Right before diving into the water, Kaldalis took a moment to activate his Dedication Ring. There was no big flashy effect, but after a moment of concentration, Kaldalis felt a subtle tingle of the buff settling over him. It was like the minty sting of mouthwash, but on the back of his neck and across his shoulders. The buff matched the ring’s description, giving him a bonus of 150% experience point gain from kills, with a one hour duration that was already ticking down.

Despite his desperation not to waste any of the exp buff timer, Kaldalis took a few minutes to get used to fighting underwater again. Movement underwater felt less like swimming and more like flying. The vaguest sense of an effort sent him gliding through the water like a fish. And with his relic fishing rod in hand, he could remain underwater indefinitely. It felt liberating. Exciting.

It made him want to build a city on the ocean floor and start talking to fish.

The challenge, though, was actually fighting things. His fishing rod didn’t serve at all as a weapon. It was unbreakable, so he could hit things with it, but it just aggravated whatever he hit instead of dealing damage. Perhaps it counted as a War Weapon, and he could raise welts on people with it, but it wasn’t working here to establish aggro. Kaldalis had to choose between juggling weapons and getting up close to punch things with his free hand - which did very little damage, but still counted to get the monster’s attention so that Myrin, Balrim, and Heluna could take care of it.

The right decision varied from monster to monster. Against the nautilobsters, getting in close was a huge mistake. Their large curled shells made them seem like they’d be easy to outmaneuver for an extended fight, but their tentacled faces and clawed limbs meant that they had all the tools to get a hold of him to prevent him from escaping. If he swam up close to them there was a chance that they could grapple him and stop him from fighting them effectively, forcing both him and Balrim to burn valuable defensive cooldowns.

For them, switching to a proper weapon and then changing back once the fight was over was the smartest course.

Meanwhile, sygnaceous crabs were bulky and slow-moving, with large shells and weighed down by kelp growing on their chitinous bodies. Their claws were powerful, but not fast enough to catch Kaldalis if he gave them a quick swim-by sucker punch, and so he could gather them all up quickly and easily for Heluna and Myrin to chip them down.

True to her word, Heluna was astoundingly well-suited to the water. She was swimming faster than Kaldalis and his friends, with greater maneuverability. It wasn’t enough to literally swim circles around them, but it was a near thing. She was able to scout and find their non-monster objectives easily, and guide their movements in the deeper areas off the coast, where the water grew dark enough to impede their vision.

By Kaldalis’s reckoning, she could also hold her breath twice as long as he had been able to without the fishing rod, too.

The monsters down here made Kaldalis uncomfortable. Not that they were monstrous amalgams of aquatic traits - even though they were - but that they were so much stronger than what they’d faced in the jungle.

Fighting them was an actual challenge, even with a full party.

The Nautilobsters’ attacks were brutal and did high damage, while the defense of its hard shell and carapace meant that they didn’t go down easy. The sygnaceous crabs were worse, with heavier claws and thicker defenses, and they put Kaldalis on the defensive with their flowing mane of kelp and algae that disguised their movements and attacks.

There were others as well.

The selachnaiads were unmistakably sharks, but with giant compound eyes and six insectile legs that they used to reach for Kaldalis, trying to hold him in place for its massive many-toothed jaws. Kaldalis found himself dreading to fight them. There was also a single great beast in the deepest part of the nearby waters called a sireneliana. They had no quest to kill it, so they gave it wide berth, but Kaldalis got more than enough of a look at it to fear what it might be. It was gargantuan, the size of a whale, with a giant black and gold shell, from which emerged a strangely bear-like body with giant flippers, each one far longer than Kaldalis was tall. It looked like a giant boss monster, and Kaldalis wondered if it might be roused at a later date and flop up on the beach to attack Cotanaku.

That was what made him uncomfortable. These monsters were so strong they were kicking his ass when he failed to dodge, and they were taking two well-geared and decently-leveled DPS a considerable amount of time to fell. And the beach was still visible on his minimap.

If these beasts attacked the town, everyone would be in terrible danger.

The beach side walls weren’t as tall and strong as the jungle side, and there were fewer watch towers and archery posts. There wasn’t a killbox on the gate, either. And the sireneliana could flatten a quarter of the town if it just hopped up on the shore and rolled over two or three times.

When Heluna signed that she needed to head to the surface to take a breath, Kaldalis went with her while Balrim and Myrin continued collecting shipwreck debris. Ostensibly he wanted to ensure her safety, but really, he needed to talk.

“Phew,” Heluna said, taking a big gulp of fresh air. “Haven’t been under for that long in a long fuckin’ while.”

“It’s pretty spooky down there,” Kaldalis said. “Is it always like that?”

“Like what?” Heluna said, shaking water out of her hair.

“High-level monsters,” Kaldalis said, pointing towards Cotanaku which was well within view. “And this close to town?”

“Yeah, that shit is pretty normal,” Heluna said, tipping her head to the side to shake water out of her pointed ears. “You adventurers have been hauling ass all over the jungle to trim back the fuckers there, but there’s not as much attention on this side. You can bet your ass the monsters just outside the dock in Baimer look just the fuckin’ same.”

“So it’s not dangerous?” Kaldalis asked.

“Kal, you’re a fuckin’ sweetheart,” Heluna said, splashing water into his face. “Don’t worry your ass about this. If it was that fuckin’ dangerous, the bitches on the council would be beside themselves trying to get your ass out here to thin things out.”

Kaldalis sputtered at the unexpected splash of water, but he let her calm him down. Between the two of them, she was the mortal. If Cotanaku was in real danger, hers was the life that would be at risk. If she was calm, then he guessed he should be, too.

“Sorry to drag you all the way the fuck up here,” she said sheepishly. “If you believe the gossipy bitches around the bar, Filomena can hold her breath for a full fuckin’ day. I’m not that good, though, and I don’t have your fuckin’ tricks.”

“We didn’t need to come up here,” Kaldalis said with a shrug, holding his fishing rod briefly above the water. “I have this. But I couldn’t very well talk to you about if this is safe under there.”

“What the fuck do you think you were gonna do?” Heluna asked with a guffaw, “just hand me a relic and expect it to work for me, too?”

“Well, it works by keeping my lungs full of fresh air no matter what,” Kaldalis explained. “I could probably… Well. Share.”

Heluna laughed, but she adjusted how she was treading water, closing the distance between them. A hand popped out of the water briefly, brushing his cheek before sliding down his chest.

“Share, huh? Mouth-to-fuckin’-mouth, you mean? What kinda girl do you take me for?” she said, her voice pitched a little lower. “But it would probably make your friends uncomfortable as hell if we just start going the fuck at it in the middle of fighting shit.”

“Just, uh, something to keep in mind,” Kaldalis said, trying to focus on how cold the water was to keep his face from flushing too hard. “If there’s an emergency.”

“Well, let’s fuckin’ hope we don’t get one of those,” Heluna purred. “Speaking of emergencies, are we still on for tonight?”

“Sure,” Kaldalis said quickly. He took stock of the charge on his ring, and calculated that it would be done not long after they got finished out here in the water. More than early enough to still make it. “Dinner at our usual spot? At our usual table, right?”

“If anyone parks their ass there, I’ll kick it up between their fuckin’ ears,” Heluna said with a fierce grin. She flexed an arm and Kaldalis tried to pretend that her defined bicep didn’t affect him. Despite his best efforts, her eyes sparkled in recognition.

“Are you, uh,” Kaldalis said, clearing his throat. “Caught your breath?”

“Oh, just another fuckin’ second-” she began before splashing his face again and diving under the waves.

Kaldalis was ready this time, and didn’t get a nose full of saltwater, enabling him to dive under after her. And thanks to his infinite supply of oxygen, he could let his laughter escape and bubble back up to the surface without worry.

With his concerns about the strength of the monsters down here, he was finally able to enjoy what they represented. A challenge.

And, more than that, buckets of experience points.

He enjoyed fighting trash monsters that could put up an actual fight, but the exp bonus of fighting high-level mobs was incredible on top of the bonus of his ring.

He’d been getting under 100 exp per mob for the quests they’d done before arriving here at the ocean - and under 50 exp per mob for the low-level junk he’d fought in the morning before the quest drop. These monsters were worth 305 exp per mob across the board. Each one gave him a considerable chunk of his exp bar. After a dozen of them, he was level 18, with the exp gain showing no sign of slowing down.

It was incredible to gain so many levels so fast. He almost wasn’t paying attention to the quests anymore, just blitzing around at high speed, gathering monsters for his friends to cut them down and feed him more and more experience points.

It couldn’t last, though. Eventually, they’d killed and collected everything they needed. With fifteen minutes left on his ring’s effect, he begrudgingly followed the others back to Cotanaku to turn in quests and let Heluna get back to her day job.

Or her day drinking, whichever ended up being applicable.