Storm Strider

Marisol didn’t need telling twice. With a sharp twirl, she started skating back the way she came, hurtling down a particularly long root as the crab-headed men screeched behind her—she pushed off the winds, cloak fluttering in her wake, refusing to turn around and look.

The rustles of the gargantuan forest behind her showed they were pursuing.

Blackclaw Marauders? she thought, chewing her lips as she skated down a root and launched into the air for a brief moment, landing on another root. You know those people, then? What’s up with their heads? Freaky!

[In the western seas, ‘Marauders’ rule in the straits where the Harbour Imperatours from the Whirlpool City cannot defend,] the Archive explained calmly. [Think of them as bandits on the sea, and, like many bandit organisations on the continent, these Marauders regularly consume crustaceans to biologically modify themselves. Since most of them do not have Swarmsteel Systems that allow them to control how their mutations manifest, they usually end up disfigured like that.]

You mean if I ate the fairy shrimp’s meat without having you in my spine, I’d mutate fairy shrimp traits on my body?

[Yes.]

How many crabs did they have to eat to have their entire heads and arms replaced with that?

[They are the ‘Blackclaw Marauders’, one of the weaker known Marauder fleets of the western seas. They are quite infamous even amongst the many bandit organisations in the Hasharana’s database,] the Archive said plainly. [The Blackclaw Marauders do not have an established outpost. We believe they drift around solely on their ships, making it difficult for the Hasharana stationed in this region to track them down and eliminate them. However, it is rumoured that wherever they settle down somewhere for repairs, they always make sure to choose a location with plenty of crabs for them to chew on—suffice it to say they probably eat more crabs in a single week than most men ever do in their entire lives.]

Right as she slid off a root and prepared to jump onto another one, she heard a rustle in the shrubs next to her. She turned. A pair of bright orange pincers snapped at her neck, and she jerked her head so far back that she almost fell off balance. She managed to keep skating along the forest, though, and the crab-headed Marauder cursed in his foreign tongue—if she’d been a fraction of a second slower, her head would’ve been snipped off already.

Fast! And strong!

[Indeed. And the Blackclaw Marauders are known to be particularly cruel and vindictive during their pillages as well. If they catch you, they will probably enslave you in their galleys, and you will never see the light of day again,] the Archive said. [That is, if they do not simply pluck off your limbs and decide to turn you into bait for catching more crabs. That is also very much a possibility.]

Her heart hammered in her ears as she kept her eyes focused on the roots ahead, trying to map out her escape route before she was skating on top of it. There were around fifty Marauders at the outpost, so if all fifty were chasing her right now, and she was trying to run on their home turf…

[... Do not tell me you are getting cold feet, now.]

[Did you not slay the fairy shrimp leviathan with a less than five percent chance of success?]

…

She gnashed her teeth together and forced out a grin, glancing behind her to count the number of vaguely humanoid shadows charging through the forest. Thank the Great Makers their chitin were bright orange and their throats were loud like barbarians—she could hear them screaming and shouting curses from half the forest away—otherwise she wouldn’t be able to tell where they all were, and where they were going to be.

On water, she didn’t think she’d lost in a battle of speed, but on land? She was more than happy to see just how fast she could glide.

I don’t suppose I can beat them, right? I mean, I’ve never been in a fight before!

[Even if you knew how to fight, I would not recommend going up one against fifty with superior battle experience and weaponry. Please just run.]

Where? Is there anywhere I can–

[This appears to be a rather large landmass. Skate west and begin ascending a series of small hills. There is a cliff overlooking the entire landmass next to a waterfall—you can lose them there.]

She’d just have to take the Archive’s word for it. Eyes flickering across the roots, she eventually found one that seemed like it’d bring her west, and now she put in all her effort as she felt herself moving up—actively swinging her arms, controlling her breaths, picking up her skating rhythm. She could actually see the top of the cliff peeking through the canopy fifty metres overhead, and hear the roar of the waterfall slamming into a basin close by; all she had to do was get up there.

Easier said than done, of course.

Without warning, the moment she started routing through the forest and skating up the sides of the cliff, the Marauders ‘fired’. The projectiles weren’t like the bullets she’d heard fired from the Rampaging Hinterland Front’s rifles, nor like the mortars she’d heard fired from the Attini Empire’s Forward Armies—one of them grazed her ear right as she made a sharp turn, and she winced without touching her wound. She’d lose her momentum otherwise, and besides, she saw the fizzle of steam where the projectile slammed into a nearby bark.

They were shooting ‘water’ at her.

Whoa!

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey–

[The Blackclaw Marauders’ preferred food of choice is the ‘Lightfoot Crab’—also known as the ‘Red Rock Crab’, one of the more common species of crab in the western seas,] the Archive explained, plucking the question out of her mind. [Most adults of the species are mottled or spotted brown, pink, or yellow, and their specialty is being able to spit concentrated streams of seawater in response to external threats. Now, if a little lightfoot crab spit seawater at you, it would not really hurt, but when you scale a lightfoot crab up to the size of a human and then do a little biological modification–]

If I get hit by one of those streams, I’ll die?

[Perhaps. Or perhaps not.]

How useful you are, she mumbled in her thoughts. Upgrade my speed level to five. That’s… um, four times four is sixteen. That’ll be sixteen points, right?

[Speed: 4 → 5]

[Unallocated Points: 66 → 50]

[Indeed. You have fifty points remaining.]

I have so much left? Then, can I–

[Please refrain,] the Archive interrupted, [I have a proposal to make once you reach the top of the cliff.]

‘It better be worth dying for’ was what she wanted to say, but the Archive probably heard her thoughts anyway. If it had a better use for fifty whole points, then she’d put her trust in it for just a little while longer—narrowly dodging streams of saltwater, leaping over chasms, and skating like the desperate, flailing girl-out-of-water that she was—until eventually she skated out of the woods, emerging onto the top of the cliff overlooking the entire rest of the island.

For a moment, she lost herself in the breathtaking sight. So high up above the sea, the air was fresh with the scent of herbs and mint, salt in the winds; the island was more ‘round’ than she’d expected. Without clouds above, the pure blue sky really was something to marvel at—and then the Archive snapped at her to focus, dragging her back down to cruel, uninviting reality.

[See that small boulder next to the waterfall? Pick it up, throw it off the edge, and then climb down the cliff on one of the vines.]

… Oh!

She got the memo. Before any of the Marauders could burst out of the forest and corner her at the edge of the cliff, she picked up the small boulder—it was surprisingly light with her enhanced strength—and immediately tossed it over the edge. She’d have liked to watch it plummet a horrifying sixty metres down to the bottom, where a large water basin was contained by a circular wall of wooden floodgates, but she had no time to spare. She heard the first Marauders screaming through the forest and grabbed onto a few vines, sliding herself right off the edge.

Dangling next to the roaring waterfall, she held onto her vines like her life depended on it; freezing water sprayed into her face and made it difficult to breathe, so she gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, praying the Marauders would overlook her.

A few seconds later, she heard the massive plop of the boulder hitting the basin below her, as well as a lot of disgruntled chatter from the Marauders above her. Her brain was freezing, her hands were slipping, but she counted the seconds as they passed by—one by one by one until she heard the Marauders cursing out loud, racing back into the forest in an attempt to catch her at the bottom.

She’d done it.

She’d made them believe she’d jumped down the waterfall.

Y-You’re a genius, Archive!

N-Now I just h-have to climb back up–

[I detect many hollow spaces behind the waterfall,] the Archive interrupted. [Please, order me to deposit fifty points and unlock the tier two mutation on the right.]

Her eyes were still squeezed shut and her teeth were still chattering from the sheer cold and weight of the waterfall; she couldn’t afford to see what the Archive was talking about.

W-What do you mean? I–

[–please just do it–]

–deposit fifty points and unlock the tier two mutation on the right!

And it took a while after that, but, over the course of what felt like three or five or even ten minutes, it was like someone had thrown a blanket over her to protect her from the waterfall. Her skin felt warmer. Dryer. She gradually peeled her eyelids open and saw ‘magic’ before her eyes—the sprays of water that’d been pummelling her body were now being reflected away from her, like she was being surrounded by an invisible barrier of wind.

[T2 Mutation Unlocked: Hydrofuge Spines]

[Brief Description: You have grown microscopic hydrofuge spines across your skin. The entire surface of your body can now become water-repelling should you choose to vibrate your hydrofuge spine]

[Unallocated Points: 50 → 0]

Now, she could shove her entire arm through the waterfall and it’d part the water like running a blade through the desert.

Grinning weakly, she felt around the back of the waterfall until she felt dry air behind it—there really was a hidden cave of sorts—and then she kicked back against the cliff, making sure not to let go of the vines until she swung right through the waterfall. Her ‘Hydrofuge Spines’ weren’t one hundred percent water-repelling, and her face was still smacked with a hammer of water when she swung through the thickest and heaviest part of the waterfall, but… she was in. A hidden cave behind a waterfall on top of a cliff.

She let go of the vines and lay sprawled out inside the cave, panting for breath.

For a brief few seconds, she thought she was in one of those fairy tales her mama used to read to her in bed. It really was quite magical seeing sunlight refracting through the waterfall in glimmering sheens of golden-orange light, illuminating only the mouth of the cave—and slowly, she panned her head to the side and saw the cave seemed to lead somewhere deeper, somewhere darker, but frankly she couldn’t care any less how this cave had been formed right now.

Her stomach was growling.

Her throat was parched.

And most important of all, she still hadn’t gotten a good night’s rest since integrating with the Archive.

[Objective #4 Completed: Run from the Blackclaw Marauders before they turn you into crab bait]

[Reward: Survival]

… Nope, she thought, shaking her head softly. Can’t walk… anymore. Need to lay down. It’s safe to rest here… right?

[I believe so,] the Archive said, and she let out a huge sigh of relief hearing him say that. [I hope you do not roll in your sleep. Three rolls to your left and you would fall out of the cave and down into the basin. Perhaps you should move a little bit deeper into the cave.]

Right… I’ll do just that–

She jolted when she heard legs skittering in the dark, unlit end of the cave, and somehow managed to find the strength to sit up straight.

Squinting at it now, there was nothing moving at the end of the cave, but she swore she heard something skittering past like crab legs.