Fifty wormholes closed one by one behind them, each with a muffled thrum, until the last one sealed and left them in silence.

The air in the underground tunnels beneath the Divine Capital was as thick and damp as Zora remembered it, but that worked to their advantage now. There shouldn't be any pursuers able to track their pheromones, which he knew the Ant Classes were capable of.

By his reckoning, the three of them were at least five kilometers away from the campus, buried deep in the northern end of the Divine Capital close to the city walls. He could also be wrong, because he still wasn't quite sure what the range of Enki's wormholes were, but if Enki thought they were far away enough, he'd believe it too.

As Enki continued holding the unconscious Eria, Zora lifted the skull-shaped whistle around the neck and blew into it.

He'd never used it before, but he'd heard of the death whistles the Attini Empire's border armies used to communicate with each other. The stories didn't do it justice. The sound was dreadful, a metallic shriek that rattled stone, stabbed at the nerves, and rebounded across the tunnel on both ends, multiplying until the whole earth seemed to groan with the sound.

He sustained it for about ten seconds before lowering the whistle.

He listened dearly.

At first, nothing. Then—softly—the patter of chitin legs on stone and wheels crushing small pebbles came from the front.

The sound of a caravan.

It was cold and damp down here until Ifas eventually pulled up to the three of them with his giant silver ant caravan, lantern light faintly warm.

"... Sorry for the lateness," Ifas said, dipping his head casually. "Had a hard time getting down here with my caravan, though. If it weren't for the whistle, I'd never have found you."

Zora couldn't help but smile slightly. "Sure."

"We should leave the Divine Capital before it turns against us," Ifas added, still humming as he thumbed back at his caravan. "Get in. Save your strength and let me carry us out. Don't make more wormholes and exhaust yourself, you hear me?"

Enki nodded slowly, and Zora inclined his head at the boy, realizing Enki was, in fact, looking slightly tired. He didn't even think that was possible for the great Worm Mage, but opening so many consecutive wormholes—including however many he opened to evacuate the students in the campus—must've drained him dearly.

Even still, Zora tilted his chin at the limp girl in Enki's arms.

"Not yet," he said. "Eria has to be cut out first. The lower half of her body is still intact inside the giant grafting bug, so before she wakes up and goes on a rampage again, you're going to have to cut her free."

Ifas looked to his left. Nobody was there. Then he looked to his right. Nobody was there as well.

Zora may be blind, but he was looking at Ifas.

"... And how do you expect me to do that?" Ifas chuckled lightly, thumbing at himself now. "I'm just a humble chef and driver, not a doctor. I've no idea how to—"

"If you don't," Zora said, "Eria will die a monster."

His words settled in the tunnel like a stone dropped into still water.

For a moment, Ifas said nothing. Then came a sigh, and the scrape of boots as he hopped off the driver's seat. His kitchen knife flicked into his hand so quickly Zora didn't even hear it coming out of his sleeve.

"Fine," Ifas muttered. "But then you'd best give me space, and more light than this gloom. I need to see her clearly."

Enki immediately stomped. Zora felt the sudden vibration underfoot—like a drumskin struck hard—as pebbles danced and rolled away from the four of them, the vibrations grinding the floor into flat stone.

Huh.

That's… his vibration mutation?

Shaking his head, Zora spoke, "Sustained flames."

Four globes of fire appeared mid-air around them, hanging like torches and spreading warmth evenly around them. He had no idea how bright it really was in the tunnel, but if Ifas wasn't complaining, it was probably good enough.

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Together, they laid Eria flat across the cleared floor. Her upper human body sagged forward, skin clammy, while her giant grafting bug body sprawled behind her like a grotesque shadow. Even in unconsciousness, her body twitched, her breaths punctuated by small groans. Ifas crouched beside her upper human body, tracing the flesh where her waist connected to the giant body.

"She's moving a bit too much for my liking," he murmured. "If she jerks under my knife, I might cut her wrong. Can you—"

Before Zora could cast a spell, Enki moved again. In one step, he warped himself onto the back of Eria's grafting bug abdomen, and then he raised a hand, palm facing down. A hiss spilled outwards. Zora caught the crystalline crackle of frost spreading across Eria's entire body as Enki released a concentrated wave of frigid mist, so cold that even the four fire globes around the tunnel threatened to wink out.

Zora cast another spell to strengthen the flames as Eria's unconscious spasms dulled, her twitching limbs numbed and chilled into stillness.

Ifas gave a low whistle. "Cold trick. Makes my hands feel like they're working in a freezer."

Enki didn't respond to that, warping off Eria's body. At the same time, Zora crouched beside Eria as well and pressed his palm against her waist, mapping her insides with his sense of touch. It didn't take him long to start tracing a circle around the flesh where she was connected to her giant body.

"Cut along this line," he said, glancing at Ifas. "Her lower body lies within this cavity… though there are connective tissues, nerves, and blood vessels in the way. As long as you can get her whole body out intact, Enki can freeze her wounds. How clean of a cut can you make?"

Ifas shrugged, lifting his knife already. "Well, I guess we'll—"

Zora's hand shot out, closing around Ifas's wrist.

"One attempt," he said. "No more."

"... I got this."

Ifas sent him a crooked grin, and that was Zora and Enki's cue to back off.

The kitchen knife twirled once more in Ifas' fingers as he stood before Eria, looking down on her with furrowed brows.

Then he exhaled long and steady, poising the blade before him.

Zora knew nothing about surgery. Every wound he'd sustained back in Amadeus Academy was treated by Julius, and he did think about making Enki warp Eria all the way back to the academy just so Julius could take a look at her, but they didn't have the time for that now. Taking into account the vast complications of removing a human from a giant bug they were biologically connected to, there was only one other person in the Attini Empire—apart from Vantari—who he believed could extract Eria from her body.

After all, he already had more than a hunch that the driver Lord Baya had hired to ferry them around was not a simple, humble driver.

Silence pressed against the walls as Zora and Enki stepped back, leaving Ifas alone in the circle of flame-light. The damp echoed every breath, every drip of condensation, until even Zora's steady composure began to fray with unease.

He heard the minute shuffle of Ifas's boots, the faint roll of the knife between his fingers, and then—suddenly—the air split with a flurry of decisive cuts.

The strokes were too fast. Too clean for Zora to follow. His ears caught only fragments of movements, and he scowled, brows tightening. Even blind, he should've been able to trace the sounds, but…

He supposed this wasn't ordinary knife-work.

Then came the wet, tearing sound of flesh parting. A moment later, Eria's body slid forward, freed from the grotesque casing of the grafting bug. Ifas was there to catch her before she struck the ground. Her lower half was completely intact—slick with bug flesh and blood, yes, but also crosshatched with wounds that bled slowly.

Enki's hand lifted without hesitation. Frost hissed into the air, cryogenic mist spilling across her body until her injuries glazed with ice. The groaning and twitching quieted; her breaths steadied into a shallow rhythm.

Ifas glanced over his shoulder, lips crooked into a grin, and gave Zora a thumbs-up. "All in one piece."

Zora exhaled a long, weary sigh.

"Good. Then let's leave this place behind us."

Ifas hefted Eria into his arms and began toward the caravan. Zora lingered for a beat, listening.

The gutted carcass of the grafting bug creaked faintly as it continued bleeding across the soil.

Enki stood beside him, silent. They exchanged no words—none were needed. Enki stomped once, vibrations booming outwards, and the ceiling began to crumble. At the same time, Zora murmured, "Burn," and flames leapt from his throat to catch on the carcass instantly.

The crackle of burning chitin drowned the space until the ceiling came down, crushing and smothering what was left.

He felt no satisfaction. Not even the comfort of harvesting it for points. Some things weren't meant to be eaten, nor remembered.

And if there are still other grafting bugs out there…

By the time the last echoes of falling stone faded, the two of them were already climbing into the caravan. Eria lay across one of the benches, still unconscious, while the two of them settled opposite her on the other side.

The giant silver ant stamped once, impatient, before Ifas flicked the reins and set it moving back the way he had come. Wheels rattled over uneven stone, and Zora gripped his staff tighter as he listened to the rest of the tunnel caving in right behind them.

… And so it begins and ends.

His march across the Attini Empire was long, but its mask was cracking. The blood spilled this morning and the secrets unburied would inevitably ripple across the empire until it all spiralled towards a single conclusion: the civil war everyone feared wouldn't be averted.

In all likelihood, neither he nor Enki would be fighting in it. The problems between the Outer Regions and the Divine Capital must be dealt with by the people of the empire.

He had just the faintest inkling of a suspicion, though, that at long last, he'd meet Decima at the end of the Divine Temple's throne room.

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