Dahlia expected chaos, but she didn’t expect .

  A wave of a hundred Giant-Class bugs crashed into the clearing, breaking the forest around them, and the nine participants caught in the way scattered in every direction—including her.

  Locust greaves boosting her speed, she bounced over a small group of giant ants and onto a mushroom branch, taking the high ground. Emilia and Muyang had no such need to retreat. The cicada girl shouted her physical sound waves out in bursts, and the man dunked the beetle helm over his own head, slamming the ground with his horns. The miniature earthquake almost shook Dahlia off her branch. It the muddy ground below her, causing half a dozen giant bugs to fall into chasms, and the bugs that didn’t fall in had their heads sliced off by Emilia's flute notes.

  Ten down. Ninety more to go.

  Dahlia grimaced as two giant beetles crawled up her mushroom, horns cleaving through the bark and forcing her to jump even further up. On second thought, though, she sucked in a sharp breath and narrowed her eyes—she could see the steel threads showing her how to dismantle the bugs. In fact, she could see the threads twirling and connecting to every single bug in the clearing. None of them were particularly powerful. All they had was overwhelming numbers, but if it was just the two below her?

  Even she could deal with them.

  The two beetles seemed just as surprised as she suddenly pounced down, four claws reared back, and smashed into the closest one’s head with a cross-slash. Blood exploded in her face. She jammed her feet between its chitin plates so she wouldn’t fall off. Down and down they went and crashed into the other beetle on the way, her claws following the steel threads to rip the bug’s head open, and then she leapt onto the other one to dismantle its horn as well, using it to impale its own skull. By the time it slammed into the earth below, its body was already completely broken.

  She collapsed to one knee atop the beetle’s carcass, her breaths heavy. That was the first time she’d fought so decisively, and the first time she’d killed a giant bug so… so .

  She gotten stronger.

  Her kill count was two, Muyang was six, and Emilia a bit more than that, but there were still dozens more of them rampaging around the clearing.

  If not for the other six participants, they’d already be overrun by now.

  She looked to the left and saw the middle-aged couple in silver-plated robes cutting through swathes of hornets and moths, their feet moving like clockwork. Their giant bone saws glittered silver as they swung in perfect sync. The man would swerve to the right for a dodge, and the lady would swoop in to counterattack. The lady would circle around a giant bug as a distraction, and the man would jump and slam down for the finishing blow. Every swing and every block did not go to waste. Not a single bug landed a hit on them, and they weren’t even really looking at each other; it was as if they could reach each other’s minds mid-battle, and Dahlia was reminded of Ayla and Aylee back in Alshifa.

  Telepathic twins.

  Years and decades of training.

  Her eyes wandered up, and it took her a while to locate him, but it wasn’t him she spotted first. It was the glint of a barrel. It was the sound of metal being loaded into metal, then a slide being pulled back, and then—. A projectile. Two, four, six blurry silver projectiles ricocheted around giant bugs trying to get the jump on the couple’s backs, and each projectile was fired with pinpoint accuracy, tearing through the bugs’ skulls in a single shot. The blond-haired boy in the thick fur coat reloaded his weapon from atop a mushroom branch, and he had glowing blue eyes behind his dragonfly goggles. Swarmsteel. The ranged weapon in his hands was probably one, too.

  The three of them were on the left side of the clearing. On the right side, though, she wasn’t even sure if the other three could be called a ‘team’.

  Giant bugs crawled and climbed over each other as they tried to snap at the two ladies fighting each other: one wielded a rectangular greatsword lined with triangular obsidian edges, and the other had ten glowing syringes for claws. One was dressed in regal, colourful attire befitting a noble swordswoman, and the other was clad in a raven-black cloak with a mosquito mask over her lower jaw, looking like a shady back-alley doctor. Neither seemed to realise they were here to kill bugs. With every swing from the methodical swordswoman, half a dozen giant bugs caught in the way would be split in half, and with every jab the nimble doctor missed with her syringes, another half a dozen would melt away in acidic heat. They were to boot, too. They darted from one end of the clearing to another at speeds Dahlia couldn’t follow with her naked eyes, and… she just felt bad for their third teammate.

  If they just turned their focus onto the bugs instead of each other, they wouldn’t have to let their teammate fend for herself in the corner with a giant axe, screaming at the two to work together just once.

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  She was about to finish her thought with ‘violent’, but it wasn’t like Muyang and Emilia were much better. She’d never actually seen them fight before today, but now, they didn’t have to hold back.

  Wearing his oversized giant beetle head like a helmet, Muyang stomped and charged and spun in place, performing a dance of death as his horns gored through every bug in his way. Just a few strides away, Emilia weaponised every sound she made by turning them into physical sound waves. When she gritted her teeth and let out a sharp screech at a full surround of bugs, a forceful gust of sound would slice all of them apart. When she turned and clapped her hands, a bubble-like sound wave would explode outwards and make every bug around her screech in pain. When she turned again and hummed a soothing rhythm in Muyang's direction, it was like her sound waves physically resonated with his body and gave him an even massive boost of toughness. A giant mantis tried to claw at his back, but its scythe bounced off his bare skin and Muyang immediately whirled in surprise, jumping to kick the mantis' head off.

  She’d no idea what all of their abilities really were, but they were powerful as all hell.

  Her eyes widened as Kari’s voice stuttered in her head, and, without looking, she uppercutted a giant ant with her claws as it tried to lunge for her back.

  Kari muttered, appearing on her shoulder and dipping its head slightly.

  She got her answer half a second later when a giant shadow fluttered overhead, plunging the entire clearing into darkness.

  It took her only half a second longer to register what was to happen, and she dashed forward with her locust greaves, tackling Emilia out of the way as two glowing eyes shot a thick beam of fire down on all of them. The two of them flew headfirst into a shrub while Muyang curled up inside his giant beetle head, using it as a shelter while the fire vaporised everything else—not a single giant bug even had the opportunity to scream as they turned to ash. Red hot energy exploded outwards from the point of impact, throwing the participants back, and the entire clearing turned into a hellscape of fire and smoke.

  For her part, Dahlia recovered quickly and dragged Emilia out of the shrub. Muyang popped out of his giant beetle head moments later, all of them wincing and shying away from the oppressive waves of heat.

  The sun moth was still perched overhead, sitting on top of a giant mushroom cap as its eyes glowed again—readying for a second shot.

  “... That’s all for today! I'm tired! We’re not hunting the Mutants anymore!” Emilia shouted, grabbing Dahlia by the collar and dragging her back alongside Muyang. The sun moth fired, but not at them; Dahlia held her breath as the pillar of flames decimated a chunk of the forest where she last saw the couple’s team.

  Kari muttered.

  A second pillar of flames shot down at the other end of the forest, where the other team was, and Muyang picked of them up by the waist so he could sprint them away even quicker.

  Kari reassured.

  Dahlia wasn’t on fighting the sun moth, but it was still nail-bitingly terrifying to know it wasn’t just the Mutants she had to worry about in the exam.

  Kari shrugged.

  Not reassuring at all. At least Muyang was a fast runner, and as he literally carried them a hundred, two hundred, three hundred metres deep into the fungi forest—not even breaking a single sweat—Emilia glanced behind them to see if anything was following them.

  The hellfire wrought upon the clearing was but a glowing dot in the distance now, and Dahlia’s antennae didn’t tingle in response to any bugs in pursuit. She couldn’t detect any humans following them, either, so she let out a small sigh of relief as they managed to disengage from the chaos.

  “... At least we know what and who we’re dealing with,” Emilia said, rattling off names as she lifted eight fingers. “One Pioneer from the Rampaging Hinterland Front, a Noble-Blood from the Attini Empire Front, a Plagueplain Doctor and two Symbiote Exorcists from the Plagueplain Front, a Tamera Mercenary, and three Mutant-Class bugs: two of which are ambrosia beetles working together. We’ll spend the next week or two relaxing, preparing, and planning how to beat them down, yeah?”

  “I believe we might be the strongest three teams in the entire exam,” Muyang said, slowing down once he realised they weren’t being pursued as well. He still didn’t let the two of them go, but instead he flung them onto his giant beetle helm, letting them ride atop it as he dragged it across the forest by the horns. “The Plagueplain Doctor aside, the sharpshooter Pioneer appears to have a modicum of skill with his rifle. Should we encounter his team and they decide to lash out in hostility, we must focus on taking him down first.”

  Emilia agreed with a firm nod, but Dahlia, sitting cross-legged on the giant beetle helm, was getting rocked around a little as she frowned at the two of them.

  “I… thought we weren’t going to fight humans,” she said. “I don’t… I don’t want to–”

  “Well, we’re not gonna them.” Emilia sighed, rubbing her throat tiredly. “But if they decide to attack us, we’ll have to fight back. I can guarantee you the three Plagueplain folk wouldn’t hesitate to kill us if we’re getting in their way.”

  Muyang hummed back in response, and Dahlia looked between the two of them for a few more seconds before rolling her shoulders, scratching her arms to relax.

  At least her teammates weren’t bloodthirsty for other humans.

  “But when you say we should prepare and plan how to kill the ambrosia beetles…” Dahlia started, chewing her nails as she glanced around nervously. “There’s three of us, but they’re Mutants. How do we even fight two Mutants at once?”

  Emilia threw her a cheery, confident smile.

  “We all have Symbiotic Systems here, don’t we?” she said, thumbing at a nearby horde of giant bugs to their left. “We’ve been ignoring it for the past three days thanks to a certain someone who got too caught up renovating a temporary shelter, so let’s do what we can’t do nearly anywhere on the continent—let's relax and have a feast for weeks!”

  The link to the Discord server is with nearly five hundred members, where you can get notifications for chapter updates, check out my writing progress, and read daily facts about this insect-based world. My is here with up to eight advanced chapters for this story and Storm Strider and Thousand Tongue Mage, so it's twenty-four advanced chapters in total.

  See you next Friday!