It surprised Kaldalis to see the army of adventurers gathered before he got there. For some reason, he’d expected their numbers to have been thinned by the devastating defeat they’d just suffered. Obviously, that wasn’t true; having only PCs in the fight meant that every single person had respawned.

If anyone was missing, it would be because their body was in an unsafe location. They’d join later when the threat was reduced.

Everyone looked his way as he walked up. The last to die meant he was the last to join. It was unnerving to have so many eyes on him, especially when he was the cause of their collective deaths.

Kaldalis swallowed hard. He really didn’t want to deal with this.

Instead of running away, or trying to figure out a clever way to blame someone else, Kaldalis clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Alright, everyone, good wipe. Very efficient. I’m proud of all of you.”

He was surprised again when his attempt to lighten the mood actually worked. It was just a brief chuckle that ran through the crowd, but it was a lot better than the grumbles and curses he’d expected.

Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

“In all seriousness,” he said, “I’m sorry everyone. I want to be the first to admit that we were grossly unprepared for this. Our real victory is that there were no permanent casualties, but that’s not the greatest comfort for all of you who just watched the last several days of work reduced to...” He glanced over his shoulder and gestured at the flattened remains of the camp. “This.”

“Yeah, yeah,” someone said with a dismissive wave of the hand. Kaldalis turned, shocked to see it was the man in black armor. “Hakuna Matata, motherfucker. We put the past behind us. What do we do to move forward?”

Kaldalis frowned. He expected a protest, perhaps a mutiny. After his leadership failed so miserably, it seemed natural that the group would want to blow off some steam at him.

Instead, they were all attentively looking to him to continue to lead.

“Well,” Kaldalis said, and then started tapping his chin. He honestly didn’t know what the next step was, and so had to stall for time. “I put it up to the vote. Are we going to try and make our way back to Cotanaku? Because I’m not sure how we get there, from here, without a boat.”

“Fuck that,” Myrin said. She pointed back towards the camp. “We’re not letting them get away with this, are we? I mean, we already failed the quest, so what else do we have to lose?”

A murmur of assent went around the group at that. It wasn’t surprising that a group of gamers were unwilling to run from a challenge, but Kaldalis had no idea how he could guide them to victory against this force, after they’d been smacked down so hard.

“So, if we’re going to fight,” Kaldalis said, raising his voice to quiet the crowd’s murmurs, “we need a plan. The Globin are outhealing our damage, and the Xorn’s destructive potential crushes any defenses we’ve got. What’s the missing ingredient for this fight?”

SeventyEight stepped forward, raising her hand. “Um… I know what we need.”

She looked nervous under the gaze of so many, which seemed odd for an ex-pro gamer. Kaldalis had seen those stages. He’d even been to one of her matches, live. Stage fright wasn’t something you could let yourself have in those situations.

“What have you got, Ess?” Kaldalis gestured for her to come up to him in front of the group, then hesitated. If she was having issues with speaking up, it would be a dick move for him to bring her in front of everyone.

But Ess didn’t hesitate. “One second,” she said, even as she stepped forward.

For a moment, she gestured at the empty air in silence. Kaldalis was confused until she produced a greatsword. Right. She had been searching through her inventory.

The weapon in her hands was roughly-made, and after a moment he realized that it must have been one she’d crafted.

“So I had a weird run while leveling weaponsmithing,” SeventyEight said, holding up the weapon. “I was just spamming stuff out based on what materials I had, and I ended up with like two dozen weapons with the Seal property.”

“Of course,” Deytambos interrupted, clapping his hands together. “That’s the missing piece of the puzzle. Seal reduces healing received. We afflict the Xorn with it, and the Globin will be doing less.”

“The Xorn are also doing dark damage,” someone else added - it was the greatsword-wielding Suyon tank that Kaldalis had pulled from the killbox. “That might mean they’re weak to Seal, since it’s the debuff affiliated with Light.”

All of this was way more than Kaladalis knew. He vowed to pay attention more to the affinities system as soon as this was all done.

“I’m going to need to distribute some weapons,” SeventyEight said. “But not for everyone. These are… Slightly underleveled for most of you. I have them ranging from item level three to item level five.”

“Tanks,” Kaldalis said, pointing at the people he recognized as sharing his role. “Tanks, come forward. I want every tank to take a Seal weapon. Our damage output is shit anyway, and anything that the group is trying to kill, one of us will be holding.”

The bodyguards came forward, and SeventyEight took a moment longer to dig out weapons. SeventyEight had way more Seal weapons than there were tanks, but there was an issue. Because she’d just been grinding out the crafting, the majority of the weapons were swords and daggers, which she had been spamming.

There weren’t any spears available.

“I, uh,” Kaldalis said, considering his options. “I need to stick with my own weapon.”

“Come on, man,” Courbois said with a smirk. “Just take the DPS loss like the rest of us.” She held up her new Seal weapon. “I’m going sword and board for this. The least you can do is take a pair of daggers.”

“Well, I got an upgraded thing from Sivima,” Kaldalis said, pointing to the taper beneath his weapon’s head. “I can’t just carry it forward onto the new weapon.”

The group of tanks with their new low-level weapons just collectively glared at him. Martok bared his teeth like he was about to snarl.

“I’ll take the Captain,” Kaldalis said, trying to placate them. “The extra mobility will let me keep it out of reach of the Globin. I want us to thin out as many enemies as we can, both to help future fights and to get more research notes.” He pointed his spear back at the camp. “Pattern recognition dictates that killing the Captain will make the rest of them leave. So we want to save it for last.”

There was a bit of a grumble, but the group seemed to let it go.

“So we have a pretty simple battle plan here,” Kaldalis said, raising his voice to be heard by the whole group. “If a tank isn’t hitting it, it’s never going to die. I want us picking away at the Globins first, but I recognize that they’re much sparser. We might need to thin out the Xorn before the Globins are valid targets.” He reached to the sides and patted the nearest two tanks on the back - Courbois and the greatsword-wielding Suyon. “Trust your tanks on this. Focus what they focus, whatever it is.”

The group started to nod, and it suddenly made sense why nobody had reacted with blame when he got back.

This wasn’t a defeat.

He’d been joking about it being a wipe, but that’s what had happened. They’d just raid wiped while learning mechanics. Everyone here was a gamer, after all. They understood: sometimes you have to lose before you can learn how to win.

“Group up if you haven’t,” Kaldalis said, turning towards the ruined camp. “We’re not wasting any more time. We’re pulling in thirty seconds.”

“Are we gonna do a battlecry?” Myrin asked as she stepped up beside him.

“I want all of you together,” Kaldalis said as the people in his party gathered around him. “Stick on Courbois’ and Martok’s targets. I’m going to try and pull as little healing from you as necessary, okay? I’ve got healing potions, so just ignore me unless everything else is dealt with.”

“Alright,” Balrim said with an uncertain frown. “Just try to not die.”

“If it looks like the Captain is going to get the best of me,” Kaldalis said, “I’ll book it out of here as fast as my Jump cooldown can carry me to make it take as long as possible for it to be a problem for anyone else.”

Balrim grimaced. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

“Don’t you worry about me,” Kaldalis said puffing out his chest, “let me worry about blank.”

Courbois was the only one who laughed at that, but Kaldalis didn’t have time to try and put the others’ minds at ease.

It was time.

“Everyone, with me!” Kaldalis called, raising his spear as he led the charge. “Panbu was merely a setback!”