The cloud of sand rose to five metres, then ten metres, then finally fifteen metres—casting a wide shadow over Marisol as she clenched her throat in anxiety.

  It wasn’t a cloud of ‘sand’, to be exact, but rather a swarm of finger-sized crustaceans stuck together to take the form of a bioluminescent, bluish-purplish-reddish tree.

  [Identification Complete]

  [Common Names: Copepods]

  [Grades: 4000x B-Rank Critter-Classes]

  [Aura: ~6,000]

  [Strength: ~5, Speed: ~4, Toughness: ~1, Dexterity: ~2, Perception: ~3]

  [Brief Description: Slender, double-segmented, and clustered. Copepods are deep sea crustaceans distinguished by their light-producing glands. They emit striking bioluminescence used primarily for predator evasion through distraction and counter-illumination. Their antennae are also prominent and feathered, aiding in both propulsion and sensing changes in their environment as they move through the sea, but when they are gathered in numerous clumps and clusters, they become highly aggressive]

  “... Critter-Class copepods,” Aidan mumbled, patting her shoulder from the back as the three of them walked past her, shrugging their pistol shrimp arms. “They’re the most generic aquatic bugs you’ll find down here, and while they ain’t particularly dangerous in clumps of a hundred or two, when they’re all clumped up in the thousands like that, they can easily rend all flesh from your bones in under a minute.”

  “There’s not supposed to be so many of them just hiding up in Depth Two, though,” Helena said, driving her heel into the ground and casting her free hand back, telling Marisol to stay where she was. “Either they drifted up here incidentally, or they were starving for planktons down in Depth Three. Whatever the case, this is the point of the patrols: we get rid of any bugs that are out of place.”

  Finally, Bruno glanced back at Marisol and gave her a curt, confident nod. “We’ll handle this and show you how it’s done. They’re a poor matchup for you, so stay back and support us if we—”

  The cloud of pulsing, glowing copepods was impatient. Hundreds of them shot towards the Imperator siblings like a dozen living roots, and in turn, the siblings whipped their shrimp claws towards the copepods.

  She already knew what to expect, so she clamped her ears and winced as the three of them clicked their claws, using their Arts and releasing a burst of shockwaves. Water trembled around her as the living roots broke apart. The waves may not do any damage above the surface, but down here? She had no doubt they could pop her skull if she ever got hit by one of them directly, and the copepods weren’t any different. A hundred of them were immediately crushed and flattened by the waves, making the entire copepod tree reel and wobble in the distance.

  While the commercial divers fled and scrambled away, Bruno shouted orders at his younger siblings. Helena fanned out to the right, blasting several copepod roots away as they tried to go for the divers. Aidan leapt onto a coral on the left and blasted down several more, taking a higher vantage point. From three separate points, Bruno gave the order again—“fire”—and they sent three coordinated blasts at the trunk of the copepod tree, wedging a significant chunk of biomass off the clump.

  “Estimated number of B-Rank Critter-Class copepods: four thousand or so, all streaming out from that conch-like shell!” Aidan shouted from the left, blasting several more roots without looking as he glared at the copepod tree. “Core located! Highest density congregation cluster is ten metres up, halfway point within the ‘crown’ of the tree!”

  “No distress pheromone signals have been sent away from this sector, either!” Helena shouted from the right, covering the retreat of the last of the divers. “It’s just us and the copepods! No other Giant-Class crustacean is in the vicinity or coming to its assistance!”

  Bruno stomped down on a living root, blasting a hundred or so copepods to shred underfoot. “Begin Critter-Class Extermination, Protocol Five! Aidan, Helena, to me—”

  “Here!”

  In the blink of an eye, both younger siblings dashed back in front of Bruno, shrimp claws braced in front of them. Bruno passed his own giant claw between the two of their heads, and when he clicked his to send a giant shockwave the copepod tree’s way, the two of them clicked theirs as well, softening their waves such that Bruno’s attack folded theirs into the mix. A combination attack of resonating waves.

  Marisol’s eyes widened as the resonance shockwave slammed into the root of the tree, dispersing at least a thousand copepods and scattering them like a mound of sand being hit with a child’s foot.

  the Archive murmured.

  The Archive shrugged, pointing at their backs as they dashed forward as one unit. Helena and Aidan batted away any living roots that tried to intercept them while the copepod tree regenerated its sturdy form, regathering copepods around its central cluster, but all of it was just a bit too slow for the Imperators. The younger siblings were the ram, the spears and the shields, and the eldest brother was the charging cannon. Dozens of roots stabbed at them from the sides, none even coming close to breaking their formation as they slid to a halt right under its exposed trunk.

  They hadn’t come to a complete stop yet when all three of them lined up their claws, clicking in unison to decimate the trunk from within—fast, bold, and painful for Marisol’s ears even from a distance. Her vision blurred as she stumbled a few more steps back, watching the shockwave rip through the top of the tree before dispersing the entire copepod cluster.

  None of the smaller clumps of copepods immediately swam to regather with the other clumps, and the Imperator siblings high-fived each other as they trudged back towards Marisol.

  the Archive explained.

  Marisol couldn’t smell very well underwater—because she wasn’t even inhaling—but she still felt she was catching the thin, subtle undertone of some sweetly sick pheromone swirling around her.

  She didn’t get to finish her thought. Whatever she and the Imperator siblings expected to happen, it wasn’t more copepod swarms bursting out the corals around them with muted , the dense clusters sucking up the survivors of the first tree as they each became fully-fledged trees of their own.

  Helena didn’t see one of the trees firing a living root at her head, but Marisol did. She kicked off the ground, spun mid-air, and smashed the root apart with the War Jump while she dragged Helena back to safety, holding the lady in a princess carry.

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  “... That ain’t four thousand or so, brother,” Bruno grumbled, backing up towards the two of them alongside Aidan, the brothers’ claws poised before their faces. “What, the clusters are smart enough to launch coordinated attacks now? Do they have a super cluster beneath us or something?”

  “I ain’t no whirlpool carcinologist. Hell if I know what the fuck this is,” Aidan mumbled back, eyes narrowing as the three copepod trees grew larger, larger, and larger. None of them were quite as imposing as the first one, but they were still five-metre-tall monstrosities each with writhing, living ‘roots’.

  This time, the copepod trees launched a volley of two dozen roots at them. Some came from the left, some from the right, but most streaked down the centre. The Imperator siblings exhaled sharp bubbles and met the first volley with a resonating wave, scattering half the roots in a single blow.

  The other half that didn’t scatter reeled back like worms, swirling over and around them until the second volley came.

  Bruno didn’t ask for it, and he didn’t need to. Marisol jumped into the fray and skated a full half-circle around the Imperators’ backs, lifting her glaive and cutting through the roots that tried to stab them from behind. It was like a hot knife through butter, but she immediately understood what Bruno had meant when he said the copepods were a poor matchup for her.

  Realistically, she only killed a few dozen copepods with her devastatingly powerful kick, because the rest simply reformed a few seconds later and stabbed at them again.

  Gritting her teeth, she spun and lashed out with her glaives again and again, intercepting as many backstabbing roots as she could. The Imperators weren’t faring so well against the front-facing roots, though. The trees were only a short ten strides away, and while that meant the Imperators could probably blast them apart much easier, the fact that they were closer also meant the travel distance for the roots was much, lower—and the constant stabs were suppressive, keeping the Imperators from training all their claws on one tree at a time.

  If even just one of the siblings stopped firing defensive waves and batting away attacking roots, they’d all be impaled to death.

  “Not good, brother!” Helena shouted, grimacing as a root cut her on the cheek, neck, and shoulder, drawing thin and wavy streams of blood. “It’ll take more than the three of us to dislodge the three of them, and we ain’t got the firepower! Even if we manage to blast one apart, we can’t blast the other two quick enough, and the first one will reform with so many copepods in the vicinity! Either we get all of them at the same time, or we run!”

  “The commercial divers have yet to evacuate completely!” Bruno snapped, growling as he caught one of the roots with his bare human hand, crushing a dozen copepods into a murky cloud of blood. “We stand our ground and fight a war of attrition. Sooner or later, we whittle their numbers down!”

  But Aidan didn’t need to speak, and Marisol didn’t need the Archive to tell her. All three siblings were already bloody, worn-out, and they wouldn’t hold for much longer. The roots were attacking so fast and violently that they were beginning to blot out sunlight, slowly wrapping them in a living, thorny cage.

  If there was some way to gather all three copepod trees in a straight line, then—

  the Archive interrupted.

  Marisol almost opened her mouth to speak, but fortunately, she was dashing and kicking around too much to unclench her jaw as a status screen popped up next to her, reminding her of her newly unlocked mutation.

  [T4 Core Mutation: Basic Discharge Lvl. 1]

  [Brief Description: Your glaives have evolved small jets in them that allow you to suck in and eject air and water at will, allowing you to propel yourself underwater without kicking your legs. Subsequent levels in this mutation will decrease the stamina drain from continuously discharging]

  The Archive had advised her to unlock it first thing in the morning, and Victor had said it was a strong mutation as well, but…

  the Archive said,

  A switch flicked in her head as her eyes lit up briefly.

  Maybe she could’ve tried to say something to the Imperator siblings even without ‘Basic Sonar’ unlocked, but frankly, they had neither the time nor the energy to listen to her plan. They were trained professionals, so she’d just have to trust they’d follow up on whatever she did.

  Without a word, she kicked away from the three of them and skated to the far right, cutting through the dense wall of copepod roots with her apiclaws. A dozen more roots immediately chased after her, but she still remembered the step sequence for her fastest skating routine—glide, spin, pause, raise arms, then twirl and caper as the basic form—and underwater, above the water, there was very little difference in how the dance was performed.

  She just needed to put more speed and strength into her moves.

  Arms spread out, fingers twirling as though she were paddling through water, she skated around the copepod trees until she’d spun a full clockwise circle around them. She caught the copepods’ full attention. Every root that’d been battering the Imperator siblings zipped after her instead, and some of them were dangerously close to stabbing through her back.

  Tightening her throat, she willed her right glaive to ‘gather’ droves of water through the jets in the chitin, and then ‘discharged’ them as violently as possible from the left side of her left glaive. She didn’t stop skating in circles around the trees as she did, and the result was immediately apparent: the trees were being shoved closer and closer together by her discharging water, and it was like they were being constantly blasted by a torrent of underwater waves from every direction.

  She grinned, spinning a full circle around them every three seconds or so, and the propulsion, the circular motion, just the of it all… her perception level almost matched her speed, but with the propulsion added on top of it, she could barely even see her own arms in front of her.

  It was a pointless question that didn’t need to be asked now, but the rush was getting to her head, and the copepod trees were shrivelling under her constant discharge of water—so the Archive sighed in response, sounding only slightly amused.

  She did as instructed, stopping the discharge from her glaives. They were instantly beset with muscle cramps and fatigue the likes of which she’d never experienced before, but she’d already done her part. The waves had shoved all three copepod trees close together, and their trunks were almost touching.

  The Imperator siblings had long-since recovered, gathered their energy, and now they were lining up their claws to fire in a straight line.

  “Not bad, Marisol!” Bruno bellowed, grinning through bloody teeth. “We’ll take it from here!”

  Their outstretched claws rippled with energy as they punched forward all at the same time, throwing the shockwave out like a javelin, and the resonance wave tore through all three trees with a nasty, bone-rattling shockwave.

  So close to the impact, Marisol had to clench her ears with her arms and bury her face in the ground just to avoid getting caught in the shockwave… but after all was said and done, she lifted her head slowly, groggily, and saw the big cloud of copepods dispersing for good.

  All that was left were clumps of tiny, free-floating copepods as a status screen popped up next to her head.

  [Objective #13 Completed: Defeat the B-Rank Critter-Class Copepod Brood]

  [Reward: ~300 points]

  The Archive sighed, shaking its head as it floated by her nose.

  Her ears were twitching. Her vision was swimming. She felt lightheaded and heavy as lead at the same time, and though she tried to crawl onto her feet, her harness only dragged her back down to the ground.

  Someone ripped her box of candies from her back and stuffed a piece of sour candy into her mouth between her gasps, forcing her to swallow by keeping their hand on her mouth. She choked and coughed and instinctively exhaled through her nose, squeezing her eyes shut as she expelled the excess pressure in her head.

  She felt much better by the time she peeled her eyelids open, and Helena smiled down at her, flicking her gently on the forehead.

  “Not bad at all,” Helena said, as her older brothers patrolled the area and checked the nearby corals for any more copepod clusters. Marisol didn’t smell any, and Aidan didn’t raise his voice either. “We’ve still gotta finish our patrol before we can head back up and make our report—and we’ve gotta check on the commercial divers, too—so do you think you can continue walking, or do you have to rest in the diving bell for a bit?”

  Marisol blinked tiredly up at Helena before looking down at her shaky glaives.

  So she pulled herself onto her glaives, groaning all the way.

  The siblings looked at her, impressed.