Kaldalis scrambled over the railing and back onto the deck. Despite conventional wisdom, the UI elements that normally floated around his vision were as obscured by the darkness as the deck around him. With only the light of guttering torches and sparse lanterns, he had to tilt his head awkwardly away from where he knew tentacles were descending upon the ship in order to overlap his inventory and character page on places nearby where there was illumination. He switched the fishing rod in his weapon slot for his spear as fast as he could before whirling, opening his eyes as wide as possible, hoping to see the threat come before it crushed him.

But the tentacles didn’t come for him. He saw vague shapes moving through the blackness off the edge of the ship, but instead of slapping down onto the deck, the whole ship shook and shifted as the monster took a grip on the hull. Kaldalis staggered back and forth as the boat was lifted out of the water. His tail lashed in time with the shifting surface, keeping him on his feet even as sailors and other adventurers within view around him were sent tumbling across the deck.

The boat jerked to a stop once the enormous hull had been lifted clear of the water, and he felt like the monster was about to turn it over and plunge it into the ocean. Kaldalis wasn’t sure if he should rush to the side of the ship and stab at the tentacles, or if he should rush to the stern and dive into the water to avoid being amidst the wreckage if the boat was suddenly transmuted into a giant mass of splintered wood. But his plan was interrupted when an animalistic shriek filled the air, rising up from beneath the ship. And then another matching shriek from farther up the boat. And another from the other side. And then it became a chorus.

Moments later, they were on the deck.

The creature nearest to him was about human sized, but as they came into view elsewhere on the ship, their sizes ranged from that of a large dog up to the size of a horse. They were chitinous beasts, looking sort of like enormous lobsters, crawling on a number of slim segmented legs. In place of enormous claws and antennae was a forest of tentacles, twitching and writhing across the deck ahead of itself. At the back of its body, in lieu of a lobster tail was a spiral shell, curling up like a snail.

The nearest of them wiggled its tentacles, first along the deck, and then in the air. A moment later and the creature’s attention oriented on him, and it skittered forward, tentacles raised and reaching.

Kaldalis let loose a sound that was not a scream. It was definitely an extremely manly war cry. An intentional kiai meant to draw in and focus his attention and strength.

He was absolutely not caught off-guard and terrified.

Gathering himself, he lashed out blindly with his spear, hoping to interpose the sharp point in between himself and the grasping beast.

The blade of the spear slashed across the soft tentacles, drawing a splash of bluish blood. His mind told himself that he dealt thirty-nine physical damage and nineteen wind damage - an astounding amount. The creature screamed, the sound like the bark of a silenced gun drawn out over several seconds. Two tentacles hit the deck of the ship, and it recoiled from the blow. Kaldalis lunged forward, driving the spear into the creature again in a thrust. The blade of the glaive lanced through the soft flesh of the creature’s front and deep into its body. Another fifty-eight total damage done, and the segmented legs went limp. The creature flopped to the deck, and while the tentacles still twitched, wrapping feebly around the spear plunged into their depths, the creature was dead, and Kaldalis was able to pull the weapon free and prepare himself for the next attack.

As the beast fell, he received some information directly to his brain. Much like the way he was informed of his damage output, he was informed that he had slain a nautilobster. One shell fragment was added to his inventory, and he was awarded 12 exp. Considering he required 750 to reach level 3, it wasn’t near enough to work towards his next level. He would need to clear the deck of them twice over to even get close.

That said, they were chasing and closing in on the sailors scattered across the deck. Kaldalis was a tank, and had long since decided that protecting others - even from near-negligible challenges for near-negligible rewards - was his foremost goal.

Kaldalis let out a bellow that was actually not a terrified shriek this time, and rushed the nearest beast. It was one of the larger ones, and was currently wrapping its tentacles around the legs of a wounded sailor. Kaldalis smashed the tip of his spear into its side, sending a scattering of cracked shell across the deck, and immediately whirled away. He dealt his fifty-eight damage to it and was already moving on. The creature dropped its would-be prey and moved to give chase, drawn after him by the aggro his attack generated.

He darted around the deck, running from sailor to sailor, drawing the nautilobsters off of the harried crew. There were a few calls of gratitude following him, but he didn’t stop until he had at least ten on him. That was ten people he’d saved. Now he just had to mop up the results.

As he ran over the deck, he saw that the other adventurers were starting to pour out of the ship and onto the deck. A small number of them were also picking away at the army of crustaceans that were scrambling around, but most were running to the sides of the deck, where the enormous tentacles were gripping the ship. It looked like the bulk of the effort was going towards getting the ship loose of the creature’s grasp.

Kaldalis contemplated joining them, but he felt good about his contribution. The sailors he’d rescued were either climbing up into the rigging, struggling to get the sails under control in the storm the ship was suddenly caught in, or they were running belowdecks, where they would be safe. The mob of beasts following him were more than enough attention for right now, and he planted his feet and set about laying into them with his glaive.

Blue blood, grey flesh, and mottled bits of shell scattered across the deck as he smashed his weapon against the creatures as they closed in on him. They felt like such a negligible challenge, but he reminded himself that each one represented a life saved. If only saving lives was always as easy as two strikes with a spear. Each one rewarded that same twelve exp and a single shell fragment. Even the larger beasts only took two hits and gave the same rewards as the rest. The bodies left behind made footing precarious, and he was grateful again for his tail’s natural ability to keep positioned in the perfect way to maintain his balance.

Once the beasts he had collected were cleared out, he fell back towards the rest of the adventurers chipping away at the enormous tentacles. The grey-white mass was looking in bad shape, drenching the mob of armed folk in that same blue blood that had spattered across Kaldalis from his own fights. He looked for Balrim and Myrin in the fight, but had barely spotted them among the crowd before he was forced to turn his attention away as a second wave of nautilobsters crawled over the railing and skittered towards the nearest target - Kaldalis.

He decided his efforts were better spent keeping the smaller threats contained. He wasn’t going to be a large numerical contribution to a group of people that size, even if he were a DPS and could output significant damage. Keeping the smaller adds aggroed onto himself and not the fight around the main boss was no less noble a task.

He positioned to engage the next wave of nautilobsters, positioning himself to grab the attention of any that tried to rush by him to the defense of the tentacles. A single hit got their attention, as it had before, and while their skittering legs moved them quickly across the deck, their grasping tentacles seemed to move in a way that was more lethargic and avoidable, and they seemed to be the only attack they had. It was easy to gather them up and just keep out of reach of the flailing tentacles. He finished gathering the second wave and was about to start thinning them out when the first tentacle was damaged enough that it writhed and peeled away from the ship.

Several things happened at once in that moment. First, there was a cheer from the adventurers. Kaldalis actually got partial credit for the kill, gaining a modest 32 exp for taking part in the killing of an elder nautilobsters tentacle, and he was tempted to let out a cheer of his own.

The second thing was that the enormous beast’s grip tightened on the boat. There was a scream of tortured wood and the deck split in two barely thirty feet away from Kaldalis, and right through the middle of the mob of adventurers, positioned to attack the tentacle but now right in the path of the enormous rent that ran all the way through the ship.

Third was that the giant tentacles whipped across the surface of the ship, grabbing handfuls - tentaclefuls? - of adventurers and hoisting them off the boat before vanishing into the darkness. Myrin and Balrim were visibly among those taken.

Fourth was that the beast dropped the boat back into the ocean. With the whole ship nearly split in half, it began taking on water. The nautilobsters scuttled away from him, returning to the deeps.

Lightning streaked the sky again, giving him a second of perfect clarity in the single moment of light even as the roar of thunder shook his very bones. The boat was sinking. Crew and adventurers alike were screaming and running over the bloody deck, strewn with chunks of meat, guts and shells. And his only two real friends in this world had just been hauled off the side of the ship and into the water.

He glared at the quest text on the right side of the screen. Survive 0/1 still lingered there, barely visible in guttering torchlight as the lightning left him momentarily flash-blind.