Even with the bioluminescent reeds growing on the walls of the cavern, Dahlia recognised the pure black mass of skittering bugs beneath her.
Fog-bask beetles.
There were more than thirty of them standing on their heads, lifting their dorsal sides to catch as much oasis water trickling down from the ceiling as they could. The water trickled down the natural grooved ridges on their backs, sliding down to their mouths, and then they fed it all into the newly dug tunnels leading deeper underground—far, far, far beneath the Sharaji Oasis Town, to a place no human could reach without being crushed by the subterranean pressure.
Suddenly, one of the fog-bask beetles stopped collecting water from the ceiling and snapped its head up; Alice yanked her neck back with an invisible thread, pulling her away from the edge of the tunnel she was peering down at them from.
“... Well. Even I get what’s going on here now,” Alice mumbled, peeking over the edge with just the top of her head as Dahlia choked on her thread. “So there’s a bunch of giant bugs living at the super bottom of the town, and then they dug tunnels up here to start draining water from the bottom of the oasis. These beetles are all of the same species, so they’re probably one big team, but the water bug that attacked you last night was probably just a straggler that climbed up the tunnels with them. It was a bit greedier than these beetles. It wanted more than water, so it tried to eat you and that little girl by actually surfacing on the oasis.”
Dahlia managed to untangle herself from the invisible thread, rubbing her neck and frowning as she did. “But… fog-bask beetles aren’t colony insects. They don’t typically live and work together. How were they coexisting with a water bug all the way down… wherever they all came from?”
Alice glanced around, giving her a puzzled look. “I thought you dealt with one in Alshifa. You should know what can compel a bunch of giant insects that don’t typically work together to move like a coordinated army.”
[... Madamaron lives at the bottom of those tunnels, then,] Eria said, and Dahlia tightened her lips. [Mutants are powerful enough to draw giant insects of every variety towards them. You can think of them as generals of the otherwise ‘mindless’ Swarm.]
“Like the Mutant firefly,” she whispered. “But that one was different, wasn’t it? All the bugs in Alshifa came out from that one cocoon, so they were already in a team. Can all Mutants just… attract completely different species of giant insects towards them and have them dig tunnels like this?”
Alice shook her head. “There’s a spectrum the Hasharana use to grade Mutants,” she said curtly. “The Mutant firefly that I was tracking down was on the weaker end of the spectrum, so it probably wouldn’t be able to attract lots of giant insects outside of the ones in the same cocoon, but if it’s so strong that it’s bordering on the verge of becoming a ‘Lesser Great Mutant’, then Madamaron could probably get fog-bask beetles and water bugs to work for it.”
Dahlia tilted her head. “A Lesser Great Mutant?”
“What, your Archive didn’t tell you?” Alice said, raising a brow as she started pulling crimson threads from her nails; all four of her hands moved independently. “There are three types of Mutants. The firefly you killed is the weakest version called… well, it’s just called a ‘Mutant’. It’s kinda smart, it looks kinda humanoid, and it has a few strange abilities. In the grand scheme of things, they’re not too strong, though—tons of Mutants die on the frontlines of the Seven Swarmsteel Fronts every single day. All Hasharana are expected to be able to kill one by themselves as well, so if Madamaron is just a normal Mutant, this will be an easy job.”
Then she paused for a second, staring down at her hands as she started weaving something out of thin air; Dahlia couldn’t tell what it was just from the skeleton of the construct, but she felt it was some sort of… weapon.
Was she weaving some sort of blade out of silk?
“The more threatening version is called a ‘Lesser Great Mutant’, and these are the ones with names assigned to them by the Hasharana,” Alice continued, eyes flickering back and forth as she twirled all twenty fingers with expert precision, weaving not one, not two, but four swords out of silk. “Lesser Great Mutants can talk. That’s the main distinction between them and normal Mutants. Because they can talk, they can also adapt to human strategies much faster than their weaker variants, so thank the Great Makers there aren’t a lot of them on the continent. It usually takes at least two Arcana Hasharana to deal with one of them.”
It was Dahlia’s turn to pause, freezing where she stood. It wasn’t like she was moving much to begin with, but she felt if she even so much as made a squeak on the sandstone floor, the horde of fog-bask beetles below her would be alerted to her presence.
“The last version is called a ‘Great Mutant’, but, judging from the look on your face, you already know what that is,” Alice finished, and, in the silence of the tunnel, lifted four crimson curved swords each as long as she was tall; she grinned back at Dahlia, and there was real bloodlust in her eyes. “Whether Madamaron is a Lesser Great Mutant or just a normal Mutant bordering on the verge of one isn’t important. As a Hasharana, my job is simply to slaughter every bug I see—so just stay up here and watch, okay?”
…
Dahlia didn’t properly process what Alice said until she snapped her head and looked, mouth parted in surprise.
“... What are you going to–”
Alice dragged her blades against the sandstone walls, making her entrance as obnoxiously loud as possible to drag every fog-bask beetle’s attention towards her—and by the time they realised they weren’t alone in the cavern, she’d already leaped thirty metres down onto one of their heads, jamming all four blades through its grooved chitin.
With a cacophony of guttural screeches, the beetles came alive. Dahlia felt water droplets flying into her face as they started jerking themselves around, each of them five-metre-class giants with more mobility than they appeared to have; their horrendously long hind legs gave them reach and speed like no beetle she’d ever seen. They bunched together and crawled on each other and spit balls of water each solid enough to put dents in the walls of the cavern, and Dahlia pulled herself from the edge of the tunnel, just narrowly avoiding getting her head blown off by a stray water ball.
They’re strong!
And there’s thirty of them!
[They will be a good source of points,] Eria said, nodding on her shoulder. [Hauling them up to Safi would be an arduous task in and of itself, but it will be worth the effort. You should try to negotiate with the Hasharana and see if she will let you eat most of them.]
… Aren’t you too calm for this?
Eria raised her front legs, feigning a nonchalant shrug.
[She told you to watch, did she not?]
....
Alice did.
She’d just been trying not to.
One moment, the Hasharana was standing on the head of a beetle, and in the next she was twirling through the air, four blades spinning around her in blinding crimson arcs. When she jumped, it took less effort than skipping off the ground. When she swung her blades, it was more graceful than how Dahlia used her claws. The cavern rumbled with each beetle felled, legs severed, heads decapitated and carapaces carved open in crosses. With two swords guarding her back as though they had minds of their own, she moved nimbly, her wing-like cloak fluttering after her and struggling to catch up—her lithe and bony figure betraying the expectation of a weak and frail little girl.
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Each of her swift and heavy blows was as powerful as the last.
[She cannot be that much older than you, I think,] Eria mused, resting its head on her shoulder as the two of them stared quietly down, [but the very fact that there is a Hasharana her age means the Worm God is getting desperate. Even a child must become a wandering bug-slayer now.]
Dahlia frowned. When one of Alice’s swords was caught in a beetle’s mandibles mid-swing, she thought the Hasharana might drag the blade through with sheer, brute force—but instead the blade was let go, and a wriggling mass of blood silk burst out of Alice’s nails, twirling into a completely different weapon in the span of a single second.
A spiked mace.
In a single, smooth movement, Alice leaped onto the beetle chewing on her sword and bashed its head open with her mace. Her new weapon bent almost immediately. Its construction was rushed and hurried, after all, so when four more beetles piled on her at the same time, she slapped her remaining three swords together and disappeared under their bulky bodies for half a second—half a second later, there was a flash of crimson light. The heated visage of a wandering bug slayer. All four beetles were cleaved in half by the massive staffblade Alice swung with four hands, their bodies flying back and slamming into another small group of beetles to crush them against the walls.
[... Ah,] Eria muttered, as Dahlia bit her nails and watched Alice switch through a dozen more silk-woven weapons in the span of half a minute; there were all manners of swords, daggers, axes, spears, and some so strangely shaped she couldn’t even begin to put a name to them. [Although I cannot access certain information as long as I am an unregistered Altered Swarmsteel System, the last time I received a system update was three years ago, when the twenty-first Arcana Hasharana was officially chosen by the first Arcana Hasharana, ‘The Fool’s Undeath’. If she is still alive today, she would be… fourteen years old. Same as you.]
Dahlia’s eyes drifted slowly across the cavern of carcasses below with an odd mix of awe and—unsurprisingly—fear.
The four-armed crimson Hasharana was still wearing her face, after all.
[As the sole survivor of the ‘Hasharana Academy Breach’ event eight years ago, where three hundred and seventeen Hasharana students in training were slaughtered by an unnamed Lesser Great Mutant, the twenty-first Arcana Hasharana possessed a unique class… an extinct variant moth species by the name of ‘Bombyx Mandarina’,] Eria continued, head tilted up as though it were looking and reciting from a status screen in the air even she couldn’t see. [Her unique set of mutations allowed her to congeal her blood and turn it into silk, which she used to weave weapons on the fly and dominate the Hasharana Entrance Exam three years ago. Owing to her formless fighting style, her silk’s incredible adaptability, and her utter lack of a single coherent personality during the final interview, she was given the title of ‘Hangman’s Mimic’: the girl of a hundred faces, and the youngest Arcana Hasharana to ever grace the ranks beneath the Worm God–]
Alice dashed back up to the edge of the tunnel with a funnel of wind, licking blood off her lips as she unwound her silk weapons and blinked straight at Dahlia.
For her part, Dahlia didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
She didn't think… that her face could look so empty.
“... I have just the faintest feeling your Archive is saying something bad about me!” Alice chirped a moment later, tugging a cheery smile onto her lips as she flicked a hand behind her; a single red thread descended into the mountain of carcasses, a trail marker to remind herself how to get back to this cavern. “Well, we're done here. I've plugged the tunnels leading deeper underground with their corpses for now, so if the wells run dry again, we’ll know exactly where to cut down the bugs. Give or take a few days and this cavern will be completely filled with water again, so let’s lug about ten bugs out of here and give them to uncle—I’m sure he’ll make us something reasonably tasty with how watery these beetles already are!”
With that, Alice started skipping back through the tunnel, extending the thread under her nail as she walked.
She’d really leave all the beetles behind if Dahlia didn’t cough and call out to her, making her glance around with a playful eye.
“What?” she asked. “We’ll come back for them later. We have about an entire day to haul ten beetles to the surface. It’s more important that we don’t forget how to come and leave this cavern–”
“I can remember,” Dahlia said, biting her lips as she turned to peek down at the mountain of carcasses. “But… Madamaron has to be at the bottom of those tunnels, right? That water bug and these beetles were working on its orders, so… if you’re this strong, can’t you just go down there right now and kill it?”
Alice’s lips thinned into a line. “And fight what could be a Lesser Great Mutant in its home territory? No thanks. There are ranks even among the Arcana Hasharana, you know—maybe Judgement or Magician can beat a Lesser Great Mutant solo, but I’m not there yet. I need to copy more weapons and fighting styles before I can even think about challenging a Lesser Great Mutant in its home territory. That’s where you come in!”
Dahlia pointed at herself, wobbly and unsteadily. Alice winked and started walking forward again, fully intent on leaving her behind at the edge of the tunnel.
“I checked with my Archive!” Alice said, carefree as ever. “Your class is an ‘extinct’ class dangerous enough that the Worm God had to personally redact a ton of information even I can’t access, so I wanna know what makes you so special! You’ve gotta have a special fighting style or 'weapon' worthy enough for me to mimic, right?”
“...”
“We’ll haul the beetles up and resume investigations on Madamaron tomorrow,” she finished, waving back at Dahlia. “I’m not fighting it down there, so while you try to figure out what species it is exactly, I’ll try to figure out how to lure it up to the surface. If it’s on plain, open sand, then maybe I could even beat a Lesser Great Mutant by myself? There’s no rush, though—I’ll eat tons more insect flesh and put more points into my attribute levels first!”
… It was quite strange seeing Alice walk away, leaving a single glowing thread behind for her to grasp onto and follow; Dahlia felt as though she simultaneously understood more about the Hasharana, and yet understood even less about her now.
Does she think she can copy my ‘abilities’ if she… wears my face?
[I believe that is the case,] Eria mumbled. [I am unable to access updated information currently, but even if I could, I doubt the Archive of Altered Swarmsteel Systems would have any information pertaining to the Hangman’s Mimic’s background. Until you better understand her psyche, I would suggest not poking and prodding into her past—most of the Arcana Hasharana are rather ‘volatile’, after all.]
She pursed her lips, casting one last look at the cavern behind her before trudging through the tunnel.
… Eria.
[Yes?]
If Issam… and Raya… and the others were here, she started, lowering her gaze, do you think they would be strong enough to be Arcana Hasharana as well?
A long pause.
Eria had gotten comfortable with doing that lately.
[I don’t know about them, but I am the Godsent Talent of Alshifa,] Raya whispered, interjecting before Eria could reply. [So what if she became an Arcana Hasharana at eleven? I could’ve done it at ten. It wouldn't have been a problem at all–]
[Nah, you couldn’t have done it. Now leave her alone and get outta her ear,] Amula grumbled back, and the sound of someone getting kicked in the head made Dahlia giggle. [Don’t think about Alice. Don’t think about ranks and stuff. Right here, right now, just focus on getting stronger yourself—unlock more mutations, increase your attribute levels, and maybe make a few Swarmsteel with all those beetle parts you just got. Madamaron can wait.]
… Alright, she thought, shaking her head to clear her thoughts. Eria might’ve tried to say something on her shoulder, but she didn’t hear it; she’d already made up her mind to focus only on one thing at a time. If we’re forgetting about Madamaron for the time being, though, there’s something I have to do before anything else.
She felt as though she could hear Issam perk his ears. [That is?]
That little girl who lost her leg, she thought. I wonder… if there isn’t anything I can do for her.