Historically, the phrase “it’s a good day to die” comes not from the idea of death possibly being pleasant, but the philosophy of living a life free of regrets so as to not fear death.

Kaldalis reflected on this as a mob of Xorn pounded the hit points out of him.

He did the best he could, but with every passing second, more Xorn appeared. He and Courbois held out as long as they could, but the bad ending was inevitable. Kaldalis considered popping his extra Jump charge to get some distance, but he wasn’t sure he could hope to actually accomplish anything besides looking like he was trying to abandon Courbois to save himself. And after his first death against the syncoresi, he knew it would fail - the Infernal Horde would chase him to the ends of the earth.

Coubois fell first.

Only a minute later, the endless stream of huge metallic fists took him out as well.

Kaldalis hadn’t been a ghost in weeks. He’d forgotten how strange it was. First and foremost, there was the suddenly alien sensation of no longer having a physical body. Once more he felt much more intensely like a man in a tube controlling a videogame character instead of Kaldalis, Vathon bodyguard.

He had a spectral body, though. Kaldalis knew from experience that it couldn’t interact with anything.

Even as he looked over and saw Courbois’s corresponding spectral form, he knew they couldn’t really interact. Without bodies, they couldn’t breathe, and without breath, they couldn’t speak.

But he and Courbois weren’t alone. As he looked around, he saw there were dozens of other spectral ghosts. Some number of fallen adventurers had followed the Xorn and had watched them fall in turn. He spotted Reno and SeventyEight immediately, with Balrim, Myrin, and Martok near at hand as well.

His whole party was here.

And him without any ability to strategize for 30 minutes.

Worse than that, he was going to respawn exactly where he was standing, in the midst of the horde-infested camp.

The quest on the right side of his vision flashed again as another facility was marked as !!critically damaged!! under the raid tag. He knew that the council had received the same feedback, and if he still had an approval bar for them, it would be plummeting.

There was a very real chance that Cotanaku was about to suffer a hostile takeover, and that all of the ghostly people around him were about to be reduced to second-class citizens in homes of their own making.

In the absence of anything else to do, Kaldalis wandered around in his ghostly form, watching as the Xorn all hammered at the outer walls until they, too, were critically damaged. He watched as the Xorn Captain that had entered the camp crushed the town hall, knocking the building over with two deft strikes. And then the barracks fell, after a group of Globins rushed in and destroyed all the building’s contents before swarming back out as the army of Xorn started hammering at the walls from all sides.

None of their work was spared.

No resource was saved.

Everything was smashed, knocked over, flattened, and then smashed again.

Every muted crash and crunch of destruction was a gutpunch to Kaldalis. As he watched the camp’s defensive wall crumble and fall, he remembered Reno complaining about the logging that had yielded those exact lengths of wood.

And now they were being smashed to splinters.

As the town hall started to list to one side after the Xorn Captain’s first blow, he remembered Balrim working hard on making the roof shingles as part of a crafting quest.

And now they were scattering across the dirt in pieces.

As the stone barracks was smashed to gravel, he remembered Myrin accidentally getting her finger slammed between two stone blocks helping to assemble the back wall.

And now the damage to that very wall was bringing the second floor to the ground.

This was all their work. Not just his, but everyone’s. Every person here had put their blood, sweat, and tears into this camp. And now they were all forced to watch as it was torn apart.

And it was his fault.

Obviously, he couldn’t have predicted what would happen. It was impossible to foresee the complication the Globins had brought. He’d handled them as well as he could have, hadn’t he? But it had all been for naught. Too little, too late. He suspected that if everyone wasn’t silenced by their ghost forms, they’d be hurling blame at him in spades.

After a length of time, the quest for the raid failed. The horde had been methodically hunting down and breaking shit for nearly fifteen minutes before the last !!critically damaged!! addition popped up and the entire quest flashed red and faded away.

It was over.

Panbu was finished.

Kaldalis had hoped that the horde would disperse after that, and a large number of them did leave. About two out of every three enemies meandered their way out of the ruined camp and vanished back into the jungle. But dozens of Xorn, at least twenty Globin, and a single Xorn Captain remained at the camp, methodically picking their way through the camp and smashing things.

While the raid had succeeded when everything needed for the upgrade had been critically damaged, there were still other elements remaining. Many of the Xorn busied themselves with toppling and stomping the tents that had served as the adventurers’ sleeping quarters. A group of Globins swarmed into the mess hall and reduced the interior to shattered cookware and splintered furniture before a mob of Xorn arrived to push the entire structure over.

Kaldalis watched with a ghostly grimace as the Xorn Captain waded up to its waist into the ocean to smash the floating dock to fragments, sending the pieces out with the tide.

He wasn’t sure what was worse, the failure, or being forced to watch as he waited for his timer to count down.

Kaldalis tried to signal to people and communicate, to try and make a plan, but the best that he could do was gather all the ghosts together in one spot outside of the smashed remains of camp and point at the ground energetically. He hoped that the message would get across that he wanted them to gather together outside of the ruins to discuss their next moves.

A few dozen ghosts peeled away from the group and ran to the town gate. Kaldalis realized that he had less than 10 minutes left on his timer, which meant that the first bunch of deaths - the raid groups from inside the killbox - were about to respawn. The area was clear of enemies, and the bulk of the nearest group of Xorn were intent on stomping on the remains of the crafting center, flattening out the uneven mounds of scrap that had been the workstations.

Kaldalis was slightly gratified when he saw the man in black armor as the first to reform to a physical body. That meant that he had been the one to die first. His physical body formed from the outside in, and as his lungs formed there was a sharp scream. Kaldalis was suddenly reminded of how painful the respawning process was, and struggled not to shudder at the idea of it coming soon.

The man was standing there in his underclothes for just a second, looking around in a panic before he touched the skeleton below him. Suddenly the black armor teleported from the ground onto his body. That was another thing Kaldalis had forgotten. Respawning would demand that he stand still for a second to recover his belongings. That was fine for these folks who had died near the edge of the camp, but for those whose bodies were surrounded by Xorn, there was a problem brewing.

For now though, the man in black armor - and the respawning members of his party - scurried out of the shattered remains of the killbox and headed to where all the ghosts had gathered.

A handful of ghostly jokers started sticking their hands through the physical bodies of the respawned adventurers, but more people were returning to the ruins of the camp now. Even those who still had a few minutes left went and stood over their own corpses, waiting their turn to come back.

The group of living people standing at the rendezvous point were talking, and the dulling filter that death applied to real-world sounds turned it into a garbled mess. Kaldalis heard some anger in their voices, but without any ability to translate the noise into words, it was a waste of time to guess if he was the target of their ire.

A few minutes later, his death timer ticked down to seven and a half minutes remaining. As before, a little prompt appeared.

Warp to and respawn at your Home Point for 30 Aplomb

Return to death location and respawn for 15 Aplomb

That was his cue to get back to his body.

He picked his way through camp a bit more carefully than he really had to. The idea was to look for a clear path to where everyone was gathering without getting aggro from the whole mess of Xorn stomping on the remains of the camp’s fresh water barrels. When he got to the remains of the beachside gate, though, it was obvious that the only way he was getting out was to run for the beach and circle all the way around.

The Xorn Captain was lurking in that area, its huge hands pushing over the last remaining sections of wall that hadn’t been entirely toppled.

All Kaldalis had to do was wait for the perfect window before he could respawn.

Watching the Captain carefully, he started to notice patterns in its behavior. It was moving slowly and deliberately. When it started hammering on a section of wall, its attention was devoted entirely to that for several seconds. He just had to use that moment to get his gear-

Courbois’s ghost ran up to join him, stood over her body for a bare instant, and abruptly respawned. As soon as her body was complete enough to move - even visibly still forming - she slapped the pile of armor on the ground, and bounded away almost before her armor covered her body, the mobility cooldown for her staff lending her the speed and agility to be gone in a flash.

She got away clean, and Kaldalis realized he was probably overthinking this. Instead of strategizing too much, he watched the seconds pass and then paid his 15 Aplomb to respawn as soon as he could.

Resurrection was painful.

As much of a warning as he’d had, he still underestimated it. As his nerve endings reformed, his whole body was briefly 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 was made out of Lego bricks.

It was over as fast as it had started, and Kaldalis did his best to imitate Courbois’ speed, snapping his gear back onto his body and activating a charge of Jump to launch himself to safety before anything could aggro onto him.

He landed on the sandy beach, and waited for just a second to make sure that he’d made a clean getaway. The Xorn Captain turned and smashed another hole in the wooden wall, visibly unconcerned with Kaldalis.

As the last person who died, Kaldalis was likely going to be the last person to regroup with the others. He had to hurry. The sooner he got there, the sooner they could get through the part where everyone got their shot to kick him in the nads for his failure.

And the sooner they got through that, the sooner they could plan their next moves.