It was strange. Was this how it was supposed to feel? Coming home after ten years? Surely not.

Eik had expected an avalanche of emotions to come crashing down over him the moment they stepped through the fracture. After all, this was where he had grown up.

Although those difficult, anxious, and often lonely years after the collapse of modern civilization had felt like nothing short of a life time, this was actually where the majority of his life had been spent. That memories and emotions would be evoked upon such a return was a given.

So then why the hell did he feel so empty as he looked around the square?

That there would be a settlement right here in the middle of the city had been a shallow hope in the first place but it was difficult not to feel disappointed from the get go.

They had been spit out inside the premises of Tivoli, which was one of the oldest operating amusement parks in the world. The oldest operating park, opened more than four hundred years ago in the year 1583, was actually located about twenty minutes away by car in a neighboring suburb.

Well, operating was not really an accurate descriptor anymore. The place that had always exuded an atmosphere of coziness and enjoyment was now absolutely haunting.

Huge roller coasters and spinning carousels towering above the park stood against a bright moon hovering in the sky. Vines had twisted their way up the old metal, a testament not only to the tenacity of nature but also the changes nature had undergone since Earth had entered the Unified Mass.

The song of a bird Eik could not for the life of him recognize seemed to follow them as they made their way to the fence. Peeking through the iron rungs, nothing living seemed to be roaming about out there. Well, there were some birds chasing each other through the night air but nothing that could threaten a C-ranker and a B-ranker together. And with how noticeable the glow of the fracture had been, they would probably already have run into anything that could.

As they hopped the fence and ventured across the square the extent of the changes only continued to grow more evident with every step. One of the more prominent features of city hall looking out over one of the biggest squares in the city, was the massive bell tower protruding from the roof.

The metal spire had crashed into the stones of the plaza below and sent fragments out in all directions. It was difficult to tell exactly what had caused that enormous tower to come down like this, but ten years definitely weren't enough for it to happen naturally.

Now that he looked around properly, several other buildings around showed clear signs of violence. They wandered the streets. It was truly a ghost city. Bones littered the ground in various states of decay, and in some places so many were gathered that they had to consciously step around to avoid them.

"This is so different from what I remember from the one time I visited years ago," Olivia said.

"You're telling me," Eik agreed, eyes scanning the corner of every building they passed, expected something to jump out to attack them at any second. "I still can't believe this is the same place where I used to hang out with my friends. It's like it's dead."

"Do some of these bones look a little… fresh to you?"

"Now that you mention it, yes," he replied, crouching down to study a skull with six grooves for the eyes. The mouth and snout were elongated like a dog's but the rest could hardly have been further from canine. Horns protruded from the brow and along the top of the skull in five neat rows.

Dry flesh and skin still hung on the bone.

"But this wouldn't be the first time we've seen monsters show aggressive tendencies among themselves. It's been observed that they will go at each other so long as they think there are no people in the vicinity," Eik pointed out.

"Mmyeah…" He wasn't wrong, but for some reason she didn't look convinced. "This one, for example," she said and stopped and knelt by another specimen that still hadn't succumbed completely to decay. "Doesn't this look like a burn? Like, a burn from an ability?"

Eik weaved through remains to see what she was talking about. It was definitely a burn. It had seared through several layers of skin, completely destroying the tissue in the process. It was probably "This could have been done by another monster though. I've personally witnessed one that could breathe fire. In fact, it could have killed you while you were comatose."

"So have I. Many times. But it's very rare for low level monsters to have much in the way of abilities as far as I've seen. They usually get by on raw strength alone."

"Maybe, but still. It's not exactly implausible."

"There's more. Or rather, there's something missing."

"What?"

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"Bite marks," she muttered as she crawled around among the corpses, searching for evidence. "Plenty of the anatomies here would have used their teeth and fangs to inflict injury on an opponent. But take a look around," she said and brought her arm about in a sweeping motion. "Where are all the bite marks that should be present on some, if not all of these bodies?"

"Alright, I will admit that's a good point, but most of these don't look like they died today. Such marks could have faded as the bodies broke down."

She gave him a look. "Are we going to take that chance? There could be people here, Eik. It could be survivors."

"Or it could be the cult," he said.

"Yeah, there is that possibility but it probably isn't. Judging by what Mikla told us, it's an incredibly time consuming affair to triangulate arrival locations for fractures like this, and much more so if you don't have anyone with a map to point at. According to him, it's much more likely that the cult obtained the information about Forest from a leak in the Nidafjeld Alliance. They're unlikely to be here, halfway around the globe. Frankly, a blind search like this seems to be the quickest method, even if it ends up taking months."

"Mmhm, good point," Eik mumbled, but the irrational anxiety was not so easy to shake. His eyes never stopped scanning every corner and every shadow as they continued through the city. With his new C-ranked senses, especially his hearing played tricks on his mind non stop. From experience he was well aware that his brain would soon grow accustomed to it and automatically filter out the unnecessary inputs and allow him to calm down.

Walking down the pedestrian street, they both kept their abilities at the forefront of their minds, ready for anything. "Let's go through here," Eik said and took the lead through a narrower passage. "It's less exposed than out here."

Mid way through, the passage widened to a central room about twice the width of the leading tunnels. It had a domed glass ceiling which had shattered completely. Eik immediately felt more secure with a roof over his head — even one that had didn't actually offer much shelter.

Small stores lined each side of the passage, some of their wares still laying dusty on the shelves inside. Unlike the glass in the ceiling, only about half the windows here on the ground floor were shattered.

"Hey," Olivia whispered. "take a look at that corner over there. Isn't that the remains of a bonfire?"

It was. Judging by the state of the wood, it had been lying there for a good while. Probably more than a year. Charred logs lay scattered around the fire site, probably due to an animal or a monster digging around.

"Well, I can tell you for sure that nobody was building camp fires here when the world was still normal."

"That means people were here to build fires until relatively recently," she said, looking up through the ceiling. Scattered puddles of rain water pooled in the corners, some of the logs moist from exposure. "That wood isn't ten years old no matter how you look at it."

"What do you reckon?"

"A couple of years maybe? I don't know. I'm by no means an expert in this kind of stuff."

A sound of something zipping through the air above alerted Eik to the danger even before his brain had time to properly register that something was happening. Something was jetting in through the shattered ceilings and coming straight for them.

Reflexes kicked his body into gear before he could make a conscious decision to react and a slender spear of blue materialized in his waiting palm with such speed that he almost dropped it. The projectile coming into existence in his hand at more than twice the speed he would have been able to manage before reaching the rank of Apostle of Toxin.

His fingers pulled the creation into a vice grip as he spun on his feet to face the oncoming threat, winding up for a deadly throw. The spear left his hand with a wham even before he had put eyes on the enemy.

He just barely managed to catch a glimpse of a flying monster with reptilian features and an unbelievably long snout before the toxic projectile pierced through the socket of its eye and continued into its torso without losing any of the insane velocity he had hurled it with.

But rather than just penetrate and exiting the tail end, numerous hooks along the length of the creation tore through the flesh of the monster like the teeth of a chainsaw and caused it to literally explode upon impact, showering Eik and Olivia in warm, blue blood and gore. The stench was horrid and Eik's aura immediately snapped into place to spare his poor nose from enduring such sensory torture.

"By Odin's greasy beard," he muttered, staring down at his hands now covered in blood. "That was awesome! Did you see that, Oli?" he exclaimed excitedly, the rush of the kill momentarily letting him forget the anxiety of the ghost city.

The narrowed eyes that glared back at him promised an ass kicking he would not soon forget, her hands sweeping across her skin to flick off as much of the offal as she could. Eik looked on sheepishly.

He hurried to envelop both of them in Profound Toxin which removed every trace of blood and grime, leaving their skin and clothes clean and dry when it retreated back into Eik's body. At this point he was more than confident enough to completely enclose Olivia in toxin and not worry that it might attack her.

Maybe it would be a different story during one of the blood frenzies he was prone to, but in his current mental state he wasn't afraid of losing control.

"We've got more incoming," she muttered, her hands bursting into flame.

"Wait," he said and put a hand on her shoulder. "Could you leave them to me? There's something I want to try real quick."

She leapt back, far enough to avoid a second shower of blood. Soon he heard the flapping of wings as well. Twenty little Living Manifestations crawled out of his skin and promptly fused together in groups of four individual, leaving him with five medium sized toxic beasts.

"Alright, get ready guys! Five piece bomb squad!" He held one manifestation in each hand while the remaining three clung to his waist, ready to be picked and thrown like apples from a tree.

Even before the flying monsters appeared in the shattered skylight, Eik lobbed the first two Living Manifestations high, the other three following closely behind.

Two of the five were snatched out of the air while the last three ended up in the middle of the pack of six monsters. All five manifestations exploded violently, sending shock waves of blue in all directions that ripped the flyer from the sky and sent them careening for the flag stones below.

The two that gobbled up one each outright exploded, the point of detonation so high up that some of the blood still reached Olivia after moving away.

Eik sent more Living Manifestations to finish off the survivors by swiftly contaminating their systems with Profound Toxin. He also sent a couple to clean the blood from his sisters clothes before she killed him.

"Let's see if we can't find more traces of whoever lit this fire."

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