The area around Andihar and Bobopahn's battle looked like the ground zero of a carpet bombing. Thunderous cracks rang out and would most certainly have alerted any other cultist who might have made it through the fracture by now to their location. If they joined the fight, their current advantage of two against one would turn into a severe disadvantage.

He had already sent a full army of Living Manifestations through the forest directly toward the fracture. The total force consisted of a single giant fifty meter wyvern, about forty larger Profound Toxic beasts, a hundred medium beasts, as well as a few dozen tiny ones, mostly to hop in there and cause chaos.

So long as there were no more S-rankers coming yet, it was possible that the summons might even just finish off the newcomers. They were a tough bunch of blue bastards. But in the event that they weren't enough, he had to expect the worst.

There was no choice. Eik had to get in there and contribute, even if he might get caught in the middle.

But with his leg busted, it wasn't feasible to just run in there. What the hell could he d—

What did they always say? 'Necessity drives creativity'. Was that how it went?

Probably not, but Eik just remembered a genius idea he had had a couple of weeks back and it had worked great. Fuck it. It was the only thing he could think of right now, and this had to happen quickly.

With himself encased inside, he erected a fifteen meter tall obelisk of blue crystal. Quickly hollowing it out, he filled it from the bottom up with dozens of tiny Profound Toxic beasts, keeping himself carefully separated from them with a thick plate under his foot and the temporary block of crystal he used as a replacement limb while he regrew his leg and foot with Panacean Quintessence.

He was just deep enough inside to be unable to see out but a tiny Profound Toxic beasts stationed on the rim of the opening functioned as a navigator through Eyes of the Beast. Feeling the pressure from the other cultists advancing on their position, he frantically adjusted the massive barrel, trying to calculate trajectory, velocity, wind speed, weather patterns, flavor, or whatever other garbage info might be relevant to the success of the launch.

But in the end, instinct and mid-air improvisation were really the only things he could rely on so he aimed the barrel to his best estimation and lit the metaphorical fuse.

Both of the S-rankers startled at the sudden, echoing boom, but Bobopahn recovered just a millisecond quicker than Andihar and managed to stab the man through the shoulder, deftly finding and exploiting a gap in his armor. Although 'gap' might be a bit too harsh of a word to describe the expertly crafted plate armor set, even this had weaknesses.

The elf grunted and took a couple of steps back to recover but kept his shield high and ready despite the injury to his arm. Soft, golden light flowed around the injury which immediately began to knit itself back together but Bobopahn didn't allow him any time to rest and went all in on the offensive advance, forcing Andihar to defend with a slow shield arm.

Several more attacks went through the elf's defense but veils of light only visible when struck reduced the force of the strikes, allowing him to shake most of them off. One got him good in the leg, however, and that injury really hindered his movement.

Fortunately, Eik was en route, gliding wings keeping him on course in a reckless straight dive. Bobopahn's senses must have been excellent because his head whipped around abruptly, his ugly mug staring straight up at him.

With his fingers alone he flicked needles up and Eik had to swerve out of the way. He still got hit in the remaining leg, the needles penetrating deeply and exploding the flesh around the impact site to the point where the leg was hanging on by a thread.

A sensation that felt like electricity jolted through the limb and up his hip and back, freezing his lower body in cramps and ruining his sense of balance in the air.

His trajectory was thrown off and he was suddenly on a trajectory that would miss the fighting pair completely. Clenching his teeth, he conjured a handful of Profound Toxic beasts, putting a thick plate of solid toxin between them and triggered Accelerant.

He grunted as he was more or less propelled back on course, flowing into Toxic Liquefaction. Andihar saw him approaching and neglected defense in order to put extra pressure on Bobopahn, keeping him occupied while Eik entered the S-ranked system.

As he coursed through the body, he felt the sensation of Ak'ki attempting to interact with him. He was gaining levels. That probably meant that his Profound Toxic army had encountered the enemy.

Without holding back, Eik released as much Profound Toxin as he could. Exactly like inside Oru, Bobopahn's internal aura pressure was something else. It pushed Eik's movement down to a relative crawl and made sure his liquid transformation wouldn't last much longer. He would have to move quickly.

For almost twenty seconds he managed to maintain his transformation but began to reach his limits. It was now or never.

Hopefully Andihar would realize what he was doing and would be ready to avoid what was about to happen next. He snapped his metaphorical fingers and was rapidly sucked out and shoved into the body of a Living Manifestation. Flowing back into human form as quickly as he could, he shouted.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Andihar! Now!"

The elf immediately reacted and jumped back in the same moment that the first and primary detonation went off—the hyper concentrated pinch of toxin. It lit up the man's skin along the shape of a rod inside, although the glow was very difficult to discern through his armor, only visible in the gaps.

The blast tore the Reacher's large back-mounted arm clean off, blood spraying everywhere. Whether he would have screamed or not, they would never know, because the sequential explosions continued swiftly. Blood poured from between the gaps in his armor, Accelerant rocking the S-ranker's body violently.

The earth cracked and Bobopahn fell to his knees, a pained gurgle escaping his throat. Shock waves ripped up grass and vegetation, soil and debris thrown through the air.

Both Eik and Andihar rushed back in, Andihar's blade cleaving Bobopahn more than halfway through what Eik now knew was definitely a rib cage. Eik's blue conjured sword hacked in from the other side but didn't go nearly as deep as Andihar's. He pulled it back to the tip and stabbed it back in, detonating that as well.

Desperate to finish it off, he leapt onto the collapsing man's shoulders and stabbed sharp spikes into each of his ears before he could react. Blood spurted from the nostrils on his squished nose as the spikes exploded. His face hit the broken earth with a thud and Eik felt notifications light up his arm again.

"We've got incoming!" Eik hissed, eyes searching the horizon.

"I know," Andihar answered, swinging his sword through the air to clear the blood from the blade. "Can you check on that for us? You can see through your summons' eyes, can't you?"

"Yeah, give me a second." he said and reached out for the troops closer to the fracture, trying a few times before calling it. "Sorry. My range on this thing isn't great. About two hundred and something meters last time I checked. If nothing else, we know they're further away than that. But I can tell that they're fighting."

"All right," Andihar said. "That means we can get the drop on them. If your summons are still fighting, there probably isn't another S-ranker there right now. We should get going." The elf led the way back.

"Then where are the other S-rankers?"

"I don't really have a good guess for that. Just like the Nidafjeld Alliance, Moon Shall Swallow is a very large organization. And like us, they have many outposts out there in the Unified Mass which require command, maintenance, and a powerful force. Barely any of our S-rankers are present in Gimleh either."

"But I thought the cult operated differently from the Alliance," Eik said.

Andihar shrugged. "They do, but with operations at these sizes, there are bound to be fundamental similarities. Not to mention that we really don't know much about the higher ranking members of Moon Shall Swallow and what they do. Although that will hopefully change now that we have their oracle."

Eik checked his levels while they ran.

The first notification was one from before the fight with Bobopahn. And it was a big one.

[Reached Prince of Toxin — III]

Damn! It made sense. He had almost taken down an S-ranker on his own back then. He was by far the most powerful Awakened in Forest at this point. Although he liked to pretend that he didn't, he had leadership responsibilities, and while he still lacked in nearly all areas, at least his might in combat was coming along nicely. It was the one thing where he was beginning to get confident.

The next messages were spoils from this fight.

[Acquired Living Manifestation — Lv. 139]

[Acquired Living Manifestation — Lv. 140]

[Acquired Living Manifestation — Lv. 14…]

[Acquired Living Manifestation — Lv. 147]

[Acquired Living Manifestation — Lv. 148]

[Acquired Movement Boost — Lv. 129]

[Acquired Movement Boost — Lv. 130]

[Acquired Movement Boost — Lv. 13…]

[Acquired Movement Boost — Lv. 138]

[Acquired Movement Boost — Lv. 139]

Apocalypse Canvas must have been active for a little while after he went through the fracture because there were a handful of levels there as well.

[Acquired Apocalypse Canvas — Lv. 106]

[Acquired Apocalypse Canvas — Lv. 107]

[Acquired Apocalypse Canvas — Lv. 108]

[Acquired Apocalypse Canvas — Lv. 109]

And there were still more from the fight with Bobopahn, although it was less since he had fought alongside Andihar this time.

[Acquired Monarch's Will — Lv. 175]

[Acquired Monarch's Will — Lv. 176]

[Acquired Monarch's Will — Lv. 17…]

[Acquired Monarch's Will — Lv. 192]

[Acquired Monarch's Will — Lv. 193]

[Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 225]

[Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 226]

[Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 22…]

[Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 237]

[Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 238]

This raid had been the biggest level farm he had ever experienced. It was actually insane how much he had progressed just in this one day, despite being an A-ranker which was a notoriously difficult stage to advance.

But then again, he had done something that no other A-ranker could even come close to doing. That just went to show how great of a gap the system thought there was from A-rank to S-rank.

And finally.

[Reached Prince of Toxin — IV]

Holy shit. He was literally one grade away from S-rank himself. Now, that didn't mean that S-rank was just around the corner. He had already spoken with Gul Ougi and Andihar about it, and they had assured him that that last step was far longer than any previous. There was a reason why the ratio of A-rankers to S-rankers was greater than that of any other adjacent ranks.

But it was still proof of how far he had come. He would just have to keep going. For his family. And for Earth.

The selection notification for the Apocalypse Canvas evolution asking him to pick between Diverse Palette and Autonomous Wanderer showed up again but he dismissed it again, adamant that it could wait. It wouldn't do to pick at random at these levels.

"I hit A-rank grade four," he grinned as he ran next to Andihar.

The elf huffed and shook his head incredulously. "You never stop surprising. Although I suppose it's a given after what happened tonight. I think we might be forced to celebrate with yet another fight."

"Nothing much to do about that," Eik smirked. "It's better to take care of them now than have them on our heels. Let's be quick and go home."

"Yeah. I'm hungry and I miss my daughter."

"Me too."

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