Despite their forces outnumbering hers - even discounting that Garyung had Dalgaard well in hand - Kaldalis was unnerved by the confidence still radiating from Onirioago. She had her spear, and with it, she might be able to make herself a match for the four of them all together. If she didn’t care for what happened after, she could choose any one of them to die with a single well-placed strike. But if she had skill to match her confidence, she could use the polearm to keep them at arm’s reach, stabbing them to death.

Considering that Gavinkim - possibly the most threatening fighter among them - was an NPC, whose death would be permanent, Kaldalis was inclined to try and find a non-violent solution.

The only way to do that was to test that radiating confidence.

“You know me,” Kaldalis said, stepping past Garyung to put himself in between Onirioago and all his companions as Martok started to go around cutting the bindings on the others who were still paralyzed. “You know what I’m going to say.”

“And you know what my response would be,” Onirioago shot back, slowly levelling her spear at Kaldalis, lined up with the center of his chest. “But I do so love our chats, Kaldalis. Please, go ahead.”

There was a flicker of something across her face, and Kaldalis felt a little twinge of hope. She was trying to stall for time. She wanted to draw it out to give her underlings time to come to her aid. But perhaps he could convince her that he was the one favored by this situation. The time she bought would benefit him as well. Once Myrin, Reno, and Ess recovered from the paralytic poison, being on the inside of this little floating house would give them the defensible position to hold off however many friends Onirioago had.

“This doesn’t have to end with violence,” Kaldalis said carefully, drawing each word out. He let his eyes flick over towards Ess, who was close enough within his eye line that he could make that pointed look while keeping Onirioago in his peripheral vision. “We can reach a peaceful conclusion here. Nobody has to know about your little revolt. Nobody has to know about your underlings, either. You can keep your information network and have your fun. But you just have to put down your weapon and surrender.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me that I don’t have to be the villain here?” Onirioago asked with a smirk.

“I wouldn’t insult you like that,” Kaldalis said, remembering the last time he’d tried to cut a deal with her. “I’ve never met what you are, but calling you a villain is a gross oversimplification.”

For a brief moment, Onirioago’s smirk turned into a real smile. It was just a second of genuine joy at his recognition.

The smile planted a pang of regret in Kaldalis’s heart. If she was just a little bit less megalomaniacal, they could have been friends.

But that ship had sailed several times already. They were enemies now, and it would take more than a few moments of personal connection to undo what she’d done.

“I’m sorry,” Kaldalis continued, “we can’t all come out of this as winners. But you don’t have to come out of this at a total loss. I’m not even asking for unconditional surrender. Ask me a favor. Two favors. Five favors. I’m not above bribing you to end this without one of us dead on the ground.”

“As much as I love our chats,” Onirioago said, her smirk taking a dark cast, “I’m not above this ending with one of us dead on the ground.”

She lunged.

Kaldalis twisted before the weapon struck, and let it glance off of the front of his armor. If it had struck square, the ominous weapon might have punctured through, and from Onirioago’s aim, it would have perforated his lung.

She wasn’t looking to fight.

She was looking to kill.

Onirioago started to pull the weapon back, making a calculated shuffling step to draw back for a second strike. Kaldalis reached for the weapon, trying to grab it to wrestle for it, but all he got for the attempt was a slash across his palm. He had a moment of terror, where he feared that the edge may have been treated with Jormongumo venom, but he was fine. Their supply must have been too limited for her to have slathered it on her weapon without confidence that this fight would come.

The spear lanced out at him again, and he had to jump back to avoid being skewered. Behind him, he heard a brief struggle, and he spared a brief glance to see that Garyung had become distracted by Onirioago’s attack, and Dalgaard had nearly wiggled loose from his grip. Martok had jumped to Garyung’s aid, and Gavinkim was going for the knife that Martok had dropped, presumably to use it to put an end to Onirioago.

Kaldalis was going to need to deal with this fight alone for a second longer. More than long enough for Onirioago to kill him if he wasn’t careful. He found himself desperately missing the standard combat rules of this world. Onirioago wielding a “war weapon” put him at too huge of a disadvantage.

That was how he could win.

He needed to get the weapon away from her.

But how?

As Onirioago’s weapon lunged in at him again, and Kaldalis knew what to do. If the PVP system was going to be an insurmountable problem, he needed to make it Onirioago’s problem, not his.

And so he let her attack connect.

Onirioago had aimed low. She’d seen him fight enough to know that when things got desperate, he wasn’t above throwing himself to the floor. If he’d tried to duck down, that would have made this a shot through the heart - with only himself to blame - and if he’d tried to throw himself all the way to the ground, it would have opened his throat. As he’d stepped up and accepted it, it punched through the thinner parts of his armor over his midsection. It sank an inch into his gut, and Kaldalis fought every instinct in his body to lunge forward.

Impaling himself.

The pain burned, but in the same way as holding an ice cube bare-handed for too long. The weapon froze a line of phantom fire through his body, and he felt the moment it broke through his back. Under normal circumstances, it would have been devastating. Debilitating.

But in the world of Rundan, Kaldalis was a tank. More than that, a tank with tank-focused statistics on all his equipment. Despite this combat not being broken down to damage numbers, that mattered for something. He kept his feet, even as he knew the tip of the weapon was only about three inches to the left of his spine.

More than that, he turned. He turned bodily, and was able to ignore the searing pain roaring in his abdomen.

Onirioago hadn’t expected that. Any of it. Even when the attack connected, there wasn’t a moment of victory. She’d known that he’d let her land the blow on purpose. Even so, she hadn’t seen what he was planning until it was too late. His sharp turn ripped the haft of the weapon from her hand, and just like that, she was disarmed. And he was one unpleasant act of contortion away from being armed himself.

Even before that, he saw that Gavinkim was leaping to his side, Dalgaard’s dropped blade held in a knife-fighter’s reverse grip. Kaldalis didn’t even have to look to know that there was murder in his eyes. As Onirioago’s eyes flicked to the oncoming Bhogad, Kaldalis grabbed the haft of the spear and pulled it out of his gut with a grunt of pain. His spear skill let him whirl the weapon and level it at Onirioago, even though he could feel warmth spreading from his wound and wetting his underclothes.

He expected her to posture and boast. To say something about his wound being fatal, or about how she had a plan for this eventuality. Just a moment of overconfidence to let him come to terms with the absolutely unholy pain still singing in his gut. But she offered no such opening. With a flash of her hands, she held two daggers, and Kaldalis flinched back for a moment, fearing that they might also be war weapons. But they were more ordinary-looking. The simple pieces of curved and sharpened metal lacked the sinister aura possessed by the spear Kaldalis now held.

It was obvious in a second what she was doing. The daggers gave her the dash ability, and with it, she reached the entrance to the floating house in the blink of an eye, before Kaldalis could react. He tried to lunge at her, but she didn’t even stop to open the door. She literally hit the door, the impact of her shoulder shattering the brittle wooden hinges, and flew out into the forest canopy.

Kaldalis ran to the door and for a brief terrifying second, she was out of view. It was his total expectation that Onirioago could - and would - utterly vanish the moment she could. He feared that the next time he saw her, it would be accompanied by a monologue about how she’d managed to drug him. But at the end of that brief second, he locked eyes on her back. The dash ability was still running, and she was sprinting at speeds he’d never be able to match through the dense jungle.

Not by normal means, anyway.

He had only one chance. He needed to move now, or else his one shot was going to be gone, and with it, Onirioago. He leaned out the door, letting himself tip forward.

Using Nyxlas’ Augment and the Jump cooldown, he kicked off as soon as he was in line with Onirioago’s fleeing form.

Kaldalis became a bullet. He flew through the intervening space in a near-blinding flash, too fast to react. There was a thump and a grunt of pain that wasn’t his. He hardly believed that he had reached her that fast until his vision went dark for a moment after the impact. The augment had put so much force behind the jump that he hit Onirioago’s back hard enough to blank his vision for a moment.

There were a few seconds of frantic grappling. Even as his vision was returning as fuzzy static, Kaldalis was terrified that Onirioago might escape. He redoubled his efforts to get a firm grip on her. She thrashed beneath him in a way that was particularly vicious. Fingernails clawed at him, and she spat a stream of curses - half of which he’d never heard even from Heluna - into his face. She lunged at him headfirst twice, and he thought she was trying to headbutt him horn-to-horn, believing her allies to outnumber his, but even blinded he managed to twist away from the attacks.

The fight went out of her quickly, though. The struggle ended just before his vision fully returned. But not because he had pinned her.

When his vision returned, he found himself staring down at her corpse.