"I have an idea," Glenn said cheerfully. "We can't go on the aisle, so the only hope is to go to the ropes and get onto the deck, which is only 20 to 25 feet of climb."

"Does it mean that we have to run through the hole that the big bastard is guarding? That's a suicide jump," retorted Chris.

"That's the only choice we have," said Glenn firmly.

The student who was at the side of Glenn seemed to have been convinced. He dashed to the hole and jumped. Fortunately, he clutched a rope and then twisted his body drastically to move up.

Chris had no choice. He put his sister on his back, caught a rope and began crawling up the rope using his hands.

Glenn and lafite followed.

Roping up wouldn't present a problem for the burly Glenn, despite his wounded ankle. But it was a big challenge for the delicately-built Lafite, who had been pampered by her powerful father. But when facing death, she mustered up her courage and jumped.

As the five students were ascending along the rope, three similar monsters burst from the sea surface and started creeping up from the bottom of the hull.

"Holy sh*t! These things aggregate to attack?" yelled Chris, who was fearing for Nina's life, who had bled out on his back.

A sizzling sound was heard at the time and the roping team shuddered partly out of fear yet mainly because of an actual blast of cold wind. The next second, they found a large stretch of ice sprawling downward to meet the three giant creatures, and overpowering them to shrink back.

As the thick layer of ice was making its way to freeze the creatures, the sea whirled violently and a giant octopus burst out of water.

"An octopus?" Lafite wondered. "Are the monsters we've seen its tentacles?"

The rest of the group's face fell at Lafite's wild guess.

At the time, a monster (a tentacle?) had been frozen, so, it lost its grip on the hull. The monster then fell off into the sea and generated a gust of strong wind.

Glenn braced himself and grasped the rope tighter against the high speed gale while the student leading the climbers was blown clean off the rope and whirled into sea; his screaming could still be heard as he dived into sea.

Lafite was swept off the rope, too, and was in a free fall. She desperately worked out the sorcery and conjured up the vine that flew up and anchored itself in a rail of the deck. But the sorcery had to be sustained by her magical force, which would be used up in minutes.

She hung in the air, hair ruffled. Her beautiful face paled out of fear. She knew that she would fall by the minute, and would become the monster's food, but she didn't speak out the word "help", either due to her paralyzing fear or because of her stubborn pride; instead, she clenched her teeth and glanced at the roaring sea.

Chris already had his sister on his back, so he couldn't take any more of weight.

Therefore, Glenn was the only possibility that Lafite was to be saved from a horrible death.

In a moment of life and death, Glenn decided to take the risk and rescue her, not just because of her charming yet pathetic face at the moment, but because she had never insulted him for his poor parentage.

Glenn took a deep breath, reeled his arm in the rope and descended until he reached a lifeboat in the middle of the hull. He then untied the hooked rope, which was present in the life boat, and swung it towards the vine. After several attempts, Glenn caught on the vine and dragged it to him as close as possible, after which he began to gaspingly lift the vine, the other end of which Lafite was holding as the last straw.

Lafite was dragged to the lifeboat just before the vine vanished. She stared at Glenn, tears in eyes.

Glenn had never been watched this intently by such a beautiful girl as Lafite, so he stroked his nose to reduce his awkwardness.

"Ah," Glenn chirped.

Lafite had rushed to Glenn and grasped him around the waist, nestling her head in Glenn's chest.

"I thought I would die. I thought you would not help," Lafite whispered in Glenn's ear, weeping.

Glenn was extremely nervous. His body went stiff; his hands were lost for position; So, he just stood there motionlessly and smelled the gorgeous natural scent coming out from her hair.

The two didn't move until Lafite realized her faux pas and chuckled.

"You wanna hold me forever?"

"No...No..." Glenn stuttered as he released Lafite, and his face turned red.

A little romance had developed in a moment of grave danger.

"Get on my back, and I will get you up to the deck." Glenn calmed down and got down to the business.

At the time, Chris had already reached the deck and was helping Glenn by pulling up Glenn's rope. A minute later, Glenn and Lafite were on the deck, too.

But they were faced with an even more horrifying scene on the deck. The 300-foot long deck was potholed everywhere and was littered with over a hundred dead bodies. All the bodies were soaked in blood so much that in no way you could recognize which one was a student's, a knight's or which one belonged to a monster.

And in the center of the deck, a huge tentacle that had been cut off was twitching, and was oozing out cyan and stinky blood.

Another booming sound came. The group tracked it and found that Sorcerer Dior was standing in the air about twenty feet above the deck. His eye patch had been removed, showing a complicated and fast moving mechanic eye.

Dior cast a spell and was freezing a tentacle under his feet, which was trying to attack Dior. The group finally realized that the vast layer of ice had been produced by Dior.

Out of nowhere another big tentacle was swooping at Sorcerer Dior and Dior immediately shielded himself by producing a large and thick ice column before him. The ice column and the flying tentacle met and disintegrated into a pile of ice-chipped minced meat.

Another tentacle came and Dior broke it using the same ice weapon.

And on the deck, the remaining knights were defending the charging tentacles, and to Glenn's amazement, the two students who were in Dior's room were in the fight, too.