“... I’ve heard rumours that you can fire seven shots in a single second with your bolt-action rifle,” Kuraku said, running her arms through her hair to coat them with a sheen of glowing, blast-ready ants. “Have you betrayed the Attini Empire, ‘Seven-Shot’ Sparrow?”
Sparrow kept his mouth shut and his fingers tightly curled around his bolt-action rifle. The outpost was burning around him, the air sticky and suffocating, but the Envoy had crafted his new weapon out of cold snow diamond. Appearance wise, it was exactly the same as his old bullet ant rifle with a wooden veneer coated over, but somehow it was also lighter and tougher. At the strength he’d been swinging it around, his old rifle would’ve broken a hundred times over already. This new one could deflect bullets and mortar shells alike without so much as a single crack in the white diamond; most likely, it could also survive one of Kuraku’s point-blank explosions without any issues.
He’d be fine not testing that out, though.
Tipping himself off balance, he warped five metres to the left and fired twice in quick succession, both shots aimed at Kuraku’s head. Her burning crimson eyes followed his movements, but she didn’t dodge; she merely gritted her teeth and let the bullets ricochet off the subtle red chitin plates on her temples. A taunt. She whirled a second later and flicked a whip of ants his way, the chain of explosions spreading from her wrist to the tip of the whip where it narrowly missed his legs. Grimacing, he warped five more metres to the left and up, perching on the edge of a fallen mushroom cap to fire six more shots down her back.
Each bullet tore through her fur coat and uniform, making her stumble forward on her mushroom cap, but none pierced her chitin skin. His rifle clicked empty. Kuraku took the opportunity to swipe an entire arm behind her, casting a wide fan of ants to completely annihilate the mushroom cap he was perched on—and now he backed off, warping several times until he vaulted into the burning debris of a demolished barrack, hiding in the flames as he reached into his cloak for more bullets.
Her chitin mutation and high toughness level combined make her almost impermeable to scrap metal bullets.
Maybe I can get some damage in if I aim at her eyes and ears, but she will be on guard when it comes to her weak spots—is firing at range not a viable option against her?
He got his answer when his vibrational senses made his whole body shiver in the midst of flames, and he warped instinctively onto a wooden beam several metres away from where he’d been hiding. A cloud of ants detonated on the barracks half a second later, and Kuraku dashed through the flames with her arms crossed in front of her face, clutching two more balls of explosive ants. He’d no time to reload properly; he warped ten metres back in a straight line, trying to put some distance between them, but she chucked her bombs with extra strength so they were both soaring at his face.
Detonation.
It was only twirling his rifle before his face that he endured the brunt of the explosion, but a hundred scrap shrapnel still pounded against his rigid annuli, sending him crashing through into another mushroom barrack. Smashing into a cabinet, he immediately pushed himself to his feet and aimed out the hole he’d made in the walls, firing only thrice at the Vice-general leaping straight at him—but all of his bullets sparked and exploded mid-air, intercepted by a cloud of crimson ants passively surrounding around her like an aura. She didn’t flinch. Her steely expression didn’t change. He warped down to ground level, then warped eight steps consecutively to put great distance between them; the mushroom barrack erupted into a roaring column of flames far behind him, and he didn’t turn to look as he sprinted towards her office in the centre of the outpost.
[Strain: 56% → 71%]
As expected.
Even if I make wormholes in front of her eyes, I cannot make the wormholes move along with her. Her attribute levels are much higher than mine. If she really wants to, she can react to and dodge my bullets before they even leave the barrel.
Kuraku had stomped and made the entire mushroom stalk sink halfway into the ground earlier, but the front door to her office was still above ground level, so he found it and kicked the entire door in, knocking it off its hinges. The two carpenter ant builders who’d been aiming at the door didn’t even manage to get a single shot; both of their heads rocked back into the walls as Minki warped in through the windows, sliding in with a rifle of her own and firing twice to take them down.
The two of them should be the last of the grunt soldiers stationed in the outpost.
“... I will stay and deal with the Vice-general,” he said, his eyes dark as Ninmah heard the commotion and started straining in her bindings, shaking her head left and right in an attempt to get the hood off her face. There was a nasty bleeding hole in the back of her hand; Kuraku must’ve run a knife through in order to get her to talk. “Get Ninmah out of here, Minki. Do not return for me until all everyone—including Utu and the others standing by on the slope—are safe and sound in Immanu.”
Minki nodded, warping behind the metal chair to cut the hood around Ninmah’s neck, being very careful not to touch the potentially explosive lace itself. Ninmah immediately gasped and choked for breath. He sighed a quiet breath of relief seeing her face, at the very least, was not bruised or bloodied; he didn’t know what he’d say to the children if she returned with a broken nose or a missing eye.
While Minki continued cutting Ninmah’s bindings with an obsidian-edged knife, he craned his ears outside the windows and heard the snow-rumbling, explosion-trailing steps of the Vice-general—tracker pheromones must be stuck to his body like invisible markers, so there’d be no hiding from her as long as he was in the outpost. He could make a run for it alongside Ninmah and Minki, but…
That wouldn’t solve the problem.
Removing the Vice-general here and now would open up the General’s right-hand position, which meant, in the future, he and Minki could offer themselves up for that position in exchange for keeping Immanu’s existence a secret.
So he slid under cover behind the open window, fingers shaking slightly as he reached for more bullets inside his cloak. The strain was starting to get to him. However, he had a plan—even if it might be a risky one—and that had to amount to something.
He needed to focus..
Tense his muscles.
He closed his eyes, listening to the explosive steps drawing nearer and nearer, and–
“Deep breaths, Sparrow.”
Ninmah rushed forward, wrapping him in a painful hug the moment Minki freed her from her bindings. His eyes immediately shot open as he tried to tap her back, wanting her to ease off the neck a little, but then he felt cold water dripping onto his shoulders and her own arms trembling—the smile on her lips may be the usual as she eventually pulled away, but the fear, anger, and desperation in her teary eyes were real as well. There was nothing he could say to assuage her that everything was going to be alright.
“... Deep… deep breaths. You have to relax,” she whispered, holding his shoulders, her own warping voice shaky and quivering. She looked just about ready to cry. “You’re… you’re fourteen, right? And Minki is… fifteen? I think? How old… is that Vice-general?”
He remained silent, thinking for a moment. “Vice-general Kuraku is seventeen. General Wanuy is eighteen. Now return to Immanu and have Minki bandage your wounds. Dinner will be served in–”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
She cut off with another tight hug, drawing in huge breaths and expelling them as quiet sobs.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed, nails digging into his nape. “Y-You had to kill so many, and I don’t… but… thank you. For coming for me. I thought… I thought you might–”
“I am a weapon,” he said plainly, tilting his head. “I do not mind killing other weapons. They would have done the same to me and you. This is simply war–”
“You are not a weapon,” she said, pulling away one last time, grabbing his cheeks and forcing him to look; her firm and steady eyes a starry, brilliant blue, in stark contrast to the crimson flames gnawing at the office around them. “And as long as there’s one child of Immanu missing during roll call, not a single dish will be served, so don’t you… don’t you dare be late for dinner, okay? We’ll wait for you. Nobody’s eating until you come back. Promise.”
“...”
Expressionless, he finished reloading and vaulted out the window, chambering the first shot.
“Get Ninmah out of here, Minki,” he said.
“Understood.”
The former silver ant scout grabbed Ninmah by the shoulders and wrangled her into a warp, the two girls vanishing with a low thrum behind him. At the same time, a massive wall of snow and earth erupted in front of him, blown up by the Vice-general pacing steadily through the burning outpost. Her jaw was hanging slightly open, her needle-row teeth gleaming sharp in the moonlight—every breath of hers reminding him she was at ease breathing in the smoke-filled air, while he, even with his full-body filtering gills, would sooner or later succumb to the lack of oxygen amidst the flames.
Preferably, he’d end this battle fast.
Kuraku’s eyes glowed scarlet as she spotted him standing in front of her old office. With an underhand throw, she chucked a bomb at him and detonated it along the way. The explosion trail messed with his vision, he warped ten metres off the side a bit too slowly; she already had a second bomb thrown at him, soaring at maximum speed. Just getting hit in the head by the clump of ants would probably knock him out with her vastly superior strength. Snapping his neck and jerking his head out of the way, blood dripped down his ear as he fired back, every last shot intercepted by her defensive aura of ants.
Through the smoke and flames, she chucked a third bomb at him—this one, he warped forward and smacked back at her with the stock of his rifle, the explosion dispersing her defensive aura for just a split second.
He warped next to her face in that singular moment.
If ranged attacks cannot reach her, then melee is the only option.
Kuraku’s eyes snapped at him, jerking her arm down to block his bayonet. He warped to the opposite side and struck again, but she took a step back and parried with her bare claws, miniature explosions left in the wake of her swipes. Before she could get used to his rhythm, he stabbed once more at her neck from the left—opening a wormhole with his right eye to make the bayonet stab from the right. The knife pierced the first layer of her chitin, making her growl, but the wound wasn’t deep enough, wasn’t fatal; more explosions cracked as she swiped at him, forcing him to skid a few metres back.
So she can be taken off-guard after all.
But if I stay in melee range for too long, all she needs to do is touch me once to transfer exploding ants onto my skin—and all it takes is one point-blank explosion to knock me out of this fight.
In that case…
…
He tightened his grip on his rifle.
His plan was going to be risky, after all.
Unlock the tier four mutation left of ‘Filtering Gills’.
[T4 Mutation Unlocked: Salt Epidermis]
[Unallocated Points: 456 → 6]
It was a subtle mutation, and wasn’t readily apparent with rain and ash falling on him; he barely felt his skin shifting and rearranging himself, so he could only pray Kuraku didn’t notice he’d spent all the points he’d gathered with a full day of non-stop eating.
Fearless, reckless, he charged straight at the Vice-general, bayonet reared to his side like a spear. For a single moment, Kuraku looked lost—he wasn’t warping or using his superior manoeuvrability against her, after all—so there was no chance she didn’t know he was up to something. She was the Vice-general of the Hagi’Shar Forward Army, who’d served and fought alongside General Wanuy since they were children; he knew this wasn’t her first duel against a soldier with a completely different system class.
She’d be wary.
She’d be cautious.
And if there was any time to be ruthlessly wasteful—to go all-out with her explosive attack power—now was the time.
Her raw physical might and speed eclipsed his by a significant amount, and she slashed both hands in a cross as he neared, her entire arms thickly coated with a hundred, a thousand exploding ants crawling on each other; she was wagering everything in this one strike. One touch was all she needed for her ants to cling onto his skin. To that end, he gritted his teeth, held his breath, clenched every last muscle in his body, and pushed his bayonet straight out at her heart.
Then, he just let himself fly straight forward at her chest.
Her cross slashes sent a thousand exploding ants flying at him, all of their tiny little mandibles piercing into his skin, into his rigid annuli—and then, in that one, singular moment where she snapped her fingers to detonate her ants, he relaxed with a deep breath.
Her ants failed to cling onto his salty epidermis—a thin layer of slime that moisturised his skin—and about half of them slid off his bare arms, legs, and face as he carried through with the momentum.
Half of the explosions still went off on the tails of his cloak, but as long as the ants didn’t blow up on his bare skin, he could still move, he could still fight. Kuraku’s flinched and tried to take a step back, but he ran his bayonet into her chest and then jumped onto her, feet slamming into her shoulders. She toppled over, spine arching as she hit the ground hard, and he immediately leaned his entire weight onto the stock of his rifle, pushing the bayonet even deeper, even deeper–
He warped away preemptively, yanking his bayonet out with a trail of blood as she fanned a cloud of explosions up at him, a last-ditch effort to save herself.
[Strain: 71% → 83%]
… Victory.
Heaving, panting for breath, he stumbled back and slipped off his feet. A painful fall. But the two of them crawled back onto their feet, pushing themselves up with all four limbs, assessing their wounds in silence as the outpost crackled around them. His cloak was in tatters, his muscles were shaking all over, and he was bleeding out of his eyes for how many bullet-sized wormholes he’d made the past half-hour, but… he could still stand and lift his rifle. So could Kuraku, for that matter—though she was bleeding out of her scalp, the open wound in her chest, and sporting a dozen see-through holes across her forearms where some of her own ants detonated on her skin, she still managed to pick up a rifle from a fallen soldier nearby and pointed it straight at him.
She was a terrifying, powerful opponent after all.
And to think she wasn’t much older than Minki.
…
But now, the two of them were ten metres apart.
They reloaded in slow, stumbling silence.
Aimed their rifles at each other, a meandering pace.
And then Kuraku fired a single round first—her training telling her to shoot straight at his chest, the easiest target to hit. He would’ve aimed for the same spot if he were in her situation.
So that was how he made one last bullet-sized wormhole in front of his chest, warping the bullet off to the side with a quiet plink.
“... Your eyes are impressive,” Kuraku mumbled, her lips bloody, clutching the hole in her chest with a single claw. “But unfortunately… of all the bullet ant soldiers in our Forward Army’s single battalion… the sparrow-eyed marksman is the only one who cannot shoot through my defences–”
He fired eight times in one second, hands blurring across the bolt as each bullet nailed the Vice-general in her chest wound—and then she was thrown back into the flaming debris, falling over with an unceremonious thud.
…
It was true he wouldn’t have been able to shoot through her defensive aura of explosive ants as a mere bullet ant soldier, but now, he was no mere bullet ant soldier.
He could warp up a three thousand metre slope and get back to the village in time for dinner, still.