After a week-long questioning session by the Imperators, where she was made to recount everything that had happened down in Depth Two with excruciating detail, Marisol was finally allowed to sleep in late at the Highwind Inn.

Of course, she didn’t choose to sleep in late. Sharp at eight in the morning, she was already stretching on the flat roof of the inn, getting warmed up by the light morning drizzle and sunlight falling softly over the volcano city. The upper city crowd on the streets below were as loud as usual, doors and windows being thrown open as businesses hung their signs out to sway in the wind. She’d not been to the lower city recently, but she was sure the people there were just as carefree and nonchalant; none of them knew what’d transpired just a week ago in the whirlpool, and perhaps it was for the better that the city didn’t start panicking.

Fifty-nine Rank One to Three Imperators gravely wounded.

Five dead.

That’s a third of the Depth One to Three patrol forces relegated to the infirmary beds for the next month and a half, huh?

She stretched her arms wide, pulled one glaive skyward, and then brought it down with a sharp exhale—the mechanical doll in front of her dodged to the left, its glaives for legs sliding to the edge of the roof with an ear-grating screech.

[... It is certainly fortunate that the Imperator siblings were teamed up with you during the copepod attack, but I do not see how this training is helping you.]

Ain’t it obvious?

The nicknamed ‘Highwind Doll’ was something the innkeeper lended her a week ago at her request of wanting a private place to train: tall, mechanical, and crafted from bronze and iron with gear arrays visible in the joints, it was a humanlike construct designed to imitate a Mutant with four arms and two legs. Each arm was a little different. One ended in a wide, flat surface for blocking, another had a blunt fist for counterstrikes, while the other two sported claw-like grips allowing it to grab and swipe at her. Its legs were glaives like hers, though it probably wasn't based on a water strider user as much as the simple fact that glaives allowed it to slide around the wet roof easier.

According to the Archive, the dolls were rather standard issue constructs the Imperators used to train themselves when they weren’t on patrol, and they were small-scale versions of the giant armours used to combat titan bugs in the northeastern Rampaging Hinterland Front. Depending on how far she turned the little dial on their backs, she could set them to automatically dodge her attacks at the speed of an untrained child, or at the speed of a C-rank Mutant-Class—meaning, at its current dial setting of five out of ten, she wasn't even coming close to landing a kick on it once.

Sliding around the roof and missing kicks were all she'd been doing the past week.

If it weren't for Ether Discharge, I'd have been completely useless against the copepods.

Gritting her teeth, she darted in with the War Jump, trying to cleave the doll's head off with a flurry of kicks. It sidestepped foot after foot, spinning around at the same time to land a graceful backhand on her arms—which she blocked with her preapical claw, immediately countering with an elbow slash with her other claw.

The doll was too slippery, though. Her slash missed, her follow-up kicks missed, and her cloak fluttered after her as she pursued its shadow around the roof with more swift, heavy kicks.

There'll be lots more horde-type bugs like the copepods the deeper down I go, right? She grimaced, eyes sharpened and focused like never before as she tried to follow the doll's movements; it was still a blur of motion, dancing circles around her attacks. If the Imperators hadn't been there, I'd have been cornered by those copepod trees. I wouldn't have been able to gather all the copepods together and deal the finishing blow at the same time.

That's why I need more speed.

If I’d gotten to those copepod clusters faster and destroyed them before they could wrap themselves in the giant trees, maybe I could've gone to help the other diving teams nearby–

Her Ripple Sensors flared when the puddle beneath her glaives wobbled, and for the first time in weeks, she managed to whirl in time to send a kick flying at Victor’s head—which he blocked with his walking cane before hitting her once on the head, once on the shoulder, and twice in the thighs, all in the same motion.

Ow.

She didn’t fall, but she definitely hobbled away with a few pained groans while Victor straightened his collar, looking around the mess she’d made on the roof. The inn had been using the roof for extra storage space, but she’d since pushed the empty crates, old furniture, and stacks of terracotta bricks aside to make a little arena for her and the doll to dance in. Maybe she should’ve gotten permission first, but the fact that the innkeeper even lent her the doll probably meant she was allowed to do that… and if she wasn’t, she’d just tell Victor to ask for her.

Whatever the case, it didn’t stop Victor from shuffling over to one of the crates before plopping himself down onto it, both hands still clasped on his walking cane.

“... You tell me to be on standby in the inn, disappear for an entire week, and now you show up to slap me around?” she grumbled, rubbing her thighs as she turned away from him, ready to dash at the whirring doll again. “There ain’t nothing to worry about me, old me. I ain't giving up on getting down to Depth Nine just because I got a little outmatched by a bunch of Critter-Classes. Now, if you ain’t here to drag me off somewhere, I’d prefer if you didn’t disturb me while I’m busy training–”

“It ain’t always about speed when you’re underwater. You’re already fast enough for Depth Three.”

He spoke, quite evenly, just as she leapt in and launched a high kick at the doll’s chest. In a seamless motion, the doll bent backwards, its torso dipping just low enough to let her glaive soar over it—then she landed, kicked downwards with her other glaive, and it dodged that one with a simple sidestep too.

She gasped for breath on the opposite side of the roof, while Victor was sitting close enough to turn the dial on its back with the tip of his cane. It didn’t take long for its clockwork mechanisms to whir even more vigorously.

“... You ain’t gonna find a lot of speedy opponents in the whirlpool. The aquatic bugs of the Deepwater Legion Front are generally regarded as the second weakest group of bugs in the entire world, and while most of it can be attributed to their massive sizes making them rather easy to hit, there’s a reason why they’re still incredibly difficult to kill,” he said, humming delightfully as he cranked the dial up to six, seven, then eight. “On land, there ain’t a lot of options for bugs to choose how they want to evade. It’s either left, right, back, down, or up—but they always gotta come back down to the ground eventually. Even winged bugs gotta rest every once in a while.”

Then he tapped the back of the doll with his cane, making it shoot forward with a sharp roundhouse kick. Her breath caught as she ducked at the last second, gliding under its kick to swap places with it.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Now it was on the opposite side of the roof, and she was back to where she was by Victor’s side.

“That’s just how they move,” he said, patting her back hard with his cane. “Aquatic bugs are tough to kill because, more than any other type of bug in the world, they ain’t bound by gravity. Physically and biologically, they’re slippery underwater. If they so wanted to, an aquatic bug can spend their entire life swimming around at weak gravity, and thus their movements are erratic. Hard to predict. Even winged bugs can’t zip around you constantly the way aquatic bugs can with zero effort. Flying expends energy, but swimming doesn’t—for most of them, being slippery is just their way of life.”

Frustration began mounting inside her as the doll increased its speed, and her kicks struck where it should’ve been, only for it to slip aside every time she thought there was no way it could dodge her strike. Its limbs could stretch and retract. Its movements were minimal and effortless. It was making full use of the fact that it was designed to emulate an aquatic bug—even if it wasn’t underwater—to slide, jump, and counter every conventional attack she could throw at it.

The old man was right. ‘Slippery’ was the right term to describe it.

“Speed is all relative down in the whirlpool, lass!” he called out, kicking back on his crate as she bobbed and weaved, barely ducking under its kicks and slashes. “No matter how hard you train, you’re human! You ain’t ever gonna be as slippery as the bugs that were born to be slippery, so don’t think about how you can get faster to match its speed! That ain’t happening most of the time down there! Make the bug slow down so it matches your speed, and then it’ll dance to your tune!”

And she paused abruptly, her eyes flashing briefly blue with clarity.

Victor smirked under his bandages.

Slow it down, she thought, dodging the doll’s next kick as she slid across to one corner of the roof, eyes scanning the terrain. A few heavy crates sat nearby, so she pivoted, shattering all the crates to scatter fields of sharp nails across the roof.

The doll froze mid-dash as it reassessed the terrain, but almost immediately after, it found the easiest path to skate through to get to her with a kick. She stuck her tongue out at it as she leapt over its head, fanning out her wings for just a bit more airtime before landing on the opposite corner, kicking down a stack of terracotta bricks. The bricks went tumbling, forming small mounds; yet another obstacle for the doll to assess and navigate.

I ain’t done yet.

She spun, eyeing a battered chair, a mouldy closet, and half a dozen old furniture just sitting along the edge of the roof. Just before the doll started moving again, she kicked the chair aside, knocked the closet into its predicted path, and when it sidestepped to find a straighter path towards her, she actived Ripple Returner to send ripples out along the puddle, confusing its sensors.

Then she activated the first part of Ether Discharge and sucked in a roaring gust of wind with the jets on her right glaive—pulling in the field of nails behind the doll.

The doll whirled, its single lens for an eye zooming in and out on the unavoidable wall of nails flying at its back. It didn’t know where to run. Bricks and furniture flanked it on both sides, limiting its path of evasion, and it’d never allowed itself to touch anything but its designated opponent. Obviously, a real bug wouldn’t care and bash through all the obstacles in its way, but its movements to the side limited and its ability to dash back sealed by the nails flying at it, there were only two possible paths of evasion.

Forward and up.

And Marisol leapt in with a simple jump—expelling the air she’d sucked in from behind her jumping glaive so she’d have even more speed—before kicking her glaive from sky to ground.

There was nowhere for it to go.

A resounding, satisfying clank punctured through the air as her glaive smashed its head into its neck, the springs and coils inside strumming with a deep, basso tune. She recovered from her kick a half-second later, sliding back with her Preapical Claws dragging along the ground to slow her momentum.

While she disabled discharge and gradually allowed herself to breathe, the doll wobbled around, trying to regain its balance. For a moment, she stopped allowing herself to feel giddy about finally having hit the doll once—she didn’t cleave its head open or anything, but if she damaged it, she wouldn’t have to pay for repairs or fix it herself, right?

[I think you would have to pay. You are not meant to actually hit the doll with all your might, you know.]

Really?

[Yes.]

Pull some strings for me. Pay for the damages.

[Clean up your own mess.]

You are meaner nowadays.

Brows furrowed, face tight with worry, she turned towards Victor and looked at him with pleading eyes.

“... That’s about right.” He hummed, sliding off his crate and groaning as his spine cracked. “It ain’t about increasing your speed all the time. Seal off the bugs’ possible paths of movement, confuse them with clever and distracting tricks, and you’ll find, someway, somehow, that you can always slowly grind the dumbasses down. They always have a glaring weakness. You’re human, and they’re not—it’s tempting to rely only on your speed once you’re already this fast, but brute force and power won’t carry you all the way to Depth Nine.” Then he glanced up at the distant lighthouse, sighing to himself as he waved her away. “That’s where you’re headed, by the way. The Imperators want you down in Depth Nine as soon as possible.”

Marisol’s brows knitted even further. “I know why I'm going down there, but what do they really want me down there for?”

“I told you. It’s not you they want,” he said plainly. “It’s your Archive. More specifically, it’s your Archive’s analytical power they want—since I can’t go down there myself, they want you to go down there with your Archive so it can analyse what Corpsetaker and his Four Lesser Leviathans are planning by calling bugs towards the city from all over the Deepwater Legion Front, and that's the whole truth.” Then he paused for a moment, tilting his chin up. “The Imperators are still investigating the copepods that attacked all of you a week ago, by the way. Most likely, in a week or two, they’ll decide to send you and the siblings down to deal with whatever Mutant spurred the copepods up.”

“A Mutant?”

“Mhm. It’ll probably be a Mutant extermination mission they’ll send you and the siblings on, so get your ass ready.”

She rose to her feet, scowling as she placed her hands on her hips. “But that coordinated attack getting that much damage done to the Imperators ain’t normal even by Whirlpool City standards, right? Why send someone like me down to get rid of the Mutant-Class when I’m obviously weaker than some of the other Imperators–”

“From now on, don’t talk back or question anything the brass tells you to do,” he interrupted, shushing her with his walking cane to his lips. “We’re Hasharana, not Imperators. There’s a reason why the Worm God placed Hasharana in every Swarmsteel Front to work alongside the local military—we’re not of the same organisation, and while that gives us agency to move in ways others cannot, the sea has ears we are not privy to. You, in particular, are of great importance to whether or not ‘Black Storm’ can be lifted in a timely manner… so do watch your back when you’re down there.

“The deeper you go, the darker the waters.”

Marisol pursed her lips, eyes shifting nervously around the adjacent roofs.

As far as she could tell, nobody was watching them.

“... What’s that even mean, old man?” she whispered. “Are there enemies amidst the Imperators’ ranks? Are they targeting my Archive? What, are they pushing for me to be sent down to fight the Mutant, hoping I’d die–”

He whipped his cane to the left, clearing his throat loudly. “Look, a bug!”

She snapped her head to the left, muscles tensing, but then she felt like an idiot when it was obvious there was no giant bug there. The morning in the upper city was cheerful, boisterous, and energetic. It was peaceful. The sounds of civilization were soothing. The only thing that could bring her mood down was the old man telling her more about the humans she should be watching out for, so on that front, he was kind enough to not disturb her morning anymore.

By the time she turned back around to scowl at him, Victor had already disappeared—and the doll that’d been impossible to hit was bisected diagonally from shoulder to waist, the upper half sliding down slowly before the entire thing crumbled to the ground.

…

[Most likely, you will have to pay for the repairs–]

I ain’t taking a single silver out of my purse.

He comes here, gives me a bit of advice, tells me to watch my back with the Imperators, and then breaks the doll at… what?

Dial nine?

Damnit, what insect class does he have, anyways?

She knelt and groaned with her face in her hands, not wanting to listen to the doll’s head rolling across the roof.

… Hey, Archive.

[Yes?]

I couldn’t have picked a worse possible time to visit the Whirlpool City, huh?

The Archive shrugged on her shoulder. [Humanity is always at war with the Swarm. We are simply on the cusp of the Swarm evolving a strategy we have never seen before.]

What horrid luck.

Marisol could barely keep herself from sighing again.

I think I’m gonna read mama’s book again.