Rhizocapala landed hard on the dry seabed, skidding across the sunken wreckage before he caught himself, clawed feet grinding into the sand.

… Hah?

He straightened, rolling his shoulders, glancing about. The parted sea loomed around him in a massive circular arena. The walls of water curved around him in a perfect sphere, trapping him in a seven-metre radius of dead space.

No sea. No waves lapping at his feet. Just sand, rotting wood, and the bleached bones of drowned men.

His gaze flicked back to Marisol, standing at the center of it all. Her legs were braced, her breaths were steady, her body was loose, coiled, and prepared; her hydrospines were vibrating at a pitch only monsters and madmen could hear. She seemed to glow under the sunlight, sweat gleaming off her tanned skin, her glaives still crackling with a sheen of pink and blue. Her lightning was still up.

He narrowed his eyes.

How troublesome.

He didn't even have to take a step back to know he couldn't move the way he wanted. The absence of water clung to him like shackles, heavy and binding. Without water, he wasn't a particularly powerful god. He was still far above any normal Mutant-Class, that was for sure, but he couldn't be the ever-elusive Barnacle God if he didn't have water to be elusive in.

With a flick of his wrist, he spattered a wave of blood across the bones and wood, giant barnacles blooming from the wreckage in an instant. A hundred colossal shells cracked open like hungry maws, each of them locking onto Marisol and firing bony spines in a storm of death.

But she was already gone.

A blur of motion, a streak of pink and blue, carving straight through the onslaught with nothing but a tilt of her body. Her glaives barely touched the seabed as she danced through the barrage, a shimmering surfactant coating the sand beneath her and turning it into a slick surface made for skating. She twisted. Weaved. Never slowed, never faltered, and in the blink of an eye, she was upon him.

Her glaives sliced the air, her body already mid-spin, the bladed edge screaming for his face.

He jerked back, barely slipping the kick, but his sluggishness without the sea's touch betrayed him. The edge of her glaive cut through his forearm, slicing away a cluster of barnacles. The wound sealed itself almost instantly, but it was all the proof he—and she—needed.

She was faster than him now.

His scowl deepened as he skidded back, legs braced, watching her movements. The way she shifted, the way she pushed off the seabed with effortless precision… her Art had evolved. He didn't know how exactly, but he could see the proof with his own eyes. She wasn't just quick. She was growing faster still.

Can't fight her head-on, then.

He moved. No hesitation, no overthinking. He shot toward the edge of the arena, feet hammering the seabed, aiming straight for the walls of water. If he could touch it—just a graze of his fingertips—he'd be back in his element, and she wouldn't be able to keep up.

But the moment he surged backwards, she followed.

He veered left. She cut him off. He twisted right. She was already there. Always half a step ahead of them, kicking at his torso or slashing at him with her apiclaws. It wasn't just a game of cat and mouse. She was keeping the arena moving with her, dragging the seven-metre radius anti-water bubble wherever she went, making sure he never reached a single drop of water.

Shit.

His barnacles sprouted in massive waves, shooting spines, bursting into growths of jagged shells, turning the battlefield into a minefield of living, writhing death—but it didn't matter. She zipped through the onslaught like a spectre. A blink. A flicker. A storm in human form.

And then he saw it.

The lightning crackling across her glaives was pink, blue, and gold.

His heart clenched.

A memory crashed into him, unbidden and unwelcome. Twelve years ago. Another battlefield, another arena, but the same speed, the same merciless pursuit. Victor.

That bastard.

The first time they'd fought, the man had come at him with the same kind of madness—the same kind of speed—tearing through his Swarm like a demon sent to purge his existence from the face of the world.

And now he was seeing it again, but in her.

Yet another water strider.

Rhizocapala shuddered.

It was subtle—just a small, involuntary tremor in his spine—but he felt it down to his bones. His mind barely registered the movement before his body locked up, stiff as a plank, unwilling to acknowledge the truth of what he'd just done.

He'd shuddered.

A mistake, perhaps. A meaningless, fleeting motion. The aftershock of exertion, of strain. And yet, deep in his chest, something ugly coiled around his ribs, squeezing tight. He ground his teeth together, jaw clenching so tight he thought he might snap something.

His body betrayed him. Instinct screamed the truth before his mind was ready to accept it. The tremor in his hands, the weight in his chest—he knew exactly what it meant.

Fear.

It burned through him, hollow and hot, curling like a parasite in his belly.

Me?

Afraid?

Rhizocapala, the ever-elusive?

For a moment, he almost stopped dodging and tried to stand his ground.

That would be the answer, wouldn't it? To dig in. To fight back with everything he had. No more dodging, no more running. Just him and her, meeting head-on, a clash between a god and a human. He was Rhizocapala. He wasn't a coward.

But…

… No, no, no.

What am 'ah thinkin'?

That was exactly the line of thought that'd killed Eurypteria and Kalakos. Pride. Stubborn, stupid, meaningless pride. Eurypteria had gone down screaming, Kalakos had burned in lightning, and neither of them had lived long enough to regret it. And Rhizocapala? He'd survived all these decades because he was smarter than every other bug in the Deepwater Legion Front. Because he wasn't a fool. Because he knew when to fight and when to run.

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He twisted, barely avoiding the arc of Marisol's glaive as it streaked past his ribs, leaving a thin line of pain in its wake.

Way too close!

She was faster than him. That, more than anything, made his pulse hammer behind his ribs. If he kept this up—if he let her keep pushing, keep pressing, keep chipping away at him—there'd be no coming back. It was only a matter of time before one of those kicks landed, and if she could just jam her glaive deep enough, she'd electrify his muscles so hard and so fast he wouldn't even be able to eject his heart.

His breath hissed through his teeth as his mind raced.

Think, think, think.

The walls of water warbled, shifting as she moved. He wouldn't make it to the edge. She'd chase him down, drag the ocean with her, and lock him in this endless cage of swirling sea and sky. He could keep retreating and hope one of his endlessly propagating barnacles would land a shot painful enough to stop her from chasing him, but he couldn't bank on that. With that lightning in her eyes, she'd continue chasing him even if she were missing an arm and a leg.

But… that whirligig beetle girl isn't here.

That was something. She couldn't electrify the sand to make even the seabed a hazard—not without help—and that meant she wasn't exactly locking him in. There was still a way out.

But where?

His eyes flicked around him. Nowhere to go. The walls were only deceptively close. There was no good cover. No hiding places. No openings. Unless…

Sunlight caught his eye.

His gaze snapped upward, and he grinned.

The sky.

That was it. That was the answer. That was the one place she couldn't follow him, because water striders couldn't fly.

Marisol lunged in for a jumping kick, and at the last possible second, he ejected. His body exploded into a hundred jagged barnacles, and his heart was one of only a few dozen barnacle fragments that streaked skyward. She wouldn't catch him. After all, his heart looked exactly the same as every other fragment, so—even if she could reach him—there was no way she could tell which one was her real target.

For a single moment, he was weightless, rising fast, leaving it all behind—the sea, the shipwreck, the sand. The open air swallowed him, and the world stretched out below in endless blue.

She couldn't reach him here.

His lips curled as his heart pulsed a heavy beat, molding new flesh, regenerating a fresh new head and body far above the sea. He'd done it. He'd escaped. Now all he had to do was land far away and touch the surface of the great blue again—

"There you are."

His heart stopped.

The voice came from below.

His eyes snapped downward just in time to see her moving.

Marisol blurred across the curved walls of the parted sea, her body a flickering silhouette against the sunlight. Each move was a perfect, seamless transition into the next. Glide. Spin. Pause, raise arms. Twirl and caper. Sharp turn. Sharp pivot. Then jump—soar. It was a dance. A predator's rhythm. She bounded from crest to crest, riding the shifting currents of water as if they were solid ground, each kick launching her higher, faster, until—

Her wings snapped open.

The wind caught her, and suddenly, she was ascending right at him.

"... Just like the old man said," she whispered. "Push them into a corner where it's do or die, and they will do something drastic and get out of that trap somehow.

"But give them the illusion of a false opening, and you'll catch the dumbasses on the way out.

"You're just a fucking bug at the end of the day, after all."

Her glaive rocketed upward.

Rhizocapala saw it all unfold in perfect, excruciating clarity: the angle of her body, the weight behind the strike, and the way her glaive gleamed at her back, primed and ready for the killing blow. His mind screamed at him to move, to react, to eject—but he hesitated.

In an instant, he knew she hadn't flown. She'd simply skated on the curved walls of water and launched herself off it like she'd done with many waves and many ramps. She may be a water strider, but she wasn't terrestrially bound. She was simply a girl who could 'fly'.

And she found my heart… because she ain't alone.

Her Archive.

She may not be able to tell the difference, but her Archive shares her senses, and it remembers everythin' it sees.

Her glaive struck the side of his torso, and as lightning coursed through his body to pull his muscles taut, preventing him from moving, he realised a third fact.

He'd underestimated her.

She wasn't like Victor Morina.

In a way, she was even fiercer.

Pain, white-hot and brutal, detonated through his body. Lightning crawled through his veins, locking his muscles, freezing him in place. His nerves screamed. His mind roared to react, to eject, to move—but there was nowhere left to go.

The sky shattered in light.

The ramparts of the Harbour City trembled beneath the weight of its people, but that didn't stop Reina from leaning against the worn stone of the western walls. Beside her, Claudia stood with her arms crossed, stiff as a blade, eyes locked on the distant horizon. Helena, Maria, Andres, and Captain Enrique as well—all of them were gathered there alongside thousands of soldiers, Guards and Imperators alike.

Together, they watched.

Out over the sea, the sky split apart with pinkish-blue fury, the explosion of lightning rupturing the air with a crack so loud it swallowed the world. The surface of the great blue boiled in an instant, sending up a towering wall of mist, thick and impenetrable. A few moments later, vaporized seawater crashed back down in a scalding rain, a deafening shockwave rippling outwards.

No one spoke. No one dared to breathe. Nobody even cared that the colossal black tide far behind the explosion shuddered, fractured, and broke apart. Nobody cared that the tens of thousands of Giant-Class bugs recoiled, fell onto itself, and retreated from the Harbour City, rolling back like wounded beasts dragging themselves into the abyss.

Reina's heart thundered in her chest.

Rhizocapala was dead.

The realisation spread like wildfire. The soldiers began murmuring, shifting, gripping their weapons tighter. No one spoke, but all eyes were trained forward, waiting. Watching.

For her.

Minutes stretched into eternity. The mist swirled, thick and heavy, veiling the sea three hundred metres away. The anticipation was suffocating.

And then—a figure emerged.

Gliding over the great blue, silhouetted against the sunlit mist, Marisol skated forward with lightning still crackling faintly in her wake.

She faced the city, and she ended her dance with a bow.

The city erupted.

Thunderous cheers roared through the air, rolling across the ramparts like a crashing tide. Soldiers slamming their fists against their chest plates, throwing helmets into the air, screaming themselves hoarse. Some wept. Others howled in unfiltered relief. Tens of thousands of voices screamed her name, and it wasn't the right one—but maybe it was, and though Marisol may not be able to hear the words, maybe she wouldn't mind it just this once.

Reina smiled, and Claudia let out a long breath, tilting her head back as though she'd been holding it for years.

"Someone get out there!" Claudia barked, turning to wave at the soldiers. "She's gonna fall, so someone's gonna have to pull her back in!"

The world wobbled in her vision like a bubble, and the roar of the Harbour City dimmed in Marisol's ears, distant, like the black tide pulling away behind her.

Then she crumbled, falling flat onto her back.

She thought of her dream.

Sinking. Drowning. Falling into the depths.

But she wasn't sinking.

She was floating.

… Ah.

Of course.

She had hydrospines. Her very first unlocked mutation.

She could never sink to begin with.

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

[Reward: The 'Chariot']

[Grade: S-Rank Mutant-Class → E-Rank Storm Strider God]

A slow, quiet laugh bubbled up in her chest as she stared up at the cloudless sky. The sun glared back down at her, golden and fierce. She could feel its warmth on her face—burning, searing—and yet she didn't move. She simply lay there on the surface, limbs splayed, breath coming in slow, deep waves.

For the first time in her life, the great blue felt small.

'Mar' of the western seas. 'Sol' of the eastern sun.

She'd joined them both as Marisol Vellamira.

So she closed her eyes and let out a soft, gentle exhale.

She'd finally found what she wanted to do.

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