Storm Strider

Before Marisol knew it, Victor put a diving harness on her, tucked a box of skyball corals behind her sash, and tossed her into the whirlpool from the top of the Imperator lighthouse.

The strong underwater current sucked her under immediately, but it wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation, nor a particularly painful one this time around. She’d been prepared for water rushing into her ears, her nose, and her hydrofuge spines were vibrating over her eyelids even before she hit the whirlpool. Everything was crystal clear as she was made to sink to Depth One’s halfway point—five hundred metres deep—and then Victor tapped the sapphire on her harness with his cane, making her plummet sideways and land in the middle of Seagrass Meadow.

While she bit her lips and tried to get used to that dull, throbbing ache in her head, the man landed in front of her with both hands on his cane. The bandages were still covering every inch of his skin, and somehow his feathered hat wasn’t just floating off his head; he wasn’t even wearing a gravity-controlling harness like she was, so she’d no idea how he was standing on the walls of the pit.

He’s a Hasharana, right?

Can’t you tell me what insect class he’s got?

[By Hasharana Law, the Archives of the Altered Swarmsteel Systems cannot publicly disclose the insect classes of the twenty Arcana Hasharana,] the Archive replied curtly. [He is of a higher rank. Even if I wanted to tell you, the information would simply be redacted behind several high-level processing barriers—none of which I can even hope to break through, considering you are not even technically a registered Hasharana.]

Marisol grumbled under her breath. How useful you are–

“It’s currently… ten in the morning,” Victor said, his voice clear and concise just like the new recruits she’d fought before. “To get you used to moving around underwater, here’s what we’re gonna do: the circumference of the Seagrass Meadow is three kilometres. This means if you skate in a straight line, you’ll eventually end up right where you started in three kilometres.” Then he gestured around the meadow, twirling a small circle with his finger. “We’ll race around Seagrass Meadow. One lap. If you lose, you’ll skate an extra lap as exercise. Got it? Three, two–”

She held up a palm, scowling at the man as she almost opened her mouth to talk; she’d completely forgotten she didn’t have a mutation to speak underwater.

Even still, she was pretty sure her eyes conveyed her message quite well.

Wait up, old man. Why am I doing something like this–

“If you don’t do it, I’m taking my room back,” Victor said, plucking her question right out of her head.

… What do you mean ‘take your room back’? It’s mine–

“No. It’s mine to begin with. I’ve just been leasing it to you,” Victor grumbled, scratching the back of his head as he swayed left and right. “You know, I’ve been sleeping outside in the rain the past two weeks. Sometimes, I feel like tossing you out so I can get my bed back.”

Marisol blinked. Can’t you just get another room from the Imperators? You’re a big shot even amongst the Hasharana, right?

“But sleeping in the rain’s good for my health… or so Reina says,” he muttered, shaking his head in dismay. “In any case, registering for a new room in Highwind Inn’s a hassle, and I don’t wanna live anywhere, so there’s only gonna be one room—and we’re gonna race for it.”

I’ll just get a new room myself if I get kicked out–

“I won’t let you. Now shut the hell up and get ready. There’s no time limit, and I’m gonna leave my walking cane right here in the seabed, so whoever races a full circle and touches it first wins–”

The old man answering her questions before she could even ask them in her head was getting to her, so she took off skating towards the east, blitzing through the forest of seaweeds.

Unsurprisingly, it was a rather calm stroll without pistol shrimp Imperators shooting at her.

She was a swirl of speed and motion as she hurtled through the Seagrass Meadow, focusing on the pure and simple motion of the Storm Strider—keeping her upper body low and forward, swinging her arms far and wide, and skating light on the tip of her glaives throughout. There were little hard obstacles in her way. The entire Depth was a plain field of seaweeds, which meant there was nothing her glaives and preapical claws couldn’t tear through. For a straight line dance, it was as plain and relaxing as could be.

If only her ears weren’t popping and her head wasn’t still throbbing, though she had no idea why she felt on the verge of throwing up.

[... There is also another slight problem.]

You don’t gotta spell it out for me.

She gritted her teeth, but there was nothing she could do about it; for how fast she was going, she couldn’t help but see Victor waving at her casually every hundred metres or so, always a few steps ahead of her. One moment she’d be skating through a natural corridor of seaweeds—seeing him meandering around next to her—and in the next she’d have skated into the next corridor, seeing him meandering around again as though she’d never made any progress… but she was making progress. The Archive was keeping track of the distance between her and his walking cane all the way up on the ‘ceiling’.

She couldn’t even see how he was moving so quickly, let alone come up with a plan to beat him.

Archiveeeee–

[I cannot disclose the insect class of an Arcana Hasharana.]

Then just tell me what he’s doing! Is he… teleporting with wormholes like the Worm God? Is he actually cheating by ‘flying’ over the meadow? What’s going on?

[I can assure you he is doing nothing of the sort.]

[He is simply faster than you—and all but the Worm God cannot hope to match his speed.]

In two minutes, she managed to complete a full lap around Depth One. She could’ve gone a whole lot faster, she imagined, but for the fact that underwater resistance was a drag on her speed and her morale was at an all time low—she didn’t even speed up as the walking cane finally came into view, because Victor already had his hands clasped over it, waiting impatiently for her to screech to a halt.

That she did, kicking up a cloud of silt and sand in his face.

“... Welp.” Victor shrugged nonchalantly, waving the cloud away as he turned to leave the whirlpool. “I’m getting my room back. For your reference, there’s a mound of trash bags two blocks behind Highwind Inn, and I’ve been sleeping there the past two weeks. It’s mighty comfortable–”

Again, she thought, growling bubbles out through gritted teeth as she stomped. One more lap.

Without another thought, she sped off eastwards again, and the only thing she heard was the man’s faint sigh before her ears started popping again.

The second lap took her a minute and a half. She tightened her muscles and kept her body lower than before, skating the exact same route to avoid having to cut through clumps of seaweed again—but by the time she returned to the walking cane, Victor was there again, giving her a mocking farewell wave.

Again.

The third lap took her a minute and twenty seconds. She forced herself to not look around as she skated. It didn’t matter if she could see the man taunting her or waving at her every hundred metres or so—by the time she returned, he was still there waiting for her.

The fourth lap took her a minute and ten seconds.

The fifth lap took her a minute and five seconds.

The sixth, eighth, tenth lap took her a minute and two seconds—she’d hit a soft wall, and for the life of her she just couldn’t figure out how to overcome it. Maybe if she activated her storm glaives, she’d be able to supercharge her muscles to break through the one-minute barrier?

No.

I’ll just electrocute myself if I activate that underwater.

So she clenched her jaw and kept doing it her way: throwing herself at the wall until it shattered under raw, unfiltered power.

The twentieth lap took her a minute to finish. She’d done nothing special but focusing on the movement of her fingers—instead of just swinging her arms to the rhythm of the Storm Stride, she imagined her hands as fins, her fingers as claws, ‘pushing’ water behind her while ‘pulling’ herself forward. It wasn’t much, but she’d rather have a two second improvement over nothing.

The twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth lap took her fifty-five seconds to finish. Her hair felt like it was going to tear off her scalp. She felt her skin was going to peel off her muscles, her muscles were going to slide off her bones, and her eyes were going to pop for how fast she was forcing herself to go. If anything, her ears were going to tear off her head first. The popping was incredibly painful, and she felt she couldn’t even hear the Archive’s voice anymore–

She couldn’t screech to a halt upon finishing her twenty-sixth lap, and she skated straight into a clump of seaweeds with a muted boom, kicking up a massive cloud of silt and sand.

… Can’t breathe.

While she lay tangled up in the seaweeds, she tried pushing herself onto her feet, but her hands slipped between the seaweeds and her glaives were jelly. The gravity harness did its job keeping her glued to the ground, but now she wanted to stand—and she couldn’t.

Can’t… move.

Something was gnawing at her mind. Her lips trembled. She couldn’t breathe. Everything felt cold and warm at the same time, and even her vision was beginning to blur as shadows fluttered in and out in the corners of her eyes. It was like… toxin in her veins. Adrenaline, maybe? It was an intoxicating sensation nonetheless, making her skin tingle down to her fingertips. Her body was overcome by an invisible weight bearing down on her, and–

Someone yanked out her box of skyball corals and shoved one of the sour candies into her mouth.

The moment she started sucking on it unconsciously, her head cleared and she could see again. She could blink again. She rolled around on the clump of seaweeds, flailing desperately, and somehow managed to sit up straight—Victor was standing over her with both hands clasped on his cane, looking down at her solemnly.

“... There is no greater killer than the comfort of being wrapped in water, pain dulled by numbness,” he said, backlit by the sun as he tipped his hat. “The deeper you go, the heavier the pressure, and the stronger the levitoxins given off by Corpsetaker and his brood. They cloud your judgement. They weaken your resolve. Headaches and popping sounds in your ears are the least of it—don't delude yourself into thinking you're invincible underwater just because you slayed a low-rank Mutant on the surface.”

“...”

“In any case, just pop a skyball coral whenever you feel you’re losing yourself in the pressure sickness and the levitoxins,” he said casually, doing a complete one-eighty on his tone as he whirled around to walk away. “Remember: they give you thirty minutes’ worth of oxygen in bursts, which means the oxygen will flush out all the nitrogen building inside you. To get rid of your headache quickly, pinch your nose and breathe out as hard and fast as you can until you feel you’ve equalised your pressure. Try it for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

“...”

It was true her head was still throbbing a little, so she pinched the bridge of her nose and blew bubbles through her lips, squeezing her eyes shut the entire time.

Somehow, she wasn’t completely surprised when his advice turned out to be effective—it was like her headache was flushed out with the bubbles as well.

“See?” He chuckled, waving behind him as she continued shaking her head to choke out the last of the bubbles. “And you already have ‘Filtering Gills’ unlocked, don’t you? Once the effects of a skyball coral runs out, that mutation will let you breathe underwater for thirty minutes, but the faster you move, the faster that duration counts down as well. Pay attention. Keep your wits about you, so even if you run out of skyball corals mid-mission, you’ll have ten or so minutes to rush back to the surface on your glaives. At the very least, bring yourself close enough that you'll float to the surface as a bloated corpse." Then he paused for a second, glancing back at her. "Now skate twenty-five more laps for each round you lost, and then twenty-five more for making me spend more time than I want underwater. It makes my bandages really soggy and wrinkly.”

He laughed all the way as he disappeared from view, heading back towards the surface.

For her part… she remained seated on her comfortable clump of seaweeds, staring until she could no longer catch a glimpse of his back or hear the solid clacks of his walking cane tapping against the ground.

She’d half a mind to race after him and ask if she was keeping her room, but at the same time, she wasn’t that much of a sore loser.

Compared to him, she was much, much slower—and if she was going to be diving to deeper Depths over the course of the next few months, she’d have to get used to underwater pressure quickly.

… A ‘mentor’, huh?

That old man?

Smiling softly, she shook her head and climbed onto her glaives, wobbling around for a few seconds before she found her footing again.

Since she’d demolished an entire swathe of seaweeds when she crashed into it, she supposed she could use it as a landmark to figure out if she’d skated a full circle around the meadow.

I still have around… nineteen skyball corals in the box.

Fifty seconds, then.

The goal today is to break three kilometres in fifty seconds.