Chapter 79.

PART 1.

Hatori is working on the modification of the bee soldiers, recently done with the wasps. He had to explain to the wasp queen that her soldiers had reached the limits of the modifications he could offer and that she should consider using those soldiers in the general operations of her hive to see their performance.

Currently, he is working on the bees to make them element-resistant. While it is true that you can’t exactly make someone resistant to a rock bashing their head, it is possible to increase the tolerance of fire or electrocution. Done with carving the rune on the soldier’s body, while the rest of the buzz in anticipation, Hatori motions the soldier to move at some distance. He will now try to light the soldier on fire.

The Fireball has no effect, and the wet wings from the water dried up quickly enough. He then tries the lightning spell, a small nameless spell, to produce some shocks. The spell causes the soldier to fall to the ground hard, suffering the effects of electrocution. When he is modifying them, Hatori feels like a mad scientist.

But when his experiments fail, he has to justify to his guilty conscience that they offered themselves. At least his recovery runes are working fine, as the soldier is up much too quickly for a bee that just got electrocuted. It also doesn’t help that the soldiers themselves don’t seem to mind; they have an almost careless disregard for their lives. They do not see themselves as expendable, though, instead seeing themselves as material for the bridge to the future, which will be built with their bodies. When he hears talk like that, Hatori feels depressed and goes into his camp to sulk.

Meanwhile, the queens are having a conversation nearby. The wasp queen has shifted her hive near to the bees. This would have resulted in a war normally, but these are not normal bugs. They are successfully managing to distribute resources among their hives; thus, they do not see any reason to conflict with each other. It also helps that Hatori is giving them a study supply of flowers, allowing them to produce more honey. Now they have even started to supply it to other bees and wasps.

‘I say this has turned into a profitable venture; wouldn’t you say?’ asked the bee queen.

‘Indeed.’ Agreed with the wasp queen. ‘Though I worry for the human boy. He seems unable to accept our way of life, constantly worrying about the soldiers.’

‘I’m sure he’ll come around sooner or later. Humans are very adaptable.’ Said the bee queen. ‘He’ll recognize that those soldiers and servants have one escape. And that is death.’

‘That stands true for us as well.’ reminded the wasp queen.

‘I never said that it didn’t.’ Both queens buzzed in amusement.

The snake and the elephant, the two new additions to the revenge coalition, watch the performance of the bees. ‘You’ve improved them even further. They weren’t resistant to the elements before, just slightly faster and with more stamina.’

‘I argue that is way too fucking much already.’ Said the elephant. ‘I mean, we should get a fair chance of running away, shouldn’t we?’

Hatori ignored the banter between the two. “You two, you never told me why you wanted to help me.”

‘And I’m still not going to.’ Said the snake.

‘But I fucking will.’ Said the elephant. ‘I remember how a bunch of young mages tampered with the fruits. When my mother bit into one of them, it exploded in her mouth. She was shocked so badly that she just went into a river, and died there. Later, I got captured by one of your professors who studies us. She left me in this forest with other wild elephants like myself. Soon, I established that I have the biggest dick around here, so I will rule. But I never forgot what happened to my mother.’

“I’m just like those mages, you know.” Said Hatori, gathering his sharp instruments for cleaning.

‘I know. But I don’t care. You’re not the one who killed my mother.’ Said the elephant. ‘And before you say it, yes, I know that those shit factories in there didn’t do that either. But it makes no difference to me. My anger will be felt!’

‘See, that is why I don’t want to talk about my revenge. It turns into this melodramatic talk.’ Said the snake, bored with the topic.

‘Come here, and I’ll show you melodramatic, spineless fuck!’ roared the elephant, and went after the snake.

Hatori sighed. One of these days, the elephant would end up squashing the snake by mistake. He’ll be very sorry, or very happy that day. Hatori still hasn’t got a good enough read upon his large questionable comrade to understand which one is more likely. They do seem to be friends of sorts, but sometimes, there’s real venom in their spats.

Poor kid, let me tell you. Most real friendships are like that.

‘Whatever.’ He thinks, done gathering his things. ‘Once the potions are ready, I’ll be ready to perform the ritual of power. that should allow them to cast spells, and I hopefully won’t have to carve every single one of them, unless they request specific special modifications.'

PART 2.

James is working on his projects. Apart from taking care of the potions of Hatori, he is working on the optical designs for yantras, trying to understand how the vision works in those magical machines, and how it differs from human vision. This sometimes crosses the path with advanced subjects like alchemy, so he often comes to ask Professor Dhiraj some questions.

“Professor, tears do the job of cleaning the eyes, usually in humans. But what about yantras?” asked James.

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“Usually, the eyes of a yantra are quite, shall I say, stiff.” Said Dhiraj.

“Not to mention, the yantras you’ve worked with so far do not require advanced vision.” Chimed Sultan.

“Get back to work, slave!” roared Dhiraj.

“Do it yourself. I’m not your slave!” fired back the apprentice.

“Getting back to the point.” Dhiraj ignores the humph of the Sultan. “You might need some alchemic liquid to clean the optical organs in advance yantras.”

However, he doesn’t only need alchemic knowledge. “Professor, what would be the best runes for vision-related work?” he asked Krodhatma.

“These are some angry! Runes you can use.” Said the angry professor. While he gives the list to James, he goes to Dhiraj. “What is up with that boy? He’s asking too many strange questions.”

“Indeed. His obsession with vision is also strange.” Said Dhiraj.

“Do you two know why a third year came to me and asked me about planting yantra eyes into humans?” asked Healer Slaughter, joining both professors in Dhiraj’s office.

“We’ll find out soon enough.” Said Dhiraj cryptically.

The door opens, and James sees all three adults sitting in one place. “So, mind explaining why you are asking so many vision-related questions to all three of us?” asked Slaughter.

“We don’t mind answering those questions.” Added Dhiraj.

James sighed. “Let me explain.” And he did a lot of explaining. Complete with a presentation of figures and progress he has achieved so far, and of course, the entire reason for doing this.

“Hmm.” Said Slaughter. “I haven’t worked on something interesting for a while; tell you what kid, I’ll help you out here.”

“Yeah, same for us. What do you say?” asked Dhiraj to Krodhatma.

“Of course. Though my limit is the symbol.” Said Krodhatma. “Anything more than that, you will have to rely on these two.”

PART 3.

Hatori is meditating, trying to sense the snake, who is coiled outside of the magic-suppressing barrier. From what Hatori has learned of such buriers (including how to put them), they work on some specific frequencies, which results in the blockage of magical sensing. They fail to block magic use; those buriers are insanely hard to put. One twelve-year-old who is dabbling in a dozen things is not going to put them up by himself.

The snake is singing outside, (he has a good voice, but the songs are annoying), and Hatori is trying to match the frequency of the barrier. According to the technique he has read, to break a sensing barrier you must match the frequency of your magic to the barrier, and it’ll shatter like the glass broken from the sound vibration.

Though the task sounds simple, it is anything but. The singing is not helping; the cold weather is making him shiver, and as if listening to his complaints, the sky decided to add rain and thunder to it as well. However, this isn’t any normal storm, which would pitter off after raining for a bit. This one is a destructive storm, and it proves it by first breaking the burier by tossing the stones bearing the runes to create the burier aside, and then nearly tossing Hatori, and making him drenched from head to toe in just a few seconds of rain.

Hatori tries to run to his camp, but it didn’t survive. It completely collapsed, as if the elephant had decided to stomp in there. Speaking of which, the large mammal is calling out to both snake and him. ‘I know a place. Hurry up, or else you’ll be drenched more than the sun!’

Hatori doesn’t want to make sense of that statement right now. The elephant brings them to a cave, which is sealed off from the effects outside, and it is big enough to accommodate them all. The snake slides off Hatori’s shoulders, having hitched a ride on him for faster travel. Crawling through a storm is not recommended, if any snakes are reading this.

“Thanks, elephant.” Said Hatori, before removing his clothes, and falling asleep. His clothes are also destroyed in the camp, not that he had many, to begin with.

‘Don’t mention it.’ said the animal gruffly, before leaving the human to his rest.

If it weren’t for the elephant, Hatori would be running around, trying to find shelter from the storm. ‘If it weren’t for some bozos, I would still be happily living in my home.’ That was the last thought before Hatori falls asleep.

The snake and the elephant discuss the human sleeping a few paces away from them. Since they talk mentally, they don’t need to make any noise. Just another advantage of telepathy. ‘The boy looks what’s the word… ah yes. Haggard.’

The elephant grunted. ‘Of course, he looks like that. Humans are fragile, especially young humans.’

PART 4.

“And that is how we form a sentence in runes. Notice how one symbol connects to the other? This is how you form a sentence like ‘I’m angry’.” Professor Krodhatma is teaching his runes class for the fifth year.

“I’ve been mad. Very very mad.” Said one student, while trying to write down that sentence.

Suddenly, he realizes what he has just said out loud, and he looks up from his notebook to see the whole class glaring at him. “I’m not mad. I’m angry! Very, very, very, very, very, angry!” The class had to flee in haste, as the professor started to fire spells in his madness. “Anger!”

A voice brings him down from his fog. “Professor, your delivery is here.” Said Shin, walking up to him with bells jingling, and handing him a box.

“Ahem. Thank you,” he said, paid for the delivery, and Shin left.

His plan to take over the underground world of the school is proceeding smoothly, as he has moved up from student to professor recently.

(End.)