Just roughly person-shaped globs.

And the almost comical silliness didn’t stop there. Even in combat, attacking them only caused a little splatter of goo, not any blood. Their attacks seemed like comical blundering, swinging giant fists around in big sweeping attacks.

If it wasn’t for the threat they posed when those attacks landed, Kaldalis would laugh at the sight of them.

The bigger threat, though, was the Infernal Horde’s special attacks. Regular syncoresi didn’t have one, but the captains had a high-damage howl attack. The malum’s special attack was a telegraphed explosion of dark damage, signaled by an energetic undulation of their gelatinous bodies. While the adventurers wouldn’t have to worry about the syncoresi howl until the larger captain mobs got involved, the danger of the dark blast attack was already at hand.

More mundane dangers made themselves apparent first, though, as the eight monsters he’d struck lunged in at Kaldalis. A storm of white-furred claws and red-orange fists lashed out at him at all sides. Aurigeant dove clear of the incoming attacks, which was easy for him since they were aimed at Kaldalis.

There were a lot of options for Kaldalis at this point. It was early in the fight, so he still had resources to burn. He didn’t want to eat every attack - even with his defensive cooldown, that would be a death sentence - but he didn’t want to bend over backwards to avoid everything while he had the damage bonus from Sweeping Strikes running.

He activated Endure for the damage reduction, and swept his spear back through the group as he stepped forward.

Kaldalis moved away from more enemies than he moved towards, and only took three attacks. One from a malum and two from syncoresi.

His attack swept through all the adjacent foes again, dealing out his ninety-six damage to the syncoresi, and the one hundred and one he dealt to the malums. With Endure active, the syncoresi only hit him for two hundred and seven physical damage each. The malum, however, struck him for two hundred and fifty-eight physical damage, with an added sixty-one fire damage.

The total damage he took was seven hundred and thirty-three, more than a third of his total hit points.

Pain ripped through his body at the strikes, but he pushed it down. There was too much on the line to let out more than a grunt.

He was glad to establish aggro with that extra sweep of his spear, but he had forgotten just how much damage the Infernal Horde could deal.

Balrim was there with the minor assist, throwing down a potion from the top of the wall. It restored only two hundred and seventy hit points. While it was a big chunk of the damage he’d just taken, it seemed woefully insufficient, since Kaldalis knew there was a lengthy cooldown on that healing ability.

“Don’t do that again!” the healer yelled down at him before firing an arrow haphazardly into the group of monsters around them.

“No shit!” Kaldalis yelled back. “Sorry!”

He wondered how his DPS were doing. Kaldalis could hear Myrin’s cackle as she smashed away at something behind him. There was an unfamiliar swishing noise as well, presumably Aurigeant’s glaive sweeping through everything rather than focusing a single target down.

Kaldalis hoped Myrin was doing her best. While Aurigeant was putting out a lot of damage, it was being spread out. Myrin was the one who was going to actually take targets down.

The horde was, in a way, just a giant pool of hit points.

They’d have to deal with dozens of the monstrous foes, and maximizing raw damage output was going to be helpful. But in the short term, thinning their numbers was going to make their lives a lot easier.

The mob of monsters was too densely packed for many more of the infernal horde to threaten them until the others got out of the way, but they were still surrounded on all sides. Kaldalis managed to get one more Sweeping Strikes swing out before he had to put all his energy into dodging, ducking, dipping, diving, and dodging the crowd he’d aggroed.

Overworld aggro mechanics meant he was spared having to keep pelting damage into them to hold their attention. Just hitting them was enough. As long as he tagged anything that joined the fray before it could attack his friends, it was going to be fine.

Focusing on controlling the battlefield and conserving hit points was going to mean he spent very little time attacking. But compared to actual damage classes, his damage contribution was negligible at best. It was no great loss that his attention was consumed with the delicate dance he needed to do to stay ahead of the attacks coming for him.

“Kaldalis!” Balrim shouted down at him from atop the wall. “Pass leader! More people are coming in!”

A fraction of a second later, Balrim was the party leader and new names started popping up in the party pane. The dispassionate archer from earlier was now at the top of the wall next to Balrim. Shortly after that, Droto - the green-scaled talsar who favored the bow so much it had become a meme - joined them. Yosini leaped down to join the fray, adding his healing to Balrim’s to keep Kaldalis from falling, as well as the damage of his staff to the growing melee.

A few others jumped down as well. Some were people Kaldalis recognized, others he didn’t. At first it was only other PCs, but when Kaldalis saw Bangen enter the fray, he knew he had to start taking things seriously.

As an NPC, if Bangen fell, it would be for good.

Kaldalis could never forgive himself for that.

Every minute or so, one of the monsters around them would break and run, finally having taken enough damage to be forced to flee. Kaldalis just kept widening his movements, giving whatever monster that wanted to fill the gap the poke in the butt it needed to turn its attention to him. As they worked, the group inside the killbox thinned.

After a few minutes, they freed up enough space that someone outside the party jumped down. Kaldalis thought it was Garyung at first, but on a second glance, he saw it was Gavinkim, the greatsword-wielding Bhogad from the council. The newcomer let out a bellow of rage and started swinging his weapon, creating another area where a handful of more DPS jumped down to join him - a second party. One of the figures that leaped down was Gabriel, the imperious Finnian whose healing would ensure that the NPC serving as their tank would live through anything, and with AoE healing abilities that shored up everyone in the immediate vicinity.

Kaldalis started to worry after a few more minutes. More people were showing up at the top of the wall, but it was just Kaldalis and Gavinkim down here tanking the mob. Kaldalis’s cooldowns were ticking back too slow for him. He was going to slip up eventually, and only two healers weren’t going to be able to keep up with him once he started to get punch-drunk and tired out. They needed help.

At some unseen signal, the gates opened, and reinforcements poured through. At the head of the group was Garyung, shield held before him as he plowed into the thick of the Infernal Horde. A dozen adventurers were immediately at his back, forming a wedge behind him. The Bhogad let out a roar of challenge as he and his party turned the tide from a frantic attempt to stall into an even battle.

“Expedition Leader!” Kaldalis shouted over to him as if it were stagged. “What’s the plan?”

“Beat them back!” Garyung yelled, not just to Kaldalis, but to all the gathered adventurers. “Remind these vermin what it means to assault the Adventurers League!”

The panicked skirmish became a pitched battle. Kaldalis could still see the Infernal Horde captains hanging back, nearer to the treeline. He figured they were trying to run out the town’s resources. Wait for the cannon fodder to wear them down.

And as the battle wore on, Kaldalis started to fear what would happen when they finally joined it.