Marisol’s vision blurred for a moment as Victor hauled her onto the upper deck of Captain Enrique’s warship.

  She had to admit, the rapid changes in pressure made her limbs more than sluggish. Her lungs still burned, her heart still pounded in her skull, and her muscles still ached from the strain of ascending three thousand metres in mere minutes. She staggered forward once she was thrown overboard, gripping the railings for support and sucking in deep breaths through clenched teeth.

  Ow.

  Remind me… not to neglect my gills mutation even if I’m gonna be fighting above water most of the time.

  [Noted.]

  As she exhaled coolly and flung both halves of the Mutant-Class water strider onto the deck with a wet thud, a few Guards immediately rushed over, hauling the severed remains away. She barely paid attention to where it was being taken. Cannon fire and shrill shouts dragged her attention to the warships around her, and the best word—and perhaps the only word—to describe the chaos around her was ‘frantic’.

  Across the fleet of warships, a thousand soldiers were abandoning their ships, leaping over the rails and landing onto the massive giant horseshoe crab island docked beside them. At first, she frowned. Confused. Still slightly disoriented. Then, she saw the crab children scuttling across the black sand beaches, helping the soldiers unload supplies, weapons, and cannons from the ships, while the Damselfly Oracles helped pull all the essentials onto the island—a complete evacuation of the fleet at breakneck speed.

  Her gaze flickered through the crowd of evacuees and locked onto familiar faces: Captain Enrique, grim-faced as always, barking orders as two Guards carried an injured Reina off on a stretcher. Claudia and the other Imperators were among the retreating soldiers, helping coordinate the hauling of larger and heavier supplies. At the same time, the ten colossal Whitewhales that’d been pulling the fleet forward for the past week were finally detaching themselves from their harnesses. Ropes snapped loose, and the whales immediately swam ahead, positioning themselves at the front of the giant horseshoe crab.

  Marauders scrambled across the wooden towns on the whales’ backs, flinging thick hooks and ropes toward the anchors she and the crab children had hammered into the black sand beach. As soon as the hooks latched onto the anchors—and a few marauders disembarked their wooden town to help secure the connection on the beach, of course—the Whitewhales heaved forward, their colossal bodies dragging the entire living island with them.

  The entire island shifted, lurching ahead at an even greater speed than before as it headed east for the Harbour City.

  … Right.

  And that’s the first part of the plan done.

  Memories of Andres’ plan came flooding back to her all at once. She’d successfully intercepted the fleet. The Whitewhales were pulling the island along. The soldiers were all racing into the colossal forest with their supplies, guided by the crab children to make a temporary base somewhere that Claudia could coordinate the rest of the evacuation efforts from.

  Everything was going according to plan, except…

  She glanced around at the fleet of warships they were leaving behind. The ships were eerily still, barely manned, abandoned on the choppy waters. The only people left standing on the upper deck of Captain Enrique’s ship were herself, Victor, and Maria.

  Marisol narrowed her eyes and turned toward Victor. “What the hell are we still doin—”

  But before she could finish her sentence, a shadow moved above them.

  A split-second later, Andres dropped down from the mast, landing like a meteor. Wood groaned under the force of his landing, the impact sending vibrations through the deck. Marisol tensed, fists instinctively clenching as she adjusted to his sudden presence—she’d never gotten used to his aura, and frankly, she didn’t think she’d be getting used to him anytime soon.

  Even still, as the Harbour Imperatrix straightened and brushed dust off his heavy coat, his gaze settled on her first.

  “Good work, Marissol.” His voice was even, approving. “You found the island. That was the hard part.”

  Marisol exhaled through her nose. “Great. So why are we still here?”

  Andres didn’t answer immediately. His gaze drifted toward the sea behind him, and the rest of them followed his line of sight slowly.

  It wasn’t hard to spot what he was looking at.

  The horizon was moving.

  Three hundred meters out, the sea churned like a living thing, heaving in writhing, rolling waves. The water itself seemed to be dark, but it was still bright out and the sun hung strong in the sky. No. It wasn’t the water. It was the endless black mass that swelled forward, stretching across the entire horizon, sweeping towards the fleet like a living wall—thousands upon thousands of giant crustaceans crawling over each other, skittering, writhing, devouring. Jagged limbs clashing against armored shells, pincers snapping and clacking.

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  It was a storm of living exoskeletons.

  Marisol swallowed hard. The bile rising in her throat tasted bitter.

  And this ain’t even the Crawling Sea?

  [No,] the Archive said plainly. [The Crawling Sea is much thicker, much darker, much wider. This is but a tide of crustaceans Kalakos and Rhizocapala have called upon to vanguard the pursuit.]

  One percent of the Crawling Seas’ size?

  [Less than.]

  Andres let her watch in silence for a moment. Judging by how nonchalant Maria and Victor looked, they’d all but gotten used to the sight of Kalakos’ tide over the past week. It was just Marisol who couldn’t quite get her nerves under control yet.

  “They’ve been on our heels all week,” Andres said calmly. “And even with the Whitewhales pulling the island eastwards, we won’t be able to outrun that forever. We’re still a week away from the Harbour City. Right here, right now, only the four of us here are A-Rank Mutant-Class or above—so we must stop Kalakos and delay her as much as possible.”

  Marisol looked at Andres, frowning. “Wasn't the plan to blow the warships sky-high after Kalakos and her horde swim right into them?”

  “ Correct. The ships we’re standing on—and the ones surrounding us—are all rigged to blow. but the explosions won’t kill them. It won’t even scratch Kalakos. It’ll hurt the rest of the tide a little bit, but I’ve had an entire week to think about this, so this is the new plan:” Andres turned to her again, arms crossed, watching her carefully. “Have you noticed something yet?”

  She blinked. “Noticed what?”

  He only jerked his chin towards the water.

  She scowled but skated to the rails, scanning the sea. The giant horseshoe crab island was pulling further and further away, the Whitewhales dragging it toward the eastern horizon at a steady pace. All the soldiers, cannons, and supplies had been offloaded onto the black sand beach, so the fleet of a dozen warships, now unmanned, had begun drifting apart a while back.

  Then, she noticed ‘something’.

  The twelve warships weren’t just scattering randomly. They were drifting apart in a loose, staggered formation, stretching out like a jagged, uneven line. More importantly, they weren’t drifting forward towards the fleeing island. They were drifting back—directly into the path of the tide of black chitin surging toward them, each of them ten metres apart from stern bowsprit.

  The realisation clicked into place.

  Victor’s bandaged grin was sharp, almost lazy, but his eyes burned with something far more calculating. He rocked back on his heels, hands tucked into his pockets. “The fuses are set across all twelve warships,” he said. “One by one, they’ll go up in flames—starting with this one we're standing on and ending with the last, the one closest to Kalakos.”

  Marisol glanced over her shoulder. Three hundred meters behind them, the tide of black chitin was still continuing to surge forward like a living wall. Kalakos, of course, led the charge with her colossal remipede body, but if she squinted and focused really, really hard, she could also pick out lots of strange protrusions from her carapace: giant barnacles. All volcano-like. They were the ones that'd fire giant spines at anything that dared approach.

  She was starting to understand what the plan was now.

  “We can't approach Kalakos and the black tide as we are. Rhizocapala’s spines will decimate us before we even get halfway there, which is why Victor's staying here to light the fireworks,” Andres said, nodding at the old man. “While the three of us charge at the black tide, he'll blow up the ships next to us one by one. The explosions will kick up enough smoke, fire, and debris to give us cover.”

  “Then we'll slip in close to the tide,” she finished, a simple murmur. “And our extraction? How are we gonna get out?”

  “I figured we'd take a page out of your book.” Andres shrugged casually. “We’ll figure it out as we go.”

  Andres didn't really have to explain the plan in full. They weren't going to kill anything. That much was clear. Their job was to wreak havoc—just enough to throw the black tide into disorder, and just enough to force the Insect Gods to stop chasing the fleeing island where their people were.

  It's risky as hell.

  [And I do not know how the three of you can extract safely once you have delayed the black tide sufficiently.]

  And her body was still aching, barely recovered from the last fight—but before she could think too hard about it, Maria clapped her on the back.

  The hit sent a jolt through her spine. She barely whirled around before Victor’s boot also struck her square between the shoulders, making her stagger forward.

  “... You love living on the edge, don't you?” the old man said, holding a candle flame to the end of a long fuse. His bandaged smirk was infuriating as always. “Well, this is it. For all intents and purposes, it's the final battle. For every minute we keep Kalakos and Rhizocapala distracted, that’s another minute the horseshoe crab gets closer to Harbour City. Once the black tide is in firing range of the city's autocannons, it’ll be a hell of a lot harder for Kalakos and Rhizocapala to do anything to break through the city.”

  Then he tilted his head, and a soft, uncharacteristic smile took over his face.

  “We delay them for thirty minutes, and that'll be enough for the crab to never get caught by the black tide,” he finished. “And your ten-year-long journey will finally come to an end.

  Victor’s voice dropped, just slightly. “Win this fight, and your journey will come to an end.”

  Marisol blinked.

  Something about the way he said it made her pause.

  … What the hell was that supposed to mean?

  But she didn’t have time to ask. Maria rolled her shoulders, grinning slightly despite the bloodied bandages wrapped tight around her jaw. Andres cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders, and for the first time, Marisol got a good look at those huge, bulky mantis shrimp arms of his. In terms of sheer size, they were even larger than some anti-chitin cannons she'd seen mounted on warships—they were the arms of the legendary Harbour Imperatrix, who'd once fought alongside the Worm God as an equal.

  Marisol may not know much about him as a man—and he seemed to like it that way—but she'd be lying if she said she wasn't feeling just a little bit giddy about being able to fight alongside the strongest Imperator in the Whirlpool City.

  “Ready?” Andres asked.

  Maria nodded, and Victor hovered his candle flame closer to the long fuse, but Marisol didn't reply with a perky ‘yep’.

  Instead, she jumped onto the railing, balancing on the tips of her glaives. The wind lashed at her, whipping her cloak, her hair, her breath.

  Ahead of them, the black tide closed in fast, swallowing the ocean.

  Three hundred meters.

  But Marisol narrowed her eyes at Kalakos giant, ugly head.

  Screw just causing chaos.

  A slow, reckless grin spread across her face.

  “... If we're gonna be stupid about it, then let's just forget the horde,” she said, pointing straight at Kalakos. “Let’s go right for the head.”

  Chapters remaining: 11

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