The wormhole spat Rhizocapala out with a deafening roar, and he landed claws first on the frozen ground, his bulk crushing the frost-coated dirt and sending cracks rippling outwards.

  Steam hissed off his barnacle-infested carapace, the frigid air clashing with the heat radiating from his human-like form. Slick, bright blue droplets of blood dripped from his mouth, sizzling as it struck the frost. They weren't blood, no, but rather, they were the remnants of the Mutant-Classes he’d devoured while he was stuck in the wormhole where time, space, and perception all swirled together in one blurry mess.

  He couldn’t remember just how many Mutant-Classes he’d eaten, but considering he’d ordered about fifty of them to jump into his wormhole with him, he must’ve eaten around that many?

  The fifty or so Guards and Imperators stationed around him in the city’s factory district froze. Their makeshift barricades of iron spikes and hastily fortified cannons looked like toys in his eyes. He straightened, his jagged armour of barnacles groaning as he shifted, and he realised he towered over most of them on ground level now. He towered over them. Two and a half metres of living terror, every inch bristling with barnacle growths and thick, plated limbs. Sure, half of the soldiers were standing on watchtowers and manning cannons on the roofs, but he taller than them.

  He hadn’t felt that way since he first became an Insect God three decades ago.

  So he exhaled, sticking his three thread-like tongues out as he let out a low, guttural rumble.

  “... Fresh air,” he whispered, his tongues twitching. The taste of the surface world was sharp and , nothing like the crushing depths he called home. “So overrated.”

  Demolished conch shell speakers crackled to life around them, their piercing tones cutting through the icy morning. He craned his head back and listened. Reports echoed across the city, frantic voices overlapping, and he closed the hundred bioluminescent eyes across his body to listen even better. The voice roaring through the speakers was familiar, but was it…

  “Victor?” he muttered, a mocking, raspy sweetness in his voice. “Is that you, Victor?”

  The vibrations in the air and the distant tremors beneath his feet told him everything he needed to know.

  The Imperators were on him.

  “What ye humans would grade me as an E-Rank Barnacle God, right?” he finished, crunching the conch shell speaker beneath his feet as he grinned at the Guards and Imperators around him. Their faces were pale, and all but two of them were trembling where they stood. Seeing their adorable reactions, he gave them a casual shrug and rolled his shoulders, making a big show of stretching his limbs. “‘Ah told a buncha Mutant-Classes to wait in the factory district where ‘ah knew the Worm God’s gonna knock me into a big wormhole, so while ‘ahm stuck in there for… how long? Three weeks? Four? Maybe even a whole month? So that ah’ve got enough time to fight them and eat them all, shell to flesh to sinew to nerves. ‘Ahm what ye humans would call an ‘E-Rank’ Insect God now, right?”

  Honestly, he just couldn’t help but boast a little. He’d planned this moment to . If he remained an F-Rank Barnacle God, he would’ve popped out of his wormhole two days before Eurypteria, and that was plenty enough time—assuming the Imperators had already dealt with all the other Giant-Class and Mutant-Class wormholes—for all of them to converge on him. Two days was more than enough to send him straight back to the abyss.

  That was why he to come out at the same time as Eurypteria, because now, they had to split their forces.

  The conch shell speakers screeched again, voices now overlapping in frantic confusion. Orders, updates, and warnings blurred together, the city’s leaders trying to contain the spreading panic. He tilted his head, listening with delight as his name was repeated over and over, laced with fear.

  Then his eyes snapped open, their glow casting eerie shadows across the frostbitten ground. He scanned the defenders, his gaze locking onto the two figures standing apart right in front of him: the whirligig beetle lady and another shrimp lady he didn’t really recognise. They weren’t trembling like the others, but the others were so afraid their killing pressures weren’t exactly supporting both of them.

  As it stood, Rhizocapala’s aura both of theirs combined, so just the slightest, tinge of fear clung to the two ladies like the morning mist.

  “... This is the end!” He laughed, his voice booming across the factory yard as he raised one claw, slashing it across his chest. Thick, red blood sprayed in an arc, splattering the ground in front of him, and where it struck—barnacles erupted instantly, sharp and jagged, spreading like a living infestation.

  The infestation raced forward, devouring the icy ground and iron spikes with relentless hunger.

  Guards shouted and scrambled back from the first line of spike and cannon emplacement. Some of them broke formation, their retreat a chaotic scramble. A few fired desperately, their rifles kicking against their shoulders, but the bullets barely slowed the advancing barnacles. One Guard tripped, his foot caught in the spreading growths. He screamed as the barnacles climbed his leg, jagged shells tearing into his flesh before another Guard yanked him free.

  More musket fire cracked, bullets pinging uselessly off his barnacles’ hardened shells, while a few roaring cannons from the nearby roofs managed to destroy his first wave of infestation. He pursed his lips in amusement. He crushed a dozen barnacles on his right arm this time and scattered his blood forward again, and this time, his blood directly flew onto the first cannon emplacement on the nearby roof, barnacles immediately exploding and swallowing the half dozen or so cannons.

  Then the barnacles took over the cannons, and had artillery support on the roofs now.

  For their part, though, the whirligig beetle and the shrimp lady didn’t move. They stood their ground even as the rest of their allies backed off, debris and water swirling around the beetle lady’s arms, while what smelt like healing blood dripped off the shrimp lady’s long antennae. They were probably… what were they called? ‘Lighthouse Imperators’?

  Andres and Victor must’ve assigned them to ‘deal with him’, then.

  Eurypteria was ashamed to admit it, but the moment she clawed out of her wormhole and landed on all sixes, bladed limbs stabbing into the ground, she knew she’d been beaten by her older brother.

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  She breathed in deeply, feeling a touch of snow on the tip of her extended tongue.

  Fresh air. Sharp, crisp, tinged with smoke from distant chimneys. It cut through the taste of the wormhole rot that still clung to her senses. For a moment, all she did was let herself enjoy it. Her scorpion tail curled and wrapped around her neck like a scarf, and she savoured the colour of the sky she’d last seen twelve years ago.

  Then she looked down, and the calm slipped away.

  The streets of the residential district around her were lined with Imperators, a hundred or so of them, all armoured and armed to the teeth. They formed an unbroken ring around her. Distance was carefully measured, every cannon was perfectly aligned. Dozens of heavy artillery pieces were stationed at intersections, massive metal barrels gleaming in the pale morning light. Atop roofs and behind windows, even more Guards and Imperators braced rifles and crossbows. Every last soldier’s attention was fixed on her, including the two Lighthouse Imperators standing right in front of her.

  The water scorpion girl and the diving bell spider man.

  She straightened, rising to her full height, her raptorial clawed legs unfolding beneath her. She was sure her sleek, elongated form cut a terrifying silhouette against the dawn sky, the ridged plates along her spine glinting like shards of obsidian, but she’d give the humans credit. They didn’t speak. They were . They were probably the stronger bunch of the surviving Guards and Imperators, so the trembling of their hands was only barely hidden as they held their formation.

  Without a word herself, she turned her gaze northwards again, scanning the icy morning sky.

  She didn’t need to see him to him. Rhizocapala’s killing intent rippled in the distance, thick and oppressive, swirling around the entire northern end of the city like a storm. He was making a spectacle of himself. Again.

  Her mandibles scraped together in irritation. His plan had worked after all. The plan was for him to devour fifty Mutant-Classes in the relative safety of the wormhole in order to increase his strength and delay his escape, and oh, she hated it. She just the idea of it. Grinding her mandibles, she thought back to the countless times she’d decapitated, bisected, and cleaved him in half from head to toe—and now he was an E-Rank Barnacle God? The same rank as

  Her claws flexed, her tail rattling menacingly behind her. She hated his plan. She hated that it , but perhaps, most of all, she just hated the fact that he now stood as her equal in strength.

  Her glowing compound eyes narrowed as she turned back to the Imperators in front of her. At the very least, judging by their combined killing pressures, the humans had assigned a stronger and more robust force to deal with her—in their eyes, she was still the strongest Insect God. She was the more worthy opponent.

  So she didn’t speak.

  Words would be wasted on these creatures.

  The irritation building in her chest reached a boiling point as she glared at the water scorpion girl standing in front of her, pretending like she had a chance against original water scorpion.

  The watchtower down in the southern harbour district of the city swayed slightly in the biting winds, its haphazard construction creaking under its own weight. Victor and Andres stood at the very top, calloused and bandaged hands gripping tight onto the splintering wooden rails.

  The southern harbour below them was a chaotic sprawl of shouts, alarms, and hurried footsteps, but the noise was nothing like the ones coming from the east and the north. Cannons thundered in the far distance, their shockwaves rippling through the air, followed by the splintering crash of collapsing buildings. Screams and orders blurred together, underscored by the metallic clatter of soldiers rushing to reinforce the simultaneous collapse of two Insect God wormholes.

  Victor looked forward and saw Rhizocapala’s northern rampage of swirling dust and black smoke, punctuated by heavy machinery being flung into the sky like debris in a hurricane. He looked east and saw Eurypteria’s wind blades carving deep trenches through the residential district, desperate cannon fire trying to halt her advance from every conceivable direction.

  Neither Insect God would fall any time soon, though. Despite Andres slamming his fist into the war table next to Victor with a low growl of frustration, the situation was dire. Rhizocapala had gotten even more devious since the last time they met him.

  “They’ve outplayed us again.” Andres glared down at the scattered maps and scribbled reports on the splintered table. “I thought it strange that a third of the Mutant-Classes they came up here with just voluntarily jumped into Rhizocapala’s wormhole, but to think he was using his time stuck in it to on them… he’s truly E-Rank now, isn’t he?”

  Victor didn’t respond immediately. His gaze remained fixed on the north, where Rhizocapala’s gigantic barnacles took over entire buildings, firing spiny projectiles every which way—then his gaze met Andres’, calm and unshaken.

  “It’s a shitty situation, alright,” he said quietly, “but it ain’t unwinnable. Listen to me, big man. We can still turn this around. You need to get to Maria. She’s fighting Rhizocapala in the north with Claudia and only fifty Imperators, so she’ll need every ounce of strength we can muster. Reina and Hugo can hold on against Eurypteria with a hundred Imperators backing them up for now.”

  Andres furrowed his brows. “And you? Won’t you be going to your niece?”

  Victor glanced over his shoulder, and Andres followed his gaze. The giant wormhole behind them with its churning, violet-black depths was still pulsating ominously, but the air around the edges were shimmering with distortion, the fabric of reality starting to strain under its weight.

  “I’ll stay here,” Victor said firmly. “Someone’s gotta keep an eye on Kalakos.”

  Andres’ scowl deepened. “You think she’s coming out soon as well? Even if she’s—”

  “A month ago, back in Depth Five, we didn’t even detect her until she was right in front of us. That’s because she shed her old shell and intentionally weakened herself to stop us from tracking her aura signal.” He gestured back at the warbling wormhole, tapping his cane against the floor a few times just to test the structural strength of the watchtower. “I ain’t completely sure since I wasn’t paying attention to her back in Depth Five, but I’m sure Rhizocapala told her to weaken herself until she’s dropped a whole rank. She probably ain’t our D-Rank Remipede God anymore. Worst case scenario, she’s E-Rank right now, which means—”

  “She’ll be coming out alongside Rhizocapala and Eurypteria,” Andres said, eyes narrowing and gritting his teeth. “Shit. They never intended on letting us jump them all at once. They strengthened Rhizocapala and weakened Kalakos on purpose so they’re all at Eurypteria’s level.”

  “That’s why you to go north,” Victor said firmly, kicking the big man on the back and sending him staggering into the wooden railings. “Go. Hugo can help out Reina against Eurypteria, and Claudia can support you and Maria against Rhizocapala, but there ain’t no Lighthouse Imperator we can spare for Kalakos. That’s why I’m staying here.

  The Harbour Imperatrix immediately placed his hand on the railings as if to vault over, but at the last moment, he hesitated.

  He looked back at Victor, his expression conflicted and far away.

  “... You sure you can handle Kalakos?”

  Victor didn’t answer immediately again. His hand drifted to his pocket, fingers brushing against the smooth, cold surface of his little trinket.

  His jaw tightened, but he didn’t speak.

  And the silence stretched for a moment before Andres nodded resolutely.

  “Don’t die, old man. The Deepwater Legion Front still needs its Chariot.”

  With that, the Imperatrix vaulted over the railing, his figure disappearing into the chaos below.

  Victor remained where he was, his hand still in his pocket as he stared back at Kalakos’ warbling wormhole.

  His grip on the little trinket in his pocket tightened. He could feel the of it pressing into his palm. If he popped it right now, there was a fifty-fifty chance he’d be able to dash over to the eastern residential district, kill Eurypteria, defend his niece, and have enough stamina remaining to return here before any of the Guards and Imperators below him could even notice he’d left. On the other hand, if he were to run out of stamina and died the moment he finished off Eurypteria with his Swarmblood Art, there’d be nobody left to deal with Kalakos in the south.

  And even in the best case scenario where he could kill two measly Insect Gods in one prolonged activation of his Art, what would happen if either Corpsetaker or Marculata decided to pop out of the whirlpool then? Who else would be able to buy enough time and protect the soldiers while they were evacuating the city?

  He could only use his Art once.

  So he couldn’t move.

  Whoever he picked as his target had to be someone he to kill no matter what, and no matter how dreary the situation was, it just wasn't dire. Enough. Yet.

  Not yet.

  He still had faith that the Imperators and the Guards could deal with Rhizocapala and Eurypteria on their own, and then they'd be able to rush back to help him against Kalakos, thus removing the need for him to use his Art entirely.

  He was going to die today.

  “... Come on, lass,” he murmured under his breath. “Time to pick up the slack.”

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