Marisol clenched her jaw as Rhizocapala popped out of the dead Mutant-Class copepod’s carcass like he’d been wearing it as a second skin.

  He may be man-shaped with two arms and two legs, but his entire body was built with a hundred writhing shell-like barnacles, their eyes opening and closing lazily as they tasted the water. His head was disturbingly human, though slightly off. He had hair, a nose, two ears, two eyes, and a mouth, but that was the extent of his mimicry. Like the rest of his body, part of his facial features was made out of a thousand tiny cluttered barnacles taking different shapes, different forms, and when he spoke—his warbling, rippling voice didn’t come from his mouth.

  All of his barnacles spoke at the exact same time, and it wasn’t just Marisol. He was everything a human wasn’t, so heartbeats thundered in the ears of human in the cavern, ribs crushing lungs, cold slithering through guts.

  It was unavoidable, really.

  They faced the killing pressure of a Barnacle God.

  [Identification Complete]

  [Name: Rhizocapala]

  [Grade: F-Rank Warform Barnacle God]

  [Swarmblood Art: Shellblight Bloom]

  [Aura: ~50,000]

  [Strength: ~12, Speed: ~10, Toughness: ~10, Dexterity: ~14, Perception: ~16]

  [Brief Description: First observed as a Critter-Class barnacle in Year Sixty-Four, he evolved into a Mutant-Class after consuming the flesh of an Insect God known as 'Venossa', who was defeated by the Worm God and the Thousand Tongue. His attacks as a Mutant-Class began with northeastern fishing villages, eventually leading to his overtaking of Port Amorasa's fleet in less than a day. Attempts to halt his spread across the Deepwater Legion Front with conventional forces failed, with entire battalions—estimated 6,239 Harbour Guards in total—falling victim, their bodies encrusted and immobile in parasitic barnacle shells. In Year Seventy, he was finally cornered and trapped in the whirlpool alongside Corpsetaker and the other Four Leviathans by the Worm God, where he remains to this day. His Swarmblood Art is ‘Shellblight Bloom’, which allows him to spawn barnacles on any surface his bioarcanic blood touches, and his barnacles can shift between three forms: close-ranged jaw-chomping form, medium-ranged tendril-grabbing form, and long-ranged spine-shooting form]

  “... One, two, three, four water bugs,” he mumbled, counting their heads as he pointed at each of them with a clawed finger. His eyes lingered on Marisol’s for a bit longer, making her core shiver. “And… a strider. Ah. Under the tutelage of man? ‘Ah can see why the copepod lost. Mind, ‘ah wasn’t even half-focusin’ on the fight when ye woke me up—ah’d thought the copepod could beat ye even without my interference—but ah’ve seem to come out to a pretty interestin’ bunch, don’t ye say?”

  Marisol blinked. He was talkative. A was speaking in a human tongue.

  the Archive said, voice tight and urgent.

  The water in the cavern flashed white as Rhizocapala leapt at them, bowling straight at Marisol with a cannon-shaped arm made out of barnacles. Water swirled and churned around the tip of his arm-cannon, and just being the target of his gaze seemed to siphon vitality from her body, sapping her strength, making her lethargic.

  She twitched an eye and raised her apiclaws to block, but that was all she could do to defend herself.

  Reina moved nimbly, her cape fluttering behind her as she yanked Marisol out of the way before counterslashing with her scorpion tail. Rhizocapala’s cannon arm shattered into a hundred clattering barnacles as she cleaved through it like butter, making him hum in delight. He didn’t stop his advance. The shattered barnacles swirled back in to reform his arm as if he’d taken no damage at all, but now he’d slipped past Reina’s tail, standing right between the five of them as he pressed the tip of his cannon down at Marisol’s skull.

  “Yer fast, water scorpion girl, but ye ain’t the one,” he said, a wicked grin parting his lips as his barnacle-made face practically split in half. “the one we have to kill. Yer the one with that… oh, what do ye humans call those little things again? An... an ‘Archive’? An artificial clone of the Worm God in yer heads?

  “That won’t do.

  “Ye ain’t disturbin’ my king while he works—”

  Lightning crackled around her glaives and electrocuted of them, but it stunned the Barnacle God for a second while she recovered in half a second. She’d electrocuted herself once before, after all—back when she first activated it—so by the time he fired a high-pressure blast of water down at her skull, she’d already skated back with her apiclaws dragging through the ground.

  In response, the Imperators immediately thwacked the silk threads on the back of their harness, and Reina thwacked hers along the way as Hugo started yanking of them out of the cavern.

  Blinding motion. Dizzying motion. Marisol clamped her hands over her mouth and tried not to hurl as her harness jerked her back, into the crystal tunnels, and out of the light. It was in the tunnels. The encrystals that’d been glowing so brightly all around them on the way in were flickering red and purple now, the evil colours of the Swarm, and as the entrance to the cavern became a tiny dot in the distance, Rihzocapala laughed—a booming, bellowing sound that travelled far too fast underwater.

  “... Swarmblood Art: Shellblight Bloom.”

  Their threads yanked them around a corner and out of Rhizocapala’s line of sight, but his biomagic persisted. Ten, twenty, thirty chunks of crystals around them morphed into giant barnacles, and of them had milky white eyes that stared at them as they flew by. Most were like the ones inside the giant remipede, too—Marisol’s senses flared as they fired spiny projectiles at her, forcing her to twirl in the Whirlwind Spin just to deflect half of them. The Imperator siblings fired at the barnacles, as did Reina help her intercept with a blinding flurry of tail slashes, but no matter how fast they were being pulled through the tunnels, it wasn’t enough.

  The barnacles just kept popping up around them, staying right on their tails, and Rhizocapala’s laughs always seemed to be just around the corner.

  the Archive said, injecting a dose of adrenaline into her head as a projectile grazed her cheeks, making her hiss.

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  the Archive said plainly.

  she trailed off, hissing as a whole line of spiny projectiles stabbed into her thighs. Reina slashed those barnacles apart a second later, but the damage was already done.

  , Marisol!] the Archive snapped.

  “‘Ah sense yer Archive’s sayin’ somethin’ terrible about me. Let me in on the small talk?”

  They were ten metres from shooting up the vertical exit chute when Rhizocapala punched through the wall on her right, sharp rocks spraying against their skin as he snapped his fingers, commanding a whole legion of wall-clinging barnacles to fire at their threads. The threads were tough, but not tough. A dozen spiny needles severed their only link to safety with soft and sent them all tumbling to the ground, their momentum cut completely short.

  And before any one of them could even recover, Rhizocapala fired his cannon-arm at the ceiling behind them, collapsing the rocks to block their way into the exit chute.

  “Ah’ll admit, ye got me good with that… around yer glaives,” he growled, kicking Marisol in the stomach as she tried to crawl onto her feet. A pained gasp escaped her, and she flew back into the collapsed rubble, spine smashing hard against the stone. “Ain’t a lotta bugs in the world that can use lightnin’ to… well, that ain’t really true, either. Them fireflies in the north got lightnin’ as well. Hey, how’s the Greater Firefly God of the North doin’ up there? Ye guys killed him yet?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and clutched her stomach in pain. Her right arm was already broken, but something in her chest was broken as well, and she just didn’t know what.

  “Nah. Of course not,” he said, shrugging as he aimed his cannon-arm past the rest of the fallen Imperators, completely ignoring everyone but her. “Humans don’t beat gods. Just because yer a little fast ain’t mean yer an exception.”

  She saw the attack coming before it even fired. She could the result. The compressed water he was about to fire would decimate the entire cavern and all of them along with it, and there was nowhere to run.

  Forward?

  Could she stand up now and go forward in this state?

  Could she really say she had the nerve to match that face-to-face again?

  … It didn’t matter in the end.

  When Rhizocapala fired, it was Reina who whipped her tail to the ceiling, cleaving the projectile before it could gather momentum and turn into a swirling missile.

  The rest of them groaned and tried to claw to their feet as Rhizocaphala clicked his tongues in irritation, firing again. Reina wobbled to her feet, bleeding from a dozen different cuts, and flicked her tail at him again. Back and forth. Projectile to nothing. Rhizocapala took a step back and snapped his fingers. Twenty giant barnacles immediately bloomed around the walls of the tunnel, and all of their eyes were staring pointedly down at Marisol.

  But Reina didn’t even hesitate, and for thirty whole seconds, the Lighthouse Imperator fought.

  The four of them initiates were sprawled out on the ground close together, so Reina stood right in front of Marisol, twirling and capering and whipping her tail every which way to intercept twenty projectiles. It was speed, precision, and control unlike anything Marisol had seen before. Her tail moved in blinding arcs, making the very water scream. Rhizocapala occasionally butted in with a swirling missile of his own, fired from his cannon-arm, but she’d intercept that too before yanking her tail back to defend the four of them—and eyes were blazing blue, marred with nothing but scorn and disdain at the bug standing in front of her.

  For her part, Marisol was still trying to push herself up, her lungs grasping for air she wouldn’t get without her skyball corals.

  “‘Ah already said ye had a modicum of skill, water scorpion,” Rhizocapala said, letting out a disappointed sigh as Reina’s movements started slowing. Projectiles grazed her neck, arms, and legs, ripping through her uniform, tearing up her cloak. It was all the Imperator siblings could do to fire a few blasts at a few barnacles, trying to help out however they can.

  “And you are Rhizocapala, weakest of the Four Leviathans,” Reina said with a pained, scornful voice. “For what reason… are you pursuing one of our own?”

  “The strider girl? Ain’t no need to pull the wool over my eyes, scorpion. ‘Ah know she ain’t one of ye,” he said casually. “She’s a Flower Cape with an Archive to boot. She’ll probably be annoyin’ if we leave her be for too long, so say, why don't the rest of ye just step aside and let me kill her? Ah’ll let ye live if ye do that.”

  “As if letting humans walk is ever on the table with the Swarm.”

  “Well, ye ain't really got a choice here, so ah'll give ye ten seconds to turn around," he said, pointing a finger gun at them. "Ye turn around and walk, maybe ye get to live. Ye don't turn around, ye die for sure. Life’s a gamble—”

  “And is that what you said to my dad?”

  The projectiles didn't stop firing, and Reina didn't stop whipping her tail around the four of them to intercept every last one, but Rhizocapala certainly paused for a moment.

  “Have we met before?” he said, tilting his head in genuine, sincere confusion. “‘Ah don't know ye. Sorry. ‘Ahm kinda bad with names—”

  “Figures,” Reina growled, and her tail's movements became more frantic, erratic. It wasn't a good thing. She wasn't as precise as before, and that meant more projectiles pierced her body, drawing more blood; she didn't seem to register even a single one.

  “Be that as it may, yer still gonna step aside. Leave that girl to me. Hand on my heart, blood to my king, ‘ah ain't really interested in killin’ the rest of ye. Just let me have her and her alone.”

  “And I know you heard me,” Reina whispered. “I am Reina Torrealba, Dive Leader of the Mutant-Class Extermination Team, and I protect my team.”

  As Marisol looked down at the ground, chest with energy, Rhizocapala’s other arm broke apart so it could reform into a second barnacle cannon.

  “Shame, then.” He pressed both cannon-arms together, raising them straight ahead at Reina. “Ah’d never had a successful negotiation with any human before, and ‘ah hopin’ today could be the day, but evidently not—”

  He was interrupted. A crack. Light leaking through the collapsed rubble behind them. Half a dozen silk threads whipped through the tiny gaps in the rubble and yanked the five of them up the exit chute, making them wince from the sudden jerking motion.

  They shot past the edge of the hole just as Rhizocapala fired up the chute, but someone else was already waiting for them at the edge of the hole, and he smacked the tunnel-decimating missile away with a simple walking cane.

  Rhizocapala clicked his tongues again.

  “Tch.”

  Sunlight bore brightly down on the whirlpool. There were twenty diving bells hovering above them, fifty Imperators armed to the teeth clinging to the sides of those bells, and Hugo flung them back into open waters where half a dozen medics immediately swam towards them with boxes of sweet-smelling herbs in hand. Everyone else was glaring down at Rhizocapala at the bottom of the hole, but Rhizocapala, with his glowing white eyes, only had attention to spare for the man standing right at the edge of the hole.

  The feather-capped man sneered down at the bug, though it wasn't very obvious with extra layers of bandages wrapped around his face.

  “... Still alive and kickin', Victor?” Rhizocapala said, putting his arms on his hips as he grinned up at the old man. “When are ye gonna kick the bucket, man? Ye know how long we've been waitin’ for ye to just die of old age? What are ye even turnin’ this year?”

  Victor shrugged. “Fifty or sixty or seventy something. Can't really keep track.”

  “Goin’ too fast?”

  “Going too slow,” he replied, tapping his walking cane once against the ground and making the water around him with alien, oily colours. “It ain't too bad, though. A boring life's got its own merits. For one, not diving as much means I don't gotta change out of wet bandages as much.”

  “Oh, that sure sounds like a bother.” Rhizocapala snapped his cannon arms up at the man, sneering back. “‘Ah can help ye with that, though. Just stand there for a second and stay really still—”

  “Do you want to have our rematch right here, Rhizo?”

  The Barnacle God narrowed all hundred eyes at once, staring pointedly up at the Imperators behind Victor.

  Maybe it’d take two Arcana Hasharana or three Lighthouse Imperators to take him on, but fifty Imperators was enough to almost blanket the entire sector of Depth Three in their shadow. Marisol couldn’t even about fighting more than three Imperators at once, and Rhizocapala?

  He was imagining it.

  He was thinking about it.

  And eventually, he decided to simply laugh and let live.

  “... Well, ‘ahm not in a hurry,” he said, crossing his arms behind his head as he strode back into the caverns. “Yer gonna have to come to us anyways. ‘Ah was just seein’ if there was a chance I could nip the bud at the source.

  “It was nice seein’ ye again, Victor Morina.

  “But ‘ah bet ah’ll be seein’ ye again soon.”

  Victor didn’t pursue the Barnacle God into the caverns, and that was the end of it.

  Marisol, too, didn’t stay awake for much longer after that.

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