Marisol thought the Seagrass Meadow was pretty enough already—she’d never bored of the calm and quiet forest of seaweeds that swayed gently with the underwater currents—but if she ever wondered what the coral cavern under the horseshoe crab island would like if it were submerged underwater, she didn’t have to look any further.
Somehow, two thousand metres deep into the whirlpool, sunlight still shone brightly down onto Depth Two, the Tropical Reef. A forest of orange, violet, and electric blue coral formations rose like twisted sculptures around her, winding and curving in mesmerising patterns. The sand beneath her feet was soft and cool, dotted with scattered shells. Above her, fan-like sea anemones unfurled like great, colourful banners, billowing in the soft underwater currents. Ribbon-like kelp fronds stretched from the ground towards the diving bell she’d dropped down from, and… as she kept vibrating her hydrofuge spines to keep water out of her eyes, she noticed the four of them weren’t the only inhabitants of the Tropical Reef.
Whoa!
That’s–
She backed into Helena, who grabbed her shoulder and laughed as she recoiled from a colony of tiny, vibrant shrimps swimming past her face. The shrimps weren’t the only inhabitants; among the reef, crabs with iridescent blue and emerald shells clung to the corals, picking off algae with their delicate pincers. Metre-long lobsters with shimmering gold armour crawled along the ground here and there, antennae waving lazily about as schools of bright-scaled fish hitched rides on their backs. There were even eight-limbed, jelly-like creatures darting between coral branches, their bodies shifting colours with each coral they jumped onto—she’d no idea what those things were even called, but for the amount of crustaceans she was being surrounded by, there was only one real question on her mind.
The Archive was a mind-reader, but the Imperator siblings who patted her back and started walking forward were mind-readers, too.
“Haven’t you been told the ecosystem in the whirlpool ain’t like anything you can find outside the city?” Aidan said, his voice warbling and slightly distorted as he glanced back at her, arms folded behind his head. “Down here, there are just as many docile crustaceans as there are hostile crustaceans. We’ll never get any rest if we try to wipe all of them out, so we identify and classify everything in the Deepwater Legion Almanac—that’s the notebook we’d pinned in our diving bell with information about every crustacean in every Depth, and it’s up to the orienteer to regularly update it by collecting research samples.”
Helena slapped Aidan on his head, making him wince. “Then get going with the sample collection already,” she grumbled. “The patrol formation is simple: in a team of four, the orienteer is the only one who gets to stray particularly far away while collecting research samples. The other three are always close by, no further than twenty metres away from each other at all times, and they observe the crustaceans in the area they’re assigned to patrol to see if anything’s out of place. Simple, right?”
Then Bruno slapped both of his younger siblings’ heads, grunting as he waded forward and took the lead. “Simple, but still. Keep your senses peeled. Just because anomalies have only been happening in the lower Depths doesn’t mean anomalies can’t pop up here.”
Helena and Aidan gave their older brother a mock salute as Marisol followed closely behind, the four of them patrolling the reef at a slow, meandering pace. All the better for Marisol, she supposed—she had more time to gawk at the dozens of giant diving bells still descending overhead, the bells themselves looking like shooting stars while the chains looked like their starry trails. A few of the bells came to a halt in Depth Two as well, with a few more groups of Imperators dropping out to patrol different sections of the reef, but most bells shot past them to reach the lower Depths; she couldn’t but help but shudder as she realised, eventually, it would be her in one of those bells, descending to Depths where even sunlight couldn’t reach.
And the Imperators do this… three times a day?
[Correct.]
How far down does sunlight go?
[Only down to Depth Three. Past that, the Imperators rely on lanterns and the bioluminescent flora of Depths Four to Seven for visibility.]
What about Depths Eight and Nine?
The Archive hopped off her shoulder and paddled in front of her face, swimming lazily around her head. [Nobody who goes down to Depth Eight and Nine needs to see with their eyes. They all have at least one perception mutation unlocked, and their perceptivity levels are high enough that they can essentially navigate the abyss blindfolded.]
…
[That is to say, Depths One to Three are not particularly dangerous,] the Archive said, pointing at a nearby coral they were walking by. [See those people over there?]
She turned and looked, ignoring Aidan bouncing around the corals scraping algae into glass tubes.
Apart from the four of them, there were groups of heavily armoured divers trudging around the corals, all of them bearing different crests on their one-shoulder pauldrons. Some wore weighted boots with tubes snaking from their diving helmets to their oxygen backpacks, cutting small branches off glowing corals before sliding them into metal boxes. Others were swimming and floating around the fan-like sea anemones, cutting off ribbons of kelps with sickles and then tying them around the oxygen tanks. She spotted even a group of children squirming between two tightly-packed corals, extracting crystalline pearls from the bed of a large anemone-like plant—there were delicate, practised processes everywhere she looked, and for their part, the Imperator siblings weren’t paying any mind to the divers at all.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Bruno and Helena were starting to stray too far ahead, so she slid forward to keep up.
“... The Whirlpool City is, for the most part, capable of sustaining itself with the resources we harvest from the whirlpool,” Helena said, glancing and gesturing around as Marisol caught up with her. “All a company needs to do is register for a commercial diving licence with Lighthouse Five, which is responsible for dealing with governing affairs, and then they can dive down to Depth Three depending on what resources they’re trying to harvest.”
“There are about two hundred commercial diving companies in the city,” Bruno added, nodding at one of the divers as they passed by. “There are ecological rules they have to follow while they’re down here, of course, so it’s part of the patrolling Imperators’ duties to recognise them by their crests and shoo companies who aren’t supposed to be here away. We don’t want them messing with the natural regenerative cycles of the reef too much. There’s a delicate balance we Imperators need to preserve if we don’t want bugs acting up–”
“Hungry, Marisol?” Aidan interrupted, darting in front of her and making all of them screech to a halt. “That’s the ‘Gansas Viejo’ company, who harvests and sells the best rainbow fish in the lower city. I know the boss over there, and he said you can go and have a taste of their freshest catch if you want—you ain’t gonna turn free food down, are you?”
His older brother and younger sister immediately slapped him over the head for suggesting such a thing, but Marisol was hungry, and though she couldn't talk underwater, her stomach could growl.
“... Just don't stray too far.” Bruno sighed, waving her off to the distant group of divers waving at her to come over. “You can't differentiate between crustaceans that are and aren't supposed to be here, anyways, so familiarise yourself with the local fauna. You'll make yourself more useful that way.”
Marisol paused. The excitement she'd been trying to suppress showed on her face, and she thanked the Imperators with a small bow before darting off to the divers sitting hunched over a coral.
They were supposed to patrol for only two hours, but Marisol spent the next hour bouncing from coral to coral, group after group, greeting the divers as they handed her all kinds of gifts: luminescent seaweeds that had bouncy, jelly-like textures, translucent sea grapes that looked like water-filled pearls, and pulsing pinkish-bluish petals from an underwater flower that resembled a five-pointed star. One group even offered her an entire coral lump, the lady in charge cracking a small piece off the branch before handing it to her with a knowing grin. That one was just pure, crystallised salt—she coughed and hacked and made the divers laugh as the Imperators shook their heads behind her, shouting at her to keep up as she visited each group one by one.
[They seem to know you,] the Archive remarked, as she skated over to her next group ten metres in front of the Imperators; these were two children who held their hands at her, telling her to wait as they squirmed inside a coral to yank something out. [Most diving companies that harvest food and fabrication resources from the whirlpool are based in the lower city—the upper city folk don’t typically risk their lives down here, however relatively safe these jobs may be—so it would not be a surprise to me if they know you as the ‘Storm Strider’, or whatever it is you are being called amongst the lower city folk.]
She scowled, popping a third skyball coral candy into her mouth as she exhaled bubbles through her nose. What’s up with that name, by the way? How do people even know about me?
[Your fight against the Mutant-Class skeleton shrimp was dangerously close to the shores of the lower city. Most likely, many lower city folk watched you descend from the sky and cleave the shrimp in half with lightning swirling around your Storm Glaives—and the lower city folk enjoy heroic tales more than anyone else in the Deepwater Legion Front,] the Archive said pointedly. [When you live on the frontline between the great blue and the whirlpool where Corpsetaker is confined to, you, too, would want heroes to look up to. The Harbour Guards patrol and guard the great blue, while the Imperators protect the upper city by diving into the whirlpool. Who do you think the lower city folk depend on to protect them, then?]
The Hasharana?
The Archive rubbed its legs together to make a snapping sound. [The lower city folk hardly care if you are a registered Hasharana or not. For decades, the Hasharana have had close ties with the households and establishments of the lower city; by extension, the diving companies view you as someone to respect and revere.] Then the Archive paused for a moment as the children in front of her pulled out of the coral, holding up strange, bulbous red fruits with bright smiles on their faces. [It also helps that you literally killed a Mutant-Class in front of them, so it is likely that the children, especially, look up to you as a hero.]
…
She’d no idea what to think about that.
To begin with, she hadn’t been planning on staying in the Whirlpool City for long, but the more she learned about the city and the more people she ran into.
… Maybe this place ain’t such a bad place to live in, after all.
At the very least, after mama recovers, I should take her back here so she can see what’s become of the city she left behind.
Dipping her head in a show of gratitude, she accepted one of the fruits and bit into it on the spot, savouring the sweet yet mostly salty tangs that came out of the flesh—it wasn’t like any fruit she’d ever had on the surface, that was for sure, but it was nourishing all the same.
She grinned at the children, and the children grinned back–
----------------------------------------
[Points: 3 → 4]
----------------------------------------
–when a status screen popped up next to her head, making her flinch and look down at the half-eaten fruit in her hand.
The children looked just as surprised to see a little shrimp-like creature wriggling across the reddish flesh, two glowing antennae wagging left and right.
… Ew.
This is–
[Grab the children and back away from the coral.]
Her body moved on instinct. She grabbed the boys by their waists and kicked off the ground, the explosive burst of speed kicking up a cloud of sand and shattered shells as her ripple sensors flared all across her skin—and the Imperators behind her immediately snapped their heads over, Bruno catching her before she could slam into another coral.
While Helena and Aidan shouted at the nearby divers to run away, Marisol flung the children back as hard as possible, glaring at the cloud of sand that was beginning to warp around the coral they’d just been standing in front of.
[I see the Sand-Dancer’s misfortune has yet to leave you even two thousand metres below the surface,] the Archive muttered. [Prepare yourself for combat. Detecting four thousand Critter-Class pests ahead.]
----------------------------------------
[Objective #13: Defeat the Copepod Brood]
[Time Limit: Undefined]
[Reward: Survival]
[Failure: Death]