Immediately, an unimaginably foul stench invaded Eik’s nose and only quick thinking and a pair of crystalline nose plugs allowed him to avoid dry heaving where he stood. He craned his neck as he gazed up into the sky, the black miasma take over the heavens and casting the world in darkness.

  In its creepy tree form, the monster no longer seemed capable of attacking. Or, at least, it no longer had the inclination to. All of its energy and focus appeared to go toward the expelling of the miasma.

  “This can’t be normal monster behavior,” he muttered.

  “It’s not…” Andihar coughed as he stumbled back to Eik from where he had been thrown by the violent, final attack. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  Eik reached up and beckoned at the sky above with a frown. Slowly, as if forced through a wad of tar, a blade of blue crystal slid through the miasma covering the Apocalypse Canvas. It was larger than any blade Apocalypse Canvas had ever spit out, measuring more than two hundred meters in length.

  Along with the supernatural force with which it would be launched, the sheer weight of the conjured object would send it on a collision course that would certainly rearrange the immediate vicinity. “Get back,” Eik told Andihar calmly as he leaped backward, the elf following him closely. “What the hell was that back there?”

  “Back there?”

  “You used my skill. I mean, your control was god awful, to be blunt. The best way to describe it would be pitiful, I suppose, you know, if I had to.”

  Andihar snorted with a grin. “All right, all right, I think I’ve got it, you little shit. And if you’re asking what that was, then I’m guessing you haven’t checked your messages since doing whatever you did to me.”

  Eik gave him a look. “I’ve been just a little busy, mate. Oh, here we go! Show me what that shield infused with my better half can do, please,” he said and threw himself to the ground.

  Andihar grunted and stopped in front of Eik and turned to face the creepy tree as he hammered the edge of his shield deep into the ground and dug in his feet.

  “If you’ve got some of my powers now, the least you can do is not embarrass me by making them look so one-dimensional,” Eik complained and waved his hand.

  The Profound Toxin enveloping Andihar’s shield reacted as smoothly as always, six spikes, three on each side, plunging into the frozen ground, digging much deeper than the shield itself.

  It took less than a second from complete release from the Apocalypse Canvas to terrestrial impact. The moment the tip connected with the bulbous head of the tree, the earth rose fluidly like a dark tsunami and erupted outward with extreme force. A violent shock wave tore into the shield like a gale force wind.

  Sticking out of the top of the billowing dust cloud, the length of the blade that was visible revealed that about half of it had been buried in the earth. Eik couldn’t tell what the extent of the actual damage to the monster was but he could feel that there was still a system to infect.

  But there wasn’t really a reason to infect anymore. There was no doubt that the bastard was pinned deep within the earth and torn open by the colossal crystal blade. And since it was already there…

  “Get back further,” Eik commanded and repeated it loudly for the others to hear as he leaped back from the impact site.

  “What are you planning to do?” Andihar asked as he followed.

  “Further. Further yet,” Eik reiterated before finally stopped once they had covered more than two kilometers. “All right, I guess this should be enough.”

  “You guess?”

  “Well, I haven’t exactly done it before, have I?”

  “Done what?” Andihar asked with exasperation.

  “I don’t know what to call it but for now, I guess I’ll go with… The Big Boom.” And with those words, he snapped his fingers with a sharp crack.

  Andihar arched an eyebrow. “The Big Boo—?”

  He saw it before the sound reached him. The azure blade glinted for a brief moment but the brightness was blinding. Blue light tore through a million cracks in the crystal as it shattered and burst outward. When the thunderclap of noise hit, it nearly shattered Andihar’s eardrums, the bass waves ripping through his body violently.

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  To Eik’s eyes, it looked like a nuclear explosion. There were no flames in the detonation, and although he didn’t doubt that the extreme energy levels alone would cause temperatures to climb like crazy, the entire thing was a beautiful blue.

  The earth shook. Stretching on for what felt like an eternity as debris and fragmenting boulders were torn free of the depths by unstoppable force, Eik suddenly wasn’t sure if their distance from the Accelerant was enough.

  “God… damn…” Andihar whispered as he craned his neck and watched thousands of tons of material hurled skyward.

  Like meteorites, the debris began to fall back down while blue smoke continued to smolder into the clouds. Approaching the site again, Eik gazed down into the gaping hole left behind in the earth.

  Like ants, small Living Manifestations swarmed into the black abyss of the crater in search of even the smallest pieces of the monster. If there was any possibility that it had survived, Eik wanted to know as quickly as possible.

  “Fuck it,” he muttered and hopped in after them. He had to see it for himself. A few seconds later, he felt Andihar follow. The plunge was… deep. It took about eight seconds before he landed in smoking, hot soil at the bottom of the crater. That meant it was, what, three hundred meters deep? Fucking hell, man…

  Bright, glowing rods shot out of the dirt walls and floor, lighting up the place. Deploying copious amounts of liquid toxin to sink into the stirred up soil, Eik supplemented his army of Profound Toxic beasts and quickly concluded that the terrifyingly powerful S-ranker was really dead. The fact that his arm kept buzzing with pushy messages from the Ak’ki pointed in that direction as well.

  It had been completely annihilated in the Accelerant.

  “We’re good. I think we’re finally good,” he breathed. “That was…”

  “Dangerous,” Andihar finished as he kicked some dirt. “Your ability is absolutely terrifying. Do you know that? I’ve never seen destructive force like that. Not ever.”

  Eik shrugged. “I can’t just do that kind of thing anytime. It would kill all allies in a regular fight and if that thing hadn’t been immobilized by its own transformation, it would have been able to escape faster than myself.”

  “Still. There’s a use for everything.”

  “Hm,” Eik mumbled as they made their way back up out of the deep crater.

  The presence of Gul’s shadow soldiers meant the others were already informed when Eik and Andihar touched down. “Did you really kill it?” Sireal asked, the ordeal appearing to have made him about twenty years older.

  “Yeah, it’s dead, all right,” Eik said with a nod. “I think we’re done here, but let’s stay for a couple of hours just to make sure.”

  “St-Stay…? Uuh, is that such a good idea, you think?”

  “How about you start sketching out the map for this area?” Eik suggested nonchalantly, scanning the horizon despite the snow storm still making it impossible to see anything in the distance. “I know it’s been very hectic but have you made sure to record the terrain well?”

  “Of course,” Sireal huffed. “I still have my professional pride.”

  “Good. It’s apparently not unlikely that the same site spawns monsters again before the Expulsion is over. We need that map to approach an eventual second wave more safely.”

  “It was pretty successful this time, though,” Sireal muttered as he pulled out his materials and began his work.

  Eik arched an eyebrow but didn’t respond.

  “What about that?” Kalavax wondered out loud, his eyes on the pitch-black miasma swirling below the clouds above. Apocalypse Canvas peeked through but was still mostly covered by the tar-like substance.

  “We can try to disperse it while we wait for more monsters to appear,” Gul said, looking up as well. “But if that doesn’t work, then I suppose we’ll just have to hope that it’s fine. It didn’t really get much time to spout that foul payload into the atmosphere anyway.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” the enormous shieldman muttered. “It’s worrying as hell.”

  “Yeah, me neither,” Gul said, eyes never leaving the swirling smog.

  “Does it have anything to do with the Lord of the Moon?” Eik asked.

  Gul frowned and tilted his head to the side. “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. There is more than one extraordinary circumstance surrounding the Expulsion this time, so it’s difficult to put a finger on the exact cause of extraordinary consequences. Not to mention that we don’t actually know anything about the Lord of the Moon besides ancient myths. We can guess but we should be careful with drawing hasty conclusions.”

  “We should talk to the Oracle again.”

  “Her?” Gul scoffed. “Her faulty information on the Life Harvesters nearly got us killed!”

  “Yeah, well, if you’ve got a better idea, I would love to hear it,” Eik said with a tired sigh.

  Gul simply grumbled at that.

  “All right, Kalavax, you stay in the barrier with Sireal while he works. I wouldn’t be surprised if an opportunistic monster hoped to sneak in to try and take a bite out of him before we notice. I want everyone else to form a small perimeter and stay alert. If more monsters show up, we want early detection. I’ll send beasts out to scout further,” Eik said as countless poured out of him.

  For the next two hours Eik, Gul, and Andihar tried various ideas in order to disperse, erase, or otherwise neutralize the miasma. The deployed Living Manifestations encountered many monsters but nothing too tough, and certainly nothing like the creepy transformer that had nearly wiped them out.

  After a little over an hour and a half they finally gave up, the miasma still looming below the clouds above. Whether it would disappear on its own now that the source had been removed only time would tell, but they didn’t have that time.

  It was time to go back.

  “So,” Eik began as their fracture specialist opened a portal. “care to tell me what that blue shield of yours back there was, Andi?”

  “I’ll show you once we’re back to safety,” the elf said with a smirk. “You’re going to like it.”

  Check out my Patreon if you'd like to read even more than what is currently posted on RoyalRoad

  cat videos