The world blurred around Marisol. Air roared in her ears. Wind howled past her skin as she plunged like a bolt of lightning, faster than the eye could follow. The morning sun painted the sky in molten gold, light spider-webbing across the great blue below, but… the sea wasn't empty.

The black tide shifted on the horizon, devouring the water in a churning, grotesque wave.

Tens of thousands of Giant-Class horrors swarmed forward, massive crustaceans moving as one. Their thick shells grinded. Their claws snapped. Their mandibles chittered with a sickening, unified rhythm. Giant crabs stacked atop each other waded through the depths like living warships, their gnarled legs casting vast shadows against the waves. Towering lobsters, armoured like siege machines, plowed through the current. Colossal shrimps swam beneath the surface, their elongated bodies bristling with spines that stuck out of the surface like shark fins. In a way, the black tide itself was a unique ecosystem that only the Swarm could survive in, and it was hellbent on one objective only: swallowing the Harbour City whole.

But Marisol didn't care about the black tide. Her focus was locked onto the figure at the very front of the tide, standing atop the broad, barnacle-encrusted shell of a giant swimming crab.

Rhizocapala.

Her blood burned. Heat coiled through her limbs, not from exertion, but from the sheer, unshakable certainty that with his death, this would all be over.

Go on, then!

A hundred and ten percent!

She narrowed her eyes and shifted, aligning her wings, tensing her body, focusing every muscle into a single, perfect descent. Her glaives crackled, lightning surging along their wicked edges, and she tucked her limbs in tight.

Then she dove.

Rhizocapala saw her. His head tilted slightly, his barnacle-plated arms spreading in a gesture of lazy amusement. That smug, toothy grin split across his inhuman face, and he opened his mouth to speak with three thread-like tongues wiggling around.

"Oh! It's the water strider! What's up? Ye here to—"

She hit him with the tip of her glaives before he could finish.

The impact detonated.

Rhizocapala's crab exploded beneath him. Not cracked. Not broken. Shattered. Chitin, blood, and seawater erupted into the air, a shockwave ripping across the ocean's surface. The force sent a towering column of mist skyward, the sheer kinetic blast rolling outward in a spiraling tide.

The sea bucked under the blow, waves thrashing in violent upheaval.

Marisol didn't stop. Her glaives found the surface of the ocean, and she skidded, lightning crackling around her as she came to a grinding halt. Water rippled outward in a widening circle, and she flicked her damp hair back, exhaling through clenched teeth as the ocean heaved around her.

The black tide still loomed ahead.

Her muscles ached just looking at it, the sheer weight of the Swarm stretching beyond what the eye could see. Sunlight glared off the tide's chitin armor, a sickly gleam reflecting from countless serrated pincers and gnashing mandibles. They were so many—so suffocatingly vast—that her breathing came hard.

She forced herself to scan the waters, to look for—

A break. A ripple.

Ten metres away, something breached.

Rhizocapala pulled himself up onto another giant swimming crab, water sliding off his barnacle-coated body. He peeled off a chunk of shattered shell stuck to his shoulder, flicking it aside with a mild grunt of irritation. "'Ah liked that crab, y'know?"

Marisol dragged in a breath, her lungs burning, her arms trembling from exhaustion, but she still bared her teeth in a grin. "Sorry to disappoint," she said, "but if I can't have my chariot, neither can you."

Rhizocapala chuckled.

Then, without taking his eyes off her, he lifted a fist.

The black tide stopped.

Tens of thousands of Giant-Classes, frozen in place. The silence was thick. Suffocating. Even the waves they were kicking up seemed hesitant, lapping at the stillness with muted, uneasy whispers.

Rhizocapala studied her, his gaze flicking over her clothes, the bruises purpling her skin, and the shallow rise and fall of her chest. His grin widened, easy, amused.

"You look like complete hell."

She exhaled hard, pushing past the ache. "No shit."

"And ye really think ye can fight me lookin' like that?" He tilted his head, voice almost mocking. "Even Andres and Victor fought me at their strongest. What's a half-dead lass gonna do to me?"

She moved in response.

Her glaives hummed, lightning crackling under her skin as she slid into a neutral sand-dancing stance. One leg kicked back, hovering above the surface, her balance light, effortless. Her apiclaws extended from her elbows, gleaming silver in the sunlight. She poised her whole body at the very edge of speed, waiting for the next motion, the next breath—the next moment where she could shatter the world with a thunderclap again.

Rhizocapala's smirk flickered just for a second. Marisol grinned back, sharp and wild.

"You must be mistaken about something, Barnacle God."

The air thickened. Heat rose from her skin, the exhaustion in her bones burning away in favor of something hotter, sharper, hungrier. The fear, the danger, the sheer madness of facing the Barnacle God alone… it fueled her.

"The closer I am to death—the more I'm toeing the very edge—the more exhilarated I am."

The wind howled around her, and the world narrowed.

"The faster I am."

Fiercer lightning snapped across her glaives, pinkish-blue veins splitting the air.

"The stronger I am."

And her heartbeat slammed against her ribs.

She met his gaze, her breath ragged, her body singing with raw, untamed power.

"Wanna test that out, Rhizo?" she taunted with a pained, tired grin.

Rhizocapala stared at her for a long moment.

Did he like her calling him the way the old man called him?

Did he hate her for it?

… His grin stretched even wider.

"No thanks."

His fist dropped, and the black tide crashed forward—but the instant the tide inched forward, the sky erupted.

A barrage of explosions thundered across the battlefield, the force of them rolling over the ocean in violent shockwaves. The first detonations swallowed entire clusters of Giant-Class crustaceans in fire and shrapnel, their hulking bodies torn apart mid-motion. Chitin split open like cracked stone, limbs flailed before being vaporized, and the sea churned red with obliterated flesh. Smoke rose in twisting plumes, curling into the golden sunlight as the cries of the dying shrieked across the water. The stench of burning chitin and scorched salt flooded the air, thick and acrid, the reek of war searing against the back of the throat.

Marisol didn't need to turn around to know the source. The autocannons of Harbour City had begun their song.

Harpoon turrets screamed, mortar shells shrieked, and rail-fed cannons fired at precise intervals, each round calibrated for maximum devastation. Rhizocapala turned, head snapping toward his army as his eyes narrowed at the carnage unfolding behind him.

Marisol struck before he could do anything about it.

She launched herself forward, her body aligning with the air, speed compressing into a single violent burst of movement. In less than a breath, she closed the distance, her glaive leading the strike. The impact connected with brutal force—a sharp, concussive crack as her knee smashed into his jaw, snapping his head back with a spray of blood.

His body lifted off his feet, momentarily weightless before crashing back onto the shell of another Giant-Class crab. He spat something thick and wet into the ocean, shaking his head, but before he could rise again, Marisol had already skidded to a stop, her glaives carving deep arcs into the water's surface.

"Focus!" she barked. "I am your opponent!!"

Rhizocapala wiped his mouth, his expression shifting from brief surprise to something sharper, something darker. A growl rumbled low in his throat before he slammed his fist into the ocean.

The sea roared.

From beneath the waves, a hundred Giant-Class crabs erupted onto the surface, their colossal bodies thrown upward as if the ocean itself had spat them out. Water cascaded off their armoured shells in thick, frothing waterfalls, their massive pincers slicing through the air as they struggled for footing. But they hadn't just been summoned—they were being claimed.

Barnacles swarmed their bodies the instant they surfaced. Rhizocapala's Swarmblood Art spread over them in a grotesque infestation, devouring the crabs as the barnacles expanded, overtook, transformed. Their shells became spiked towers. Their bodies reformed into living artillery. They twisted and bristled with jagged bony spines that snapped into place, and all of the barnacles took aim at her.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Then they fired.

The air shredded with the velocity of hundreds of giant spines screaming toward her. The attack covered the entire horizon in a razor-edged storm, an execution meant to turn her into pulp.

She skated.

Her muscles coiled. Her instincts took over. She shot forward in a blur, her entire being reduced to nothing but speed. The world folded into motion, time compressing into the space between heartbeats—and then she danced, as she always did.

She wove through the storm of spines. A spine shot for her chest. She dipped low, the wind biting against her skin as it barely grazed past. Another came for her side. She twisted, let it scrape along her ribs before hydrokinetic redirection sent the force into the waves below. The next volley came faster, the angles sharper, but she was ahead of it. She was reading the pattern. Seeing the gaps before they existed. Cutting through the gaps like she belonged in them.

Every time she'd fought Rhizocapala, she'd always been just fast enough to escape. To run away. To keep herself alive.

But when had she forgotten the only way to win was to move forward.

Now, she wasn't just dodging.

Now, she was outpacing.

Weave through the attacks and move forward!

Don't run away!

Rhizocapala's scowl deepened, frustration flickering behind his barnacle-encrusted face as he watched her dash and skate and kick through his volleys of giant spines.

She felt the grin pull at her lips, and she called up her status screen one last time just to check.

[Name: Marisol Vellamira]

[Grade: S-Rank Mutant-Class]

[Class: Storm Strider]

[Swarmblood Art: Storm Glaives]

[Aura: 16,643]

[Points: 20]

[Strength: 8, Speed: 9 (+4)[+9], Toughness: 7 (+1), Dexterity: 7 (+2), Perception: 7 (+1)]

[// MUTATION TREE]

[T1 Mutation | Striding Glaives Lvl. 8]

[T2 Mutations | Filtrating Gills Lvl. 6 | Repelling Hydrospines Lvl. 7]

[T3 Mutations | Laminar Apiclaws Lvl. 6 | Streamlined Wings Lvl. 5 | Basic Setae Lvl. 2]

[T4 Mutations | Spraying Discharge Lvl. 5 | Basic Sonar Lvl. 4 | Crystalline Underchitin Lvl. 5 | Omnidynamic Chitin Lvl. 5]

[T5 Mutations | Surfactant Domain Lvl. 2 | Reflexive Vision Lvl. 5 | Rapid Rehydration Lvl. 2 | Segmented Flexion Lvl.1 | Hydrokinetic Redirection Lvl. 4]

[// EQUIPPED SWARMSTEEL]

[Ghost Crab Scarf (Grade: F-Rank)(Tou: +1/1)(Aura: -200)]

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

[Water Boatmen Bandages (Grade: E-Rank)(Spd: +1/1)(Dex: +1/1)(Aura: -500)]

[Water Strider Sand-Dancer Outfit (Quality E-Rank)(Spd: +3/3)(Dex: +1/1)(Aura: -1,100)]

… Great Makers, this status screen is hard to read.

[Welp. ]

So I'm getting four levels in speed from just Swarmsteel alone, and that 'plus nine' next to the 'plus four' in speed is…

[The one hundred percent increase in speed you are temporarily gaining by keeping Storm Glaives active.]

[If you deactivate your Art now, you will instantly lose nine levels in speed and become significantly slower than Rhizocapala—so don't you dare deactivate it now.]

[As the westerners would say, 'Go and fuckin' kill 'im first.']

She shot forward, her legs slammed down, and she launched herself into the air, her glaive carving a brutal arc toward Rhizocapala's head. But before the blow could land, the surface of his arm twisted and expanded. Barnacles swelled from his flesh, dozens upon dozens, their ridged shells bursting open to reveal snapping, clamped maws.

His entire forearm became a wall of interlocking teeth, hungry and gaping. He thrust it up, aiming to catch her mid-air, to clamp down and crush her momentum before her glaive could reach him.

But Marisol was no fool, and she wasn't stopping.

Her glaives flared, her muscles coiled like an unleashed storm, and with a pulse of sheer will, she twisted midair with spraying discharge and segmented flexion, her trajectory shifting in an impossible snap of movement. The force of her turn sent out a shockwave as her glaive came down—not just on his arm, but through it.

Her speed was beyond even the reinforced jaws of his barnacles. The impact was a razor-thin moment, a flicker of light slicing through the hard shells, and shattered barnacle shards burst outward. His arm was reduced to splinters and bleeding fragments in an instant. The pain must've been immense, but Rhizocapala didn't scream. He only jumped back onto a different Giant-Class crab, his body already shifting, the endless regeneration of his barnacle mass trying to recover.

She didn't give him the time.

The moment her glaives touched the water again, she launched herself forward, a blur of motion cutting across the battlefield. Her kicks came in rapid succession, each one carving into him with merciless precision, breaking away the barnacle layers that encased his heart. Rhizocapala staggered back, step by step, his monstrous body cracking apart under her relentless kicks.

And then she saw it. An opening. She sent a kick that drove through his chest—but at the last possible second, Rhizocapala's torso convulsed.

Something shot downward. Something small, something fast; his true heart, no bigger than a fist, ejected from his ribcage and plummeted into the depths below. Then, like a loosened husk, his humanoid body simply crumbled apart, torn to nothing by the sheer force of her kick.

She skidded to a halt, her breath sharp, her glaives bracing against the rolling surface of the sea. Beneath her, his tiny barnacle heart vanished into the abyss, sinking out of reach.

For a moment, all was still.

Then, several dozen meters away, the water churned violently.

A new form burst out of the sea.

Barnacles clustered, layering over one another, building up like coral growing in fast motion. In mere moments, a new Rhizocapala stood there. His body was reformed, reshaped, his limbs grotesquely stitched together from the same parasitic shells that made up his ever-regenerating flesh.

He exhaled, rolling his shoulders as if shrugging off a minor inconvenience, and then he laughed. The sound was not manic or crazed. It was amused, almost… pitying.

"See? This is the difference between us!" he taunted, spreading his arms wide. "Even with yer speed, ye ain't faster than my heart when 'ah eject it! Why'd ye think 'ah didn't seriously fight ye and Andres back in the Whirlpool City? On land, 'ah can't escape quickly enough, but on water? In my domain? Ye ain't gonna be able to touch me!"

His voice carried over the crashing waves, over the sounds of the battle still raging behind them: the autocannons in the distance, the screams of the dying Swarm, and the relentless groaning of the black tide as it pressed ever forward toward the harbor walls. Marisol didn't respond. Her breathing was slow, measured. She wasn't exhausted. She still had plenty left in her, but for all her strength, for all her power, she hadn't won.

Not yet.

Rhizocapala watched her, tilting his head. "Well? Are ye out of tricks?" He gestured toward the distant Harbour City "Sucks to be ye, but 'ah ain't foolish enough to wade onto land where 'ahm weakest and destroy the city myself! Ah'll just stay right here, keep sendin' my tide forward, and yer cannons may be tearin' through my horde now, but it don't really matter. I can send more. Forever and ever. Sooner or later, the city will fall." He grinned, his jagged teeth gleaming. "So? Feel like throwin' in the towel… already…"

He trailed off as he saw her smiling.

The expression seemed to unsettle him, though he probably didn't understand why.

[... He is correct, after all.]

[Like every other crustacean you have fought in the Deepwater Legion Front, he is impossibly slippery and evasive when he is in contact with water—even more so considering his skills and talents. Even with your current speed, it is impossible for you to catch his ejecting heart either on the surface or underwater. However, he will also not let you drag him onto land where the speed of his ejection is significantly slowed.]

[In that case…]

Her fingers twitched, excitement thrumming in her veins.

Right.

How deep is the sea where we are, Archive?

[Five metres. We are extremely close to the Harbour City's shallow shores.]

Hah.

So you're saying I've got that Mutant-Class water strider to thank for showing me what to do?

She shot forward.

Rhizocapala moved to react, but he was a bit too late. Or maybe he was getting lax, thinking she couldn't ever kill him as long as he was touching water.

He was correct, in that sense.

She slammed into him, wrapping her arms around his waist, and then she drove them down into the sea. He barely had time to laugh before she activated the very first mutation she'd unlocked—and her repelling hydrospines sent a shockwave rippling away from her body, a hydrophobic field expanding outwards in a perfect sphere.

His laughter died down quickly, but she didn't let go.

Immediately, the sea beneath them parted, driven away in a seven-metre radius around her. Seven metres for seven levels in her hydrospine mutation, and she was putting almost everything she had into vibrating her hydrospines as hard and as fast as she could.

The water that should've cushioned their fall was gone, leaving only open air and the sudden, yawning drop below.

Rhizocapala's eyes widened as they plunged down, down, straight through the parted sea. Sunlight glared down alongside them. He tried to tear her off and push her away, but he was taken off guard by the sudden absence of water, so his barnacles only tore into her skin, bit into her flesh, and put her in a world of hurt. Not nearly enough to kill her.

Then they both hit the shallow seabed five metres below hard, tumbling across dry silt and sand, rolling and skidding before separating.

But the most important part was that they were both dry, and Rhizocapala wasn't in contact with water.

… If he won't come on dry land, then I just gotta make dry land in the middle of the sea myself.

Marisol groaned, pushing herself onto her feet, her entire body trembling. The effort of maintaining the water-repelling field was immense, and her hydrospines were vibrating so violently she could barely contain the backlash into her own bones, but she forced herself to stand—to breathe—and to look around the giant air bubble she was maintaining.

The two of them stood in a graveyard of lost vessels. Mossy and waterlogged ships rested in the seabed around her, buried hulls and masts sticking out of the sand like bony spikes. She recognised some of the markings, some of the faded banners. This was Captain Antonio's fleet.

Oh.

So the sunken fleet was swept all the way here, huh?

She turned, facing Rhizocapala a few paces in front of her once more.

The Barnacle God was crawling onto his feet as well. At first, he moved with his usual arrogance—pushing himself up with slow, deliberate motions, his barnacle-plated limbs shifting as if he still had control of the battle—but as he straightened, his gaze swept around the parted sea. He looked at the distant walls of water held at bay by her repelling hydrospines, at the golden sunlight falling upon their large circular arena, and at the sand beneath his feet where no tide rushed to meet him.

The confidence in his posture faltered. His clawed fingers twitched. His gill-lined throat pulsed, but no water flowed to sustain him.

Shock twisted his expression, his mouth parting slightly. Then his eyes snapped back to her, narrowed and searching, his usual smugness cracking under something new—hesitation.

A small smile flickered on her lips.

She was standing on dry sand at the bottom of the great blue.

'Mar' of the western sea.

'Sol' of the eastern sun.

And now, the Barnacle God had nowhere left to run.

[Objective #71: Slay the E-Rank Barnacle God, Rhizocapala]

[Time Limit: Undefined]

[Reward: The 'Chariot']

[Failure: Irrelevant]

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.