It took another six days for the entire village to be repaired, but by then the sullen and downtrodden spirits from experiencing a Swarm invasion first-hand had turned into quiet, teeming anticipation in every child—and for the second time in Sparrow’s second month in Immanu, all hundred and eleven children were gathered around the bell tower under bright morning light, sitting cross-legged and barefoot in the thin snow.
Some of the children seated around the garden were rubbing their hands, snoring aloud, or playing with their slinky toys. Of the hundred and eleven, the youngest were seated closest to the bell tower in accordance with their height, while the elders surrounded everyone else in a dome-like perimeter. The eighteen of them carrying bows and quivers on their backs were the only ones standing, crossing their arms as they nagged at the younger kids to look forward and listen; ‘Sparrow is going to tell us all something important, so pay attention,’ they seemed to say. He still couldn’t completely understand the Immanu tongue after all.
But, seated atop a small crate right before the bell tower and in front of the Worm Mages, he couldn’t help but wonder just how, exactly, he was going to teach them anything.
Ninmah was standing next to him, but it wasn’t like she could translate anything if he couldn’t say anything.
… Well.
I suppose my left arm and shoulder have healed completely.
While Utu and Ninmah shouted especially loud at the kids, telling them to pay attention, he lowered his head and made a big show of tapping the small protrusion on his nape. His status screen popped open with a small buzz, and he willed the borders of the black box to glow brighter than they’d ever been, to be more obnoxious than they’d ever been—and that got everyone’s attention. The children quieted as he pulled down his status screen, then pulled it up again with a tap, then pulled it down again, over and over and over; with Ninmah and the eldest children’s guidance, it only took another minute before everybody had their status screens pulled up next to their heads.
He didn’t bother taking a glance at some of the younger children’s attribute levels. He felt he’d only feel pity for himself if he saw how strong they were, so before they could all break off into a chorus of disjointed chatter, he expanded his status screen to three times its original size, flattening it against the wall of the bell tower behind him.
Then he raised a finger, pointed at each of the boxes in every single row, and nodded at Ninmah.
Be my interpreter.
“...”
Ninmah shot him a thumbs up, grinning proudly.
[// STATUS]
[Class: Worm]
The box denoting his class was what he really pointed at, and everyone huddled together, whispering amongst themselves. He vaguely heard the word ‘worm’ being thrown around even though they were using their warping voices, so he looked at Ninmah and started miming a whole bunch of other insects; how well she could interpret his gestures and drawings in the snow, and then translate it to the Worm Mages was completely up to her.
More specifically, it was up to how much she and the other eldest children already knew about the outside world.
“... Outside of Immanu, the Swarm consists of thirty… billion giant insects,” she said slowly, first in the Attini tongue so he could nod his approval, before quickly switching to the Immanu tongue to translate it to everyone else. “Humanity used to be spread out across the world on five different continents, but since they invaded from the edges of the world sixty years ago, we’ve been pushed back to the Asanyon continent in the centre. The northern, southern, eastern, and western continents have already fallen. Currently, the Swarm is surrounding our continent from every single direction, and they are so giant and numerous that they bloat the seas… something-something ‘Crawling Seas’? The seas surrounding the continent are made up of giant insects, and there’s no end to them in sight?”
The children listened intently, and Sparrow blinked incredulously. Ninmah stuck a tongue out at him, waving at him as though to say ‘go on’.
He obliged, not wanting to make her lose her momentum.
“Sparrow comes from the ruling faction south of the continent, where every warrior like him has an ant system,” she continued. “In the west, though, warriors have… water insect systems. A bit up north, warriors have fly systems or some sort of… buzzing around, annoying poisonous insect systems? Then there are other systems like fire… bug systems, butterflies and moths, beetles and hornets, all sorts of systems across different battlefronts holding each section of the continent. Basically, each system is specialised at making someone mutate a specific way—if Sparrow has an ant system, he can never make wormholes like us. Each system has its own set of mutations and branch mutations, which are, like, less impactful mutations.”
He blinked again.
… Is she actually reading my mind?
How terrifying.
But I must keep going.
Ninmah watched his gestures carefully, tilting her head. “He also says he doesn’t really… no, wait, he does know how some systems become more specialised,” she corrected herself. “He’s using himself as an example. He started off as a generic ‘ant’ class soldier, but because he proved himself in battle to his leaders, his system was… forged? Hammered? Upgraded! His system was upgraded, so his class changed to… ‘something-ant’. There are lots of other specific classes a generic ant class can be upgraded into, and generally, the more specific the class, the more powerful the mutations. Is that right?”
He nodded. She was still interpreting well.
Now came the more difficult part.
“But he says it’s strange… that we all have what sounds like a generic ‘worm’ class, and still be so strong with incredibly powerful mutations and abilities,” she said, pausing here and there, frowning as he struggled to properly put his thoughts into gestures. “Typically, we’re not supposed to be this strong. Most warriors from the south are like him when he first came here. His people are good at fighting, but individually, they’re not actually all that strong. They’re only strong in groups, like… ants. We’re the complete opposite with mutations and abilities that make us individually powerful, and the reason for that is most likely because…”
She trailed off as he pulled out a square chunk of raw insect flesh from his cloak—he’d asked to borrow it from her just before they gathered everyone around the bell tower, and thankfully she still hadn’t eaten her entire share of Boreus meat. It might be a bit of a waste using it for demonstration, but if it’d help them understand the most vital part of what made their systems powerful, he’d gladly sacrifice a dozen points or so.
But he’d remember Ninmah trailing off with that sentence and pester her about it later.
She seemed like she was just about to explain why their systems were so powerful and downright magical compared to most other systems he’d heard of, which were mostly biological in nature.
He still couldn’t figure out how he could possibly manoeuvre through space with a ‘worm’ system.
“... So this is the giant insect meat,” she started, sounding just as confused as he raised the chunk of insect flesh above his head, waving it around so everyone could see it. Then he pointed up at the box under his blood volume and strain, making Ninmah repeat it out loud for everyone to hear.
[Unallocated Points: 18]
“He says… gathering ‘points’ is how people with systems grow stronger,” she said, pausing for a moment. “If we look at the words right under the points, you can see… um, strength, speed, dexterity, toughness, perceptivity, and strain limit. Six of them with numbers next to them. Excluding strain limit, the number you see next to each of those words is equal to how… umm…. Oh! If you have a ‘one’ next to strength, you’re as strong as one person! So since Sparrow has ‘four’ next to strength, he’s as strong as four people!”
The background noise was starting to pick up as he went through the rest of the five basic attributes, making Ninmah translate the same—six levels in speed meant he had the reaction time and the raw agility of six people, and four levels in toughness meant his skin could probably make icicles bounce off, so on and so forth—but strain limit was a bit difficult to explain. In the end, he resorted to pointing at the words, then proceeded to warp left and right in rapid bursts until his breathing grew visibly haggard and his strain percentage started increasing.
He pointed at the strain box popping up, before gesturing several times at Ninmah until she got the message: strain limit was something akin to their stamina, and one ‘point’ put into strain limit increased their limit by one. However, to level up strength from four to five, he’d need four times four amount of points to do so, which meant the higher level their first five attributes were–
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“The more points we’d need to increase them any further,” Ninmah finished, and by the end of it she was slightly out of breath, too; the children laughed and clapped their hands, looking as though they were watching a puppet show. For all intents and purposes, it kind of was one. “So Sparrow is saying… that since most of us already have several of those words in the double digits, it’ll take us hundreds of points just to increase each one by a single level. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t think that’s worth it, and the reason for that is because we don’t have… an easy way to get points?”
A more than satisfactory interpretation. With that, he split the chunk of meat unevenly in half, popping the larger chunk into his mouth. The youngest of the young immediately squealed and squirmed and reeled away at the sight of him chewing on raw insect flesh—he wasn’t really sure what they were so disgusted about, considering most soldiers ate them raw anyways—but very quickly they were distracted by the numbers changing on his status screen, their eyes utterly enthralled at the spinning lights.
[Unallocated Points: 18 → 24]
“... Oh! So if we eat insect flesh, we get points to make ourselves stronger! But if you–”
He didn’t let her finish. For the remaining smaller chunk, he took out a flat piece of crystal he’d picked up from the mouth of White Worm Barrow just ten minutes ago, hovered it over the chunk in his hand, and adjusted the angle until sunlight started sizzling the meat through the crystal.
Ninmah waited.
The children waited.
He waited.
In hindsight, he should’ve just set up a campfire to make the process quicker.
But eventually the meat was darker, crustier, and steaming hot when he chucked it into his mouth, working his jaw as he struggled to chew through the whole thing.
[Unallocated Points: 24 → 42]
“... But if you cook it, you get more points even if the chunk of meat is smaller!” Ninmah finished, and everyone started cheering and clapping; it really was a show to them. “The points can be used to increase the numbers next to the six words, but if we look a little further down, it shows… his ‘mutation tree’! Mutations in bold means they’re already unlocked, and there are ‘t’.. tiers? Mutations cost more points to unlock the higher tier they are, and as it says on the right, the amount of points required to unlock a single tier three mutation is a hundred and fifty. The smaller ‘branch mutations’ under each tier can only be unlocked by… using the corresponding tier mutations to meet certain conditions.”
The eldest children murmured around the edges of the crowd as they studied their own status screens, taking note of their attribute levels and unlocked mutations. Sparrow stole a glance at Ninmah’s screen from the side as well, and once again came face to face with it—a mutation tree so far unlocked he still couldn’t quite believe his eyes.
[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 | ??? | ??? | ??? | ??? | ??? | ???}
He’d worried they wouldn’t be able to understand how the mutation tree worked, but thankfully, Ninmah herself already seemed to realise that since she’d already unlocked all of her tier four mutations, each tier five mutation was going to cost her a thousand three hundred and fifty points.
In simpler terms, a lot of points.
Slowly but surely, he saw the looks of understanding and knowing in everyone’s eyes; the ‘path’ to growing stronger had become all but apparent to them. He could go into more detail about tier mutations, branch mutations, and the optimization of making insect flesh yield more points per pound of flesh consumed, but frankly he didn’t think they were all too important.
At the end of the day, the ‘path’ was simple: they’d have to obtain a large amount of points from consuming insect flesh, distribute them evenly across the six basic attributes, and once increasing their levels become inefficient due to how little points they were getting, they’d have to unlock a mutation to obtain a massive ‘jump’ in their overall power. With the jump in power, they could start hunting stronger and larger insects whose flesh would yield more points per pound—and while there were whole classifications and guidebooks explaining which insects would yield the most points when consumed by different system classes, he was neither knowledgeable in those matters nor particularly interested in trying to explain them to Ninmah.
Utu, standing at the very far back of the crowd, was the first to raise his hand and ask a question in his shouting, warping voice; this once, Sparrow felt as though he understood what the Worm Mage was saying perfectly.
“So if we want to get stronger and make all our numbers go up, we have to kill, cook, and eat lots of giant insects?” Utu said.
Sparrow nodded firmly, pulling his bayonet rifle forward and gripping it tight in his hands.
Even though they were already far stronger than him in terms of raw attributes and unlocked mutations, he was going to pull all of them onto higher levels alongside him.
“...Hey, Sparrow,” Ninmah whispered, warping next to his ear so none of the children could hear them. “With our current numbers and unlocked mutations, how many… um, how many giant insects or Darkworms would we have to kill in order to raise everyone’s numbers by one?”
He thought about it for a moment, did a bit of calculation in his head, before raising three fingers on one hand and closing his fist with the other.
Ninmah couldn’t help a frown. “Three?”
He shook his head.
“... Thirty?”
He nodded plainly.
And the immediate response in the crowd as Ninmah said the number out loud in the Immanu tongue was… ‘sadness’.
Most of the children’s expressions morphed into looks of heartache, as though hearing the number itself had cut a wound. Even the eldest children were shifting in place, fidgeting with their bows and quivers and looking left and right nervously—Sparrow had to remind himself these were the same children who’d been paralyzed with fear when faced with a mere eight Boreus. To ask them to slay thirty just for a meagre increase in power that they’d also have to distribute evenly between them was obviously going to be difficult; there was no other way to make themselves stronger nevertheless.
Every human across the continent had to do the same if they wanted to survive.
The Worm Mages weren’t exempt from this.
And none of you are that weak, are you?
…
“... We promised our parents, before they left, that we wouldn’t use our abilities to ‘fight’ anything,” Ninmah said in a hushed voice, clasping her hands and lowering her head as she did. “But we understand. Even if we have to kill more Darkworms and giant insects than there is snow in Immanu… we will grow stronger. Whatever it takes.”
With that, she opened her mouth and sang in that low, warping worm’s voice again. The rest of the Worm Mages huddled closer, dipped their heads, clasped their hands, and joined in with their own voices; their melody weaving through the air, drawing him in, holding his breath in quiet anticipation.
He closed his eyes and listened.
For the second time today, he felt as though he could almost hear the lyrics—a harmonic prayer that asked for understanding, that pleaded for forgiveness, and challenged the Swarm, nevertheless, to a battle their resolve would not weaken for.
So he said nothing.
And he didn’t join in their prayers.
He was still a living weapon trained to kill without remorse, after all.
“... Alright,” Ninmah whispered, the first to break from the prayer as she raised her head to smile wistfully at him. “If it’s hunting for a steady source of points that we need to do, then we know a spot where we can find lots of them.”