As expected, the giant butterfly didn’t just keel over and ‘die’. It kept charging, its oversized legs cracking the tiled floor and knocking tables over as it did. For such a large bug, it was rather slow—moving at less than five metres a second—and that meant the thirty metre gap between them wasn’t crossed as fast as Zora had worried it’d be.

… So the ‘die’ spell won’t work, he thought, pulling his wand away from his lips as he backtracked, leading the giant butterfly out of the cafeteria with hurried steps. What’d that old man say? ‘I must speak the word, and I must believe, with all my heart, that I can manifest it into reality’?

Then, I can’t tell it to ‘die’ because I don’t believe I can kill it as I am.

As the butterfly picked up speed, he turned around to start running, racing back along the bridge. He tried glancing over his shoulder to see if Emilia noticed—now was her time to bang on the dorm gate—but his eyesight wasn’t all that good, and he couldn’t afford to run into debris while looking back.

He gritted his teeth and tried to focus; he’d just have to believe in her.

Think.

What does it mean that ‘I’ have to believe, with all my heart, that I can manifest my spell into reality?

Whirling around quickly with his wand pressed to his lips, he whispered several more words and tried to bring them into existence: ‘forget’, ‘reverse time’, ‘undo’, and ‘stop’ were all failures. The butterfly paused every time he whipped his wand at it, as though trying to sling a spell, but very quickly, it realised he was just making silly gestures with no bite behind his bark; it started crawling even faster, making his lips thin into a line as he upped his pace as well.

I can’t cast a spell that ‘I’ don’t think I can do, he thought, eyes darting around the hallway of the language arts building as he sprinted off the bridge, checking for more giant bugs. So the condition of ‘I’ is me in my most fundamental state, without any tools, without any special abilities?

If I have a kitchen knife, I can dice a carrot, so can I cast ‘cut’ on the butterfly?

He whirled again. The butterfly was struggling to squirm through the narrower entrance of the bridge, its wings tearing across the low ceiling, so he took the opportunity and voiced ‘cut’ at its wings.

Nothing happened. A physical sound wave didn’t even leave his mouth and swirl around the tip of his outstretched wand.

I see.

So, what if I do something like this?

Before the butterfly could squeeze through the rest of the bridge, he turned his wand on its head and spoke.

“Strike.”

A ripple darted from his lips to his wand, so the moment he saw it swirling around the tip, he whipped his wand and flicked the spell forward. His accuracy was true—he’d had lots of practice throwing chalk at sleepy students after lunch hour—and the spell ‘struck’ the butterfly in the head, making it flinch and recoil momentarily in pain.

Interesting.

‘Strike’ works because I can imagine myself running forward and punching it, but ‘cut’ doesn’t work because… well, even if I had a knife, I probably wouldn’t be able to imagine myself actually cutting it. I could ‘strike’ it with a knife, but then it wouldn’t be an actual cut.

As he stood still and mused, the butterfly whipped its antennae forward like spears, forcing him to jump to the side and dodge. A very close call. He stumbled a few steps, breaths picking up, and then sprinted down the hallway to put more distance between them—the butterfly smashed through the bridge and rammed into the wall he’d just been standing in front of.

So, is it accurate to say I can only cast spells that I can imagine myself physically doing? he thought, scowling as he stared down the butterfly twenty metres away, watching it struggle to free itself from the wall. My ‘strike’ dealt no damage because I can’t imagine myself actually hurting it with a punch, but what if I were to ‘strike’ something else instead?

Peering into the empty classroom on his right, he spotted a porcelain vase and immediately cast ‘strike’ on it, shattering it from afar.

So if I believe I can physically strike it and destroy it, the spell will also do more damage, he thought. But that also means all ‘magic’ spells are completely out of the picture: no summoning thunderbolts or teleporting around or raising the dead from their graves. Spells are more like ranged extensions of my current physical ability, so if I want to kill it with ‘strike’, I need to increase my physical strength.

That fitness teacher could probably imagine himself crushing the butterfly’s skull with one hand, but I’m just a humble stickman. I don’t have that much strength.

And he coughed the moment he came to that tentative conclusion, his throat dry and scratchy beyond belief. He’d cast only a few spells in the past ten minutes, but it felt like he’d just run a marathon in a desert. In stark contrast, the lumbering giant butterfly managed to rip its head out of the wall and reorient itself, screeching at him as it resumed its fervent charge once again. Its energy was boundless.

His heart leapt into his throat as he backed up even further, going all the way to the rubble-filled staircase leading down to the lower floors.

… What a cruel and unforgiving ability, he grumbled. I can’t cast ‘magic’ spells because I don’t believe I can make them come true, but the only reason why I can’t make them come true is because I don’t think I can physically do it.

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Emphasis on the 'I'.

If a child who truly, with all the heart, believes they can physically summon lightning gets this ability, would they actually be able to summon lightning?

He half-stumbled down the stairs, half-sprinting as fast as he could to outrun the giant butterfly hot on his heels. By the time he got down to the ground floor and sprinted to the end of the hallway, the bug crashed down the stairs thirty metres away, legs carving up the walls and making the entire building tremble.

He couldn’t keep running away like this. There had to be something he could do.

Even if I can’t really cast ‘magic’ spells…

He parted his legs. Stood firm. Pressed the tip of his wand against his lips as though to shush the butterfly as it charged.

“Rise,” he whispered, flinging his spell at the mounds of sharp debris lining the hallway—and when he realised he could control how hard he flicked his wand to fire off his sound wave spell in multiple bursts, he managed to lift half a dozen bent metal pipes into the air with an invisible force.

I can imagine it, he thought, a bead of sweat rolling down his brows. ‘Rise’ is the urgency in the air when I walk into a class and begin the roll call. I can imagine picking a student up by their collar when they sleep through their name being called, can’t I?

The giant butterfly continued charging. He pulled his wand back to his lips and spoke again: “Throw,” he said, before whipping his spell at the floating metal pipes. Not all of them were pointing their sharp ends towards the butterfly, but enough of them were. His command sent them flying forward at the speed of thrown chalks, and one, two, three, four of them soared into the butterfly, making it screech in pain as they punctured its chitin.

Sickly yellow blood spurted from its wounds, its speed significantly slowed as it slammed into the walls, trying to dislodge the pipes in its body. His eyes widened—bloody wounds like that would kill any normal man, but the butterfly was giant. It needed a bigger push.

‘Throw’ is the speed of a stick of chalk when I throw it at a noisy student’s head, but I’m not that strong. I can’t imagine throwing anything other than a stick of chalk with that much accuracy. He clenched his jaw, casting ‘rise’ on more debris as he did. But I didn’t buy out all forty boxes of the academy supply store’s stock of chalk for nothing.

If four pipes won’t break you, then how about a dozen more?

As he continued stepping back, slowly and steadily, he raised whole lines of debris and threw them at the charging butterfly, barraging it with an onslaught of scrap. Most of the wooden beams and stone tiles bounced off its head, but the heavier metal plates made it shudder, while the glass panes and jagged shrapnel tore through its veiny wings. The butterfly tried crawling faster, squeezing its giant body through the narrow hallway; he picked up more debris, striking it over and over with as much strength as he could muster.

Eventually, nobody could tell that it was a butterfly from the front. It slowed to a near-complete halt ten strides in front of him, two dozen or so pieces of debris lodged all across its body like the spines of a porcupine, and its antennae tried to stab at him. He hissed and jerked his head out of the way, casting ‘tear’ on the flimsy appendage that just tried to decapitate him, and for the first time, his pure attack spell had an effect.

The spell punched through the antennae, severing it from the butterfly’s head.

Even a stickman like me can imagine tearing off a slow-moving appendage like that.

Still, if I want to finish it off…

He had to be patient. He had to wait. He could pick up more debris and throw them at it until it died, but he’d figured out something else: distance played a massive part in how ‘effective’ his spell was. Since his spells were simply sound waves given physical effects, they’d lose strength and speed the longer it took them to reach their target. The spells would even fizzle if he aimed them at something too far away, so currently, his maximum range seemed to be about twenty metres.

As things stood, he simply waited until the giant butterfly slowly bled itself dry. He watched as its legs went limp, its remaining antennae wilted, and its short wings fell flat over its body. It wasn’t quite dead yet, no—its giant black orbs for eyes were still trained on him, and it was still desperately trying to suck in breaths of air—but it could do nothing as he approached its head, pressing the tip of his wand against his lips.

An adult who does not believe in magic cannot cast magic.

But… there is a spell that only I can cast, no?

With a quiet voice, he whispered ‘translate’ and flicked the spell at its head, watching as the sound waves rippled across its entire body.

And frankly, he was surprised when its seemingly pointless screeches and inhales slowly turned into comprehensible words.

“Mama,” it cried, burning its remaining strength just to turn its head left and right, as though trying to plead for mercy. “Ma… ma. Cold. Hurt. Where… you?”

“...”

He stepped past its head and squeezed through the cramped hallway as it cried for its ‘mama’ with its final breaths. His hands were shaking slightly, his forehead glistening with sweat—he’d known the giant bugs of the Swarm could communicate with each other via pheromones and physical gestures as they rampaged across the continent, but the fact that their normally unintelligible noises could be translated directly into human words was news to him.

There was a tongue he didn’t know how to speak, after all.

… Gotta get back to the dorm. He winced, rubbing his throat as he tried not to think about how dry his throat was. Then he glanced back at the giant butterfly, eyeing its two stick-like hind legs. But before that, I need a source of ‘points’ if I want to get any stronger with my system, don’t I?

Again, he was no expert, but he knew a bit about the Swarmsteel Systems and how warriors across the continent grew stronger with them. There was no way he could even attempt gaining points in the middle of a hallway while surrounded by destruction on all sides, though, so he quickly cast ‘tear’ on the butterfly’s giant hind legs and severed them from its body. They didn’t look too heavy to carry, and maybe he could even afford to cast ‘rise’ and hover them all the way back to the dorm, but he’d rather save his strength in case he needed to–

The wall behind him exploded with a chorus of horrid screeches, and he whirled around to see a horde of giant bugs tearing into the hallway.

Most likely, they’d heard the dying throes of one of its brood and came to investigate, and bugs only knew one way of ‘investigation’—by running their razor-sharp legs and antennae over said object, that was.

Well.

Even ants know when to leave the anthill, huh?

Hauling the two butterfly legs under one arm, he took off on a mad sprint back towards the stairs at the end of the hallway, and the horde of bugs screeched to life behind him.