Marisol didn’t know what to expect from an underwater Mutant-Class Extermination Mission, but it wasn’t this.

  [Identification Complete]

  [Common Name: Redbloom Copepod]

  [Grade: C-Rank Mutant-Class]

  [Swarmblood Art: Morphing Shoal]

  [Aura: ~14,000]

  [Strength: ~9, Speed: ~6, Toughness: ~6, Dexterity: ~11, Perception: ~8]

  [Brief Description: Slender, double-segmented, and clustered. Redbloom copepods are deep sea crustaceans distinguished by their light-producing glands. They emit striking bioluminescence used primarily for predator evasion through distraction and counter-illumination. Their antennae are also prominent and feathered, aiding in both propulsion and sensing changes in their environment as they move through the sea, but when they are gathered in numerous clumps and clusters, they become highly aggressive. Their Swarmblood Art is ‘Morphing Shoal’, which allows them to summon and control any Critter-Class copepod in the vicinity with their bioarcanic essence]

  The Mutant unfurled to its full height, only as tall as she was, and lashed out with four claws in their direction.

  A dozen living roots made of a thousand glowing, pulsing copepods each burst from the crystallised ground, burrowing and snaking towards them.

  The Imperator siblings each returned four-round fire bursts, carving the swathe of roots away into misty clouds of critter blood. In the same motion, Reina exhaled steadily before pivoting where she stood, whipping her scorpion tail in an upwards cleave, and Marisol watched her send a blade of screaming water back at the Mutant, forcing it to leap away with a bubbly screech.

  All hell finally broke loose.

  The crystals around the cavern trembled as ten, twenty, thirty more copepod roots darted at them, and there was no sticking together this time. The Imperator siblings darted to the left, firing sound waves in rapid volleys, while Reina advanced slowly forward with one arm behind her back, her scorpion tail flicking around her like a flail or a protective barrier. Marisol, on the other hand, had no such interception abilities. When she felt half a dozen roots about to impale her from below, she dashed. . Speeding off to the right, glaives tearing through ground, she grimaced back at the copepod roots nibbling on and devouring the crystals she’d been standing on just moments ago.

  Her eyes darkened as the roots behind her started bulging, each individual copepod doubling in size. It was just a ‘her’ thing she had to deal with. The Imperator siblings could destroy the roots directly, and so could Reina, but when more oversized roots started chasing after her, the only thing she could do was run—but that the only thing she could do?

  The Mutant at the very back of the cavern was playing tactician. It was doing nothing more than conducting its orchestra of roots by waving its hands around, lolling its head left and right as though listening to an unheard rhythm, but she was on the run from the roots anyways. Why not bring them back to it?

  Leaning dangerously forward, clenching every muscle in her body, she swerved around the edges of the cavern before swerving straight for the Mutant, making its head snap towards her.

  She darted in, thirty metres away, and launched off the ground twenty metres in.

  The copepods behind her lost focus and broke up as the Mutant was forced to stop its conducting for a moment, because her War Jump could’ve cleaved its head right off if it hadn’t ducked, sinking so low its stomach almost pressed flat against the ground.

  Screeching to a halt on the other side of the cavern, she clicked her tongue in irritation. . It was as slippery as the Highwind Doll she’d been training against the past month, maybe even more so—that was eight spins in a single War Jump, but the Mutant dodged it like a run-of-the-mill attack.

  While the Imperator siblings battled and distracted the vast majority of the roots coming after her, she moved in. Lightning threatened to spill from between the chitin plates on her glaives as she twirled, spun, kicked, and capered her way through flurries of attacks. Discharge allowed her to eject water for propulsion, increasing speed, but… her kicks were too wild. Too much strength, too little control. She still hadn’t figured out how to safely activate her Art underwater without electrocuting herself, so she couldn’t just get a speed and strength boost from activating it. She was wasting her strength right now.

  One of her kicks impacted with the Mutant’s arm and severed it like paper, but the victory was short-lasted. She barely even had time to grin before a swarm of copepods gathered around its arm, biting and linking up with each other until they turned into a functioning arm of their own.

  And it would’ve ripped her jaw off with an uppercut slash if her month of reaction speed training with the old man hadn’t kicked in, her whole body lurching backwards with a sudden, painful jolt. Her glaives screeched against the crystal ground. She licked her lips and tasted blood—she’d not completely dodged its claws—but now the Mutant wanted more, thousands of copepods gathering around its legs and it out like it was standing on springs.

  It rushed her with a maddened frenzy. She was ready to dodge, duck, and twirl backwards, and she slap some of its slashes and punches away with her glaives and apiclaws—but she struggled to hold it back. Her counterattacks all missed. It’d completely switched gears from fighting at range to fighting at uncomfortably close quarters, and while the latter should be her range of expertise, there such a thing as too close. She couldn’t catch a breath.

  Blank-faced, the Mutant lashed out and grabbed her face with a massive copepod-formed claw. It completely blindsided her, and she kicked off its chest with both glaives, backflipping away from it.

  It dashed back in and grabbed her glaive mid-air with minimal effort.

  And as it pivoted, trying to slam her into the ground, Reina’s scorpion tail severed its arm from several strides away. She was still being slammed, just not as hard, and not nearly as deadly. She cried out in pain as she hit the ground shoulder first, crystals biting deep into her right arm and shoulder. Without missing a beat, though, she pressed her palms to the ground and twirled upside-down, performing the Whirlwind Spin with her glaives.

  That forced it to flutter back, swimming slowly up into the centre of the cavern, and Marisol flipped back onto her feet with pained, rasping exhales.

  Her knees buckled and forced her to take a knee, accidentally gasping and choking on water.

  “Eat,” Reina said plainly, shoving a skyball coral between her exhales before slapping her forehead so she’d swallow. “Flush out the pressure. The faster you move, the more energy you expend, and the heavier your body becomes. Do not break away from me next time.”

  As the Imperator siblings sprinted over to them, the copepod root attacks ceasing for a short moment, Marisol coughed bubbles and glared at the dive leader. “It was attacking us from twenty different directions. Maybe you guys can defend yourselves by standing your ground, but I can’t. I’m a water strider. I to skate away if I wanna defend myself, and I to be fast if I wanna fight—”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Then fight as you wish,” Reina said, glaring back, “and leave the defence to us.”

  As a puzzled frown crossed Marisol’s face, the crystals in the cavern darkened. Flickered. An unsettling shiver creeped down her spine as she watched six, eight, ten thousand copepods eating through the walls, gathering to form a single copepod root growing out of the ground and towards the hovering Mutant. It was thicker than any root before it. It was sharper, heavier, and than any root before it. It wasn’t a root at this point. It was a solid, squirming pillar of pulsing red biomass, and she could hardly think of anything or anyone that could withstand its weight.

  The Mutant tilted its head back and furled its lips, sneering at them as it reared all four fists back and punched forward.

  The giant pillar of ten thousand copepods heeded its command and thundered down on them.

  Marisol braced her head instinctively, squeezing her eyes shut in a moment of fear—but that was wholly unnecessary.

  Reina exhaled and stabbed up at the pillar, piercing the biomass head-on, and she barked an order at the Imperator siblings—“fire”—to have them whip out a resonating shockwave. wave didn’t hit the pillar head-on. It hit Reina’s back, made the elegant lady buckle for a moment, but then it travelled along the length of her tail and made it vibrate.

  Her tail became a blurry spear and a thrumming blade, and with a casual, almost nonchalant spin to look back at Marisol, her tail destroyed the entire pillar of copepods in a single swipe.

  “I was told you worked brilliantly with the Harbour Guards to dispatch the giant remipede,” Reina said, face steady, eyes sharp as daggers. “I do not know why you fight like the rest of us do not exist, but I am your dive leader, so I will protect you. Now, has my uncle taught you how to deal with evasive opponents underwater?”

  Marisol laughed and nodded softly as the Mutant blinked in confusion, sinking back to the ground as it wondered where its copepods just went.

  “Good,” Reina said, whirling back around to face the Mutant. “Then return to formation. Helena, Aidan, you intercept any roots flying at our backs. Bruno, take care of the bigger ones for your younger siblings. The Storm Strider and I will slow it down and seal off its movements so we can all deal the finishing blow to its heart.”

  The Imperator siblings responded with a boisterous “understood!” as they snapped back into their triangle formation, and Helena nudged Marisol’s back with a gentle knee, sending her a confident smile.

  Marisol smiled back.

  The cavern’s crystals trembled again as the Mutant summoned even more copepods from the ground with a deafening screech. This time, Marisol skated forth with reckless abandon, trusting the siblings to shoot down the roots charging at her, and that they did with precision, opening up a straight path towards the Mutant. Reina followed her, taking slow, meandering steps in stark contrast to her speed, but… that was part of the plan.

  She crossed her arms over her torso, spun, and leapt into a War Jump. The Mutant’s antennae twitched. It couldn’t summon copepods quickly enough to form a wall between them, so it had to evade.

  But right before her glaive could reach its head, she ejected sprays of water in front of her, decelerating, jerking herself to a halt mid-air.

  She froze, hovering her glaives mere inches from its face.

  The Mutant blinked.

  She didn’t.

  Half a second later, she jerked out of the way as Reina’s tail stabbed through where she’d been standing, gouging one of the Mutant’s eyes. It didn’t see that attack coming. Screeching, stumbling back in pain, it slammed all four hands on the ground and summoned more copepod spikes from the ground. Those the siblings couldn’t blast apart in time, Marisol jumped and kicked off, dashing between the spikes at breakneck speed before she’d circled around to the Mutant’s back.

  Then she leapt in again, forcing it to whirl and respond to her movement—and then she stopped before committing to the full kick again, discharging water to decelerate, hovering her glaive just a single inch before its neck.

  It froze in place again, as though waiting for her to finish her kick just so it could evade at the last possible second.

  She didn’t move. The Mutant didn’t move. They stared each other in the eye for a good fraction of a second—and she could practically the thoughts trying to move inside its head, wondering why she wasn't kicking so it could evade last second—but then Reina stepped in slowly with another slash, cutting off one of its arms.

  It was forced to dash back. Marisol followed again, speeding up to its face, kicking out at its waist—then pause. Hovering her glaive an inch before contact.

  Reina slashed again, severing another arm, and they pressed on. Refusing to give it regeneration time.

  Marisol smiled to herself as she repeated the process over and over—kicking rapidly, missing most of her attacks rapidly, then pausing right before she could land a kick to make the Mutant freeze up in confusion, not knowing whether to dodge or not.

  Then Reina would come in with an attack so slow it could barely perceive, and attack would land.

  the Archive finished.

  Ten more kicks. Ten more evades from the Mutant. With one final kick aimed at its chest, Marisol grinned and bared her teeth at the Mutant—then she feinted her kick with discharge at the last second, and she savoured the blank, befuddled look on its face as it failed to notice Reina stabbing out its heart from behind.

  Just for good measure, Reina lifted the Mutant up into the air and waved at Marisol to get down. She did, and immediately, the Mutant was blasted with volleys of pistol shrimp shockwaves from afar, snapping every appendage and breaking every chitin plate across its body.

  By the time Reina slammed it back down, the Mutant was already disfigured, lifeless, and lightless. Its half-transparent chitin lost its already dull orange hues. If it had any more regeneration tricks to show off with its copepods, it’d be using them now.

  But it didn’t.

  [Objective #21 Completed: Defeat the C-Rank Mutant-Class Redbloom Copepod]

  [Reward: 2,000 points]

  [Grade: F-Rank Mutant-Class → E-Rank Mutant-Class]

  Sighing a breath of relief, Marisol stumbled back and tripped on a crystal shard, landing hard and painful on her rear. The Imperator siblings laughed as they trudged forward to high-five each other, and when they got to Reina… well, they didn’t even try. But even the prim and proper lady had a small smile curling the corners of her lips as she surveyed the rest of the cavern, watching the remaining copepods disperse and scurry on back to their small cluster abodes.

  Without a Mutant-Class to coordinate them, they were just normal Critters-Class bugs an Imperator patrol could easily deal with.

  Mission successful.

  They’d won.

  “... Time: Ten fifty-nine in the morning, day one of Month Cicada,” Reina said, her voice wavering and warbling a little as Helena and Aidan grabbed her shoulders, shaking her left and right in cheery celebration. “C-rank Mutant-Class copepod encountered and defeated in Sector Sixteen, Depth Three. Beginning extraction from the Crystal Kelp Caverns. Bruno, Aidan—stop shaking me for a moment—go and carry the Mutant-Class carcass with us. Lighthouse Four will want to dissect it and figure out why this particular Mutant-Class was so powerful—”

  “And here ‘ah thought ‘ah could get all of ye without havin’ to show myself.”

  The small hydrospines on Marisol’s nape lifted, and all of them whirled at once, pincers and tail and apiclaws sharpened.

  None of them had felt it.

  Marisol’s reaction speed training hadn’t prepared her for this.

  But the half-destroyed body of the Mutant-Class copepod—which, by no means, was in any condition to move—slowly floated onto its feet, and in the gaping wounds across its body where Reina had hacked and slashed and stabbed through, there were dozens upon of writhing barnacles.

  Each barnacle had an eerie human eye, and they all blinked, none in sync, as the Mutant-Class copepod’s head popped off only to be replaced by a young man’s head.

  His head had the shape and proportions of a human’s, but every detail was formed from tightly clustered barnacles. A textured surface of a hundred overlapped shells. His flowing locks of hair were coral-like fibres. His ears were hollowed ear-shaped barnacles. His eyes sat deep in their sockets, round and stark white without pupils, and when his slit for a mouth parted—several glowing thread-like hairs stuck out in place of a single tongue, vibrating as it let out a contented sigh.

  Marisol's limbs locked up.

  Its killing pressure was like she'd ever felt before.

  “Prepare to evacuate,” Reina whispered, her voice tight as she slowly pushed the rest of them back with her scorpion tail, lips quivering. “That is Rhizocapala, weakest of the Four Leviathans—the Barnacle God born of the Deepwater Legion Front.”

  . Swarms can reach up to 100,000 individuals per cubic metre of water, thereby creating patches visible to the naked eye. Some copepods are also bioluminescent and emit flashes of light when disturbed, so in swarm, they can create stunning underwater light displays meant to deter predators!

  here with over five hundred members, where you can get notifications for chapter updates, check out my writing progress, and read daily facts about this insect-based world!