To Eik's relief, the iron maiden-like contraption wasn't equipped with iron spikes along its inner wall as he had feared, so for now at least, he wasn't being stabbed to death. It was, however, very cramped and uncomfortable to be stuck inside the tight space, but given the fact that his life for the past weeks had just been one big, prolonged traumatic experience, he really didn't have much in the way of complaints.

For the first time since his kidnapping, Eik was seeing the outside of the hangar that the black armor called his laboratory. A hole for his head allowed him to take in everything around him. A green barrier like the one in place in the tray slit prevented him from using any abilities that would overlap with it.

Ever since his first attempt at penetrating the barrier in the tray slit, he had attempted it many more times in a variety of ways. More spikes, both liquid and gaseous toxin in various configurations, as well as deployments of Living Manifestations.

Something he had been able to do was stick his fingers through the gap—something which, to his eternal joy, scared the living shit out of the subordinate cultist on dinner duty that evening—and to his surprise, that fact didn't change even when he activated Backflow.

Logically, the effects of Backflow should have triggered the barrier's defense, shouldn't it? Backflow was his body being affected by an ability after all, so why did that work when something like Toxic Liquefaction or a hypothetical body resizing didn't?

Fingers enveloped in aura would also pass through with no issue but the aura itself would be stripped and contained to the inside of the barrier. Well, thinking this hard about it wouldn't do him any good.

They were in a city. And it seemed to be extremely large. At least in the district they were currently moving through, most of the architecture was the same.

Row after row after row of buildings were exact copies of each other, making for a maddening sight that made it difficult to place oneself in the space. They would pass a building and then seemingly pass it again and again, like a video running on a loop.

The skyline, if it could even rightly be called that, was frequently interspersed by the spires of the cult temples, their dull, dirt brown colors marring an otherwise beautiful and sunny day, soft clouds floating languidly by above.

"Why do you want to destroy all of this anyway?" Eik found himself asking, surprising even himself with the sudden question.

"Pardon?" the black armor said.

"I'm asking, when you look up at such a beautiful day, what is it that possesses you to want to destroy it all?"

"Goodness me, we don't want to destroy anything!" he said with exasperation. "Never destroy! No, what we want is to rebuild."

"Rebuild?" Eik asked, puzzled. "Rebuild what?"

"Everything!" the cultist whispered, something sinister dripping from his voice. "Don't you see, Eik? The world—no, the Unified Mass—is broken. It is controlled by the whims of so many different individuals and organizations, all according to personal power. It is weighed down by chaos and disorder like a man drowning in an ocean is weighed down by water."

"Okay…"

"And what could save a man in the middle of an ocean, Eik?" The cultist seemed to revel joyfully in the opportunity to preach his cause.

"I don't know, a ship?"

"Yes! Yes, that's exactly right! A ship! A ship controlled by a skillful captain!"

"Can't you speak more clearly?" Eik was largely aware of the cult's general motive. They were firmly against the state of the Unified Mass where the masses were at the mercy of powerful individuals and organizations. They believed that the power structure should be less fluid and more centralized.

Truthfully, he didn't know much more than that. He hadn't been born into the Unified Mass and been told about it from childhood, so once he understood the basics, other endeavors had quickly taken up space on his metaphorical plate.

In the end, all he felt he needed to know then was that the cult had committed a massacre and a mass kidnapping. The rest he could sit down and learn about once his schedule became a little more free.

Well, he was free now. Time to learn directly from the source.

"We would be better served with someone to whom we could anchor ourselves. Someone who could take the reins of our existences and herd us toward a utopia. Someone like the Lord of the Moon! Finally, it will soon be time to awaken him from his long slumber!" he exclaimed, raising a fist to the sky.

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"Who the hell is the Lord of the Moon?" Eik had heard the moniker before but had assumed it to be a term for whoever led the cult and their sinister venture. The way this person was spoken of now seemed slightly… different from the image Eik had.

"It's our savior!" the black armor said, sounding confused at Eik's clear lack of knowledge.

"And who is that?"

"Why, he is the greatest of the Primal Entities, of course!"

"And what are the Primal Entities?" Eik asked again, the cultist growing seemingly more frustrated with each new revelation of Eik's faulty understanding.

"They're the great beings that existed before the Unified Mass was formed. They preceded us all. Their might was unrivaled and their influences wide."

"And you know this how?"

The black armor huffed in annoyance. "Our oracle has heard it."

"Why should I believe what your oracle says about anything? Your oracle sounds completely bonkers if you ask me."

The robed cultist who accompanied them turned and drew in a breath in preparation for a rebuke of the heresy. But the black armor whirled around and struck Eik so hard across the face that his vision blackened for a moment as his head lulled, his imprisoned body completely unable to put up a defense. He felt blood run freely down his face and watched it gather in a pool on surface of the quasi iron maiden.

His head rang like a bell and he felt like throwing up but he kept it down. He would do everything he could to keep any sign of weakness from his torturer.

"Stay your foul tongue in my presence, cur. The next time I will not be so kind." Again, that icy, emotionless chill appeared in his voice. Only this time it was crystal clear and undeniable.

As had become his default strategy these recent days when the black armor got violent or went off on one of his absurd tangents, Eik shut up and refused to open his mouth again.

He saw how this frustrated the cultist to no end, and being in the stifled situation that he was, this capacity for even a small expression of defiance filled him with satisfaction. What was the dumb fucker going to do anyway? He already subjected Eik to endless, daily torture, and even though he was far from right in the head, Eik didn't think he would kill his 'precious' 'specimen' just because he was annoyed.

The same couldn't be said if he bad mouthed that oracle again, though. That seemed to genuinely enrage the man. He could hold back on that if it meant another day of survival. He would go home some day. Absolutely.

They walked a bit more and must have entered a different district of the city, because the duplicate humdrum of buildings rather abruptly changed into a duplicate humdrum of buildings in a different configuration.

Not only the temples had unique architecture, Eik came to realize. There were a variety of buildings that differed from the monotony of the rest, although the architecture was alien to the point where Eik couldn't figure out what they were used for.

It was one such building they went into, and even before making it through the front gates, the clamor of a cheering crowd reached Eik's ears. Considering how dull and relatively silent the city had been thus far, cheering was among one of the last things he had expected to hear.

The cart was pulled in through a side passage guarded by a pair of robed cultists. When they saw the black armor, they stepped silently to the side and allowed them to pass. It was damp inside and as they came to a deep flight of stairs, they stopped and Eik was let out of the iron maiden and placed in handcuffs.

He didn't even bother checking if the manacles had a similar effect to the green barrier built in. He was in the middle of the city, surrounded by insane cultists who would witness his escape, not to mention the black armor who would immediately incapacitate him. Whether he could take the black armor with both Backflow and a healthy dose of potions he couldn't really say, but as it stood now, he had no chance.

When he finally made the attempt to escape, it would be without witnesses.

"Walk," his captor ordered and Eik started down the stairs. The damp air only grew damper as they descended. Despite the seemingly poor insulation, the place was well lit and sturdy. They were softly circling whatever was happening in the center of the building where the cheering was coming from.

"What is this place?" Eik asked absentmindedly as he looked around. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they kept walking in that wide, soft circle, following the same inner wall the whole way. Along the outer wall was a seemingly endless row of door. The floor was soft, warm sand that felt good on Eik's bare feet.

"You'll see," the black armor said. The nonchalance that had been present in his voice before had largely disappeared after Eik's insult of the oracle. "Here. In there," came the order and Eik was shoved through one of the many doors.

"What is this place?" Eik asked again.

"Wear this," the black armor said and threw him a tough leather jerkin, some leather bracers, and some leather shin guards. "Do you have a weapon you prefer? Or do you usually fight without a weapon?"

"Uuh, daggers, I guess. Seriously, what are we doing here?" Eik was getting a bad feeling about this.

"Pick whatever from the weapon rack over there. Then hurry up and get going. Your turn's coming up."

Eik picked a malformed but rather sharp knife from the rack and followed the cultist and his subordinate back to the door. They led him a few doors further down the gently winding corridor before they came to a large set of double doors in old, rough wood.

"Go on," the black armor ordered and took off the manacles.

Eik steeled his gaze and pushed them open.

The first thing that hit him was the heat, the sand at his feet baking in the sun. The second was the stench. About a dozen corpses lay scattered in the arena in various states of desecration, the blood staining the the sand in large, red patches.

Eik glanced back at the entrance through which he had come, the double doors already being pulled closed again as the cultist chuckled. "This is where we offer our devoted believers some much deserved fun, so please be sure to put on the greatest show you can! Perhaps a real fight can push you to show me a bit more of what you can do since you've been so reluctant until now. Let me see what you can do! Show me that power that hurt me!"

Fuck. Was this just another one of the cult's methods to desensitize its members, like the cannibalism and the social division?

A pair of glowing eyes in the dark beyond a heavy portcullis was all that warned Eik before something charged out toward him.

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