Kaldalis led the charge physically, but the effects of the censer preceded him. There were only five or six syncoresi on the outside of the den, but they were on alert, even as the orangish tint of the censer’s effects fell over them.

They didn’t know where the attack was coming from until Kaldalis crashed out of the undergrowth.

“Just who the hell do you think we are?” Kaldalis bellowed as soon as he set eyes on the den.

“Take the left side,” Courbois snapped from right behind him, “I’ll take the right.”

“No,” Kaldalis said quickly, in a firm tone. “You take everything on the outside. I’m running right past. I establish a foothold inside the cave itself. We can’t get bogged down on the outside or else when their reinforcements arrive-”

“Baruk Khazad!” Myrin whooped from behind them, interrupting the impromptu tactics meeting. “To battle!”

“I understand,” Courbois said with a smirk. “The cave is the bottle. We’re the cork.”

The two of them exchanged a terse nod.

Kaldalis stuttered his step slightly, letting Courbois run past him. She drew out her weapon - a simple-looking staff, with a leatherbound grip and bands of metal evenly spaced along the length - and took off at speed. She started moving with a strangely arrhythmic, acrobatic gait, and then whirled her way through the front line of syncoresi.

Her staff was a match for the length of Kaldalis’s spear, but being able to strike with both ends meant her attack speed was kind of astounding compared to what he was capable of. She tagged every monster in a matter of seconds.

It was incredibly impressive.

“You’re up!” she barked as Kaldalis rushed past her.

“Everyone,” he yelled, “with me! Into the den!”

Kaldalis ran into the mouth of the cavern, the rest of his raid group hot on his heels.

The interior of the cavern was craggy and uneven. It looked a lot less like a natural cave than it had from the outside. The opening narrowed for the first ten feet - going from fifteen feet wide to ten - before widening again into a larger chamber. Beyond that, the chamber was roughly the shape of an eggplant, thirty feet wide at the widest point, narrowing to twenty feet towards the back before it closed with a rough stone wall. A tunnel opened at the side of the room that vanished into darkness.

It was a sight to behold. The room was full of syncoresi. There were no captains, and Kaldalis wasn’t sure if he hoped that meant the boss-level monsters were at the encampment or not. If they were at the camp, that meant they weren’t here for his team to deal with, but at the same time, it meant the camp was in more danger than he’d expected. His job was clear, though.

“We take this room!” Kaldalis bellowed, letting his voice boom through the cavern. He lunged into the cavern, following the head of his spear as he charged. “This is where we fight!”

“And this is where they die!” the answering call came from the greatsword-wielding human, right behind him.

Kaldalis’ first attack was augmented by Sweeping Strikes, and ripped across the first line of startled syncoresi. With the cooldown increasing his damage, and the censer reducing their defenses, he did one hundred and seventeen physical damage, and ten wind damage to each one.

The reduction in their stats was a huge boost to his damage output. He suspected they would also do much less damage, but he wasn’t in a hurry to investigate that number.

“Left to right!” the greatsword-wielding human barked, stepping up on Kaldalis’s left and smashing his sword into the syncoresi farthest to that side. Kaldalis shifted right to make room for Myrin to step up as well, and a storm of arrows launched over her head and into the called target as well.

“Aurigeant,” Deytambos said from behind, “you and me with Courbois. Let the newbies handle the forward position.”

That suited Kaldalis just fine. This choke point was getting a bit crowded already.

To that end, Kaldalis popped his Jump cooldown and leapt clear over the first set of attacks directed at him, landing behind that first row of syncoresi. Overworld aggro rules meant that their attention had to follow him; they couldn’t rush through the breach he’d left as long as he had aggro. The empty spot in the tunnel was soon filled by Yosini, with his staff. The three archers they’d brought lined up in the back, though Balrim was holding the burning censer rather than wielding his bow.

From his new perspective, he could see Courbois beyond the backline of archers. Aurigeant was sweeping his polearm back and forth across the row of syncoresi there, with Deytambos’s daggers flashing out between the potions he administered.

They had things well in hand, since it looked like no reinforcements had yet arrived.

Kaldalis’s spear swept in a full circle around himself. In addition to the three syncoresi he’d struck in the entryway with his first strike, there were four more in spear range as he whipped it around himself. As his attackers lunged with their white-furred claws, Kaldalis leaped again, jumping deeper into the room.

This was a calculated risk. The enemies in the room he hadn’t yet struck could have rushed the entry once he moved, but he put his faith in himself. All he had to do was tag them before they closed with the rest of his party.

He got lucky. The four untouched enemies in the large room seemed to fixate on him, charging him instead of trying to circle around the other syncoresi as they chased Kaldalis leaping into the room. The tip of his spear ripped through the five new targets, securing aggro on them with one hundred and twenty-seven damage each.

The rest of his party swarmed into the room. Their damage was focused on that same target they’d started with, taking turns slamming their weapons into it. Kaldalis turned his attention on the mob of attackers now surrounding him, sweeping his spear around as fast as he could. His damage was going to be negligible compared to that of the DPS players, but every little bit counted.

He didn’t know how narrow their margin for success was going to be, and he didn’t want to hold back now and then find out later that it had all fallen apart for want of another one hundred and twenty-seven damage.

There were too many enemies for him to keep ahead of every attack, but when one finally struck him, it only dealt one hundred and eighty-five damage. A ridiculously significant difference from their earlier output.

“Fall back!” Deytambos called from the cave entrance. He and Aurigeant pulled back into the room, with Courbois not far ahead of them, holding the syncoresi beyond.

“Reinforcements already?” Droto asked.

“No,” Courbois grunted as she ducked under a swiping claw before cracking its owner right up under the jaw with the end of her staff. “Just taking advantage of the choke point.”

Kaldalis wanted to shout helpful advice, as Garyung had, but couldn’t focus well enough to do it. He was too involved in keeping ahead of the attacks directed at him. It was almost as if the sword-and-board Bhogad was just a gifted leader. Kaldalis just didn’t have that talent. If he wanted to have the same level of oversight and awareness, he’d have to do it from behind another tank rather than while in the thick of things.

The first syncoresi broke and ran within a few moments, under the pressure of so many players. His group moved on to the next target to the right, but the fleeing syncoresi seemed to bug out. It tried to run for the entrance instead of fleeing deeper into the cavern, but was unable to push through the group of mobs Courbois was holding there.

Something about the fleeing behavior restricted it, not allowing it to attack, or even to shove its way out of the tunnel.

“Corbois!” Kaldalis called. It was a simple enough order to give that even he could do it. “Pick up that runner! Damage team! Focus it down! No mercy!”

The Finnian smashed the butt of her staff into the monster’s ribs, staggering it for a moment before it turned its attention on her. In concert with that, the rest of the party descended upon it, hammering on it all over again. Kaldalis focused on dealing with what was on his plate already, doing a careful dance around the storm of claws churning the air around him.

Seconds later, he got a little notification that a syncoresi had been defeated, giving him sixty experience points, and a sheaf of research notes.

“They can die,” Yosini observed. “I didn’t know that.”

“If it can die,” Myrin announced, “we can kill it!”

“Another!” The greatsword-wielding human bellowed, charging back towards the knot of monsters around Kaldalis. “With me!”

They were doing it. Their initial invasion had gone through, and now they just had to hold their ground. Securing this room would demand a response from the syncoresi; there simply were not enough enemies here to force them out without help.

Kaldalis had, for a moment, a mad hope that the plan would work.