Five days since the Boreus infestation.

  It turned out the houses were rather easy to rebuild. The crystal trees bore incredibly light crystal wood, and with the crystal forest growing inside the cavern at the end of the village, the Worm Mages were not at all scarce of raw resources to pull from.

  There were still places here and there that needed special tending to, of course. Sparrow was currently working on one of them. The morning sun was fierce, light reflecting off the mountain range of snow in blinding white hues, but he squinted and heaved through the exertion as he pushed in the final loose brick that’d come out of the bell tower during the attack—all things considered, the bell tower was the least damaged building in the entire village, but given everyone else was busy rebuilding houses or rummaging through the rubble for their personal belongings, nobody but him had the time to spare for the village’s tallest landmark. His own cabin outside the village was completely untouched, after all.

  Clicking in the final brick and returning the bell tower to its unblemished, alabaster glory, he sighed and sat on a small ledge halfway up the landmark, overlooking Immanu ten metres up in the air.

  Though most of the village was already rebuilt, the scars remained. Shattered pieces of ice and wood were still strewn across the landscape near the east. The once densely packed houses near the bell tower stood partially restored, hastily patched up, but there were still gaping holes in most walls and roofs sagging under the weight of rubble. A hundred and eleven children moved and warped through the wreckage, searching for small tokens of their old homes under the snow and debris. The air was filled with the sounds of their quiet activity: the scrape of shovels against ice, the soft murmur of warping voices, the occasional cries of triumph or sorrow whenever they dug up something important.

  The bundle of wind chimes far above his head tinkled faintly, their music subdued as if in mourning—even though Immanu was already mostly restored in form, the spirit of the Worm Mages were bruised and battered.

  His heavy rifle was slung over his back, but he wouldn’t be shooting or stabbing with it anytime soon. He could endure the pain and work through it, but his left arm and shoulder were still broken. Even with his half-inorganic body, it’d take him a few more weeks to heal that alongside all the other bandaged cuts and tears across his body. If only he’d paid more attention and didn’t lose track of where the Boreus were at all times, he wouldn’t have been caught off-guard by the surprise tackle, but he supposed they were all beyond lucky that he was the only one who’d been targeted and focused on—for all their mutations and abilities and unbelievably high attribute levels, the Worm Mages of Immanu weren’t capable of fighting whatsoever.

  Narrowing his eyes and folding his hands in his lap, he watched the children stumble and bumble their way through the debris, completely lacking in hand-eye coordination though they were masters of balancing and warping away.

  [Name: ‘Sparrow’]

  [Grade: C-Rank Giant-Class]

  [Class: Whiteworm]

  [Swarmblood Art: Worm Maw]

  [Aura: 942]

  [Points: 68]

  [Strength: 3, Speed: 5, Toughness: 3, Dexterity: 3, Perception: 3]

  [T1 Mutation | Inorganic God Lvl. 10

  [T2 Mutations | Vibrational Senses | Wormic Bones Lvl. 1

  While most of the Worm Mages had concerned themselves with rebuilding the village the day after the attack, he went ahead and chopped up the Boreus with Ninmah and Utu and the older children, turning them into cooked bug meat distributed evenly amongst the hundred and eleven. He received his fair share, of course, and while maybe there could be an argument that since he’d killed all eight of them, he should be able to eat all of them by himself… that wasn’t what he’d been taught in the Bullet Ant Battalion.

  It didn’t matter who killed how many giant bugs. Either everyone grew stronger together, or grew stronger at all.

  They were Ant Class Soldiers who worked as a collective, after all.

  So, eight Boreus chopped up and split between a hundred and eleven children—himself included—netted him only a total of sixty-eight points. It was still far more than nothing, but for eight Boreus, he’d expected a little more. Maybe it’d be best if he just unlocked his second tier two mutation now to gain access to the tier three mutations. He couldn’t exactly read, still, but by now he vaguely had the impression that each and every mutation in the Whiteworm Class was powerful in ways his old Bullet Ant Class weren’t.

  Before he could return to the General, he had to learn more and get more out of his class.

  That much hadn’t changed.

  A voice from below broke the tranquillity of the gentle chimes and the soft morning breeze. He looked down to see a dozen or so of the youngest of the young, waving up at him with their bodies covered in extremely thick and fluffy white cloaks. They’d all drawn up their hoods to cover their faces, and even as he slid off the ledge to land in the snow ten metres below, he couldn’t quite tell who each of them were—all he knew was that they were all half his height, twice as exuberant, and four times as energetic as they bounced up and down, stretching their limbs and cracking their shoulders.

  It was like they were preparing to gang up on him in a fight.

  the little boy who’d called up to him said, holding up a spare slinky toy and peering up at his face with a cheeky wide grin; Sparrow frowned curtly in response.

  He nodded after a few seconds of deep thinking and accepted their toy. The Worm Mages’ warping voices were still mostly indecipherable, but he getting better at feeling out their intentions, at intuiting their meanings whenever they warped in front of him looking all energetic. Their bouncy rhythms were just like Ninmah’s whenever he met up with her early in the morning to race her around the village, after all; the dozen or so children in front of him probably wanted to race him or do something similar.

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  Since he had nothing better to do right now—he’d already finished repairing the bell tower and was awaiting new orders from Ninmah, who was nowhere to be seen—he supposed he could stretch his limbs around a little.

  The children looked at each other excitedly, giggling and whispering under their breaths as he made a big show of covering his eyes.

  He heard the low thrums of them warping away and counted to ten seconds, but when he eventually opened and rubbed his eyes in the same motion, letting sunlight fall warmly on his face, he noticed the dozen children kneeling perched on the nearby roofs—heads tilted, beady sapphire eyes blinking under their deep hoods like owls watching their prey.

  His face went inexpressive again. He took a step forward, nearing the whole lot of them. None of them even flinched. He took a second step forward, and this time he warped directly behind them, right hand flicking out to wrap his metre-long slinky around one of their waists–

  Then all of them warped away without so much as a single step taken, dispersing to the neighbouring roofs as they continued staring at him, giggling softly.

  Not bothering to take it easy on them anymore, he leaned his entire weight forward and warped, speeding up his advance. His warp wasn’t clean or quiet. He made it abundantly clear he was out to grab them with his slinky, and they made it abundantly clear they had no intention of letting him touch them; they’d stay perched on their roofs, staring at him intently until the very last moment—when his slinky were about to wrap around their bodies—before warping away by purposefully shifting themselves off balance.

  His eyes twitched.

  The only way to catch them was to up his speed to the max, then.

  As the minutes passed, strong twists in the air made the winds pick up speed, his long striding warps bringing him in front of a child every single step. With every step, however, came the realisation that the children were more talented than him, and they had more stamina than him; while he’d been the first to warp fast during the night of attack, they must’ve been watching him back then and instinctively picked up on how to warp fast themselves. He was hurrying to catch them, so they were hurrying to run away. In a battle of equal urgency, the children with their superior attribute levels and experience in warping were utterly unbeatable—he was getting dragged around the village like a doll as they evaded him and his slinky with a chorus of laughs, evidently pleased with how much faster they could warp now.

  Frustrated, he kicked up a small wave of snow around him to mask the twists in the air, obstructing their vision. That bought him space to warp down into the alleys, out of sight, and directly back up to flick his slinky around a little boy’s neck.

  But the little boy snapped his neck around, jeering and sticking his tongue out before warping away with incredible reaction time. One moment the boy was wrapped around the neck, and in the next, nothing—in the distance, the boy reappeared next to his friends on a gabled roof, high-fiving each other as more children started pointing and laughing at him from all around.

  For his part, Sparrow couldn’t even imagine how he was supposed to hold onto anyone with his slinky for longer than a single second.

  Biting his teeth, he swept across the roofs with his right hand bouncing his slinky up and down, pushing his speed to the max. No more holding back. For a good five minutes Immanu turned into a blurring battlefield. Hardly any one of the dozen children cared about running carefully or warping slowly, and similarly, he gave them no quarter to rest. One second he’d warp behind a child, miss his flick, before immediately pivoting to attempt nabbing another child. Their short legs made their pure running speed slow relative to his, but their warping speed was on a whole other level—it didn’t matter even if his slinky managed to touch their cloaks every once in a while. They simply stuck their tongues out at him before warping far away, leaving him behind.

  On one occasion after a child slipped out of his grasp, he passed by Utu hauling baskets of crystal wood towards a reconstruction site.

  Utu said, snickering as Sparrow panted for breath, putting his hands on his knees.

  With that, Utu leaned forward and shifted into a warp, disappearing to fulfil his reconstruction duties.

  And while Sparrow didn’t exactly catch everything he’d been told, seeing the fleeting twist and thrum of air left behind by Utu’s warp gave him an idea.

  [T2 Core Mutation unlocked: Vibrational Senses Lvl. 1]

  [Brief Description: Your terrestrially bound senses have grown sharper. You are now able to detect minute vibrations twice the range of your perception level with your bare skin. Subsequent levels in this mutation will increase the range of your vibrational senses. At max level, your vibrational senses will be ten times as perceptive as your perception level]

  [Biorarcanic Aura: 942 → 992]

  [Points: 68 → 18]

  He warped back onto the roofs, shivering and shuddering as he faced the scattered children on even ground. Even without knowing how to read, he as though his skin was turning inside out, his nerves pulled out of his muscles in thin lines and sent flying in every conceivable direction—it was a different sort of sensation to increasing his perception level, which usually felt like expanding and enhancing the senses he already possessed.

  This mutation made it so the winds could peel off his skin, bypass his muscles, and caress his worm-like bones.

  It was… an eerie sensation.

  But if he could accept the chills, endure it, and push past it, he felt he could see the twists in the air the children would create the wormhole could even open fully.

  To test his theory, he warped right in front of a child, a menacing slinky looming towards her. She yelped and warped away immediately as expected, but there it was. A tingle on his biceps. The winds picking up speed and shifting momentum in that one particular direction. His feet moved before his mind could turn, the thrums of a warp about to complete reaching his ears before he could consciously think about it—and then he reappeared in front of the girl’s warping wormhole at the exact same time, matching her warp though they were now ten metres away from their original roof.

  Panicked, stumbling, the girl tried to warp away to no avail. He didn’t acknowledge the girl’s wild kicking and flailing as he lifted her up into the air with his slinky pulled taut, refusing to let go.

  she seemed to say. she seemed to protest. She opened wormholes around her with every kick, but if he was holding onto her, she couldn’t jump through a single one. He just had to hold on for ten seconds. Eight seconds. Six seconds. Faintly, he could hear the children gathering around him, now having turned against the girl who’d been caught, and they were laughing and booing her with a dozen thumbs-down—

  And then Ninmah threw her hood off with a gasp, kicking him lightly in the stomach to make him double over and drop his slinky. The pain he felt was orders of magnitude higher than any simple punch to the gut he’d endured during training. His new mutation had turned his skin all tingly and bristly for more acute sensitivity, but in return it also felt like a spear had just pierced his stomach, his muscles clenching and twitching involuntarily.

  He fell to his knees, clenching his jaw and holding his stomach. Ninmah must’ve felt bad for him, because she immediately warped over to him to start patting his back, worry creasing her thin white brows.

  she asked, and he nodded plainly. He was still blinking rapidly in an attempt to dull and get used to the pain. She whirled briefly to clap her hands, shouting to tell the other children off before turning back around, dipping her head apologetically.

  Her blush was immediate. He angled his head to look at her as she turned away, averting his eyes, but her rosy cheeks were unmistakable. It couldn’t be because of the cold—the Worm Mages all walked around barefoot and barehanded no matter the time of day—so there had to be something magnifying the strange, strange expression on her face.

  Dilated pupils, mouth slightly parted, cheeks slightly slightly hollow—was this ‘disappointment’?

  In who?

  In him?

  … No.

  Not him.

  And just as quickly as she’d turned away, she sucked in a deep breath to puff her cheeks, gathering courage, reforging her spirit—before taking his right hand in hers, a small smile blooming on her lips.

  He couldn’t read her expression now.

  she said, sounding almost sad, though the glint in her eyes was anything but.

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