The snow beneath Sparrow’s knees was still smooth and pristine, albeit a bit cold against his trousers. If he walked just a few metres further, though, he’d come face to face with yet another vertical drop like the one at the edge of the village—and this one wasn’t a drop even a fearless bullet ant soldier could laugh at.

Ninmah had warped him all the way out to a thin strip of rock protruding from the side of a towering blackrock mountain, and the hundred-metre stretch in front of him must’ve been a properly paved road a few decades ago; an avalanche must’ve smashed through the rock and created the chasm before him. To join both ends of the road, the Worm Mages had thrown dozens of frayed ropes across, creating what was the most hazardous-looking web of ‘bridges’ he wasn’t sure even the fleet-footed Silver Ant Battalions would dare challenge; the ropes weren’t pulled taut, the howling winds made them sway from side to side, and snow coated the top while icicles bled from the bottom.

Even if he wasn’t already freezing in the blizzard, he doubted anyone from the Attini Empire would be able to balance their way across any one of the ropes.

But, of course, the Worm Mages weren’t from the Attini Empire.

“This is Death Rope Passing, where we train our young to warp!” Ninmah said, her eyes twinkling with excitement as she grinned back down at him. “In Death Rope Passing, either you'll learn how to warp today or you'll die trying—so there’s only one trick you have to learn!”

As he looked back up at her, tightening his jaw and gradually acclimating to the cold, she whispered in her warping voice to get the dozen children around them to disperse; half of them nodded and warped off to the side of the mountain, sitting and playing with strange string-like toys by the rocks, but the other half were immediately standing at the edge of the cliff in front of the ropes, their heads leaning dangerously far forward.

Those who were about to cross the chasm searched for a path with their eyes, and Sparrow zeroed in on the youngest one: a boy with his hood down and his long hair tied in buns, not looking even six of age. He was definitely too young to be walking out in the blizzard winds, let alone thinking about challenging the ropes while clad in clothes and cloaks twice the weight of his body.

But again, the Worm Mages defied his expectations.

The children not participating in the crossing whooped and cheered, warping the air around the chasm to create a thin protective barrier that warded off the winds; their voices were the signal for the challengers to go. All six of them stepped forward at once with slow exhales, and suddenly they were all at various distances away from the cliff, balancing casually on the swaying ropes.

Sparrow widened his eyes as they kept warping forward, jumping five metres at a time, ten metres at a time. Most of them weren’t even walking normally with two feet on the ropes—some were skipping, some were hopping, some were crossing different ropes and laughing and trying to playfully nudge the other kids off—but all of them were relaxed beyond reason, not taking the race across the chasm seriously whatsoever.

How are they so casual about this?

Do they not fear heights at all?

Ninmah beamed proudly as the boy Sparrow had set his eyes on managed to finish first, a tiny pale dot on the opposite end of the chasm waving cheerily back at them, almost blending in perfectly with the snow. The rest of the children eventually caught up, and it became a rowdy mess of a snowball fight the remaining six children on his side were just fidgeting to join in. Ninmah whistled and jerked her head to the side, telling the rest of them to go, so they did with great pleasure; skipping, hopping, prancing their way across the ropes with ease, not a single child taking more than twenty seconds to reach the other side.

And, while Sparrow kept staring at the children, completely dumbfounded, Ninmah sat down next to him and poked him with a smirk.

“So? Still raring to learn how to warp even though I’m telling you to rest and heal your body first?” she said, her warping voice bouncing with a playful, teasing lilt. “Well, they did just show you how to control it, so I’m guessing you already have a good grasp of our ‘warping step’. Wanna try? It’s only a thousand hundred-metre drop from here to the sea of clouds below, so, you know—not that far!”

He regarded her with a plain, dazed expression. She didn’t so much as curl a brow or twitch an eye in response; she was sincerely asking him to go and believing a thousand-metre drop wasn’t that high of a drop. Maybe they could survive the fall with how high their toughness levels must be, but if he were to fall…

…

… So what?

He gripped his fists and rose to two wobbly feet, exhaling sharply as the children had.

A bullet ant soldier does not fear.

Decree Four: Death in battle is an honour for a warrior against the Swarm.

Ninmah skipped a few steps back to give him a wide berth, cupping her hands before her mouth and cheering for him to make the passing. The children on the opposite side, too, noticed him staring at the ropes and ceased their carefree snowball fight—in its stead, they burst into yet another cheerful, vibrating song, creating a thin barrier around the chasm to dampen the force of the howling winds.

It wasn’t much, but he was grateful nonetheless.

The children all exhaled before beginning to warp.

Perhaps removing excess air from my lungs… helps?

He’d been paying attention, and there weren’t any real techniques he could glean from the children’s movements but for their little short breaths before stepping onto the ropes. It had to be an important move, then—a ritual to prepare their bodies for the warp.

He was willing to bet his life on it.

So, after completely expelling the air in his lungs and making his body as light as possible, he took one step forward onto the ropes–

He warped five metres uncontrollably, only the tip of his toes touching the rope he’d chosen for a split second before he felt himself plummeting.

[Speed: 3 → 4]

[Unallocated Points: 72→ 63]

Hands shooting out on reflex, he snatched onto the rope and started swinging, legs dangling over an abyssal drop. The frayed rope wasn’t pulled taut at all, so there was plenty of slack for his body to sway around; the creaking wasn’t adding to his confidence, either. As the children erupted into great laughter with their warping voices, whooping and clapping to a rhythmic beat, he gritted his teeth and pulled himself up—struggling for a good thirty seconds before finally managing a strenuous balance with both his feet on the rope.

It was only by pure luck that the ropes around him were just as wide as his feet. Otherwise, he didn’t think he’d even be able to stand on them.

“Try again!” Ninmah shouted over the cheers and the laughs, though he couldn’t spare a glance back to see if she was making any gestures at him. “It’s easy! Just put one foot before the other, keep your shoulders loose, your elbow wide and happy, and you’ll nail it down in no time! Keep going!”

He clicked his tongue in irritation.

I know how to balance across a tightrope.

But balancing across a swaying, rotting tightrope in the middle of a blizzard–

Was impossible.

He took another step forward, warped three metres diagonally, and slipped again. Being ready to catch the rope as he fell had nothing to do with how much it hurt his palms, with how cold the snowflakes battering into his bare feet and hands were—it was more than twice as difficult to pull himself up the second time, and his fingers even threatened to unfurl just as he was about to throw one foot onto the rope. Exhaustion bloomed in his chest like an inkblot spreading on a scroll; he couldn’t keep up with this endless cycle of walking, warping, and falling.

And as he finally managed to stand again, holding both wobbly arms out as he tried to maintain his wire-thin balance…

He found he couldn’t take another step forward.

His muscles were locked. His nerves were electrified. Breathing in the snow was a pain, every breath drawn like daggers stabbed straight into his lungs, and all he could hear were the howls of the blizzard and the cheers from the children who didn’t understand what he couldn’t understand—just what, exactly, was he missing that he was being outdone by a bunch of children half his age?

I was always good at balancing, was I not?

He was a bullet ant soldier, trained to traverse all sorts of difficult terrain, but it wasn’t like he was alone in this strength. Every military grunt and drone of the Attini Empire, regardless of their background, were put through the same training gauntlets as everyone else. It didn’t matter if they were orphans fleeing from the Swarm, children of peasants who needed the service allowance, or just fungus farmers who wanted a chance to make a better future for themselves; everyone who fought on the frontlines had been put through the harsh training regiments that granted them a Swarmsteel System implant, so was all of that training for naught in this village?

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The hours he’d spent balancing atop a log while carrying two logs on his shoulders. The days he’d spent out in the pouring rain being roared at to finish his laps through the fungi forests. The weeks of lashing he’d endured whenever he’d failed to complete a regiment in time, the hunger he’d stifled whenever he’d been thrown into an isolation hole, the sharp aches and bruises where his nails had cracked—he’d pushed through all of it and became a soldier of the Attini Empire.

How could he fear a simple thousand-metre drop?

How could he be stuck on such a simple obstacle?

How could he ever return to the Forward Army like this?

“... It’s because you’re too tense.”

A shudder rippled up his spine as he felt Ninmah grabbing his hand from behind, but he couldn’t look back. He couldn’t turn lest he risked spinning right off his rope. All he could do was clench his jaw and throat, trying to pull his back foot forward, taking one step at a time–

“You’re always looking around like you’re worried someone’s going to jump at you,” she whispered, tightening her grip on his hand and holding him still. Her warping voice made the air curl around his ear; it was ticklish, almost. He didn’t let himself shudder again. “I… don’t really know what you’re being so jumpy for, but when you’re in Immanu, you don’t have to worry about anyone ambushing you. With snowballs and slinkies, maybe, but not whatever’s got your shoulders this bunched up.”

… Easy for you to say.

You, children of worms, who do not even know what a rifle is…

What do you know of the world I come from?

He tightened his chest, trying to pull away, but Ninmah’s hand was locked. Her fingers were living worms, curled in a death grip around his—he’d have to warp if he wanted a chance at shaking her off.

But if he warped now, he’d only have one hand to snatch onto a rope when he inevitably fell.

The other would be busy holding onto her.

He couldn’t warp.

“... The ‘trick’ is just to relax,” she whispered again, reaching forward to curl her forearm over his eyes; suddenly he couldn’t see, and he couldn’t even try to jerk his head out of the way. He’d tip himself off balance if he did. “Your eyes are very bright, but they are too keen. You walk and move and look around like you’re always in a hurry, and that’s no way to live with your system. A worm isn’t urgent, it doesn’t have anywhere to go—it lives deep beneath the snow, beneath the earth, and lives move around it in natural passing. It lives ‘in-between’ here and there, because it is everywhere.”

No.

You do not understand.

You cannot walk with your head held high.

You cannot walk with leisure.

Move like that on a battlefield and you will be killed in an instant–

“Tell me this, then,” she whispered, “if you can warp anywhere you want in an instant, is there a difference between taking a fast, hurried step and taking a slow, meandering step?”

…

“No, right?” Ninmah chuckled softly, letting go of his wrist to cover his eyes with both hands. “If you can warp to your destination in an instant, it doesn’t matter whether you’re running or dashing or skipping or jumping. You can move however your heart wishes to move, and the result will be the same. How fast you go into the warp doesn’t matter, right? You will warp and arrive at your destination regardless, right?”

…

“You don’t have to choose our methods and force yourself to relax if you can’t forget your training completely,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you can’t actually relax. As long as you try to meet us halfway, in the ‘in-between’, your system will handle the rest. It'll carry you the rest of the way through.”

…

Without warning, Ninmah let out a wordless song in a worm’s low, thrumming voice.

There was a shift in the winds, a distinct hum of power and weight that seemed to permeate the air. Her voice behind him was tangible, like the strumming of lute strings, a vibration that seemed to resonate with the blizzard itself—and the children on the other side decided this would be no one-girl performance. One by one their warping voices joined the song, filling the sky with a slow-building rhythm that spoke… a story.

The lyrics were indecipherable, he couldn’t catch a single ‘word’ they were singing, but–

He felt it was a ‘familiar’ song.

It was ‘comforting’.

It was ‘soothing’.

It was ‘in-between’ physical and invisible.

It was sung in a tongue that had always grated his ears and gave him a pounding headache, but that was because he’d always been listening to it thinking he had to decode it.

But now his muscles were trying to unclench, his shoulders were trying to drop, he was trying not to hold his breath–

And he took his first step forward with his eyes closed, without warping uncontrollably.

[T1 Branch Mutation Unlocked: Warping Step]

… Oh.

He knew it, Ninmah knew it; she pulled her hands off his eyes and warped away with a low thrum, but still he didn’t try to open his eyes.

The rope was straight, after all, and he already knew how to walk.

‘Balance’ wasn’t something anyone had to think about when walking.

A strange tension began to uncoil in his chest as he took a few more steps forward, each bringing him closer and closer to the other end of the chasm. He didn’t start off by warping crazy distances—in fact, he didn’t even try to warp his first few steps—but gradually he pictured himself strolling across a wide, open plain. There were no trenches any mortars could be lurking in. No barbed spikes and traps to fall into. No mounds of dirt and soil giant bugs could be hiding behind. He imagined he was walking on the surface of the moon, because that was the only truly wide and open plain he could think of, and when he imagined warping was just like rotating the moon under his feet instead of walking around the moon himself…

He warped one metre, controlled.

Two metres, controlled.

Three metres, controlled.

Five metres, controlled.

And five metres was as far as he could warp before his feet pressed into brittle snow, a dozen children running their heads into his stomach to tackle him to the ground.

"Sn̷owb̴a̴ll fi̶ght̶!" one of them shouted, making the rest disperse with a series of low-thrumming warps, and before he could even rub his eyes and sit up straight—nailed in his forehead by a snowball.

… Hah.

The children floundered, disoriented, warping up and around the mounds of snow for their renewed snowball fight while they largely ignored him sitting in the middle of it all; it became apparent to him soon enough that their warping tongue was the only tongue they could speak, but even their space-twisting voices, he felt, were something he was beginning to understand.

He recognised a few of the intonations and pronunciations in what the first child just shouted, though not completely as of yet.

“... Easy, right?” Ninmah said, sitting next to him and grinning with pearly white teeth. “Just put one foot in front of the other, keep your shoulders loose, your elbow wide and happy, and see? It’s not much different from normal walking, after all.”

He stared at her for a moment, quiet, before pulling up a small section of his status screen and falling backwards in the snow.

[Strain: 73%]

[// MUTATION TREE]

[T1 | Wormhole Core]

{T1 Branch Mutations | Warping Step | ??? | ???}

… Branch Mutation. Apart from the big tier mutations that cost points to unlock in sequence, there were also branch mutations under each tier that could only be unlocked by meeting certain conditions. Usually, the conditions involved utilising a mutation in a particular way that’d ‘activate’ the branch mutation, and then they’d gain additional abilities on top of what their tier mutation already offered them—this was how grunt ant class soldiers could earn the strength, and thus the right to evolve into more specialised classes.

He’d heard both the General and the Vice-general were normal carpenter ant builders until they did something that activated two extremely hidden branch mutations mid-battle. Because their branch mutations were rather powerful, they were recalled and had their system upgraded by the Capital, turning them into the specialised classes they were now.

If being able to warp with every step was just one of three branch mutations in tier one, then what could the branch mutations in the stronger tiers even be?

…

He was too tired to think about it right now.

And Ninmah sat down next to him, shrugging at him with a lopsided smile. “Well, it’s a little different from normal walking, I guess, but it's not that different! You’re just slow and weak and have no stamina, so you’ll get better with time and practice! Here, have a snack!”

He answered with a fierce scowl as she dumped three small worms onto his chest, making her laugh.

‘I’ am the slow one?

Nonsense.

You people… you children, and your philosophy of this ‘in-between’, you…

…

He didn’t bother finishing that line of thought as he shook his head, knocked the snow off his face, and forced himself to sit up straight. The children were still play-fighting, Ninmah was still nagging at him to stay down, but he felt more energetic than ever—he wanted to try crossing the chasm once again.

He tossed her snack worms in his mouth and chewed.

[Unallocated Points: 63 → 64]

“Hey, dark hair. Wanna race?” Ninmah said, poking him with yet another smirk. “I’ll win, you know?”

A teasing smirk.

A somewhat ‘annoying’ smirk.

So he shook his head a few more times, crawling onto his feet as he caught a stray snowball that would’ve flown right into his face.

… I will win.

I am designated Sparrow of the First Bullet Ant Battalion.

I will master warping by the end of the day.