Eik’s eyes shot open.

  How long had he been out? It couldn’t have been long. The ground was still collapsing around him, the gentle blue glow radiating from his light rods visible through a small hole far above.

  Just how far into the ground had he been punched?

  But he must definitely have been knocked unconscious if only for a fragment of a second. The confusion in his mind made that obvious.

  He shouldn’t have dropped True Toxic Harmony so quickly, but with the monsters in the immediate vicinity seemingly eradicated it had felt prudent to not waste the short duration of the effect until more appeared.

  Sounds of combat coming down from above pulled him out of the stupor and slapped him in the face with the severity of the situation they were in.

  With a mental command, a blue pillar extended from below and shot him out of the hole and into the air. Spinning around he took in the scene, stomach sinking.

  Grandpa Gul lay on the ground. Both of his legs had been severed crudely above the knees, his arm mangled into a broken mess, and his stomach had been pierced through and through. Andihar’s shield was warped badly in two places like an empty soda can struck by a rock and his his arm hung limply at his side from a nasty shoulder injury, making him unable to hold his trusty blade.

  And then there was the monster—humanoid in form, slender and pale like a ghoul with two piercing, red eyes that bored into Eik as it came for him at extreme speed.

  True Toxic Harmony already back in effect, Eik threw up his arms protectively and managed to erect two layers of crystalline Profound Toxin before a hand that had transformed into a chunk of metal bashed through them with frightening ease.

  For the second time in less than ten seconds, Eik was sent flying by an attack in a way he hadn’t been for a relatively long time.

  This monster was dangerous. It wasn’t an X-ranker, obviously. If it had been, none of them would be alive anymore. Facing Chop for even a moment had made that more than clear. But he was beginning to truly understand just how true it had been when the old geezer had told him that S-rank could potentially be infinitely deep.

  And whatever this thing was, it was deeper than any of them.

  Conjuring a large block of toxin to block his path in the air, he detonated it with another layer between them and propelled himself back into the fight before the monster could have the chance to go for his allies again.

  The Living Manifestations that had already been deployed swarmed in from their stations while ever more poured out of him. Swiftly coalescing into a hundred meter long dragon, Eik’s blessing of Raise to the Occasion elevated the Profound Toxic beast to new heights as it shrunk down and compacted to a mere five meters, much like when he had fought the archer and fire mage duo back during the hunt for the Life Harvesters.

  It shot up and disappeared into the Apocalypse Canvas which was currently focusing on deploying Panacean Quintessence for Eik’s allies in favor of the standard blue toxin which probably wouldn’t hit the ultra fast monster anyway.

  Eik led his attack with another five layers of crystal, all of them shattered by the impact of the biological wrecking ball attachment on the monster’s wrist, but this time he had left a little trap for the bastard. Blood spurted from the monster’s forearm as a thick, reinforced spike of toxin protruding from Eik’s chest tore through its skin.

  Good. He could hurt the fucker. And if he could hurt it, then he could kill it.

  “Get grandpa to safety!” he howled to his allies on the ground.

  “Eik!” Andihar tried but Eik, narrowly avoiding another attack, grunted waved him away. The monster’s hand had now transformed into a wicked axe head that cut the edge of his light armor as easily as a nano blade cutting a stick of warm butter

  “Just get out of here!” Eik screamed.

  “No.” The voice was otherworldly. Non-human. Eyes wide, Eik’s eyes were locked on the humanoid monster but it had directed its attention at Andihar, Gul, and the rest of his friends. He realized what it was going to do before it even moved but he still barely managed to react.

  Just as it whirled into movement, Eik’s fingers sunk deep into the sinewy flesh of the monster’s shoulder. Pulled along like a rag doll, the Monarch’s fingers sprouted many needles that pierced skin and injected potent Profound Toxin. The beginning of an end.

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  If only he could prevent their own ends until then.

  Taking a page out of the monster’s own book, he conjured a short axe into his hand and hacked it deeply its trapezius muscle—an injury it appeared to care little about as the weapons melted and flowing into the wound. It had eyes only for the others.

  “You… don’t leave,” came the disgusting voice again. It almost sounded like a burp.

  “It speaks!” Andihar gasped as he raised his shield to block the incoming attack.

  Unable to stop the monster’s course, Eik gritted his teeth and erected a barrier of crystal in front of his allies, one in front of the monster, and connected their centers with a pillar which he extended to push the two parties away from each other.

  The axe hand once again exchanged for the solid, metallic ball, the enemy smashed through the barrier only to be met with yet another barrier further down the length of the ever extending pillar. Smashing that as well simply revealed another barrier after that and then another. Snarling, the monster leapt out to go around, finally dealing with Eik by grasping him by the wrist and throwing him toward the ground.

  Despite the poison already coursing through its system it still had enough physical strength to overwhelm him. But that wouldn’t last forever.

  Plummeting to toward the ground, Eik watched the bastard make his way to Andihar and company. Unfortunately for it, the pillar had pushed them almost five hundred meters further apart, and although that was a distance such a highly ranked being could cover in a mere moment, it was also time that Eik had been using to reinforce a dome around them.

  There was no way their fracture specialist would be able to open a fracture home in time to get them away from such a powerful opponent, not to mention the fact that that would leave a direct route to their home base. It would be a disaster.

  No, the only solution was to keep them all alive long enough to leave in peace once it was all over. There wouldn’t be more than one of these guys, right? If it spawned with this much power, it must have spent a lot of the locally gathered excess Ak’ki. This early in the Expulsion it would be unlikely for more than one individual of this capable to appear.

  At least, that’s how it was if Eik had correctly understood the information he had received…

  Like a meteor the monster slammed into the dome with a boom that cracked across the sky like thunder. For the first time since it appeared, it failed to break through his crystal in a single attack. As a matter of fact, it didn’t make that much of a dent in the dome at all.

  Then again, what it had been up against until then was nothing but hastily thrown together barriers with the relative strength of a damp pringle. The dome was solid steel in comparison. Since the inception of Eik’s Really Big Ass Rail Gun, his barrier technique had improved markedly out of sheer necessity in order to keep the explosive launch contained.

  This seemed to anger it as it began hammering away at the solid toxin with ferocious violence, each blow ringing like a bell through the snow storm.

  Having already sent himself hurtling back toward the dome with a mid-air Accelerant like a pong ball, he touched down lightly on a tree branch and leapt at the monster with extreme speed. Three consecutive blasts at his back increased his velocity even further as he extended a straight sword and drove it through the humanoid monster’s back. Finally, it reacted, spinning about and hitting him in the face with a vicious backhand that threatened to break his skull apart.

  Prepared, Eik had already attached himself to the dome to avoid being thrown back by the force of the attack, and in response had planted a blade, now melting and flowing through the wound, in the monster’s stomach.

  There was no doubt that Eik was the slower of the two, but Profound Toxin was already beginning to affect the bastard significantly. With Profound Toxin being exceedingly focused on offense, he also couldn’t defend himself properly. Addling the monster with toxin was the only way to win.

  In the first retreat it had made thus far, the monster leapt back but Eik had eight streaks of toxin waiting which zipped for the stomach wound—the only one that hadn’t already knitted itself back together.

  Three of them managed to enter before the thing could react but the remaining five were deflected by powerful cracks of energy unleashed by its strikes.

  Then, without any kind of warning, the monster suddenly dove back down, forcing Eik to raise his defenses again, but the anticipated blow never came. Instead a crunch rang through the snow storm and Eik felt the reinforced dome fail. Immediately, he dropped the shells he had erected in front of himself only for a chunk of his own crystal to knock him on the head.

  For but a moment he blacked out but it was long enough for his body to collapse backward down the side of the dome—all the while the humanoid kept digging through the crystal with a spike of power incomparable to anything it had shown until then.

  If it somehow had a way to gradually increase its own power and negate the effects of Profound Toxin, it would be a disaster.

  Helped by his toxin, Eik scrambled back toward the enemy but the last layer protecting his friends broke before he could make it there.

  “No, no!” he roared as the abomination reached in through the hole and pulled out a struggling Andihar.

  What could he do? How could he solve this? Eik’s mind was operating on a fuel called panic and it was muddling his thoughts in the most dire of moments. There had to be something he could do.

  He lunged for the monster but the same energy wave that had dispersed his streaks of toxin deflected his attack and after a short exchange, he was beaten back again. If he Accelerated the Profound Toxin currently circulating the monster and it wasn’t enough to severely harm it, the addling effect of the poison would wear off and the monster would become truly impossible to deal with.

  Fuck. He just wasn’t strong enough.

  S-rank alone wasn’t nearly enough anymore. He needed more power. Much more.

  Righting himself, he leaped back into the fray but it was already too late. Tears streaked down Eik’s cheeks as he rushed in.

  With a hand now transformed into a wicked blade, the monster held Andihar aloft, the elf’s chest pierced all the way through. His eyes were fading and blood fell in globs from his mouth.

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