Marisol peered over the railings and down at the shadow of the titanic monster, her heart completely gripped with fear.

  she thought, forcing a nervous, trembling grin onto her face.

  With what little moonlight fell over the rainy sea, she focused her eyes like never before and tried to pick out the monster’s physical traits: armored from head to tail, chitin joined in giant segmented plates, a hundred pairs of legs jutting out its sides, and it was also around five hundred meters long. It could wrap around the warship five times and still have length to spare.

  A status screen popped up next to her head a moment later.

  [Identification Complete]

  [Common Name: Giant Remipede]

  [Grade: C-Rank Giant-Class]

  [Aura: ~4,000]

  [Strength: ~18, Speed: ~4, Toughness: ~17, Dexterity: ~2, Perception: ~4]

  [Brief Description: Oar-footed, hollow, blind, and carnivorous. Giant remipedes are often confused as giant sea serpents by sailors and fishermen. They excel at using their chemosensory antennae to detect smaller prey near the surface. Their fangs are venomous, their prehensile antennae are adapted to help them navigate in the dark, and they are capable of molting up to a thousand meters in length. However, despite their size, most of their body is simply filled with air, so they are not nearly as tough and strong as they are large]

  Marisol saw the word ‘sea serpent’ on the status screen, and she felt she understood why people could confuse the two of them. Stuck on a tiny ship, surrounded by eerily calm waters, the shadow of the giant remipede resemble a serpent trying to gauge its prey before attacking.

  Now, there were plenty of snakes in the desert town where she lived, but they were all relatively small and unnoteworthy—they were like the giant remipede circling the ship.

  something that can be beaten head-on at your level, or even by most trained Hasharana,] the Archive said quickly.

  the Archive explained.

  She didn't even have to think.

  the Archive said.

  She gritted her teeth.

  she thought, breathing into her hands, trying to calm the pounding heart in her chest.

  the Archive said.

  She did as instructed and tore her eyes away from the shadow of the remipede, looking through the misty, rainy fog.

  True to the Archive’s words, there silhouettes of other ships and vessels floating on the calm sea—and of them were wrecked already. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before, but now that she was looking for them, there had to be two dozen shipwrecks flanking both sides of her own warship, forming a thousand-meter long line of floating wreckages along the perimeter of the fog. They must’ve met the same fate as her; giant barnacles appeared on the bottom of their hull and stopped them from advancing through the fog, and then the giant remipede appeared to finish them off one by one.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  How long had this been going on for?

  Even if that fairy shrimp hadn’t destroyed Captain Antonio’s fleet, would they have made it past this rainy fog with the patrolling remipede?

  the Archive muttered.

  the Archive finished.

  Eight minutes. Biting her lip, she looked out at the closest wreckage and started fidgeting. The absolute nearest pallet of wood she could reach was a hundred meters away, and while she could easily skate there in under eight seconds at full speed, there was no telling how sensitive the giant remipede was to ripples and vibrations. It neared the surface just because she poked her head underwater for a brief moment. What was to say it wouldn’t immediately pounce on her the instant she jumped off the ship again?

  the Archive said.

  Her thoughts trailed off as she remembered a certain technique in her mama’s book.

  It hadn’t been that long since she read that chapter—three hours and two minutes to be exact—but while she felt she still remembered the technique clear as day, she wanted a refresher.

  Racing back into the captain’s cabin where there was a roof overhead and candlelight to illuminate the pages, she got down on all fours and slammed her mama’s book on the floor. One pull on the latch and the second chapter popped open—her eyes the diagrams spanning fifteen whole pages before she even read her mama’s handwritten letter on the first and last pages.

  Water dripping from her hair and onto the pages, she chuckled softly and decided to slow down a little bit. She still had a few minutes left before she had to book it. She read her mama’s letter carefully once more—poring over each and every last word with all her heart—before going back to the diagrams, making sure the technique was something she could use to evade detection.

  the Archive warned, and she bounced onto her glaives, slipping her book behind her waist.

  The warship started groaning, rocking left and right as the waves churned beneath it. Now, there were plenty of things Marisol wanted to take with her—most of the crab children’s gifts and garlands, for one—but there was no time to sprint down to the lower decks for them, not even to take a live crab with her. She had her crab shell scarf over her neck, her mama’s sand-dancing cloak and technique book over her back, and a chatty bug in her ear. It was just like the time when she’d set off from the fairy shrimp to skate through a storm.

  She was afraid, but she wasn’t frozen.

  With thirty seconds left to spare, she sped out of the cabin, carved across the deck to reach the front of the ship, and leaped off the bowsprit with the tip of her glaives pressed together. She landed on the sea with barely a raindrop’s worth of ripples, her arms spread out to maintain perfect balance. She didn’t turn around as she heard the giant remipede split her warship in half, splashing a massive wave outwards as the whole vessel was dragged underwater, pulled into the depths.

  Exhaling coolly, she looked to the left and spotted floating debris a thousand meters off into the fog. Anything she could wait the night out on would serve well enough.

  She took one slow step forward—tentatively raising a glaive and placing it back down on the inner edge—and she ‘slid’ by pushing off her back glaive, keeping her body low to the surface as she slid a single meter towards her destination.

  There was no ripple created by the movement.

  The giant remipede’s shadow slithered beneath her, evidently unsatisfied with its catch—all wood, all metal, little juicy flesh to go by. Maybe it’d mistaken her warship and all the other ships around her as living prey.

  Whatever the case, she had only one objective: get as far away from the wreckage of her warship as possible and tough out the night.

  Of about fifty thousand crustaceans species worldwide, the remipede is the one and only venomous crustacean. Like a lot of true bugs, remipedes inject venom into their prey to dissolve their insides before sucking up their liquidised meals. The current explanation for why remipedes are the only crustaceans with venom as their hunting trick isn’t really clear, but don’t worry. They mostly live in coastal caves deep underwater, so you’ll almost never encounter one unless you go really, really far looking for it!