Now that the Xorn Captain had demonstrated its sleep cone attack for everyone, the group around Kaldalis responded appropriately. Without needing him to move, the group gathered the sleeping people up and cleared the area behind him.

The next cone would find no targets, as long as Kaldalis himself got out of the way.

With the Captain’s special attack mitigated, and the rain of fists down around Kaldalis becoming familiar enough to be second nature, the fight didn’t hold any remaining surprises. Kaldalis focused on the 5 D’s - dodge, dip, duck, dive, and dodge - and let the damage dealers do their work.

As the fight went on, the crowd contributing to it grew.

At first, it was more of the Cotanaku reinforcements collapsing on the Captain, but eventually people he recognized from what had been his own forces joined the fight as well. Balrim and Yosini started adding their healing, and he saw Myrin, Reno, and Ess all alongside Heluna. The progress bar for retaking the town had stopped rising, which told him that the place had been cleared out, and the last 25% required to fill the bar was represented by the Captain alone.

Despite the huge force they had gathered, it still took several minutes to whittle the Xorn Captain down without a censor. Its health pool had to be well into the millions to withstand this much abuse. But eventually it broke away, the malice radiating down at Kaldalis replaced with frustration.

It turned and ran.

The quest to reclaim the town completed with a little chime, and a message briefly flashed up.

Panbu Restored

Floating Dock Salvaged!

Defensive Wall Salvaged!

Town Hall Salvaged!

Materials Salvaged!

Nearby, gravel and wood fragments inexplicably leaped up out of the dirt. Within seconds, they collapsed into the town hall building that Kaldalis had seen smashed. It still looked badly damaged, but it was in one piece again.

As the crowd let out of a cheer at the notification of victory, Kaldalis also saw huge planks and stakes of wood hurling through the air to smash together in a ring around the camp. The wall that erected itself was ragged and incomplete, with a few gaps and thin spots remaining, obviously in need of work to actually render them an appropriate defense.

Kaldalis, however, had something else on his mind.

“Get it! Get it!” he bellowed, pointing his glaive at the fleeing Xorn Captain. “We can’t let it escape!”

A charge of his Jump cooldown let him launch himself after the giant, covering a dozen feet at a time.

The Captain’s head start put it far ahead of him, but he was closing the distance fast.

He flew past Garyung, who was making his way towards the town hall from whatever fight he’d finished. The Bhogad looked like he was about to protest the chase, but Kaldalis didn’t stop long enough to let him give voice to the complaint.

He knew what he was doing.

The Xorn Captain had been a huge threat.

Even after knowing how to fight it, the raw weight of its hit point total was a huge challenge for them to overcome. Kaldalis shuddered to think how much of a fight it was going to put up if it came back to haunt them as a Xorn Major.

The Jump ability let him hurtle into the monster’s back. He struck with both feet, and whipped his glaive around, smashing the curved blade into the side of its vase-like head.

In response it whirled, two fists lashing out in simultaneous backhands, but Kaldalis was able to kick off of its back to get clear of the attacks.

The battle-damaged appearance of the Xorn Captain was harrowing.

Its visible wounds leaked a clear fluid that must have been what passed for its blood, darkening the metallic skin around the wounds to look like tarnished silver. More than that, though, the sand swirling around its head had been joined by more of that clear fluid, making the sand wet and chunky as it slapped in and out of the holes in its face.

The malice that crashed down on him when it faced him was now tempered by panic. He’d secured aggro on it again, but he could clearly sense that the monster felt backed into a corner.

It was going to fight much harder now.

True to that expectation, as it had when he re-engaged, two fists came at him at once now, forcing him to leap back or else be crushed. The speed of the oncoming assault set him off-balance, and the only thing that let him keep his feet was the instinctive flick of his tail. He barely had time to recover before the opposite two fists came down, one in a straight punch and the other in a vicious hook, forcing him to scramble back even farther, his tail flailing wildly to keep him upright.

He couldn’t stand his ground against its doubled assault as he had before. It was going to complicate matters further as the column of damage dealers started to converge, joining him against the Xorn Captain. As much as they would want the boss monster to stand in one place so they could do their thing, Kaldalis was unable to accommodate them without getting stamped into an indigo pancake.

The results of this inability were obvious. All of the adventurers were forced to jockey for position, moving with the Xorn as it followed Kaldalis’s fighting retreat. It was more than just annoying, it was slowing down their damage output.

The fight was going to drag on even longer.

Kaldalis was starting to realize the value of diversified weapon selection. There was obvious min-max value to be had from having a selection of elemental options, but this fight - and indeed, the entire siege - could have been dismantled easily if he had been of a mind to prepare a selection of debuff weapons. Obviously, having the Seal debuff ready to roll would have been great at the start of all of this, but now he was aching for the Gust debuff to buy him the space to catch his breath.

Not that he was using his glaive that much. The constant hail of blows coming down at him kept him on the retreat. The only thing the weapon was doing for him was periodically giving him the Jump cooldown to make it a little easier to keep ahead. But now that the Xorn Captain had its back to the wall, metaphorically speaking, every little bit helped.

Especially once Kaldalis’ constant retreat had his back to the wall literally speaking.

The camp’s defensive wall was in rough shape. Without knowing the specifics, he couldn’t really predict what the salvaging process had done, but it was visibly in a badly damaged state. The wood was cracked and split, and in places the cracks were large enough for a person to squeeze through.

Despite the porous nature of the salvaged barrier, Kaldalis realized that stopping the Xorn Captain from crashing through it was a larger help than expected. None of the openings here were large enough for it to pass through. It would have blasted a large hole in the wall on its way out, and considering the delicate state of the wall, there was no telling what it would do to the structure. It was possible that one solid hit here could bring down a huge section of it.

Kaldalis changed direction and danced along the wall clockwise, keeping barely ahead of the Xorn Captain’s unceasing stream of double-fisted strikes. The panic-laced hatred that radiated out of its eyeless face down onto him was still a physical weight on his skin like harsh sunlight, but as the fight went on, the clear-ish fluid leaking from it grew denser. Not just that there were more wounds, but the ones that the DPS were opening up in its back were no longer fountaining watery liquid. The open wounds were now slowly leaking a thicker substance more akin to glue.

As the fight went on, Kaldalis was glad, above all else, for the inhuman stamina he seemed to have. If he were forcing his physical body around like this, he’d have been winded beyond usefulness within a few minutes. Whether it was his vigor stat or just videogame logic, he was still on his feet and moving.

Despite that, even now his muscles were starting to ache. He was feeling the burn. While the Xorn Captain seemed energized by its proximity to death, Kaldalis was wearing down.

He wasn’t afraid of death, though. At the tail of the mob of DPS, he could see Garyung bringing up the rear. If he fell, another would take his place.

And if it was too much for Garyung, Courbois would be there. And Martok. And the rest behind them. And if they could hold for thirty minutes, he’d be there again, ready to fight and die once more.

He held onto that hope.

They were gamers.

Persistent little cockroaches.

It would take more than overwhelming odds to stamp them out.

Things didn’t come to that, though. After a few more minutes, the beast faltered. As soon as it stumbled, the mob of DPS pounced, surrounding it. Even as Kaldalis got the notification of its death - along with the exp, sheaf of notes, and the Infernal Horde Core - they were still hammering away at its body as it toppled over sideways with a crash.

Kaldalis let himself drop to his own knees, taking a deep breath.

He hadn’t realized during the fight, but the stress and tension of the battle had blacked out his peripheral vision, narrowing him to a tunnel. It took a couple of deep breaths for the world to come back to him.

They’d done it. The Captain was dead instead of out there becoming an empowered rival for him, and Panbu was back under their control. Panbu was just a camp again, and obviously would need another big push to get back to upgradable, but they’d done it.

It was over.

Of course, as soon as he had that thought, the next challenge presented itself.

When he looked up the Zaran diplomats were storming towards him, and Cerh and Jetporpan looked like they wanted his head on a plate.