Storm Strider

At one point, Marisol may have been excited to know she played a big role in bringing down the giant remipede, but now it was dead in the middle of the day. Four whole hours since they exploded onto the open sea. There were no clouds overhead to provide any shade, and so the midday sun was scorching her back—she had half a mind to tell everyone to just leave the giant remipede carcass floating where it was.

Because right now, about thirty of them were walking on the giant carcass while the warship was docked next to its bloody head, and they were having a real tough time harvesting the parts they could harvest.

[Tell those five men to give up on the hind phyllopodia. Those four over there should be handling the giant venom mandibles with gloves on. The rest should focus on carving only the flesh near the surface of the chitin; the muscle strands are too tough for any of their cutlasses to tear through.]

Wiping a bead of sweat off her brow, she hollered at the top of her lungs and relayed the Archive’s exact words to all of the Harbour Guards… but she’d no clue how many of them actually heard her. The thirty of them were all scattered across the five-hundred-metre long giant carcass doing their own thing—cutting flesh and severing legs and tossing everything onto the warship with rope pulleys and buckets—so she had no hope even half of them heard her instructions.

Sighing, she simply lowered her head and focused on her task at hand: kneeling on top of the giant remipede’s smooth head with two small chisels in her hands.

This ain’t fun, Archive, she grumbled, getting down on all fours and rapping the remipede’s chitin with the handle of her chisels. When you say there are ‘rewards’, what you really mean is I gotta do all the back-breaking work just to claim even a fraction of my rewards. How the hell are you supposed to harvest all the usable parts before the carcass naturally sinks?

[By working hard and fast, of course. After the Worm God and the Thousand-Tongue slayed their giant remipede, they sat on it for five days straight and managed to devour a thousand points’ worth of flesh. They also ripped off its legs and paddled the carcass towards the Whirlpool City, which was a much more efficient venture than paddling towards the Whirlpool City on a rowboat.]

Okay, but why were they on that rowboat in the first place?

[Irrelevant. My point is, while titanic bugs above two hundred metres in length are usually deconstructed by crews of up to a hundred trained experts, it is still very possible for all of you to harvest enough parts to make this venture worthwhile,] the Archive said, jabbing a pointy leg into her cheek. [Focus. Let the Harbour Guards harvest the flesh and chitin. You are looking for–]

Yes, yes, those ‘olfactory nerve centres’ or something. What are they even supposed to look like, anyways?

The Archive hummed as she continued crawling over the giant head, tapping her chisels against the chitin to listen for hollow spaces underneath. [In humans, an olfactory nerve centre is just a bundle of nerves in your brain that allow you to smell. In a giant remipede, however, not only does it have two olfactory nerve centres, it can also use them for ‘sophisticated olfactory processing’: a type of image-processing and interpretation typically used by cave-dwelling water bugs to locate potential food items even with extremely low odour concentrations in the dark. Recent research from the Genesis Glade Front have even theorised that remipedes can change their nerves centres into neuropil centres should their main brain be damaged.]

…

[They look like small, silvery pearls the size of your nails,] the Archive said, sighing and shaking its head. [If you find them and turn them into Swarmsteel, you can equip them for a few attribute levels, and your sense of smell would be amplified tenfold.]

She grinned at the Archive as she started tapping the chitin with renewed vigour. More bug parts she could turn into Swarmsteel sounded sweet to her, so she’d break her back for as long as she needed until she found them—and yet she felt so, so incredibly stupid as thirty Harbour Guards walked past her over and over, hauling their harvests back onto the warship while frowning at her tapping the chitin like a child digging for earthworms.

Hours passed like this.

It’ll be worth it, she comforted herself. Shiny pearls… shiny pearls… shiny pearls–

Tink!

She hit something slightly hollow underneath with her chisel, and she didn’t need telling twice from the Archive. She jammed both chisels into the chitin and started carving away, the little water strider tracing a circle with its legs to show her where she needed to cut, and it may have taken her ten minutes, twenty minutes, maybe even thirty minutes—eventually, she carved out a delicate chunk of chitin and tossed it away, peeking inside to see a hole made out of blue, pulsating flesh.

Her eyes caught the barest glint of something shiny inside, so she looked away and grimaced as she reached in, rummaging around the squishy flesh with her fingers until she felt them: something small and round between her fingertips.

Got it!

Translucent fibres ripped from the little spheres as she yanked them out, and with a wide grin, she raised them over her head to let sunlight burn off the remnant strands of flesh. They were such small, small things for such a giant bug; the Archive really hadn’t been lying when it said they were about the size of her nails.

… I was expecting something a lot shinier, though.

[Give it time to glow. It will look decently pretty in due time.]

It’ll glow? Her eyes lit up as she twirled the pearls around, her mind wandering off to places she could possibly wear them over. Do they have to stay in pearl shape to work, though? I don’t imagine I can melt them down and–

[Yes, the chemosensory ability will only be retained if you equip them as they are. Now please get off the carcass before it sinks.]

Right on cue, the water around the giant remipede started to bubble, and she jumped to her glaives completely startled. The Harbour Guards yelled at her to quickly jump on board before the carcass could sink, so she clutched the pearls tightly and skated down the side of the chitin, jumping and jamming her glaives straight into the hull of the ship.

Someone tossed a rope down at her, and she climbed up as she glanced at the carcass behind her, sinking not-so-quietly into the depths of the great blue—she hadn’t noticed it while she was busy looking for the pearls, but it was nearly sundown now, and the same thing had happened to the fairy shrimp. The buoyancy of giant water bug carcasses would naturally disappear after a while.

As two Harbour Guards helped her over the railings, she scanned the busy upper deck for all of their spoils of war: about two dozen remipede legs were stacked on top of each other like logs, four giant curved mandibles were wrapped in thick fabrics to prevent any venom from leaking out, and she assumed the dozens upon dozens of crates being hauled to the lower decks were filled with remipede flesh… as much as they could harvest within half a day, anyways. They certainly didn’t manage to harvest five thousand points’ worth of flesh, but there were probably two or three thousand points on the ship. Maybe even four thousand.

[I estimate only one thousand points.]

She puckered her lip and frowned at the little water strider on her shoulder. You’re no fun.

[To be fair, I do not think this warship is capable of carrying more than a thousand points’ worth of bug flesh anyways. Considering the additional weight of the chitinous legs and mandibles, I would say the maximum load limit of the warship has already been reached.]

And would the additional weight slow us down on the way to the Whirlpool City?

[Unlikely.]

Once the giant remipede bubbled completely beneath the surface, Captain Enrique shouted at his Harbour Guards to raise the anchors and unfurl the sails. His daughter—the pregnant lady they’d pulled up from the rowboat half a day ago—sat on a crate by his side, giving Marisol a tired little wave as their eyes met for a brief moment.

Marisol had gotten a brief explanation for why a pregnant lady was on their warship from the Harbour Guards earlier. Apparently, Captain Enrique’s daughter and son-in-law had been living on the mainland continent, but then decided to hitch a ride with him and his men on their way back to the Whirlpool City for a vial of healing seawater. It was to ensure the safety of childbirth, she was told; it was just that none of them could’ve ever imagined encountering a giant remipede attack of that scale, much less against a warship flying the Harbour Guards’ emblem.

… To that end, a few Harbour Guards had also been rowing around the field of wreckages the past few hours, trying to fish up flags and emblems to identify the ships that’d been sunk by the giant remipede. They were going to continue towards the Whirlpool City, so as Harbour Guards, they had to report to the city what’d happened here in full detail. No doubt Marisol was going to be caught up in the questioning as well, but that was just a problem future her would have to swiftly deal with.

The fish scale sails billowed at full strength as the warship started moving again, and now they were headed once more for the Whirlpool City.

How long until we reach the Whirlpool City this time, Archive? she asked, leaning against the railings as the Harbour Guards scurried around behind her. Planting her chin in her hands, she gazed sluggishly out at the vast, open seas—the dim orange sun was just about to fall over the horizon, and she felt like laying down to sleep for a long, long time.

[The build of this warship is quite streamlined. Assuming there are no delays, it should take exactly eleven days. Exactly one week.]

Assuming there ain’t no delays.

[Correct.]

And for the first time in a while, she felt she had the luxury to just stand there and do nothing but think.

Recall.

Remember.

… That ‘ghost’, she eventually thought, narrowing her eyes at the dusking sun. I saw it again. That night when the giant remipede first destroyed my ship. It was just standing on the surface of the sea, staring down at the lady, and the moment I approached it, it sank into the ocean like a skeletal husk.

What was that?

[...]

That ain’t the first time I’ve seen that ‘ghost’, Archive.

The first time, I saw it right after stumbling out of the captain’s cabin on Captain Antonio’s ship. It was standing on the far edge of the wreckage, and it disappeared the moment I looked at it.

The second time was when I did the War Jump. The rest of the world may have disappeared around me in a void of colour, but not that thing. It wasn’t a hallucination. It was standing on the open sea, watching me from a fair distance away from the island, and again—it disappeared once I stopped spinning and tried to look for it.

The third time was when it stood over the pregnant lady.

She clenched her jaw and scowled down at the little water strider on her shoulder.

All three times I’ve seen it, it’s got something to do with a giant water bug, she thought. The fairy shrimp. The horseshoe crab. The remipede. You said it yourself. It’s nonstop anomaly after anomaly with me, and mama can say it’s the ‘Sand-Dancer’s misfortune’ all she wants, but what are the chances I’m being followed by this–

[Ghosts do not exist in this world, Marisol.]

… Then what?

What is this ‘ghost’ of a man following me wherever I go?

[...]

The Archive shook its head lightly.

[I do not know.]

[But the great blue of the Deepwater Legion Front holds many secrets; it would be unwise for you to lose any sleep over questions there may not be satisfying answers to.]

…

She sighed begrudgingly and let herself lean fully against the railings, hoping it wouldn’t snap under her weight.

Fine.

What I have to do right now doesn’t change, anyways.

[Correct,] the Archive said. [All you can do right now is wait until this ship either reaches the Whirlpool City, or another leviathan attacks and you are forced to disembark again.]

… Well, don’t jinx it like that.

Taking out her mama’s book, she flipped to the lock on chapter four and rubbed it with her fingers, wondering if maybe she should cut it off preemptively.

If I’m going to be at the Whirlpool City in a week anyways, should I just skip ahead and ignore the timer?

If anything bad happens, that fourth technique might prove useful, after all.