"You want me to save your oracle? From the clutches of her own organization?" Eik asked, leaning forward with a sigh and resting his forehead on his knuckles. "Do you know how difficult it will be to convince the Nidafjeld Alliance that it's a good idea to attack Moon Shall Swallow, much less to rescue your leader."

"I realize that!" the young man said frantically, struggling against his shackles in agitation. They creaked and whined under his strength. "But you have to realize that she is instrumental in the overall success of such an operation!"

"Explain."

"You think any of us left in the Fold of Truth and Knowledge know how to bring about the incapacitation of the mission of a cosmic consortium as enormous as Moon Shall Swallow? We wouldn't know where to begin! But she does! She is the director!" Vendekaabe argued. "If you want to stop the reawakening of the Lord of the Moon—and I know you do—then you will have to help me help her!"

Eik cursed under his breath. "All right, but surely you know what the next step in her plan is?"

The cultist nodded. "I do."

Eik stared. "Okay, well, what is it then?"

"I'll tell you if you agree to rescue my Lady."

"Fuck, man…" he muttered. "Fine, I'll rescue the damn girl, okay? What is it then? What's the next step?"

Vendekaabe crossed his arms over his chest, which caused his manacles to stretch tightly across his ribs. "Didn't you say you would need to convince your allies to help as well? I'll tell you then."

"Oh, my god…" Eik sighed, standing up and pacing around the small room before he stopped and slammed his fist into the table, sending spiderweb cracks throughout the whole surface. "I'll definitely convince them, all right? I'll convince them, so tell me!" Just the thought of the Lord of the Moon coming back to the world in its true form was a horror that was difficult to describe.

Back in the chamber of the Stirring Cradle where he had dismantled some of the mechanisms of the reawakening site, he had come face to face with an apparition of the Lord of the Moon. A simple, near defenseless image in the form of a spectral eye. The depth of power he had sensed from just that had filled him with an unimaginable dread that still haunted him to this day.

He liked to think that the deep hatred for the other Worldbreaker that Profound Toxin harbored had been the driving force behind the virtual barbarity he had released upon the spectral eye, but if he dug deep enough, he had to recognize that a lot of it had been fueled by his own fear toward the otherworldly wraith.

If such a thing returned with its full power, it would result in inconceivable catastrophe.

The lack of communication from the oracle since his return from the cult had weighed heavily on his mind but he had managed to naively convince himself that it was a good sign that he hadn't heard anything. No news is good news, as they say. Yeah, that was clearly a bunch of bullshit.

Now that he was faced with the reality of the situation, he really did have to act.

Eik bent down and snapped the shackles around Vendekaabe's wrists and ankles with playful ease. "Stand up and let's go."

"Where are we going?" the cultist asked.

"Away from here. We can't risk word getting out about this. It's already bad enough that the gate guards know that you came from the cult. We have a pretty bad history with you guys, you know."

"I heard from my Lady. It saddened me to hear what happened to your people."

Anger rose in Eik's chest. "Oh, did it now?"

"Yes," Vendekaabe said with such sincerity that Eik paused for a moment. He thought he might have gotten a glimpse of why the oracle had chosen Vendekaabe as one of the six to enter her so-called Fold of Truth and Knowledge.

"Hm," Eik mumbled and beckoned for the cultist to follow him outside. Four soldiers stumbled away as they were pushed bodily by the door. A single, tiny Living Manifestation that had been sitting on Robert's shoulder since before they even arrived had informed Eik of the soldiers' eavesdropping from the moment they had been kicked out. A sound barrier of aura had prevented every word of their conversation from being overheard, however.

"I'm taking him into custody," Eik announced.

"Y-You can't!" one of the soldiers yelped, clearly afraid. That he was still upholding his duty in the face of someone so much more powerful was admirable. "We can't release him into the custody of anybody else before it is signed off on by either the gate captain or the vice captain. The vice captain should be here soon, so please wait a moment."

After a moment's contemplation, Eik eventually conjured an arrangement of chairs of blue crystal as well as a pavilion. He slung himself into one of the comfortable constructions. They all had soft padding of gooey poison along the seats and the backs. "Feel free to sit, everyone."

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Silently, they did. None seemed keen on starting the conversation so Eik took it upon himself.

"I'm sorry if I was a little rough back there," he told them. "I got a little agitated and I acted in a way I shouldn't have." He offered an apologetic bow of his head and fished out goodie bags with a variety of potions which he handed around to each of them.

"Th-That's okay!" the soldier who had pushed for immediate execution stammered, his face still pale from the mental attack. He clearly hadn't expected an A-ranker to apologize to his face. "I spoke out of turn as well."

"No," Eik broke in. "I completely understand your anger. As a matter of fact, two years ago I slaughtered more than forty cultists on my own, mostly because I was so furious about what Moon Shall Swallow had done. I lost one of my best friends in the invasion as well but I could do nothing back then." Vendekaabe looked quite uncomfortable with the topic of conversation.

A tear rolled down the soldier's cheek but his face remained stony otherwise. "We all lost someone."

"Yes, we did. It was a terrible day…" Eik agreed with a somber nod, his gaze on his shoes. "But what you all have to understand is that what this is," he said, pointing between himself and Vendekaabe. "is not an alliance between us and the cult at large."

"What is it then?" a woman, also in uniform, asked.

"Well, I think you might find out pretty soon, but for now, just know that we haven't aligned ourselves with the group that killed and abducted our people or anything insane like that. You have my word on that."

They nodded. The female soldier who had spoken up spoke again. "I saw you."

"Sorry?" Eik asked.

"Two years ago I saw you. You rushed at that cultist in the black armor, didn't you?"

"That was you?" one of the guards who had stood by the door exclaimed excitedly. "That was one of the craziest and most awesome things I had ever seen, dude! We talked about that for days! I honestly thought you died during that…"

Eik and the rest laughed. "Well, I didn't die. The black armor was Gih the Madman, by the way," he said with a glance at Vendekaabe.

"Ugh, nobody likes Gih the Madman. But everybody fears him. He's unpredictable and insane," Vendekaabe said with a frown. "He is perverse and taints the good name of Moon Shall Swallow."

Eik thought he had already seen plenty of perverse things coming out of the cult but didn't comment. "I've got him in my basement."

Vendekaabe froze, staring open-mouthed at Eik. "E-Excuse me? I think I must have misheard you. Could you repeat that for me?"

"I said I have Gih the Madman in my basement. Or, to be precise, I used to have him in my basement. Well, actually, now that I think about it, it's probably more of a cellar. You know, technically speaking. It is entirely underground and used for storage, which I think is the definition of a cellar, but to be fair I'm not a native speaker. Built it myse—"

"Enough about what kind of basement it is, please. Do you really have Gih the Madman in captivity?" the cultist asked, unable to believe what he was hearing.

"I used to. After capturing him, I intended to have him tell me more about Luna, your capital city and the efforts of the cult. Unfortunately, for... several different reasons, I couldn't get anything out of him. In the end I found that I'm not much of a warden—it feels a little icky, if I'm honest—so I killed him," Eik said. Visage of Death had brought the cultist totally over the edge, and he had barely been capable of stringing two words together. Cruelly, he had ended up as a kind of experiment investigating the long-term effects of Visage of Death and the results were... terminal.

Vendekaabe was silent for a moment as his brows knit. "We heard he had died in the attempt to retrieve you. How did you manage to set up an ambush with your allies from your cell in Luna?"

"I didn't. I killed them," Eik said, the memory of the massacre sending a rush through his body. "I killed them all. I beat the shit out of Gih as well before incapacitating him."

"Damn," was all the soldiers could say in response.

They spoke for another several minutes, Eik pulling refreshing beverages from the depths of his belt pouch of holding, proving again just how incredibly convenient it was to have a magically powered subspace to store anything he might need. At one point, one of the soldiers looked up over Eik's shoulder.

"Vice captain, there you are!" he called. "Where have you been?"

"What are you doing lazing about here? I heard that we have an unknown," A male voice snapped. "And what's all this blue stuff? Did we recruit an ice user or something?" All of the soldiers scrambled to their feet and stood at attention. Eik didn't have to turn around to know who the vice captain was.

He could see everything through a Living Manifestation sitting on Robert's head, not to mention that he recognized the voice.

"The unknown is secure. What happened to your hand, sir?" one of the soldiers asked.

"My fingers were crushed by some maniac!" the vice captain raged, holding up his hand bound in bandages. It couldn't be that bad. Eik had left some Panacean Quintessence to heal them back up.

But then again, if they had flicked the green substance off before they could get the full effect, then it wouldn't have helped much. "I had to get it treated. When I find out who that crazy bastard was, I'll make sure he rots in a cell, B-rank or not!"

"Why would he crush your fingers?"

Eik still hadn't turned around. He sipped his drink and kept his cool.

"The guy has adopted this little alien filth! And he has the gall to get angry when we want it thrown out! Just the thought of its disgusting green skin makes me want to puke! He even enrolled it in my daughter's school for crying out loud!"

Eik was not keeping his cool anymore. Robert put a calming hand on his fingers as they crushed the crystalline armrest, looking very concerned about what his employer might end up doing next. Some of the soldier's were beginning to notice Eik's reaction as well, putting two and two together, and scooting their chairs away from his as subtly as they could.

"But we're fixing it," he said with sickening glee in his voice, somehow thinking it appropriate to brag to his subordinates. "I already contacted Mission Central to report it. My wife's waiting at the school as we speak to guide the officers when they show up. Both the fucking dad and his nasty beast deserve to—"

That was all he managed to get out before Eik's fist crushed his nasal bone, cheek bone, and jaw with a crunch.

The man fell to his knees, a muffled scream escaping his throat as blood and teeth spilled from his mouth. "Mai heef!" he shrieked, the words coming out nearly unintelligibly. "Mai yaw! Ai will hill yu!" Finally, he looked up, now finding himself face to face with the man whose little girl he had just disgraced so thoroughly.

The blood drained from his face. Eik's aura was pumped to the absolute maximum, the sheer force of it flattening his mind and thrashing his body to the point where the vice captain pissed himself then and there. The visage of the wrathful, blue mask hovering in front of Eik's face was that of an immortal demon.

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