… Where am I?

  Marisol’s senses flickered back like a dying lantern—uneven, dim, and painfully slow.

  Her head pounded. It was the kind of deep, bone-aching throb that dulled every thought and made her stomach churn. Her ears rang with a shrill, unrelenting whine that turned every sound into a muffled blur. Her muscles screamed with every twitch, the ache of exertion and impact still radiating through her body like fire. Not lightning. Fire. The kind that hurt and made her want to shrivel up and scream.

  She lay flat on her back, staring up at a sky that didn’t look quite right.

  The sunlight above wasn’t steady. It flickered and twisted unnaturally, like a reflection on a rippling pond. The swirling debris in the air didn’t help—ash, smoke, and dust mingled with faint streaks of water vapor, all twisting into strange patterns that made her eyes swim.

  What… am I doing?

  Her breaths came in shallow gasps, her chest too tight to expand fully. The world smelled burned. Charred wood, scorched metal, and the faint metallic tang of blood. For a few more moments, she struggled to remember what had happened leading up to her lying on her back.

  She tried to sit up, but the motion sent a sharp jolt of pain up her spine, forcing her back down. She couldn’t do it. It hurt too much. Her hand groped blindly for some kind of support, and her bloody fingers managed to close on broken stone, jagged and cold.

  What… is this?

  The thought echoed dully in her mind as she gritted her teeth and forced herself to sit up. Her limbs felt heavy, her movements sluggish, but with one hand curled around a chunk of broken stone, she was able to do so. Now her vision blurred even harder as she looked around, the shapes of the world coming into focus one hazy detail at a time.

  What... happened?

  Breathless, disoriented, she staggered onto her glaives, swaying as her legs threatened to give out. The ground beneath her was uneven. A field of shattered stone and twisted metal. Her glaives scraped against the debris as she started sliding, so she leaned on a cracked wall for balance.

  When her eyes finally managed to focus on what was directly ahead of her, though, she froze.

  The square was gone.

  No, not gone—obliterated.

  The entire residential district square had been wiped out, reduced to a desolate wasteland. Buildings were no longer buildings. They were mounds of shredded rubble, steel, and splintered wood. Not a single structure stood within sight. The ground was cratered and torn, uneven and scarred. Smoke and ash hung in the air, blotting out what little sunlight was left—and at the centre of this destruction stood a single four-armed, two-legged Water Scorpion God, panting for her own breath with all four hands on her knees.

  Eurypteria.

  Her limp scorpion tail shimmered with the remnants of her Swarmblood Art—that black and electric blue vortex flickering faintly at its tip—but it was quite evident that she was tired. Exhausted. Activating her Swarmblood Art for what must’ve been the first time in decades drained her the same way activating Storm Glaives for the first time had knocked Marisol out for a month.

  Even still, the Water Scorpion God was the only one in the district standing tall, expelling a killing pressure that made Marisol’s knees weak.

  And Marisol blinked as the memories came rushing back.

  The fight. The vortex. The others.

  Her stomach lurched as she whipped her gaze from Eurypteria to the ruins around her. The cannons were wrecked, their barrels twisted and scattered like broken toys. Soldiers were strewn across the battlefield, many motionless, others groaning in pain. She wasn’t alone here. The others were just down on the ground, hiding behind mounds of rubble, and… just as she was about to double-over and throw up from her sheer, swirling headache, someone grabbed her from behind and yanked her down behind a mound of rubble.

  “... Storm Strider!”

  A medic’s face came into view, pale and smeared with dirt and blood. Her voice was sharp, but Marisol could barely hear it over the ringing in her ears.

  “Are ye hurt?” The medic’s hands were on her shoulders, shaking her lightly, but Marisol couldn’t form a response.

  Her eyes drifted past the medic, drawn to the sight just beyond.

  Reina was kneeling next to Hugo, and his body was... wrong. He was lying in two pieces, bisected at the waist, his expression frozen in calm but gentle determination. Reina’s head was bowed, her hands trembling as they hovered uselessly over him.

  He’s dead.

  Marisol’s chest tightened. While a few medics slid over and started running healing shrimp antennae across the various cuts and scrapes on her body, she tore her gaze away, only for it to land on another grim scene—Helena knelt right next to Reina, her uniform torn and bloodied as she crouched over the prone forms of her older brothers. Aidan and Bruno. Both men were alive, but barely, and they were groaning weakly as Helena desperately tried to stop the bleeding from their injuries.

  Marisol’s vision blurred again as her hands clenched into fists.

  They can’t fight anymore.

  This is… this is—

  “Is this it?”

  Eurypteria’s roar cut through the chaos like a blade, and Marisol’s head snapped up, her breath catching in her throat.

  The Water Scorpion God’s voice was sharp and mocking, echoing across the ruins with an unnatural resonance.

  “Is this all you have?” she bellowed. Over the mound of rubble, the Water Scorpion God’s bladed limbs twitched as she swished her tail through the air, a blood-curdling cackle bubbling out of her chest. “Is this all the strength you’re willing to show for the ‘weakest’ Insect God?”

  Marisol’s chest heaved as she tried to steady her breathing. Her body was trembling, her mind racing.

  This can’t be it.

  We… we can’t be done.

  But even as she thought it, doubt clawed at her. Her eyes drifted back to Hugo. To the cannons. To the fallen soldiers. No doubt about it. Without care for his own health, Hugo had woven a cocoon over all of them just moments before Eurypteria’s vortex tail struck all of them, preventing most of them from dying outright, but it still wasn’t enough. Dozens of Guards and Imperators were still dead. They were still hopelessly outmatched. Outclassed.

  For a moment, she thought about turning back.

  She thought about running.

  But then her gaze fell on Reina, Helena, the medics, and the rest of the soldiers who were still panting for breath and hiding behind their scattered mounds of rubble—and she bit her tongue hard enough to draw blood, slamming her forehead into the wall of rubble she was taking cover behind.

  That made the medics flinch, but it didn’t stop her from sucking in a cool, steady breath.

  … No.

  I ain’t done.

  Not yet.

  Rapid Rehydration was the only thing saving her. The fog in her mind was clearing much faster than everyone else’s, the aches in her body were dulling quickly with the medic’s shrimp antennae bleeding all over her wounds. Her heartbeat wasn’t steady, but it was steadier than most, so she had to fight.

  Eurypteria let out another sharp, guttural laugh over her mound of rubble, the sound grating and dark.

  “Come on, then!” she roared, her voice thick with disdain. “Where’s your human courage? Where’s your human pride? Will you hide until there is nothing left for you to hide behind?”

  In response, Marisol slid forward. Despite the dreary hopelessness around her, and despite the medics trying to pull her down, her glaives crackled with faint arcs of pinkish-blue electricity as she climbed over her mound of rubble.

  Someone screamed her name from behind, sharp and desperate. She didn’t turn around. She ignored the lingering pain in her ribs, the stinging cuts on her arms. She ignored the fear clawing at the edges of her mind.

  Her eyes were locked on Eurypteria, whose gaze snapped to her instantaneously.

  “I’m… here,” she breathed. “You want… a fight?

  “Come on, then.

  “I’ll give you what you want.”

  And a wide, toothy grin spread across the Water Scorpion God’s face.

  “The water strider, huh?” Eurypteria’s tail twitched, and the faint remnants of a vortex flickered around its tip. “Give me everything you have.”

  Reina knelt in the rubble, hands trembling as they rested over what remained of Hugo. The man hadn’t even been that old, but his face, lined with years of wisdom and too many battles, was still and calm—almost mocking in its peacefulness.

  How could you just go like that?

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The Whirlpool City… still needs its initiate trainer.

  But his lower half was gone, and blood was already pooled beneath him, soaking into the dust, snow, and ash of the battlefield. He was dead, and the world around her was anything but. Smoke curled into the sky in thick, black plumes, blotting out the sun and casting the square into a dim, otherworldly haze. The residential district was unrecognisable, reduced to an uneven field of ruin and debris. Walls had been flattened, buildings had been torn asunder, and the once-proud cobblestone square was now a jagged, cratered wasteland.

  At the center of it all stood Eurypteria.

  The Water Scorpion God’s silhouette was barely visible through the swirling dust and ash, her seven bladed limbs gleaming like silver in the warped light. Her tail arched high above her, the faint shimmer of the vortex at its tip starting to distort the air around it. She was still panting, her frame heaving with exertion, but even without fully activating her Swarmblood Art, her presence was no less terrifying. Her slashes, cleaves, and footwork were no less precise.

  And somehow, Marisol was still alive.

  Reina’s gaze snapped to her rival as Marisol darted and dodged through the ruins like a cornered animal, frantic and desperate. Dust clung to her sweat-slicked skin, her hair matted to her forehead, and her eyes burned with desperation. She was fast—faster than anyone else Reina’s age—but it was clear, if nothing changed, that she’d run out of steam very soon. Her balance faltered for half a second, and Eurypteria’s tail slammed into the ground inches from her, spraying stone and debris into the air.

  Move, Marisol.

  You have to move.

  And Marisol moved. She twisted her body, narrowly avoiding another strike, her glaives barely finding purchase on the uneven ground. But she wasn’t fighting back. She wasn’t countering. All she was doing was running, dodging, and evading—as though she were buying time for all of them to run away.

  Reina clenched her fists, her leather gloves creaking under the strain.

  I’m supposed to be the Lighthouse Imperator.

  I’m the one trained to defeat Eurypteria.

  And you…

  A sharp, pained groan snapped her out of her thoughts.

  Reina turned her head, her heart sinking as she took in the scene to her left. Helena was kneeling over her older brothers, Aidan and Bruno, both of whom were bloodied and battered. Aidan’s left arm hung limp at his side, his face pale and drawn, while Bruno clutched his stomach, blood seeping between his fingers. Hugo’s last-second cocoons weren’t perfect, though he’d certainly mitigated the disaster that was everyone getting cleaved in half by Eurypteria’s first activation of her Swarmblood Art—it was all the medics could do right now, running their glowing antennae over the two brothers, to keep them alive with their healing blood.

  But of all people, it wasn’t either of the two Lighthouse Imperators who managed to speak first.

  “... Not yet,” Helena rasped. Her hands were still on her brothers’ chests as the medics fixed them up, but when she glanced up to meet Reina’s gaze… there was fear behind her eyes, yes, and yet at the same time, there was something stronger burning behind them.

  Anger.

  Determination.

  Lightning in her eyes.

  “We’re not done,” Helena spat. “Not yet.”

  Reina tore her gaze away, looking beyond Helena to the scattered figures around them. Imperator initiates and Guards—dozens of them—were pushing themselves to their feet. Some leaned on one another for support, others used their weapons or chunks of rubble as crutches, but they stood.

  Bloodied, broken, and battered, they stood.

  The medic treating her brothers glanced around with sweat pouring down her brows, biting her teeth. “Get down, all of you!” she snapped. “You’re all in no shape to fight—”

  “We can’t fight,” one of the initiates said, his voice steady despite the blood trickling down his temple. “But we can help.”

  Another Guard, her armor dented and cracked, took a shaky step forward. “Master Hugo trained us. All of us. We’re not… letting him die in vain.”

  Reina’s chest tightened as she looked at their faces—faces she recognised, faces she didn’t recognise, faces she’d trained alongside, faces she’d fought beside. All of them had something to say about Hugo, about the Guards, about the Imperators, and frankly, she couldn’t make heads or tails of even half of their overlapping shouts and declarations, but the spirit was there.

  ‘This isn’t over’.

  …

  … This isn’t over.

  Her hands shook as she reached down and closed Hugo’s eyes. The man had earned his rest—it was time for the rest of them to pull their weight.

  Taking a deep breath, Reina forced herself to her feet. Her legs wobbled, but she steadied herself, planting her boots firmly on the uneven ground. Around her, Guards and Imperators stared in silent expectation, their faces a mixture of fear, desperation, and bright, burning hope. They still believed they could win. They still wanted to believe they could win, so it was her turn to lead.

  “Fifth Lighthouse Imperator, Reina Torrealba taking command!” she shouted, her voice firm despite the tremors in her chest. “I need all able-bodied Guards to spread out across the residential district! Comb the ruins for any intact Mutant-Class carcasses and drag them back here! I will devour them alongside the Storm Strider for a last-minute boost in strength!”

  The Guards didn’t hesitate. They knew this was the only thing they could do, so they only exchanged brief glances with one another before scattering every which way, running on pure adrenaline and willpower. Next, Reina turned her attention to the dozen or so Imperator initiates, their older faces pale and streaked with grime.

  “The rest of you, get to Lighthouse Five!” she commanded, pointing far, far up the city, towards the edge of the whirlpool. “The wall of anti-chitin autocannons may have been built by Maria’s Sangroja Household, and the ammunition may be supplied by her family’s factories, but control over those autocannons falls under the administrative jurisdiction of Lighthouse Five! I want every last one of those cannons turned away from the Crawling Seas and firing on Eurypteria!”

  One of the initiates, a girl with a bloodied bandage wrapped around her head, hesitated. “But, Miss Reina, those cannons are the only thing holding back the Crawling Seas—”

  Reina cut her off with a sharp glare. “The Crawling Seas will still be here after this fight is over, but Eurypteria won’t! She’s just a goddamn water scorpion with seven bladed limbs! Nothing’s changed just because she’s used her Swarmblood Art! We throw enough projectiles at her fast enough, and she won’t be able to block them all!”

  She knew the stakes better than anyone else. Those autocannons were supposed to be firing on the Crawling Seas twenty-four hours a day, but right now, they had nothing left. All of their cannons in the district were destroyed, and they had no backup artillery anywhere close by. If there were any weapons in their arsenal capable of volleying shells at Eurypteria from afar, they’d be the Deepwater Legion Front’s most long-lasting and reliable autocannons—and the Imperator initiates understood this as well.

  All of them scattered, and Reina only nodded at the medics one more time for good measure before taking another deep breath.

  Eurypteria was her archnemesis to kill—not Marisol’s.

  Marisol darted across the ruins, her glaives slicing the air as she jumped and dodged the air blades slicing behind her.

  “Stop running and fight!” Eurypteria’s voice thundered. She gritted her teeth and ignored the command. The Water Scorpion God’s shriek sent tremors through the earth, but she couldn’t stop—couldn’t afford to stop. Her entire body ached, muscles screaming from overexertion, but adrenaline and sheer stubbornness pushed her forward. If she stopped now, she’d lose her momentum, and she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to get up again.

  No cover! No escape! Just keep moving!

  A jagged piece of metal skidded underfoot, nearly tripping her. She stumbled, righting herself just as Eurypteria’s tail lashed past her head. The air cracked with the force of it, the tip gouging deep furrows into a broken building in front of her.

  Marisol whipped around, her teeth bared. “You’re gonna have to try harder than that!” she shouted, though her voice was hoarse and shaking. But the taunt worked. Eurypteria snarled, the tip of her tail beginning to glow with a vortex of seething blood once more—the Water Scorpion God was going to activate her Swarmblood Art in full again, and if she were allowed to do that, nobody here would survive.

  But before Marisol could even consider pivoting and charging straight into Eurypteria for a last-ditch attempt to kill, Reina shouted at her somewhere from behind.

  “Jump, Mari!”

  Marisol didn’t think twice. She coiled her legs and launched herself skyward with all of her strength, soaring over a broken building.

  Beneath her, Eurypteria hissed in fury. The Water Scorpion God reared back, her tail arcing overhead as the vortex at its tip began to churn. She felt the pull immediately, the gravitational force dragging at her limbs, and just as she was about to wonder if she’d hallucinated Reina telling her to do the worst possible thing anyone could do in the middle of a fight—jump and make themselves vulnerable mid-air—a deafening boom split the sky.

  And her eyes widened as a dozen explosive shells screamed past her, slamming into Eurypteria with devastating precision.

  The impact detonated in a cascade of flame and shrapnel. The blast wave hit Marisol midair, sending her spiraling backward, but she managed to land on her glaives and skid to a relatively safe halt amid a shower of debris. Then her legs turned to jelly and she fell flat onto her stomach. Pain flared up her sides, but she was still alive, gasping for breath.

  More shells followed, a relentless barrage raining down on Eurypteria’s position. The explosions turned the already ruined battlefield into an inferno, the air thick with smoke and ash.

  Marisol raised her head and squinted through the haze, her heart hammering in her chest.

  That artillery—

  [Source confirmed: Lighthouse Five autocannons from the far west, ten kilometres off the shore of the Harbour City’s western shoreline,] the Archive buzzed. [Ammunition type: anti-chitin explosives. Firing trajectory: hyper-accurate. Those specialised shells are much, much, much more powerful than your average anti-chitin cannonballs.]

  Through the smoke and fire, though, Eurypteria’s voice erupted once more, dripping with venom.

  “Is this all you have?”

  Marisol paled as she watched the Water Scorpion God emerge from the inferno, her bladed limbs cutting through the smoke and flames as if they were nothing. Her carapace was scorched, blackened in places, sure, but she stood tall. Unbroken. The first volley didn’t kill her.

  From the edge of the battlefield, Reina’s voice rang out again, this time coming from several directions as her command was amplified through the scattered conch shell speakers.

  “All autocannons, increase fire rate! Don’t stop firing until she’s down!”

  Another volley of shells screamed overhead, crashing down into Eurypteria with brutal force. The Water Scorpion God hissed, her bladed limbs thrashing against the onslaught once more—and for the first time, Marisol saw her falter. Saw her struggling to deal with all the shells at once.

  Then, a commotion behind Marisol made her turn. A small group of two dozen Guards stumbled onto the field, their armours dented and bloodied, dragging several Mutant-Class carcasses behind them. Their faces were pale, their movements sluggish, but lightning burned in their eyes and Marisol recognised a few of the carcasses they were dragging forward. She’d killed at least half of them between yesterday and today.

  Reina and Helena weren’t far behind the Guards. Reina reached her first, sliding to her knees beside her, and the Lighthouse Imperator’s expression was sharp and unyielding. There was no hesitation, no doubt—only grim determination.

  So Marisol lifted her head, her breath coming in shallow gasps. “What’s… the plan?”

  Reina didn’t waver. She leaned closer, voice brimming with conviction.

  “We kill Eurypteria,” she said. “Here and now.”

  “And how are we gonna do that?”

  Reina didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she gestured sharply at the Guards, who were already dragging the nearest carcasses closer. “Bring them here! All of them! Move!”

  The Guards obeyed without question, their boots crunching against the rubble as they heaved the massive crustaceans bodies forward.

  Marisol gritted her teeth and pushed herself into a seated position, shaking her head. “I’m assuming… you do have a plan to deal with her Swarmblood Art?”

  Reina’s jaw tightened, and her eyes flicked downward. For a moment, her resolve seemed to falter, but then she reached behind her, her hand brushing the segmented, chitinous tail that curled menacingly at her back.

  “... She’s a water scorpion,” Reina whispered, “and so am I.”

  Helena exchanged a glance with the nearby Imperators, but they said nothing. Their trust in Reina was unshaken.

  For her part, Marisol was smiling now—it wasn’t the confident or relieved sort of smile, but rather, she was just glad they hadn’t given up yet.

  She raised a shaky, trembling fist, and Reina bumped it without hesitation.

  So the plan is simple.

  [Beyond simple.]

  While the autocannons from the far west continue suppressing Eurypteria, we’ll eat as much bug meat as we can stuff down our throats.

  [You should be able to pick one from three tier five core mutations. In short, ‘Surfactant Domain’ will allow you to release a surfactant liquid from your glaives that will reduce friction and increase your speed, ‘Basic Vision’ will enhance your vision, and ‘Segmented Flexion’ will evolve flexion joints in your glaives so they can bend without losing sharpness.]

  Good.

  I already know which one I’ll be unlocking.

  [Then bring down the Insect God.]

  [Updating objective.]

  [Objective #69: Slay the E-Rank Water Scorpion God, Eurypteria]

  [Time Limit: 3 minutes]

  [Reward: Death of a Sea God]

  [Failure: Destruction of the Whirlpool City]

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