Sahuagins On Deck!

Marcus grinned ear to ear as he stared over the deck. Before him he was met with the shapes of beings that looked as if some deep sea monster had grown arms and legs. Their heads all appeared to belong to different fish. One of them had the head of a moray eel while another had the head of an angler fish. They wore armor that appeared to be crafted from coral, seashells, and salvaged ship hulls. Their weapons also seemed to consist of whatever sharp objects they could find like sickles and coral headed spears. reaching to his back and pantomiming the act of drawing the hefty maul off of his back, Marcus had drawn his weapon, though it wobbled awkwardly in his single hand. Fortunately, he was able to correct this by grabbing it with his other one, and just in time too as one of the monsters turned to face him. Raising its barnacle encrusted sickle in its hand, it hissed out a battle cry before charging at him, using its long tail to balance itself out as it did so.

Marcus meanwhile squared up as it crossed the deck, sickle held high and ready to slash. Marcus however knew well that despite his short stature, he still had range in his side with how long the handle of his maul was. In response, he did not follow suit with an overhead swing of his own, instead, he drew his arms back, pointing his elbows behind him as if readying a spear thrust. As soon as the fish man got within range, Marcus lunged forward and extended his arms, thrusting the bulky head of the hammer right into the gut of the sahuagin. The creature released a gasp before falling onto its back. Yet another pleasant surprise. He wasn’t actually expecting these creatures to suffer convincing reactions to a move like this.

“Haha, there we go! This feels great!” Marcus exclaimed as he reared his maul over his shoulder.

With that, Marcus swung the maul back down, smashing it into the chest of the sahuagin and taking notice of its red health bar being torn down by a significant chunk. The wild smirk of a combat rush was now on both the face of his avatar and himself as he reared the maul back once more. As he did so however, he watched as the lower part of the maul suddenly slipped from his grasp. He quickly noticed the problem however when he realized his hands had become misaligned.

“C’mon, you’ve gotta be kidding me!” Marcus growled as he worked to get his hands back in order.

It took a few attempts but he eventually managed to regain control of his weapon, making a mental note to really try getting used to avoiding that mistake. However, in the time it took for him to get his hands back on his weapon, the sahuagin began rising back to its feet, any mangled ribs it may have suffered of course being little more than a suggestion in a video game. Still, that didn’t stop Marcus who quickly pivoted to the right. Drawing his maul back once more, this time towards his side, he swung to deliver a fierce sweeping blow. Observing as the fish monster’s hit points plummeted down to zero, Marcus watched with great satisfaction as its corpse ragdolled through the air and struck the railing of the ship. With that sorted, Marcus turned his attention to the rest of the beasts. He was fortunate to not be the only one fighting up here as the guardsmen of the boat seemed to be holding their own aside from the relatively meager damage output they seemed to have, no doubt an intended design element so as not to overshadow the player. That didn’t matter much however as there were still a couple unattended stragglers ready to take cold iron to the gob.

Marcus rushed forward, Maul overhead and ready to strike. This time, it was his turn to do the charging. Though his stature was hardly intimidating, he did manage to capture the attention of the monsters, just in time to bring the maul down atop the skull of the nearest one. With a vicious crack, the blow saw the creature drop from full hit points to absolutely nothing as it crumpled to the ground in front of him, the maul briefly flickering in his hand. A critical hit! He watched as the remaining sahuagin flickered purple as it staggered back. Marcus wasn’t sure what that purple meant, but he did notice as an icon in the shape of an exclamation point appeared beneath the health bar over its head. Perhaps it indicated surprise? All that Marcus cared about was the perfect opening that it had created. His grin wide as ever, he prepared to charge at the creature, maul ready to strike before the sound effect of a slicing blade played out and a flash of red appeared at the bottom of the screen. In that instant, Marcus had also noticed his own health bar at the bottom of his vision. It had dropped. It was nothing major or truly alarming in any way, but Marcus quickly realized that he had let his guard down as something managed to sneak up behind and drive its blade into his back.

Though Ember staggered for a moment, Marcus of course felt nothing. Twirling himself around the moment his avatar stopped staggering, he bludgeoned the sahuagin in the side and sent it reeling. A good chunk of health dropped but the creature remained on its webbed feet. It swung once more towards him with the old, rusty meat hook it had apparently been using as a weapon. Unprepared to defend himself, Marcus took another hit as that hook sliced across Ember’s face. All Marcus could do was be thankful that player characters at the very least didn’t take sensible damage and just another small fragment of his health bar had been reduced. It was then that he was reminded of why games typically had tutorials. He remembered pretending to swing weapons around in other games, but he very much forgot that he still needed to defend himself too, no matter how tempting it was to keep swinging and seeing those satisfying enemy reactions when the hits landed. Marcus once more raised his maul, this time positioning the handle across his face as another attack came in and clashed with it. The feeble, tutorial leveled creature bounced off with a clang and recoiled, giving Marcus a chance to rush forward and shove the fish man with his maul.

The shove fortunately made contact, and although it dealt no damage, it caused the sahuagin to lose balance, leaving it open for another swipe of the maul against its right side, and then another to his left on the back swing. The creature bounced around in reaction to the blows before its health finally dropped to nothing. That unfortunately was when he heard the sounds of webbed feet slapping across the deck towards his position. Immediately he turned around, maul at the defensive as he blocked an incoming strike from the sahuagin’s cutlass. It was now that Marcus thought back to his class levels and the abilities he was supposed to possess as an imp and a Berserker. He didn’t recall seeing any of that when he was looking at his stats. Fortunately he had some basic information for himself right here on his hud, and upon checking his level, he realized that… they started you at level zero in this game!? Shouldn’t he start off with some racial abilities at the very least!? From the looks of it, he would simply need to practice the bare basics until that number climbed.

Marcus pivoted to the right, once more winding up a fierce side swing of his maul and nearly losing his grip of it once more as his hands drifted out of alignment. He then swung again, the sahuagin raising its off hand which held a small buckler, however, the meager shield was not built to deflect something so big and heavy as Marcus broke through his feeble defense with ease. Marcus then swung again from the left, colliding with the monster’s side, and as it attempted to regain its footing, another blow from overhead came crashing down upon it.

With the third sahuagin’s demise, Marcus froze in his tracks as a surge of flame flashed around him and an impish cackle graced his ears. His eyes shot to his level, that pitiful zero having been replaced by a one. Sure, it wasn’t much, but he watched in glee as another component of the UI emerged from the bottom of the screen. The first was what looked to be an absolutely infuriated devilish face, the other was the much softer visage of an imp’s face spitting out a ball of flame. That was it, he did it. He unlocked the base level of his kit! His excitement was remarkably short lived however as when he eagerly scoured the deck to seek out more combatants, he was just in time to watch a group of the remaining guards finish off the final sahuagin. If anything, it was impressive to see how accurately they actually fought, their attack animations didn’t particularly seem to be pre-set in any way. Still, that didn’t change the fact that they had just cleaned up the rest of the mooks before Marcus was finished with them. Miffed as he was, the guards seemed quite ecstatic with their victory, their cries of joy and the sense of comradery among them was almost too convincing. As he watched one group congratulate each other however, he almost jumped when he heard a voice from behind.

“Wow, That was some good fight’n adventurer. Good to see you can hold your own out here.” a human guardsman praised.

“Oh, umm, yea, thanks.” Marcus replied.

Though he had done it already, he rather quickly found himself missing the ability to select dialogue options instead of actually speaking to these NPCs himself. He fidgeted where he stood over the uncanniness of it all.

“Haha, with skills like that, I have a good feeling you’ll make it far in the new world!” a halfling guardsman added.

Before Marcus could feel any stranger about talking to these people, he froze where he stood as a plume of water suddenly shot out from the sea behind where the guards stood. Fortunately, the player wasn’t the only one to notice as the guardsmen swiftly turned around, gazing frantically in all directions before looking up just in time for a sahuagin over twice the size of the previous ones to crash down from the sky. Beneath them, lay two of the guards, their condition impossible to determine at this moment. It wore fragments of worn, barnacle encrusted wood that presumably used to belong to a shipwreck. They were fastened with coarse rope to its bulky frame. In its hand it held a long, rusted harpoon and it bore the head of a hammerhead shark. Over its head, the name Sahuagin Chieftain could be seen in the red letters of a hostile entity and unlike the others, it displayed a level beside its name. This beast dwarfed Marcus’s level by two. With a fierce swing of its harpoon, it knocked aside the guards, sending them careening across the deck in a heap, only then to turn its ire to the singular imp that stood before it. Seeing this beast, Marcus suddenly wasn’t feeling so miffed about losing out on a few extra whacks against some mooks as a real encounter now loomed before him.