After a week-long questioning session by the Imperators—during which she was made to recount that’d happened down in Depth Two with excruciating detail—Marisol was finally allowed to sleep in late for once at the Highwind Inn.

  Of course, she didn’t to sleep in late. Sharp at eight in the morning, she was already stretching on the flat roof of the inn, getting warmed up by the light morning drizzle and sunlight falling softly over the volcano city. The upper city crowd on the streets below were as loud as usual, doors and windows being thrown open as businesses hung their signs out to sway in the wind.

  She hadn’t been to the lower city recently, but she was sure the people there were just as carefree and nonchalant. None of them knew what’d transpired just a week ago in the whirlpool, and perhaps it was for the better that the city didn’t start panicking.

  She stretched her arms wide, pulled one glaive skyward, and then brought it down with a sharp exhale. The mechanical doll in front of her dodged to the left, its glaives for legs sliding to the edge of the roof with an ear-grating screech.

  The nicknamed ‘Highwind Doll’ was something Daniela, the innkeeper, lent her a week ago at her request of wanting an opponent to train with: tall, mechanical, and crafted from bronze and iron with gear arrays visible in the joints, it was a humanlike construct designed to imitate a Mutant-Class with four arms and two legs. Each arm was a little different. One ended in a wide, flat surface for blocking, another had a blunt fist for counterstrikes, while the other two sported claw-like grips allowing it to grab and swipe at her. Its legs were glaives like hers, though it probably wasn't based on a Water Strider Class user as much as the simple fact that glaives allowed it to slide around the wet roof easier.

  According to the Archive, the dolls were rather standard issue constructs the Imperators used for training when they weren’t on patrol, and they were small-scale versions of the giant ‘Inorganic Armours’ used to combat titan bugs in the northeastern Rampaging Hinterland Front. Depending on how far she turned the little dial on their backs, she could set them to automatically dodge her attacks at the speed of an untrained child, or at the speed of an E-rank Mutant-Class—meaning, at its current dial setting of five out of ten, she wasn't even coming to landing a kick on it once.

  Sliding around the roof and missing kicks were all she'd been doing the past week.

  Gritting her teeth, she darted in with the War Jump, trying to cleave the doll's head off with a flurry of kicks. It sidestepped foot after foot, spinning around at the same time to land a graceful backhand on her arms—which she blocked with her apiclaw, immediately countering with an elbow slash with her other claw.

  The doll was too slippery, though. Her slash missed, her follow-up kicks missed, and her scarf fluttered after her as she pursued its shadow around the roof with more swift, heavy kicks.

  She grimaced, eyes sharpened and focused like never before as she tried to follow the doll's movements. It was a blur of motion, dancing circles around her attacks.

  Her senses flared when the puddle beneath her glaives wobbled, and for the first time in weeks, she managed to whirl in time to send a kick flying at Victor’s head—which he blocked with his walking cane before hitting her once on the head, once on the shoulder, and twice in the thighs, in the same motion.

  She didn’t fall, but she hobbled away with a few pained groans while Victor straightened his collar, looking around the mess she’d made on the roof. The inn had been using the roof for extra storage space, but she’d since pushed the empty crates, old furniture, and stacks of terracotta bricks aside to make a little arena for her and the doll to dance in. Maybe she should’ve gotten permission first, but the fact that Daniela even lent her the doll probably meant she was allowed to do that… and if she wasn’t, she’d just tell Victor to ask for her.

  Whatever the case, it didn’t stop Victor from shuffling over to one of the crates before plopping himself down onto it, both hands still clasped on his walking cane.

  “... You tell me to be on standby in the inn, disappear for an entire week, and now you show up to slap me around?” she grumbled, rubbing her thighs as she turned away from him, ready to dash at the whirring doll again. “There ain’t nothing to worry about me, old man. I ain't giving up on getting down to Depth Eight just because I got a little outmatched by a bunch of Critter-Classes. Now, if you ain’t here to drag me off somewhere or give me my share of points from last week’s mission, I’d prefer if you didn’t disturb me while I’m busy training—”

  “It ain’t always about speed when you’re underwater. You’re already fast enough for Depth Three.”

  He spoke, quite evenly, just as she leapt in and launched a high kick at the doll’s chest. In a seamless motion, the doll bent backwards, its torso dipping just low enough to let her glaive soar over it—then she landed, kicked downwards with her other glaive, and it dodged that one with a simple sidestep too.

  She gasped for breath on the opposite side of the roof, while Victor was sitting close enough to turn the dial on its back with the tip of his cane. It didn’t take long for its clockwork mechanisms to whir even more vigorously.

  “... You ain’t gonna find a lot of consistently speedy opponents in the whirlpool. The aquatic bugs of the Deepwater Legion Front are generally regarded as the second group of bugs in the entire world, and while most of it can be attributed to their massive sizes making them rather easy to hit, there’s a reason why they’re still incredibly difficult to kill,” he said, humming delightfully as he cranked the dial up to six, seven, then eight, each turn punctuated with a loud . “On land, there ain’t a lot of options for bugs to choose how they want to evade. It’s either left, right, back, down, or up—but they always gotta come back down to the ground eventually. Even winged bugs gotta rest every once in a while.”

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  Then he tapped the back of the doll with his cane, making it shoot forward with a sharp roundhouse kick. Her breath caught as she ducked at the last second, gliding under its kick to swap places with it.

  Now it was on the opposite side of the roof, and she was back to where she was by Victor’s side.

  “But that don’t apply to aquatic bugs,” he said, patting her back hard with his cane. “They’re tough to kill because, more than any other type of bug in the world, they ain’t bound by gravity. Physically and biologically, they’re underwater. Their movements are erratic. Hard to predict. Even winged bugs can’t zip around you constantly the way aquatic bugs can with zero effort. Flying expends energy, but swimming doesn’t—for most of them, being slippery is just their way of life.”

  Frustration began mounting inside her as the doll increased its speed, and her kicks struck where it been, only for it to slip aside every time she thought there was no way it could dodge her strike. Its limbs could stretch and retract. Its movements were minimal and effortless. It was making full use of the fact that it was designed to emulate an aquatic bug—even if it wasn’t underwater—to slide, jump, and counter every conventional attack she could throw at it.

  The old man was right. ‘Slippery’ the right term to describe its movements.

  “Speed is all relative down in the whirlpool, lass!” he called out, kicking back on his crate as she bobbed and weaved, barely ducking under its kicks and slashes. “No matter how hard you train, you’re human! You ain’t gonna be as slippery as the bugs that were born to be slippery, so don’t think about how you can get faster to match its speed! That ain’t happening most of the time down there! Corner it! Put it in a tough spot where its options are limited! Make the bug slow down so it matches speed, and it’ll dance to your tune!”

  And she paused abruptly, her eyes flashing briefly blue with clarity.

  Victor smirked under his bandages.

  , she thought, dodging the doll’s next kick as she slid across to one corner of the roof, eyes scanning the terrain. A few heavy crates sat nearby, so she pivoted, shattering all the crates to scatter fields of sharp nails across the roof.

  The doll froze mid-dash as it reassessed the terrain, but almost immediately after, it found the easiest path to skate through to get to her with a kick. She stuck her tongue out at it as she leapt over its head, fanning out her wings for just a bit more airtime before landing on the opposite corner, kicking down a stack of terracotta bricks. The bricks went tumbling, forming small mounds; yet another obstacle for the doll to assess and navigate.

  She spun, eyeing a battered chair, a mouldy closet, and half a dozen old furniture pieces just sitting along the edge of the roof. Just before the doll started moving again, she kicked the chair aside, knocked the closet into its predicted path, and when it sidestepped to find a straighter path towards her, she vibrated her repelling hydrospines to send ripples out along the puddle, confusing its sensors.

  she sucked in a roaring gust of wind with the jets on her right glaive—pulling in the field of nails behind the doll.

  The doll whirled, its single lens for an eye zooming in and out on the unavoidable wall of nails flying at its back. It didn’t know where to run. Bricks and furniture flanked it on both sides, limiting its path of evasion. Obviously, a real bug wouldn’t care and bash through all the obstacles in its way, but with its movements to the side limited and its ability to dash back sealed by the nails flying at it—because its setting was on ‘touch opponent only’—there were only two possible paths of evasion.

  Forward and up.

  So Marisol leapt in with a simple jump—discharging the air she’d sucked in so she had propulsion and even more speed—before kicking her glaive from sky to ground.

  There was nowhere for it to go.

  A resounding, satisfying punctured through the air as her glaive smashed its head into its neck, the springs and coils inside strumming with a deep, basso tune. She recovered from her kick a half-second later, sliding back with her apiclaws dragging along the ground to slow her down.

  While she disabled discharge and gradually allowed herself to breathe, the doll wobbled around, trying to regain its balance. Quickly, she stopped smiling and feeling giddy about finally having hit the doll once. She didn’t cleave its head open or anything, but if she damaged it, she wouldn’t have to pay for repairs or fix it herself, right?

  Brows furrowed, face tight with worry, she turned towards Victor and looked at him with pleading eyes.

  “... That’s about right.” He hummed, sliding off his crate and groaning as his spine cracked. “It ain’t about increasing your speed all the time. Seal off the bugs’ possible paths of movement, confuse them with clever and distracting tricks, and leave them only one ‘possible’ path of escape. If you do that, you’ll find, someway, somehow, that you can always slowly grind the dumbasses down. They always have a glaring weakness. You’re human, and they’re not—it’s tempting to rely only on your speed once you’re already this fast, but brute force and power won’t carry you all the way to Depth Eight.”

  Then he glanced up at the distant lighthouse, sighing to himself as he waved her away.

  “Good going,” he said. “Get stronger. Feel free to hop in on patrol and extermination missions in Depths One to Two whenever you want. You have some time before Lighthouse Seven calls for you again, so make sure to unlock ‘Basic Sonar’ by the time they send you down to Depth Three.”

  Marisol’s brows knitted even further. “I know it’s on the way to Depth Eight, but why Depth Three specifically?

  “The Imperators are still investigating the copepods that attacked all of you a week ago,” he said plainly. “Most likely, in a few weeks, they’ll wrap up the investigations and pinpoint the general location of the Mutant-Class copepod. It’s probably in Depth Three, so seeing as you and the Imperator siblings were the only ones to have come out of last week’s attack safely, Lighthouse Seven will probably decide to send the four of you down to deal with the Mutant-Class.”

  “A Mutant-Class?”

  “Mhm. It’ll probably be a Mutant-Class Extermination Mission they’ll send you and the siblings on, so get your ass ready.”

  She rose to the tip of her glaives, scowling as she placed her hands on her hips. “But that coordinated attack getting much damage done to the Imperators ain’t normal even by Whirlpool City standards, right? Why send someone like me down to get rid of the Mutant-Class when I’m obviously weaker than some of the other Imperators—”

  “Do you not want to fight?”

  “No. Not that. I wanna get down to Depth Eight as soon as possible, so I gotta get stronger for that, but why are the also pushing me so hard—”

  He whipped his cane to the left, clearing his throat loudly. “Look, a bug!”

  She snapped her head to the left, muscles tensing, but then she felt like an idiot when it was obvious there was no giant bug there. The morning in the upper city was cheerful, boisterous, and energetic. It was peaceful. The sounds of civilization were soothing. The only thing that could bring her mood down was not getting her questions answered by the old man, so on that front, at least he was kind enough not to stick around and taunt her with his presence.

  By the time she turned back around to scowl at him, Victor had already disappeared—and the doll that’d been impossible to hit was bisected diagonally from shoulder to waist, the upper half sliding down slowly before the entire thing crumbled to the ground.

  She knelt and groaned with her face in her hands, not wanting to listen to the doll’s head rolling across the roof.

  The Archive shrugged on her shoulder.

  What horrid luck.

  Marisol could barely keep herself from sighing again.