The plateau shook as if through an earthquake. Spiderweb cracks spreading rapidly across the rock, it split and began to slide down the side of the mountain

  Only the foundation of the enormous crystal cannon stayed in place as massive, boulder-sized chunks shifted around it like water flowing around a heavy stone sitting unmoving on the bottom of a rushing river.

  Like a wall of blue light, a shock wave cracked out of the mouth of the barrel like thunder. The air warped visibly as something rocketed toward the location where Eik had discovered the monster spawning ground, numerous force rings blasting outward from its path as the virtually ripped through reality. But the thing itself moved at such high speed that even the eyes of the S-rankers watching could not register its presence before it was gone.

  Striking its target at speed, the projectile arrived so quickly that the boom of the launch and the impact would have sounded simultaneously if not for the time it took for the sound to travel to their ears.

  The bullet had flown several kilometers in an instant.

  The secondary detonation of the extra thick rod of hyper concentrated toxin implanted within the projectile was visible even from here, a bright blue glint briefly lighting up the horizon through the snow storm.

  “And that’s a bullseye, folks! Aah, the levels!” Eik howled with glee and launched himself from the crumbling plateau, a rapidly growing army of blue beasts trailing him.

  “Hey, I’m— H-Hey, I’m falling. Somebody! I’m falling!” Sireal screamed as the ground disappeared under his feet. Just as he was about to plummet into the blackness below where he would surely be battered to a bloody and very deceased pulp on the outcroppings, something hooked the collar of his shirt.

  Hanging freely with his feet dangling in the air, he glanced over his shoulder. “You’re not falling, dude,” Kalavax snorted. “Look down.”

  As it turned out, the foundation of the giant gun hadn’t just extended down into the plateau. Instead it had spread out throughout the entire mountain side like the root net of a tree. If he had activated his ability to survey the ground, Sireal would have noticed it but Eik must have dug down deep in only a few handfuls of seconds.

  “Let’s get going,” the A-ranked twin shield user said and sat Sireal down on his feet.

  “What? Go where?”

  “With Eik of course.”

  “We’re going toward all the big monsters?”

  Kalavax shrugged. “As counterintuitive as it may feel to you, nowhere is safer than close to Eik Magnasen, even if that includes S-ranked monsters.”

  Andihar Dayarunar, Gul Ougi, and the rest of the crew had all begun moving to follow Eik down the mountain into battle.

  “Is Eik going ahead alone?” Sireal wondered out loud.

  At that Kalavax couldn’t help but grin. “If you had been on a mission with him before you would be thinking the same thing as me, I reckon.”

  “Which is?”

  “He’ll probably be all right.”

  ***

  This damned snow made it difficult to see very far ahead. Even if he had great vision thanks to his S-ranked physique, that didn’t mean he could see through matter such as all of these thick ass snowflakes.

  Eik practically strode through the air, continuous tiny detonations of Accelerant under his feet keeping him in the air. But he didn’t have to keep it up for long as that and three long strides saw him touch down in the middle of a crater more than two hundred meters across.

  He stood at the edge of a void in the earth that smoked like a chimney. It was impossible to tell exactly how deep the hole actually was, but it had to be at least a hundred meters. Manifesting a small Profound Toxic beast in his palm, he tossed it into the abyss and followed its descent through Eyes of the Beast as it fell. And fell. And fell…

  God damn… Just how freaking overpowered was the ERBARG? He would have to be seriously careful using it near allies in the future. It’s just like what Chop had said about his own power.

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  Even if one had impeccable control over one’s skills and movements, it was the nature of great power to cause change—often in the form of destruction. That’s why the old fart refused to unleash his full power anywhere near anybody he didn’t want to hurt. And Chop really did have impeccable control.

  Eik on the other hand… a shiver ran down his spine as he imagined what could happen if someone had been nearby when the bullet from the ERBARG struck. Even the physically powerful Andihar would have been annihilated without a trace. Just like numerous S-rank monsters had just been.

  Speaking of monsters… “What are you ugly things hiding around for? Afraid to face a lone man, are you?” he called into the snowy darkness. Deep, rumbling growling preceded the appearance of the first S-ranker to enter his field of vision. It was so dark that he could only just sense the presence of more further out.

  This was ridiculous. If there was no light, he would just have to create some.

  With a flick of his fingers and a flex of his will, countless rods of crystal about the thickness of his thigh sprouted from the ground all around, casting the area in a calm light. The monster and its compatriots, which he could now see clearly, shied away from the rods with clear wariness.

  As S-rankers they must have been able to sense the similarities in the energy emanating from the rods and the bullet that had just obliterated a majority of their population, even if the intensity of the energies could not be compared.

  They simply watched him as they circled. Pieces of their comrades that had been too close to the impact site lay scattered about the area—a frightening illustration of the true power of the Azure King.

  “Seriously, why aren’t you coming at me?” Eik asked with a smirk as the ethereal titan Monarch rose up behind him. “Always so aggressive but now suddenly so shy. Is ol’ Mr. Magnasen going to have to come over there himself? Fine. Have it your way.”

  True Toxic Harmony pushing his limits past ordinary S-rank thresholds, he appeared in front of the first monster in an instant as if by teleportation. By the time it could react, Eik had already stabbed a thick, hollow needle into the monster’s ribs, injected a dose of potent toxin and moved on to the next victim.

  Like a tornado, he whirled from monster to monster as they attempted to keep up with his speed. A tail came in like a whip but he ducked, drawing a blade across the scaled skin and sending a streak of Profound Toxin into the wound as a concentrated gout of white-hot flames streaked across his back just as he moved out of the way.

  Panacean Quintessence was immediately deployed to flow across the wound and the burn knit itself together quickly. He repaid the injury by cleaving the offending creature in two in a single movement with a crystalline katana.

  Jumping high into the air, he launched a droplet of potent toxin into the darkened snow cloud which rapidly folded out into an Apocalypse Canvas as the S-rankers and even a few A-rankers that had arrived late to the party leapt into the air after him.

  With a quick swipe of his finger, he sent five gigantic blades of crystal down, their razor-sharp edges passing him by a hair’s breadth on their way to the monsters aiming for his life below. The first, apparently taken by surprise was struck directly and carried bodily to the ground where the force of a blade obliterated it.

  Another managed to readjust its path in the air just enough to allow it to run up their lengths and hop from blade to blade as it approached Eik while two others sprouted wings and avoided the massive weapons with expert aerial maneuvers.

  Moving like a feline, the one leaping along the blades reached him just as the final blade fell down between them and cutting off its path to the human. Deftly manipulating the Ak’ki around its feet, it stepped lightly on the air and circled the lengthy chunk of crystal to get at the invader.

  But where had he gone?

  Equally confused, the two winged beasts joined and they scanned the horizon in all directions as the final blade of the five passed them by. Then they all whirled about in the same moment, looking after the descending crystal, instinct suddenly screaming.

  On the enormous pommel stood the tiny man, hands clasped behind his back as his bright blue cloak and cape billowed vigorously around his body. He was grinning and pointing up into the sky above them.

  Unfortunately, their relatively primitive brains didn’t quite managed to interpret the meaning of the gesture before a sixth crystal sword abruptly appeared and ripped away the two flyers, carrying them down and into death.

  Snarling, the remaining S-ranked monster followed the hated man back down, narrowly avoiding three more falling blades as it went. It knew that more of its kin would be gathering below, simply waiting for them to come back down. They would tear him to pieces. But a noise drew its attention.

  A colossal figure clad in gold had engaged the monster forces on the ground and a dark purple, spectral being was approaching the monster at speed. It dodged out of the way, but a loud boom from directly below announced its death as a blue bullet pierced its head like a bolt of lightning.

  “Fucker,” Eik muttered and lowered the smoking rifle barrel and took in the changing battlefield.

  The others had joined the fray with Andihar leading the charge a bit more cautiously than he had—a fact Eik was grateful for. He thrived in the disorder of a chaotic fight but was also fully aware of the fact that that could lead to the deaths of his allies. That Andihar and Gul were the stable monoliths to his raging land slide was not lost on him.

  Nearly all of the S-ranked monsters in the area had been killed by the initial shot of ERBARG so there were only a few left now to take care of. Together they dispatched of four more, including a couple of dozen A-rankers.

  “Did you get them all?” Andihar asked as he shrunk back down to near regular size.

  “We might have more coming in soon, but I think I got most of the ones gathered.”

  “Sh-Shall I start mapping the area then?” Sireal stuttered, his eyes flitting anxiously from one giant corpse to the other. “Are we really sure there are no more mon— Hey, uuh, wh-what’s that?”

  Eik barely managed to react before something hammered into his head and sent him crashing through the earth.

  Something at a completely different level had arrived.

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