Two flares arced up in smooth streaks of orange and red, their light bouncing off the smoky morning haze above the city. One flew north, the other flew east—and Marisol tracked them both with sharp, unblinking eyes, clenching her jaw as she looked at the live footage of Rhizocapala and Eurypteria falling out of their wormholes.

  A single thought gripped her mind.

  While conch shell speakers around them crackled to life, Andres’ voice reporting the emergence of the E-Rank Barnacle God the E-Rank Water Scorpion God, the Guards around her shot to life. They moved with haste. Twenty of them immediately picked up arms and rushed to the northern factory district, while forty of them started rolling cannons, barricades, and all sorts of other heavy artillery towards the eastern residential district. They’d practised this a little, no doubt, but they weren’t quick enough. They wouldn’t arrive at the collapsed wormholes fast enough to reinforce the Imperators who were already fighting there.

  Right here, right now, Marisol had to make a choice.

  “We’ve gotta split up,” Helena said, grimacing as she looked up at the lingering flares. “If we go east together, we’ll be leaving Miss Maria and Miss Claudia to deal with Rhizocapala alone, and there are only fifty Imperators in the north compared to the hundred in the east—”

  “I’ll go north, you’ll go east!” Marisol shouted, dragging one glaive back as she electrified her blood and temporarily increased her speed. “I’ll help out Maria, so you help out Reina! You guys get there as quickly as you can!”

  It may be a razor-thin margin between a right decision and a fatal mistake, but between fifty Imperators and a hundred Imperators for an E-Rank Insect God, Marisol knew which side she had to reinforce first… and though she wanted to help out Reina as well, Maria was still injured, and Claudia wasn’t much of a fighter. Rhizocapala her attention.

  So no one argued. Helena and Aidan nodded sharply, Bruno barked orders at some of the nearby Guards to follow them, and Marisol immediately took off for the northern factory district.

  Cannons were already thundering in the distance, buildings crashing and screams of pain resounding. The streets she was blurring past were already chaos made flesh. The cobblestones were jagged underfoot, torn up by deflected stray cannonballs. Smoke and ash hung low in the air, scraping her throat raw with every breath. Bodies littered the ground—some human, others not. She forced herself not to look too closely as she skated at breakneck speed.

  The factory district loomed ahead, most of the smokestacks now toppled and broken. She was about to leap onto the nearest roof to get a better vantage point of the entire district when a factory to her right collapsed with a deafening crash. Its walls were punched out like paper. Dust and debris billowed outwards, forcing her to throw an arm over her mouth and nose, but she felt something flying at her. Something light, something human-like, sending up a plume of dust and shattered concrete.

  And then Maria flew through the broken factory, her body limp, before slamming into a wall on Marisol’s left. The impact sent cracks spidering through the bricks, and the Lighthouse Imperator crumpled to the ground in a broken heap.

  “Maria!”

  Marisol’s breath hitched. She dashed forward instinctively, but out of nowhere, Claudia grabbed her arm from behind and pulled her back. The medic wasn’t alone. Four more medics with the Cleaner Shrimp Class jumped around the fallen Maria, running their antennae over her as they shouted healing orders at each other.

  While Claudia continued pulling Marisol behind a small mountain of rubble, Marisol’s eyes widened at Maria’s bloody state. Her uniform was torn and pierced with jagged, bony spines that dripped blue ichor. Clam-like barnacles clung to her skin, their sharp teeth gnawing at her flesh. Her eyes were fluttering open and close, and she reached for her notebook clumsily as she spotted Marisol staring, but the medics slapped the notebook away and barked at her to stay still. She wouldn’t die—a Lighthouse Imperator wouldn’t fall that easily—but she to stay still.

  And so did the rest of them.

  As all seven of them knelt behind the mound of rubble, Marisol’s stomach churned. Goosebumps pricked all over her skin. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up straight, and she held her breath instinctively as her attention was dragged upwards—towards the distant mound of rubble that was the collapsed factory Maria was punched out of.

  Rhizocapala himself stood atop the ruins like a monument to carnage, and his killing pressure was like it was just a month ago. His human-like body of a thousand tiny barnacles was oily, slick with blood and filth. Teeth and eyes and thread-like tongues pulsed grotesquely along his limbs, the mouth-like shells opening and closing in rhythmic hunger. He was taller, too. He wasn’t two metres tall the last time Marisol saw him, but now he was, and it became clearer than ever that the Archive’s guess wasn’t wrong.

  He was no longer the ‘weakest’ of the Four Leviathans.

  [Identification Complete]

  [Name: Rhizocapala]

  [Grade: E-Rank Barnacle God]

  [Swarmblood Art: Shellblight Bloom]

  [Swarmblood Aura: ~75,000]

  [Strength: ~14, Speed: ~14, Toughness: ~12, Dexterity: ~17, Perception: ~16]

  While Claudia and the medics hissed at Maria to stop moving around so they could heal her properly, Marisol narrowed her eyes at Rhizocapala’s new attribute levels. She didn’t remember Eurypteria’s levels exactly, but they were truly about the same in strength now.

  the Archive muttered.

  “Surface air,” he said to himself, inhaling deeply, his raspy voice cutting loudly through the air. “It’s been a decade since ‘ah last came up to the surface, but yer human ‘air’ is still as foul as ‘ah remember.”

  Then his head snapped down, and the hundred eyes across his body locked onto Marisol, peeking over her mound of rubble. Her blood immediately froze as a grotesque smile split his face, revealing multiple jagged rows of teeth.

  “And it’s ye again,” he rumbled, almost jovial. “The little water strider with the little lightnin’. Let’s make a bet. Will all of ye manage to stop me before the hour is up, or will ‘ah buy enough time distractin’ all of ye until Kalakos escapes her wormhole first?”

  Marisol bit her tongue. Her blood turned to pure ice as his gaze pinned her in place. Around him, Guards and Imperators who’d been caught up in his initial destruction were starting to recover—and they were loading their cannons, picking up their oversized weapons, gnashing their teeth together in determination—but Marisol didn’t need to see their status screens and estimated attribute levels to know all of them combined wouldn’t be able to rival Rhizocapala. At best, they’d be able to buy time for Maria to make a recovery, but how many people would have to die before she could get up on her feet?

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  No.

  The weight of Rhizocapala’s killing pressure may be pressing down on her shoulders, crushing her lungs, but at B-Rank Mutant-Class, Marisol was no slouch anymore.

  She was on par with a Lighthouse Imperator, so it was her turn to defend everyone.

  As the barnacles on Rhizocapala’s limbs swelled, their grotesque mouths widening, Marisol whirled on Maria and Claudia and forced a smile onto her face. Her fists may be shaking, but she was banking on neither of them noticing.

  “I’ll distract him,” she said shakily, nodding at Claudia. “I’ll buy as much time as you need to heal Maria.”

  Maria glared at her, eyes wide, but Claudia simply shouted at her medics to put a hundred and ten percent effort into the healing.

  That was Marisol’s cue to go.

  As Maria’s hand shot out at her, she vaulted over the rubble, glaives flashing in the sunlight. That caught Rhizocapala’s attention. The air screamed as he launched a volley of spiny projectiles at them with his barnacle cannon arms, but Marisol immediately twisted with her palms on the ground, spinning her glaives around her. Storm Glaives and Whirlwind Spin combined with spraying discharge made a mist swirl violently around her, picking up stray debris that deflected the spines and scattered them every which way.

  Then her glaives hit the ground, and she dashed forward, sparks flying behind her as her glaives scraped against the icy pavement. Momentum carried her straight to Rhizocapala, who stood towering and still above his mound of rubble—and for a moment, surprise flickered across his grotesque features.

  He hadn’t expected her to come at him fast.

  She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t wait for any of the Guards and Imperators to suicide charge the Barnacle God in order to buy Claudia and Maria time. With Storm Glaives temporarily boosting her speed by fifty percent—putting it at thirteen, just one less than Rhizocapala—she leapt high, her body coiled like a spring, and then drove her knee straight into Rhizocapala’s face.

  The impact reverberated through her, a crack of chitin giving way beneath her force, but she was surprised her attack landed, too.

  Rhizocapala flew backwards, smashing through the crumbling wall of a nearby factory, and Marisol followed him in. She to stick to him like glue. As she flipped and landed cleanly, glaives biting into the floor to halt her momentum, she whirled around and quickly scanned the factory from top to bottom.

  Giant auto-hammers were still pounding away in relentless rhythm, smoke and sparks billowing from the heavy machinery. Conveyor belts continued churning under flickering orange light as her shallow breaths steamed and formed mist in the bitter air. Rhizocapala had been thrown spine-first into a giant furnace at the end of the factory, but he was already back on his feet, strutting slowly towards her and slashing his hands through the air.

  Pure crimson blood sprayed outwards in wide arcs, and where the droplets landed on the moving machinery, giant barnacles erupted. They grew rapidly and infested every surface as Marisol gritted her teeth, skating back slowly to put some distance between the two of them.

  “Yer speed’s the same as mine,” he said, his voice low and mocking, “but ye ain’t got any backup, and this city is now domain!”

  Her eyes narrowed on the giant barnacles growing upside-down on the swinging auto-hammers, and then she dodged, backflipping over the first wave of giant spines they shot down at her. More barnacles grew on both sides, infesting stacks of crates, metal beams, and overhead wire bridges. There were too many of them to deal with, so she whirled around and started skating the other way, speeding through the vast interconnected factories as the army of immobile giant barnacles chased after her.

  Her heart pounded, adrenaline and lightning flooding her veins as she narrowly dodged another barrage. A giant spine slammed into the wall beside her, splintering metal with a deafening .

  "Impressive!" Rhizocapala roared behind her cackling, “but how long can ye run, and how much time can ye buy?”

  Marisol didn’t respond. Her focus was split—evading the barnacles’ projectiles, navigating the labyrinth of heavy machinery, and keeping an eye on Rhizocapala’s looming figure as he simply walked after her.

  As she darted past a row of swinging auto-hammers, ducked under rows of swinging gears, and vaulted over several conveyor belts in a row to avoid barnacles snapping at her from below, the Archive’s voice chimed in her head.

  she snapped inwardly, leaping over another conveyor belt as a clam-like barnacle lunged from the shadows. Its massive jaws clamped shut inches from her, the impact shaking the floor beneath her.

  She barely ducked as another spray of spines whizzed past her head, embedding themselves in a steel beam with sickening thuds.

  you can kill him?]

  She grimaced while the interconnected factories groaned behind her, entire sections of the building collapsing under the corrosion of the spreading barnacles. Debris rained down as Rhizocapala leapt from one gantry to another, moving with surprising agility as he continued splattering his own blood in wide arcs, infesting even more heavy machinery and increasing his barnacle count. There seemed no end to it—no limit to his blood pool—but even if there a limit, the Archive was right.

  Her goal was just to buy time.

  she mumbled, glancing back at his leaping and hopping form as she neared the very, very end of the factory.

  The factory was rapidly becoming uninhabitable. Flames licked at the edges of broken machinery, and the air was thick with smoke and the acrid stench of burning oil. Barnacles swarmed across every surface, their grotesque forms pulsating as they prepared another volley. She spotted the giant window at the end of the factory and jumped through it, bracing her arms before her face and crashing through with a shower of shattered glass and twisted metal.

  She tumbled out into the snow-covered streets beyond, and frigid air immediately burned her lungs, a stark contrast to the suffocating heat inside.

  A shadow fell over her, and she looked up, heart lurching. Rhizocapala stood perched on the roof of the burning factory she’d just escaped, his slender form outlined against the grey, smoke-streaked sky. Snowflakes fell lazily around him, though none dared to settle on his barnacle-encrusted body. It was like his aura had a physical presence, and… he wasn’t the only source of killing pressure around her.

  Her stomach twisted as she skated back slowly, ice cracking under her glaives. She looked around anxiously, chills running down her spine. She felt them. More bugs around her. She reached out with her senses—felt the subtle wind currents swirling across the factory district—and her breath hitched as her eyes suddenly darted to a ruined alley on her left, her chest tightening.

  But it wasn’t a giant bug that emerged.

  At first, they shuffled like drunks in the snow—their movements erratic, disjointed—but as they drew closer and closer, their forms became clearer. Sunlit, shadows burned away.

  She froze completely for the second time today, her eyes twitching involuntarily.

  Four dozen or so Guards and Imperators, men and women she might’ve fought beside only hours ago, staggered toward her, surrounding her on all sides. Their faces were pale, slack-jawed, and their eyes were clouded with a dull, unseeing haze, but it was what clung their bodies that made Marisol’s blood run cold.

  Barnacles.

  Twisted shell growths covered their skin, jutting out from their arms, their backs, even their faces. Some barnacles pulsed faintly, like diseased hearts. Others had grown into jagged, unnatural shapes, curling around their limbs or spreading across their torsos like melded armour.

  One of the parasitized Imperators stumbled forward, his body jerking as though pulled by invisible strings. A barnacle the size of a giant crab had consumed the entire upper half of his face, and when his mouth opened, the sound that came out wasn’t human. It was a wet, gurgling rasp. Alive, but not quite. Dead, but not fully.

  It’d be easy for Marisol to just activate her Storm Glaives again and blitz through all of them, but could she do that?

  After she’d already abandoned a hundred people down in Depth Five?

  Her glaives trembled, lightning flickering in and out between her chitin plates. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears, loud and insistent, but she didn’t know what to do.

  Run?

  Fight?

  Get Claudia to heal them?

  Her mind raced as the parasitized humans surged forward, all snarling as Rhizocapala cackled overhead.

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