Rushing out of the town hall, Kaldalis had three things on his mind.

First and foremost was getting things in order at the front. The council ought to have been bringing some order to the assembled defenders, but their unwillingness or unpreparedness to do so had led to an unforgivable delay in the camp’s response. He needed to correct that mistake.

His second priority was whatever support he could offer to his friends outside the walls. The whole point of the plan - besides using it to convince the council to start the upgrade - was to clean up the Globins before starting the final fight. He needed to get some reinforcements out of the camp to contribute to that effort, due to the narrow window he had for preparations.

The last thing on his mind was a wild hope. If the start of the event had put out the same notification all the way to Cotanaku as the last one, Kaldalis might have his own reinforcements on the way. With the time that had already been spent, and the thirty minutes he’d negotiated, they would arrive just before Cerh hit the button - assuming that they were on the way.

The arrival - or not - of reinforcements was beyond his reach. For now, he had to keep his attention on the things he could affect. The front gate was his first stop.

“Hey!” Kaldalis barked as he reached the strangely energetic conclusion of the rock-paper-scissors tournament. There were even a pair standing between the finalists, in the middle of color commentary that made the whole affair feel like a sports anime. “What the fuck are you assholes doing? Did you know there’s an attack going on out there?”

One of the tournament finalists whirled towards Kaldalis, and abruptly tried to hide his hands behind his back. “Uh...” Kaldalis recognized the Talsar man as Daan, a tank player from the most recent wave of newbies. “We were just about to leap into action, sir.”

“Lucky break,” the other finalist grumbled. “I had you dead to rights, rock-throwing bitch.”

“Don’t,” Kaldalis snapped, grabbing Daan by the shoulder before he could whirl on the other man. “We don’t have time for this. We didn’t have time for any of this, but apparently Cerh and his bunch of bozos decided to hold a meeting to figure out how to pin the blame for all of this on me instead of, you know, actually leading. But the diplomats are in charge instead of the adventurers, so here we are.”

“What’s the plan?” someone asked anxiously from near the closed inner gate.

“Alright, broad strokes time,” Kaldalis said, raising his voice as the gathered adventurers’ attention turned towards him. “You know that message we all got that said we’re going to wait for two weeks before doing the upgrade, and we’re all on house arrest until then? Well, because some idiot ran the dungeon anyway, we’re in this mess. So I talked the council into pushing the button and getting the upgrade now that we’re already halfway there.”

A cheer went up on the crowd.

Kaldalis grimaced, but he had to agree, things had strangely worked out to their advantage.

“Hey,” Kaldalis said, gesturing to quiet the crowd, “just remember, this is a bad result, okay? The council is pissed at all of us because of this, and even when we win, they’re going to take it out on us however they can.”

The cheer died down at that. While Kaldalis wanted to reassure them that they’d get through this, even if they didn’t have time for their epic season finale of the rock-paper-scissors tournament, he didn’t have time to discuss the socio-political ramifications of this mess.

“I hate to split up groups who have already assembled,” Kaldalis said, gesturing behind himself, “but I need everyone who can get over the wall and through the Xorn with me when I head back out there. We have a special mission and not a lot of time to do it.”

“You heard the man,” Martok said from nearby, “spear and staff users! With him! Everyone else, reform groups.”

The adventures started to shift around, and chatter began to break out as a group gathered behind Kaldalis and the remaining people shifted and flowed to fill the new vacancies. He was surprised at how many stepped up with him. Even ignoring that about a quarter of them were NPCs, he had a group of nearly twenty people at his back.

“Alright,” Kaldalis said, raising his voice to be heard, “while you’re doing this, here is the plan: my group is going out there to start picking off the Globins from the outside. I want all archers to the towers and four full parties in the killbox. We need to relieve pressure on the walls so that they’ll survive the final battle to come. One more party head across to the beachside gate.” He looked around and spotted Gabriel; the terse Finnian healer was standing among Daan’s party near at hand. “Your group, Daan, you go to the beachside gate. I expect Garyung to arrive with reinforcements soon, and I want to make sure they can get in as soon as they arrive. Everyone else, stay fresh. We will need to rotate parties in the killbox when we get to the final fight.

“The whole reason we’re doing this,” he continued, making a gesture and leading his group of spear and staff users towards the wall, “is because every hit point we shave off these guys now will persist into the final attack! Soften them up now, and they’ll come at us soft later. We’re going to get through this nice and easy, alright? No daring heroics.”

A laugh went around at that, and it took Kaldalis a few moments to realize why. He, Kaldalis, had asserted control of the situation, made a big dramatic plan, and had followed that up by demanding they not engage in daring heroics. It was a bit ridiculous.

He smiled along with the laughs, pretending it was intentional.

There was a ladder up to the top of the wall, and Kaldalis started the climb. About two thirds of his group hopped up to the top with their Jump cooldowns, but all the staff-wielders followed Kaldalis’s lead on the ladder. Their cooldown wouldn’t get them up, but it would get them down, and through the mess of Xorn at the base of the wall.

Kaldalis got a decent look around. It looked like the groups on the treeline had chewed through what they had, but only two more Globin were missing from the packs on the walls. Kaldalis realized that someone had made the executive decision to chase the fleeing Globin, and they were now looking to finish them off rather than send them running.

Either way suited Kaldalis just fine.

“We go together,” he said as the last few staff-wielders mounted the wall. “We don’t have time to lose anyone to carelessness.” He turned towards the group below the wall. They were sorting themselves into parties. Daan’s group with Gabriel was starting away towards the beachside gate. “We’ve got twenty-five minutes left to get our chip damage in! Make it count!”

Kaldalis activated his Jump cooldown and hurled himself from the wall.

He sailed easily over the Xorn, landing on the far side of them. Kaldalis stopped and turned to watch the cloud of other spear-wielders leaping as well, landing around him. The staff-wielders jumped straight down, unable to get the same distance from the wall with their mobility tool, but as they hit the ground they tumbled through the Xorn with unnatural agility.

Watching the movement, Kaldalis decided that if he was going to work on a second weapon, the staff went way up his list. He remembered Garyung trash talking it when they’d first met, but it seemed a good match for the spear if all he was looking for was the mobility cooldown. Jump was ineffective when there were obstacles he could crash into, and the staff’s ability seemed designed to ignore - or circumvent - such obstacles.

Kaldalis took the opportunity to stab his spear into the nearest Globin. The blow did the same one hundred and twenty-seven physical damage, and ten earth damage. The important part, though, was that it whirled, its attention coming away from the walls.

“With me!” Kaldalis barked, breaking into a run towards the treeline. “We get this done fast, alright?”

The group descended on the Globin like a pack of starving rodents. The bulk of them leapt in with their spears, while the rest scrambled in low to the ground. A hail of blows descended upon it before Kaldalis could even get it to the treeline. Kaldalis elected to hold his ground a moment and let them work on the monster. Thanks to the archers of Panbu, the Xorn only had eyes for ripping down the walls to get at them for retaliation.

Considering how long it had taken his friends to send their first foe running, Kaldalis was shocked when the Globin he held was bolting towards the jungle before Panbu’s outer gate opened.

It turned out having twenty people did way more damage than five. Who knew?

“Spread out,” Kaldalis ordered, gesturing towards the other groups who were still struggling with their own Globins. “We can’t be hogging all the DPS, right? I’m gonna pick up the rest of the Globins. Have your tanks come peel them off of me when you’re done!”

The group gave a confident cheer and broke away, making for the others where he saw Balrim, Myrin, Ess, and Reno helping Courbois. It meant he was alone for just a moment, surrounded by chaos but not actually knee deep in it yet.

Kaldalis let out a deep sigh, enjoying a single moment of peace before he had to take on the next element of the fight.

The outer gates of Panbu opened, and the Infernal Horde started to move in, pushing their way into the killbox at the adventurers waiting within. Kaldalis had wanted to catch all the Globins before they got into the killbox to fuck over the parties within.

He took one more deep breath and activated his next charge of the Jump cooldown.

“No rest for the wicked,” he muttered, getting to work.