The forces at the jungle-side gate were in chaos.

There were still hails of arrows coming from the walls, but they were much thinner now. More scattered. They lacked the focus Kaldalis had seen when he was last there. He couldn’t tell what was going on beyond the walls or within the killbox, but that wasn’t the most pressing issue.

There was something floating about twenty feet over the gate.

It was the size of a building. Not as large as the giant sireneliana, but larger than any other monster Kaldalis had ever seen. The span of its limbs from the tip of one to the tip of the opposite was probably just over thirty feet.

It looked like an upside-down golden chandelier, with a central body that was a bunch of floating rings like a ribbed sphere. In the center of it was a pulsating yellow glow with no visible source. From below the bottom of that sphere stretched eight giant golden arms, delicately curved and fluted. They stretched up to the sky, ending in sharpened points that curved back down towards the ground like cruel hooks.

All these parts were disconnected, floating vaguely in the air above Cotanaku as a single unit.

As he watched, a bolt of white energy lanced out from the central sphere, crashing against something on the ground. Kaldalis couldn’t see what it hit, but the plume of debris that kicked up indicated that a building had just been demolished. One of the giant legs drooped, smashing down against the town wall like a hook-headed hammer, smashing a small gash in the stone.

There was only one thing it could be.

An Abstract.

The third type of Infernal Horde.

A thing the Lataxinans warned they wouldn’t be able to stop.

“That’s a problem,” Kaldalis said, more to himself than anyone else.

“No shit,” Heluna murmured, though she immediately winced. “Sorry, hun.”

“We’re going to need support on the jungle-side gate,” Kaldalis called over his shoulder to the adventurers on the beach. “And we needed it there ten minutes ago! I’ll try and buy us some time.”

He didn’t wait for a response. There wasn’t time to deal with objections or complaints. His Jump cooldown was already rolling, and everyone in the shadow of the spindly metal monster needed help immediately.

If he was the only one with the energy to step up, he couldn’t afford to hesitate.

Kaldalis launched himself across town as fast as he could. The closer he got the more dire the scene became. A few arrows struck the floating monstrosity, but it retaliated quickly and brutally, smashing at Cotanaku’s walls with its hooked limbs and blasts of energy. But whenever it went unmolested for more than a second, the next blast struck a building, reducing it to a flaming crater instantly.

His Dedication Ring charged up, and on reflex, he activated it. Beneath the part of his mind dealing with the current panic, the part of him that was still an accountant reminded himself that he had a dungeon slot reserved tomorrow, and he had to activate the ring right this second if he wanted it to be ready for his dungeon run. But he wasn’t sure if he was going to get anything out of it this time.

As soon as Kaldalis landed beneath the floating monster, he was surrounded by chaos. A number of Syncoresi had capitalized on the Abstract’s attack and clambered over the walls. The adventurers inside were scrambling to respond.

There was also a tremendous din coming through the closed gate to the killbox. Whatever was going on in there was unlikely to be good. It didn’t help that from beneath, the floating chandelier-like structure was more evocative of an invading alien battleship than a single foe. From here, it was hard to say that the thing was only huge and twenty feet up, instead of massive and a mile above them. The panic was understandable from the perspective of anyone who’d seen any alien invasion movie more than once.

“Adventurers!” Kaldalis bellowed as loud as he could, bending deep at the knees for this next jump. “We don’t go down without a fight! This is our town! Take it back!”

With that, he launched himself straight up at the floating monster. Without any features or proper body, he didn’t know if it saw him coming. But it didn’t make any reaction until after he jabbed his spear against the fluted metal of one of its limbs. He only did fifty-two damage, but he landed a stack of poison, which would tick away at its health. The important thing was that according to Overworld Aggro rules, it would have to pay attention to him until it killed him.

The central glow in its spherical body pulsed, and a beam of light blasted out at Kaldalis. Unlike the ranged attacks of the elementals, this was right on target, properly leading his arcing course through the air to catch him as he came back down. Instead, Kaldalis activated Slowfall, letting the attack hurtle out into the air above the town. He didn’t know how much that would have hurt, but he needed to avoid getting obliterated by a building-destroying laser beam.

The only ways to establish and hold aggro on this thing was going to be with a spear’s jump, or with a bow’s range. And a bow didn’t have the mobility options to handle this thing’s attacks.

There weren’t many tanks who could contain this thing.

Kaldalis had blundered into one of the few loadouts that was mandatory for dealing with this foe.

It took several seconds for Kaldalis to slowly drift back down to the ground. As he fell, the monster rotated in the air, clearly lining up one of its limbs with the spot where he was going to land. The unknowable intelligence behind the monster timed the attack perfectly, and Kaldalis’s feet didn’t touch the ground before the moment of impact.

The hooked limb smashed Kaldalis into the stone of the courtyard. Unlike the previous times Kaldalis had taken damage from enemies, this damage wasn’t identified. No number or damage type. There was just a searing pain and a big chunk of his hit points were gone. The accountant part of his brain said it was something like twelve hundred damage, but that wasn’t important.

He’d survived.

And he had to keep it that way.

Scrambling to his feet, Kaldalis bolted in a circle around the monster.

Slowfall was a liability he couldn’t afford, so Kaldalis canceled the ability. It had saved him from being sniped mid-air, but it had also given the monster all the time it needed to smash him into the ground without giving him the chance to dodge.

Kaldalis darted left and right as he ran, and a blast of energy narrowly missed him, leaving a crater in the stone right beside him. The blast nearly threw him to the ground, but the adjustment of his tail kept him on his feet.

“What are you all doing?” Kaldalis yelled. “Kill that fucking thing! I got it!”

He couldn’t pay close enough attention to his surroundings to see if the shouted order worked. Another of the spindly metal limbs was coming down on him. It was lightning-fast, and he narrowly dove out from under it, feeling the swing miss taking him in the leg by inches.

Kaldalis reversed direction as soon as the appendage struck the stone. His Jump ability was still active, so he was able to lunge as it retracted, landing on the grooved surface. He started smashing his spear against it, dishing out his meager damage, and the whole monster quivered in a way that unmistakably conveyed rage.

Shockingly, Kaldalis realized that the floating monster was entirely silent. He’d expected some kind of roar or snarl. But as the structure quivered, there wasn’t even a jingle of windchimes.

He didn’t have time to reflect on that, though. There was a faint flash in the central sphere, and Kaldalis kicked off of the monster’s arm just before a bolt of energy exploded where he had been standing.

Right on its own arm.

The floating geometry shook violently at that. The spot on the arm where Kaldalis had been standing was scorched and cracked by its own attack. He had a brief thought that if he could dance around on the creature’s arms, he could trick it into blasting itself over and over again. But he discarded the plan quickly. He only had a few seconds left on his jump cooldown, and he didn’t want to be stuck on its arm when it ran its course, or else he was going to get obliterated with no way to dodge. It was time to return to the ground until he could jump again.

When he hit the ground, the monster was still shaking silently at blasting itself. It gave Kaldalis a moment to examine his surroundings.

The adventurers were starting to rally. The loose Syncoresi were under control by tank players now, and while most of the DPS were still staring up at the floating monster, a number of them had oriented on the earthbound threats, and were helping to clean them up.

“Archers!” Kaldalis yelled, pointing up at the monster. “The floating chandelier is our top priority! Once it’s down, the siege will end!” He looked around at the other adventurers around. “Everyone else! Either get a bow, or go deal with stuff you can reach! We gotta make sure there’s still a town to save when this is over!”

That seemed to snap most of them out of their stunned stupor. Most of them rushed towards the nearest of the Syncoresi to contribute their damage to that cause, but more than a few fumbled to change weapons.

Kaldalis’s instincts screamed at him and he hurled himself to the side as the next blast of energy left a crater where he’d just been standing. Even his tail couldn’t keep his balance now, and he went into a roll. As soon as his feet were under himself, he dove backwards towards the crater, and a giant metal hook smashed into the stone where he had been.

“Well, I pissed it off alright,” Kaldalis grumbled as he got to his feet again. “It’s a shame that’s the easy part.”

He took off at a run in a giant circle around the courtyard, focusing all his attention on not being crushed to paste by the floating abomination above him.