"You work better with a tank, as you call it, don't you?" Andihar asked with a grin.

"I used to, yeah. It been so long that I'm not sure anymore. But wait, can you use a shield as well?"

Andihar offered a raised eyebrow, clicking his tongue. "Of course I can. I can use all weapons. I'm a weapons expert, Eik. I built my entire skill profile on the basis of weapon usage. Didn't you know that?"

Eik looked at him sheepishly. "I… kind of thought you were a, well, you know, getting' big expert, or something like that."

"I'm hurt. We've been friends for a couple of years at this point, Eik. How could you not know something so fundamental about me?"

Eik threw his hands up and stuck Bobopahn the Reacher's spear back into the ground. "I've barely ever seen you fight! All you do is fawn over your wife and eat out at restaurants!"

"All right, all right," the muscled elf chuckled. He took a defensive stance entirely unlike the one he usually fought it. "Now, get ready. He is going to be here any second."

All of Eik's javelins began to spin, revving up for launch. Another army of Profound Toxic beasts had already been dispatched, scattering throughout the surrounding trees and underbrush, ready to leap in from all directions.

If Bobopahn the Reacher really would be fighting harder than Oru the Devourer had back in Luna, like Andihar seemed to be certain of, the Living Manifestations would not be able to put up much of a fight. But… luckily those little buggers had a tendency to blow up. Violently.

Eik had purposefully held back on creating any Living Manifestations with the Original Life trait. There was no telling exactly what kind of consequence would follow the use of such an ability, and Eik wasn't about to find out about it by putting a being into the world with the intelligence of a baby, child, or even an adult, only to be killed two minutes after.

"Just get me an open wound and I'll take care of the rest," Eik said, getting into position behind a tree, leaving Andihar to spearhead the encounter.

Andihar laughed, rolling his shoulders. "I like the confidence."

They didn't speak anymore than that, because in the next moment the spear suddenly woke back up, quivering spiritedly as it wrestled itself free of the soft soil. Like a bolt of lightning it flew toward the center of the fracture, whipping into a gloved hand sticking out of the swirling, blue surface. A helmeted head followed, and then the rest of the body.

He was armored but not heavily so. It mostly looked like cured leather, likely reinforced by magical artisanship. Parts such as the hip padding, forearm, shin, foot, and hand protection were all fitted with additional armor in the form of metal studs and plates.

He had no arms. Or rather, he had no arms where Eik would have expected him to have arms. Instead, a single extra large arm extended from the middle of his back and up behind his head. The hand which now gripped the great spear tightly had six fingers, three on each side, providing what looked like an extremely powerful criss-crossing grasp on the shaft.

Now it made sense why he was a thrower. It looked like he was built exactly for that. Was he from a whole civilization of throwers? Eik nearly chuckled.

The cultist's face was very small, squished into itself as if a comical cartoon character had been punched in the face. To the point where it was difficult to tell what his features were like.

Bobopahn looked up at the spear lovingly but immediately froze, realizing that something was off about it. Whether it was the weight of it or the transparent layer that caught his eye was unclear, but that wasn't really what mattered. The important thing was that he was looking right at it, the coated blade only a dozen centimeters from his eyes.

The mental order received an instant response as the transparent toxin coating the blade suddenly warped, spikes going straight for Bobopahn's tiny eyes. Faster than anything Eik had seen before, the Reacher twisted the blade away from his face and ducked out of the way of the spikes.

Eik cursed under his breath, but in that same moment Andihar's blade of light waiting above descended like a guillotine.

Bobopahn was forced to evade right, fracture blocking his back and Andihar staring him down ahead. The blade of light entered the earth as if it had been made of warm butter, dispersing into motes of gold when the hilt reached the soil.

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Five of Eik's spinning javelins were batted away just as Andihar descended upon Bobopahn in a single leap. Going for pressure, a shield bash opened the exchange and knocked the Reacher further off balance, but he still managed to bring the spear around to parry the chop of Andihar sword, dexterously maintaining distance from the blade where the toxic coating still remained.

The sheer force of that overhead strike heaved up the earth as a crater was created under Bobopahn, and Eik had to shield his eyes with a pair of quickly conjured perfectly fitting goggles of transparent toxin. Inventing on the fly.

The Reacher leapt back to create distance for his throw, but Andihar was on the warpath and gave immediate chase, sending blade energy wave after blade energy wave at Bobopahn, keeping him occupied and refusing to allow him to throw that deadly spear. The stray attacks felled hundreds of trees, destroying habitats and marring the earth relentlessly.

No matter how one looked at it, the cultist would have been most comfortable at range but had been forced to engage in a melee in order to get his spear back. And Andihar was taking full advantage of that fact.

Eik was just happy that the ugly bastard hadn't decided to attack him while he had been fighting Oru the Devourer. The first throw would have taken him out.

The moment Bobopahn stopped to confront the elf in a head-on battle, Profound Toxic beasts rushed in from his rear and flanks, their only real jobs at this point being to work as a distraction. If any of them got close enough to actually deal some damage, that would just be icing on the cake.

Eik himself had followed behind them as they moved and sat ready to do his part. All he needed was the right time. Getting in there and attempting to join that melee would not only be unnecessarily dangerous, it would also hinder Andihar's ability to go all out for fear of Eik getting caught by friendly fire.

That was one of the reasons S-rankers seldom fought in teams. That and the fact that S-rankers were an extreme rarity even in larger organizations.

Bobopahn deflected two blows from Andihar and destroyed four Profound Toxic beasts with the butt of the spear. The last beast, coming in from directly behind his back, managed to get close enough to dig its sharp claws into the reinforced leather of his back and stick to him for long enough for Eik to trigger Accelerant.

The point-blank detonation propelled the S-ranker forward, right into the path of Andihar's blade as it descended in an overhead slash. By the skin of his teeth, Bobopahn deflected the blow with the shaft of his spear—an unbelievable feat all things considered—but he just wasn't fast enough against a weapon expert like Andihar, and the heavy blade sliced off a chunk of flesh and armor along his side. It would have been his shoulder if he had had such a thing, but on Bobopahn it seemed to be a less crucial part of his body.

But for Eik, it was exactly what he needed.

Using an ability that looked a lot like the Disengage that Sonja had used back when she had been alive, the one-armed man flew back, the ability carrying him about a kilometer backward through the air. Andihar was in immediate pursuit but even then, Bobopahn, if briefly, acquired a distance that allowed him to throw.

It must have been an ability that did it, but the man seemed to achieve a stable and balanced throwing poise despite having nothing but air under his feet. But before he could follow through, the transparent toxin wrapped around the blade slithered down the shaft and into the wound along his side that had only just begun to heal itself.

He tried to weave out of the way as his arm continued to throwing motion, but the transparent substance had already made it onto his arm and snaked along his back. A burst of aura, just as Oru had tried, was not enough to disperse the toxin which had been created by Eik in a state of Profound Unity. And when it entered the wound, it was already too late.

His spear struck Andihar with the force of ten trucks, instantly arresting the elf's forward momentum as he plunged toward the ground. The sound of metal on metal was deafening. Momentarily rocked by the impact, Andihar lunged to grab the spear like he had before but it swung back out of reach before he could get it.

As the spear returned to him, Bobopahn redirected his attention to Eik, the Earthling suddenly realizing that the tree he had been hiding behind offered less than no protection against the missile-like weapon. The cultist flung it again, this time at Eik.

He cursed loudly and dove to the side but as it had before, the spear veered to the side, following him like a hunting dog. Frantically, he threw up as many thick crystal shells as he could but it tore straight through them. With desperation, he leapt but it caught him in the knee, tearing everything up to his hip clean off and churning up the earth like an underground detonation of dynamite. He screamed.

If Oru was any indication, the relatively small amount of toxin that had entered Bobopahn's system wouldn't have a decisive effect for a while yet. Fuck.

Struck by an idea, Eik released Living Manifestations that immediately rushed the spear. Four mid-sized specimens managed to wrap themselves around the shaft before it rocketed back to Bobopahn. The cultist had disappeared behind the trees, out of Eik's sight, but Eyes of the Beast allowed Eik to follow the Profound Toxic beasts' flight back to him. He detonated them the moment the weapon touched the Reacher's palm, the Accelerant ripping into the back of his head.

A large, feline Living Manifestation carried Eik toward Bobopahn, knowing well that Andihar would already be rushing there. Crystalline Panacean Quintessence had already sealed the heinous leg wound. The best way to survive would be to kill the bastard quickly. And then they could finally go home.

Finding the two combatants was easy, the cacophonous noise of their clashes ringing shrilly through the trees.

Sudden sounds from the direction of the fracture made Eik uneasy. The other cultists had gotten here faster than expected.

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