"Thud, thud, thud... bang!"
The dull impacts and faint tremors through the hull brought Hobert's slender fingers to an abrupt halt on the mother-of-pearl command console.
He whipped his head around to look at the image of the Mirror Moon's own deck in the light screen... the sounds and vibrations weren't coming from the Sea Lion, but from his own ship!
"They... how dare they!?"
For the first time, a crack appeared in Hobert's usually deep-sea composure, mingling shock, disbelief, and a trace of offended anger.
"Damned monkeys!!!"
As Hobert growled, dozens of figures on the light screen before him were dropping like dumplings into a pot, leaping fearlessly from the Sea Lion's towering, wall-like deck onto the lower Mirror Moon.
These Bagnia monkeys boarded in a crude, direct fashion. Some swung across on ropes, while others simply jumped, completely disregarding the height difference between the ships and the risk of falling into the sea.
They landed with heavy thuds on the Mirror Moon's mirror-smooth, rune-engraved upper deck.
"If you're so eager to die, then die!"
The players' boarding assault went badly. The instant they landed, blue runes flared across the Mirror Moon's mirror-smooth upper deck, and its already slick surface was covered in an almost invisible but incredibly slippery film of ice.
The players in the lead immediately felt as though they had stepped onto grease-coated ice. Unable to gain any traction, they tumbled into a miserable heap, their weapons flying from their hands.
The slippery deck wasn't their only problem. Water Elemental Warriors, arrows formed from seawater, and all sorts of bizarre illusions appeared around the players, even inside their formation, throwing them into utter chaos.
The boarding party led by Not Playing If I'm Not Having Fun was far too small, numbering fewer than a hundred. These