Thousand Tongue Mage

Zora may know how to 'cook an egg', but casting 'turn the butterfly legs into a mouth-watering delicacy' was a little bit out of his depth.

That didn't stop him and Cecilia from trying to crack the black tube-like shells with the back of their kitchen knives, though, while Emilia sat on the countertop nearby and Titus and his friends scattered across the foyers to watch over the gates. If anyone knocked on the gates, they were to immediately pull the levers and let the new arrivals in. Zora trusted they were capable enough for that.

"... And what's this about eating bug meat to grow stronger?" Cecilia asked, scrunching her nose with a heavy scowl as she managed to wedge her knife along the length of the hard chitin, struggling to crack the whole thing open like a lobster leg.

In stark contrast, Zora was still struggling to whack the leg open, and he feared he'd destroy the cutting board underneath before he could put a dent in it.

"How much do you know about our esteemed academy mages to begin with, Miss Sarius?" he said in a strained, sing-song voice, glancing at Emilia kicking her legs back and forth aimlessly as he did. "Our Essence Art is infamous: 'God Tongue', the biomagic that lets us infuse our voices with bioarcanic essence and cast spells as long as we truly believe we can manifest them in physical reality. I'm sure you already know this, given how you tried to blow my face off earlier with your wand."

"'Twas a mistake."

"Fun fact about Miss Sarius, number four—"

"Quiet," she muttered, glancing over to throw her spell at him. Her physical sound waves wrapped around his face, and suddenly he couldn't hear his own voice anymore. He blinked. He paused.

It wasn't until another moment later that he swiped her spell off his face, and sounds returned to his ears.

"You do know how to cast a spell," he said, resuming hacking at the butterfly leg with his knife. "You speak the word you believe you're capable of manifesting in physical reality, and then you have two options: either you let the spell diffuse around you in an area, or you concentrate it on your wand so you can sling it faster and farther at your target. Since our spells have travel time—that being how fast our voices can travel—both options have their merits. I'm sure you already know this, though."

"... Really?"

It was his turn to glance at her, frowning. "You didn't know that. What do you know about our magic, then?"

"I knew the first part about only being able to cast spells you believe you're capable of manifesting," she mumbled, peeling chunks of chitin off the slimy white flesh of the butterfly leg, "but all I did was say 'Da Capo' with the instruments already sitting around the foyer, and then they just… listened? That's because I could imagine myself playing all of those instruments, right?"

He stared at her in silence, and ever so slightly, his lips shifted into a faint smile.

She can imagine herself playing all of those instruments?

There must've been ten or twenty different types of instruments back there.

"... 'Da Capo' is far northeastern tongue for 'from the beginning', isn't it?" he said, resorting to whacking his butterfly leg with the handle of his knife. "It appears you can cast spells in whatever tongue you can speak, so this is news to me. Good job, Miss Sarius. Emilia, tell Miss Sarius she did a good job."

Emilia brightened up. "Good job, Miss Cecilia!"

"Now help me rip the chitin off this leg," he said, patting the girl's head as he rolled the leg off the cutting board, letting the moth girl have a go at it while he sat on the countertop himself. Cecilia gave him a disappointed scowl, but what could he do? He was a walking skeleton, lacking in muscles unlike that maniac of a fitness teacher. It was best to wipe off his sweat and just rest for a little bit. "Have you tried any other spells? Something special only a music teacher can cast?"

"None apart from 'stand', 'Da Capo', and 'Coda' for 'stop playing'. I haven't had the opportunity to cast spells much," Cecilia said, shaking her head. Since both girls were doing a much better job cracking their legs open, he pulled a pot from the cabinet under him and started filling it under the sink water tap. He could cast spells and have his magic do all the hard labour for him, but he wanted to move his body a little. Warm himself up a little. "And you? What sort of spells can a language arts teacher cast? Something completely banal and useless, I imagine—"

"Strike", he said, whipping his wand at a nearby flower pot to crack it. "Among a few other generic spells, of course," he added quickly. "There's only a hundred more spells I'd like to try out, but a basic offensive spell like 'strike' is a pretty decent 'default' option if your mind goes blank in the middle of a fight. If the hammer does the trick, the hammer does the trick. Also, it's a one-syllable word, so it's easy to pronounce in a pinch."

Cecilia glanced back at the flower pot, pouting. "Julius gave that to one of my kids for his birthday last year."

"'Twas a mistake. Anyways, I'd recommend using 'strike' as our default offensive spell—it's easy to remember, it's easy to say, it's easy to imagine ourselves physically doing, and its strength scales with how hard we subconsciously know we can physically punch," he said, smiling cheekily as she glowered at him. In the meantime, he slid his pot of water onto the gas stove next to him and turned the knob, letting it boil to a simmer. "We're both walking skeletons, so I imagine if I told you to cast 'strike' on a wall, you wouldn't actually be able to break it down, right? That's where the rest of our system comes in. Mind tapping the little bony protrusion on your nape for me?"

The two of them tapped their own napes, pressing hard, and then his status interfaces popped up next to his head. Cecilia gasped, evidently startled by her own status interface as well, though Zora couldn't see hers. The interfaces were projections created by their spinal implants, after all.

[// STATUS]

[Name: Zora Fabre]

[Grade: F-Rank Giant-Class]

[Specialized Class: Magicicada]

[Passive Mutation: Resilin Cords]

[Essence Art: God Tongue]

[Aura: 100 BeS]

[Points: 0 vBe]

[Strength: 1, Speed: 1, Toughness: 1, Dexterity: 1, Perception: 1]

[// MUTATION TREE]

[T1 Mutation | Pulsatile Lungs] 15P

[T2 Mutations | Basic Chitin | Basic Spiracles] 50P

"... The simplified explanation is this: there's your name, grade, class, passive mutation Essence Art, and your aura. I'm pretty sure your grade is your estimated overall strength defined by the highest grade of bug you can kill. Passive mutation is your class' core mutation, and you automatically mutate it when you get your system. Essence Art is your class-specific biomagic, while aura is the measurement of your 'killing pressure' created by your bioarcanic essence leaking out of your skin," he said. "If your enemy has a higher aura than you, you'll be paralyzed with fear, and the bigger the difference, the more afraid of them you'll be. Since all Arts also use bioarcanic essence as a resource, aura is also the indicator for how much 'magical stamina' you have.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He continued without pause, eyes rolling down the interface.

"Below that, there's your five basic attributes," he said. "One 'level' in strength, speed, dexterity, toughness, and perception means you're equivalent to an average human in all of those attributes. If you have two levels in strength, that means you're basically twice as strong as the average human."

Cecilia blinked, nodding along as she mumbled something under her breath.

"If you want to raise your strength from level one to two, it will cost you one point. If you want to raise it from two to three, it will cost you eight points. Increasing your attribute levels will cost a number of points equal to that attribute's current level cubed," he continued, looking at his own status interface. "For every point we obtain, our aura will also increase by one… so our magic stamina increases, our killing pressure gets stronger, and we become less afraid of bugs."

Emilia was still happily peeling away at the chitin on her butterfly leg, but Cecilia was listening diligently, so he grabbed her fleshy leg and dunked the entire thing into the boiling pot of water.

"After the attributes, there are the five tiers of mutations we can unlock, which are… like special 'abilities' unique to our class," he said, hesitating slightly as he tried to find the right term. "The passive mutation we unlocked the moment we got our classes is 'Resilin Cords', which… let me check again."

He willed his status interface to expand, and a second, smaller interface popped up underneath the final row.

[Passive Mutation: Resilin Cords]

[Brief Description: Your inner throat has hardened with flexible but tough chitin. Your voice will no longer break]

"... Says here that our passive mutation makes it so our voices don't ever break, which is probably supremely useful considering our magic is voice-based," he said, glancing at Cecilia for confirmation. She nodded back, indicating her passive mutation was the same as his. "We can't level up our passive mutation, but we can for the five tiers of mutations on our mutation tree. If I remember correctly, the cost of levelling up a mutation is that mutation's current level cubed multiplied by its tier, so if we want to increase a tier three mutation's level from two to three, it would cost two times two times two times three, which is—"

"Twenty-four points," Cecilia finished, putting a finger to her chin. "I'm assuming our mutations get stronger the more levels we put in them?"

"And they also evolve," he added. "The max level for mutations is ten, but at level five, mutations with the 'Basic' prefix are capable of evolving. Like our tier two mutations that'd cost us fifty points to unlock, 'Basic Chitin' and 'Basic Spiracles'. When they each reach level five, there'll be three branch mutation options we get to pick from so we can make them more specialised and powerful. Basically, we get to pick and customise our own branch mutations, so two people with the Magicicada Class may not have the exact same abilities."

"O… kay." Cecilia nodded absentmindedly. "And… how do you know all this?"

"I only know a bit from what I've read," he mumbled, picking up a spatula and poking the reddish-yellow butterfly leg in the pot as he did, "but that was a long digression from the main point I was trying to make: to get 'points', we have to eat bug meat filled with bioarcanic essence. It's the living magic energy only bugs can naturally create, so when we eat bug meat, the system in our necks converts our intake of essence into 'points', allowing us to selectively control how we want to get stronger. I've heard we can technically eat bug meat raw, but I've also heard cooking it first would give us more points."

So the two of them stood huddled around the boiling pot, scowling down at the butterfly leg with forks in their hands.

"... And we won't start mutating insect traits uncontrollably if we eat this?" she asked quietly, glancing back at Emilia. "You know I'll be the first to shove it down my throat if it means we can protect our kids better, but there won't be any point if we just end up going insane immediately after eating it. I do not want to eat our kids' heads off."

"The system protects us from mutating. Even if someone without a system eats bugs, they'd still get stronger because of the intake of essence. They just wouldn't be able to control how they manifest and mutate said strength without the system," he replied just as quietly, poking the floating leg with his fork and ripping out a soft, tender strand of flesh. The texture and colour almost made it look like lobster meat. "If you consume too much essence without a system to safely convert it into points, you run the risk of the essence mutating you in ways you don't like, like what happened with… Emilia."

Emilia looked the way she did because she was force-fed too many moths without a system, after all.

But what kind of moth is she, after all?

He still didn't know, but it wasn't time for that line of thought. He and Cecilia were completely in sync as they stabbed chunks of butterfly flesh out of the pot, raising their forks to their chins.

The meat was red, pulsating, and… it looked rather tasty, to be honest.

"Cheers?" Cecilia said, gulping as she tried to toast his fork with her own.

"I mean, it can't be that bad if soldiers all across the continent eat this daily," he mumbled back, stuffing the whole chunk into his mouth and chewing as fast as he could. Cecilia followed his lead, squeezing her eyes shut—and then they both retched, gagging and coughing and doubling over as they forced the incredibly putrid flesh down their throats.

Nope.

Tastes like gooey resin dipped in spice and medicinal herbs.

But then his status interface popped up next to his head, and they forced themselves to finish the rest of the pot before he looked up at his interface with a grimace.

[Points: 0 vBe → 20 vBe]

[Aura: 100 BeS → 120 BeS]

"... How convenient," he grumbled. "I got exactly twenty points. You?"

"Also twenty," Cecilia mumbled. "What do we do with them?"

"Well, it's just enough to unlock our tier one mutation, and we have to unlock all the mutations in one tier before moving onto the next, so we have to do it sooner or later. We'll put the leftover points in every attribute?

Cecilia coughed into her fist one more time, turning away as she shot him a trembling thumbs-up. "Sounds good to me. How do we… do that?"

"Just think about it. The system should automatically—"

Another status interface popped up as he finished that thought.

[T1 Core Mutation: Pulsating Lungs Lvl. 1]

[Brief Description: You have developed pulsating air sacs along your trachea, which can store excess airflow. At level one, this mutation doubles your lung capacity. Subsequent levels in this mutation will further increase your lung capacity. At max level, your lung capacity will be four times that of a normal human]

[Strength: 1 → 2]

[Speed: 1 → 2]

[Toughness: 1 → 2]

[Dexterity: 1 → 2]

[Perception: 1 → 2]

[Points: 20 vBe → 0 vBe]

"... Just like that," he finished, blinking at the new interfaces. He didn't feel stronger or faster or like his lung capacity had just doubled immediately, so maybe it'd take some time for the mutations to take effect. "Now, our 'strike' spells should do a bit more damage because we can subconsciously imagine ourselves punching harder, and we should also be able to run away twice as fast. Theoretically."

Cecilia nodded weakly, and then she looked back at Emilia still happily peeling away at the other butterfly leg's chitin. "If this gnarly flesh is the price to pay for growing stronger, then… it's our job to deal with it. You think it'll taste better if we roast it over a fire with salt and pepper instead of boiling it?"

He shrugged, not knowing the answer to her question, but Emilia heard the word 'fire' and immediately perked up. The little girl hopped off the countertop and trudged over to the two of them, holding up her peeled butterfly leg with all four hands like she was offering a sacrificial offering to an altar.

"Fire?" Emilia asked, tilting her head quizzically. "Where's the fire?"

"..."

In response, he accepted her butterfly leg gingerly and turned the knob on another gas stove, letting the small fire crackle to life under the pan support.

"Can you feel it?" he asked, smiling softly as he stuck his spatula through the end of the leg like he was making a skewer. "This is 'fire'. It comes in many forms, but we use it primarily to cook food and warm ourselves. Wanna hover your hands around it to see what it feels like?"

Emilia nodded excitedly, so he handed the leg skewer off for Cecilia to hold over the stove while he guided the little girl's palms over, making sure she wouldn't accidentally burn herself. She was blind, after all, and he'd no idea how good her depth of perception was.

She looks like she's starting to get it, though?

Does she understand what 'fire' is now?

Her milky human eye glimmered as he held her palms around the fire, and she looked so in awe at the crackling fire that he didn't feel like asking. She could understand what physical objects were because she could physically touch them or feel them out with her moth senses, but for something formless like fire—something that could wink into existence and extinguish in a single breath—he still didn't quite know how to explain such a concept to her… but if she could understand what it felt like instinctively, that'd be more than good enough.

For the time being, the three of them simply stood around the roasting leg, watching as the fire seared the flesh and made it give off a slightly tantalising smell. Not so much that it made him excited to take another bite, of course, but it was evidently going to taste better than when he'd boiled it in a pot.

He was determined to eat as much as he could before leaving the dorm to look for the other teachers.