The fifty-meter-tall wave of water smashed into the warship's bowsprit, and right before it could crush all of them under its weight, Marisol kicked it with the full might of a prideful Sand-Dancer.

Immediately, her legs threatened to snap.

The waves are still as heavy as ever, huh?

She hissed as she vibrated her hydrospines at maximum power, her kick sending out a ripple that bent the water around the ship… but she wasn't alone this time. The 'hold' command was given, Captain Enrique cut his palm with a knife, and he shouted at his men to activate their Arts as well—and including her, there were forty-one souls pushing back against the giant wall of water. Their combined water-repelling force kept the water at bay.

O… kay! We're holding it!

And now… we turn it around!

The wall of water may be wide and tall enough to encompass the entirety of the giant remipede's stomach, but it was still water at the end of the day. Its shape could change. Its flow could change. It was in no way different from a dust devil of the desert, able to be kicked away by a single Sand-Dancer with enough conviction in her toes—it could be sent back the way it came, and all Marisol needed to do was dance.

Sucking in a sharp breath, she spun in place and kicked again, then again, then again. A dozen ripples pounded through the top of the wave of water, the bottom supported by the water-repelling force of the Harbor Guards below her. This wasn't like any of the other times she'd simply redirected the water around the ship. She needed to reverse its direction of flow entirely this time.

She gritted her teeth and mustered a hundred and ten percent of her power. The Archive stimulated the release of more adrenaline into her blood. Exhaustion, exertion, and exhilaration flooded into her. Stars swirled in her eyes as she spun and kicked in place, but she knew she had the strength to send the wave back. She had to do it. This was life or death, and for a Sand-Dancer who lived on the very edge between life or death, water was the absolute last thing that was going to stand in her way.

Come on!

Go!

BACK!

And with a heaving, heavy groan, the wall of water changed directions. She knew they'd done it when she kicked and the tip of her glaive didn't even scrape a droplet of water. The moment she saw the massive wave falling backwards, moving towards the mouth, she peered down the crow's nest and shouted at the Harbor Guards to push their water-repelling force forward.

In an instant, the wall of water collapsed and turned into a low, churning wave in front of the warship.

They'd created their own wave, and the water beneath them lifted the warship ever so slightly—just enough for it to start sliding forward.

"... LET'S GO!"

Captain Enrique bellowed his order from the helm, and at once, twenty anti-chitin cannons roared out the back of the ship. The shots propelled the ship forward with a sudden lurch, and then they had the initial momentum.

Marisol screamed down at the Harbor Guards—"fire"—and the next cannon volley fired out the back again, making the warship jolt forward. Suddenly, they weren't just moving in sharp, lurching movements. They had momentum. They had consistent momentum. Their anti-chitin cannonballs tore into the back of the remipede's insides, making the giant bug buckle forwards with a tremendous rumble.

While Marisol slid down the ratlines and the Guards raced across the upper and lower decks to reload the cannons at the back, Captain Enrique laughed at the helm; a bubbly, childlike sound, completely unbefitting of a man his age and appearance.

"We have our own wave, boys!" he cackled, as all of them closed their palms and lifted the water-repelling force. "Aye, boys! Ten on the starboard guns, ten on portside, and fire at will! Blast this thing from the inside-out and make it writhe like the scurvy bug it be!"

As Marisol touched down on the upper deck, the cannons on both sides of the warship roared to life, the deep, deafening sounds echoing through the confined space like thunder. Fleshy walls exploded into geysers of blue blood where the anti-chitin cannonballs punched through. The walls of the giant remipede squirmed and rippled, making the Guards laugh as they reloaded their guns, and more cannons fired in a chaotic cacophony of booms.

[Anti-chitin cannonballs fired out of anti-giant cannons,] the Archive mused, [works wonders against a giant remipede from the inside, at least.]

The giant remipede buckled even more, and Marisol grinned. It was swimming up, probably in an attempt to make all of them slide back down, but they already had the forward momentum. They couldn't be stopped now. The Guards simply fired more of their back cannons with greater frequency, using the propulsion force to maintain their momentum. After all, they'd gathered more than enough anti-chitin cannonballs to fire for days on end. They could blast the walls of the remipede with a full volley every twenty meters they sailed, because that was just how fast the Guards could reload.

But there's still one more obstacle!

Just one more!

Three hundred meters to the mouth. Two hundred meters to the mouth. The bioluminescent walls around them throbbed and pulsed as the remipede spasmed, their continuous barrage of cannonballs hurting it greatly, the wave of water they were riding picking up speed from all the propulsion. The prow cleaved through the water like a knife on butter, and Marisol skated up onto the bowsprit, balancing on the very frontal tip of the ship with her arms spread out.

She had a stupid, stupid grin on her face as she stared forward, her eyes locking onto the field of giant barnacles clinging to the walls and ceiling a hundred meters in front of her.

Come on, you ugly bastards!

Shoot me!

And as the first barnacles fired at them, determined to hit something—she exhaled coolly and slapped one palm on the bowsprit beneath her, kicking her glaives back until she was doing a handstand at the very tip of the ship.

Then, she started spinning, vibrating the hydrospines on her glaives so violently as she did that the sprays of water droplets around her shot back towards the barnacles at ultra-high speeds, shattering the spiny projectiles mid-air.

"… Sometimes, the audience is too dazzling. Sometimes, they are too loud. Sometimes, you're trying out a new routine or a new technique you haven't mastered yet, and you don't want people to see how ungraceful you look while doing it. When there's any reason at all you don't want the audience to see you, just use this technique that is as old as the sky is blue—put your hand on the ground, do a handstand, and spin in place to make a miniature sand tornado.

"Blind your audience for a short moment, and what they cannot see will be manifested in their imaginations instead, and what they imagine you are doing will always be a hundred times more impressive than what you are actually doing."

"Ironically, what they cannot see is oftentimes far more entrancing than what they can see."

The Blackclaw Marauders had shown her the strength of liquids as projectiles, but it was her mama's third technique, 'Whirlwind Spin', that reminded her—there were plenty of times when her mama had thrown sand into the audience's eyes with a spinning handstand, and she'd never understood why. All she remembered were kids laughing around her, adults chuckling in amusement, and everyone's attention being diverted by such an unexpected move that her mama's next move made all of them forget that sand was actually really uncomfortable in their eyes.

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Maybe—just maybe—her mama wasn't as infallible of a Sand-Dancer as she'd thought.

There were times even when her mama made mistakes during a routine, and there were times when her mama had to cover them up with a quick Whirlwind Spin to distract her audience.

Only now, she wasn't spinning sand, and her audience could use a little bit more than distracting.

To do a spinning handstand fast enough to make a small whirlwind, exhale all the air from your lungs, make yourself as light as possible, and just go at it with reckless abandon!

Become the whirlwind yourself, and the sands will spin around you in jealous mimicry!

She spun and spun and spun, faster than even when she'd done the War Jump, and she became a living spinning top. Any droplet that even neared her was violently repelled by the hydrospines on her glaives, and then they were sent flying every which way. Some smacked the Guards behind her on the head, making them yelp in pain. Some bounced off the deck, some ricocheted off the hard wooden railings, but some shattered the barnacles' projectiles mid-air… and she was repelling a lot of water droplets simply by spinning on the bowsprit, the very front of the ship.

For every projectile that fired their way, she reflected a thousand tiny droplets with the speed and strength equivalent of five men. Only one of those droplets needed to hit the projectile and it'd be intercepted.

As a result?

Not a single barnacle spine projectile reached their ship.

Ha! I'm doing it!

I'm doi-doi-doi—

But she was spinning way too fast upside-down, and her teeth chattered as she found herself spinning only faster and faster, quite unable to slow herself down at this point. She didn't want to slow down, though. She wanted to keep going, keep pushing her limits. The only reason why she was still able to keep her hand on the narrow bowsprit was because of her 'Basic Setae' mutation, allowing her skin to cling to surfaces with extra stickiness. If not for the mutation, she'd have spun herself overboard the moment she tried to do a handstand, but she did have the mutation, so she wanted to keep going.

How fast could she spin?

Could she actually spin up a water tornado if she kept at this growth rate?

Ar-ar-ar-chi-chi-chi-ve-ve-ve!

Lo-o-o-o-o-k!

I'm goi-oi-ng-ng rea-a-ll-ll-ly fa-as-as-as-at—

[Please focus. Are you an actual, honest-to-god child?]

Ok-ok-ok-ay-ay-ay—

"Brace yerselfs, lads!" Enrique bellowed, cackling at the top of his lungs as the warship reached speeds it'd certainly never reached before, and Marisol spotted—it was really just a blur of light in her spinning eyes—what seemed like the giant remipede's teeth in the near distance. "We're closin' in on the bug's maw! Fire everythin' we've got! We're crashin' through in tree, two—"

One!

Marisol relaxed her setae, letting herself spin twenty meters backwards into the door of the captain's cabin, and at the same time—the warship slammed into the giant remipede's teeth, chitin and flesh exploding into splinters and shredded muscles.

With one more thunderous boom, every cannon on the warship fired at once as they burst through the giant remipede's mouth.

For a brief, glorious moment, the warship was underwater.

The world turned cold and green. Underwater pressure pressed against her chest, the salty sting of seawater biting at her eyes and lips. Wood creaked and groaned around her as the ship strained under the weight of the ocean. Her fingers ached from clutching onto a random bundle of ropes close to her, her whole body trembling as the cold seeped through her soaked clothes. Her 'Basic Gills' were level two, which meant she could breathe underwater for about two minutes, but she still didn't like the feeling of being underwater.

After twenty seconds that felt like an eternity, the submerged ship started jolting upwards.

A deep hum vibrated across the ship as the crew activated their Arts, repelling water below them. The ship began to rise, shuddering with the effort. She squeezed her eyes shut, her ears popping painfully as they shot upward. Pressure pushed down on her shoulders like a heavy weight, the rushing water in her ears making it impossible to think clearly, but just as she felt thirty seconds had passed and they still weren't anywhere close to the light—the ship exploded onto the surface with a sudden, deafening boom.

Marisol pulled her eyelids open as she gasped for breath. Golden sunlight bathed all of them in its warmth, the stifling, acidic air of the remipede's insides replaced by the fresh, salty brine of the open seas. The natural light was almost blinding after a month in bioluminescent gloom, but it was a welcome discomfort.

She may have hated being surrounded by nothing but water a month ago, but oh, how dearly she'd missed the sea without even being aware of it until now.

Unfortunately, not all of them managed to find something to hold onto as the ship burst onto the surface. Half blinded, she stumbled out of the captain's cabin and opened her eyes just in time to spot Captain Enrique flying overboard with a scream. Several Guards tumbled over the railings as well, and about a dozen unanchored miscellanea flew everywhere. A plank of wood even snapped off the mast and smacked her in the face, making her fall over with a pained yelp… but when all was said and done, she was lying flat on her back, staring up at the sun she'd thought she'd never see again.

A knot in her chest that had been twisting tighter and tighter for the past month finally unraveled. Her fingers, raw and trembling, clenched the soaked deck beneath her as if to confirm this wasn't some cruel dream.

It wasn't.

She was out.

She was alive.

Swallowing a mouthful of seawater, she let out a heavy sigh of relief. Then, a sound bubbled up from her, at first a hoarse gasp, then a choked snort.

Before she knew it, she was laughing—wild, broken, unrestrained. It ripped out of her in ragged bursts, echoing across the deck and over the waves, because every breath was a gift, and every laugh was a defiance of the darkness she'd endured.

She laughed like she'd never done before.

… I kinda wanna do that again.

[Please refrain.]

I'm kidding, I'm kidding! she thought, groaning as she stood up and pushed herself to the railings, staring out at the open seas.

The first thing she did was check on the people who'd flown overboard—two, four, six of them, excluding Enrique, were all paddling safely back towards the ship, cheering with their fists shaking in the air. The Guards who hadn't flown overboard rushed to the upper deck, cackling as they threw ropes into the sea. Marisol was a little different. She doubled over and threw up, the Whirlwind Spin finally catching up to her head, and she shooed laughing men away as they tried to pat her on the back. She was going to be alright.

The second thing she did was look over to the left, where she spotted Captain Enrique swimming away from the ship, heading towards a tiny rowboat a hundred meters out onto the sea.

Marisol squinted for a good few seconds, thinking that couldn't be it… but it was the rowboat she'd laid the pregnant lady down on, and judging by the tiny figure that waved back at Enrique, her decision to leave all the provisions with the lady wasn't the wrong decision.

How lucky is it that we surfaced near the rowboat?

Like, seriously, that's—

[The giant remipede never moved that far from the fog in the first place. Remember what I said about the giant horseshoe crab? Giant bugs do not tend to stray too far from their territory,] the Archive said plainly. [Now that we are out of the fog, according to my navigation data, we are right about where your previous ship was destroyed. We have neither made any progress nor backtracked any progress in the past month.]

… And the fog? Where's it gone now?

[I imagine the giant remipede was responsible for it somehow, whether by way of its barnacles or something else. Once you become a registered user and I am reconnected to the other Altered Symbiotic Systems, I will inquire with the Hasharana to investigate more about the remipede's symbiotic capabilities with the barnacles.]

Marisol gave the Archive a tired smile, wiping her lips as she leaned against the railings.

You still can't contact the Hasharana to give me a hand because I'm not a 'registered user', huh?

[Yes. As long as you are an unregistered user, I cannot communicate with the other Archives nor access any real-time information, such as up-to-date navigation data that would tell me whether or not the weather conditions are safe enough for sailing. After you retrieve a vial of healing seawater and cure your mother, please attend the Hasharana Entrance Exam and become a registered user.]

You said it had… what, a ninety-eight percent fatality rate? That only ten people pass it out of a thousand participants every year?

What makes you so sure I can pass that exam?

[...]

The little water strider gestured broadly at the five-hundred-meter long carcass floating right in front of them, shriveled and curled up like an artificial island.

[Objective #8 Completed: Slay the C-Rank Giant-Class Remipede]

[Reward: 3,000 points, 2x Remipede Olfactory Nerve Centers]

[Grade: E-Rank Giant-Class → C-Rank Giant-Class]

[... Including you, only three people have been recorded slaying a giant remipede of this size,] the Archive said plainly. [Now, three thousand points' worth of extremely tough remipede flesh is almost impossible to consume and digest in under a month for an untrained human, but if all you eat is ten points' worth of remipede flesh every day for the next ten months, I am quite certain you will be able to blow through next year's Hasharana Entrance Exam with ease.]

Marisol squinted at the Archive.

I don't wanna eat just remipede meat for ten months.

[Then eat more at a faster rate, and you can be done in seven. The world record title for the most points gained in a single day belongs to the Worm God, who managed to consume ten thousand and twenty-one points' worth of insect meat on a cold winter's night. Now, you are quite talented, so you can probably be done in five months if you eat just a little bit more every single day—]

Don't wanna. I'll eat at my own pace.

[B-but this year's Hasharana Entrance Exam is in four months.]

Are you trying to guilt trip me into taking the exam?

[N-no?]

Whirlpool City first, so I can deal with mama's ailment.

Then… we can talk about exams and stuff.

[What about right now?]

Ain't it obvious?

She planted her elbows against the railings while the Guards continued cheering, and she stared out at the giant remipede carcass with a wide, stupid grin on her face.

First, we celebrate!

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