For a brief moment, Eik simple laid there staring up at the two newcomers. They stared back silently, silently sizing up this man who had pushed his was into the middle of their city and caused havoc nearly uncontested, besides another S-ranker who had been dealt with quickly and efficiently.

Judging by their positions, it looked like they had come from the location of the Life Harvester Eik had neutralized. Had they received reports of a high-ranker ravaging the area? The time it had taken him to go to Andihar and then all the way back would have been more than enough time for two S-rankers like them to get updated information on the defeat of the Gohkamorian swordsman cultist and arrive.

Eik narrowed his eyes. They were here to catch him while he was on his own. They wanted a safe and easy kill of one of the Alliance S-rankers by ganging up on him. Good.

Silently, Eik sent a mental order to the Living Manifestations taking care of the prisoners and commanded them to take the lot of them and leg it the hell out of here. The response came in the form of a sudden and utterly synchronous reaction as they sprung into action.

The S-rankers moved in that same moment, dozens of small but extremely potent balls of fire scattering to target each of the escaping captives.

What? Why did they care about some emaciated prisoners? Twisted principles or a simple attempt to distract Eik from the true attack?

"No!" He dove for the closest of the tired victims—a young woman dressed in what looked more like a ragged sack meant to hold potatoes and other produce than clothing. It barely covered enough skin to have been okay for one of the more free-spirited beaches back on old Earth.

The shell to block the projectile snapped into place just in time to absorb the infernal flames but the Profound Toxic beasts receiving immediate new commands to protect the victims weren't quite as fast.

At least a dozen weakened Awakened didn't even live long enough to scream as fireballs struck and exploded, the blaze claiming their bodies and reducing them to ash in seconds. They were just gone along with the Living Manifestations that had failed to act in time.

The others, who had been just slightly farther away were either howling in agony or quietly unconscious as their blue protectors melted away over them, revealing awful welts and burn rashes across their bodies despite the cover.

Fuck!

He stood up, the girl instantly carried away by the beast, the S-rankers doing nothing to prevent it this time. Eik sent summons ala Panacean Quintessence to each of the burn victims, hoping to save as many as he could, watching the two S-rankers closely all the while. They didn't make a move.

Right up until they did.

Another round of projectiles appeared as if out of thin air, homing toward the targets that still appeared to be alive. But this time Eik was prepared, blue Living Manifestations already primed to leap in to intercept the fireballs.

In that same moment, a fifty meter blade of blue crystal rammed into the barrier erected directly above, cracking it and melting through the fissure. Startled, the S-rankers' heads whipped up and Eik took that brief opportunity to finally send the prisoners away for good and immediately jump into the offensive to keep the pressure on while they escaped.

A second titanic blade slammed into the roof the two cultists had been standing on but they had already leapt away, splitting up, the mage already hurling more fireballs now focused on Eik, while the other had vanished.

Small shards followed like a swarm of hornets, chasing the mage as he unleashed massive conal gouts of flame that shattered and neutralized the crystal. But more kept coming and he was forced to grant a bit of his attention to continuously managing that threat. Scratch that. She was forced to grant a bit of her attention to it.

Meanwhile, Eik hunted the other guy, eager to keep him from chasing the prisoners. He spotted the S-ranker on a different rooftop, a massive, three meter tall longbow trained directly on him, the first two arrows already midair, a third released as their eyes met.

A short, broad blade of crystal appeared in Eik's hand and he deflected both projectiles before they could make contact. The third one he simply side stepped. All of them crashed into buildings, completely demolishing them and opening craters in the grounds, accompanied by dust explosions and flying rubble.

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These guys didn't seem nearly as afraid of damaging potentially holy infrastructure as Oru the Devourer and Bobopahn the Reacher had been. Perhaps they already thought it was so damaged that it didn't matter, or maybe this city just didn't have the same divine significance as Luna.

Now aware of both S-rankers, he managed to jump out of the path of two fireballs but another arrow tore a chunk out of his shoulder before he could avoid it properly. Fighting two S-rankers on two fronts just wasn't sustainable. It was too dangerous.

Even though he was powerful, it was exactly like he had been told. The depth of S-rank was truly something else and it simply didn't scale in the same way that any of the previous ranks did. That wouldn't last forever though. He would keep advancing through the rank and stand above all else.

That was his legacy.

Jumping suddenly, he forced the archer into close quarters while Profound Toxic beasts poured out of him, collecting into one larger mass that took the form of a mighty dragon—not a wyvern like when he had been A-rank.

He was able to order various shapes but usually he just let the beasts handle that themselves. They knew what they needed for specific tasks better than he did.

It was at least a hundred meters long from snout to the tip of its tail and significantly slimmer than the stocky wyvern. Its body practically undulated with rippling, muscle-like structures, the dragon's grade so high that its features were perfectly defined with none of the blobby, soft look of the earlier iterations.

Just as it reached its full length, it shrunk down to less than twenty meters but the oppressive air surrounding it only seemed to intensify. Scaling down to compress its power, was it? Interesting. Andihar could do something similar, if he wasn't mistaken.

Borne on swift wings, the dragon shot forward as Eik cast Raise to the Occasion—his new trait from Living Manifestation. Instantly, the summon's features warped, growing more monstrous as it shrank even further, reaching a length of no more than eight meters. A brilliant glow also shimmered across its body for a second, further evidence that something had taken hold.

Its tail grew and six rows of terrible, twisting horns sprouted from its skull. Two new pairs of glowing eyes opened above the original one and a smooth aerodynamic back turned ridged. But even so, its speed increased significantly, now rocketing through the air, incomparable to before.

Desperately, the fire mage threw flaming projectiles in its direction while still constantly neutralizing the shads from Apocalypse Canvas but the dragon weaved around them like a fighter plane. It spat a blob of toxin at the cultist in a flyby before suddenly soaring high, preparing for another attack.

Good. That would keep the mage somewhat busy, and Eik could concentrate on the archer, and this time he would have to take it seriously.

A blast of Tyrant's Pressure startled the archer and Eik slashed him across the bicep before he could retreat. When he did, a dozen streak of fluid toxin, lead by jagged spearheads of crystal, hunted him like hawks.

A multi-shot took out all of them at once with a cluster of arrows that burst like grenades on impact before the archer turned his bow on Eik. But a shroud of toxic mist had obscured him from view completely. Arrows were fired into the haze nonetheless, each projectile opening wide holes in the shroud that quickly closed back up, the archer appearing to possess some manner of observation ability that allowed him to detect Eik without the use of his eyes.

With a boom as if from the main gun of a tank, the haze was dispersed at once as Eik's thrown spear slammed into the archer's abdomen in mid air, the velocity of the weapon far exceeding his own arrows. Gasping for a breath that wouldn't come, he looked down at the bloody mess his torso had become, falling toward the ground.

In the blink of an eye, the spear melted into the wound, properly infecting the archer, and seven streaks of liquid toxin followed closely after, this time entering unimpeded.

Eik leapt after him, unwilling to allow any time to recover. He glanced to the mage to see how it was going up there.

She had given up on the fireball strategy and switched to a more accurate, laser-like streak of heat which she directed at the flitting dragon, maintained in one hand while the other continued to cast the conal gout of flame that kept the raging shards of toxin at bay.

She was being pressed terribly, gritting her teeth as the dragon's incredibly agile air tricks allowed it to largely avoid the beam and cut into the mage, delivering doses of toxin with every flyby. Any time it was hit, the flame would vaporize a part of its body, but since it lacked vital organs it simply reformed around the gash.

More thorough and more massive damage would be needed in order to completely destroy the Living Manifestation Raised to the Occasion. And having taken some hits from shards she had failed to stop, the concentration of Profound Toxin in her system was taking a toll. She couldn't take even a moment to focus on Eik.

That gave him ample freedom to finish the archer. Diving after the bastard, he conjured another blade of crystal, lengthening it to five meters and broadening the edge a few times over, giving it nice weight before hurling it down at the archer with speeds that cracked the air with sonic booms.

It pierced the archer through the chest with enough destructive forced to send him plunging into the earth, street and buildings collapsing around the crater and crumbling on top of him, burying him alive. With a snap of his fingers, Eik sent a signal to the blade as well as the toxin already flowing through the archer to Accelerate.

Despite the pressure she was under, the mage had watched Eik pummel her companion into the earth and now he caught her gaze with his own as he stood victorious on the bow user's burial mound just as it burst like a volcanic eruption.

Eik took a single step forward, his eyes never leaving the struggling S-ranked mage's, and hopped gently as the explosion caught him from below and carried him effortlessly into the air, heading straight for her.

Borne on the waves of his S-ranked Accelerant, Eik soared upward, grinning as he prepared to savor the final moments of an enjoyable fight.

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