It took eight hours to dismantle and haul all of the edible bug parts out of the pit with Emilia’s glowing threads, but that was because Marcus sent Cecilia and Emilia back to the dorm to make lunch and dinner for their students, while Zora wasn’t much of any help when it came to strenuous physical tasks. His strength level was only four. He’d probably need two or three more levels in strength before he could comfortably climb a hundred metres up and down with giant bug legs strapped to his back—his spine threatening to snap.

  They also could’ve probably finished four hours earlier if the girls were here, but by the time Zora and Marcus threw themselves over the edge of the pit, they were both panting for breath and exhausted to the bone.

  So there they lay on the cold stone floor for a minute or two, cold moonlight falling through the broken windows and onto their sweat-addled faces.

  “... You need some exercise, skellyman,” Marcus mumbled, groaning as he pulled himself to his feet with one working arm. “I had to carry you… and the carcasses… and the girls… up the thread, while you—”

  “Dismiss not the quiet strength of a kind word… or a steady presence,” Zora muttered back, his joints cracking and popping as he forced himself to stand as well. “The greatest battles… are often won not by force, but by the unwavering belief… that someone stands with you."

  “I’m no language arts teacher, but I think that’s just complicated sorcery for ‘you were nothing but moral support’—”

  “—you mean ‘sophistry’—”

  “I’m putting you in a special working out class after this,” Marcus grumbled, smacking him on the back as they limped forward and picked up all the carved bug legs.

  All in all, they’d hauled up forty-two legs, two pairs of fleshy-looking antennae, and two giant ant eyes that looked somewhat edible. It was impossible to carry all of it back to the dorm with their bare hands, so they wrapped as much as they could in their cloaks and slung the bundles over their shoulders, making a silent unanimous decision to leave a few especially heavy legs behind. Even thirty legs should be more than enough to last them a few days.

  Before they could start trudging out the front doors, though, Marcus knelt by the bodies of the 2-C children, and Zora lingered in the back as he let the man pray for them.

  He didn’t stop Marcus, either, as the ermine moth’s giant spotted legs were placed before the few broken bodies of the especially young.

  For the thousand tongues Zora knew how to speak, he didn’t know a thousand cultures, so it was neither his place to comment nor to judge. He simply stood with his back to the door, waiting with his head lowered and his eyes closed until he heard Marcus standing up slowly.

  The big man clapped once more, offered a deep bow to his students, and remained deathly still for a few more moments before standing up straight.

  When Marcus turned around, his eyes were faintly bleary, but his face was stern and his nod was resolute.

  “... Back to the dorm,” he said plainly.

  “Back to the dorm,” Zora agreed.

  “And what do I have to expect when I get there?”

  “A dorm in perfect, harmonious order.”

  It was nine by the time Emilia opened the eastern gate to let the two of them into the dorm, and Marcus’ eyes twitched as they trudged into the dreary common room where forty-two languid children moved around like undead. Most were lining up along the kitchen counter with empty plates in hand, but some were dozing off on the couches, some were asleep in front of the gently crackling hearth, and others were just meandering about with their hands in their pockets, heads sullen and low. The few gas lanterns Zora had placed around the room before he left were all but extinguished as well, so the place was cold and chilly beyond belief—what little warmth came from Cecilia working eight stoves at once wasn’t nearly enough to keep any child from shivering in place.

  It could all be very easily misinterpreted as a scene from a far northeastern prison, but if Zora were to be frank, he’d seen prisoners more lively than the children currently were.

  “What can you do, though?” he sighed, rubbing Emilia’s head as she hugged his legs from behind, letting go of his heavy bundle of bug legs in the process. “For an emergency shelter, it’s as good as it’ll ever be. Miss Sarius needs some help by the stoves, but apart for that, I’d say—”

  “What’s going on here?” Marcus boomed, stepping forward with his arms crossed behind his back.

  Immediately, forty-two pairs of ears perked up as heads swivelled around to face the rugged fitness teachers—and Zora quietly backed up against the wall, nudging Emilia alongside him.

  “Just because classes have been temporarily cancelled and you’re all stuck in the dorm doesn’t mean you can just sit around and waste your days away!” Marcus continued, strutting through the common room as every dozy child shot to attention, spines straightening, faces paling. Their lips trembled as they watched him drag a finger across the couches and tables, swiping up entire balls of lint and dust. “What an absolute mess this place is! Trash in the corners! Soot off the columns! Where the hell are the lights, anyways? Is this how we’ve taught you to treat your house?”

  “No, Mister Evander, no!” was the children’s resounding reply, making Emilia wince behind Zora’s back.

  “Good! You all have one hour to turn this dorm upside-down!” Marcus roared, raising a fist and pointing at the stairs by the side of the room. “Class 2-A, follow your class monitor and break into groups of five upstairs! I want the hallways, the dorm rooms, the handrails, and every window on the second floor squeaky clean! 2-B, stay here and fix the common room! I want five of you to go into the library and take out the backup gas lanterns as well!”

  There was no delay. There was no need for communication. Everybody immediately knew what they had to do as they scattered across the common room, rushing to the two class monitors who were leading everyone to their designated cleaning locations. Marcus shook his fist angrily at a few of the stragglers, who yelped and laughed as he made faces at them—and Zora was just glad that Marcus had seemingly made them forget to ask about class 2-C, because frankly, he had no idea what he was going to say if they asked why it was that only Marcus returned from the fitness building.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  So Zora glanced around and patted Emilia’s head once again, smiling softly.

  “Wanna help your classmates out with cleanup?” he asked. “Marcus comes here and flies into discipline teacher mode once every two months, so everyone’s already used to it, but you don’t have to join in if you don’t want to. You can just stay here and help me cook—”

  “I’ll go,” she breathed, hands still trembling as she forced herself to let go of his pants. A shaky nod was all she gave him before she turned away and bolted up the stairs as well, following Titus and the rest of 2-A… and if Zora were to be honest, he felt something was a little off about her reply.

  He hadn’t been expecting a reply at all, really—his previous attempts at getting her to fit in with the rest of the class had always ended with her hiding behind his body—but maybe she was starting to change as well?

  Maybe she was starting to open up to her classmates.

  In any case, he felt he didn’t have to worry about Emilia right now. In this very common room, there was a far more pitiable girl who needed both his and Marcus’ attention, so the two of them strode over to the stoves where Cecilia stood completely despondent. There were two burnt pans in her hands, six on the stoves, and Zora couldn’t even fathom what sort of dish she’d been trying to tackle for everyone’s dinner.

  Her shoulders shook as he and Marcus chuckled quietly, and then she flipped the burnt slabs of meat into their faces.

  It was a miracle how much could change in the span of fifty minutes.

  Dozens of brooms and wet towels had been dragged over every furniture, every hard surface, and now the common room gleamed with soft sheens of light. Faint scents of soap lingered in the air. The toppled chairs were all put back under their rightful tables, the blankets and mattresses that’d been carried down from the private rooms were all removed to clear up the space, and about thirty or so backup gas lanterns Zora hadn’t known even existed were hung on hooks on the walls—they were all cranked up to eleven, and with more firewood tossed into the crackling hearth, the common room was now bright as day and warm like a summer afternoon.

  Nobody shivered anymore. Sweat poured down every child’s brow as dozens of them continued sprinting up and down the stairs to help out with the second floor cleaning, shouting and hollering at each other to pick up the pace—if they couldn’t clean in time, they wouldn’t eat in time—which was a rather incredible and depressing sight at the same time.

  Impressive, in the sense that they could turn their living conditions around in such a short amount of time with just a few loud words from a very big man.

  Depressing, in the sense that was supposed to be the language arts teacher here, and he’d just been bested by an oaf in a game of words.

  He wasn’t doing anything, anyways. While he and Cecilia sat on the kitchen counter kicking their legs back and forth idly, Marcus manned all eight stoves by himself, flipping eight pans and stirring three pots with a single hand. The cooking apron was comically small for his torso, but the man’s skin was probably more heat resistant than anything woven out of fire bug chitin. The dinner he was going to serve to everyone in ten minutes was also apparently going to be pan-seared chicken on rice on a bunch of lettuce sticks roasted far northern style, which was going to be… a lot of energy. And a lot of effort to cook. And a healthier than whatever the hell Cecilia had been trying to whip up earlier.

  “Monster teacher,” Zora commented, staring at the eight pans.

  “Monster muscleman,” Cecilia commented, staring at the sizzling chicken.

  “Shut up and help me plate the rice,” Marcus snapped, throwing a stack of plates their way, and they caught it out of the air as he jabbed at the three pots he’d taken off the stoves. “While you’re at it, I cracked a few bug legs open and boiled them in the leftover broth as well, so we each get one whole pot of bug meat for dinner and breakfast tomorrow. Don’t eat my portion. I still need to catch up since you two have a whole day’s worth of points ahead of me.”

  Zora grumbled as they hopped off the counter to do as Marcus asked, occasionally stabbing their wands into the pot of bug meat to take a small bite. “Maybe you can’t tell, but we’re not exactly buzzing with excitement when it comes to eating more of this slop,” he said, ripping into the first chunk as he scooped rice out of the large steamer in the back. “No matter how you cook or season it, it’s still bug meat. You can’t possibly make it taste… good…”

  He trailed off mid-sentence. Marcus glanced at the two of them with a smug ‘you suck’ smirk, and in his head, begrudgingly, Zora admitted defeat to the big man—the mushy texture and the putrid scent had somehow been stripped away by the copious amount of spices dumped into the pot, and while the meat still wasn’t tasty by any means, it didn’t make him or Cecilia gag.

  In Zora’s books, that was ‘good’, and for the first time, his status interface popped up next to his head without a bitter taste on his tongue accompanying it.

  [Points: 0 → 10]

  Cecilia mumbled as she continued chewing, evidently bedazzled by Marcus’ culinary skills as well. “And what… are we… upgrading next? Higher strength? Higher… speed?”

  Marcus grumbled. “You guys need more exercise is what you need, so get the equivalent of stamina or whatever the hell it’s called on the status interface—”

  “No,” Zora interrupted, plating rice for the first few children who’d finished their cleaning and were queuing up over the counter again. “First, we should unlock the second tier two mutation ‘Basic Tympana’. Not being able to hear bugs approaching before they’re literally drooling over our heads will get us killed next time, and the two of us can’t ‘toughen’ ourselves like muscleman can—”

  “—if you plead, I can cast it on you two every once in a while—”

  “Besides, unlocking the last tier two mutation should open up the options for the tier three mutations,” he finished, stabbing his wand into one of Marcus’ chickens to flick it onto the plate. “I want to see what we can choose from. If there’s something powerful, we should try to rush towards it as soon as possible instead of padding up our attributes. If we have enough points after we finish all these legs, we could even try to aim for a branch mutation.”

  Cecilia stabbed her wand into another chicken, tossing it and almost missing her plate. “Right. Makes sense. And… for our next move?”

  “Julius,” Zora and Marcus said.

  “I know that. It’s been two days, though. Do you think—”

  “He’s alive,” Zora and Marcus said. “Titus said he was teaching biological sciences with 2-D in the skybridge garden, so I reckon he’s still holed up in his observatory with the rest of his kids,” Zora added. “His observatory is a self-made shelter in its own way, so if he’s stuck there, chances are he’s in the same situation as muscleman: there’s a super strong bug cornering him in the garden, and he can’t get out without our help.”

  “Thank the Great Makers we have a meatshield now, then.” Cecilia sighed, turning to give the kids a bright and comforting smile as she served the first plates. “So? We’re going early next morning? If he’s cornered right now, though, maybe we should rest a bit and then immediately head out—”

  “He’s fine,” Zora and Marcus said. “We can afford to leave tomorrow morning,” Marcus followed up, glancing at the children behind them as he did. “We’re all beat-up, tired, and hungry. If the kids in 2-D are holed up in his observatory, they’ll have all the food and resources they could ever want. There’s no need to rush into a death trap ourselves when Julius is probably living it up over there.”

  Cecilia squinted at them suspiciously, serving the second, third, and fourth plates. “An outsider would hear this conversation and think you guys don’t actually want to get Julius back.”

  “Not particularly,” Zora and Marcus said without missing a beat. “But we want his kids back,” Zora added. “So I’ll cook, and you guys eat,” Marcus finished.

  And while Marcus and Cecilia started squabbling over whether or not Cecilia should be allowed to help with dinner service, Zora peeked out at the line that was beginning to form along the revitalised common room—they were mostly kids from 2-B. Some of his kids in 2-A were there as well, but they were mostly at the back of the line.

  Cecilia and Marcus could probably handle dinner service by himself, and it wasn’t like he was in a rush to chow down the rest of his boiled bug meat, so he supposed he could go upstairs to see what was taking Emilia and Titus so long.