It was a stalemate—an even contest of strength between Muyang and the Mutant-Class beetle, and Muyang, who’d never lost in an upfront battle, was having fun.

  He couldn’t see much out of the eyeholes in his giant beetle helm. His fists and fingers were wrapped around the metal bars he’d hammered into the edge of his helm, and with every head slam into the ground that made the earth ripple—missing the agile beetle by inches—he was reminded of those cold and rainy days when he’d been made to stand outside his clan’s iron-studded doors, forced to take a squatting stance as he held a boulder on his back for hours upon hours on end.

  He was the fourth son of the prodigious Firegourd Wu Clan, a family of Beetle Dancers famous for having collected two Insect God heads. Every man in the family was supposed to have at least two bloodsworn wives by the age of fourteen, who’d be the ‘Body’ and ‘Tail’ to his beetle ‘Head’, but if there was one thing he simply couldn’t do, it was fooling around and playing with his dearest partners, splitting his attention between two lovers. He wasn’t like his older brothers. His strength and durability meant nothing if he wasn’t charming enough to attract a Body and a Tail, and for his inability to marry even after he’d turned eighteen, he’d been cast out. Told to pack his bags and head for somewhere else where his lackluster talent for Beetle Dancing would be appreciated.

  It wouldn’t be a lie to say he’d all but given up on ever fighting and dancing in a team. He’d spent years wandering across the continent, enrolling in entrance exams for every single Swarmsteel Front, and while he’d passed each and every last one of them with flying colours… he’d always refused the invitation offer in the end. There was no point joining an organisation that didn’t push him to his limits. The entrance exams would always be too easy, and he’d always end up crushing whatever bug they put in his way under his foot. He never needed teammates. Outside of the Hellfire Caldera Front, the Giant-Class bugs were, simply put, pathetically weak. The far northern front wasn’t known as the most powerful front in the world for nothing, and for years and years, he’d wondered if he’d ever meet his match.

  Or find people he had to work with to meet his match.

  … In that sense, he didn’t regret coming to the Hasharana Entrance Exam.

  Not at all.

  As the beetle darted away from his next head slam, it circled around him to try to rip out his spine, but a bullet from the Pioneer bounced off the back of his helm and ricocheted into the beetle, making it stumble, making it screech. He grinned like he’d never smiled a day in his life, though nobody saw it under his helm.

  Instead, he only pivoted, turned, jumped with a hearty laugh, and slammed his head down on the beetle again.

  Wisnu stole peeks at Muyang fighting off his opponent to the side every now and again, because the fact was, the Mutant-Class beetle she was fending off simply wasn’t too tough of an opponent.

  Claw strike to the neck. She parried with a lazy block. It darted to a fungi tree, circled around her, and she spun to slash it out of the air as it pounced at her. Recovering from its painful landing, it burrowed into the ground and snaked towards her, clouds of dirt and soil being kicked up as it tried to impale her from underneath. She took a step back and stabbed her sawtooth blade directly beneath her, barely missing its head by inches as it jumped out of the ground, retreating to a distance.

  Her eyes narrowed as she returned to her default stance, drawing a line in the earth with her blade before dragging it behind her, both hands wrapped loosely around the hilt.

  She wasn’t stronger than it, no—she imagined Muyang, hailing from the Hellfire Caldera Front and all, could probably crush its skull with his bare hands if he could just get close enough—and she wasn’t faster, tougher, or just physically superior in any way, shape, or form. It was a Mutant-Class for a reason. It’d decimated hundreds of bugs and participants before her because it overwhelmed them with its physicality and speed, but while she wasn’t winning her fight, she wasn’t losing it, either.

  Without using her Swarmblood Art and with Emilia constantly buffing her strength with that voice, she was just barely an even match with it, and that pissed her off more than she liked.

  I’m not showing it on my face, am I?

  She felt she’d kept herself decently composed throughout the exam. Save for the one or two or three times she’d clashed with Blair out of pure, murderous rage, she felt she’d successfully convinced everyone she was a noble who could keep her cool when she needed to the most… but the Mutant-Class beetle was really, really testing her patience, and just staring at it clicking and clacking its mandibles in front of her—assessing her strength, perceiving her aura—made her want to forget all about her principles and kill it outright, passing the first stage of the exam for herself.

  It looks… almost like that Insect God.

  The way it just stares at me.

  The way it just stands there, unmoving, unblinking.

  Back turned towards the rest of the team, she allowed herself to clench her teeth and let just a bit of rage show on her face—and she must’ve pushed her aura out a little, because the Mutant-Class beetle suddenly froze and began to shudder.

  … What good am I as a Noble-Blood of the Hunahpu if I can’t even defeat a C-Rank Mutant-Class without using my Swarmblood Art?

  How will I ever become a Hasharana and take down that Insect God?

  I bring shame on my household name.

  So she tightened her grip on her blade and exhaled coolly, the feeling of the wrapped leather against her fingers grounding her.

  She wouldn’t let anger consume her. Not completely.

  She still had to play her part in this plan to incapacitate both Mutant-Class beetles at once.

  Come on, bug.

  Why don’t you retreat and use your Swarmblood Art to heal up?

  Emilia wasn’t exactly sure if she was bored or tired after having spent an entire month in this colossal fungi forest, but frankly, she felt it didn’t matter either way. She was perched ten metres above the fighting, a few steps behind the Pioneer, and far, far away from danger—all she had to do was support her team with her voice. Easy enough. She wasn’t draining too much of her stamina, either.

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  Is this really what I’m supposed to be doing, though?

  Just be the ‘backline’ support?

  ‘Supposed’—a word that implied any of them in Team Dahlia had any set roles to play to begin with. Now, she felt she’d made a pretty strong impression on her team back when they first met in that little underground room, and she’d assumed it’d either be her or Muyang who’d be taking the initiative for the rest of the exam, but… that didn’t turn out to be true after all.

  As she kept whipping her cutting notes at the beetles from afar, she looked down at the edges of the clearing and tried to spot their trump card. The Swarmsteel Maker. The girl whose extra arms seemed to have minds of their own whenever it came to building or crafting something. Before Emilia knew it, she’d been swept up by Dahlia’s plans. She’d accepted being the backline support for the team, because the rest of the plan simply made sense: the physically strong and fast ones should be the vanguards keeping the beetles busy, and those who weren’t should be in the back providing supporting fire or disrupting the enemy. She’d agreed with the plan. It was a good plan.

  But… she should be taking a more active role. All Hasharana were supposed to be main characters wherever they showed up. Nothing was more preposterous than a Hasharana being a mere background character with only supportive capabilities, because how else would people revere them as heroes of the continent? People wouldn’t cheer for a bug-slayer who wouldn’t fight on the frontlines, would they?

  … What am I taking this exam for again?

  Don’t I have to make a name for myself?

  She didn’t hate fighting, but she didn’t particularly like it, either. She hated overexerting herself. She wasn’t a battle addict like Muyang and Wisnu. She liked the little mushroom hollow they’d made as a team. She liked lazing around on the cushion, gazing up at the stars during the long nights, and going around the forest picking herbs and studying flora she’d never seen back in the east, but she hadn’t run all the way here, away from home in the middle of the night, just to act like a little girl and forget about why she’d even come here in the first place.

  So she had to fight.

  She had to show everyone what she was really capable of.

  Everyone back home was looking up to her, and just the thought of disappointing all of them by achieving less than stellar results in this exam made her feel like buckling over and crying.

  If she simply stayed as a backline support—if she didn’t dominate and overshadow every other participant in this exam by doing something incredibly, incredibly spectacular—could she really bring herself to go home and look her fellow classmates in the eye again?

  Could she look her father in the eye and call herself his daughter?

  …

  Slowly, steadily, she stopped playing her ‘Ode to Amadeus’ and simply stood there. She rubbed her throat and cracked her neck. The Pioneer cast a brief glance at her, likely wondering why she’d stopped using her voice, but then the beetles screeched and demanded his attention again—he whirled back around and resumed firing, his hands feeding bullets into his rifles at double the pace to make up for her lack of support.

  She should stick to the plan. She should at least hum in the vanguards' direction to buff their strength and toughness by matching their natural frequency, but she didn’t really feel like doing that anymore.

  Why shouldn’t she just show her true strength and decimate the beetle twins right here and now?

  Why shouldn’t she just show everyone—and the Worm God, who was surely watching from afar—what she was capable of doing, right here and now?

  … I’ll give you one minute, radish girl.

  It was time to stop showing her lazy self to the participants of this exam.

  She had to play her role as that man’s daughter.

  If you don’t end this in one minute, I will.

  Otto had half a mind to turn around and shout at Emilia to start using her voice again, but frankly, his attention was already being stretched to its utmost limit. He was a Swarmsteel Maker first, a marksman second. Even if he was lying prone on his stomach and his rifle was set on a swivelling bipod he’d made himself, having to provide fire for two Mutant-Class beetles at once meant he couldn’t blink. He couldn’t breathe. He poured his all into aiming, firing, chambering, then aiming again—he was just barely keeping up with how fast the beetles were dashing around the clearing, and the vanguards weren’t exactly locking them down to make shooting at them any easier.

  Still gotta do it!

  Maybe Emilia was drained. Maybe her stamina was already running thin, and it was up to him to cover for her.

  Up to him.

  Whether all of them could safely defeat the Mutant-Classes or not was up to him.

  … The beetle twins have impeccable teamwork though, huh?

  Somehow, his mind wandered a little as he kept firing on repeat—he remembered the synchronicity drills he used to do in the Rampaging Hinterland Front as a young boy. His parents had entertained his selfishness for many, many years, allowing him to take more than a dozen aptitude tests to see if he had any talent in piloting any Inorganic Armour, but… he never had any. His synchronicity with his crew and teammates were always the lowest of the low. Only the Great Makers knew how much money his parents had spent just to keep entertaining his childish dream of one day being able to pilot ‘Gigantitania’, the third Arcana Hasharana, but if he couldn’t even pass the aptitude test to pilot the the most basic of Inorganic Armours, he’d never be allowed to even take part in the selection exam to become Gigantitania’s Pilot.

  He wasn’t stupid.

  He didn’t want to be selfish.

  He’d told himself this would be his last year of trying. He’d leave his home, participate in the Hasharana Entrance Exam, return home with an Altered Symbiotic System that proved he was competent enough to at least take part in the selection exam, and then surprise everyone by being the person most fit to pilot Gigantitania. If he failed, he’d simply go home and hang his head in shame. He’d simply go back to being a normal Swarmsteel Maker. He’d inherit his parent’s factories, carry on their business as Pioneers—engineers who worked on Inorganic Armours—and look on with pride as the Pilots rumbled the world with their colossal armours.

  And that was why he couldn’t fail here.

  His dream was still on the line.

  One, two, three, four shots—he chambered and fired four shots in the span of a single second, nailing both Mutants in the chest at once as they dodged away from the vanguards. All four anti-chitin shots tore through their torsos and sent them toppling over.

  They weren’t dead yet—Mutant-Classes and above could only be killed by destroying their hearts—but his bullets were the straws that finally broke the camels’ back. He destroyed the powerful magnets that’d been stopping them from fighting together. Now they could stick to each other and fight with more than double the strength, double the efficiency.

  … But Otto couldn’t help but smirk as they scrambled to their feet, staring down Muyang and Wisnu as the two vanguards stood together as well.

  He’d deliberately aimed to destroy the magnets.

  I hope you’re right about their behaviour, Dahlia.

  All was silent in the clearing for a good few seconds. Muyang and Wisnu stood side by side, as did the beetle twins, but the moment they regenerated the hole in their torsos, they decided to run. Make a sprint for it. After all, even if the magnets were destroyed and they could fight as one unit now, they’d still been considerably injured and drained. They needed to jump and burrow into a tree to use their healing Swarmblood Arts, and then they could immediately jump back into the fight to face a significantly weakened and tired Team Dahlia.

  But all this time, Team Dahlia was missing a ‘Dahlia’, and now that the beetle twins were joined at the hip, leaping faster than ever before towards a seemingly random tree Otto wouldn’t even have guessed was their target…

  Go get them, ‘trap’.

  Having observed and predicted the beetle twins’ behaviour throughout the entire fight, Dahlia leapt up herself from the trunk of the tree they were dashing towards, her giant warhammer swinging and crackling with lightning.

  In one overhead swing, she smashed both beetles into the ground with a hefty boom, and Otto immediately fired half a dozen metal stakes into their limbs to impale them to the ground.

  Day thirty-three, last day of the Hasharana Entrance Exam’s first stage.

  Both Mutant-Class ambrosia beetles were incapacitated and nailed to the ground, unable to move.

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