My Special Ability is Growing Muscles

The C-Ranks went in like black banners snapping to full wind in order to stop the Treants. If they let them close to the students, it would be a massacre.

And that left everyone else to deal with the incoming flood… the vine-whip flowers that fired barbed tendrils, the spore hounds that wreathed in fungal fuzz that shook clouds from their coats, and the beetles with glittering crystal backs that hit like battering rams.

For a moment, the students froze, terrorized.

Someone had to take charge.

"Shields front!" Mira barked, dropping into the pocket at Kairo's left.

As soon as she and Kairo moved, the others reacted.

Draven thundered up, Titan Arm swollen as he smashed a beetle clean off its legs. Alric and Barros locked their shields, baring their teeth as they dug their boots into trenches to steady their core for collision.

All hell broke loose!

A flower's maw opened and spat a thorn like a bullet, though slower but just as dangerous.

Kairo slid his head by a hair to dodge as he felt it kiss his ear, then he drove his dagger straight into the flower's throat.

The flower convulsed, then he ripped his dagger free and used its own stem as a suicide rope to choke and hold still a spore hound that leapt the shield wall right until another student killed it.

Kairo and Mira were not the only ones leading to protect the caravan though.

On the ridge to their right, Adrain Cross simply shifted time.

BZZZ!

An E-Rank plantoid's tentacle strike hung for the briefest fraction as his ability triggered, leaving the helpless monster as slow as honey.

Adrain stepped inside the arc with calm eyes, and drew a glowing line in the air. When time snapped back, the tentacle completed its swing, minus the piece he'd already parted from it… brutal!

He used that beat of time to pull a battered squad back into formation. His voice was crisp, and his movements were precise.

He didn't shout, he never needed to.

His sheer power and charismatic presence naturally drew others to make their stand around him as they protected the caravan.

Across the lane, Selene Duskbane seemed to be three people at once. With [Phantom Mirage], clones ghosted through enemies while the real Selene painted the air with crescent arcs of Moonveil Sorcery.

Where her sorcery carved, plantoids fell in silent halves.

And in the churn between instructors and students, Valek made a statement.

He drew a line across his palm with a toothpick dagger. His skin cut open, blood welled, and then hardened midair into crimson spears that screamed through vine bundles. When he threw them, it was hell…

Bam… bam… bam…

When a spore hound's shell exploded, showering a boy in burning fuzz, tendrils of congealing blood wrapped the boy's limbs and yanked him behind Valek just as a beetle hammered the spot he'd been.

Valek was a shining light on the battlefield like a few others, but he didn't even look at the boy he'd saved after he saved him.

Rather, his eyes were secretly on Kairo.

"This," he muttered coldly amid the chaos, "is how a noble fights".

Of course, Kairo didn't hear him.

A girl with a cracked wrist and terror in her eyes was pinned between two vine stalks. Kairo dropped, rolled, and jammed his dagger hilt-first into one stalk's joint so it bent instead of broke, then he kicked her free.

"Behind the wagon!" He told her, hauling her by the collar until her knees remembered what walking was. "Keep your head down". He ordered.

"Breathe through cloth if it smokes".

He was already moving again, spinning back just in time to see the second wave.

While Captain Roran and two other instructors battled the Treants, the wagons became targets.

Small plantoids swarmed the axles, jaws sawing at leather harness as they aimed to bring them down. A crystal-backed beetle lowered its horn at a ration crate and pawed the earth like a bull.

"If the supplies go," Kairo said, mostly to himself, "it's mission failed".

He didn't wait for permission.

[Monarch's Roar Activated!]

"Wagon line!" He called loudly.

"Shields to spokes! Spears on approach! Protect the merchants! Archers kneecap anything with legs! Draven, stomp to disrupt chargers on my mark! Mira, I need wind to clear spore clouds when they go!"

His voice sounded with the cadence of someone who'd been obeyed in panic before. The other students? They moved, not perfectly, but it was enough.

The beetle thundered.

"Mark!" Kairo roared.

Draven's heel hit dirt as the ground vibrated.

The beetle's timing was disrupted as it clipped the wheel instead of shredding it.

And that was when Alric and Barros met its head with braced shields. The impact rang like struck bells, but the Archers were already making their move as they put three arrows into its leg joints.

It sagged.

Before it recovered, Kairo was already there, sliding under its belly, his dagger punching into the seam where plated crystal didn't quite meet flesh.

He came out the other side with black sap in his teeth.

Kairo looked like a Demon on the other side, a Demon covered with the blood of monsters.

Mira's wind howled, pushing a bloom of spores off the line. She coughed anyway as her eyes started watering. "That's not normal fungus," she rasped. "It's… weaponized".

"Everything here is," Kairo shot back as he sucked a breath and nearly choked on it. "Damnation!" He cursed.

And that was when they noticed.

A vine-whip flower had climbed the wagon bed while they fought.

Its maw yawned over a crate stamped with the Academy's sigil. Immediately, Kairo sprang up the wheels, boots skidding on polished wood as he drove his dagger into the maw just as it snapped.

Teeth clacked inches from his fingers. He twisted the dagger until the stem went slack, then he kicked the corpse off the side.

"Left rear!" Someone cried. "We've got a breach!"

Kairo turned.

A cluster of plantoids had tunneled under the tail wagon, popping up like tumorous bulbs around the rear axle. Two students tried to drag them off; one took a thorn to the calf and folded choking.

He didn't think, he moved.

He jumped over crates, off the tailgate, dropping into the nest. The air burned his throat but his hunger burned everything else.

When he arrived, he fought small, close and personal, slum-brawl style… blade in, blade out, knee to stalk, elbow to maw, boot to soft spot that felt like the underside of a jaw. Kairo's movements and attacks flowed like water.

He used the wagon's own weight, wrenching a vine until its pull rolled a bulb under the wheel. The wagon crushed it with a wet crunch.

Something flared at the edge of his sight, a red spear, then another.

Valek's blood weapons pinned two plantoids that were angling to flank Kairo. Kairo didn't look over, he just finished the last stalk, his chest heaving.

Captain Roran's voice cut through like thunder. "Students, down!"

"Eyes closed! Breathe through cloth!"

Kairo didn't ask questions. He simply yanked his collar over his nose and shoved Mira's sleeve up over her mouth.

Then, the ground boomed.

KABOOM!

A Treant screamed, letting out a sound like steam in a furnace before going down on one knee as Captain Roran's spear punched through its face. It toppled, smashing three spore hounds flat.

The victory was a hiccup.

The fallen Treant's core, a fist of pulsing red crystal flared as it hit the ground. Its bark split in glowing seams, and the seams exhaled one final time.

Spores poured out in a rolling wave.

They came like fog, spreading sparkling crimson motes into the damp air as the world went hazy. Shapes smeared into shadows as the coughs turned violent. Students stumbled as they wiped at their eyes that kept flooding with tears.

"Wind!" Kairo barked, and Mira responded immediately.

He felt Mira's hand find his arm, then the sound of a gale whipped across the line, pushing the worst of the cloud sideways.

It helped, but it didn't clear.

Through the reddened haze, Kairo saw as more shapes moved. Not wolves, not beetles either. These guys were taller, thinner, and with too many joints.

'Dammit!'

Kairo couldn't see faces, but he could feel it, the moment the Wild Zone stopped testing them and tried to break them.

"Stay on the wagons," he said, low so only the ones nearest could hear. "Tighten up. If you run, you die".

He blinked as tears flowed down his eyes, and then lifted his dagger as the new shadows stepped into the blur.

The battle didn't end, it just escalated.