According to Zora and Cecilia, twenty-four years of raw, unrelenting muscle development had turned Marcus into a monster of a man, but he didn’t really see himself as anything more than a hack of a head fitness teacher.

  A real fitness teacher would’ve climbed out of this hole with their bare hands a full day ago, and not have to rely on a scrawny language arts teacher and a dainty music teacher to assist him up an obstacle course he designed himself.

  So he’d pay them back tenfold for the trouble and vent all his anger on the giant bugs surrounding them.

  Six giant beetles, two giant ants, and two more whatever-the-hell kind of bug led by an even bigger moth fluttering overhead—what they were didn’t matter. When he tightened the muscles in his left arm and pivoted, jerking the chain hard right, the cage-like elevator he tore from the ground shattered chitin and flesh alike. The feeling of strain was there, and the will, too. Screeches of surprise escaped half of the giant bugs’ mouths as their skulls were crushed, carapaces were smashed, and sprays of yellow pus splattered across the bottom of the pit.

  The other half stopped advancing and took cautious steps back, but sharp deceleration would tear his muscles. He followed through with the first pivot, spinning an extra half-circle to whip the giant elevator at the other bugs as well, and there was nowhere for them to run. Nowhere for them to jump. Their reaction speed may be fast, but faced against a man who could swing an entire elevator like any normal flail, their senses were dull. Those he couldn’t smash with the elevator were caught by the giant chain, limbs torn from their sockets and wings split in half.

  It took two swings to decimate the ten giant bugs who’d jumped down after them, and with a third spin—a “strengthen”

  The moth barely managed to stay afloat as it shrieked with pain, fluttering back and clinging onto the walls of the hole. Blood and pus leaked out the crack in its abdomen and trickled down the wall, so he let go of the chain mid-swing and rushed forward, punching the wall with all his strength—a “toughen”

  He screamed out with the punch, and it split the wall open, sending a thundering crack ten metres up to the moth. The bricks tumbled down. The moth lost its footing, slipping, and in a desperate attempt to regain flight, it flapped its wings to send a thick haze cloud down at him.

  His self-enhancing spells dispelled as the haze ran across his body, but the moment they emerged out the other side, two wands stabbed forward next to his ears.

  “Amplified strike!”

  Zora and Cecilia slinged their spells in the space between moments and targeted the crack in the moth’s abdomen, rattling its entire body and making it shriek once again. Its wings began vibrating to shed more scales, covering itself in the spell-dispelling haze, so Marcus just picked up the chain and swung it again; the elevator tearing huge chunks of stone from the wall as it cleaved towards the moth, forcing the bug to drop down and cover its abdomen with the ground.

  Marcus lunged in as it pounced at him, ducking at the last moment so it soared over his head. In the same motion, he grabbed one of its hindlegs and shouted “strengthen everyone”“strike”

  With its wings removed, the moth was helpless as he flung it to the other side of the hole, sending it slamming into the wall.

  He held up his fist to stop Zora and Cecilia from jumping the bug, taking off his crimson cloak as he did.

  It was just slowing him down.

  “... You wanted a fight, didn’t you?” he said, kicking a lump of debris at the moth’s head. “You, me, right here, right now—you face a man of the far northern lands, where mountains are crushed in our fists and the ground rumbles beneath our steps.”

  He wasn’t lying, and he wasn’t exaggerating. Before he’d been rescued by the Headmistress and brought to the academy as a young fourteen-year-old boy, he’d been training as a soldier for the northern Hellfire Caldera Army… and since he was torn from the north before he could complete his training, owing to a Swarm infestation that ravaged his entire homeland, he’d felt he couldn’t let up on his training even after he arrived at the academy.

  For what purpose could he have been saved if not to one day leave the academy and rejoin the war against the Swarm?

  So he’d spent his first two years as a student in the academy with his heart closed. No teacher, faculty, or classmate could get him to speak more than five words a sentence. Back then, the only thing he did was run circles around the academy day after day until even exhaustion became terrified of him. He never attended a single class. No Magicicada Mage could catch up to him. He could already ignite himself in mind, body, and spirit; he’d thought he was on track to becoming the strongest man in the academy within a year or two.

  Then, he’d spent his last two years as a student with the walls around his heart slowly being chipped away by clever insults, harmonic music, and drugs. Zora and Julius had just arrived at the academy, and Cecilia had been transferred into his class. He couldn’t even remember why they started hanging out, but somehow they did, and he’d never felt weaker for it. He couldn’t match Cecilia’s dexterity when it came to music instruments. He couldn’t match Julius’ depravity and ingenuity when it came to brewing nigh-magical drugs out of insect venom. He couldn’t just hit people he didn’t like without getting disciplined by the Magicicada Mages, either, so he’d spent many nights biting his blanket to sleep after Zora cut his pride apart in a thousand tongues; the strength he’d had wasn’t so invincible after all.

  He’d spent the past six years as a fitness teacher realising he wasn’t strong at all.

  His muscles couldn’t stop a little girl from crying for her mother in the middle of the night. His stamina wasn’t enough to keep up with all the boys trying to escape from the academy and return to their destroyed homes during his outdoor classes. His senses weren’t keen enough to notice when some students just really, couldn’t finish the exercise sets he’d made just for them, and it was by no means a failure in effort or struggle—there was more to being a fitness teacher than having a body large enough to carry ten children across his arms and shoulders.

  He wasn’t like Cecilia, who could sing a tune to soothe a sorry soul, and he wasn’t like Zora, who could speak in every child’s native tongue to heal a homesick heart.

  The only thing he had was strength.

  So if he couldn’t help his students with his strength, he’d give them the strength to help themselves—and if even that wasn’t enough for them to protect themselves, then, at the very least, he’d gift their graves with the guts of a giant.

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  … And Zora watched, eyes narrowed, as the fitness teacher with six levels in strength pummelled the giant moth into the ground.

  Those six levels of strength were strength, and Zora couldn’t believe it at first when he’d asked Marcus to take a look at his own status interface, but… looking at the fitness teacher now, it was the very definition of a ‘one-sided battle’. Zora would rather call it ‘bullying’—he’d certainly been on the end of Marcus’ beatdowns many, many times during swordsmanship class, in which he'd get his sword wrangled from his hands and thrown into the ground like a ragdoll.

  Back when they were mere students, their old fitness teacher would always yell at Marcus to stop grabbing wooden blades with his bare hands, because ‘there was no way he could ever catch a real blade with his bare hands’.

  Zora thought,

  For such a big man, Marcus moved with fluid and practised motions, slipping around the grounded moth while sending flurry of kicks, jabs, and shouting hefty “booms”

  Cecilia didn’t avert her eyes from the beatdown, and neither did Zora. For the music teacher, it was probably guilt that kept her from looking away—guilt from keeping the truth about class 2-C from Marcus—but for Zora, it was half that and half curiosity that kept his gaze firmly on Marcus’ back.

  The fitness teacher was probably too heated to realise it himself, but he was casting “strengthen” “toughen” “hasten” “fortify” “balance”with the Magicicada Class?

  All Zora had to do was teach the man the basics of their class, their magic, their mutations, and he was by far stronger than Zora and Cecilia combined.

  So when Marcus eventually kicked the giant moth into the wall between Zora and Cecilia—making the music teacher flinch—Zora didn’t shy away from the bruised and battered bug lying on its back.

  Its wings were severed. Its legs were torn. One of its eyes had been punched out, and there were dozens of cracks and bleeding pores across its scaly body. Even if Julius were here, Zora doubted the moth would be able to survive the blood loss for longer than two, three minutes at most.

  While Marcus stomped slowly towards the upside-down bug from the other side of the hole, he knelt in front of its head with a cold, unempathetic smile.

  It wasn’t like he wanted to give it a smile—he just felt he needed to bare his teeth if he wanted to replicate its voice properly.

  “... Is this your tongue, bug?” he said, pausing between clicks of his tongue to mimic its punctuation. The moth’s bloodshot eye immediately snapped up to look at him; it was no longer concerned about the approaching Marcus.

  “You… Speak? Our words?” it breathed, voice dulled by agony. “How… you… learn—”

  “I speak a thousand tongues. Adding one more tongue to the mix is hardly a cause worth celebrating, and yours is painfully primitive,” he said, tilting his head as he thumbed back at Marcus. “My colleague will kill you, and you will die. Before you do, tell me one thing—what’s hidden in this academy that Nona, youngest of the Magicicada Witches, would deign to grace us with her presence?”

  The moth suddenly clammed up. There weren't really any visible ‘tells’ apart from the way it tried to shirk its head inside its body, so before it could hide and run away from his steely gaze, he grabbed its head and forced it to look.

  His nails dug into its remaining eye, threatening to pop it with a grotesque squelch.

  “You won’t talk, huh?” he whispered. “How sad. The one who does not know cannot comprehend the thoughts of one who knows, but cannot say. If we could all just read each other's minds, I'm sure the world would be a much gentler place… alas, there was a need for one such as the Fabre Household. A family of translators and interpreters—were you there with Nona as well, ten long years ago? Were you there when you forced me to run from my home?”

  It didn't answer again, so he sighed, waving his hand dismissively.

  “No matter. I see it's pointless to interrogate you rank-and-file grunts for information on Nona," he said, sighing as he did. “I don't know how she's stopping you from spilling your guts, and I may not know what she’s trying to find in this academy, but if your ‘soul’ will be returned to a hivemind or something of the sort, tell your friends it’d be best not to look down on all of us.” Then he titled his head back, glaring at the moth through its expressionless facade. “One human with the resolve to live is equal to nine hundred and ninety-nine of you who only have an interest in a quick bite. In your next life—”

  He didn’t manage to finish his sentence. Marcus reached the moth and stomped on its head, crushing it under his heel.

  The moth hardly had the strength to let out a dying squeal, and even the gorey splatters of its head weren’t as loud and disgusting as Zora had thought they’d be—and then all was silent in the hole like it’d never been before.

  “... You’re whispering to bugs now, skellyman?” Marcus muttered, head low and chin tucked into his chest as he kept on stomping the moth’s head; it was as dead as a carcass could ever be, but Zora didn’t want to stop him, so Cecilia had to slowly step between the two of them just in case. “I thought you needed that… that ‘translate’ spell in order to make it talk? Where’d you learn how to talk like that?”

  Zora shrugged, standing and looking at the crimson cloak the man had discarded by the middle of the pit. “About three minutes ago. That the fourth bug that has spoken to me face-to-face, though, and even you’d be able to beat anyone in any sport after seeing them play for four good rounds.”

  “Mm. That’s true.”

  “Right? And Cecilia could probably master any instrument after hearing someone else play it four times as well, so—”

  Without a word, Marcus shoved him to the ground with a light push on his chest, but he expecting something of the sort. Kind of. He landed on his ass with his arms slapping the cushion behind him, making a quick rebound—and he could’ve sprang back up in the same motion, but didn’t.

  He sat there.

  Breathless.

  Motionless.

  He waited to see if Marcus would turn around and properly glower down at him—as he deserved—but before that could happen, the three of them were distracted by someone shouting at the very top of the pit.

  Through the slowly dissipating haze, a single, glowing red thread was being lowered by the wall.

  Emilia.

  Zora wanted to sigh a breath of relief, but Marcus cut him to the chase.

  “You thought I couldn’t take the truth, Zora?” Marcus asked, turning around to offer him a helping hand up. “Am I really such a weak man in your eyes?”

  There was still a hint of anger in the man’s sturdy and chiselled face, but… not a part of it was directed at him.

  He could harbour a faint guess as to who and what Marcus’ anger was directed at—language transcended words nine times out of ten when it came to the man from the northern lands—and yet, he couldn’t bring himself to accept the man’s hand so easily.

  He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong by concealing the fate of 2-C, but…

  “... There is a saying in the far north where I came from,” Marcus grumbled, grabbing his hand and pulling him up whether he wanted the help or not. Then the man gave him another hard slap on the back, a fist to the head, before putting him into a nasty headlock he couldn’t even dream of squirming out of. “A fallen leaf always returns to the root. To lament its fall is to forget the tree from which it came, and class 2-C… was the strongest class I’ve ever had the honour of teaching.”

  Zora looked down as he tapped the man’s arm slowly, pleading for release.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “You were much… stronger and hard-headed than I thought.”

  Marcus clicked his tongue irritably as he let go of Zora. “Oh, and the skellyman’s calling weak. How iconic—”

  “—it’s ‘ironic’—”

  “You’re getting supplementary fitness assignments after this is over.” Marcus sighed, shaking his head at the two of them as he walked towards Emilia’s glowing thread. “Seriously. Little Emilia’s more fit than the two of you, and the ones with the Magicicada Classes. You’re not planning on letting your kid do all the hard work, are you?”

  Then he gestured around the pit, and the two of them grimaced at the amount of giant bug carcasses they were going to have to lift out of here. Including the giant moth, they had an easy supply of bug meat for at least one or two days, so there was no way they were leaving anything they could bring back to the dorm.

  If they were going to run into more powerful bugs like the katydid and the ermine moth on their way to get Julius, they’d have to push themselves to the point of puking out their guts.

  Sound Bug Facts #19: When magicicadas first emerge, they always have soft, white exoskeletons. Within a few hours, though, they undergo a rapid color change as their exoskeletons harden and darken, developing their iconic black bodies with orange-tinted wings and red eyes!