The rest of the patrol was uneventful, but the ascent in the diving bell was cheerful. Aidan popped open bottles of fresh fruit juice from the overhead compartments, Helena gawked and peppered Marisol with questions about the exact workings of her glaives, and Bruno smiled softly as he turned the small crank to pull them back up—if the Imperator siblings had any doubt Marisol was going to be of any use underwater, they didn’t doubt her a single bit now.
For her part, Marisol was still a bit light-headed. It wasn't Aidan chugging two bottles of juice at once or Helena poking the holes in her glaives that made her dizzy. Simply having spent two hours in Depth Two sapped all the strength from her, and the lingering pressure on her shoulders still made her body tremble slightly; this wasn't something she could get used to quickly.
[On the bright side, nobody was seriously hurt.]
Yeah.
[All of the commercial divers were safe and sound, the siblings got off with light injuries, and you found a new use for your new tier four mutation.]
Did you already know Ether Discharge could be used that way?
I was only planning on using it for speed. Never in a million years would I've thought about using the discharge as a ranged attack.
None of the siblings could see the Archive floating in front of her, pulling its front legs apart as though trying to shrug. [It is not exactly uncommon for aquatic insects to have some form of active propulsion mutation. Furthermore, the last water strider user before you had managed to unlock the Ether Discharge mutation, so the records of its potential applications are already in my database.]
But you didn't know what my Hexichor Art was until I figured it out myself?
[Correct,] the Archive said, and Bruno frowned as he stared at something outside the latch window. Another patrol team's diving bell, it seemed like. [You must understand that all insect classes offered by the Altered Swarmsteel System were once designed by someone somewhere around the world. We cannot offer our Hasharana an insect class that has not been used by someone with a normal Swarmsteel System before—and to wit, one of only two differences between a normal system and an altered system is the existence of the artificial intelligence assistant, otherwise known as the ‘Archive’—so in cases of rare insect classes like yours, only the original designer of the water strider class knew that Storm Glaives was your Hexichor Art.]
… Come again?
[Most insect classes were designed before Year Seventy, which was when the first Altered Swarmsteel Systems came to existence,] the Archive explained. [Back then, humanity only had normal Swarmsteel Systems, and they were either mass-produced in military factories or custom-made by incredibly talented smiths. What we called ‘generic insect classes’ back then and nowadays means we already know the workings of the class' Hexichor Art.]
[Take for example, the pistol shrimp classes the Imperator siblings are using.]
Marisol glanced at Aidan and Helena’s claws as the two partied in the bell, chugging bottles and cheering each other on.
[Many Imperators in the Deepwater Legion Front are users of the pistol shrimp class. This is because the pistol shrimp system is a mass-produced system with a very clear-cut, transparent manufacturing process. Thus, their Hexichor Art of 'Snapstrike' has been known since the year they began being distributed across the Deepwater Legion Front,] the Archive elaborated. [In contrast, the first water strider system was probably made by some random hermit smith in the middle of a cave, and it was probably passed down from random hand to hand until, eventually, a Hasharana stumbled upon the first prototype water strider system abandoned on a sinking vessel. As there were no records of how the system was originally created, the Hasharana could only analyse its data and copy them into our database of selectable insect classes. That means the encryption on the Hexichor Art data was also copied over—hence, I could not tell you what your Hexichor Art was until you reached the conditions to unlock it by yourself.]
[Therefore, while the Archives of the Altered Swarmsteel System are able to offer the water strider class to people whose biology and physiology are best fit for its mutations—this being the second difference between normal systems and altered systems—I am unable to tell you why the water strider class' Hexichor Art is Storm Glaives.]
[For the record, there are plenty of rare insect classes like the water strider class, and all the Hasharana who were offered them also had to figure out what their Hexichor Arts were by themselves.]
Marisol pursed her lips. The explanation was a lot more complicated and wordy than she’d thought, and frankly, she didn’t really understand half of what the Archive just said.
She felt she got the general gist of it, though.
But… a while back, I thought you said there were only a few Hasharana before me who were also offered the water strider class.
[Correct.]
And none of them figured out Storm Glaives was their Hexichor Art?
[As far as I know—though certain information may be redacted for me—no.]
She didn’t know if she should feel proud or disappointed by that fact. On one hand, she’d blazed a new path for all future water strider users, but on the other hand, it meant she was still in the dark about why her Hexichor Art was the magic it was.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
… Oh, well.
Ain’t like there ain’t no charm in being the ‘first ever’ for something as grand as the water strider class.
[Certainly. Being a daredevil has its advantages–]
The diving bell rattled as they broke the surface, and the colour of sunlight streaming in through the latch window turned from pale blue to a harsh, warm orange—Marisol nearly lurched off her bench as her head immediately throbbed.
While Helena and Aidan hurried to swipe all the empty bottles in a bag under the small table, Bruno continued frowning out the window, muttering something under his breath as he turned the wheel to pop open the latch.
Marisol didn’t hear much of anything afterwards, because the moment Bruno shoved the latch open to let in a wave of fresh, brine-scented air, she was assaulted with the blaring sirens of half a dozen armoured ships approaching them from afar.
Reina was waiting for them on the platform right outside the bell, and her face was ghostly white as she frantically rushed towards them.
----------------------------------------
… Victor’s hands tightened on his walking cane as he stared down at the whirlpool from the top of Lighthouse Seven, watching the medics struggle to pull bloody Imperator initiates out of their diving bells.
It was sharp at noon, but he’d barely even touched his brunch an hour ago when the first incident report surfaced: an unnatural cluster of copepods appeared in Depth One and attacked a team of four initiates patrolling the area at the time, forcing them to end their patrol early. Soon after, three, four, five more diving bells surfaced earlier than usual—by noon, all in total, the diving logistic officers reported sixty-four initiates and commercial divers gravely wounded, all of them having barely escaped their leviathan attacks by the breadth of their hairs.
Chaos reigned below. The Imperators always had half a dozen medical ships on standby during the morning, afternoon, and nighttime patrol sessions in case any team needed to surface early due to injuries, but they didn’t have enough ships to attend to sixteen diving bells at once. The result was apparent; shouts and screams for volunteer medical aid from the upper city resounded across the whirlpool below, and for Victor’s part, he could do nothing but watch as bloody initiates were yanked out of their diving bells and placed on stretchers, being ferried to shore as quickly as possible.
He wasn’t alone at the top of Lighthouse Seven, of course. He had an old friend to commiserate with.
“Only the Imperator teams patrolling Depths One to Three were attacked,” he murmured, glancing at the Imperatrix standing next to him as he did. “What do you see with that eye of yours, Andres? Think it ain’t nothing but a coincidence?”
Andres scoffed, face hardening as one of the medical ships below waved a red flag up at them; the signal that someone had perished inside a diving bell. “As if this could’ve been anything but a coordinated attack. Corpsetaker is behind this. First, the Harbour Guards outside the city report Mutant-Classes are heading towards the city from all over, and now a third of our initiates are benched for at least two months?”
“What’s the move?”
“No commercial diving company is to be allowed in the whirlpool for the next three days, and all morning, afternoon, and nighttime patrols in Depths One to Three are to be reinforced by additional teams composed of Rank Four to Six Imperators for the next two months,” he said firmly, glaring at the officer who just barged into the room behind them with more miserable reports to offer. “We’re splitting our Depth Four to Six patrol forces in half. Tell the standby teams on afternoon and nighttime patrols to figure their allocations out by themselves.”
The officer paused, saluted, and raced out of the room before he could even deliver his report. Victor sighed, pulling the brim of his feathered hat down.
“You don’t want any of the initiates diving by themselves for the next two months?”
“It’s the rational move to prevent bleeding out our young buds.”
“And if half of the teams who are supposed to be patrolling Depths Four to Six aren’t there, you could stand to lose the other half from another coordinated attack,” Victor said plainly. “If anything jumps the weakened Depth Four to Six patrol teams, there won’t ever be enough Imperators nearby to immediately reinforce them. You’ll prioritise Depths One to Three over them?”
“The city cannot sustain itself if the commercial divers aren’t allowed to harvest,” Andres replied steadily, a small scowl on his iron face. “We protect the livelihood of our citizens first and foremost. Does a Hasharana prioritise slaughtering bugs before safeguarding human lives?”
Victor threw the man a sardonic smile, though it was largely hidden behind his bandages. “We’re the wandering bug-slayers. Nothing else. Nothing more. I’d leave you dead in a ditch if it means I can get a clean hit on Corpsetaker or any of his Four Lesser Leviathans.”
Andres’ expression didn’t change. “Asshole.”
“Bitch.”
“This is why you never get invited to any of the annual Arcana Hasharana meetups. Enki and Zora still find you irritating.”
“It’s a compliment to have annoyed the great Worm God and the Thousand-Tongue for over four decades.” Victor shook his head, a smaller, genuine grin rising onto his face as he spotted a particular medical ship being pulled back to the bottom of Lighthouse Seven. “In any case, there are only three initiates and an acting Hasharana who seem to have gotten out of their copepod attack relatively unharmed. Who do you think you have to thank for that, hm?”
The Imperatrix clicked his tongue, waving Victor away dismissively as he turned to leave the room.
“The reports claim the unnatural copepod hordes originated from somewhere within Depth Three,” he said. “We’ll have a few scouts investigate, and once we know where they’re coming from, the three uninjured initiates plus your water strider girl will enter Depth Three to deal with the source of the copepods. Have Reina go with them to err on the side of caution. Reina alone can take down a Mutant-Class no problem, but I’d like to see what those initiates and your girl can do in Depth Three as well.”
Victor looked over his shoulder, squinting at the Imperatrix. “It’s too early for her to be down in Depth Three. She doesn’t even have her Sonar Translation and Corrugation Armour mutation unlocked yet, so she can’t even speak underwater–”
“It’ll be a while before the investigations wrap-up,” Andres interrupted. “At the very least, she’ll have time to get enough points to unlock the first one."
Once the Imperatrix made up his mind, there wasn’t going to be any arguing back—so Victor simply let the man leave as he continued surveilling the whirlpool, lips tightened in a thin line.
The day we let the girl dive on an actual mission, the copepods attack.
Was it fortunate we put her with a team of initiates so she could protect them, or was the ‘plan’ to injure all the other initiates so Andres will definitely send her down to Depth Three as part of an extermination force?
But the whirlpool, like the great blue, had a mind of its own, and no doubt the hermit king lurking in the abyss had something to do with the attacks.
… Which one of the four is it, Corpsetaker?
And how do you even know that weakling of a girl has an Altered Swarmsteel System?