The first syncoresi that emerged from the side entrance of the room took Kaldalis by surprise. Its sudden appearance near at hand meant its claws ripped up his back for one hundred and eight-five damage. It almost turned and bolted for Balrim when the talsar hit him with a potion, but Kaldalis managed to tag it and secure aggro before everything went to shit.

“Repositioning!” Kaldalis yelled, juking and ducking his way through the crowd of syncoresi. He needed to be standing near the door for the next new addition to the fight. If he could clog this entrance like Courbois had the other, he could stop them from being overwhelmed.

The group moved with him - until the second syncoresi broke and tried to flee. The DPS chased it down, continuing to hammer away at it, allowing Kaldalis to move into position more freely. He got there just in time. It looked like their attack was starting to draw the attention of the syncoresi elsewhere in the tunnels - or it had activated some kind of spawner. There were a half-dozen more running up the cavern, and Kaldalis tagged the frontrunners of the group, bringing the whole column to a crashing halt.

He got a little message for another sixty experience points and another pile of research notes as the DPS finished ripping apart that syncoresi and then pounced on the next one of the group inside the room.

“Faster would be better!” Kaldalis called. “Hey, can I borrow Aurigeant? We need to clear this room!”

The spear-wielding finnian leaped to join the rest of the damage dealers. His Sweeping Strikes cooldown was already up again, and with his jump cooldown running as well, he started doing a crazy spinning gymnastic routine, leaping around the room and swinging while in the air above the group, maximizing the number of targets he hit. He was spreading the damage instead of focusing the same target as everyone else, but his damage was focused on the syncoresi in the room, which was what Kaldalis needed. There were ten remaining in the room - not counting the two he had at the mouth of the tunnel - and the group needed to deal with them all in short order. Once they had control of the room, he and Courbois could hold the entrances nearly indefinitely.

Kaldalis took as few hits as he could, but there were just so many claws filling the air around him. Even if he had his jump cooldown back up, he couldn’t have used it without risking the blockade he had on the back tunnel, as he could see more and more syncoresi filling the space behind that front line. Courbois was doing well enough on her side of the room that Deytambos had healing to spare for him, barely relieving the pressure that Balrim and Yosini were struggling with.

Another of the syncoresi in the room broke away and was cut to death by the DPS.

And then another.

The number of syncoresi around him was dwindling, but there were still just so many.

Once Aurigeant’s cooldowns wore off, he was only adding his damage to the rest of the party tunneling down on one mob after the other. Rundan just didn’t have a lot of AoE options, at least not this early. The group was still just barely treading water.

Kaldalis wished he’d grabbed a fourth healer. And a third tank. And eighteen more damage dealers. But he told himself that those twenty hypothetical players were fighting at the camp, all in accordance with his plan.

They weren’t here to mop the floor with the syncoresi.

His team was here to be a thorn in their side. One that forced them to-

“Reinforcements!” Courbois barked.

“Dozens,” Deytambos added. “Captains, too! We did it! The syncoresi pulled back from the camp!”

“We’re not done yet!” Kaldalis said. He nodded to the right side of his vision even though nobody was likely able to see the gesture. “We hold this room until the quest completes! It’s the only confirmation we have that our job is finished. Until the town is safe, we fight!”

Another of the syncoresi on the interior peeled away and was cut down by the mob of damage dealers. They were falling a little faster now, since Aurigeant had softened up the whole crowd.

“I’m going to need a little more support over here,” Deytambos called.

Kaldalis looked over and saw that the sheer weight of the reinforcements pushing their way into the cavern was starting to displace Courbois. She started focusing her blows on their heads and shoulders, which seemed to be forcing the enemies to flinch, but that wasn’t doing much in the face of the growing force behind them. The captains were trying to push their way to the front of the growing force outside the cavern.

“All the DPS besides Aurigeant, back to the entrance!” Kaldalis ordered. “Send a few trying to run back out the way they came! That should relieve the pressure. Aurigeant, keep your Sweeping Strikes up as much as you can. The sooner we have control of the room, the sooner we can start using our resources with some actual fucking efficiency!”

He had to concentrate on his movements now, so he couldn’t pay close attention to see if his plan was working. With only Aurigeant smashing at the syncoresi arrayed against him, there was a low chance of their numbers thinning. He couldn’t even duck around to avoid the attacks effectively, or else he was going to open up the tunnel to let even more of the syncoresi flood in. At least he had the censer still running. It was the only thing keeping their damage from overwhelming him.

He kept his movements as quick and efficient as he could. Claws churned the air around him, and he just kept twisting aside and ducking under them as fast as possible. He didn’t have to attack - overworld aggro rules were a lifesaver here - and so he just kept moving. Always barely one second ahead of getting completely obliterated, he tried to keep his nerves under control.

Kaldalis was the hero, right?

This was what he wanted this whole time, right?

To be challenged as a gamer, right?

He wanted to be the one man snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, right?

Kaldalis wanted recognition, and at the end of this, everyone would know that he had stood in the middle of the shitstorm and held as long as he could.

And if they were all very lucky, it would be as long as they needed.

Aurigeant sent another one running before his Sweeping Strikes was ready again, and Kaldalis saw the party at the door part to let it through.

It looked like his plan was working. Just as they had in the killbox back in camp, the ones fleeing had to push past the others trying to push in, reducing the pressure. It was letting Courbois hold the door much more easily.

He hoped the DPS would be able to return their attention to his side of the room soon, because the press of bodies in the tunnel he was holding was starting to build.

“Alright,” Deytambos said, “we can split some DPS off of this now. Kaldalis, who do you want?”

“Anybody,” he yelled back, “I don’t care who, I’ll be glad to have them!”

“Good, cause I’m sick and tired of these motherfuckin’ syncs in this motherfuckin’ cave!” Myrin announced as she turned and joined Aurigeant fighting the handful still remaining inside the room.

The greatsword-wielding human stayed on the doorway, and Droto kept his arrows headed towards those enemies as well. The bow-wielding human turned attention back to Kaldalis’s side, and Yosini switched groups as well. With Deytambos sticking to the door with Courbois, it was a relatively even split. The odd man out was Balrim, who was still holding the censer aloft.

“Time is starting to run out,” the red-scaled talsar warned, “the smoke’s getting a little thin!”

“We need to clear what’s inside the room!” Kaldalis ordered. “If I’m still getting smacked around once the censer is done, I’m gonna fucking die before the second one is lit!”

“Back to that side, back!” Deytambos ordered, pointing the other damage dealers across to Kaldalis’s side. “Just me and Courbois here! We can hold for a minute, just make sure we don’t lose Kaldalis!”

The group jumped to obey, and within seconds another syncoresi ran. Rather than focusing it to death, they let it go. Courbois moved to let it become a hindrance to the army trying to march to the den’s defense.

Just a few breaths later, a second one ran. Aurigeant’s Sweeping Strikes had done its work. The whole group was softened up, and now it was only a few seconds of focus fire to send each one running.

A minute later, the last of the enemies in the room was clear.

Kaldalis had held the point position long enough for them to do it, and was still just above seventy-five percent hit points, with fifteen hundred and ten out of nineteen hundred and fourteen.

“Censer is down!” Balrim warned a moment after that. At the same moment, the sickly orange coloration faded from the enemies filling the tunnels. “Lighting the next! Hold fast!”

“We’re doing great,” Kaldalis yelled. “Everything is going according to plan. Garyung is probably wiping out the last of the malum any second now!”

This was, of course, a mistake. Kaldalis knew it as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

A person should never test the universe by claiming victory. For, as the censer’s effects drained and the syncoresi lashed out with renewed strength, that was the moment when everything went wrong.