The quintet of adventurers crashed through the white-blossom forest at top speed. Reno, with her daggers, pulled ahead quickly with the Dash ability, but the passive speed boost Balrim had from his bow let him gradually catch up to her.

The other three, however, trailed behind. Myrin couldn’t use her greatsword’s Aggressive Charge ability without an enemy target, while Kaldalis and SeventyEight couldn’t use the Jump ability from their spears safely in the denser parts of the jungle without becoming separated - and potentially losing their way - in the denser foliage above.

“This sucks,” Myrin grumbled, “I should carry something to swap to for runs like this.”

SeventyEight nodded with a smile. “I’ll make you something when we get back. But we have to get there first.”

“I’d love to get in on that, too,” Kaldalis said. He grimaced up at the low canopy in this part of the forest. “I can appreciate that we’ve all got different abilities and usages, but combat isn’t the only thing Monsoon should have balanced around.”

The three of them simultaneously broke through the treeline around Panbu, nearly slamming into the backs of Reno and Balrim. Myrin started to curse in complaint, but stopped when she saw what was before them.

Up ahead, the walls of Panbu were being hammered by about three dozen Xorn, backed up by ten Globin, sparsely scattered through the group.

There were maybe twenty adventurers in the archery towers, plinking away at the Xorn below, but the walls were empty.

“Are we fucked?” Reno asked, looking back at Kaldalis. “Where is everybody?”

Kaldalis nodded, then shrugged, then shook his head. “I don’t know. Everybody got the quest, same as we did. They have to be on the way from wherever they are. But look at this: there’s less than fifty of them. We can take these assholes, right?”

“Uh. S-sure,” Balrim stammered. He looked at his friends then the collective Infernal Horde. “There are kinda a lot of them, though.”

“That’s why we have to act fast,” Kaldalis said. “If they break through the walls then it’s not just Panbu getting fucked. Garyung is still gonna be on the line for however he got the cash for this operation whether or not the town gets made.”

SeventyEight readied her spear. “We should start with the Globin. I have Seal on this weapon, we can pick them off so that the other defenders can take on the Xorn.”

“And after that,” Reno grumbled, “we just have to figure out who Voker is and make sure he pays for this, too.”

Kaldalis agreed with that sentiment, but they didn’t have the time to ruminate on their revenge against whoever had ignored the council’s ruling and ran the dungeon anyway. Before thinking about it any more, he needed to hit something. Activating his Jump cooldown, he flung himself towards the mob of Infernal Horde surrounding Panbu.

The Globin were on the fringes of the pack, as their slimmer bodies likely lacked the raw destructive power of the Xorn. Kaldalis came down behind one of the Globin and slashed right down its back with the blade of his glaive. The strike dealt one hundred and twenty-seven physical damage, and ten earth damage.

He reflected for a moment on how poor the Infernal Horde’s tactics were. The Globin obviously had low defense stats compared to the Xorn, but they weren’t really working to defend them.

“If you don’t peel for your healer,” Kaldalis said as he leaped back from the negligent crowd of Xorn to return to his friends, “you get exactly what you deserve.”

On the way back, Kaldalis was surprised to see more groups of adventurers in the treeline. They must have all been out in the forest screwing around, same as Kaldalis and his friends. He hadn’t seen them before, but now that they’d seen what he was doing - running back to his group with a Globin chasing after him - they had started grouping up as well. Kaldalis could already see Courbois darting out of the trees towards the enemies when he got back to his party.

“Clear the Globins,” Kaldalis yelled to the other groups. “Even just pulling them away from the rest will get us through this!”

He hoped he was right as his party went to work.

The Globin was shockingly threatening, even on its own. Its attacks weren’t as beefy as those of their Xorn allies - they didn’t even hit Kaldalis for more than one hundred and fifty damage - but the way its body moved was like flowing liquid, making it a real challenge for Kaldalis to anticipate its attacks. Its center of mass was also extremely deceptive. The creature appeared to have a bloated abdomen, but it moved as if it was just a giant bubble of air, with its center of gravity up around its shoulders.

Nevertheless, between the three damage dealers - and SeventyEight’s foresight to keep a Seal weapon on hand - their damage output overcame the periodic bursts of healing.

It just took a very, very, very long time.

When it finally staggered back from Kaldalis and fearfully fled into the jungle, the whole group was dog tired.

“Jesus,” Reno said, arching her back and gasping for breath. “That’s the most annoying enemy design I’ve ever seen. WTB spell interrupt mechanics, am I right?”

“We can’t rest now,” Kaldalis said, pointing back at the walls. “There’s still work to do.”

Five of the Globins around the walls had been peeled off and were being hacked away at by the various groups, but the remainder had moved, dispersing themselves through the attacking forces to cover as many of the Xorn as they could with their healing ability.

Even from here, Kaldalis could see the other adventurers’ stamina flagging. This was well and truly a pain in the ass. He couldn’t even imagine how much of a pain it must have been for the guys in the archery towers, just plunking away and doing literally nothing.

They had one advantage, at least. There didn’t appear to be any captains present. Having seen the captains in the ill-fated final battle, Kaldalis knew that even with the walls so heavily reinforced, the siege potential of a one-man battering ram would put them on a much tighter clock.

But this was the second attack, shouldn't there have been a captain here?

“Hold on,” Kaldalis said, stopping himself before he could head back to pick up a new mob to fight. “Wait, I’m having one of those things… A headache with pictures.”

“Do you mean an idea?” Reno asked with a smirk.

Kaldalis tipped her a wink, but said nothing else.

The joke aside, Kaldalis was having an idea. There was no captain at this attack… And it was because they’d chased down and killed it at the reclamation. The game wasn’t spawning new monsters. It was drawing them from a pool and throwing them at the camp for the event.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, it seemed so obvious he facepalmed. Of course they were always the same foes. Hadn’t he had his huge rivalry with the four-fingered syncoresi?

It also explained why the final fight for Cotanaku hadn’t been as overwhelming as the failed establishment of Panbu. In the second raid of Cotanaku, Kaldalis had been adamant about killing the Infernal Horde rather than letting them flee. That had thinned the ranks for Cotanaku, giving them an edge when Garyung had pulled the trigger on the upgrade.

“We can use this information,” Kaldalis said, to no one in particular. “We can do something with this, right?”

SeventyEight looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. “What?”

“The Infernal Horde are persistent.”

“Yeah,” Balrim said with a laugh. “They certainly seem to be.”

“No, I mean, they’re conserved. They…” Kaldalis gestured vaguely at the group attacking the walls. “They don’t just spring up to fill the gaps in the ranks. Like, the captain isn’t here with this attack because we killed it. We didn’t get a Major with our final fight because it hadn’t been promoted yet.”

Everyone seemed to contemplate that for a moment.

“So what can we do with this?” Myrin asked. “How is this useful information?”

“If we send all the Globins here running,” Reno said, rubbing her chin, “maybe if we start the final fight right after, that’s a decent number of Globins who are either low health, or still fleeing.”

“Plus whatever Xorn we can chip down,” SeventyEight said with a nod.

Kaldalis hadn’t considered the idea of actually trying to get Cerh to push the button to make Panbu a town. It was a pretty hopeless cause. Kaldalis could probably track him down and try, but even if Cerh didn’t hate him specifically, the council had been adamant about holding for reinforcements.

“I don’t think I could convince them to do it,” Kaldalis said, eventually.

Myrin gestured at the camp with her greatsword. “Honestly, we were ready to rock this morning when we ran out of quests. If everyone is here, we all know we’re gonna get it done.”

“You won’t know until you try,” Balrim said, grabbing Kaldalis by the shoulder and giving him a reassuring squeeze. “Just go talk to them, we’ll go help another group to speed things up out here.”

Kaldalis sighed. This whole idea seemed flimsy. In his mind, it was more of an excuse to get Cerh to start the final battle than it was a legitimate idea.

But if he could put on his best politician face and try, maybe…

“Are you guys gonna be okay without me?”

“You’re stalling,” Reno said, giving him a playful sock in the arm. “Don’t think I don’t know what it looks like. Just put on your big boy pants and do it for all of us out here.”

“Yeah,” Myrin said, putting a hand on the small of Kaldalis’s back and pushing him towards Panbu. “Do it for all of us who don’t want to sit on our asses for the next two weeks!”

“Alright,” Kaldalis grumbled as he started towards Panbu, activating a charge of his Jump ability to let him get into the camp past the Xorn and over the wall. “But don’t be surprised if it doesn’t work.”