When they came upon the other pursuers, there wasn't much the cultists could do to oppose their own annihilation.

Most of Eik's summons had been destroyed but they had taken many with them, melting into aggressive Profound Toxin when their physical integrity broke down. Corpses lay strewn about the devastated area in various states of ruin, blood and guts flowing like water after a heavy rain, staining the marred ground red.

It was clear that many B-rankers and C-rankers had come along for the hunt, numbering in the hundreds but they simply hadn't stood a chance against the Profound Toxic beasts. And now that Andihar Dayarunar the Gold Titan and Eik Magnasen of Blue Death had joined the party, it turned from a heated battle into a one-sided slaughter.

Eik had only recently found out that he had reached the point where other had begun to make up nicknames for him. Until now, he had actively worked to keep his identity somewhat secret and separate from his professional and martial achievements. But now that there was a name attached to the feats of creating Eik's Legendary Mystery Medicine, nearly quadrupling the high score in the A-rank raw damage output test in the Crucible, and casually filling the sky above Gimleh with an ocean of poison that spat out massive crystalline rods of death, his name was getting some traction.

When the other A-rankers had laughed and called him Blue Death throughout their night of partying before the raid, he had thought it a joke, but apparently it was not even any of them who had started it. It had just started circulating organically in pubs, cafés, and other places where people gathered and talked, and there were more than just that one as well, according to them.

Andihar's sword cleaved handfuls at a time, opening a path of bodies to the fracture where cultists still streamed through. The flow lessened to the point where only the slower stragglers were coming through. They had to put a stop to that.

"Can't we destroy the portal?" Eik asked as they came to a stop in front of it.

"They are not easily destroyed without the proper abilities. The dimensional forces tend to simply swallow up anything you throw at them. It would be better to trap whoever comes through and prevent them from following us."

Eik nodded and slashed in twain a cultist who came stumbling through the fracture. Triggering Profound Unity, he swiftly constructed a thick, doorless dome around the fracture and sent solid roots of crystal deep into the earth to make it more stable and hinder even very powerful Awakened from simply lifting or knocking it away.

And just to add another hurdle, he filled the inside space of the dome with dense, powerful Profound Toxin mist, ready to invade any system that came through the fracture. Any cultist hoping to pursue them would have to choose between retreat and certain, painful death.

"That should be a pretty good deterrent," Eik said, clapping his hands as his blue form faded and the crown of Monarch's Will sunk back into his head. "So shall we get going?"

"Yes, let's go," Andihar said and led the way. "Let's hurry and meet up with our man by the halfway fracture." For this exact scenario, where a small part of the raiding team had been forced to flee separately from the rest of the group, they had tasked one of the fracture specialists to wait for the separated party by a fracture halfway through the sequence of worlds leading back to Earth.

Here he would properly and tracelessly extinguish the fracture and follow them back, extinguishing each subsequent fracture to muddle the exact origin world of the attack. As a fracture specialist—and one at the A-rank at that—he would have done precisely that many times before.

"Leave another army of summons here to slow any cultists that might break through. Just in case," Andihar said.

"Yeah, good idea," Eik answered and followed the elf. Living Manifestations began pouring out of his back, rushing back to the dome where they fell into formation, becoming deathly still as they waited. "Hey, speaking of summons. I have a question if you don't mind."

Andihar glanced back but didn't slow down. "Of course. You can ask me anything anytime."

"Well, ever since I became able to summon those little blue guys, I've been wondering about something. Sometimes I swear I can feel them thinking, you know? Like, there's more to them than just some mindless summon," he said, choosing his words carefully. "Obviously I know that they aren't sentient like that, but… is it possible to get to a point where summons think on their own?"

"You mean summons that think on their own? I think you have already reached that point, Eik. You are leaving your army behind right now, and they are going to fight vigorously on your behalf without any other input from you except the initial order to wait and attack. They can even discern between friend and foe without you having to tell them, can't they?"

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"No, no, that's not what I meant," Eik corrected, biting his lower lip in thought. "I mean, like capability of independent thought, emotion. I mean becoming able to speak, form relationships, grow and learn with time. That kind of stuff."

Andihar glanced back at him, this time with a raised eyebrow. "Eik… Are you talking about creating true life? Do you have an ability that allows you to create genuine life?"

"No," Eik hurried to say. Had he been too quick to deny it? Maybe. "No, I don't. I was just curious."

"Riiight," Andihar muttered and faced forward again. "Well, abilities can't just create complex life like that

Eik sighed. It was pretty dang obvious that the man had his suspicions. Not just about this particular topic, but about a lot of matters pertaining to Eik and his abilities. His unique alchemical capabilities that had never been seen before. Not even by S-ranked alchemists.

His meteoric rise to might, flying through the power ranks like a bird flying endlessly through the canopies. Not to mention how utterly imbalanced his practical prowess were. At A-rank he did what it should have taken an S-ranker to do.

Even Eik, a man who had only spent a little more than a decade as a citizen of the Unified Mass, was aware that the only thing Andihar could be certain of in all of this was that it didn't make sense. It wasn't normal, no matter how one attempted to rationalize it.

So what did the muscled elf think? Well, he had never really talked about it, so Eik couldn't know for sure.

Was the man already assuming that he was a Worldbreaker or was that too unlikely to guess after all? Worldbreakers as well as X-rankers were so mysterious and elusive that nobody but them truly knew what they were capable of. Just because something seemed impossible didn't mean there wasn't an X-ranker or a Worldbreaker who had done it.

In fact, Eik probably wasn't even the first to create a pill that granted permanent power ups. He was just the first one to exploit it for profit.

Perhaps Andihar assumed that Eik had an immensely powerful, secret backer who produced the Legendary Mystery Medicine for him. What had become clear to the humans in the first ten years of the apocalypse was that a power rank was always a more or less accurate measure of an individual's Awakened power.

Well, in Eik's case the question was not so much if his power rank hit the bullseye on his measurements but more if it even scratched the outer rims of the target.

When they reached the next fracture, Eik constructed another dome around them before they went through and then yet another on the other side, filling that one with toxic mist as well.

Being only two high-rankers traveling together the only monsters they encountered were those they ran directly into and they didn't even bother killing them, simply leaving them cowering at the difference in strength. They did take one short break on the way, however.

None of them had come away from the fray unharmed and although their bodies had taken care of the physical damage they had suffered, fighting for one's life tended to leave some exhaustion. Luckily Eik's limb sculpting had improved a lot since he first learned it and his leg had been good again before they ever left the first fracture.

After ten minutes of rest where they ate and drank their fill, they were off again, blocking each fracture they went through in the same manner as the first.

They ran mostly in silence, and although a daring escape from an interdimensional cult should have been exciting if not terrifying Eik was bored as all hell. So when they finally hopped through another fracture, only to scare the living shit out of a guy sitting on the other side with a cloak pulled up around his body, the Earthling couldn't have been happier.

"E-Eik! Mr. Dayarunar! You're back! I was beginning to worry that you hadn't been able to get away," the guy said. Eik was pretty sure his name was Ponwa.

"We ran into a spot of trouble but we're whole and healthy as far as I can tell," Andihar said with a pat on the man's shoulder. "Did everyone get back safe."

He nodded. "Everyone who was alive when we fled was alive when we got back. We still have the oracle as well. She being kept in the agreed upon location."

"Good."

"Thanks for sticking around here for us," Eik said with a smile, forcing down the lump in his throat that had come back after being reminded of their losses. "Must have been pretty dang boring, huh?"

"Well, that's the job so…" the fracture specialist muttered with a shrug of his shoulders as he began the intricate task of dismantling the swirling gate. "but I guess it would help a bit if you had anymore of those—uuh, what were they called again?—that you handed out last night." He couldn't hold back a smirk.

"Scones?" Eik asked.

"Yes, exactly!"

"Anything for my little portal mage," Eik laughed and tossed a scone high into the air, the fracture specialist using his A-ranked body control to snatch it with his teeth like a dog.

"Thanks, boss."

"I have another one when you're done with that fracture."

"I'll get it done quickly. Won't leave a trace for those culty bastards."

***

They made good time the rest of the way back as well, stopping only to let Ponwa do his thing and erase the portals completely. When they emerged on Earth, Eik felt a weight lift and he knew he would get to sleep in his own bed and see his family tonight. It had only been a couple of days in total but it felt like more.

They thanked Ponwa for meeting them before separating. Tomorrow they would meet up with everybody and debrief where Eik would also give them their final payment.

But first they had to see with their own eyes that the oracle had made it back safely. Jogging through the city, Eik took deep, cool breaths. It had been pitch black night in the world they had just left a minute earlier and now suddenly crisp morning in Forest. That was probably the part of cosmic travel that Eik found the most difficult to get used to. Intellectually he understood, but his mind just refused to accept it as anything even resembling sensible.

Eik had found a small, nondescript property, much like he had when they had tricked the thief who had been pilfering his potions. Forest had grown a lot these past two years, so abandoned properties were few and far between but they did exist.

Without transporting her to Gimleh this was the safest he could think of. Olivia and a few of the other A-rankers were stationed there to protect the oracle.

That was why he was so surprised to see officials from the Alliance when they made it there.

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