[Name: ‘Sparrow’]

  [Grade: D-Rank Mutant-Class]

  [Class: Whiteworm]

  [Swarmblood Art: Worm Maw]

  [Aura: 6,043]

  [Points: 2]

  [Strength: 7, Speed: 7, Toughness: 7, Dexterity: 7, Perception: 7]

  [T1 Mutation | Inorganic Heart Lvl. 10

  [T2 Mutations | Vibrational Senses Lvl. 5 Wormic Bones Lvl. 5

  [T3 Mutations | Segmented SetaeLvl. 3Rigid Annuli Lvl. 4Sclerite Jaw Lvl. 3

  [T4 Mutations | Proliferating Septa Lvl. 2Salt Epidermis Lvl. 2Permeating Mantle Lvl. 2Omnidirectional Ocelli Lvl. 2

  [T5 Mutations | Peristaltic Vibration | Rapid Reconstruction | Cryogenic Release | Hammerhead Replication | Biomineralisation] 1000P

  … Dawn.

  A wintry daybreak.

  A hundred and thirteen children watched in the blizzard, three thousand metres above sea level, as the dense sea of clouds below them was blown apart by the rumble of the Hagi’Shar Forward Army’s march. Sparrow’s perception level wasn’t so high that he could pick out the individual heads at the very bottom, but he didn’t need to; the strength of the Attini Empire’s Ant Class Soldiers was their unity, so he only had to judge the army’s strength by its size and mass.

  And the Hagi’Shar Forward Army was a black sea of ants beneath them, so tightly packed that their uniforms blotted out the white fields of snow they were standing on. They were at least three thousand, most of them undead, and those who were still alive wouldn’t be for much longer. They were all the same in the General’s eyes anyways.

  Ninmah’s half-hearted, low-energy attempt to defuse the tension in the air didn’t work. All of them had stayed awake through the night, pulling their defensive spikes towards the edge of the slope, reloading their rifles and sharpening their arrows. Their eyes were sunken, their shoulders were slumped. They’d eaten as much Boreus as they could stomach and then some more just to level up the attributes they’d been neglecting—there was still the Mutant-Class carcass they were storing in the Barrows, because they just couldn’t butcher it in time with how tough and hard its flesh was to cut.

  If they had a few more hours, maybe they could’ve shared its flesh as well, but the Forward Army was already here. At any moment the General would fire the red coloured pheromone flare to signal the beginning of the siege, and then he’d wait exactly one minute for them to fly a white flag. If they didn’t do so, the General wouldn’t wait any longer.

  Obviously, they had no intention of surrendering Immanu or any of their own to the General.

  But that didn’t mean they weren’t at all nervous.

  The wall of spiked fences was lined with children hunched behind it, clutching nervously onto their shortened bows as they peered down at the Forward Army. Their orders were to run and warp in the scenario the wall was breached. The elders, though, knew they had to stay and fight to cover for their younger siblings, and so they were armed to the teeth with obsidian knives, rifles, spears, quartz crystal bombs, and all sorts of ‘toys’ they’d modified into bug-slaying weapons. They may have been more than happy to put an arrow between a giant bug’s eye, but their enemies were humans this time—flesh and blood, they would be killing the beings they took human forms to protect decades ago.

  So Sparrow held Ninmah’s hand as they stood at the very edge of the slope, hoping, at the very least, that what little warmth he could offer could stop her from shaking as much.

  she whispered, shooting him a small, quivering grin as he glanced down at her hand; it really was her hand that was shaking.

  he said firmly.

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  Surely, Ninmah believed in his belief more than anyone else in Immanu, but fear was difficult to shake. The knife wound in her hand may have healed long ago, but as long as Kuraku still stood on two feet, she wouldn’t be able to stop shaking.

  He’d kill them all again.

  Whatever it took to protect Immanu’s peace.

  So when pinkish-red lights exploded across the Forward Army, a hundred mortar shells piercing the sea of clouds and soaring four thousand metres into the sky to arch down onto Immanu, Utu shouted for everyone to raise their hands. They unfurled their fingers, and their irises turned into starry swirls of light.

  A hundred wormholes opened across the sky above Immanu, and before any of the mortar shells could land, they whizzed right through and exploded—three thousand metres below, shattering the ranks of the Forward Army with a series of cracks.

  They’d reflected the shells back at the army.

  he thought, watching as the anti-chitin shrapnel shredded through hordes of soldiers.

  They weren’t done yet, of course. The Forward Army could fire hundreds more volleys of mortar shells, and eventually they’d all run out of steam. It was for that reason that Ninmah shouted for everyone to kneel and slap their palms onto the ground immediately, and the rumbling began—a hundred and eleven Worm Mages using their only tier five mutation, peristaltic vibration, to shake the blackrock mountains.

  It didn’t take long for the rumbling to turn into groaning, and the groaning to turn into shattering; massive chunks of stone broke from the blackrock mountains around the village and began rolling down the slope, accompanied by an avalanche of snow and wooden spikes they’d deliberately tossed in the night before. They were slow moving debris from his bird’s eye view, but the Forward Army was helpless as the avalanche crushed the first wave of around three hundred soldiers, burying half of the fungus mortars planted right at the bottom of the slope.

  In just a single minute, they’d wiped out a third of the Forward Army.

  Utu shouted, fanning the Worm Mages out so they were covering every inch of the edge of the slope. The elders stayed together with Sparrow and Minki so they could concentrate their peristaltic vibrations in one epicentre.

  The children cheered and whooped and clapped their wrists sore as they warped away, carving a hundred more wormholes in the sky preemptively to reflect the second round of mortar shells back down. Right afterwards, the elders with their palms to the ground started vibrating the mountains again. A second, even avalanche began rolling down the slope, pushing back the thousand or so soldiers trying to ascend through the harshest blizzard Sparrow had ever experienced.

  Brute-forcing the slope wasn’t going to work.

  Looking around, Sparrow already saw the children warping in beds, mattresses, and tarps to pull over their heads. Utu hadn’t been kidding. They really going to camp and live out here for as long as they needed to. The Forward Army quite literally couldn’t shoot enough mortar shells to outnumber the wormholes they could make at once, which meant they could actually afford to have a third of the younger children not on guard duty at all times. Those on rest duty could tend to the village, live their normal lives, and every six hours or so they’d swap places with another group of thirty kids.

  It wasn’t like the mortar-reflecting kids needed to be paying attention constantly on the edge of the slope, either. The sounds of the mortars firing were distinct. They could be doing whatever they wanted on their beds and sofas as long as they looked up every once in a while to carve their wormholes. The eighteen elders could also afford to rotate four or five people out every few hours as well, but, naturally, they needed enough numbers to concentrate their vibrations in order to make avalanches—it’d be a bit tougher for the elders who wouldn’t be able to get much rest or entertainment in for the foreseeable future, but their resolve to be the village’s stalwart guardians weren’t so easy to break.

  Like this, they could hold the slope indefinitely, and they were the ones on home territory. They were the ones with warm beds. They were inorganic beings who didn’t really have to sleep, eat, or drink. Eventually, the Forward Army would run out of food and be left with nothing. Even they would have to call it quits at some point.

  But something also felt a bit… strange.

  Surely, the General knew this wasn’t a siege of three thousand against a little over a hundred. It was a siege of ‘one’ against a little over a hundred. However many grunt soldiers he could revive and control at once, there was no way his aura was so strong that he could afford to keep sending the Forward Army up the slope. Unlike the Worm Mages, nobody could swap out for him so he could take a rest, and the moment he rested, they’d obliterate his army with their greatest avalanche yet—so what, exactly, was the General’s plan here?

  Keep marching his undead up the slope until their bodies physically shattered?

  Keep firing mortar shells until he gets obliterated by them eventually?

  Why could Sparrow see him and Kuraku leading the charge now, after the tenth avalanche, after the eleventh volley of mortar shells were fired and sailing through the sky?

  Sparrow got his answer when he stopped looking with his omnidirectional occeli as much, putting a bit more focus into his vibrational senses—and, like earthworms wriggling to the surface after a rainy morning, three massive holes exploded ten metres below them with a geyser of snow shooting up into the air.

  He managed to fire a shot off at one of the Bullet Ant Soldiers poking their head out of the hole, but the other two got their shots off through the snow screen and nailed two elders in the head with anti-chitin bullets, felling them instantly.

  The eleventh wave of avalanche couldn’t be created with less than ten elders with their palms on their ground.

  And as the Worm Mages around him froze, their breaths catching as they watched their two elders falling slump into the snow, ‘Peregrine’ spit out the bullet Sparrow shot into her forehead and pushed through the snow screen with ‘Crow’ and ‘Harpy’.

  As undead Bullet Ant Soldiers who didn’t need to breathe, they were more than capable of burrowing all the way up without getting noticed on the surface.

  “... Death to the Swarm,” the three of them uttered in sync with the General’s raspy voice, zombie ants gushing out their hollow eye sockets as their rifles aimed upwards with jerky, inhuman motions. “For the Attini Empire.”

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