[T3 Core Mutation Unlocked: Basic Wings Lvl. 1]

  [Brief Description: You have grown short wings specialized for gliding between your shoulder blades. These wings are incapable of flying. Subsequent levels in this mutation will decrease the stamina drain from using your wings]

  [Aura: 852 → 1,002]

  [Points: 205 → 55]

  After making sure the marauders wouldn’t find them inside the grotto, the first thing all of them did was sleep the rest of the night off. They were all wet, bloody, and exhausted, Marisol included—so they only started figuring out their next course of action after waking up bright and early the next morning.

  Marisol thought, peering over the edge of the grotto as she did.

  the Archive said plainly.

  The explanation didn't convince her for a second. It was one thing if she could flap her wings, but the short, glassy, veiny fabrics that'd grown between her shoulder blades felt beyond flimsy to the touch. She glanced behind her and pinched her wings, feeling no pain, no sensation. It was like she was just wearing another piece of apparel over her normal cloak.

  the Archive said.

  …

  Chewing her lip, she looked further behind her and saw the Guards unloading most of their supplies from the warship. They had to feed and care for a dozen rescued slaves, after all, and the warship was just not holding up well. Between the gaping holes in the hull and the massive tears in all three sails, it'd be a while before they could start moving again. Making camp in this grotto was definitely the right move for the time being.

  She looked to Enrique, who was ordering for tents to be set up around the small pond, and his warrior instincts were very keen. His gaze latched onto hers for a brief moment, and he nodded, giving her a look that seemed to say, ‘scram and find us some usable parts for repair already’.

  If the Guards were going to be busy making camp here, then she was the only one who could go out on an expedition.

  she muttered, turning around and gulping as she peered off the ledge.

  “Marisol?”

  Catrina's voice made her whirl, and the weary young lady looked a bit startled. The two of them were the only girls on the warship, so it came as no surprise to her that Catrina may be wondering what she was planning to do… and she couldn't very well say she was just going to jump off a hundred-meter-tall ledge, could she?

  “You dropped these in the cabin back then, before you left to help father fight off the boarding marauders,” Catrina said, holding out two pearls in her palms with a small, uncertain look. “These things… were harvested from that giant remipede, right? Were you keeping them so you could make Symbiosteel with them?”

  Marisol blinked. Then she patted herself down, realizing she hadn't even noticed.

  “I'm not sure if this would suffice, but I made a little something out of them. Close your eyes for me?”

  Catrina waved at her to close her eyes and turn her head to the side, so she did, with a of hesitation—then she felt a prick on her left earlobe, making her wince. A second prick on her other earlobe made her reel away, prying her eyelids open as her fingers flew up to touch her ears.

  The young lady in front of her only gave her a pretty, charming laugh as she felt the smooth pearls pinned in her ears.

  [Remipede Earrings (Grade: F-Rank)(Per: +1/1)(Aura: -100)]

  “My mother liked catching pearls and making jewelry out of them, so I made earrings out of those ‘pearls’. The pins are made from rolled-up ant chitin as well, so you can… what’s the word? ‘Meld’ with them?” Catrina beamed, scratching the back of her head and averting her eyes slightly. “If you don’t like them, I can turn them into something else. I can make all sorts of jewelry as long as you give me the parts. For now, though—”

  Marisol hugged her, making her pause mid-sentence.

  “I like them!” Marisol said, pulling away as she twirled the pearls in her earlobe. They didn’t hurt too bad, they didn’t feel like they’d fall off anytime soon, they looked pretty to boot. “Hey, maybe you can even make something pretty out of those remipede parts the guys have been hoarding? If you could make bracelets or necklaces for everyone, wouldn’t we all be a lot stronger?”

  Catrina smiled weakly, shaking her head. “I’m not a Symbiosteel Maker. The best I can do is stick pins into pearls, carve a few decorative glyphs into them, and put them in your ears,” she said, before clasping her hands in front of her and dipping her head slightly. “Come back safe, Marisol. There are still stories I wish to hear of the desert.”

  Marisol couldn’t resist giving Catrina another hug before the young lady returned to the warship, adamant on helping out with nursing the wounded. A few men glanced her way and looked stunned for a moment—evidently, her pearls shone like the moon itself and everyone wanted a piece of them—so that was all the confidence boost she needed to face the hundred-meter-tall ledge again.

  She sucked in a sharp breath.

  She adjusted her earrings.

  And then she leaped off, soaring through the thin wall of foliage as the mighty sunlit canyon opened up before her.

  It was just a normal jump at first, a mere long jump ten meters away from the grotto, but then she started falling. Gravity took hold of her. The sinking sensation in her gut made her arms flail and panic for a moment before her glaives slammed into something hard—a floating chunk of wooden debris that’d split off the warship as they sailed into the grotto. She tumbled and stopped right before she could roll off the edge, her heart thumping in her chest as her eyes grew wide with terror and excitement.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  For a second there, she felt as though she was flying.

  she thought, glancing back at her twitching wings, and she poked at them as though doing so would make them come alive.

  She looked anxiously down at the canyon, realizing her floating debris was slowly, steadily sinking. There were dozens and hundreds of other floating items in the air nearby—slabs of stone, mossy branches, and countless other sheddings from the mountainous islands around her.

  the Archive said, wagging a leg at her from atop her shoulder.

  the Archive interrupted, tapping where her wings connected to her shoulder blades.

  Marisol bit her lips, staring at the closest debris she could jump to.

  Sucking in another deep breath, she closed her eyes and felt the winds passing through her, making her cloak, scarf, and hair flutter under thin sunlight—then, she jumped with all her strength. She soared fifteen meters up and slammed upside-down into a slab of stone. Her glaives stabbed into the stone and the setae on her palms helped her stick to it, but then the slab started sinking quickly. She took off for a distant slab again, chaining her momentum together as she leapfrogged across the canyon.

  Surprisingly, it wasn’t as physically demanding as it was mentally terrifying. Gravity was here, but it was really, weak. She could already leap ten meters up with her enhanced strength, so it should’ve come as no surprise that she could bounce from debris to debris like she was taking a stroll in the park. Regardless, her heart was still in her throat every time she jumped, and… she the sensation. The speed. The weightlessness. There were so many dance moves she couldn’t pull off on land or water that she could easily try out here, in the sky, but that’d just be reckless of her.

  One wrong slip and she’d fall to her death. That much hadn’t changed.

  So, the next time she slammed hard against a piece of debris on all fours, she narrowed her eyes at a particularly faraway piece as her next destination. It was at least a hundred meters away with nothing floating in between. She wouldn’t be able to back out halfway through.

  Jump or die.

  With a sharp exhale, she leaped. The wind whirled around her, the debris shattering under her glaives and scattering across the canyon. The sheer burst of speed carried her twenty meters forward, shooting her in a straight line, but then she started dipping. She started falling. She pressed her arms flat against her sides and gritted her teeth, trying to ‘feel’ the extra appendages jutting out her shoulder blades.

  And then she willed strength into them the same way she did her legs, making them unfurl and fan out to her sides.

  She dipped for only three seconds, but then she tilted her upper body and let the winds carry her back up. The air was cool and sharp against her skin. It tugged at her clothes, whipped through her hair, and the taste of salt from the roaring torrents below her clung to her lips. She spread her arms and let out a laugh, her body charged with more energy than she’d ever felt before.

  it said lazily.

  She reacted a bit too late, slamming headfirst into the slab of stone she’d been aiming for, and it was only because of the setae on her palms that she stayed glued to it instead of peeling right off.

  Groaning, she rubbed her bruised nose and flicked the little water strider on her shoulder with a scowl. With one more glare at the little water strider, she turned and looked out at the rest of the canyon. Now that she could glide and cruise along the winds, she could essentially go wherever she pleased within the strait.

  the Archive said, gesturing broadly around her.

  She turned her head around, squinting for anything of the sort floating across the canyon.

  the Archive chided, poking at her earrings.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep, heavy whiff of the air—smelling mostly brine and the sharp, fresh scent of the morning. There were also a dozen more subtle scents swirling underneath it all. The gushing smell of flesh. Vigorous streams of blood. She opened her eyes slowly and felt as though she could physically ‘see’ the trails of blood leading her in every conceivable direction. Each of them would surely end at a giant carcass.

  The only question now was which trail of blood to follow.

  She nodded briskly and took off from her debris, gliding a bit lower in the canyon as she headed towards her first carcass. Flying straight was a bit difficult at the beginning, but eventually she got the hang of it—it really was ‘instinctual’ as the Archive had said—and landed on the side of the cliff. She stared down at a giant orange shrimp impaled on a jutting rock spike.

  She winced at the gruesome manner of death, and quickly waved this first option off as she jumped after the second blood trail.

  she thought, half-mumbling to herself as she checked the second, third and fourth carcasses. They were all manners of shrimp, crabs and lobsters smashed against the side of the canyon.

  So she bounced around for what felt like two or three more hours, growing more and more tired with each hard-shelled crustacean carcass she checked. There were still hundreds more blood trails for her to follow, but she felt she was starting to stray too far away from the grotto. Any further and she should probably tell the Guards where she was going first.

  Fortunately, on her way back to the grotto, she came across a giant carp lying flat on a protruded cliffside near the bottom of the canyon. In fact, it was almost directly under the grotto—she’d simply failed to notice it because she only started smelling much later in her hunt. Her eyes lit up as she glided down to the rocky ledge, landing atop the giant carp with a quiet .

  The carp was twenty meters long, ten meters wide, and its eyes were milky white and lifeless. Its bright orange scales were the first thing that caught her eye. They gleamed even under dim sunlight, and each one of them were as wide as a dinner plate, more than large enough to patch up the holes in the warship’s sails. Bits of them were chipped and dulled, and some had fallen away, but for the most part it was not nearly as mutilated as the other carcasses she’d seen the past few hours.

  It was almost as though it’d flopped up to this ledge and just…

  So she took another deep, heavy whiff—and she smelled something acidic lingering in the air, a condensed scent of poison she’d not smelled anywhere else around the canyon.

  She dodged before the Archive could even shout at her, just narrowly evading a feathered dart that slammed into the carp’s scales from behind.

  As she skated back on the carp and whirled, she eyed the dozen dark-green tribesmen hovering in the air above her.

  Their slender, half-insect bodies were suspended effortlessly by their wings beating so fast they were but blurs to her eyes, so if she had to place what type of insect they were…

  the Archive said dryly.