… One week after the Hagi’Shar Forward Army was annihilated, Enki finished burying all of the Worm Mages in a little moonflower garden in the centre of the village, where the bell tower once stood.

  A hundred and twelve children were easy enough to carry and warp out of the Barrows, but figuring out how to lay them to rest was much more difficult. He’d spent the better part of the week cleaning up the village: warping the rubble to the outskirts, washing blood off the streets with artificial avalanches made with peristaltic vibration, and cleaning each and every last one of the children as best as he could. He wasn’t used to taking care of people, but eventually everyone was in proper condition to sleep. Today was a sunny morning, and he made sure to line each grave with the child’s favourite toy, pillow, and blanket before putting snow over them.

  Most of the younger kids were in their little cliques. He thought Utu would probably want to sleep with Minki, and he felt Minki probably wouldn’t mind, so he dug both of their graves side by side and covered them with the same blanket. The hardest one to figure out was Ninmah—he thought about putting her in the centre of the circle of graves, just because she was the village chief, but then he felt she’d probably hate that. She’d tell him to just stick her somewhere with space left over, so that was exactly what he did.

  He buried her last, laying her to rest in a random section of the circle, and once he was done filling up all of their graves… he tossed his shovel away and started seeding moonflowers for each of them.

  They’d probably like that.

  They’d probably like it even more if, after he finished planting the flowers, he prayed for them and sent them off with the proper blessings.

  Again with the ‘proper’, though, he didn’t really know what to say. He hadn’t listened to them when they’d sent off the Bullet Ant Soldiers the first time around, and now he sorely regretted doing so—maybe it’d be fine if he simply thanked them for everything they’d done for him?

  That sounded about right.

  Even if he didn’t know how to properly pray for any of them, all he had to do was clasp his hands together, kneel before them, and try to reach him with the words in his heart—because their hearts would reach back, and they’d meet him halfway there in the ‘In-Between’.

  Just as Worm Mages do.

  And he wasn’t going to dig out any of their bodies for research.

  The Worm Mages had already suffered enough.

  Humans fighting humans, Bullet Ant Battalions formed just to deal with anti-human soldiers from the other Swarmsteel Fronts… it was a complete waste of time.

  At the end of the day, it was the Swarm that took everything away from everyone—so he’d simply become strong enough to turn the tides of war against the Swarm.

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  After all, he wasn’t going to give up here.

  [Name: Enki Immanu]

  [Grade: C-Rank Mutant-Class]

  [Class: Whiteworm]

  [Swarmblood Art: Worm Maw]

  [Aura: 7,543]

  [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 VibrationLvl. 1

  He was going to keep going.

  Keep getting stronger as the ‘Demigod of the In-Between’.

  He finished praying for all of them and rose to his feet, quite slowly, quite lazily. His rifle was slung over his shoulders. The diamond moonflower hair ornament he’d shot at General Wanuy was gone, and he’d really tried his hardest to see if he could salvage it from the snow, but the fact of the matter was, that final ‘bullet’ of his was made of such hardy material that it completely decimated the blackrock mountain he fired it into. The garden and the shrine at the top of the world was destroyed as a result. He’d barely managed to pull the Worm Mages’ bodies out of the Barrows before even the caves collapsed; there was no way the undead General Wanuy survived the entire mountain crushing him to bits, and there was no way anyone could ever access the Barrows ever again.

  Breaking one tradition after another, disrespecting their culture again and again—and in the end, he’d decided to break just more little tradition of theirs.

  Before he’d buried the Worm Mages, he’d plucked off all their moonflower hair ornaments and pinned them into his cloak, making sure they were so tightly arranged that they jingled with every step he took.

  Now, he had a cloak made out of glimmering diamond moonflowers, and… honestly, he felt the Worm Mages would forgive him for not burying them with their favourite ornaments. They were simply kind like that, and if they knew their ornaments could be used as mountain-shattering bullets, they’d probably be all on board with him taking the little accessories with him anyways.

  He’d be sure to put his pretty cloak to good use.

  “… Right,” he whispered. “I’m going, then.”

  Bowing one last time to the village that’d made him a half-inorganic god, he turned and started walking away from the circle of graves, heading for the slope that’d take him down to the surface world.

  As he walked, he activated peristaltic vibration, burying the entire village under an avalanche of snow and stones.

  The moonflowers he’d seeded on the children’s graves weren’t so weak that they couldn’t grow through the snow and emerge on top in a few years.

  Her final request came in two parts: defeating the General, which he already did, and then defeating the Swarm. That last part was a tall order, but… well, he’d do anything his big sister told him to do.

  She’d paid him a snack worm for his troubles.

  So, standing on the edge of the slope, Enki looked at the far southern horizon past the sea of clouds and figured: if he had to start somewhere, he might as well return ‘home’ and start destroying the Swarm there first.

  Besides, there were a few things he wanted to say to the Attini Empire, the Empress and Her Four Families, and the various Forward Armies that made children fight as living weapons.

  There were lots of bugs he wanted to kill.

  is the main story of this entire universe, set forty years after this story. is an ongoing spinoff set thirty-four years after this story. is also an ongoing spinoff set one year after this story, and serves as an almost-direct continuation of this story. As usual, you don't have to read multiple stories just to understand the plot of one. Each story can be read completely standalone, though please note that all my stories are vastly different in terms of tone, pacing, and setting!

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