The wintry morning winds screamed with the wails of the dying, and Marisol was staring down at a city teetering on the brink of annihilation.

  The sloped streets of the Whirlpool City cascaded five hundred meters below her, and right now, it was a crumbling battlefield of shattered rooftops, toppled towers, and streets clogged with debris. Fires sprouted like malignant tumors, smoke twisting into the storm-choked sky. Between the flames and the chaos, hundreds of Giant-Class crustaceans rampaged: massive lobsters, crabs, and grotesque hybrids scuttled over the wreckage, oversized claws crushing anything in their path.

  South of the city, Kalakos dominated the view, her hundred-segmented body slithering like a living worm. The Remipede God was a thousand metres of pure destruction, her armoured plates glinting like wet obsidian. Twisting and writhing, her antennae slashing through the air like scythes, toppling walls and spires—each segment of her monstrous body slammed down with the force of an earthquake, collapsing entire districts into heaps of stone and splintered wood.

  She wasn't the only Insect God partaking in the destruction, of course.

  North of the city, Rhizocapala skipped and bounded across the roofs of the Symbiosteel factories. His cackles were mad. Deafening. His body oozed viscous, crimson blood that he spattered across the ruins like a plague, and wherever it landed, wood and flesh alike twisted into grotesque, living barnacles. East of the city—though Marisol couldn’t see her directly—Eurypteria’s tail flicked and cleaved through lines of houses in the residential districts. The air blades were physical. The speed and precision of her attacks were brutal, efficient, and unrelenting.

  It couldn’t have been more than a minute or two since the Swarm breached the surface of the whirlpool, but the suffocating sense of helplessness was already pressing down on her chest like a stone.

  … So you’re just gonna stand here and watch the city burn?

  Marisol gritted her teeth. Her glaives moved before her mind did. Without a word, she activated Charge Glaives and sped down main street. The other Lighthouse Imperators snapped out of their trances at the exact same time, and not all of them chose the same path. Faintly, she noticed Hugo and Claudia sprinting to the east, Andres sprinting to the west, and Reina was following close behind. Victor was already nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be felt. She wasn’t too keen on having him around, anyways.

  I’ll do this myself!

  She skated down the steep streets, her glaives carving trails of sparks and lightning against the stone. Some Guards and Imperators that’d been stationed in the city came into view, but their shouts and footsteps faded into the roar of destruction as she skated past them. The city was falling apart. It wasn’t just the Insect Gods—the Giant-Classes tearing through the streets were dangerous. They were far, far more numerous.

  A Giant-Class crab the size of a carriage scuttled into her path, its claws snapping wildly. It reeked of salt and decay, its shell cracked and oozing black blood. She didn’t hesitate. She kicked a leg back, twirled in a War Jump, and spun six times before kicking her glaive out, slicing down through its body and flying through. The crab screeched, staggered, and split in half behind her. She vaulted over the body and kept moving.

  The screams pushed her forward. People were running, tripping over debris, their faces streaked with soot and blood. She spotted Miss Suneria’s candy house broken and burning. The Towers of Wind bending and collapsing. A child cried out, trapped beneath a fallen beam. His mother was trying to free him. Marisol skidded to a stop, her chest heaving, and ripped the beam away with a single sharp kick.

  “Go!” she barked. The mother grabbed the child and stumbled down the street, not even looking back.

  She didn’t blame them.

  Another crash. Another explosion in the distance. She whirled to see the Highwind Inn, where she’d slept her entire time in the city, folding in on itself. A Giant-Class lobster had stabbed its claws through the wall and was ripping it open, crushing rooms, fresh water tanks, and burning hearths. Flames spilled out of the windows. Receptionists screamed inside. Marisol didn’t even feel herself thinking—she activated discharge, leapt twenty metres across in a single jump, and plunged her glaives into the back of the lobster’s head. It died instantaneously.

  But Daniela, the receptionist and innkeeper who’d been serving Marisol for months, was already crushed in its claws, her body limp with her head cast down.

  Marisol couldn’t stop to think for even another second before a giant shadow loomed over her. Behind her. She flipped to the side and dodged without looking. A giant barnacle smashed into the ground where she was standing like a falling star, and more followed. She whirled around and clenched her jaw. Forty or so of Rhizocapala’s giant barnacles being flung into the sky were falling around her, but there were still hundreds, if not thousands of people in the area that still haven’t evacuated to the lower city.

  It was too much.

  Harbour Guards and Imperators across the district raised their pistol shrimp claws to the sky, firing shockwave after shockwave, and to their credit, they did manage to destroy well over half of the falling barnacles. But the rest were unattended. Quakes rippled and unfurled across the district as the barnacles smashed down, and each of them popped their shells open afterwards to spray dozens of spiny projectiles in every conceivable direction, impaling those in direct line of sight. Marisol dashed at three of them in quick succession, kicking them away. Still, the rest became sentry cannons that automatically fired on every living being, human or bug. Rhizocapala certainly didn’t care for friendly fire.

  … Priorities, priorities, priorities!

  Protect the people first!

  Then deal with the barnacles—

  The Archive buzzed to life. [Mutant-Class aura detected! In front of you!]

  A shadow moved in her peripheral vision. She’d just started skating down the main street again to clear the barnacles in the evacuating people’s way when she skidded to a halt, her glaives screeching along the cobbled stone. She was glad to have stopped. A giant two-legged, four-armed crayfish with two extra-large pincers jutting out from its shoulders landed in a ground-shaking crouch in front of her. Its chitin was marbled, its body was segmented. Its head may not be human-like whatsoever—it was all crayfish head, antennae, and blank, dead eyes—but it was still clearly stronger than the Giant-Class riffraff.

  A Mutant-Class.

  [Identification Complete]

  [Common Name: Marbled Crayfish]

  [Grade: F-Rank Mutant-Class]

  [Swarmblood Art: Clonal Parthenogenesis]

  [Aura: ~7,000]

  [Strength: ~6, Speed: ~5, Toughness: ~8, Dexterity: ~7, Perception: ~6]

  [Brief Description: Fast-reproducing, plague-invasive, and highly destructive. Marbled crayfish are—]

  Marisol didn’t wait. She felt the natural air currents. She picked one. She rode on. She lunged forward, pressing her crackling glaives together as she drop-kicked the crayfish, and a burst of discharged air enhanced her speed even further.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  It was a loud, deafening sound. Her glaives stabbed right into its chest, driving through its shell with a wet crunch. It fell instantly as she drilled a new hole through its chest and shredded its heart on her way out.

  She wasn’t planning on letting it slow her down, but then there was another shadow to her left. She was already tired, she’d already expended most of her stamina down in Depth Five, and her senses were still hazy from electrocuting herself with her Charge Glaives. This time, another giant Mutant-Class lobster barreled toward her, its claws snapping with enough force to shatter stone. She managed to duck low, the pincer sweeping over her head, and kicked its legs. The lobster roared, staggered, but before she could finish it with a kick through its heart, its claw caught her in the side.

  Something went crack in her ribs.

  Shit!

  The impact sent her flying into a crumbling wall. The stone gave way, dust exploding around her. She gasped, the air punched from her lungs, and struggled to claw onto her glaives.

  The Mutant-Class lobster advanced in the distance, its claws snapping menacingly.

  The Archive buzzed again. [Identification complete. Common name: Albino Lobster. Grade: F-Rank Mutant-Class. Swarmblood Art—]

  Shut up!

  She coughed and hissed as she pushed herself upright. Pain rippled through her body, but she gritted her teeth and raised her glaives. She wouldn’t fall here. Not here. Not now.

  The lobster lunged, its pincer arcing down. She dodged to the side with a discharge of air, her glaives slicing through its other knee. It roared, black blood spraying across the rubble. She recovered, balanced herself, and moved in for the kill, but her muscles burned with exhaustion. She wasn’t fast enough.

  Before the lobster could strike again, a blur of blue and white streaked past her. A scorpion tail trained just a bit behind. Reina snarled as she impaled the lobster from the back, driving it into the ground and smashing its face into a sharp rock.

  Marisol would like to give something—a word of thanks, or maybe even just a nod of acknowledgement—but then there were even more shadows jumping onto the roofs around them.

  All Mutant-Classes. Giant crabs, lobsters, clusters of writhing copepods. Their bodies shimmered with unnatural light, their movements erratic and jerky, and the Archive’s system notifications were popping up non-stop.

  [Identification Complete: 14x F-Rank Mutant-Classes]

  [Common name: Spider Crab]

  [Common name: Pea Crab]

  [Common name: Purple Marsh Crab]

  [Common name: Freshwater Crayfish]

  [Common name: Vampire Crab]

  [Common name: Pea Crab]

  [Common name: Coconut Crab]

  [Common name: Harlequin Shrimp]

  [Common name: Spearer Mantis Shrimp]

  [Common name...]

  And there were more, and more, and more, and more. They may all be mere F-Rank Mutant-Classes, but Marisol was already tired, hurt, and cold. So, so cold from the gently falling snow. It was all she could do just to stay on the tip of her glaives. As she pressed her back against Reina and extended her apiclaws, gritting her teeth, she felt the Lighthouse Imperator was at her wits’ end as well. They could probably put up a good fight against the dozen or so Mutant-Classes if they hadn’t already fought Eurypteria, but now?

  Marisol didn’t need the Archive to tell her their chances of victory.

  … But it doesn’t matter, does it?

  When has a slim chance ever mattered to me?

  Never. That was her answer. And as she readied herself, sucked in a painfully cold breath to enter Steel Charge mode—

  Victor landed before the two of them with a resounding thud, his cane striking the cobblestone with a force that rippled outward like the surface of a disturbed pond.

  The sound was deep and resonant. It was an authority that demanded attention. The dozens of Mutant-Classes surrounding Marisol and Reina froze. Their twisted forms twitched, their claws retreated as if in submission. One by one, they backed away. Their glowing bulbous eyes flickered with a primal instinct: fear, in recognition of a living being with a greater killing pressure than all of theirs combined.

  Victor, for his part, didn’t move. His cane remained planted in the ground, but the aura surrounding him was suffocating. It wasn’t just power—it was death waiting to strike. Even Marisol, standing behind him, felt the weight of his presence pressing against her chest. It was difficult breathing around him.

  Then a guttural roar echoed from the far distance, ripping through the chaotic city like thunder.

  “Rhizocapala!” The voice, unmistakably Eurypteria’s, bellowed. “Use yer Swarmblood Art! Kill everyone! All of them!”

  Marisol’s head snapped up instinctively. She followed Reina’s gaze as both of them turned toward the west, where she spotted hundreds and thousands of tiny wooden shrapnel being flung into the sky.

  They were wooden, organic shrapnel already infused with the blood of the Barnacle God, and with a shrill snap of his distant fingers, hundreds of giant barnacles—larger than even the ones he’d summoned in Depth Four—sprouted in the air.

  It was the combination of the wind, ‘Black Storm’, and just the general flightiness of the barnacles he’d summoned, but they didn’t plummet like comets like the ones from before. Instead, they swirled above and around the city like debris picked up by a cyclone, and their shells creaked open slowly to reveal a giant crater-like eye in each of them. The eyes glared down. The weight of their murderous gaze bore down upon the city and its inhabitants.

  Within seconds, all of them began extending spikes and spines from within their shells, and Marisol was more than familiar with this next part.

  They were going to rain spines down indiscriminately, and while the Imperators and Guards would have some chance of survival, no one else—no one—would survive.

  But Victor didn’t flinch. In one second, he blitzed around Marisol and Reina in a flurry of wind and trailing debris, cleaving through a dozen Mutant-Classes to scare the rest of them off. In the next second, he was standing before the two of them, and his cane struck the ground again, harder this time. Then again. And again. The sharp cracks echoed like a heartbeat, like the slow ticking of a clock.

  … Marisol blinked.

  He wasn’t just hitting the ground randomly.

  There was a rhythm to it. A deliberate pattern.

  A when he finished his sequence, he took a deep breath and roared into the sky, his voice splitting the air with raw power.

  “GOD OF HOLLOWED EARTH AND TIDE.”

  “THE WORM THAT TWISTS WHERE SEAS COLLIDE.”

  “CAST YOUR SIGHT WHERE TERRORS SUP.”

  “AND TEAR APART BRIGHTBURROW’S CORRUPT.”

  And with a final, defiant roar,

  “WAKE THE FUCK UP ALREADY, OUR CHAMPION OF HUMANITY!”

  The world seemed to stop.

  For a moment, there was nothing but the faint sound of wind, falling spines, and the muted roars of destruction.

  Then, the air above every last human in the city shimmered.

  Glowing blue wormholes pried opened like the maw of a worm, each one suspended just above a head like a halo. The panicking civilians, the struggling Harbour Guards, the injured Imperators—all of them froze, staring upward as the radiant portals blinked into existence. Even Marisol had one opening above her.

  She reached up tentatively, her fingers brushing the edge of the shimmering light. It was cool to the touch, like water running through her hands. From her point of view, the bottom of the wormhole was connected to an impossibly dark place. A world of pure black. It almost reminded her of the sea of oil she used to have dreams about, but… the wormhole didn’t scare her.

  Thousands of giant spines fell onto the city.

  She flinched instinctively, bracing for pain, but none came. A bullet fired out the top of every human’s wormhole, and whatever it was made out of, it wasn’t normal metal. Each bullet shattered a giant spine with pinpoint accuracy, flying so fast and so sharp they pierced, swirled, and sucked up the scattered rain of shrapnel with vortexes of wind as they continued soaring into the sky. If they hadn’t done that, the spiny shrapnels still would’ve fallen on the city and killed thousands, if not tens of thousands—instead, not even a single human lost their lives to the rain of spines.

  Return fire.

  Five more bullets shot out the wormhole above Marisol’s head, and she heard the same happening to Reina’s wormhole, Victor’s wormhole, and every last wormhole above every human’s head in the city. She didn’t even realise what they were aiming at until the first of the giant floating barnacles crashed down next to her, its bloody shell riddled with bullet holes. The rest of the barnacles were shot down and brought to the ground, and she spotted a few more wormholes opening here and there to ‘catch’ some of them that were about to crash on civilians.

  She had no idea where the top half of everyone’s wormholes connected to, and she had no idea where those ‘caught’ barnacles disappeared to, but she didn’t have to think about it. One by one, the wormholes flickered and disappeared.

  Her line of sight no longer blocked by her wormhole, Marisol’s attention was drawn back to the sky.

  Hovering a hundred metres above the whirlpool at the top and very centre of the city was a little boy, pale and ethereal.

  He looked almost human, but not quite. He’d discarded his shirt and only kept only his black trousers and pure white flower-patterned cape on, but if he felt cold—if his immortal body could even feel things like cold and hunger—he certainly didn’t show it on his face.

  His eyes weren’t even open, in any case, and she doubted he’d be able to see much of anything with the stormy winds ruffling his messy hair anyways.

  Marisol exhaled a shaky breath, her legs finally giving out beneath her. She fell back on the cracked stone, her body trembling from exhaustion and the aftershock of adrenaline. Reina did the same, too—and they could afford to, because when the boy spoke, it was a voice beyond calm and measured, but edged with an undeniable anger.

  [... What,] the Worm God whispered, [is going on here?]

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