The white and black-spotted ermine moth stared directly down at Zora, and then it dragged its two flail-like antennae through the milky white haze.

  It took Zora and Cecilia a good second to realise they were under attack.

  “Strike!” they shouted.

  Their wands whipped upwards, their spells flew straight at the moth, but the white haze was a thick, tangible fog, nothing like the thin haze Zora had created back in the staffroom. Their “strikes” rippled through the air and fizzled within a fraction of a second, failing to even reach the head of the ermine moth.

  … What?

  Zora blinked. Cecilia blinked. Emilia had no idea what just happened, and neither did the moth even seem to realise they’d just tried to attack it. Its antennae were swishing ever so slowly through the haze, wrapping around the cage-like elevator as though caressing it in a gentle hug—and then it opened its round, obsidian eyes, the haze immediately growing heavier on Zora’s shoulders.

  “Fight. Fight,” it muttered. “Fight, kill, eat all humans—”

  Emilia immediately decided to pounce at it, four black hands sharpened into claws, but Cecilia grabbed her ankle and pulled her down at the exact same time Zora decided to tackle all three of them over the edge. That was the correct move. The moth’s slow-moving antennae suddenly turned into a clamp that sliced through the railings of the elevator, and it would’ve bisected all of them had he not thrown them onto the elevator below them.

  Zora slammed onto his stomach with a painful groan while the girls landed on their feet, breathing heavily. The moth’s antennae continued shredding the elevator above them, making the chains rattle, making the elevators bump into each other. By the time Zora managed to crawl onto his feet, head spinning, the shaking platform he was standing on was already starting to sway. Emilia was clinging to Cecilia’s back, but the music teacher wasn’t faring so well, either; neither of their next “strikes” managed to travel even a single metre upwards before fizzling in the haze, and then the moth suddenly dashed off to the walls of the pit.

  It disappeared into the haze, and he lost track of it.

  It’s just like the katydid again.

  The moth is fast, but it can also fly, and… it can also create a mist that dispels our spells?

  “The hell’s an ermine moth, Zora?” Cecilia snapped, the two of them standing back to back as they spun in place, whipping their wands outwards. Loud screeches and incoherent whispers came from all around, and neither of them could spot the moth. “How’s it stopping our spells from reaching it, anyways?”

  “Hell if I know,” he muttered back, scowling as he grabbed Emilia’s sleeve, keeping her close to them. “Don’t ask a honeybee to weave a spider’s web.”

  “It’s the haze, isn’t it?”

  “Probably.”

  “Because the haze is too dense, our spells—the physical sound waves—aren’t travelling properly!”

  “Hey, your guess is as good as mine—”

  Emilia’s east-pointing antennae tingled, so they whirled and attempted their combination spell at point-blank range. Zora aimed, Cecilia shouted: “amplified strike”. The pouncing ermine moth was no lightweight or a glass cannon like the katydid, though. While their amplified spell managed to travel five metres this time, its strength was still significantly weakened, and the moth simply shrugged it off as it snarled through the spell-weakening haze—so Zora made another split-second decision, yanking all three of them back and toppling over the railings once more.

  This time, they didn’t land anywhere close to an elevator. While the moth slammed into the elevator they were on and completely ripped it apart with its legs and antennae, they plummeted down the centre of the hole, Cecilia and Emilia screaming all the way.

  Zora was counting the distance to the bottom, though. Forty metres, thirty metres, twenty metres. At ten metres, he spotted the velvet cushions beneath them and gritted his teeth, pulling Emilia into a hug as he and Cecilia slammed into the cushions, sinking deep.

  Thank heavens the cushions were still pulled out.

  If not, I don’t know if I could’ve ‘struck’ the ground hard enough to generate enough lift.

  It was a gamble, but it paid off. Anything was better than fighting on those unstable elevators in the thickest part of the haze, so while the moth screeched far above them and tried to figure out where they’d run off to, he bounced onto his feet and placed Emilia on hers as well.

  He spun around a few times—looking for the storage room he knew was down here—but all he saw was the bottom of the hole littered with a dozen giant bug carcasses, most broken with their chitin split apart and their legs torn from their bodies. He paid them no mind for the time being. They could’ve fallen in from the top of the hole, they could’ve been killed by the ermine moth, or whatever. Right now, they just needed to find the storage room and take shelter behind closed doors.

  “... There!” he shouted, glancing back at the still-groaning Cecilia as he pointed straight ahead at a set of small, double wooden doors. “Inside! Now! If we can get out of the haze, we can at least cast our spells and fight it in normal—”

  He didn’t finish his sentence. Metal creaked and groaned overhead. He snapped his head up in a panic just to see two elevators falling on them like meteorites, the falling debris unavoidable, inescapable, so he shouted “block” in an attempt to knock the larger chunks out of the way. But he couldn’t get all of them. Several of them bounced off the physical sound wave bubble he’d made around them, but one of the heavier chunks was going to land on Cecilia, who was still struggling to claw onto her feet.

  Shit!

  He charged in, turning his wand into a blade, and Emilia charged in as well, flicking a bundle of glowing red threads her way—and yet it was the third figure dashing past the two of them who reached Cecilia in time, standing over the music teacher with his back muscles tightened as the heavy debris smashed into his shoulders.

  Zora cast “block” in front of Emilia as a bunch of loose metal fragments bounced every which way, some cutting his cheek, his neck. The thick haze felt cool as it began seeping into his open wounds, but he managed to stay on his feet while he coughed, waving as much of the haze away as possible while he squinted at the man picking Cecilia up in a princess carry.

  He was half-relieved, half-annoyed.

  If the man was alive, what the hell was he doing down here?

  “... Yo,” Marcus said, turning around to scowl down at Zora. “I see you’re as bony as ever, skellyman.”

  Zora scowled back as Cecilia looked between the two of them, blinking profusely. “And I had no doubt an oaf like you was still alive and kicking somewhere.”

  “Please,” Marcus scoffed, tilting his head at the bug carcasses around them, “like a few oversized mites can take down twenty-four years of raw, unrelenting muscle development.”

  “Well, forgoing all aspects of creative problem solving, you are the ram to break every wall—”

  The ermine moth’s screech made all of them jolt, and Marcus looked up with a nasty frown, clicking his tongue at the bug that’d interrupted their conversation.

  “That thing’s still there, huh?” he muttered. “And what’d you guys do to aggravate it like that? It took me half a day to make some sort of truth with it, but—”

  “You mean ‘truce’,” Zora interrupted.

  “—You know what I meant.” Marcus scowled at him, and Zora drew a line down his forehead to feign a drop of sweat as Emilia giggled. “Let’s see how sharp that tongue of yours remains after I put you through six hours of fitness training—”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Storage room first, Mister Evander,” Cecilia said, smiling and speaking in a sickly sweet voice as she grabbed the back of the big man’s head, shaking it back and forth. “Let’s not be in this haze any longer, yeah?”

  Both Zora and Marcus shivered. Nothing good ever came out of Cecilia taking that tone with them.

  “... Sure,” Marcus mumbled.

  Just as the moth seemed to realise all of them had fallen to the bottom of the hole, the four of them raced towards the open doors and threw themselves in. Marcus immediately dropped Cecilia to push a heavy pommel horse behind the doors to barricade it, while Zora cast “blockade” to toss a few empty crates onto the horse as reinforcement. They did so just in time—Zora flinched as the barricades rattled and ash fell from the dimly lit stone ceiling, the moth ramming headfirst into the door to no avail.

  Two antennae stabbed through the glass on the doors, trying to spear someone in the way, so while Marcus groaned and pushed his entire body against the barricade to hold the door, Zora and Cecilia sliced the tip of the antennae off with their swords. He could really feel his enhanced strength now. His blade cleaved through the chitin in a single, swift stroke, while Cecilia didn’t quite manage to hack it off, but her blade still went halfway through as the moth shrieked in pain.

  Quite quickly, the moth yanked out its remaining antennae and jumped back up to the walls of the hole, leaving all of them alone.

  They weren’t worth the trouble, it seemed.

  …

  Zora let out a heavy sigh, collapsing against the left shelves with crates of dumbbells, weights, and bars. Cecilia collapsed against the right shelves where the balls and rackets and bats were stored. Marcus sat with his back to the pommel horse, and Emilia just sat down cross-legged in the middle of all of them. The storage room at the bottom of the hole was more like an actual gymnasium than a storage room, really. The idea was that students who lacked the strength to complete the obstacle course outside could instead spend their hour inside the storage room instead, training their physique with the gym equipment before attempting the elevators again.

  He’d never been in the room before, but it was much more dreary than he’d imagined. The whole place looked like a prison cell. The stone floor wasn’t smooth, the walls were cracked, and a single gas lamp dangled from the low ceiling to illuminate not even half the room in its dim orange light. Without opening the doors, there wasn’t any ventilation, too—no sweaty student would want to work out in here as opposed to constantly trying and failing the obstacle course outside.

  But maybe that was Marcus’ thought process when he designed this room, though. Maybe he didn’t want kids to get comfortable in here.

  After all, he was the head fitness teacher who’d brought about the best fitness records in Amadeus Academy’s history.

  “... Hey,” Cecilia said, still panting for breath as she raised her wand at Marcus, scowling slightly. “Tell me five things only Marcus would know, or I won’t hold back.”

  Marcus blinked. “Hah?”

  “Just do as she says,” Zora mumbled tiredly, resting the back of his head against the wall. “Tell her five facts about herself or she’ll blow your head off with a spell.”

  “Five facts?” the man tapped his chin, thinking briefly. “Mm. That’s easy enough. Fun fact about Cecilia, number one: back when she first started as a music teacher, she didn’t have the lung capacity to hold a flute note for two minutes straight, and she thought that was embarrassing, so she asked me if there were any exercises she could do to increase her lung capacity. I told her to blow a balloon underwater to make her feel ‘inflated’ with power, and then—”

  “Okay, okay, I get it. It’s really you,” she grumbled, chucking her wand at his head as Emilia leaned forward curiously, wanting to hear the rest of the story. Zora beckoned the little girl closer and whispered ‘that was the time Miss Sarius actually did blow a balloon underwater and ended up almost drowning’, so Cecilia grabbed a rubber ball behind her and tossed it at him as well. “I didn’t think any bug could impersonate you, but, you know, just in case. Just in case.”

  ‘Muscleman’ Marcus laughed, slapping his knees. The man was as broad and loud as ever. He was a whole head taller than Zora with thrice the muscle mass, and the buttons on his self-modified sleeveless shirt were barely holding themselves together over his chest and waist. The only thing that even indicated he was a teacher of the academy and not some ruffian gangster from out of town was the bright ruby cloak draped over his shoulder—in stark contrast to Zora’s amber and Cecilia’s sapphire—but he wasn’t even wearing that properly. He’d stitched the collars of his cloak and shirt together so he wouldn’t have to clasp the tassel over his collarbone, so… the giant of a man in front of them was very much their old friend.

  Definitely not an imposter.

  “If the two of you are here with little Emilia in tow,” Marcus said, waving cheerfully at the Emilia as she waved back, a wide grin on her face, “I’m assuming the old mages have wiped out all the bugs in the academy? Why would you have time to be here otherwise?”

  But.

  If there was a single ounce of levity in the air, it was destroyed the moment Marcus asked about the academy.

  Cecilia looked at Zora, and Zora spoke up before the music teacher could say anything about class 2-C by the entrance of the building—with a heavy heart, he explained everything that’d happened since last night, leading up to their eventual arrival at the fitness building looking for Marcus.

  For his part, Marcus was strangely quiet as he listened to everything with his fist propped up his cheek, and he didn’t speak until he was sure Zora had said everything important.

  “... So Albert, Ben, Giselle, and Petra are all dead, huh?” he said, his usual candour hindered by the tightening in his throat. “Sabine? Friedrich? Not everyone should’ve been in the staffroom when the dome shattered, right?”

  Zora shook his head slowly as Cecilia looked away, rubbing the back of her neck. “Yesterday was the end of the week, so there was a faculty meeting in the staffroom as usual. The four of us couldn’t attend because we still had classes to teach, but when the dome shattered, I imagine they probably settled for hunkering down in the staffroom instead of trying to reach the dorm. They must’ve thought they’d be safe there.”

  “Right. The meeting. I… see. But did you—”

  “I checked, and I double checked,” Zora said quietly. “Cecilia was there, too. If we’re just talking about the orphan branch of the academy, the only teachers unaccounted for in the staffroom were you and Julius. We came looking for you first.”

  Marcus’ lips thinned into a line as he brushed his curly hair back, glaring up at the ceiling.

  “Just the four of us,” he whispered, shaking his head in dismay. “I… was lecturing my kids at the bottom of the hole outside when I heard the dome shatter. It’s not like this is my first infestation, so I tried evacuating my kids up to the dorm when a crap ton of bugs broke into the gymnasium.”

  “As is protocol,” Zora said.

  “I managed to escort all my kids halfway up the elevators, but by then, too many were pouring into the gymnasium, so I told them to run for the dorm by themselves while I distracted and fought off the bugs on the elevators,” Marcus continued. “I got knocked down eventually, and I’ve been stuck down here since that white moth showed up.” Then he glared out the broken glass on the doors, waving and fanning at the haze seeping slowly into the room. “That one’s a really tough bug. Nothing like the other bugs I killed outside. It’s been hanging around the middle of the hole since yesterday, and I’ve tried fighting it a few times. No luck. I couldn’t get back up by myself.”

  Zora nodded idly. He figured it was something of the sort. Like Cecilia said, Marcus wasn’t the sort of man who’d leave his kids alone if he could help it, so if the man was all the way down here while his kids were all the way up there, he must’ve been separated from them forcefully—

  “How’s my kids, skellyman?” Marcus suddenly asked. “The two of you came from the dorm. They made it there just fine, right?”

  A pause.

  Zora was about to speak when he held his tongue.

  “... Mhm,” he eventually said, giving the man a weak smile. “So we can’t stay down here. Your kids are crying for you back in the dorm, and I don’t have enough patience to coddle the lot of them alongside mine and Cecilia’s.”

  Cecilia’s face fell with guilt and shame, but Marcus laughed heartily and slapped his knees instead, standing slowly. “They’re my kids, alright. Strong spirit, fast runners. I knew they’d make it there even without me.”

  “They sure are—”

  “So?” he interrupted, planting his meaty fists on his waist as he grinned down at the three of them. “All of us here are Magicicada Mages now, right? You got any fancy spells to teach me so we can break out of this pit?”

  Zora was about to give an absentminded response when both his and Cecilia’s ears perked, their heads lifting at the exact same time to stare at the muscleman.

  “What do you mean ‘we’?” Cecilia asked, frowning suspiciously. “You’ve got a Magicicada Class as well?”

  Marcus blinked. Then he scratched the back of his head, looking slightly embarrassed. “Ah. Right. I wasn’t supposed to tell you—”

  “Who told you not to tell you?” Zora asked.

  “The Headmistress. She came by a week ago and told me not to tell anyone, but she and the mages wanted to test something out by making me swallow a Magicicada Class system,” Marcus admitted, clapping his hands and dipping his head in a show of apology. “They said they wanted to see if ‘the medicines were working’, and if we teachers ‘would be able to survive the integration in case of an emergency and they needed to give us all Magicicada Classes’. I’ve got no clue what that was all about, but… yeah. I’ve had the Magicicada Class thing for a week now, though I haven’t had the time to mess around with it yet.”

  Cecilia gave Zora a befuddled look, but what Marcus said just confirmed what Zora had heard himself. The old mage who’d given Zora the Magicicada Class had said, with his dying breath, that the mages had been ‘strengthening the teachers’ immune systems with medicine’ since they were children in order to help them survive the integration, should they ever find themselves in a situation where the teachers needed to inherit a Magicicada Class.

  It only made sense that if the mages had to choose someone to inherit a Magicicada Class first—if not only to see if their years of immune system strengthening were all for naught—they’d pick the fittest, healthiest man in the entire academy.

  But a week ago, huh?

  Did the mages have reason to think they were going to have to pass down their classes to us?

  Did they know Nona was going to attack?

  What’s Nona really here for?

  “... Do you even know how to cast a spell, you oaf?” Zora mumbled, scanning him up and down. “I don’t see a wand on you. You do know you can’t really control the direction of your spell if you don’t have a wand, right—”

  “Come on. I’m not that dumb,” Marcus grumbled back, coughing into his fist as he spread his arms apart and sucked in a huge breath. “Our Swarmblood Art is… what? Something something tongue? You just gotta put some air in your lungs and say something like ‘boom’, and then it’ll become reality, right?”