Another week passed.
Marisol was no longer confined in her room, but it felt like she was still trapped in some sense. Victor had told her she could walk around the city and unwind until he called for her, but her bodily aches from three months of intense and extreme physical exertion were still catching up to her.
Thankfully, her mama’s technique book and her Symbiosteel had all been returned to her the day after she beat up the new Imperator recruits, so she spent most of the week lying on her bed, catching up on some much needed rest while going through the remaining two techniques in her mama’s book again.
Even now, as she lay on her back reading her mama’s book, her stomach was still throbbing, her head was still pounding, and her muscles, frankly, felt like sand-jelly. She supposed she just had to be grateful she didn’t get a cramp while fighting the recruits underwater.
she thought, glancing at the cleaned plate by the study desk. The quiet head innkeeper and the receptionist, Daniela, had been diligent about keeping her well-fed this past week, and she felt it was rude to leave her plate full even if she didn’t feel like putting anything in her stomach. So, she’d eaten all of it. . Grilled sea bream stuffed with shreds of lobster, fried squid with crabs stuffed in the tendrils, and loads of other seafood she’d never tried before. At the very least, they were all novel dishes she wouldn’t get tired of eating anytime soon.
She wasn't gaining nearly as many points as she used to back when she was skating on the open seas, risking her life every day, but… getting points for basically free with zero effort was a little enjoyable.
[Name: Marisol Vellamira]
[Grade: F-Rank Mutant-Class]
[Class: Water Strider]
[Swarmblood Art: Charge Glaives]
[Aura: 1,535]
[Points: 24]
[Strength: 4, Speed: 5, Toughness: 3 (+1), Dexterity: 4, Perception: 4 (+1)]
[// MUTATION TREE]
[T1 Mutation | Striding Glaives Lvl. 4
[T2 Mutations | Basic Gills Lvl. 2Repelling Hydrospines Lvl. 5
[T3 Mutations | Basic Apiclaws Lvl. 3Streamlined Wings Lvl. 5Basic Setae Lvl. 2
[T4 Mutations | Basic Discharge | Basic Sonar | Basic Underchitin | Basic Chitin] 500P
[// EQUIPPED SYMBIOSTEEL]
[Ghost Crab Scarf (Grade: F-Rank)(Tou: +1/1)(Aura: -200)]
[Remipede Earrings (Grade: F-Rank)(Per: +1/1)(Aura: -100)]
The Archive sighed in exasperation.
The windows opened from the outside and the light morning drizzle blew in, drenching the desk, floor, and the corners of her bed with cool water. She immediately jolted upright and clutched her book close to her chest, blinking rapidly—she felt her perception level was quite high already, but whenever it came to Victor and his peculiar brand of entrances, it was like she was no different from the average human.
His bandaged hands flew over the window frame as he climbed in, dripping wet from feathered hat to pointed toe.
“... Get up, lass,” he said, thumbing out the window. “You're going to school.”
For her part, Marisol stayed cross-legged on her bed and scowled at the old man.
“What?”
“School.”
“Now?”
“Ya.”
“Well, I gotta brush my hair and wash my face first, then. Get out. I’ll be done in, like, thirty minutes—”
“The wind’ll straighten your hair, and the rain’ll moisturise your skin. We're going now.”
He allowed her to let go of her book, but he didn't wait for her to climb off the bed and hobble to the bathroom. Instead, he picked her up by the collar, threw her out the window, and just before she could soar over the adjacent roof—caught her by the collar again.
Her brain rattled in her skull, and there was little time to comprehend just how fast she was getting dragged across the roof, and to . She felt… maybe they were descending into the lower city? Or maybe they were going up towards the Imperator lighthouses? It was still bright and early in the morning, so she'd just barely woken up.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
She rubbed her eyes groggily, not even bothering with trying to see where Victor was taking her.
He came to a sudden halt, and the deceleration combined with her being let go of sent her flying down the roof, slowly rolling to a stop.
She grumbled under her breath as she rolled onto her sides, clutching her stomach. She didn't want to stand up. The terracotta roof was cool with light rain, and warm sunlight bore down overhead. It was comfy enough that she could just about doze off on the roof were it not for Victor sitting cross-legged next to her, tapping his walking cane on the glass ceiling in front of them.
She didn’t bother sitting up straight this time. She could see and hear just well enough on her sides. The two of them had landed on the roof of some sort of academy in the lower city—a large cathedral-like building with tons of arches and pointy towers in the corners—and peering down through the large glass ceiling in front of her, she noticed something akin to a ‘lecture hall’ about ten metres below. She knew what those looked like since she’d seen drawings of them in recruiting posters from famous academies across the continents, but she’d never actually seen one in person before. Dozens of men and women were seated on rows of benches arranged in a circular, tiered fashion, surrounding a wide oak podium where a professor was writing on a giant black chalkboard.
From the looks of the students still settling down across the lecture hall, class was just about to begin, and the professor—a middle-aged lady with two pairs of white, spindly, shrimp-like antennae—suddenly whirled around to face the class, leaning into her podium.
“... Welcome to Whirlpool City One-Oh-One, ya lot of new Harbour Guard recruits!” the professor drawled, waving at the students with all four antennae, though her actual face was stony and deadpan. “I’ll be yer lecturer, examiner, and tutor for the entire rest of yer time in the Harbour Guard Academy, so best get used to my volume, yeah? I’m the Fourth Lighthouse Imperator, so call me Imperator Claudia—anythin’ else and I’ll give ya the boot. Is that clear?”
A bunch of high-energy, exuberated shouts were the students’ reply, and Marisol yawned as she glanced over at Victor, whose arms were crossed and looking about ready to fall asleep as well.
“What am I even here for?” she asked. “Why do I gotta sit in for some sort of… introductory class?”
Victor yawned. “Just… listen to Claudia, lass.”
“I want to go down and fight. Kill bugs. Get points. Get stronger until I'm ready for Depth Eight. Why am I here with the Guards—”
“Not too loud, lass,” he mumbled. “She’s gonna hear us.”
Marisol blinked. Instinct told her to pull her head back a little as Claudia suddenly snapped up, staring straight at the two of them—but it seemed like the professor just couldn’t see them, so Marisol sighed a soft breath of relief as class resumed downstairs.
“To all of ye who’ve been livin’ under a rock yer entire lives and somehow passed the entrance exam, let’s get all the borin’ housekeepin’ stuff outta the way first,” Claudia said, turning around to draw the Whirlpool City on the blackboard, a piece of chalk curled in each antenna. “The Deepwater Legion Front is the name of this entire region, so ye can consider the Whirlpool City the capital of this Swarmsteel Front. With our headquarters established nearly thirty years ago around this volcano island, we, the Harbour Imperators and the Harbour Guards, have only one purpose to fulfil. Anyone wanna tell me what our job is?”
A student raised their hand in the back row. “The Harbour Imperators defend the Whirlpool City from the Greater Crab God contained at the very bottom of the whirlpool, while the Harbour Guards defend the city from bugs on the outside, Imperator Claudia!”
Claudia snapped her shrimp claws. “Nice! I said one purpose, though, and ye gave me two! Simply speakin’, our ultimate goal is to defend the Deepwater Legion Front and prevent giant crustaceans from reaching the mainland continent. Defendin’ the city at the far western border of the Deepwater Legion Front is just the way we’re currently goin’ about that!”
Marisol had to lean forward a little just to see what Claudia was drawing on the blackboard. It was a map of the Deepwater Legion Front, which was a crescent moon-shaped cove on the far western end of the continent. She already knew what the region looked like from the textbooks she’d read back when she was a child, but seeing it again dredged up old memories—the days and weeks she’d spent kicking her legs on her bed, fantasising about seeing the city first-hand had now come true.
It was just a shame that, now, she wanted nothing more than to get to the bottom of the city and go home as soon as possible.
“Now, inside the nine-thousand-metre deep whirlpool is an aquatic ecosystem the likes of which ye won’t find else in the world,” Claudia continued, drawing horizontal lines across the depths of the whirlpool to demarcate nine separate sections. “Every one thousand metres deep into the whirlpool is a different ‘Depth’, and the ecosystem in each one is vastly different from the others. The entire city’s built to accommodate for the unique resources we can harvest from each Depth, and the legendary healin’ seawater the city’s so famous for? That stuff’s brought up from Depth Eight, eight thousand metres below, and it ain’t easy to come by.
“Now, it’s got none to do with y’all, but just know this: the deeper ya go, the higher the water pressure, the more Corpsetaker's aura will cloud yer judgement, and the stronger the bugs yer gonna face,” Claudia said, slapping the blackboard violently. “And what, pray tell, is aura again?"
A student raised their hand again. "All living beings have aura, Imperator Claudia! It is the natural 'killing pressure' they emit with the bioarcanic essence in their bodies, so we determine how powerful a bug is by perceiving the strength of their aura!"
"Correct! Generally speaking, aura is how we determine the strength of a bug, so the more powerful the aura, the more terrified you'll be when facing it down! 'Killing pressure' is the right term for it! Strengthen your own aura, and the more bugs you'll be able to stare down without being afraid!" Claudia said. "Now, Depth Nine is where our Harbour Imperatrix and the Worm God sealed ‘Corpsetaker’, the Greater Crab God and the strongest bug in the entire west, and the Imperators’ sacred mission is to patrol each Depth to make sure Corpsetaker doesn’t even get a to resurface!”
Then, Claudia began scribbling a bunch of numbers on the board. With fierce sunlight reflecting from the glass, Marisol had to squint just to make out a few of those numbers… but it didn’t seem like anything particularly important, so she didn’t try too hard.
“B-Rank to S-Rank Giant-Class Imperators can only dive down to Depths One to Three respectively!” Claudia said, slapping the board again. “F-Rank to E-Rank Mutant-Class Imperators can only dive down to Depths Four to Six, while D-Rank Mutant-Class Imperators can dive down to Depths Seven to Eight! If ya wanna meet Corpsetaker—which, let’s be honest, ain’t none of ye probably wanna do that—ya gotta be at least C-Rank Mutant-Class, which puts you at the level of a ‘Lighthouse Imperator’! I’m one of ‘em, and I’m the weakest at C-Rank Mutant-Class! There’s six of us Lighthouse Imperators in the city right now, and we’re the only ones who can even think about divin’ down to Depth Nine!”
Hushed murmurs spread across the lecture hall, and Marisol listened to all of the conversations, not one in particular. If she were to be honest, the way Claudia laid the grades and Depths out for them sounded rather frightening. She had no idea what the general opinion was in the city, but she imagined most people in the lecture hall below—new Harbour Guard recruits—didn’t sign up to fight Mutant-Classes or Insect Gods underwater.
Hell, if Marisol could have her way, she’d have stuck with sand-dancing for the rest of her life as well, not here doing… this.
“Now, since there ain’t a lotta Imperators compared to Guards in general, ye can rest assured that there’s of privileges to be had if ye can become an Imperator!” Claudia said, snapping her pincers for order and silence. “High salary! Free housing for yer family in the upper city! Higher priority for healin’ seawater durin’ emergencies! I know most of ye probably have no intentions on ever bein’ an Imperator, but for the past three decades, we’ve recruited at least thirty Imperators right out of the Harbour Guards every single year. To those of ye who want to make a better livin’ for yerself, we’re hopin’ there’ll be lots of prospective and ambitious soldiers within the next four years of your stay here, so try yer hardest while yer still in the academy, yeah?”
Claudia still seemed like she had a lot to say, and though Marisol was starting to grow a little bit interested in the lecture, Victor evidently had enough of it.
Without a word, he grabbed her by the collar and yanked her away from the glass ceiling, pulling her up the roof and back towards the top of the city.
“Aight. Congratulations on graduating,” he muttered, stifling another yawn as her glaives screeched against the roof. “You understand the whole Depth thing and the hierarchy of the Whirlpool City now, right? I don’t gotta sit you down and explain anything to you, right?”
Marisol glared back at the man, scowling fiercely. “I already knew half of what she said about the Depths. My Archive told me.”
“Your Archive told… oh. Right.” He shook his head, muttering under his breath. “Forgot you had Antonio’s system. This was just a huge waste of time, then.”
“Wait. What’d you even bring me here for, then—”
“I forgot you had an Archive, so I thought you knew nothing about the city. I don’t gotta do the boring lecture stuff to catch you up to speed, then.”
“Uh… I know what wanna do, but I ain't got a clue what I’ll be doing with , though.”
He pointed far, far up at Lighthouse Seven as he casually jumped to a different roof, holding her collar all the way. “Imperatrix’s orders. I’ll be your mentor for as long as you’re in the Whirlpool City, and I’ve gotta whip you into shape so you can eventually dive down to Depth Eight without getting crushed by the underwater pressure. Basically, I’m gonna turn you into a Flower Cape equivalent to a Lighthouse Imperator, and preferably, I’ll have you down at Depth Eight by the end of the year.”
Marisol blinked pointedly.
“By the end of the year?” she said. “That’s eight months away. I mean… I accept the fact that, worst case scenario, it might take me an entire year to get back home to my mama, but didn’t that Claudia lady just say it takes four years to even graduate—”
“You’ll be sent out on your first patrolling mission in Depth Two next week. Imperatrix’s orders to see how you’ll fare in an actual underwater mission,” he interrupted. “But, since I feel you can move around in Depth One as is, I have exactly one week to get your body used to the underwater atmosphere. If not, I think you’ll have a rather jolly old time in Depth Two—so we’re going back to Depth One right now.
“Let this old man teach you a trick or two when it comes to moving underwater.”
