Dahlia had never seen Safi angry, but she couldn’t deny the old man seemed a little miffed when she returned to Tavern Emparatoria with one less radish than she was supposed to have.

Immediately afterwards, she was sent back out to the bazaar to get a new one—suffering through the heat, the crowd, the noise, the whole ordeal once again—and by the time she returned, it was already nearing evening. Dinner service was about to begin, so Alice wasted no time sizing her up, measuring her dimensions, before weaving a crimson apron for her with the words ‘Tavern Emparatoria’ spelled out bold and large in front. At least, she assumed that was the words spelled out; it wasn’t like she could read the local tongue or anything to begin with.

Nevertheless, she spent the rest of her evening hours waitressing for the tavern, and it was… as hectic as she’d thought it’d be, with only old Safi manning the stoves and two girls running the storefront. Customers from Eighth Mantid Street poured in in droves, and they liked their food hot and fast. Safi could certainly keep up, tossing rice in eight pans with two hands, but Dahlia was an absolute drag. She couldn’t keep track of orders, she couldn’t weave through the tightly-packed tables quick enough, and a bump here and there had put noodle bowls upside-down on a few customers’ heads.

Nobody really got mad at her—the scary-looking uncles and aunties on Eighth Mantid Street were all incredibly nice and curious about her—but she still felt sorely embarrassed by the time Safi ended dinner service and kicked the motley bunch out of his tavern, two hours before midnight.

She couldn’t even say ‘thank you for the patronage’ or ‘sorry for the inconvenience’ to anyone she’d bothered.

[You really ought to learn the local tongue before the Hasharana Entrance Exam.]

You think?

[Of course.]

[Your chances of survival–]

“Your chances of survival in the first stage of the exam will largely hinge on whether or not you’re capable of working with your teammates!” Alice interrupted cheerily, kicking the door open behind her and barging into her room. “In that sense, learning how to speak the local tongue is far, far, far more important than making something out of Madamaron’s parts—Swarmsteel are a dime a dozen while you’re in the first stage of the exam, but you’ll only have two or three teammates! If you can’t communicate with them, that’s it!”

... How is she still predicting what you're going to say?

Aren't you a fusion between Eria and the Bloodline's personality now?

[Give me some time to readjust. I'm still mostly drawing upon the Archives' speech pattern, so I'll make more of an effort to use the Bloodline's speech pattern in the future.]

Which is?

[Aggressive. Ambitious. Prideful. Capable of shouting at you to move even when it's not logical and you're feeling afraid.] Kari shrugged. [Your own words.]

It was eleven at night. She was prying jagged chitin plates off one of Madamaron’s severed arms on her table in front of the window on the second floor of Tavern Emparatoria. Both her and Alice had their own rooms, of course, while Safi preferred crashing out on the sofas in the tavern below, but for some reason, Alice just liked hanging out in her room all the time. It wasn’t like their rooms weren’t adjacent to each other’s, or that her room had a better window view of the Eighth Mantid Street right below. Alice just really, really seemed to like jumping onto her creaky wooden bed and making a mess of her neatly folded blankets and bedsheet.

Dahlia paid the girl no mind as she continued ripping parts off Madamaron’s arm, using natural moonlight from the window to help her locate the steel threads.

“Bath’s ready,” Alice said, kicking her legs back and forth on the bed as she squinted at Dahlia’s work-in-progress Swarmsteel. “What are you making, anyways? Is that for the exam?”

“What else?” Dahlia mumbled back, a single drop of sweat beading down her forehead as she carefully carved out a whole half-metre long plate of chitin from Madamaron’s forearm. “I don’t know… what I’m making, by the way. I just need to dismantle and pry off the raw components first. If you’d tell me… what I’ll be doing in the first stage of the exam… maybe I’ll be able to make Swarmsteel that’ll help me out directly.”

Alice made a loud ‘bzzt’ noise, crossing four index fingers before her lips. “No can do! I registered you for the exam while you were away in the bazaar this afternoon, but any more help than that and I’d be overstepping my boundaries. That’s just no good at all.”

Dahlia grumbled under her breath, turning Madamaron’s arm over to rip out the chitin plates on the other side. “I… get it. I’m assuming I already have… an advantage over most other participants because I already have an Archive, so it’ll be unfair to them if I have an Arcana Hasharana coaching me on all the strategies on top of that–”

“Huh? Nah. It’s nothing like that. I just don’t feel like helping.” Alice shrugged, slapping the back of her head with her own pillow. She whirled and scowled, yanking her pillow away; Alice slapped her face with a second pillow. “Anyone who’s half-serious is cheating in the exam, anyways. You think the details about this year’s exam stages haven’t already been leaked and flying around as rumours to be bought in the bazaars? Anyone who actually wants to pass already knows the general gist of the first stage.”

“... Okay?” she muttered, grabbing her second pillow as it flew at her face. “Tell me what the rules of the first stage are, then.”

Alice refused to let go of the second pillow. “Don’t wanna.”

“Tell me.”

“Don’t wanna. I hear dozens of new cafes have opened up across the city since I last visited, so I wanna spend all my time in the city lounging around there.”

Dahlia narrowed her eyes. “But you’re here in my room.”

Alice grinned at her. “I’m here.”

“You’re here in my room now.”

“Maybe I don’t have to be.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be here if you’re not gonna tell me, then.”

“But I’m already here.”

Alice was still pulling hard on her pillow, so she let go with no warning and let Alice smack her own face with the pillow, turning away while grumbling to resume work on dismantling Madamaron’s parts.

“If you’re not gonna help, then leave me alone,” she mumbled. “I have work to do. I gotta… make something out of Madamaron… and train… and learn how to speak–”

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“Wait, wait, wait. Don’t kick me out,” Alice said, scrambling to defend herself as she sat against the wall, holding out her pillow like a shield. “I’ll tell you what you wanna know about the exam. The exact details haven’t been leaked yet, so the only thing I can tell you is what’s floating around as rumours in the bazaars, but hey! If you don’t even know that much, I can be your girl!”

Dahlia squinted at Alice—she’d still rather have some alone time to think of something good to make out of Madamaron’s parts—but if the Arcana Hasharana was offering information, then there was no good reason to refuse.

“So… how does the whole thing work?” she asked. “You said there’s a first stage, so how many stages are there again–”

“Three stages,” Alice said, hugging the pillow as she held up three fingers. “Each stage is spaced around two months apart so participants have time to rest and heal in between, and they’re each personally designed and proctored by an Arcana Hasharana—however, stage one is almost always a team-based deathmatch, stage two is an individual hunt where teamwork is optional, and stage three is a one-versus-one battle against the Arcana Hasharana in charge. You’ll be here for at least five months, basically.”

“Three Arcana Hasharana?” She squinted at Alice again. “Didn’t you say a while back that there were only… twenty-one Arcana Hasharana? And three of them are here right now?”

“Uh-huh. The Fool and the Sun are here.”

[Rank one and rank eleven of the Arcana Hasharana,] Kari added. [The twenty-one Arcana Hasharana have internal rankings as well. Excluding the Worm God, the Fool is widely regarded as the strongest human on the continent, while the Sun is the eleventh.]

“I bet your Archive just made a snide remark about our rankings,” Alice said, grinning as she kicked the blanket at Dahlia. “Go on, miss or mister Archive. Tell her what rank I am. I’m rank four–”

[–she’s absolutely correct. She's rank four, meaning she's super strong–]

“–you suck, miss or mister Archive. Don't tell her I'm rank eighteen,” Alice groaned, running a one-girl charade all by herself. Dahlia raised a brow, though. She probably didn't realise she'd just failed to predict Kari going along with her joke. “Yeah, yeah, I’m rank eighteen. The three below me don’t fight at all, so while I’m not technically the weakest Arcana Hasharana, I’m the weakest one most people will realistically see. The other three never leave the Genesis Glade Front.”

The ranks meant little to Dahlia—given she’d never seen the feats of any other Arcana Hasharana before, nor did she really know anything about the history of the world—but just the thought that Alice was the weakest of the bunch made her a bit nervous.

She stopped fiddling with Madamaron’s arm to glance at Alice. “And… are you a proctor for the exam? You’re the third Arcana Hasharana here, right?”

“Oh. That. I, uh…” Alice trailed off, rubbing the back of her head with an embarrassed flush on her cheeks. “So, remember what I told you a month or so back in the Oasis Town? That I was kinda in a hurry to leave after killing Madamaron?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, there wasn’t a worm effigy in the Oasis Town, so I didn’t receive the notification until just this morning.” She sighed, smiling cheekily at Dahlia. “Apparently, the Fool sent me a message telling me to design and proctor the first stage, but that was two months ago and I never responded, so… I dunno. The Sun yelled at me just now while I was registering you for the exam, and she said she was going to take over proctoring the first stage for me, so it should be all good?”

Dahlia blanked out. She’d thought Alice was just lying when she said there was somewhere she needed to be, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. “So now you’re proctoring the second stage, and the Fool’s gonna proctor the third?”

“Huh? Nah. We need time to prepare each stage, so when the two of them didn’t receive a reply from me two months ago, they just went ahead and filled in for me,” Alice said, shrugging nonchalantly. “The Sun’s proctoring the first stage and the Fool’s proctoring the second, but I dunno who’s proctoring the third. The Sun didn’t seem like she knew, and the Fool refused to tell me when I asked. He said it’s gonna be a ‘mystery guest’, which is… ugh.” Then she squeezed her pillow tight, growling into the fabric. “If he’d just tell me, I can leak the info and sell it to the brokers in the bazaars for at least fifty thousand silvers. Tch. I bet he doesn’t actually know who’s the third proctor this year, either.”

[Bitch,] Kari mumbled. [So Alice is the leak the Hasharana have been looking for this year.]

[If you report her to the Sun and the Fool, you’ll get at least ten thousand silvers for your troubles–]

“But!” Alice interrupted, shushing Dahlia though she didn’t even say anything. “While even I don’t know the details of the second and third stage, the first stage of the exam is almost always the same every year—you’ll be put in groups of three, dropped off in a custom-made venue, and be tasked with hunting down Mutants. Most likely, the duration of the first stage will be an entire month, and as long as your group takes down one Mutant, all of you will pass. We’re only gonna release, like, three or four Mutants or something, though, so only a few groups will be able to pass.”

Dahlia looked around for a notebook, a piece of paper, anything she can jot down notes on; Alice threw the pillow at her and wagged a finger, telling her to focus.

“The proctor of the first stage gets to decide what the special rules and parameters are,” Alice said, her smile gleaming, turning dangerously sharp under moonlight, “and the Sun is a very, very destructive lady. She won’t actually interfere while you participants hunt the Mutants, but you can bet she’ll introduce a special something that’ll make fighting in open ground nearly impossible. I dunno what that special thing will be, so here’s the best and biggest tip I can give you for the first stage: find and make a fireproof shelter for your team to live in for the entire month. Whatever the venue is, you can guarantee it’ll be massive and crawling with giant nocturnal bugs. If you don’t have a roof over your head, you won’t even make it past the first night.”

“...”

While Dahlia chewed her lips and let her imagination run wild, Alice hopped off her bed with a little ‘whoop’, getting dust and dried bread crumbs all over her floor.

“I guess I can come by every once in a while to teach you the local Sharaji Tongue!” Alice chirped, turning to stride out the front door as she waved at Dahlia. “Don’t poison yourself by eating too much bug meat before the exam next month, and, uh… that’s about it! Oh, and don’t forget to keep the fact that you have an Altered Swarmsteel System hidden from the others! Even if it’s only half-functional, it’ll be messy if they learn you already have an Archive!”

For her part, Dahlia thought that was about all the information Alice was willing to tell her—even if the Arcana Hasharana did know more about the exam, it was likely she was going to have to buy the information from the bazaars—but before Alice could leave, Kari jabbed a leg and motioned for Dahlia to stop her.

What?

I’m sure she’s told me everything there is to know–

[Ask her about the murders in the bazaar this afternoon,] Kari urged. [Call it an inquisitive mind, but I still find it strange that giant bugs are lurking around the city in the midst of a Hasharana Entrance Exam–]

“Is your Archive worried for your safety?” Alice said, plucking out Kari’s exact line of thought as she turned and narrowed her eyes at Dahlia. “Don’t forget that the first stage of the exam kills ninety percent of all participants. Whether there are… unwanted pests scurrying around the city or not, you’ll be putting your life on the line the next half a year. The Hasharana Entrance Exam is for the elites of the elites. If you don’t drop out after registering and actually step foot in the exam venue, none of the Arcana Hasharana will come to your rescue even if you’re getting mauled by a Mutant—so does it really matter if there are one or two more spiders dangling over your head?”

“...”

With that, Alice cackled and bounced out of her room, tripping downstairs to help old Safi with the tavern cleanup.

Now, Dahlia wanted to get back to making Swarmsteel out of Madamaron’s parts at first… but then she thought the better of it, and she went downstairs to help with the cleanup.

… One month.

[One month to learn the Sharaji tongue, make something out of Madamaron, and prepare yourself for the exam.]

[Alice is right.]

[Whether you’re taking part in the exam or not, a bug-slayer’s life is always teetering on the very edge of life and death—so until the Swarm is exterminated, you will never find true ‘safety’ in this world.]

[So start by passing the exam and becoming a registered Hasharana.]

[In one month, you'll face a Mutant again, and this time, you must dominate and drive it into the ground.]