Put me in the camp of "I hated this quest". I hate the RP duties in general (I didn't spend countless hours on my character just to play some NPC), but playing this one was just awful. I hate stealth and don't want to sneak around things in the first place. I finished the duty on first try with about 10 minutes left. It was not hard. It was just tedius. I did log off the game the moment the cutscenes were over and so far have not logged back in. Might try in the morning when queues aren't absurd, but I don't know. Garlemald has been a series of really annoying and unpleasant quest mechanics in a row. From Thancred's RP session, to the girl in green follow-a-long, to this Duty, it's just driven away any sense of enjoyment the story itself might have had.

And as others have said, the reasoning behind this duty completely destroys the story. At any point, the villains could win simply by pulling you out and then destroying your empty body. Apparently good will only win, because evil is dumb.