"Break out? How the hell am I supposed to break out of here? I assume you're familiar with a guy called Oru, the Devouring Maw?" Eik argued. "Well, he, and probably a bunch of other crazies around here, could literally flick me on the forehead and it would make my whole head explode like a melon run over by a passenger plane."

"Be that as it may," she said with a sigh. "it is the only way I can see this succeeding."

"Can't you get me back to the Nidafjeld Alliance or something? I can't do this alone." Eik was pacing around the room at this point. His nerves made it utterly impossible to sit still.

She looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "And who at the Alliance would you get to help with something this difficult? As far as I've understood, you're not exactly high up in the food chain there. As you mentioned yourself, you're from a new world."

"I know some people there. I know an S-ranker," he tried. "He'll listen."

"Eik, this is the capital of Moon Shall Swallow. Do you think the Nidafjeld Alliance doesn't know that we are here? They've known for centuries at least. It's an open secret. We aren't exactly an easy target."

"But the Alliance—"

"Is a fragmented mess, no matter how you look at it," she finished for him. "We have so many spies in the Alliance that I can't even begin to tell you where. We, on the other hand, are the epitome of order. Dissent is at a minimum within Moon Shall Swallow," she said. Even though she was in the middle of betraying that very organization herself, Eik could both see and hear the pride ooze out of her.

"Because you employ inhumane methods to keep your zealots in line. You insert mind skulks into people's heads to create discord in local communities in order to step in for a take over, and then subject them to cannibalism and other horrific practices just to whittle down any sense of normalcy and humanity."

"It works," was all she had to say to that.

Eik scoffed derisively. "Yeah, because it's brainwashing, not because it fosters loyalty. Piety from a broken mind is not faith. When a man drowning in a crushing river grasps for a rock to save his life, it is not because he loves the rock, but because there is nothing else left for him to cling to."

"Poetic," she said dryly.

Eik grumbled. While she had changed her mind in a major way regarding the overall goal of the cult, her perspective on the cult's actions and methods clearly still aligned with a loyalist.

He was seriously doubting whether to trust her, but fuck if he had a choice right now.

"So how are we going to do this?" he asked.

She leaned back in her seat. "I'll get you out of whatever sorry cell you're in now and place you in a room here in the temple."

"Just like that?"

"There's precedent with other important guests. And I have a lot of power here. If I say you're important for the cause, then you're important for the cause. Simple as that."

***

To say that the new room he had been put in was a step up from the bare glass cell he had spent the past weeks in would likely be the understatement of the century. It had a cot to sleep on in the corner which, in and of itself, was already enough to call it luxury all things considered.

With the addition of proper wood walls and a narrow window through which he could observe the world outside, it was only right to place it firmly in the S-rank of jail cells. That yet another green energy barrier prevented him from escaping through the window didn't take away much from the relief of having it.

From the perspective of someone like Andihar Dayarunar's daughter, Thalandi, this might well be equivalent to living in a hole filled with mud, however, but for Eik it was just great.

For the next week and a half, Eik was the incarnation of good behavior and good manners. He accepted his trays of food and water with a grateful bow, threw polite smiles left and right, but otherwise kept quiet like a good guest and practiced with his aura almost non stop.

Since his status had been tentatively upgraded from torture victim to guest of the oracle, he wasn't actually locked inside per se. Constant and multiple patrols of cultists was what kept him in place. Being the temple of the oracle of Moon Shall Swallow, it was swarming with high-rankers.

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He was allowed to go anywhere he wanted on the one floor he was confined to so long as he had an escort.

Oru, the Devouring Maw was by to check on him about once a day but didn't bother much with him besides that. Eik was satisfied with that. After all, all he was doing was waiting for the one thing that would make a bunch of fanatic cultists come running with drool pouring from their mouths.

A commotion outside pulled his attention away from being bored out of his skull and he flew up from the cot to look out of the window. People were milling about outside, hurrying to something. Eik already knew what it was.

He rushed to the door and put his ear against the thick wood. "—eived a prophecy!" someone outside hissed. The wood muffled the voices but Eik kept his ear to it. "The great oracle has received a prophecy! Gather at the temple plaza outside!" the call came. It sounded like a herald running through the halls.

This was what he had been waiting for. The oracle had assured him that for the announcement of the divine word of their deity, directly from her lips, all available high-rankers in the capital would gather to listen attentively. In their worlds of faith and zeal, nothing was more important than the divine word.

"Her lips are the Lord's lips!" the voice continued as the speaker ran down the hallway, growing gradually quieter.

"The Lord's words are her words!" sounded the response from many voices. It was like a mantra.

Eik had known, of course, that the oracle was a big deal within Moon Shall Swallow, but it seemed that she was actually viewed as a direct spiritual link to their god. It was no wonder that her order to have him moved to the temple without much reason was obeyed so readily. Her word was literal law around here.

Until she said something that couldn't be reconciled with the religious dogma of Moon Shall Swallow, of course. Then she would, as she herself had said, be branded a false prophet.

Once the commotion outside his room died down, he pushed open the heavy door and stepped into the hallway. A hand landed on his shoulder and he turned to face a pair of cultists. "You need to stay in your room for now," one of them said. "If you wish to be escorted somewhere on this floor, I will come get you lat—"

Eik's fist rammed into the cultist's face, his power intensified by the effects of both a localized application of Movement Boost and a moderate dose of Backflow.

Eik already knew that the cultists forced to stay behind and miss the prophetic revelation out front would be lower ranking members who didn't have much to say, and judging by their movements there really wasn't much these two could do against him.

He took down the other one as well, left them in his room and closed the door. In truth, he seriously considered leaving them as corpses instead, but potentially alienating himself from the oracle who already seemed to be doubting her own conviction wasn't worth the satisfaction of killing some cultists who probably hadn't even been personally part of the raid on Earth. Breaking both their noses had felt pretty good, though.

He legged it down the hallway and headed for the staircase. During the past week and a half, he had asked to be let out a few times to familiarize himself with the path.

Before he had even made it down the first flight of stairs, he ran into a three man patrol, leading with the bottom of his bare feet. As he kicked the first down the steps, Profound Toxin shot forth from his hand and wrapped itself solidly around the heads of the remaining two.

With the face of the first guy as a springboard, Eik transitioned into a front flip and brought both legs down in a double axe kick that sent the two blinded cultists down for the count. Since they were still close to his starting point, he ran those three back to his room as well.

He was on the eleventh floor of the massive spire he had seen from outside on the day he arrived and made it to the seventh without running into any more cultists. The moment he entered the hallway on the seventh floor, however, another patrol of two cultists immediately took notice of his frantic dash.

Eik heard the oracle's booming voice reverberate outside as she began her speech that she would drag out for as long as she could, all so he could get underground to destroy parts of the critical structure called the Stirring Cradle, which would potentially allow them to reawaken the Lord of the Moon, ancient Primal Entity and their deity.

But he didn't have time to listen. Before he could get to them, one of them began to shout in alarm. Eik managed to cut her off with a glob of liquid toxin around her head before she could go full lung but it had still been pretty loud.

Cursing under his breath, he rushed the other one who had now brought out a sword. They exchanged a few blows, Eik wielding a blade of crystalline toxin, while the woman struggled to free herself. The guy seemed to be a B-ranker so Eik pushed a bit more into Backflow.

Two exchanges later and Eik caught the man across the shoulder and slashed through to his belly button, sending him gasping to the floor where a pool of blood quickly spread by the wound.

The woman, her own head still enveloped by poison, returned fire by conjuring a glob of water around Eik's head. She couldn't have been higher than C-rank, however, because Eik deployed a violent burst of aura that dispersed her ability in an instant and freed up his breathing once more.

She made an attempt to imitate it on his toxin but Eik's grip on the toxin was like steel and when she realized that she had no way out, she began to desperately tear at the liquid blocking her mouth and nose. Eik hammered a fist into her stomach with such force that he only just managed to recall the toxin surrounding her head before she vomited onto the pristine wood floor.

With a foot to the back of her head, he stomped her face first into a solid plate of toxin against the planks to not leave any traces, knocking her unconscious instantly.

A quick switch into his new healing form, Panacean Quintessence let him do just enough to keep alive the guy he had slashed across the torso before he dragged both of them into an empty room. While he tried to not kill as well as he could, he feared that might not be something he could keep up as he advanced.

Profound Toxin cleaned the floor to a shine on the way further down the hall.

The location of the room he was looking for hadn't been injected into his mind by the oracle's creepy mind ability like the information about the Stirring Cradle, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find anyway.

Right turn, pass two, another right turn, pass one, door on the left. There!

This was the center of the heart of Moon Shall Swallow, so a simple storage room didn't have any magical barriers and Eik simply forced the mundane lock. Inside was row upon row of shelves. In the bottom of the room he found what he had been after. His rucksack of holding.

With this, his odds of survival had just increased significantly.

Now to get to the Stirring Cradle below.

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