Bound by overworld aggro rules, the crowd of Infernal Horde followed as Kaldalis ran away from the town’s walls. But when Kaldalis dove into the surf and the game’s swimming mechanics let him fly out away from the beach at speed, the Infernal Horde - even the water elementals - seemed to flounder and struggle.

They couldn’t swim.

Most of them weakly doggy-paddled towards him, flopping and thrashing at the water in an effort to get to him.

And as Kaldalis entered the water, he saw the oncoming forces swimming towards Cotanaku. Darting through the water like a torpedo, he whipped his spear around, using Sweeping Strikes and his speed advantage to gather up the monsters before they could even reach the surface.

And as soon as his Sweeping Strikes ability ran its course, he switched weapons to his fishing rod, letting him stay down here indefinitely, running the enemies back and forth just off the coast.

Unlike when he’d performed a similar maneuver on the jungle side, he really could do this forever.

The difference in swim speed was a tremendous advantage.

Once he had a good lead on the monsters, Kaldalis surfaced briefly to survey the fight. A number of foes were still attacking the city - or charging past Kaldalis to do so - but the bulk of the forces were here chasing him through the water. Adventurers were visibly arriving on the scene, too. They weren’t archers staying on the walls, either. Those who could were leaping down off the wall to engage the Horde on the beach. Those who couldn’t safely jump down were taking advantage of the opening Kaldalis produced to shove open the gates and fight their way out against the much thinner numbers charging up towards them.

He couldn’t watch for long. There was a thumping boom underwater beneath him, and a shimmering bolt of energy careened up towards him. With his unreal mobility in water, he was able to avoid the rainbow bolt, but there was more coming. He dove back under the surface and resumed the chase.

Overworld aggro rules seemed to have no limit.

As long as nobody else intervened - specifically, another tank - these monsters seemed bound to follow him forever. It seemed an oversight that they never lost interest, but with lives on the line, he wasn’t inclined to complain that he could take so much pressure off of Cotanaku’s defenders.

When he surfaced again, he saw that most of the monsters on the beach had been dealt with. There were only a few left that the adventurers were fighting, and he could see his friends off to one side, squinting out at the ocean. As soon as they saw him on the surface, Courbois started to beckon him over, waving her staff in his direction.

The message was clear. Even if he couldn’t clearly see that the beach was going to be cleared in a few moments, she was another tank. If he ran up onto the beach and pulled the train of mobs behind him by her, she could peel a handful off of him. Other tanks with them could do the same. If the beachside gate and wall couldn’t withstand the continued attacks of the horde, then Kaldalis could be that wall instead, holding the foe at bay until they could be dealt with by the defenders.

He waved back, hoping to convey that he understood, before diving back under and swimming for shore.

There was a swirl of water around him as another blast of shimmering energy narrowly missed him.

As much as he told himself he could do this forever, it would only take so long before he got unlucky out here.

And he couldn’t really drink a healing potion underwater.

Kaldalis scrambled up onto the beach, struggling for a moment to adjust to the change in locomotion between effortless swimming and stumbling clumsily about on his regular, boring legs. He almost fell, but the added balance he got from an instinctive flick of his tail kept him on his feet.

Every day he found a new reason to be grateful for not making his character a normal boring human.

He wasn’t sure what the outcome would be if he fell on his face right there.

“Good thinking,” Courbois said as Kaldalis ran up to his friends. “Grabbing them all like that, I mean.”

“Yeah, Balrim,” Kaldalis said, looking over at the Talsar healer. “Sure was good thinking, wasn’t it?”

“You’ve made your point,” Balrim said with a smirk. “Just don’t die, alright?”

“Then I need to keep moving,” Kaldalis said, looking over his shoulder. The water elementals were emerging from the surf, struggling to form themselves into cohesive forms as the natural waves pushed them back and forth. Behind them, Kaldalis could see the plumes of spray from the other monsters splash-swimming towards the beach as well. “I’ve got too many to fight right now. Maybe after two or three passes, I can stand and fight.”

“Run up the beach before you go back out to sea,” Courbois said, raising her staff as the first water elemental lurched out onto the beach. “Garyung and a few others are gonna want to pick up some trash, too.”

“Be careful,” Ess cut in.

Kaldalis spared a glance over his shoulder. He had a few more seconds.

“Ess, I need your help,” Kaldalis said quickly. “You’re the fastest with your spear, so I need you to jump into town and then come back to help with the fight. If you want me to be safe, make sure I don’t have to do this again on the next wave. I need you to find Heluna. She should be right inside the gate.” He pointed towards the beachside gate, right behind where he’d left Heluna only a few minutes ago. “There has to be a way to protect this side of the town quickly and cheaply. Underwater mines, traps, nets, or whatever. Tell her that I need her and the other sailors working on that right away. If we can get something put together between this wave and the next, we can hold without me needing to do this suicidal bullshit.”

Ess flinched a bit at the request, but he’d done enough to couch it as a way she could help keep him safe, and she gave a firm nod before launching herself away towards the town. It would also give her the opportunity to talk to Heluna alone about their shared interest in his well-being.

Perhaps it would be the first step towards softening the conversation they were going to have to have about her feelings towards him.

The first of the shimmering rainbow figures emerged from the waves, raising its arms to charge a bolt of energy to hurl at Kaldalis.

Time was up. He had to run again.

His own Jump cooldown was ready to go, and so he launched himself up the beach, away from the oncoming mass of foes.

He stopped briefly by the next group of adventurers. Led by Garyung, they were cleaning up a Malum, engaged in the careful dance of dealing as much damage as possible while still being ready and able to avoid their dark blast special attack. Garyung made ample use of his shield to catch the giant fists of the monster.

“You about done with this one?” Kaldalis said, gesturing over his shoulder. “There’s more coming right behind me!”

“Great!” Garyung called back with a grunt. “I was just complaining that things were getting boring, right boys?”

A sound that was a mixture between a groan and a laugh went up around Garyung’s group. Kaldalis didn’t have time to unpack what they meant as another Malum lurched out of the surf nearby on a diagonal course towards him. He bounded quickly up the beach, past the other groups of adventurers before turning back to the sea, leaping far out into the water in case there were more foes still struggling in the surf to get to him.

He hit the water like a fish, taking off at speed until he knew how far ahead of the horde he was. There was a dicey moment where he was unsure if a particularly strong current was a water elemental, but once he used his underwater mobility to speed away from it, he was confident he was safe.

The fight continued like that for what seemed like an interminable period. Kaldalis circled around, surfaced to the beach when his Jump cooldown was ready, hopped down the sand trailing monsters for the other tanks to pick up, and then launched himself safely back into the waves. He quickly lost track of how many cycles he’d done, just falling into the mechanical trance of doing what needed to be done for the good of the town.

He was a little irritated about how long it was taking. But he reminded himself that he’d been the one to leave the lion’s share of the more powerful fighters and almost all of the archers back at the jungle-side gate. If they weren’t here, then perhaps they were fighting as well. Either way, he only had himself to blame for the limited resources on this end of the town.

On one of the later cycles, he saw Heluna and a group of sailors bringing out a big cart loaded with unidentifiable wooden contraptions. He couldn’t stop to chat, but she managed to shoot him a wink and a smile as he sailed overhead, which was so distracting he almost flubbed his landing, stumbling off-balance for a second before getting off the ground again.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to keep his holding pattern for long.

It took a while, but eventually the quest tracking the siege ticked up, and when he surfaced, he saw the surviving Infernal Horde on the beach turning and fleeing back into the ocean, ending the attack wave.

He hurried to the shore as fast as he could. There was no way of knowing how long they had, and if the sailors had whipped something up to bolster their defenses, then they had to move fast to distribute it, or else everyone was going to get caught out, and their plans to repel the third wave might end up literally dead in the water.