Skating frantically through the gargantuan forest was nothing new to Marisol anymore. She’d done this three times in three days, and compared to the ever-changing stage that was the fickle desert, the giant roots never shifted out of place. The ones she skated on three days ago were still there—she knew the terrain like the back of her hand.
She could only hope Kuku was safe, hiding amidst the canopy.
How many chasing me, Archive?
[Your perceptivity level is not high enough for me to see behind you, but I estimate at least twenty Blackclaw Marauders; one of them has especially heavy footsteps,] the Archive replied. [Do not engage all of them at once. Pick them off one by one with your superior speed.]
She kept her eyes focused on the roots ahead, feeling them split beneath her glaives, but her mind was on the shadows running closely behind her. Twenty Marauders seemed to be about the right number. While she was a fair bit stronger than when she’d last seen them, they were also far more irritated than they were before—they wasted no time spitting streams of blood at her, trying to shoot her down as she twirled and twisted through the forest and breakneck speed.
Tch.
I can’t just keep running forever.
She turned a corner on a giant root and immediately pivoted, spinning in place, locking eyes on one of the closer Marauders trying to hack through a thick wall of vines. The rest of them were all scattered about, likely trying to corner and surround her, so she’d target the weakest links first; she couldn’t afford to get surrounded with no escape route set in place.
Dragging one of her glaives back, she leaned forward in a Sand-Dancer’s sprinting start and kicked forward. Her heart was racing fast. The winds howled in her ears, the world turned into blurry lines as her eyes narrowed on the one Marauder she was targeting, and then she jumped—kneeing the crab-headed man in the chest and making his ribs go crack.
She blinked as she landed and screeched to a halt, looking behind her to see the man groaning on the ground, evidently unable to fight anymore.
… My knee barely even hurts.
[Well, you have put quite a fair number of points into raising your toughness the past few days,] the Archive said nonchalantly. [You have the strength equivalent of four men, the speed equivalent of six men, and the toughness equivalent of three men. At the speed you can run into people, the total magnitude of any impacting force is far more than what your strength level suggests.]
I… I ain’t never actually seriously hit anyone before–
[Please duck.]
She reacted on instinct, slapping her palms to the ground as a blood stream whizzed over her head, splitting the log in front of her.
Three Marauders charged out with cutlasses lunging for her neck, waist, and thighs—as swiftly as a cricket hopping out of an antlion’s sandpit, she jumped and kicked off a nearby tree, doing a frontflip as she slammed the flat edge of her glaive down on another Marauder’s head. The other two recovered with their cutlasses heading straight for her throat again, but she dodged the slow-moving blades with ease and side-stepped.
Counter-attacking while they whiffed their attacks would’ve obviously been the best option, but she was so, so dizzy jumping and flipping around at breakneck speeds.
Whoa.
I… gimme a moment… to–
[Stimulating release of perception-enhancing compounds.]
The Archive warned her, but there was no way she could’ve prepared for it. It was like someone suddenly shoved an icicle through the back of her skull and her world flashed white and red and pink—her muscles electrifying, her pain receptors amplifying, her blood running cold in her veins—but then she blinked again, and it was like she was seeing the whole world through a bug’s curved compound eyes.
The world was wider.
The Marauders’ cutlasses were moving in even slower motion.
Was this what it felt like to see through a water strider’s eyes?
She rushed at the two Marauders with a maddened frenzy, kicking one in the stomach and skating around the other to sweep him off his feet. She used the flat end of her glaive to do both, but there was more than enough force behind her attacks to knock them flat on their backs. More Marauders jumped out of the bushes where the first four came from, but she heard them coming and started skating off into the forest again; they pursued faster, roaring at her to pay for what she did to their companions.
Hey! You ain’t ever told me you could do that! Wouldn’t that have come in handy–
[It is but a temporary boost. Your senses are running three times as fast as normal; overuse of this functionality of mine will eventually damage your brain and turn you paraplegic. I will only use this once.]
She gritted her teeth, forcing out a grin as she glanced behind her. How long will this boost last, then?
[Five minutes.]
[Defeat all of them before then.]
… Got it!
She skated in zigzags, keeping herself off the beaten paths as she aimed to disorient her pursuers as best as she could. A dozen blood streams volleyed at her, screaming through the air, but she always heard them coming and dodged appropriately. Sparks of fire were born under her glaives as she screeched to a halt whenever she pivoted, and whenever she found one Marauder running particularly far away from the rest of their friends, she’d pounce on them as quickly as possible—sending a flying knee into their faces, shoulder-bashing into their chests, or just holding a glaive out as she skated past them to kick their stomachs.
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Like so, she took out ten more Marauders within three minutes, poking and prodding at their weakest links until only six remained. The six weren’t all dumb and stubborn, though. The next time she skated in to try picking off the one standing furthest out, they turned at once and spit their projectiles at the same time, forcing her to jump out of the way. Blood streams grazed her waist, thighs, and glaives. She bit down a wince as she landed on her side, scrambling to get on her feet.
[Do not engage in melee with them. Poke and prod, in and out–]
I know!
Two Marauders broke formation to stab her on the ground, but she backflipped and immediately skated ten metres back, putting distance between them. The moment she recovered, they fired again; she jerked into a dodge again, throwing herself behind a tree as wood splinters exploded around her.
If they’re standing in a tight formation like that, how can I pick them off one by one?
They’ll shoot me all at once if I show up in front of them, so the moment I’m in their line of sight…
…
Chest heaving, panting for breath, she glanced up at the gargantuan trees and got an idea.
‘Blind them in the sand’, her mama always used to say. ‘A blind audience cannot see the faults in your dance.’
Clenching her jaw, she waited until the next volley of projectiles slammed into the tree she was taking cover behind, and as the whole log started tipping over sideways, she whirled and kicked it back so it fell onto the Marauders instead. The six of them shouted and dodged out of the way easily—as expected of the strongest of the group—but she’d jumped and skated up the falling log as though using it as a ramp, soaring far over their heads.
She couldn’t use the War Jump on a tree, but on the dense canopy of vines and branches, her glaives could cut through.
Splitting her legs apart, twirling mid-air, she spun and carved and ripped through a hundred branches, making them fall on the Marauders like a hailstorm of daggers. They braced their heads with their pincers, lowering themselves to minimise their surface area, but the falling branches bought her enough time. She landed, skated in, and kicked down five of the six Marauders desperately trying to pinpoint her location.
Only one remaining.
Swerving around and doing a full U-turn, she skated straight towards the final Marauder, clenching every muscle in her legs as she jumped–
And then her glaive bounced off his chest, her kick repelled with a hefty clang.
… What?
Her momentum halted in the blink of an eye and she was left staring up at the man. His chitin was pale and sallow, but one look at him and she could tell; he was the leader of the bunch. His shoulders were broad, his human muscles were rippled, and his pincers were twice the size of everyone else’s. Even his crab head was adorned with a crown of spikes, and his protruded eye stalks glowered down at her, making her shudder and hop back out of fear, out of desperation.
She’d kicked him in the chest with everything she had—all her strength, all her speed, all her toughness—and he hadn’t even budged?
No way.
So she stumbled a few more steps back before skating in, throwing another kick at his biceps. Utterly ineffective. The flat edge of her glaive bounced off his normal human skin like a rubber hammer to a metal wall. She tried again and again and again—no damage whatsoever. The impact from the first failed attack was still reverberating through her bones, weakening her muscles, weakening her resolve.
The Marauder swiped a lazy pincer at her face, and she jerked her arms up to block. Something went crack. She went flying back, out through the forest, and tumbled into a roll next to a roaring waterfall. The winds were harsh and strong at the edge of the fifty-metre-tall cliff, and she struggled to claw to her glaives as the Marauder lumbered towards her, breaths tearing out of her in pained, haggard gasps.
He’s strong and tough in one package!
[Then do not fight him here where there are no trees around. Find a way to get past him. The cliffside is dangerous–]
Easier said than done, of course. She just barely managed to get back on her glaives when he was suddenly in her face, and he snapped his pincer around her neck, raising her off the ground.
Shit!
Deposit all my points into strength!
----------------------------------------
[Strength: 4 → 5]
[Points: 32 → 16]
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She kicked her glaives at his chest as her hands grasped at his pincer, trying to pry his claws off her throat, but nothing about him would give. Five levels in strength wasn’t enough. He strode forward calmly and held her over the edge of the cliff—he had no intention of dropping her, it seemed, but he did want to talk.
His crab mandibles opened, and his voice was just as rattly as his breath was rotten.
Y̶e̶r̸ ̷l̶i̴k̵e̷ ̷a̵n̶ ̵a̶n̵n̵o̶y̶i̷n̶'̸ ̵l̴i̴t̵t̵l̵e̵ ̸m̴o̷s̷q̸u̸i̶t̴o̴,̵ ̴b̶u̵z̷z̴i̷n̵'̷ ̷a̸n̵d̷ ̴f̴l̶y̵i̷n̴'̵ ̴a̸r̷o̷u̸n̵d̷ ̷u̸s̸,̶ ̸b̵u̶t̸–̵
[–Dhina Tongue detected. Translating–]
“–ye have that bulky little thing on the back of yer neck. Yer one of them, aren’t ya?” the Marauder growled, tightening his pincer over her neck and making her choke. “Them wanderin’ bug-slayers, them heroes of the continent… the ‘Hasharana’. How many are ye? Where’s the rest of ye?”
[Lie. Tell him there are three more Hasharana sailing the nearby straits, and that if you die, they will immediately know where you are–]
“Lay down your arms and we promise we’ll be lenient on you,” she wheezed, gritting her teeth as she forced a small, painful smile onto her face. “There’s three of us… in the nearby straits. The moment I die, it’ll send out a signal for them to check this island out. You won’t… be able to get away.”
If a crab head could have any expression, she felt the Marauder was probably ruminating in his head right now; maybe she wasn’t convincing enough? Was he going to call her bluff? She’d said everything the Archive wanted her to say, though, so if that didn’t convince him, she didn’t know–
“I just won’t kill ye, then,” he said, chortling as he tightened his pincer, trying to choke her out. “A Hasharana ain’t worth anythin’ dead, anyways. I’ll get that guy to peel that system out of yer neck. What do ye lot call it? An ‘Altered Hexsteel System’? If I had somethin’ like that, I’d have been able to keep my human head while retainin’ my crab mutations, but better late than never, eh?”
She clenched her throat and squeezed her eyes shut, doing her absolute best to resist his pincer–
And Kuku jumped behind the Marauder with a howling screech, smashing the back of the man’s head with a boulder. It was a combination of the force and the surprise; the Marauder dropped Marisol and stumbled a few steps to the side, growling in pain.
Thankfully, she had enough sense left in her to grab onto the edge of the cliff, holding on for dear life, but before she could pull herself back up—Kuku ripped off his helmet and slammed it onto her head, plunging her vision into near-complete darkness.
It was only through the two tiny eye holes that she felt as though she saw Kuku mouthing something at her, and then he peeled her fingers off the edge, making her plummet fifty metres straight down to the basin at the bottom of the waterfall.
The very last thing she saw was the Marauder grabbing Kuku in a fit of rage, and then her back hit the water hard, all sounds muffled.