The Unmaker

Madamaron charged at her, kicking off with so much power that it tore up the street behind it with an explosive boom.

For Dahlia’s part, she was still tied up in the middle of the street, unable to make a getaway for herself.

… Screw this.

Bending her knees, she made sure to compress the springs around her knees as much as possible before she jumped—the jagged edges on her desert locust greaves shredding Alice’s threads.

She leapt six metres up onto the nearest roof, just narrowly dodging out of the way as Madamaron barrelled past where she stood, and she was glad she made an attempt to escape. Four arms, four silk longswords, Alice slammed into Madamaron head-on to match it arm-to-arm, and if she hadn’t jumped out of the way, she would’ve been crushed between the two of them.

What happened to protecting me?

[She likely believed you would be able to escape from her threads by yourself.]

I swear, I’m going to–

Being on the roof wasn’t far enough. She was still in the way. Madamaron swatted Alice into a nearby building like a boy would slap away a fly, and the impact jolted her out of her thoughts; there wasn’t even a second to spare as she leaped away, hopping back onto another roof as the giant antlion ran through the building she’d been standing on, decimating it in a single good charge.

It was a five-metre-tall giant after all, completely unlike the human-sized Mutant firefly. She couldn’t even imagine a building could fall on it and crush it to death.

…

Something still nagged at the back of her head, though, as Alice shot out the building she’d been sent flying into with giant silk spears in each hand, swinging at Madamron’s nape from four separate directions. The Mutant whirled and matched each of her spears with an arm, its sandy chitin where they came in contact with her weapons; the ‘fight’ only began now, and it wasn’t like anything Dahlia had seen before.

She was reminded of Raya’s solo fight against the Mutant firefly.

Alice was an absolute pest, dashing and dodging and using her smaller frame to weave between Madamaron’s wild swings in the middle of the street. She didn’t stick with a single type of weapon. Spears, swordstaffs, hammers, axes, and sickles were all part of her armament, and she tested each type thoroughly on every part of the giant antlion. Madamaron had a turtle-like shell on its back, so she tried to crack its shell with her blunt weapons. Madamaron had a hundred bony spikes jutting out its joints, so she tried to snip and cleave those off with giant scissors and curved blades. It didn’t seem like an even fight whatsoever. Alice dictated the momentum, musing and laughing and squinting at her opponent as though she were studying it mid-fight–

Until Madamaron got irritated, plunged all four of its arms into the sandstone ground, and made the undertown vibrate.

Dahlia jumped back once more as every building in a thirty metre radius collapsed, the foundations sinking into giant sandpits Madamaron was instantly able to create with its ripples.

This must be how it phased through the walls of the sandstone houses.

Alice, of course, showed no fear. Even with the buildings sinking all around and the ground being as unstable as it was, she pressed forward with a relentless flurry of attacks, cutting and carving off as many bony spikes off its body as she could. Those spikes regrew mostly in the blink of an eye, and… Dahlia frowned, finding it strange Madamaron was backpedalling so hard. Was it on defence because Alice was faster than it, or was it waiting for Alice to tire herself out?

The speed at which it regrew its bony spikes gave her a hint, and when it suddenly curled into a giant ball to hide under its turtle-like shell, she jumped forward with her greaves and slammed into Alice mid-air—tackling the Hasharana into a narrow alley just as a hundred spikes shot out from its shell to decimate everything in its line of sight.

How is that an antlion ability? She thought, wincing as she tumbled into a roll alongside Alice. Aren’t they just good at making sandpits? Do they just have random projectile abilities now?

[You must remember that, at the end of the day–]

“Mutants aren’t your normal giant insects!” Alice said, shooting Dahlia a grin as she jumped to her feet and patted sand off her crimson cloak. “This is fun, isn’t it! It’s a bit challenging! Granted, I am an Arcana Hasharana, so I should probably be able to finish it off within a few more minutes, but…”

Dahlia flinched when a bony spike stabbed into the wall next to them, scowling at Alice as she did. “But what? What’s the point of the traps if you’re just going to fight it head-on like that?”

“I was just testing its basic physical strength and speed! It’s definitely not on the level of a Lesser Great Mutant, so that’s good to know!”

“You were testing it? You almost killed me–”

“And now that we know it’s not a Lesser Great Mutant, we’re going to kill it! Distract it for around a minute for me, will you? I’ll get all the fuses lit!”

Without waiting for a response, Alice vanished with a puff of sand, leaping over a sinking building. At the same time, heavy footsteps charged towards her—Dahlia leaped instinctively as well, dodging out of the way as Madamaron smashed into the alley.

What’s her deal? I told her I didn’t want to fight–

[Focus. Survive for one minute. Run.]

The spikes on Madamaron’s turtle-like shell were poking in and out all jittery, and she recalled the Mutant firefly’s area lightning blast—the spike attack it just did was probably similar to that. She figured Madamaron shouldn’t be able to reuse that wide-area instant-kill attack for at least a few more minutes, so Eria was probably right. She didn’t need to fight back; just distracting Madamaron for a minute until Alice was finished ‘lighting the fuses’ had to be her best bet.

… Oh, dammit.

She landed on a nearby sinking roof and popped her status screen open, checking her attributes.

[// STATUS]

[Name: Dahlia Sina]

[Class: Assassin Bug]

[BloodVolume: 4.6/4.8 (96%), Strain: 789/1452 (54%)]

[Unallocated Points: 89]

[// BASIC ATTRIBUTES]

[Strength: 7 (+4), Speed: 6 (+1), Dexterity: 8 (+5), Toughness: 5 (+1), Perceptivity: 5, StrainLimit: 1452]

[// MUTATION TREE]

[T1 Core Mutation | Nymphal Metamorphosis]

{T1 Branch Mutation | ???}

[T2 Core Mutations | Base Chitin Development | Dagger Antennae]

{T2 Branch Mutations | ??? | ???}

[// UNIQUE SWARMSTEEL LIST]

[2x Assassin Bug Claw Gauntlet (Quality = C)(Str +4/12)(Dex +5/5)(Tou + 0/5)(Strain +395)]

[2x Desert Locust Greave (Quality = D)(Spd +1/2)(Tou +1/4)(Strain +216)]

… I don’t have enough points to unlock a tier three core mutation, right?

[You do not. Those would require a hundred and fifty points per mutation.]

Then put all of my points into speed. Get it as high as I can so–

[Speed: 6 → 8]

[Unallocated Points: 89 → 4]

Eria couldn’t have acted any faster. She saw Madamaron’s motions slow as it pounced at her in real time, its claws ripping through the building she was standing on. Her legs jumped away on instinct and she started backing through the undertown—her deadly game of tag with Madamaron beginning with Eria counting down in her head.

[Sixty seconds.]

The dodges were mad and almost impossible, but somehow, she was managing. Blow after blow, Madamaron was always just a step behind her, running on all fours like a hound as it tore up the ground with its extra arms. The easy-to-shatter sandstone buildings worked against it as she purposefully sprinted across narrow alleys and jumped through windows into tiny houses, using whatever debris she could create to slow it down. Madamaron seemed just as irritated as she was, stumbling and falling whenever a particularly large chunk of sandstone crashed into its head.

[Forty seconds.]

Frustrated, Madamaron punched through a whole street of buildings and sent a wave of debris flying her way, and her antennae tingled. She glanced around. She jumped, curling into a ball mid-air and bracing her torso with her desert locust greaves; most of the debris simply smashed into the tough chitin and bounced her through a wall relatively unharmed.

As she coughed and clawed to her feet, she felt incredibly relieved that she’d spent so much time on her greaves—she wasn’t sure how much shrapnel would be stuck in her legs by now if she didn’t have them on.

[Twenty seconds.]

[Come on, Dahlia.]

[Get up and focus–]

Easier said than done. Before she could vault out the window on the other side of the abandoned building, the whole place started shuddering, the foundations sinking into a massive sand pit. She lost her balance. She landed hard on her rear and started sliding as the building tilted sideways, falling into the desert. It was only glaring at the hatch to the ceiling above her that she was able to visualise the steel path telling her how to cut it open—and she jumped, slashing the hatch open to soar out of the building as the sandpit swallowed it whole.

Too little too late, though.

Madamaron was already waiting for her outside the building, standing stoically on two legs, and it caught her out of the air with its giant shear-like mandibles.

Shit!

Her arms flew down to intercept before the sawed edges could bisect her in half by her waist, but she was just barely strong enough to stop its mandibles. She let out a gasp of pain as the sawed edges cut through her thin chitin, through her palms, and started digging into her bones. Every strand of muscle in her four arms strained as they’d never before. Her whole body clenched as she tried to find an opportunity to slip out of its mandibles, but Madamaron was just staring at her with its giant eyes. If it wanted to use its hands to squeeze her to death right now, it absolutely could—it simply relished in killing her slowly like the abnormal bug it was.

Is she… expecting me to get out of this one… by myself as well?

I… I can’t… this Mutant is…

“... Upon the bed of carcasses–”

“The flightless moth lies!” A voice shrieked from above. “Sorry for the wait! I’m back!”

There was red blur in the sky. The shadow of a moth gliding overhead, blotting out the sun. Both Dahlia and Madamaron glanced up for a brief moment, and in that moment—a giant glaive crashed down like thunder, severing Madamaron’s mandibles and releasing Dahlia from its deadly grip.

Her arms were burning and throbbing with pain, but still she managed to hop away onto a nearby roof, distancing herself from the howling and screeching antlion. She glared at Alice standing in the middle of the street immediately afterwards, but Alice merely returned a smirk and a simple thumbs-up.

Then, the Arcana Hasharana pulled her giant silk glaive back—a three-metre-long weapon so thick and clunky she needed all four hands just to wield it improperly. Her fingers couldn’t even wrap around the shaft completely, but… it didn’t matter.

When Madamaron recovered from its bleeding mandibles and screeched at Alice, she simply took a step forward and pivoted her entire body, slamming the massive glaive into its torso. The blade didn’t cut, but the sheer weight behind the impact shattered Madamron’s chitin, throwing it into the adjacent building. Before it could get off its shell and crawl onto its feet, Alice jumped, fanned her defunct crimson wings out—the winds created from her own attack making her hover in the air—and then slammed her glaive directly down its torso again, slamming it deeper into the ground.

The impact shook the undertown. The winds that rushed out blew back against her wings, letting Alice hover mid-air as she brought the massive glaive down repeatedly, as though hammering a crooked nail that just wouldn’t go through the wood. Dahlia braced her arms before her face to stop sand from getting into her eyes, but even through it, she could see Madamaron was in no shape or form to get back up; the final straw was when Alice twirled the glaive around, stabbing it down through Madamaron’s chest to impale it to the ground.

Madamaron let out a furious, unholy screech unlike any other, and while it struggled to yank her glaive out and Dahlia clamped her hands over her ears—Alice dashed next to her, grabbing her waist before beginning a series of mad hops across the roofs.

“We’re running!”

…

Dahlia wanted to ask ‘why’, of course. It felt like Alice had Madamaron dead to rights, but she felt like a sack of reeds as Alice carried her under-arm, her head spinning at the speed they were hopping away from Madamaron at. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t speak. Within ten seconds Alice had hopped all the way to the edge of the undertown, and within ten more seconds they’d already hopped all the way up to the edge of the crater, where the townsfolk were all peeking down at their evil desert god impaled to the ground–

And then the literal ‘fuses’ lit.

As Alice let go of her and she whirled around, the undertown below her exploded into a maelstrom of light and fire, great flame tongues leaping skyways. The sandstone buildings themselves seemed to ignite, transforming into molten slag of gold and amber. Heat immediately rushed upwards, blasting everyone’s faces with a suffocating wave, an immense physical force that knocked even Alice off her feet.

Dahlia didn’t fall, though.

She watched, eyes watering with pain as the crater transformed into what she could only describe as a pit to hell—flames dancing with malevolent glee as they turned the screaming Madamaron, still impaled in the very centre of the undertown, into the first and last tormented in its god-killing heat.

“... Those tarps, flammable scaffolding, and barrels of oil we’d been scattering across the undertown the past two weeks really came in handy, huh?” Alice said, grimacing as she rose and stood next to Dahlia, watching Madamaron bellow its dying throes. “I figured it only attacked at night and hid under the desert because it’s not actually all that adapted to living in the heat. In that case, I needed all the spilled oil to diffuse under the sand when it first vibrated the undertown so it can’t burrow away to escape, and then I needed the entire rest of the undertown to catch on fire so even if it escapes from my glaive, it won’t be able to run to the edges of the crater in time. You were good at running away messily and causing collateral damage! It barely noticed the oil diffusing under the entire crater!”

“...”

Irritated, still, she smacked the back of Alice’s head and scowled, refusing to look the Hasharana in the eye.

Instead, she looked around at the townsfolk and saw—for the very first time—the glimmer of light and hope in their eyes.

They probably couldn’t believe what they were seeing: their greatest evil god burning in hellfire, unable to escape as though it were finally being punished by divine providence.

… Is that really Madamaron, though?

She didn’t say it aloud because she wasn’t completely sure, and Alice wasn’t saying anything to interrupt the townsfolk’s exuberant cheers. Maybe she was wrong; maybe the gut-feeling that was telling her it couldn’t possibly be this ‘easy’ was just expecting something more dramatic from a Mutant that’d been preying on the town for a decade.

If a Hasharana had come to Alshifa’s aid during the invasion, could they have dealt with the Mutant firefly without even breaking a sweat?

[... Perhaps.]

[Perhaps not.]

[But what is done is done; that Mutant is dead, and you can watch it disintegrate into ash.]

Even Eria seemed to think that was Madamaron, and maybe she had no business arguing with an ultra-advanced Swarmsteel, but… the fact that Alice wasn’t smiling down at the screaming Mutant made her even more unnerved.

If Alice thought that was Madamaron, wouldn’t she be a lot more gleeful watching it burn?

…

Dahlia didn’t know.

But today, four weeks after she arrived at the Sharaji Oasis Town, another Mutant was killed.

And that had to be cause for celebration.

Arc Seven, “Bloodburn”, End