Marisol didn’t know what to expect from an underwater Mutant extermination mission, but it definitely wasn’t this.
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[Identification Complete]
[Common Name: Luciferase Copepods]
[Grade: C-Rank Mutant-Class]
[Swarmblood Art: Morphing Shoal]
[Brief Description: Slender, double-segmented, clustered—gaussia princeps is a deep-sea copepod distinguished by its light-producing glands. It emits striking bioluminescence used primarily for predator evasion through distraction and counter-illumination. Its antennae are also prominent and feathered, aiding in both propulsion and sensing changes in its environment as it moves through the sea, but when they are gathered in numerous clumps and clusters, they become highly aggressive]
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The Mutant unfurled to its full height, only as tall as she was, and lashed out with four claws in their direction. A dozen living roots made of a thousand glowing, pulsing copepods each burst from the crystallised ground, burrowing and snaking towards them—and the Imperator siblings each returned four-round fire bursts, carving the swathe of roots away into misty clouds of critter blood. In the same motion, Reina exhaled steadily before pivoting where she stood, whipping her scorpion tail in an upwards cleave, and Marisol watched her send a blade of screaming water back at the Mutant, forcing it to leap away with a bubbly screech.
All hell finally broke loose.
[Pay attention.]
[Its Swarmblood Art is Morphing Shoal: the magic to command every copepod in its vicinity regardless of whether they share its species. The constructs it can create with those copepods are nothing unlike the ones you fought a month ago–]
The crystals around the cavern trembled as ten, twenty, thirty more copepod roots darted at them, and there was no sticking together this time. The Imperator siblings darted to the left, firing sound waves in rapid volleys, while Reina advanced slowly forward with one arm behind her back, her scorpion tail flicking around her like a flail or a protective barrier. Marisol, on the other hand, had no such interception abilities. When she felt half a dozen roots about to impale her from below, she dashed. Fast. Speeding off to the right, glaives tearing through ground, she grimaced back at the copepod roots nibbling on and devouring the crystals she’d been standing on just moments ago.
They’re… eating the crystals?
Are they–
[Drawing strength from them?]
Her eyes darkened as the roots behind her started bulging, each individual copepod doubling in size. It was just a ‘her’ thing she had to deal with. The Imperator siblings could destroy the roots directly, and so could Reina, but when more oversized roots started chasing after her, the only thing she could do was run—or was that the only thing she could do?
Fearless!
A Sand-Dancer lives on the very edge all the time!
The Mutant at the very back of the cavern was playing tactician. It was doing nothing more than conducting its orchestra of roots by waving its hands around, lolling its head left and right as though listening to an unheard rhythm, but she was on the run from the roots anyways. Why not bring them back to it?
Leaning dangerously forward, clenching every muscle in her body, she swerved around the edges of the cavern before swerving straight for the Mutant, making its head snap towards her.
She darted in, thirty metres away, and launched off the ground twenty metres in.
Don’t fear the spin!
The copepods behind her lost focus and broke up as the Mutant was forced to stop its conducting for a moment, because her War Jump could’ve cleaved its head right off if it hadn’t ducked, sinking so low its stomach almost pressed flat against the ground.
Screeching to a halt on the other side of the cavern, she clicked her tongue in irritation. The old man’s right. It was as slippery as the Highwind Doll she’d been training against the past month, maybe even more so—that was eight spins in a single War Jump, and it was dodged like a run-of-the-mill attack.
… Again!
While the Imperator siblings battled and distracted the vast majority of the roots coming after her, she moved in. Lightning threatened to spill from between the chitin plates on her glaives as she twirled, spun, kicked, and capered her way through flurries of attacks. Ether Discharge allowed her to eject water against the direction of her kicks, doubling and tripling her speed, but… her kicks were too wild. Too much strength, too little control. She was wasting her strength.
One of her kicks impacted with the Mutant’s arm and severed it like paper, but the victory was short-lasted. She barely even had time to grin before a swarm of copepods gathered around its arm, biting and linking up with each other until they turned into a functioning arm of their own.
Wait.
It can regenerate like that–
And it would’ve ripped her jaw off with an uppercut slash if her month of perceptivity training with the old man hadn’t kicked in, her whole body lurching backwards with a sudden, painful jolt. Her glaives screeched against the crystal ground. She licked her lips and tasted blood—she’d not completely dodged its claws—but now the Mutant wanted more, thousands of copepods gathering around its legs and pushing it out like it was standing on springs.
It rushed her with a maddened frenzy. She was ready to dodge, duck, and twirl backwards, and she could slap some of its slashes and punches away with her glaives and Preapical Claws—but she struggled to hold it back. Her counterattacks all missed. It’d completely switched gears from fighting at range to fighting at uncomfortably close quarters, and while the latter should be her range of expertise, there was such a thing as too close. She couldn’t catch a breath.
I can see its attack coming and not die, but that ain’t the same as beating it!
[It is slippery, yes. As Victor Morina told you.]
Then what do I–
[What else did he tell you about slippery opponents?]
…
Blank-faced, the Mutant lashed out and grabbed her face with a massive copepod-formed claw. It completely blindsided her, and she kicked off its chest with both glaives, backflipping away from it.
It dashed back in and grabbed her glaive mid-air with minimal effort.
Shit.
And as it pivoted, trying to slam her into the ground, Reina’s scorpion tail severed its arm from several strides away. She was still being slammed, just not as hard, and not nearly as deadly. She cried out in pain as she hit the ground shoulder first, crystals biting deep into her right arm and shoulder. Without missing a beat, though, she pressed her palms to the ground and twirled upside-down, spinning around with her glaives.
That forced it to flutter back, swimming slowly up into the centre of the cavern, and Marisol flipped back onto her feet with pained, rasping exhales.
Her knees buckled and forced her to take a knee, accidentally gasping and choking on water.
Ow.
My right arm.
It’s… it ain’t broken, ain’t it–
“Eat,” Reina said plainly, shoving a skyball coral between her exhales before slapping her forehead so she’d swallow. “Flush out the pressure. The faster you move, the more energy you expend, and the heavier your body becomes. Why did you break away from me?”
As the Imperator siblings sprinted over to them, the copepod root attacks ceasing for a short moment, Marisol coughed bubbles and glared at the dive leader. “It was attacking us from twenty different directions. Maybe you guys can defend yourselves by standing your ground, but I can’t. I’m a water strider. I have to skate away if I want to defend myself, and I have to be fast if I want to fight–”
“Then fight,” Reina said, glaring back, “and leave the defence to us.”
As a puzzled frown crossed Marisol’s face, the crystals in the cavern darkened. Flickered. An unsettling shiver creeped down her spine as she watched six, eight, ten thousand copepods eating through the walls, gathering to form a single copepod root growing out of the ground and towards the hovering Mutant. It was thicker than any root before it. It was sharper, heavier, and brighter than any root before it. It was no root at this point; it was a solid, squirming pillar of biomass, and she could hardly think of anything or anyone that could withstand its weight.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
The Mutant tilted its head back and furled its lips, sneering at them as it reared all four fists back and punched forward.
The giant pillar of ten thousand copepods heeded its command and thundered down on them.
Marisol braced her head instinctively, squeezing her eyes shut in a moment of fear—but that was wholly unnecessary.
Reina exhaled and stabbed up at the pillar, piercing the biomass head-on, and she barked an order at the Imperator siblings—‘fire’—to have them whip out a resonating wave. This wave didn’t hit the pillar head-on. It hit Reina’s back, made the elegant lady buckle for a moment, but then it travelled along the length of her tail and made it vibrate.
Her tail became a blurry spear and a thrumming blade, and with a casual, almost nonchalant spin to look back at Marisol, her tail destroyed the entire pillar of copepods in a single swipe.
“I was told you worked brilliantly with the Harbour Guards to dispatch the giant remipede,” Reina said, face steady, eyes sharp as daggers. “I do not know why you fight like the rest of us do not exist, but I am your dive leader, so I will protect you. Now, has my uncle taught you how to deal with evasive opponents underwater?”
“...”
Marisol laughed and nodded softly as the Mutant blinked in confusion, sinking back to the ground as it wondered where its copepods just went.
“Good,” Reina said, whirling back around to face the Mutant. “Then return to formation. Helena, Aidan, you intercept any roots flying at our backs. Bruno, take care of the bigger ones for your younger siblings. The Storm Strider and I will slow it down and seal off its movements so we can all deal the finishing blow to its heart.”
The Imperator siblings responded with a boisterous ‘understood’ as they snapped back into their triangle formation, and Helena nudged Marisol’s back with a gentle knee, sending her a confident smile.
Marisol smiled back.
Right.
You know, it’s your uncle’s fault, Reina. He told me there’s someone in the Imperators out to get me for some reason.
But that ain’t any of you, huh?
The cavern’s crystals trembled again as the Mutant summoned even more copepods from the ground with a deafening screech. This time, Marisol skated forth with reckless abandon, trusting the siblings to shoot down the roots charging at her, and that they did with extreme precision, opening up a straight path towards the Mutant. Reina followed her, taking slow, meandering steps in stark contrast to her speed, but… that was part of the plan.
She crossed her arms over her torso, spun, and leapt into a War Jump. Ether Discharge boosted her speed. The Mutant’s antennae twitched. It couldn’t summon copepods quickly enough to form a wall between them, so it had to evade—and so right before she kicked out at its head, she activated Ether Discharge on her glaives to eject sprays of water in front of her, decelerating, jerking herself to a halt mid-air.
She froze, hovering her glaives mere inches from its face.
The Mutant blinked.
She didn’t.
Half a second later, she jerked out of the way as Reina’s tail stabbed through where she’d been standing, gouging one of the Mutant’s eyes. It didn’t see that attack coming. Screeching, stumbling back in pain, it slammed all four hands on the ground and summoned more copepod spikes from the ground. Those the siblings couldn’t blast apart in time, Marisol jumped and kicked off, dashing between the spikes at breakneck speed before she’d circled around to the Mutant’s back.
Then she leapt in again, forcing it to whirl and respond to her movement—and then she stopped before committing to the full kick again, discharging water to decelerate, hovering her glaive just a single inch before its neck.
It, too, froze in place again, as though waiting for her to finish her kick just so it could evade at the last possible second.
“… To el borde Vellamira, Marisol, my only little girl.”
“If you’re reading this, it must be at least… what? Four months? Five months since you left?”
“You’re probably in the Whirlpool City right now, aren’t you? Have you already met your fair share of arrogant, headstrong bullies who think they can push you around just because you’re an outsider? The people of the Whirlpool City can be like that sometimes. It may not be the most violent capital city amongst the Six Swarmsteel Fronts, but when you live every single day in fear your house would sink and be swallowed by the abyss… well, people tend to be on edge all the time. Not to be confused with living ‘on’ the edge, of course.”
“But have no fear, my little girl.”
“Bullies are only bullies. They may criticise you with words, they may look down on you, and they may push you around like you’re some doll to play with, but they are living beings just like you—and if even you, my brave little girl, can feel fear at times, what is to say they cannot be made to feel fear as well?”
“They’re not enemies to be killed with the War Jump, no.”
“I call this technique the ‘Homeward Pause’.”
She didn’t move. The Mutant didn’t move. They stared each other in the eye for a good fraction of a second—and she could practically hear the thoughts trying to move inside its head, wondering why she wasn't kicking so it could evade last second—but then Reina stepped in slowly with another slash, cutting off one of its arms.
It was forced to dash back. Marisol followed again, speeding up to its face, kicking out at its waist—then pause. Hovering her glaive an inch before contact.
Reina slashed again, severing another arm, and they pressed on. Refusing to give it regeneration time.
“This isn’t so much a ‘new’ technique as it is a variation of how you can end the War Jump. A feint technique. Right before your kick lands, simply clench all your muscles, stop your breathing, and hover your leg a fraction of an inch before their face—but don’t touch them. You absolutely cannot touch them. You hit them, it’s your fault. The Harbour Guards won’t care who started it. They’ll come and lock you up for assault.”
“No.”
“You put the fear of a Sand-Dancer’s kicks in their heart, and you stare them in the eye for as long as you can stop yourself from blinking.”
“You say nothing.”
“You do nothing.”
“You tell them to go home where the Sand-Dancer cannot reach, and I promise you—if it’s you—there’ll be a lot more soiled pants that night out at the bar than when the day started.”
“... But don’t come back with a drinking addiction, now.”
“I know the wine selection in the Whirlpool City can be very addicting, so just don’t. I’m throwing you out if you come back with a bottle of wine instead of my vial of healing seawater.”
Marisol smiled to herself as she repeated the process over and over—kicking rapidly, missing most of her attacks rapidly, then pausing right before she could land a kick to make the Mutant freeze up in confusion, not knowing whether to dodge or not.
Then Reina would come in with an attack so slow it could barely perceive, and that attack would land.
[The Mutant-Class is used to your speed. It knows how fast you can go and it knows how to evade all of your attacks last second, but if you suddenly decelerate and feint your kicks every once in a while, changing up your pattern, it will simply freeze up for the briefest of moments.]
[Take the initiative. Create your own pattern for it to observe, study and adapt to—then disrupt your own pattern to give it a fright.]
[That is the opening.]
‘Confuse them with distracting tricks’.
[‘Grind the dumbasses down’,] the Archive finished. [Victor Morina is correct. You are human, and they are not. They may be much faster and much stronger than you, still, but that gap can be overcome with a bit of thinking and a bit of human trickery.]
Ten more kicks. Ten more evades from the Mutant. With one final kick aimed at its chest, Marisol grinned and bared her teeth at the Mutant—then she feinted her kick at the last second, and she savoured the blank, befuddled look on its face as it failed to notice Reina stabbing out its heart from behind.
Just for good measure, Reina lifted the Mutant up into the air and waved at Marisol to get down. She did, and immediately, the Mutant was blasted with volleys of pistol shrimp sound waves from afar, snapping every appendage and breaking every chitin plate across its body.
By the time Reina slammed it back down, the Mutant was already disfigured, lifeless, and lightless. Its half-transparent chitin lost its already dull orange hues. If it had any more regeneration tricks to show off with its copepods, it’d be using them now.
But it didn’t.
[... And of course, a bit of teamwork as well.]
Sighing a breath of relief, Marisol stumbled back and tripped on a crystal shard, landing hard and painful on her rear. The Imperator siblings laughed as they trudged forward to high-five each other, and when they got to Reina… well, they didn’t even try. But even the prim and proper lady had a small smile curling the corners of her lips as she surveyed the rest of the cavern, watching the remaining copepods disperse and scurry on back to their small cluster abodes.
Without a Mutant to coordinate them, they were just normal Critters-Class bugs an Imperator patrol could easily deal with.
Mission successful.
They’d won.
“... Time: Ten fifty-nine in the morning, First Day Crab, Month Firefly,” Reina said, her voice wavering and warbling a little as Helena and Aidan grabbed her shoulders, shaking her left and right in cheery celebration. “C-rank Mutant-Class copepod encountered and defeated in Sector Sixteen, Depth Three. Beginning extraction from the Crystal Kelp Caverns. Bruno, Aidan—stop shaking me for a moment—go and carry the Mutant-Class carcass with us. Lighthouse Four will want to dissect it and figure out why this particular Mutant-Class was so powerful–”
“And here ‘ah thought ‘ah could get all of ye without havin’ to show myself.”
The small Hydrofuge Spines on Marisol’s nape lifted, and all of them whirled at once, claws and tail and Preapical Claws sharpened.
None of them had felt it.
Marisol’s perceptivity training hadn’t prepared her for this.
But the half-destroyed body of the Mutant copepod—which, by no means, was in any condition to move—slowly floated onto its feet, and in the gaping wounds across its body where Reina had hacked and slashed and stabbed through, there were dozens upon hundreds of writhing barnacles
Each barnacle had an eerie human eye, and they all blinked, none in sync, as the Mutant copepod’s head popped off only to be replaced by a young man’s head.
His head had the shape and proportions of a human’s, but every detail was formed from tightly clustered barnacles. A textured surface of a hundred overlapped shells. His flowing locks of hair were coral-like fibres. His ears were hollowed ear-shaped barnacles. His eyes sat deep in their sockets, round and stark white without pupils, and when his slit for a mouth parted—several glowing thread-like hairs stuck out in place of a single tongue, vibrating as it let out a contented sigh.
Marisol's limbs locked up.
Its Swarmblood Aura—its killing pressure—was like nothing she'd ever felt before.
[... Prepare to–]
“Prepare to evacuate,” Reina whispered, her voice tight as she slowly pushed the rest of them back with her scorpion tail, lips quivering. “That is Rhizocapala, weakest of the Four Lesser Leviathans—a Lesser Barnacle God born of the Whirlpool City.”