Ihasu came awake when a hand gently caressed her back. Everything hurt.

  Eyes caked shut, she struggled to regain her vision. Judging by the smell, her face was practically buried in dusty debris but before she could properly register that apparency, someone took her by the shoulder and hip and rolled her over onto her back.

  A soft, blue glow made it through her still close eyelids. She sighed deeply with relief.

  “E-Eik?” she asked, her raspy voice barely above a whisper.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m right here,” came the quiet response, followed by a warm hand squeezing hers lovingly.

  A soothing sensation washed over her, her body immediately recognizing it as the unfathomably potent healing form of Eik’s Profound Toxin, Panacean Quintessence. In seconds, her wounds knit themselves back together, dirt, grime, and blood cleared away more effectively than by a warm, soapy bath. “How are you feeling?” he asked, pulling her into an embrace.

  With a sudden gasp that nearly choked her, she flew to her feet, eyes frantically looking around as her heart rate skyrocketed in an instant. “Goo? Grandpa?” she hissed shrilly.

  “Right here,” Clan Leader Gul’s normally gruff voice answered softly from behind Eik. He was lying on his back on a bouncy bed of gooey toxin, an unconscious Goo curled up in the pit of his arm. Chop stood behind them, his hands gathered behind his back. “We’re just fine, as you can see,” Gul said.

  “You’re… missing a leg grandpa,” she noted flatly, calming down considerably the moment she saw the two alive.

  He looked down his body with an arched eyebrow, almost as if he hadn’t noticed his own missing limb. “Naturally, I am well aware of that fact but as you can see, my ribs have been healed,” he said and lifted his clothes for her to see his torso. “and my leg will be regrown once we have a bit more time to spend on it.”

  “Can’t you just…?” she wondered, turning to her future husband.

  Eik shook his head. “My ability is great for healing and recreating my own limbs, but I’ve now found out that attaching one of my homemade limbs to someone else’s stump never actually lets it connect to their nervous system or blood vessels. It simply remains in its inert state, the crystal never transforming properly.”

  “How about the monster then? It was… I have never seen anything like it before,” she muttered, caught in a shiver that seized her entire body. “Just the weight of its gaze alone felt like it could crush the life out of me with ease.”

  “It’s right there, by your feet,” Eik told her nonchalantly, eliciting a gasp from her as she jumped back in shock only to stop short as no ferocious beasts leaped from the debris below her feet.

  She crouched down and picked up something from between broken brick and shattered fragments of wood. Holding it up to the light, she narrowed her eyes and grimaced. It was pale and squished between her fingers like raw chicken skin.

  “Is this what you’re talking about? This is that thing?”

  Eik shrugged. “Well, it’s a piece of it,” he grinned, her grandfather snickering along as well when she flung it away in pure disgust.

  “Did you do this, Chop?” she asked.

  “I didn’t. I was ready to step in if you were truly in danger but your hubby had it handled.”

  Obeying her command just as it always did, Profound Toxin flowed across her hand to clean any remnants of the monster’s discarded flesh before she picked up her sleeping son and held him tightly to her chest. “Is he okay?” she breathed.

  “Not a hair on his head was touched, Ihasu. I promise,” Eik said. "The worst he suffered was the fall when Grandpa Gul’s leg was severed. And I’ve already taken care of that.”

  “Why is he asleep then?”

  The father of her children smiled. “Same reason you were. Aura pressure. He’ll wake up soon. Don’t worry. And when he does—”

  “I will make sure he’s grounded for so long that he will be planning his retirement from his childhood bedroom,” Ihasu finished for him. “Or what were you going to say?”

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  “Oh, uuh… Yeah, no, exactly. Grounding him until his retirement was totally what I was going to say as well,” Eik chuckled as he stuffed a handful of chocolate chip cookies back into his belt pouch of holding.

  ***

  Eik carried Goo on his back as they walked back to the estate, Living Manifestations already sent ahead to inform the others of their safety.

  “Has something like this ever happened before?” Eik asked Gul whose summoned shades were carrying him along like a king. “Monsters from the Expulsion reaching Gimleh, I mean.”

  The old man scoffed derisively. “No, it doesn’t happen. Gimleh has been moved in its entirety multiple times throughout history in order to stay far away from the Chasm at all times. It is always so far away from the Chasm-proximate worlds upon which the monsters spawn that they never have reason nor ability to travel here,” he explained, glancing at Chop as he spoke.

  The old X-ranker nodded. “This is most certainly connected to the Lord of the Moon.”

  “You think he’s here?”

  Chop shook his head. “I don’t think so. I would have been able to sense that. He shouldn’t have regained his full power yet, so I doubt he could hide himself from me.”

  “So you think he sent his spawn to Gimleh just to, what, weaken us?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe? Or maybe to provoke anger, fear, and any other negative emotion.”

  “What a fucking coward,” Eik spat. A tendril of Profound Toxin shot out of his forearm and nodded vigorously in agreement. “Unfortunately for him, we annihilated them all before they had time to really unfold their strength.”

  Chop raised his eyebrows. “Well, you might be jumping to conclusion on that one, lad.”

  Eik frowned and looked at him with puzzlement. “What do you mea—” But before he could finish his question, his head snapped back in the direction they had come as his eyes sought something behind them.

  Hissing through his teeth, he grabbed his son from his back and hurtled him toward the estate in a powerful overhead throw that sent him on a collision course with the main building. A Living Manifestation dashed after him and snatched him out of the air safely while Chop got a hold of both Ihasu and Gul, vanishing without a sound and reappearing in the same moment next to the Profound Toxic beast carrying Goo.

  “Eik!” Ihasu screamed.

  “I’ll be—” he shouted back and leaped into the air, intercepting a figure soaring toward them and grabbing it mid-air with one hand as he activated a fully powered, local Movement Boost. Grunting, he hurled it back down the hill leading down to the front gate of the estate grounds. “fine!”

  Like a rock dropped into a tub of yogurt, the figure slammed into the earth, plunging deep as waves of disturbed, roiling soil erupted outward across the grounds. Grass, bushes, and trees alike were uprooted and upturned, drowned in the rumbling cascade.

  Following up the throw, Eik constructed a massive long gun in less than a second and shot five bullets in quick succession, each of them striking the impact site precisely and detonating violently. Like consecutive volcanic eruptions, debris was spewed hundreds of meters into the air a.

  Eik released more of the grade 6 Potion of Mighty Strength stored within his spiritual pockets as cubes continuously formed at his back propelled him into a diving chase at extreme speed.

  The creature was already on the way back up when Eik hit the center of the crater like a rocket. Fist morphed into a spiked gauntlet through the poison body granted by True Toxic Harmony, they clashed with devastating force.

  The meeting knocked Eik unconscious for the briefest of moments and he found himself flying rapidly towards the clouds above and catching a glimpse of the blast as the monster was slammed back into the ground.

  In the same moment that it crawled out of the crater once more, Eik exploded himself down again, plunging at many times terminal velocity. The creature glanced up at him and he prepared to meet it again, but instead of launching itself at him, its focus shifted to the estate building where the others were gathered.

  “No!” Eik breathed, worry spreading like a miasma in his stomach as he redirected his path mid-air. Yes, Chop was down there but now that it was actually a serious situation, Eik realized that he just could not trust the old, hard-edged X-ranker to not let his friends and family get caught up in this purely in order to push him to new heights of power.

  With Eik stuck with aerial movement, the creature which was able to speed across the ground was swiftly increasing the distance between them. And given their high ranks, didn’t even give Eik time to properly consider his options.

  “Fuck!” he cursed loudly as he began the construction of another long gun, only to drop it in the same moment when he realized that the bullets would neither reach his target in time, nor be able to avoid harming the others in the collateral damage.

  This was what Chop had talked about when he held back when demonstrating his power. Great power without great precision and control would kill your allies and loved ones just as easily as it would your enemies. Or, as a matter of fact, even more easily than your enemies.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fu—” Before he could get out his roar of frustration, the solution struck him like a hammer and he vanished out of the air as he drew on a recently acquired power.

  Summon Royal Guard of the Monarch of Toxin activated with reverse effects teleported him to Andihar’s side in an instant.

  The smirk that had been plastered on the monster’s face fell in favor of a frown of confusion and anger.

  Twin shields of crystal manifested on Eik’s forearms as he launched himself at the creature. It tried to maneuver around him to get at his family but now they were both equal on the ground.

  Eik easily followed its movements and cut off its attempt, copious amounts of grade 6 Potions of Mighty Strength coursing through him along with the permanent boost of all of the grade six Legendary Mystery Medicine he had consumed since his last serious battle.

  He was a different man this time. With physical limits far, far beyond those of an ordinary S-ranker.

  This time he wouldn’t let the monster play with him.

  This time it would be a beatdown.

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