"That's why the fog didn't fade when it died. There was more than one of them supporting it," Olivia said.

"Of course there would be more of them," Eik said in sudden realization. "Deer are famously gregarious. I just hope they're not quite as gregarious as their old Earth cousins…"

"You mean…"

"There could be hundreds in a single herd," Eik said, swallowing hard.

Profound Toxin slithered around him as they prepared for the unavoidable clash. Olivia glanced back. "These ones, as well as the one we killed before, have antlers. Really big antlers."

"Your point being?"

"Wouldn't there only be a few stags even in a large herd? While these clearly evolved to be very strong for some reason, the rest of them might have ended up with considerably more meager outcomes," she argued.

The three stags came free from the fog completely and began to circle them, swinging their enormous antlers through the air in gestures of aggression and intimidation.

"Huh. I hadn't thought about that. Let's hope for that, but anticipate something worse."

"Yeah."

"I'll throw up a couple of walls to our left, and then we focus nuke the rightmost of the bastards. Deal?"

"Go for it."

Without another word, the Profound Toxin that had been circling him like an aura shot forth and grew into two massive, thin plates of crystalline blue. In the same moment, Eik, who had already taken another Potion of Mighty Strength class 3, followed Olivia into a head on collision with the first stag.

Proving her overwhelming power, her flame-covered fist won against the stag's charge, but she too lost most of her momentum.

Quicker to recover, she hammered a sweeping kick into its snout and sent it flying as a handful of Eik's spears of poison pierced its neck and ribs, and instantly liquefied and melted into the open wounds.

With a considerable amount of toxin in its system, Eik left the rest of that fight to Olivia and switched his attention to the two companions, one of which was leaping directly for Olivia, the other crashing through the blue shells and coming for him.

The combined effect of Backflow and a full powered Movement Boost localized in his arms, hands, and fingers flung a thin disk of solid toxin at the one aiming for Olivia with such force that it sliced directly through its neck, leaving the head to hang on by only a sliver of tissue and sending the enormous beast crashing into the wet soil with a crunch.

Continuing through, the disk easily severed meters and meters of vegetation like a chainsaw through a pretzel stick before burying itself halfway into a huge tree trunk with a hollow thunk.

A shell was already forming between him and the last stag as it rammed into it and Eik flowed into Toxic Liquefaction, diving into the beast's body through one of numerous small wounds inflicted on its face by an array of needle-like spikes protruding from the blue shell.

Over a dozen Living Manifestations swarmed across its fur in search of a way in. When they could find none and couldn't reach the face, they activated Fusion and merged into a single entity that quickly grew four draconian limbs, the claws digging deep to stay attached to the leaping monster as the Profound Toxic beast chomped down to create its own way in.

Now at C-rank, with control leagues above what he had previously been able to, he could maintain the transformation comfortably for much longer. The actual limit had yet to be tested, but by feeling alone, his guess would be at least a couple of minutes.

He had yet to attempt an activation of Accelerant on his own body while under the effects of Toxic Liquefaction, and frankly, the thought scared the living crap out of him. With a Unique ability like Profound Toxin, who the hell could really say for sure that he wouldn't be annihilated down to the last molecule of his being?

It probably wouldn't go like that, right? But what if it did? That would be a humorously dumb way to go. For now, he abandoned the idea.

Coursing through the deer's expansive system, he released more and more toxin from his own fluid body, seemingly defying the law of conservation of mass to an outrageous degree. A second later, his vehicle rocked violently three times in quick succession with one area of the body in particular heating up rapidly and significantly.

Olivia had engaged.

Anxious to not get caught up in the massacre, he ejected himself from the same wound he had entered through and triggered an Accelerant in the same moment, reverting back to his human form.

The stag went down with a massive shock wave of blue light ripping through it like an electrical current. Steam rose from its skin, both from Eik's finishing move and Olivia's burning attacks.

They bumped fists. "Nice teamwork, although I almost got burned there," Eik said, disabling the controlled Backflow he had been running under the Potion of Mighty Strength class 3 which otherwise put him almost at B-rank. Even that limited Backflow put him solidly in mid to high B-rank. With a fully powered, he might well be able to almost push A-rank at this point.

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Now that Perfect Consumption, the new trait of Profound Toxin also boosted the effects of potions and poisons significantly, he could handle B-rank monsters like these stags with no issue whatsoever even though five of him shouldn't have been able to win.

Olivia pulled out her wooden plaque. "Levels!" she sung with a grin! "That was what I needed for another level in Corporeal Flame! Level 105!"

They high-fived and Eik took out his own plaque. Despite his ability to exterminate B-rank monsters with ease, he was still technically an early C-ranker and thus subject to inflated rewards from the kills.

[Acquired Movement Boost — Lv. 38]

[Acquired Movement Boost — Lv. 39]

[Acquired Movement Boost — Lv. 40]

[Acquired Living Manifestation — Lv. 36]

And the juiciest for last.

[Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 86]

[Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 87]

[Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 88]

The veil of mist had now thinned almost to the point of fading completely, allowing them to see what was hidden within.

It was a mountain, rising far up into the sky and reaching the clouds. Its sides were impossibly steep, looking almost more like an anthill made of rock more than anything. Trees, bushes, moss, and other vegetation grew even further up, their hearty and adaptive properties becoming more apparent than ever before.

But most noteworthy of all were the creatures making their homes and burrows along the mountain side. Hundreds of deer stood watching them as they approached, balanced perfectly and effortlessly on even the smallest protrusions in the rock face. Their bodies too seemed to be surrounded by a faint haze.

"Did these guys evolve from deer or mountain goats?"

"It kind of seems like they were just protecting their nest and the herd. Let's just get going," Olivia said. "We have a long journey ahead of us."

"Hmm," Eik mumbled. He could only agree, but it would have been nice to get the experience from killing them all.

They were turning to leave when the first leapt. The others following, almost blacking out the sky as they sailed down toward Eik and Olivia.

Twenty five Living Manifestations rushed out of Eik's body, the remaining ten appearing in his palms. His current control allowed him to trigger and then delay Accelerant by several seconds. Hooked on his fingers by their tails, he lobbed them high into the air where they curled into balls, solidified, and lost their momentum as the deer entered range.

Olivia sent thick, raging gouts of flame upward in streaks that razed dozens of deer with every shot.

When the crystalline spheres detonated, not only did the explosions themselves take out any nearby monsters, tiny fragments of razor-sharp toxin were flung out in all directions and pierced anything they hit. From the ground, Eik had already hurled more knife-sized shards into the mass of bodies.

The destruction was unparalleled.

Jumping up as the first individuals began to land, Eik let erupt a voluminous cloud of toxic mist that spread out around him in a radius of more than twenty meters. He jumped and the cloud trailed him as he went past the last of the weaker deer, making sure that almost all of them got a dose of blue death.

While Olivia still wrought mayhem, unaffected by the friendly mist, he reached out to every single infected system and ordered a large scale Accelerant the likes of which he had never attempted.

More than a hundred and fifty systems were extinguished simultaneously then and there, delivering to his brain a sense of euphoria that nearly broke his mind. As he climbed the ranks, the degree to which the pleasure of the toxin acting out its purpose of destruction affected his mind had seemed to wane, becoming more tolerable, but this was almost too much. There were just so many at once.

Finishing off the last of them, having taken no more than thirty seconds to exterminate the entire, Profound Toxin had now proven itself to be exceptionally powerful against multiple enemies as well as single targets.

Again he fished out the wooden plaque. Where the previous fight had awarded him for fighting above his rank, this time it was the sheer number of kills that must have pushed it up.

[Acquired Living Manifestation — Lv. 37]

[Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 89]

[Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 90]

For good measure, they took a look around the mountain, but with the exception of a few shiny, man-made objects likely looted from the remains of a town somewhere, there wasn't much to get excited about there.

And so they resumed their search for signs of the group that had come up from Denmark in hopes of finding safety in the deeper forests.

Using a map poster they had nabbed from the wall of Eik's childhood bedroom, they ran through terrain that they were more or less certain had been forest ten years ago when his parents would presumably have come here. Unfortunately, due to the extreme changes in the Swedish topography almost everything was now covered in seemingly endless forest. That meant that even with the map, it was essentially impossible to know whether an area had always been deep forest or not.

For days on end they searched and found nothing. Almost all traces of civilization had been wiped clean off the face of the Earth here. It was frightening just how dissimilarly different parts of the globe appeared to have reacted to the integration into the Unified Mass.

Here, forest had claimed everything to completion, while in Denmark the natural reclamation had been considerably more limited and now apparently had begun to wane according to Harald the barrier user. The landscape around Forest had definitely also changed considerably although it didn't feel quite as radical.

After a little over a week of aimless, fruitless search, they finally made another trip back to Forest to check in. Everything was still as well as one could expect after what had happened. Eik borrowed over a dozen people and took a few hours to mass produce medicine and painkillers for the injured. He also used almost five hundred thousand of his own credits and asked Mikla to haul back as much medicine and other necessities as he could, Robert promising to distribute it efficiently.

Mikla confirmed that there were indeed plans to resume the Championships, but that the exact scope was unclear and that it certainly wasn't ready yet.

Eik also took a trip to Gimleh, which had been rocked by the raids as well, to stock up on ingredients for more potions. Wanjihan of Leafy Sundries, Eik's favorite plant breeder, had lost friends and was still grieving but they were glad to see each other in good health. Eik promised himself that he would be back to check on his friends here.

Back among the trees, they spent another week searching. After more than two weeks since the initial launch of the mission, feeling more hopeless by the day, they finally found something.

The remains of a large base yet to be claimed by the floral kingdom, stretched out before them. Tents, fireplaces, foot paths, and other signs of people brought back hope. But something had happened here that had caused everybody to flee. Or rather, they hoped they had managed to flee.

Something had trampled through the settlement, leaving footprints that alluded to something of ludicrous size.

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