There may be bigger and more comfortable houses in the village, but beneath the bell tower was where the Worm Mages wanted to have their dinner feast.
At this hour of twilight, most of Immanu was lit only by the moon and braziers. The night lighting was sparse—by design, Sparrow supposed. Unlike the Attini Empire Capital, the village was built with the specific goal of being hard to navigate on foot; wide streets were nonexistent, the houses were built clumped and cluttered, and really, if they wanted to gather anywhere for a communal activity, the garden right underneath the bell tower was their only option. This way, they only had to light the braziers in this one part of the village.
They’d put in a lot of effort into decorating the garden for the feast, though.
Crystal wood tables and chairs had been warped out of their homes, settled all across the thin fields of alabaster grass. Colourful tarps and canopies were strewn over their heads, the ends tied from the closest roofs to the protruding bricks of the bell tower, shielding them from the ever gently falling snow. The air was still chilly and cold—that much was unavoidable at the top of a wintry mountain range several thousands of metres above sea level—but between the braziers burning and the candles flickering and the steamed dishes being warped out of the kitchen platter by platter, the energy in the garden was downright infectious.
Sparrow, the guest of honour, was seated at the end of a particularly long table right before the bell tower. The moment he’d been warped back to the surface after slaying the giant black worm, he’d been taken back to his cabin and doted over by a dozen yammering children, all shouting and squabbling over who would get to bandage his wounds. He’d ended up bandaging himself since his wounds weren’t much to worry about at all.
A minute after he’d finished, he passed out on his bed.
Makes sense.
A tier two mutation that changes my entire body needs time to settle in.
What didn’t make sense was waking up eight hours later in a chair, out in the open air, facing a hundred and eleven children laughing and warping all across the garden with their toy slinkies in no particular order; the youngest of them was made to dance, caper, and spin to cheery beats hummed by musicians lining the edges of the garden. Liquid crystal robes billowed in the wind, warping voices floated from tables and tarps where children were playing catch around. The older kids serving platters of food called out to the playful ones, shouting at them to sit still, but clearly ‘chaos’ was the natural order for the Worm Mages of Immanu—after all, even the older kids couldn’t suppress their grins and looked like they wanted to join in on the random fun.
Sparrow’s body was still aching. He was too tired to really look at anyone or anything in particular, but just as he was about to lull himself back to sleep, Ninmah warped onto the table in front of him, fists planted on her hips.
Her cheeks were puffy, red, and her lips were curled in the widest smile he’d seen by far. “I bet you’re hungry!” she said, pure self-satisfaction bleeding into her warping voice, and she clapped her hands over her head; a dozen children warped behind her a second after, letting the giant worm carcass crash into the table with a tremendous rattle. “Whenever someone takes down a Darkworm, they must take the first bite. No exceptions. Here, take this and this and this and this, and then just cut into whichever section you’d like! Nobody else can contest your first pick of meat!”
She tossed four knives down at him, but he only had enough hands to catch two by the handles; the remaining ones stabbed into the table before him.
… They just dumped the entire worm into a giant boiling pot, huh?
While Ninmah joined the group of older children chanting at him to take the first bite, he rose to his feet and circled around the table, squinting at the giant worm carcass. Its crown of teeth hadn’t been removed, but its crystal plates were pried off and its translucent skin was still hissing with steam. Half of its body was missing—severed in half from ten metres down to five—but there was plenty of flesh remaining that everyone in the village could fill a whole plate with it and then some more; it may not be as tall and large as a Boreus, but it certainly seemed like there were more easily digestible parts than a normal giant insect.
Tentatively, he poked its translucent skin with the tip of his knife. The skin bounced like some sort of slime or gel. It didn’t look particularly appetising as one long chunk of steaming gel on the surface, but he was a bullet ant soldier.
Decree Two: Be grateful for what you are given.
Taking a breath, he cut out a small chunk no larger than his fist, struggling at first to pierce the skin with his kitchen knife. The skin may be wobbly and translucent and gel-like, but the flesh underneath was red and meaty like any normal meat; it was a fine-looking meat all things considered, and he’d eaten worse in the military.
Ninmah and Utu and the Worm Mages squeezed next to each other as they watched him stuff the entire steaming chunk into his mouth,
… Salty.
Is it naturally like this?
His mouth watered as he struggled to chew into the skin. He’d never actually tasted anything like it before. There was a saltiness to the meat that was like sea brine and froth washing onto his tongue, a bit overbearing at first, a bit dizzying at first—but then his tongue went numb and he stopped being able to taste the salt at all. It was much more bearable afterwards, but still he ended up awkwardly swallowing it bit by bit, unable to get the whole chunk down in one go.
Apparently, though, that was good enough of a ‘first bite’. Utu warped on top of the carcass and hollered for everyone to take their own pieces, and everyone charged in to fill their own plates, mouths salivating; it wasn’t a bad dish by any means, but Sparrow couldn’t help but feel a pang of disappointment that he wasn’t enjoying it as much as the children apparently did.
That was just in terms of taste, though.
He didn’t let it show for long, but while everyone was distracted carving into the carcass with their little kitchen knives, he pulled up his status screen briefly and took a quick peek at it.
[Unallocated Points: 3 → 16]
… Good.
While the Worm Mages busied themselves with the chaos of a feast once more, he settled down on a stool a little off to the side, cracking his neck to release eight hours’ worth of pent-up tension. He didn’t understand why or how, but now that he knew giant worms were a decent source of attribute points—and the fact that they seem to be a common delicacy in Immanu, meaning there must be more of them out there in the snow—he didn’t necessarily have to return to his battalion as soon as possible.
Now that he had a decent source of attribute points to draw on himself, he could stay in Immanu and explore the mutations of his new system without having to rely on the Empire or Ninmah for points.
He could stay a bit longer.
… Even still.
Worms are not giant insects.
So how is it–
“Do you know what it is you’re eating?”
He whirled as Ninmah warped onto the stool on the other end of his table, holding two platters of steaming food in her hands. She smiled and slid one of them across; a main dish of sliced radish, spiced cuts of fruit, and skewers of countless roasted vegetables he didn’t recognise. There were a few more chunks of worm meat on the side, though, so he didn’t hesitate drawing the plate closer.
He started chowing down the dish in front of him with his bare hands—and if he were to be honest with himself, the vegetables were far, far tastier than the worm meat.
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‘Normal’ was good, and something he’d never had.
“... The Brightworms stay on their side of the chasm in the Barrows, and they don’t interfere with our world,” Ninmah said, smiling as she watched him clean his plate, both hands propping her cheeks. “Sometimes, though, just by the nature of their design, defects appear. Anomalies. Those who cross the border are immediately struck with the immense weight of the Brightmoon, and their crystal plates start turning pitch-black to reflect the betrayal of the agreement between them and the children of Immanu—if they don’t return to the Barrows even after they’ve been warned for a while, they turn feral like a beast that’s missed the timing for hibernation. We call them ‘Darkworms’, and that’s what you’re eating right now.”
He kept on chewing, pulling up his status screen briefly to see his unallocated points had grown to forty-two, and while he was still listening to her intently, it seemed as though she had nothing more to say.
She was more than content merely watching him enjoy his food.
… Might be worth a try.
He pulled his status screen up and made it hover next to his head, consciously turning down the border's brightness. Ninmah immediately flinched with none of her usual cool elegance—she didn't exactly kick back from the table, but she was definitely taken aback as she squinted at the hovering black box, silent and still.
His brows knitted together.
Her reaction wasn't right.
“What… is this?” she mumbled, reaching out to touch the screen, but it wasn't physical. Her fingers scraped empty air, making the lines flicker for only a short while. “The words are in your tongue, Sparrow. How are you doing this? Is this an ability all your people have?”
For his part, he tried not to let his surprise show on his face. He shook his head vehemently and tapped the back of his neck where his system had been implanted.
But how was it possible they switched out his system without knowing about the status screens?
Try, he thought, tapping his nape again. Show me your screen.
Ninmah searched his face for an explanation, but after a while, she simply gave up and squeezed her eyes shut as though she were trying to make her ears pop. Fists clenched, lips pressed and quivering—he knew she wasn't going to get her status screen to come out like that. He poked her hard on the nose and got her to open her eyes again; then he mimed tapping his nape like a button, as though pushing the little spinal protrusion in would make something eject in return.
She didn't believe him at first, so he closed his screen with a thought and opened it again by tapping his nape.
You try, he thought, staring her in the eye.
So she did, and she immediately recoiled as if slapped when her status screen appeared next to her head.
[// STATUS]
[Name: ‘Ninmah’, Human]
[Class: Worm]
[Origin: Immanu]
[BloodVolume: 5.3/5.3 (100%), Strain: 1/5614 (0%)]
[Unallocated Points: 159]
[Strength: 10, Speed: 8, Dexterity: 7, Toughness: 8, Perceptivity: 5, StrainLimit: 5614]
[// MUTATION TREE]
[T1 | Wormhole Core]
{T1 Branch Mutations | Warping Step | Wormhole Carving | Warping Voice}
[T2 | Vibrational Senses | Wormic Bones]
{T2 Branch Mutations | Frost Immunity | ???}
[T3 | Segmented Setae | Rigid Annuli | Sclerite Jaw]
{T3 Branch Mutations | Recalibrated Weight | ??? | ???}
[T4 | Proliferating Septa | Salt Epidermis | Filtering Gills | Omnidirectional Ocelli]
{T4 Branch Mutations | ??? | ??? | ??? | Polarised Lenses}
[T5 | Peristaltic Vibration | Rapid Reconstruction | Cryogenic Release | Inorganic Digestion | Distending Limbs] 1350P
{T5 Branch Mutations | ??? | ??? | ??? | ??? | ???}
[T6 | Biomineralisation | Dorsal Distortion | Hypercondensed Neurons | Symbiotic Bacteria | Immunocyte Transfusion | Analgesic Resistance] 4050P
{T6 Branch Mutations | ??? | ??? | ??? | ??? | ??? | ???}
“Whoa,” she breathed, looking quite in disbelief as a few other children caught sight of the glowing black box next to her head; Utu and several of the other older children warped in, crowding around the two of them. “This is… cool. So many numbers. So many words. They’re complicated words, too—you can read all of this, Sparrow?”
He couldn’t, but he didn’t say that aloud.
He was too busy looking, stunned, as Ninmah taught the children around her how to open their status screens, and one by one they each revealed their preposterous numbers—unallocated points in the hundreds, attribute levels in the double digits, mutations unlocked all the way to tier five, none broken into tier six yet. Of the dozen or so children surrounding their table, Ninmah had the highest dexterity level, Utu had the highest strength, and while not all the younger children had a tier five mutation unlocked, all of them had at least their four tier fours unlocked.
Impossible.
If a tier two mutation costs fifty points to unlock, then a tier three would cost three times that, and a tier four would cost three times that, and a tier five would cost three times that.
At some point, Ninmah had a thousand three hundred and fifty points saved up to unlock a single tier five mutation?
It was… impossible. Or perhaps too difficult to believe. Judging by their reactions, none of them had even known they could make their status screens materialise—how was it possible that they already had their mutations unlocked all the way to tier four?
Grunt ant class soldiers would typically have their tier twos unlocked at best. A battalion leader at tier three. The Vice-general should be at tier four, and the General at tier five.
Tier six is for the Royal Capital Guards.
Tier seven for the Spore Knights.
Nobody but the Spore Knights knows what sort of mutations lie in tier eight.
There is no human who has ever unlocked a single tier nine mutation.
There may even be tier ten mutations, but without anyone ever unlocking a tier nine, nobody would know.
As the Worm Mages marvelled and poked and played around with their hovering screens, he couldn’t help but clench his stomach, feeling as though he was going to be sick hanging around them.
These children… are each theoretically on par with the Vice-general and the General?
… But, however unbelievable, he’d already seen them do one unbelievable thing after another the past month.
What right did he have, as a mere bullet ant soldier, to not accept what he’d seen with his own two eyes?
So when Ninmah turned to him, curiosity glimmering in her eyes, clearly intent on asking him more about the completely unknown side of their abilities–
The wintry winds howled, extinguishing the braziers around the garden, and the chimes at the top of the bell tower started ringing.
The Worm Mages went quiet.
Sparrow reached for his rifle that wasn’t there.
And in the distance, beyond the sea of ice, giant monsters howled back.
… Boreus.