Kaldalis wanted to jump across town to check the jungle-side gate, but just before he did there was a visible disturbance in the water. Clouds of debris started to float to the surface. Bits of wood and fragments of vine. Shortly, they were joined by darkish clouds in the water.

He wondered that they were seeing signs of the nearest traps first, but it made sense when he thought about it. The traps farther out weren’t the sort that would put evidence on the surface. The underwater mines weren’t made of materials that would float. And the remains of the Infernal Horde that died to them wouldn’t float either - Kaldalis had seen that from the carnage around the sireneliana.

In that moment of realization, Kaldalis recognized why they were doing so poorly in the water. They were denser than ordinary living things in this world. The only ones that could even reach the surface were those that were made of semitransparent energy, rather than those with heftier physical bodies, and even they could barely swim. Some number of Infernal Horde - like the heavyset xorn or the strange shifting metal monsters - were likely sinking into the silt at the bottom of the sea, unable to move. And those that were fleshier were unable to evade or defend themselves from ocean predators.

He didn’t have time to consider how to turn that knowledge to their advantage on land before the first of the next wave of monsters emerged from the surf.

As expected, these monsters weren’t just another mob. Before the first water elementals separated themselves from the ocean, the heads of Infernal Horde Captains began to poke out of the water.

This was going to be a rough fight, if the larger, stronger monsters were here.

Despite the challenge they represented, there was still hope. As the first of the lesser mobs emerged from the waves, Kaldalis could see that the traps had done their work. They weren’t organic beings, so their pulsating forms didn’t have visible wounds. But the shimmering glows were weaker, with a slight tinge of sickly purple. The front line of their ranks was also ragged and spotty.

“The traps worked,” Garyung announced a moment before Kaldalis could. “Good work, everyone. We’ve weakened them. This should be a simple matter of cleaning them up!”

Kaldalis wouldn’t have phrased it in such a cavalier way, but he recognized that Garyung was just trying to boost morale. He didn’t have time to comment now, though.

There was work to be done.

With the state of the walls and gate, Kaldalis didn’t want to let this final wave get up to it to tear into the damaged defenses. Instead of staying on the wall, he popped his Jump cooldown and launched himself into the fray.

Activating Sweeping Strikes as soon as he landed, Kaldalis carved through the monsters immediately around him, securing their attention. Immediately leaping down the beach, cleaving through the Infernal Horde as he went. He ignored the damage numbers. His damage output wasn’t important. What mattered was that he hit as much as he could to secure aggro and protect the town. The defenders would have their hands full with the Infernal Horde Captains once they emerged, and if he could stall the army of adds, the boss-level foes would be much easier to clean up.

As soon as he tagged the monsters, it became a rinse-and-repeat of his earlier work. He dived out into the ocean, forcing the monsters he’d grabbed to follow him back out into the waves, where their mobility was dramatically imparied.

The only difference was that once he was safely able to pop his head above water to survey how the fight was going, he saw that his work wasn’t done yet.

The fight against the Infernal Horde Captains was struggling. A few dozen more of the normal Infernal Horde monsters had joined the fray now, having been slowed down by weighted bear traps, and their addition to the already-difficult fight was a complication that nobody needed.

Instead of keeping a holding pattern, Kaldalis started to make his way back to the shore. His Sweeping Strikes cooldown was ready when he got back, and he quickly worked his way through the extra adds, gathering them up and drawing them away, careful not to strike the giant Captains on his way through.

“Thanks,” Courbois called to him as soon as she was relieved of her mob of adds. “I don’t know how I was gonna keep up with that.”

“Don’t worry,” Kaldalis called back, “I got this!”

Adding more monsters to his train didn’t do much to complicate Kaldalis’s life. Between his swim speed and his ability to stay underwater indefinitely, the slowpokes weighed down by the traps only made the enormous tail following him longer, not harder to manage. Having nearly unlimited mobility and free reign to dive as deep as he wanted for as long as he needed meant he was never in any real danger.

It was almost boring.

Almost.

Kaldalis kept reminding himself that what he was doing was what Cotanaku needed most right now. He was single-handedly holding off over a hundred chaos-beings of destruction and hate.

Even if it wasn’t the thrilling heroics he wanted to engage in, it needed to be done.

And he was the one here doing it.

As before, the Infernal Horde Captains were difficult bosses, and it took his friends on the beach quite a while to deal with them. But unlike previous encounters, everyone was ready now. The whole group was leveled and geared, and with both Kaia’s Flicker and Nyxlas’s Augment in their arsenals, even those with poor mobility tools from their weapon were able to dance around the bosses’ attacks safely. It was quite a while before any of the other tanks were available to start chipping away at Kaldalis’s massive trail of foes.

With his contribution to the fight being the simple matter of kiting the army back and forth, Kaldalis could likely keep up his end of the fight all day long. Especially with his increased stamina from being a tank, as the fight dragged on, it didn’t wear on him that much. But once he started running past his friends to let him pick foes off of him, he could see the fatigue wearing on them.

Just the same, it was only a matter of time. He held the line for as long as he needed to. Even when the time between his friends peeling foes away from him grew longer, Kaldalis was patient.

Survival was their goal, not slaughter. As long as Cotanaku was standing, they were winning.

The time wasn’t entirely wasted, though. Kaldalis took an opportunity to organize his inventory, sift through all his extra crafted charms, and check his Dedication Ring’s timer. The whole siege had already taken nearly the entire morning, and it would be ready shortly.

Unlike the previous wave, there wasn’t a moment when the foes fled. They were forced to fight down the entire mob, sending each one scrambling away. But they did. Kaldalis was almost disappointed. It wasn’t that he’d wanted them to fail, but he had been expecting something interesting to happen. Something new and exciting. Instead, when there were only a dozen foes left, he stood his ground on the beach, making ample use of his abilities to help batter them down to finally break the siege.

Except they didn’t.

When the last of the Malum broke and fled back into the waves, the quest didn’t update. The siege was still sitting at 2/3 waves repelled.

“Good hustle,” Kaldalis said, “but we’re not done yet.”

He’d expected a response, but everyone else seemed too exhausted to do anything but sag slowly to the beach’s sand. Even the other tanks looked worn down. Kaldalis supposed that was to be expected. They’d been fighting the whole time while he was just swimming in a big circle. Sure, it had been for over thirty minutes straight, but it probably wasn’t as exhausting in this world as the constant tension of battle for a similar duration.

“We’re all very impressed that you’re still ready to fight,” Courbois said, leaning hard on her staff to keep on her feet. “Really top-notch stamina. I’m very happy for your girlfriend. But you have to give us a minute here, man. While you’ve been having a leisurely swim we’ve been out here doing actual work.”

“I’m not the one responsible for the lack of breaks here,” Kaldalis said defensively. Before continuing, he paused and took a breath, mellowing his tone before continuing. “The Infernal Horde are setting the pace. And if they’re gone from this end, but the siege is still on, that means they’re still at the jungle-side gate. They have the stronger defenses on that side, but they’re likely facing a much tougher force. We need to get over there and help if we want-”

“Kal? Hun?” Heluna interrupted from the top of the wall. She was standing near the edge so that he could see her, but her eyes were locked onto something on the other side, unable to look away. “You need to see this.”

The fear in her tone didn’t scare Kaldalis near as much as the utter lack of curse words. He didn’t hesitate, rushing to the wall and activating Jump to get up to her side as fast as he could, taking a brief moment to put a reassuring hand on her arm before following her gaze towards the jungle-side gate.

As soon as he saw what she saw, he realized why she’d kept her language clean.

She didn’t have to say it for him to realize that things were fucked.