… A single shaft of blinding sunlight shone down upon the icy cavern, and Sparrow burst out of the mound of snow that’d broken his fall, gasping for breath.

  Frigid ice walls vaporised into cold mist where sunlight touched them, and while he clawed his way out of the snow, limbs and bones aching, he tried to squint up at the chute he’d plummeted all the way through—he couldn’t see much with the sun bearing down on his eyes directly, but he estimated he’d fallen at least fifty metres. Maybe even seventy. The silence was occasionally broken by a pebble bouncing down the walls of the chute, and combined with what he thought was Utu’s faint, shouting voice from afar, it was going to be a difficult journey back to the surface.

  But he had bigger problems right now.

  Tightening his hold on his rifle, he quickly threw himself behind a particularly large ice stalactite and held his breath; the giant black worm burst from the snow on the opposite end of the cavern, screeching in pain and sharpening its crown of teeth against each other. He didn’t need to place his ears on the ground to feel the entire cavern vibrating, the walls cracking, small icicles overhead falling and stabbing into the snow like raining daggers. Giant beasts of any kind were always capable of shattering the eardrums of men, and as a Bullet Ant Soldier, this wasn’t exactly his first time being trapped in an enclosed space with a giant foe.

  As the worm calmed down on its end, its chitin plates cracking and shifting with every little motion, he peeked out from behind his cover and observed the arena they’d been dumped into. At fifty metres across and wide, the cavern had more than enough room for them to coexist without them having to interact with each other. The worm was ten metres long. He was a mite in comparison. If he didn’t want to come in contact with it—and vice versa on its end as well—they could both simply wait until the walls thawed out and revealed tunnels or crevices they could squirm out through. Even better, the worm could simply burrow out of the cavern if it wanted to. Confrontation wasn’t exactly necessary here.

  But the worm wanted to finish off its prey, and Sparrow wanted to know if it was a source of attribute points.

  [Points: 66]

  [Strength: 3, Speed: 4, Toughness: 3, Dexterity: 3, Perception: 2]

  [T1 Mutation | Inorganic Heart Lvl. 10

  [T2 Mutations | Vibrational Senses | Wormic Bones] 50P

  The worm stood upright and twirled its head around, sucking in a swirl of air and making a loud rattling sound with its teeth as it did. It was sniffing him out. Tasting his fear. He knew only because it’d only been a year since he was trapped in an enclosed building with a giant ant that’d decimated his battalion, and the ant had done the exact same thing—making its mandibles screech together was its way of taunting its enemy. He’d survived the encounter back then by not responding to its provocation and hiding until it simply left on its own accord, but worms weren’t bugs; he was in Immanu, a world distant to the one he knew.

  The worm knew where he was and charged, burrowing through the ice with half its body still exposed to the air to get to him.

  [Perception: 2 → 3]

  [Aura: 820 → 828]

  [Points: 66 → 58]

  His extrasensory perception range increased. It didn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, but right now, being able to detect something charging at him from three metres behind his back instead of two was the difference between life and death—he rolled away from his stalactite before the worm barrelled into it with its crown of teeth, kicking up waves of snow that immediately vaporised into cold mist. He slid to a halt and raised his bayonet, gritting his teeth as he tried to read his giant foe properly.

  One of its ends whipped through the mist, through the snow, and its tail end would’ve smashed every single bone in his body if he hadn’t dodged back, putting more distance between the two of them. Its tail swung through with the motion and slammed into the cavern walls next to them. If the mist wasn’t enough already, icicles started falling in droves and some even cut into his skin, their tips a lot sharper than he’d thought they were.

  The rest of the worm charged through and cleared the mist behind it, screeching in its physical warping voice. With the stock of his rifle pressed into the ground, he jerked it up and sent a wave of snow flying into its mouth, trying to weaken its senses as he threw himself off to the side. The worm slammed its crown into the ground where he stood and he charged in—his bayonet didn’t exactly break, but it didn’t pierce through the tough chitin plates, either.

  For two seconds while the worm struggled to pull its head out from the snow, he tried to wedge his bayonet between the seams of its plates, aiming to shred its flesh underneath; it was a futile attempt. He dodged and spun backwards just as it recovered with a roar, sprays of shattered ice flying from where it’d been stuck to cut his skin, finally drawing thin lines of blood. The walls were already weak to begin with. More erratic movements and the cavern might come crumbling down on itself, and the only one that’d survive a collapse was the worm attuned to burrowing underground.

  He to kill it fast.

  The worm started circling him like a swarm of ants around a limping prey, unhurried but murderous, and he drew lines in the snow with his feet while tracking it with his bayonet. His bones were still shaking from the fall, the force of the impact making his muscles shudder involuntarily. He rolled to the right as the worm suddenly snapped forward, burying its crown into the ground as he stabbed once more, trying a different spot on its head—nothing. No piercing. Its plates expanded and pushed against him, forcing him back earlier this time, and he jumped just as it swung its head at him from the side.

  In a panic, he stabbed his bayonet down to latch onto the top of its body. Maybe there was a chance he could ride it like he had a Boreus and poke it down with a hundred stabs, but the worm shook him off like a wild cat before sending him flying through a stalactite, tumbling as icy debris flowed around him.

  His shoulders burned with exertion. Pain was mostly dulled by numbness from the cold, but his fingers were trembling, his vision beginning to blur. Even just scrambling up from where he lay to roll forward one more time, narrowly dodging the worm’s swallowing charge, took all the effort he could muster.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  One last time, he threw himself behind a chunk of ice as cover, trying to buy as much time as he could to recover his stamina.

  Grimacing, panting for breath, he knelt behind his chunk and counted the seconds in his head. The worm would find him in twenty seconds at most, so he had to decide

  He gritted his teeth, gripping his rifle as hard as he could to maintain warmth in his fingers. If he could just buy enough time while dodging around, there was a chance Utu would find a way down and offer him assistance, but by the looks and sounds of it, the cavern would collapse before anyone could reach him. The worm was already enraged from when he’d tried to kill it earlier. Nothing would slow its rampage down.

  Was he just going to die here?

  Could he do nothing but gamble on his points?

  [T2 Core Mutation Unlocked: Wormic Bones Lvl. 1]

  [Brief Description: Your bones have become segmented like the body of a worm. You can now twist and contort yourself in worm-like manners. Subsequent levels in this mutation will increase the range of your motions]

  [Aura: 828 → 878]

  [Points: 58 → 8]

  [Grade: D-Rank Giant-Class → C-Rank Giant-Class]

  The worm snapped its head over to his chunk of ice, locating him at long last.

  Ten seconds left.

  He bared his fangs and growled as pain flared down his arms and legs, an intoxicating sensation compared to the numbing cold of the cavern. Heat built up in his pounding chest, making his skin tingle down to his fingertips. His body was overcome by a wave of… confusion. Rearrangement. He’d unlocked mutations before by order of the General, but tier two mutations weren’t usually full-body mutations—they weren’t usually augmentations that’d make his entire body freeze and seize up, but maybe that was just what he needed right now.

  Clenching his jaw, he pushed through the deafening and of his joints breaking, rearranging, reattaching—

  And then he folded his entire body in half, snapping his spine forward to duck under the worm’s soaring charge that would’ve ripped through his upper half.

  He overdid it a little. Even if every last one of his bones were now heavily segmented, his flesh and muscles couldn’t bend that much without snapping or tearing. He snapped his body upright and straightened his spine, feeling his vertebrae clicking back in place with a little aching, a little bruising—but now it was like all of his bones were , and he could move and dodge like one.

  And, though he hadn’t caught the better half of the sentence back then, he remembered what Utu had said about killing a worm.

  Hundreds of serrated teeth undulated in rapid succession as the worm curled around, evidently angry at him having dodged its leaping swallowing attack. It must’ve noticed something was ‘wrong’ about him from the way it stayed perfectly still for a few moments; its gaping maw was void of empathy, but behind the rows of teeth and the vibrating inner flesh, he noticed something glowing faintly at the end of its mouth. A little blue crystal. The ‘core’.

  He let go of his left hand and clutched his rifle like a javelin instead, stretching his free hand out in front of him to aim.

  The worm lost all interest in studying him and sprung to life. Undulating, screeching, it lunged straight at his head, the ground buckling as it shifted its weight forward. He jerked his body to the left so fast his shoulders cracked and one of his ankles snapped under the force of movement, but a wince was all he’d allow himself before he his bones back, realigning his joints, regaining his balance. While the worm growled and turned to look for him, he aimed with his javelin again. Measuring the distance. Measuring the strength he’d need. The worm charged him again, but if he’d been subconsciously scared of breaking his bones before, he wasn’t now.

  Dodging and narrowly squirming past every charge from the worm, his chest burned with energy. The adrenaline rush from brushing with certain death over and over again was like nothing he’d felt before. Every sidestep, every broken bone, every twirl and caper and jump past his old limits would not go to waste; he was more focused on aiming than he’d ever been.

  He was a Bullet Ant Soldier.

  The air twisted and twirled around his body as he warped back a half-step, dodging the worm’s desperate chomp, and now he was so close he could touch its teeth with his free hand. He didn’t. He closed his left eye. He visualised a circular scope hovering in front of him. He threw his entire self forward and spun with the motion, sending his bayonet straight into its mouth—and every bone in his right arm snapped to make his throw crack like a whip, adding just that little extra amount of force needed to make the projectile soar straight through to the very end.

  Utu may have been slightly off the mark, but his bayonet hit centre mass, firm and true. A flash of blue light and the sound of something crystal-like shattering made him warp back out of caution; it was similar to when an anti-chitin shrapnel shell was about to malfunction and explode on its own, but in this case, nothing of the sort happened.

  This time, the worm didn’t even manage a pitiful death throe. It twitched for a bit, contorted in jagged angles, and slammed into a few more stalactites and walls and boulders as it thrashed around in pain—then it sank halfway into the thick snow, a slow but dramatic death for what wasn’t even a giant bug hell-bent on destroying humanity.

  He stumbled a few more steps back, eyes twitching, wondering if it’d rise again with his bayonet stuck inside its body.

  Ninmah cried, warping right behind him with a dozen other Worm Mages—all of them of the older bunch, the patrolling group. The village chief inadvertently kicked the back of his knees and made him fall, head falling backwards; she caught him just as expertly and pulled him upright, patting his body up and down worriedly.

  Two of the older children stepped forward with wet towels in their hands, but Sparrow fended them off by waving his hand around, drawing a check mark in the snow with his heel. Ninmah held him by the shoulders, teary-eyed still, but really this amount of fighting was compared to the exertion of opening and maintaining a wormhole; he’d fought longer and more exhausting battles against the Swarm before, and he’d been injured even worse. He was fine.

  So Sparrow threw a look over at the Worm Mage hiding and twiddling his thumbs at the back of the group, before deciding to kick an ice shard at his forehead—Utu instantly yelped and stumbled forward, falling on his face right before Ninmah.

  Utu mumbled, munching down on a mouthful of snow as he pushed himself to his feet, smiling apologetically at Sparrow. he finally seemed to notice the giant worm carcass they were gathered in front of, alongside the other Worm Mages who immediately took a step back out of fright; Utu and Ninmah’s eyes were both sparkling white and blue.

  Ninmah whacked Utu on the back of his head, scowling fiercely.

  Ninmah whacked him again.

  Utu turned to Sparrow and scratched his hair, bowing sheepishly.

  Ninmah didn’t look at all content with Utu’s apology, but when the younger boy reached into his cloak and handed Sparrow a handful of squirming snack worms, she immediately beamed and nodded in satisfaction. She has this look on her face that said ‘I taught you well’, and the moment Sparrow accepted Utu's worms, the two of them started laughing, slapping each other on the back as Ninmah reprimanded him one more time on the importance of hunting in fours.

  Sparrow tossed the worms while they weren't looking. For his part, he’d already calmed down from the whole incident. He’d only gotten himself a little bit injured, but if the darkworm’s flesh would yield him even just a modicum sum of points, it’d all be worth it in the end.

  So, while the Worm Mages continued squabbling and quibbling and poking the giant carcass with their bows, Sparrow tapped Ninmah on the back of her head to make her jump out of fright.

  Before she could whack him, too, for making her jump, he mimed chopping his index finger with another finger into segments. Ninmah tilted her head, puzzled. He finished his mime by fake eating his finger, making a big show of gulping loudly.

  “... Ah!” Ninmah said, pounding her fist into an open palm. “Yes! Of course we’ll be taking it back to the village for butchering!”

  And that was all he really wanted to hear.

  As he watched the Worm Mages gather around the darkworm carcass, preparing to warp it out of the cavern at once, he couldn’t help but stare at his index finger.

  He could it and bend it back in place.

  What other tier two mutation could let him do such a thing?