The Swarm was the aggressor, and humanity was the defender. Four thousand metres below the surface, all of them played their parts in this never-ending war once again.

  Rhizocapala counted down from ten, but he didn’t even manage to finish ‘nine’ before Maria exploded into motion, water swirling around her limbs in tight circles as she surged forward. Her water and debris drills carved through the giant barnacles around the three of them with violent precision, leaving jagged chunks of shell scattering through the crater. Reina followed, her scorpion tail lashing out like a scythe and slicing through the snapping barnacle mouths that lunged at them.

  In an instant, the two Lighthouse Imperators cleared a wide berth around them, and Marisol just finished popping a skyball coral into her mouth.

  High above them, Rhizocapala remained perched on his grotesque throne of crab carcasses, his demeanor almost bored. With a lazy flick of his hand, he grabbed one of the massive crab carcasses beneath him, and with a disgruntled heave, he tossed it into the water above the crater.

  Then he reached for another crab and did the same, over and over again.

  The water churned violently as the clam-like barnacles on the hundreds of hovering crab carcasses began to swell and crack open. Giant, toothy mouths lined the insides of the shells, snapping as if hungry for blood. Rhizocapala laughed and held up a fist, and for a second, nothing happened. The hovering barnacles were still suspended far overhead like grotesque storm clouds blotting out the sky. Then, at their god’s command, all hundred or so of them began aiming their mouths down at the three of them.

  The first volley of giant spines rained down from above, screaming through the water like jagged missiles.

  “Move!” Maria barked.

  Reina dashed back and slashed hard right with her tail to decimate a dozen spines aimed at her, while Maria spun in place with her drill arms fanned out, destroying her projectiles as well. Marisol didn’t have such luxurious defensive options. The spines the barnacles shot down were far too big, plummeting far too fast. Whirlwind Spin wouldn’t be of any use here. She took off skating to the side, and as Rhizocapala roared for his hundreds of barnacles to continue raining spines down on them, she continued her mad skate around the crater.

  Rhizocapala didn’t even need to move from his mound of giant crab carcasses in the centre of the crater. All he had to do was play conductor, pointing finger guns at all three of them to direct barnacle fire at them.

  the Archive agreed.

  She thought, gritting her teeth as a dozen giant spines rammed into the ground behind her.

  Halfway across the crater, Marisol threw a glance back at the ladies and scowled. It didn’t like they had a plan. Maria was much like her, dashing and leaping and swimming and pouncing between projectile and projectile with a mad frenzy, ripping through every grounded barnacle in her way and then some. Reina was much steadier, but she was basically doing the same thing as Maria: blocking and deflecting projectiles, and then carving through the barnacles that continued to pop out of the ground like a never-ending mole hunt.

  Neither Lighthouse Imperator was making any progress towards Rhizocapala, who was still standing perched on his mound of crab carcasses, conducting his clouds of barnacles suspended overhead.

  The Archive told her to focus on dodging, and she activated discharge to completely jerk her momentum to a halt as half a dozen giant spines slammed down in front of her. She immediately shuddered. Despite her increased attribute levels, she was still just outrunning the projectiles, and were it not for the foggy cloud of silt she just kicked up by spraying water everywhere, she wouldn’t be able to stand still and gather her bearings like this.

  But Rhizocapala immediately snapped his head around and pointed a finger gun in her general direction, and half of the overhead barnacles turned on her. There was no other choice. She started skating back towards the two Lighthouse Imperators, keeping discharge activated to boost her speed even further.

  the Archive said plainly.

  Good enough wasn’t good enough.

  Draining Rhizocapala’s bioarcanic essence and pushing him down to Depth Five meant he’d get to live another day, adapt to their strategies, and possibly join forces with the other Four Leviathans. If they couldn’t take him down here and now, they’d only be dragging the siege to the bottom of the whirlpool out even longer, and in the face of the Insect God, Marisol was reminded once again that she wasn’t here to have fun.

  She had no idea how long her mama still had.

  Her vision blurred briefly as the Archive began overlaying faint, fragmented images in her mind. Flickering scenes of past battles filled her head—her right eye was still seeing spiny projectiles crashing down around her, Rhizocapala of Year Ninety-Four cackling in front of her, but her left eye was seeing Rhizocapala of Year Eighty-One, Year Seventy-Eight, Year Seventy-Seven. Her right eye was in the present, her left eye in the past. She saw her past dashing and fighting swiftly, her abilities powerful, but her endings always grim.

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  Each scene in her left eye blurred into the next, and it was a montage of failure after failure, all against the same foe.

  Marisol growled, nearly losing her footing as she dodged another volley of spiny projectiles, clamping a hand over her left eye.

  the Archive said plainly.

  She scoffed, forcing a pained grin onto her face.

  The fragmented memories resumed playing, an unrelenting stream of chaos overlaying her left eye. First-person recordings from bug-slayers long dead filled her vision in rapid succession—decades of brutal battles fought and lost against Rhizocapala.

  Her right eye remained fixed on the present, darting between floating barnacles and spiny projectiles raining down in sharp arcs, but it was the images in her left eye that gnawed at her resolve. The first recording showed a Hasharana barreling through a field of barnacles, their movements precise, the sawtooth blade in their hand oversized and trembling with power. They charged confidently, without fear, without worry—until a cluster of spines erupted from the ground, impaling them mid-stride.

  The first recording cut to static.

  Marisol’s stomach churned. She felt the sharp, phantom ache of those spines piercing her own body, and bile rose in her throat.

  the Archive urged, its voice steady

  The footage jumped to another Hasharana, this one circling Rhizocapala’s writhing mound of barnacle-infested corpses. Their weapon flashed—a glaive wreathed in blue light—as they drove it into the Barnacle God’s chest. For a moment, it seemed like they had succeeded. But then Rhizocapala exploded outward, ejecting himself in a burst of barnacle shards before lodging into a fresh crab carcass nearby. The Hasharana barely had time to react before they were overwhelmed by a barrage of spiny projectiles.

  Marisol clenched her jaw as pain stabbed through her temples. Despite the Archive’s reassurance, each gruesome end seemed to sink its claws into her, dragging her deeper into a suffocating pit. How many more could she take?

  The next recording was worse. A team of four Hasharana, coordinated and powerful, worked together to trap Rhizocapala. They tore through barnacles with relentless efficiency, pinning the creature’s main body against a cavern wall. For a brief, heart-pounding moment, it looked like victory was within reach—then Rhizocapala ejected itself again, this time firing its heart like a cannonball into the far side of the arena. Then a fresh wave of toothy barnacles chomped down on two of the slayers from behind. The last two fought valiantly, but exhaustion claimed them within minutes.

  Still skating, she ducked beneath a low-hanging barnacle, her right eye still keeping track of every threat in her immediate path. Her legs burned. Her focus started to waver. Her vision blurred with tears she refused to let fall. Her chest tightened, and nausea rolled over her in waves. It wasn’t just the brutality of the deaths—it was the futility. Everyone last Hasharana who’d gone after Rhizocapala had been strong, skilled, determined, but still they’d fallen just like that.

  Like they were insignificant.

  Like they were to be crushed underfoot.

  The footage sped up, flashing battle after battle, all blending into a blur of pain and desperation. She did her best to pick out just one core strength of his, and she noticed one: Rhizocapala was slippery—slipperier than any opponent she’d faced. Whenever a Hasharana managed to corner him in close-quarters, he always found a way to eject his heart, relocate, and outlast his opponents. His cannon-like barnacles weren’t even his most powerful ability. The fact was, his real heart had never been touched in thirty-one years, and was the obstacle no Hasharana before her had ever managed to overcome.

  And that, in itself, implied a few things.

  Her glaives pulsed and crackled with lightning for a brief moment as she skated straight at Maria and Reina, who’d barely moved from where they started off. Her mind was still racing, struggling to piece together every recording of every old battle against Rhizocapala while she was still fighting in the present, but here… surrounded by carcasses and barnacles, canyons and craters, it was a perfect arena to box an Insect God in with.

  The idea hit her like a spark to dry tinder.

  the Archive muttered.

  A spine grazed her arm, slicing through her sleeve and drawing blood. She hissed, but didn’t falter, pushing the pain aside as she altered her course, tackling Maria and Reina with discharge boosting her speed just as another volley of spines rained down on them. The two of them would’ve been completely fine, of course—they would’ve reacted in time—but now she’d already thrown them over a small mound of giant crab carcasses as cover, and the two ladies glared at her as determination knotted in her chest.

  She to do it.

  She couldn’t afford to waste any more time.

  “What the hell do ye think yer doin’?” Maria snapped, grabbing her by the collar. “Stick to the plan! We keep fightin’ the long fight, drain its blood, and once the projectiles start slowin’ down, we jump on him and threaten him just enough to make him back off—”

  “I have an idea to kill Rhizocapala.”

  As dozens more spines rammed into their cover of crab carcasses, Reina gave her a long, hard stare.

  “And is this ‘idea’ something you came up with,” Reina asked, “or something your Archive came up with after analysing our environment?”

  She grinned back at Reina, her head pounding from the strain of processing the decades’ worth of battle footage, but she pushed it all down and explained her plan as quickly as possible, as efficiently as possible. At some point, she even let the Archive choose her words for her, and for their part, both Lighthouse Imperators listened as intently as they ever could in the heat of battle.

  “... So the formation is simple,” she finished, thumbing over the carcasses. “Reina will charge out at Rhizocapala as the main distraction, while Maria and I will run circles around the crater in the same direction. All Reina has to do is distract him for long enough while we do our thing, and by the time he notices what’s up, it’ll be too late for him to even think about escaping. He ain’t gonna be getting away. How’s that for a plan?”

  The two stared at her, their silence stretching like a taut wire. Maria’s eyes were sharp, calculating, her lips pressed into a thin line. Reina, meanwhile, was twirling the edge of her tail in slow, restless circles, her expression unreadable save for the faint twitch of her jaw.

  Surprisingly, it was Maria who broke the silence first.

  “What’s your Archive think about the success rate?”

  Marisol hesitated.

  “Five percent,” she said. “Maybe less.”

  She could’ve sugarcoated it, dressed it up in bravado, but what was the point?

  They needed to know what the Archive thought.

  So when Maria exhaled, breathing bubbles that might’ve been a laugh if it wasn’t so grim, Marisol had no idea what to expect.

  “... Aight,” she said finally, her tone almost casual. “We kill him, then.”

  Marisol blinked, caught off guard by how easily Maria agreed. Reina sharpened her tail against the carcass, too, the razor-edge chitin catching dim sunlight in a silver arc. “No disagreements, either,” she said. “To begin with, I did not want to let Rhizocapala live for even a single day longer.”

  And for the first time in what felt like hours, Marisol smiled. It wasn’t much—just a small, fleeting thing—but it warmed the icy knots in her chest.

  As she prepared to vault over the carcasses, Maria’s hand shot out, the grip firm around her wrist. Startled, she turned, her glaives scraping against the ground.

  Maria’s face was closer than she expected, her expression soft but strangely intense.

  “If we kill Rhizocapala here—if this shit works—’ahm buyin’ ye a meal,” Maria said curtly. “A good one.”

  Then Maria held out her fist, waiting.

  It was such a bizarre gesture coming from her—this older, wilder woman who seemed to have little time for theatrics—but it wasn’t forced.

  If anything, it felt…genuine.

  And it made Marisol laugh softly as she bumped Maria’s fist with her own.

  “Deal.”

  [Objective #42: Slay the F-Rank Barnacle God, Rhizocapala]

  [Time Limit: Undefined]

  [Reward: Death of a Sea God]

  [Failure: Death]

  So some news first: next chapter, I'll unveil the final round of progression edits for all of my stories. These changes to the progression system will be pretty big, but I've been working on them for around a month and a half already with feedback from my editor and beta readers, so I'm pretty confident it'll make for a much more satisfying read for new and old readers alike.

  However, because the changes are quite massive, I will include a full changelog of everything that has been changed about the progression system in next week's Author's Notes so you don't have to reread anything. It will be very length, but please go through it if you have the time. Once again, a reminder that these changes are being made because the manuscript for Storm Strider Volume One is due by the end of the month, and this is the last month I'll get to fully iron out all the kinks in the Brightburrow series' progression system. After the story goes live on Amazon, I can't really make any changes anymore, so this is (most likely) the final round of big edits! There'll be no more for the foreseeable future! Thanks for reading this story so far!

  Next chapter on Thursday!

  The link to the Discord server is with over five hundred members, where you can get notifications for chapter updates, check out my writing progress, and read daily facts about this insect-based world!