Six shots of formicarid serum. Three jabs of chrysopid infusion. Two tablespoons of vespidic acid swirled with a standard vial of lepidopteral elixir, then heated to a hundred stars for ten minutes before resting in a cold bath of cinderblood draught—and having mixed everything together in portable knife-like syringes he carried around at all times, Julius, in essence, could gain the raw regenerative abilities of a Mutant as long as his body met the mixture’s activation condition.
‘Death for one minute’.
It took one minute for him to ‘resurrect’ after his blood ran cold, after his eyes went dark, and after his heartbeat stopped; the activation condition was met, the six syringes he’d preemptively stabbed into his neck before Zora killed him clotted the gaping hole in his chest, and he snapped upright with a hiss. Pain. He couldn’t think. Breathe. He couldn't breathe. Freezing, sharp blood. His vision flashed white and knitted together in slow, meandering swirls like the world was made of wavy water, but the moment he heard giant legs crashing through the forest around him–
He blinked, and he was suddenly six years younger.
Thirteen years old.
He was in the courtyard under the language arts building, where the graduation ceremony that year was held. It was afternoon. He was running around in circles. Sunlight blared down on him and sixteen-year-old Zora as eighteen-year-old Marcus chased after the two of them, screaming about getting in at least one group hug for the boys before he’d begin training as a fitness teacher.
Heh.
He wants to hug us so badly.
Get a wife or something already, you big loaf–
He tripped on a rock and fell flat on his face, breaking his nose. A cry of pain escaped him. Marcus charged past him and continued chasing Zora, probably thinking he’d just stay there crying and sniffling pathetically to himself until Zora was eventually caught—and the big loaf would be right. He wasn’t getting up.
Just for the completely wrong reason.
I’m bleeding.
I’m dying.
He felt warm on his forehead. He felt wet and sticky grass beneath his face. He was bleeding, he was hyperventilating, and his head hurt so, so badly he couldn’t even call out to Marcus or Zora for help. It was agony. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t scream. His mind was active and fully functional, but his body just wouldn’t respond to him. The only thing he could move was his left hand.
His body had always been like this, though.
Before he’d been rescued by the Headmaster and brought to the academy, he was ‘something’. Not someone. His parents in the northwest used to inject him with a hundred insect venoms every single day, and that made his blood… wrong. That was to say, he’d been their blood bank. His blood had natural healing properties for normal people, and that’d made his parents very, very happy with him—the amount of health elixirs he could produce a week was abnormally high even compared to his siblings, and considering the only downside of being such a good blood bank was the fact that his own body was abnormally weak and frail? They’d been more than happy to fashion him a comfortable, cushioned cage in the attic, intent on making profits off his blood for the rest of his life.
Thing was, he wouldn’t have run even if he’d been given the opportunity to; with a body as weak and crappy as his, where could he even have run to?
… I don’t like this.
There was nowhere he could’ve run to. At least, not by himself. It wasn’t until his family was slaughtered by a giant bug and the giant bug poisoned itself immediately after by trying to eat him that the Headmaster had arrived. She’d offered him a new home. A big, warm room. All the food he could ever want, all the friends he could ever make, and a chance for the local physician to fix his frail, sickly body.
He barely knew how to speak back then as a nine-year-old, but he probably nodded or something, because the next thing he knew, he was in Amadeus Academy sharing a room with two other boys—and the two of them were always so damned noisy. ‘Zora’ was sharp-tongued, prone to pick a verbal fight with anyone, and was generally irritating to listen to all the time. ‘Marcus’ was relatively quiet, but the nights they shared together were always filled with grunts, groans, and other healthy exercise sounds he could never make himself. He was too frail to ever even consider exercising. Even ‘Cecilia’, the girl who was good friends with Zora and Marcus, could play a hundred songs with a single flute in ways his clumsy fingers could never hope to replicate.
He had very little compared to the three of them.
Where’s my syringe?
The one thing he had that nobody else had, he supposed, was his memory. The Headmaster had always told him it was quite superb. He could recite the Marheim Phytology Almanac backwards, and with his natural immunity for venoms and poisons, he’d always excelled in biological sciences. If Zora and Marcus and Cecilia weren’t dragging him around to play, he’d be holed up in the botanical garden with the old physician, learning how to brew the vilest and foulest drugs and medicines the human mind could conjure. Part of his interest had come from believing he could one day overcome the limitations of his frail body, but the other part of it was pure and honest curiosity; it’d been fun spending time in the garden surrounded by vibrant, alien plants.
So he’d gotten better at brewing.
He’d gotten better at concocting medicines.
Inadvertently, he’d also learned how to nurse other people from the old physician as well, and that was without extracting his own blood and making himself weaker in the process.
He couldn’t remember when it’d happened exactly, but eventually, he grew to enjoy the company of his friends, and the castle that was Amadeus Academy.
… Found it.
Face down on the ground. Soaking in his own blood. His left hand fumbled blindly inside his lab coat for the syringe he’d spent the better half of the year refining with the old physician, and finally he found it: the ‘resurrection syringe’ that, supposedly, only worked on him and his blood of a hundred venoms, allowing him to regenerate one minute after death. Of course, he’d never tried the syringe out before, and the old physician had always kept it locked up in a cabinet in the garden—it was just a fun little project they did for the sake of research—but he’d stolen it and replaced the one inside the cabinet with a fake just a week ago.
He couldn’t help himself.
It was the first thing he’d made with his own two hands that he felt he could really be proud of; how could he let it sit in some musty old cabinet, gathering dust for as long as its expiry date?
It was his.
Only he could use it.
So, with his heaving, dying breath, he managed to jab it in the side of his neck, and he felt–
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ALIVE!
I’M!
BACK!
He snapped upright, the wound in his forehead sealing, tenfold strength seeping into his body. The syringe felt like an icicle stabbing through the back of his head, heightening his senses. He felt himself clawing to his feet. He felt his blood running colder, his skin hardening into emerald crystals, and he felt time slowing down. Or was his perception just that much faster? Don’t know, he thought. Don’t care.
In the distance, at the end of the courtyard, he saw Marcus holding Zora up like a ragdoll while the younger boy kicked at the muscleman’s chest, gasping for breath. It was all in jest, of course. Marcus wasn’t really hurting Zora, and Zora wasn’t really hurting Marcus.
And Julius wanted in on the fun.
I’m alive!
He felt himself clawing to his feet. He felt his calves and thighs holding the rest of his body up. For three minutes, the resurrection syringe would give him the vitality of a normal, healthy human boy, so for three whole minutes, he’d enjoy his body to the best of his ability.
So don’t worry, Zora!
I got you!
A cheery smile rose onto his face as he blurred forward, intending on giving Marcus a light push from behind—and then he punched a hole through the Mutant’s back, making it drop Zora with a screech of surprise.
… Huh?
Who the hell are you?
Grinning from ear to ear, he flung the Mutant back and away from Zora, his blood running beautifully cold and sharp in his veins.
He’d never felt more alive.
Don’t get in my way, you fucking bug!
Where’s Marcus?
Let me in on the fun, too!
----------------------------------------
Scrambling to pick up his wand, Zora whispered "to me" at one of Julius’ healing syringes, pulling it in before the physician could pounce on the Mutant.
Took you long enough.
While he jabbed the syringe into the back of his neck—hissing as he did—he raised his head and narrowed his eyes at the carnage of a fight in front of him.
Julius was clumsy as ever, but his arms had hardened into crystallised emeralds, reflecting moonlight like nothing else in the world. He flung himself through the air, slashing and cleaving and slapping away the Mutant’s stabbing antennae repeatedly; the attacks came with the sounds of cracking chitin. The speed-enhancing drugs kept the antennae at bay, and for the first time, the Mutant started backtracking, attempting to reenter the forest where it’d have a terrain advantage.
But the Mutant had been straightforward this entire time, and Julius wasn’t about to let his playmate run away from him. The Mutant had four arms and two antennae, but Julius dashed in close and fought with only two hands, snarling and laughing even wilder than the bug was—the very fact that the Mutant was using all of its limbs to dodge, strike, and jab at Julius was already more effort than Zora had ever gotten it to use, which meant there was no question about it. For three whole minutes, they would not be evenly matched.
A single human against a Mutant, clawing and slashing at each other like feral beasts; it wasn’t something Zora could see everyday, and it certainly wasn’t something he’d hear about too often even outside the academy.
“... Even salt can look like sugar, bug. You made a mistake going after me instead of squashing him to bits when I snapped his neck earlier,” he said, grinning weakly as he continued applying pressure on his bloody neck. “It’s not true ‘resurrection’, mind you. Whatever the hell he claims the syringe can do, I’m quite certain it doesn’t actually bring him back from the dead. The dead do not return to life. The humans you have killed cannot be brought back.”
Growling, the Mutant tried to leap high into the air and backtrack into the forest, but Julius was a step ahead of it; he grabbed the tip of its antenna and slammed it down to the ground, cracking the earth and shattering half the chitin plates on its neck.
Zora couldn’t help but wince in its stead.
“He’s from the far northwestern Plagueplain Front, by any chance—the land where the tenet of man is ‘ten fingers, ten scalpels’,” he said, slowly rising to his feet as he felt the bloody wounds on his neck clotting rapidly. His fingers were still weak, but he held onto his wand loosely. “He’s been patching me and Marcus and Cecilia up since we were children. You may not believe it, but between his healing blood, his green touch, and his dedication to memorise every surgical technique there is under the sun, he is a man who can cast ‘heal’ as easily as you breathe. He truly, truly believes he can heal all wounds.”
The Mutant on the ground roared in what might’ve been pain and what might’ve been anger as Julius ripped off both its antennae, laughing giddily all the way. Zora was pretty sure he wasn’t in control now. The physician’s face was twisted with childlike exuberance, exactly like the last time the resurrection syringe had been used six years ago; Julius had given him and Marcus a fright back then, when the usually weak and frail boy could suddenly pick up the muscleman like gravity didn’t exist in the courtyard.
In any case, the Mutant still had some strength left. Any giant bug before it would’ve died to Julius’ overwhelmingly sharp claws in seconds, but it managed to shake him off-balance by thumping the ground beneath it. An opening was created; it punched Julius square in his chest, sending him flying back while it scrambled to its feet, heaving for breath.
More splotches of shadows zipped out of the forest. Giant bugs, all of them. ‘Julius, the timid, cowardly physician’ wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of them, but that wasn’t the Julius in control. Zora winced as the man cackled and charged and dashed from bug to bug, ripping wings from backs, drawing blood and wrestling heads into the ground. The reinforcing bugs were too weak. Too slow. Julius lashed out over and over again with his crystalised claws, and with each slash he cast out, the Mutant standing behind the giant bugs looked more and more agitated.
Its head snapped towards Zora violently as though debating whether it needed a mid-battle snack, but Zora wasn’t even a single bit worried now. After all, it really, really wasn’t like any of the giant bugs before it, so he knew exactly what a low-rank human-like Mutant would do.
Instead of going for Zora, it turned its back on them and ran, heading for the other end of the garden.
… Like I’ll let that happen.
Did you think Julius was the one who’d carry out ‘Operation Backstab’?
It wasn’t him who took down Marcus that day after the graduation ceremony, you know?
With a hard thumb of a button, he turned his wand into a sword and cast ‘strike’ on the blade, before throwing an additional ‘spin’ around the handle as he gripped it like a javelin. The slowly spinning blade cut into his palm and drew trickles of blood, but it didn’t loosen his grip. On the contrary, the pain only made him focus even harder.
Sucking in a sharp breath, he pivoted, turned, and then chucked it forward as hard as he could. Years of throwing chalk at his disobedient students paid off. The air whistled, leaves rustled around it, and the Mutant whirled to see what was coming at it from afar—his spell-enhanced sword slammed into its chest like a spinning drill, impaling it to the trunk of a tree with a satisfying thud.
He’d nailed it right in the heart, doing what Julius failed to do with the initial backstab.
…
He was decently surprised, though, that the Mutant didn’t even try to speak with its dying breaths.
It really wasn’t like the other giant bugs, after all.
Limping forward, rubbing the back of his head in pain, he trudged across the clearing and kicked the half-conscious Julius off the ground. The physician’s three minutes of nigh-invincibility was up, so he snapped awake with a gasp, cold sweat pouring down his brows.
While Zora recalled his sword with a ‘sword to me’, the first thing Julius did was whirl in a panic, looking frantically around the clearing. Zora sighed and flicked the scrawny man on the forehead; now that the drugs had worn off and the crystallised emeralds were flaking off Julius’ forearms, he didn’t break his finger with that little flick.
“None of your kids saw,” he said, thumbing at the empty doorway as he did. “I got them all out of the garden before you went feral. Your reputation as a quiet, creepy, completely harmless physician is still intact.”
Julius readjusted his round glasses with a shaky hand, blinking rapidly twice. “I… I-I see. I didn’t go… I didn’t go too far off the rails this time, did I?”
In response, Zora thumbed at the Mutant sitting slumped against a silver tree in the distance, half-shrouded in the shadows of the canopy. There were about a dozen giant bug carcasses scattered around the edges of the clearing as well—no doubt Julius had slaughtered all of them before attending to the Mutant—but he didn’t feel like pointing them out lest Julius started puking all of a sudden.
He did prefer Julius, the timid, awkward, and slightly cowardly physician more than the other ‘Julius’.
“That had to be a F-Rank Mutant. The lowest possible rank for a Mutant-Class,” he said, turning his sword back into a wand and sticking it in his pocket, “and you had to have known you could’ve killed it whenever you wanted. You just didn’t want your kids to see you like that and grow apprehensive of you, hm? Were you hoping we’d come get you in the garden so we can lead your kids safely away while you deal with all the bugs?”
Julius’ blush was immediate, and he shied away as Zora stood, offering him a helping hand up.
“O-Of course,” the physician stammered, accepting his hand gingerly. “I’m… also a teacher, after all.”
… You are, indeed.
And while Zora slapped the man on the back as they trudged back towards the dorm, he couldn’t resist casting a glance at the colossal northern building through the glass ceiling behind them.
He may have gathered all of his closest friends and colleagues now, but there was still something he wanted to check on before they could just up and bolt from the academy with their kids in tow.
What’s going on in the north, Headmaster?
Are you fighting Nona up there?