The effect of the censer was surprisingly immediate.

Logically, Kaldalis expected the incense to take time to disperse through the camp, but as soon as he looked away from the censer he saw that a group of the creatures lumbering through the tents nearby had taken a sickly yellow tone to their fur and skin. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it was a good sign.

A good sign indeed.

“What do we do now?”

Kaldalis readied his spear. “We’re adventurers. There’s monsters all over the place.”

“Yes. We get to work,” Aurigeant agreed, readying his own weapon, another spear, though his stance was dramatically different from how Kaldalis chose to stand. Kaldalis was surprised to see him using a spear, but he didn’t have a reason to find it odd. It seemed to be a good weapon, especially for someone who was just learning combat.

Perhaps he should instead ask why more people didn’t use them. Swords seemed to be the things everyone defaulted to, but it was much harder to fight with a sword. The limited reach would have opened Kaldalis up to a lot more potential damage.

As soon as everyone was ready, Kaldalis led the charge. He cut straight for the group that he’d seen darting through the tents, not wanting to give them the chance to find the victims they sought. He thought about trying to make for the direction Garyung had gone to offer assistance, but these were right here. The bhogad had shown that he could take care of himself.

Even weakened, these beasts could cause untold destruction if left unchecked, and they had the chance now to deal with them.

There were three of the creatures together, and Kaldalis aimed himself for the largest of them. As soon as his spear struck it, he could feel the difference the censer made. Instead of nine damage, he did sixteen. He still did no wind damage, but the dramatic increase in physical damage was a good sign.

Aurigeant and Myrin joined the melee soon after, and when Myrin let out a satisfied cackle at her own increased damage, he knew this fight was going to go well. Kaldalis focused on spreading his attacks around, first lunging for the one on his right, landing another sixteen damage, and then reversing to stab the other in turn. He had to take a hit from the big one in order to land another blow, but again, the incense represented a surprisingly impactful reduction in its stats. It was doing over fifty damage less, the claws raking across his chest only dealing one-hundred and twenty-one damage. Balrim’s potion almost matched that with a single heal.

Aurigeant and Myrin went to town on the monsters. Kaldalis was amazed at how smoothly it went with a full party. The only real issue he had was holding threat. Now that he was fighting with a proper party, he realized where the true challenge was. He could easily hold one creature’s attention if he just landed a strike on it every few seconds. But keeping track of all of the monsters in the fight, and getting a few hits in on them periodically, would be a full-time gig.

There was one other struggle. Kaldalis had to keep Balrim’s healing cooldown in mind. One of Balrim’s potions healed him for about ninety hit points, but the cooldown was fifteen seconds. Kaldalis’s inner accountant did the math without him having to devote any mid-fight brainpower to it. Balrim’s hit points healed per second was six. That meant he could afford to take one hit from these monsters every twenty seconds. It set a careful cadence to his focus. Sure, there were going to be times when he didn’t quite get out of the way of an attack in time, but his generous hit point pool would give him a good margin for error.

As the first of the three beasts turned and fled after taking the requisite amount of punishment from Myrin and Aurigeant’s weapons, Kaldalis was really regretting that he hadn’t stuck together with his friends from day one. Sure, he was likely to not receive the same amount of experience for the kills, but how much more could they get done together than he had done alone? Mentally, he found himself drafting part two of his apology to Balrim. The talsar had been right, and Kaldalis had never been one to shrink back when it came to taking responsibility for his actions.

The remaining two followed the other soon after. Myrin and Aurigeant focused their attacks on one of the beasts and drove it away before turning their full attention on the final one. Finishing the job only took a few moments more. Myrin started running after the last one when it ran, but Kaldalis caught her by the shoulder before she could get out of reach.

“No,” Kaldalis said quickly. “We stick together or we fall apart.”

“Cliche.” Myrin laughed and shrugged. “But also accurate, I guess. So if we’re not chasing, where are we going next, fearless leader?”

“To the front gate,” Kaldalis said as he looked in that direction. “There’s still fighting there. Maybe we can help turn the tide.”

“Just the four of us?” Balrim asked.

“We four,” Aurigeant said, “and all those between here and there.”

Kaldalis couldn’t think of anything more to say than that, and so led the group forward.

The quartet didn’t make quick work of the monsters they found, but they made consistent work of them. Each fight was a battle of attrition, but Balrim’s healing and Kaldalis’s hit points firmly turned the battles in their favor.

Myrin and Aurigeant did their jobs and whittled the creatures down, forcing their retreat time and again. Kaldalis didn’t know if he could keep up this kind of fight all day - his hit points were fine, but he was starting to tire from how much dodging and dancing he had to do in every battle. His brain was also lagging a bit, from having to manage threat. He had turned it into a counting game, and knew it would eventually become second nature, but it was difficult to get there.

More than anything, though, Kaldalis was grateful for the censer’s effect. Without that, every fight would have been much longer, and the margin for error much thinner.

Kaldalis eventually started to see others fighting against the weakened monsters. The groups were scattered. Many people were running after the creatures, allowing themselves to be distracted from protecting the tents and supplies they were trying to save. There were a few who seemed to have gotten them to engage in a proper fight - other tanks, Kaldalis guessed - but they were doing it alone, despite the other adventurers embroiled in chaos around them.

“Group up!” Kaldalis bellowed as loud as he could. “Bodyguards can force the monsters to stand and fight. Work together and we can drive them off!”

“And get the lead out!” Myrin added. “Anything still here when the debuff wears off means we’re all royally fucked!”

“Thanks,” Kaldalis muttered. “Good pep talk. Were you a public speaker in a past life?”

“What?” She looked legitimately confused for just a moment. “Pft. It’s an important addition. Just because we can deal with these things now doesn’t mean we’ll stand a chance once they’re back at full strength.”

Kaldalis nodded with a grimace. “Then let’s follow our own advice. We have to finish this fast.”

The party found another pair of monsters to fight before they got to the gate. These ones had set upon what appeared to be a supply cache someone had stashed in one of the tents here. It looked like medical supplies, and while some of them had been shredded and destroyed, there was still some left to save. After the warm-ups they already had, the creatures were just more of the same. The fight itself still required Kaldalis’s undivided attention to mitigate as much damage as possible, but it was starting to feel routine. His job was just to keep smacking them to keep them here, and to keep avoiding their jet-black claws as much as possible so that Balrim’s healing wasn’t outpaced by the incoming damage.

“We have to hold!” someone nearby shouted, drawing Kaldalis’ attention. “We can’t fall now! We only have this one shot!”

That sounded like it was coming from the gate. If the situation was desperate there, they had to hurry. Kaldalis gritted his teeth. “Healer, adjust!” Without waiting to see if Balrim understood what he said, Kaldalis started to accept blows he didn’t have to in order to sneak in more damage. He was hoping to speed up the fight, but it also gave him a moment of mindlessness to let his brain relax.

Balrim cursed, but the healing came slightly faster.

The first of the pair broke and ran shortly after his shout. Kaldalis took note of it running to the nearby wall and leaping up onto it. Its enormous claws let it scale the wooden barrier, going up and over the top. It was a nice reassurance to know that the ones they ran off were likely leaving the camp entirely rather than just scuttling away to look for easier prey.

But that wall was not going to cut it in the long wrong.

“Hold, you fuckers!” the voice came again. Kaldalis recognized it this time as Onirioago, the expedition leader. “If this one gets into the camp, we may as well march into the sea!”

Kaldalis paused long enough to look at his party and make sure they were with him. After a round of nods, he led the way. He bursted around the last row of tents towards the gate.

What he saw there chilled him.

There were at least a score of people on the ground. Some were dead, but some were crawling away with what looked like mortal wounds. Kaldalis recognized several of them as those who had been at the table in the meeting tent.

The few that still stood appeared to be those remaining.

Onirioago and the ship captain were locked in melee with creatures. The talsar leader of the research team appeared to be tanking for them, and Kaldalis recognized the healer finnian from that first day of sparring aboard the ship.

He was happy that they appeared to have a full group. But Kaldalis could see why they were struggling when Kaldalis’s team hadn’t been.

The beast they fought was much larger than the rest. Its size meant that the monster’s reach was much longer than the others, but he couldn’t discount the idea that it might also be higher level, which could give it higher stats and additional abilities.

As if in response to the thought, the creature let out a howl - that same sound of heavy metal grinding against concrete - and even at a distance Kaldalis winced.

He was aware that the howl had dealt seventy points of damage to him somehow. He saw that everyone else was also affected by it when the health bars of his own party ticked down - and by a dangerous proportion for the non-tanks.

The finnian healer, no matter how high leveled, would have to struggle to keep up with such strong full-party damage, especially if it came on consistently.

Kaldalis was ready to charge in to offer what help he could, though he hesitated for just a bare moment. One of those enormous clawed hands raised up to slash down at the talsar who currently held its attention.

And that’s when he saw it.

The giant creature only had four fingers on that hand.