The disgusting worm-like creature wiggled furiously between the armored cultist's fingers. He held it gingerly with only his index finger and thumb, clearly beyond disgusted with the fleshy cylinder. A slight shiver ran down his entire body.

Eik's mouth remained firmly closed. That thing was not going down his damn throat even if it took him directly to S-rank.

"Geh!" he spat. "Why are we still using these dreadful things? Just because it's useful doesn't mean we have to stop innovating! Remind me to remind someone about that," he said to the patterned robes, receiving nods in return. "Come on, come on! I haven't got all day!" The disgusting bug wiggled against his face as the cultist used the remaining two of the four fingers on his hand to force Eik's jaw open.

When the monster was lowered into his mouth, he tried desperately to bite it in two but those fingers felt like they were made with the hardest metal in the world. He screamed as its nasty, stubby legs kicked across his tongue. Suddenly it was as if possessed, clawing its way down his throat like a burrowing grub.

He screamed.

There was no strength left in his body and his limbs refused to obey him, but there was still one thing left that heeded his call.

With a gurgle, a virtual wave of Profound Toxin gushed up through his esophagus and engulfed the abominable worm in an instant. In a second it tumbled to the wooden planks below with a dull thud, screeching maniacally as it writhed in clear pain.

Before he could see it coming, a gloved palm struck him across the face, making his ears ring and his eyes water as his brain seemed to spin around in his skull. The cultist sighed. "Don't do that again. Appreciate that I have some interest in what you can do. You hurt me. That's something worth looking into. But don't think for a second that I will let you act out in this manner. You're not that important."

Eik let more poison flow out into his mouth and spat a glob into the man's helmeted face. "Scr-Screw you… bitch," he rasped hoarsely.

"That hurts," the man said as he dragged his gloved hand down the front of the helmet. "Down there among the rabble. You have friends — you have loved ones, don't you? I know who they are. Two people. A woman and a man. Both with dark hair. Stronger than you but much more cautious."

The cultist laughed heartily when Eik's jaw tightened at the revelation. Another slap, the hard metal drawing stinging scratches across his cheek. He felt blood run down his cheek to drip from his chin.

"They're dead. The moment I wish them to be, they'll be dead. You know I speak the truth, don't you? They wouldn't be the first to die. I don't bluff. Are you prepared to watch them die just so you can maintain this silly attempt at defiance, hmm?"

Eik felt the toxin circulating in the man's system. It was not an insignificant amount that had managed to make it inside. This bastard might well be stronger than the A-rank beast he had devastated during the Crucible damage test, but this wasn't a situation like that. There was no doubt the toxin could deal some damage, especially if it was given time to work. But such time was a luxury he didn't have right now.

An activation of Accelerant could probably at least stun the high-rank cultist for a second or two, but it wouldn't kill him. It would only make matters worse than they already were — if that was even possible.

He considered using Toxic Liquefaction, but he couldn't hold it for long and it would only tempt the cultist to go for Olivia instead. Entering the cultists system in fluid form was also out of the question. The critter back in the forest had exploded but against a high-ranker it seemed more likely that Eik would be crushed on the inside when he returned to human form and size.

He clenched his teeth tightly but eventually acquiesced and opened his mouth. A second bug came out of the same bag of holding. Was that thing filled with them?

It hurt like hell going down. How anyone could swallow a revolting vermin like this and not remember it afterward was a mystery. Halfway down his esophagus the pain dissipated as if the thing had never been there. It felt eerie.

"See? That wasn't so bad, now was it?"

"What did you do to me?" Eik coughed, feeling his consciousness beginning to leave him. Vaguely, from somewhere down and to his right, he heard Olivia scream his name in a mix of fury and terror. Many times he heard her cry out but she didn't appear. Something must have been hindering her.

"Goodness, me? I didn't do anything to you."

"Your fucking… worm. What does it do?"

"I wonder," he sang, unable to hold back a laugh. "I suppose you'll have to find out."

Immediately a haze began to settle in Eik's brain. His thoughts seemed to slow, neurons firing as if through a thick jelly. He felt his mind slip. Not in favor of another, like when Profound Toxin had momentarily taken over back in the Championships, but rather in favor of an abyssal nothingness that seemed to swallow up everything. The where, the why, the who, the how, the when, the what.

Everything was pushed flat, leaving only a pervasive numbness. But somewhere within that haze, he felt a struggle. He couldn't fight the darkness himself but something was doing it for him.

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Then, much quicker than it had first appeared, it lifted completely, leaving his mind clear as a spring morning. He was back in the metaphorical driver's seat. He felt Profound Toxin offer a mental high five and he returned the gesture gratefully.

A noise like a scratching on wood came from inside his shirt but he quickly reached for the Ak'ki to suppress it.

"Aura won't help you get out of this one. Just let it claim you. You'll be in a better place if you do. All these worries you carry will disappear and apathy will be your salvation."

For a moment Eik was confused before realizing that the high-ranker thought he was still caught in the mind fog. The effects of the worm had cleared up completely, but the armored cultist evidently wasn't aware of that.

"Hey, get me a fracture over here!" he shouted into the air. "I've got one for my own collection!"

Fuck, fuck, fuck! He had to do something!

Even though his mind had somehow recovered from the influence of the mind skulk adjacent worm, his body was still in a state of absolute desolation from the aftermaths of Backflow. All he had was Profound Toxin.

He let his head lull down onto the gloved hand still holding him by the collar. This was going to hurt like a bitch…

With a thought, he triggered Accelerant on the liquid toxin coursing through the cultist's system. A deep, pulsating rumble preceded the detonation and Eik almost feared that the ability had somehow failed.

But then it suddenly came, the shock wave throwing him back to slide across the wooden platform until he tumbled over the edge. Piercing pain shot through his shoulder as he landed awkwardly, his powerless limps incapable of catching his fall.

Well, was this it then? This was the end? How pathetic.

Worldbreaker? Yeah, right. That hadn't made any damn difference the moment the discrepancy in power ranks was too great. He had been no use to anyone in the end.

Hands grabbed him under the pits of his arms and he thought it was the armored cultist back to reclaim his prize, but when he looked up, Olivia's tearful face was the only thing he could see. The face of your family being the last thing you saw wasn't so bad, he supposed.

He noticed cuts and bruises covering her face as she pulled him out from underneath the raised platform. The sky was beautiful and blue, not a cloud in sight. That was nice too.

Then he saw the towering armor again, the long cape billowing in the breeze. Fucking asshole.

"That was not a wise choice, young man," he said, his voice actually sounding as if he was in pain. "But to think she came to me herself. Now you can finally witness her death as you lie there feebly."

Above him, another extra large fracture hung in the air, this one also about three times the size of a regular one. It had been opened some fifteen meters above the wooden podium

Where did that lead? The laboratory of some mad scientist? Or maybe room full of display cases where various weirdos like him wasted away as nothing but pieces of a macabre collection? One thing was for sure though — whatever was in there would not be to Eik's benefit.

Inside the gigantic fracture something suddenly reflected the light of the sun sharply, causing Eik to blink against it.

Then a second full suit of armor plummeted toward the podium like a cannonball. Crashing through the wood as if it had been dried paper, the armor slammed into the ground below with such force that soil was thrown into the air as the ground erupted to form a small crater.

A hope Eik hadn't realized still resided within his chest was now extinguished completely. With two armored cultists, and likely more on the way, there really wasn't much to be done as far as retaliation went. They were simply too strong.

"Oh…" he heard his sister mumble.

Nauseous just thinking about what was going to happen to her, Eik squeezed her hand tightly.

"Finally," she whispered.

Huh? With confusion, he looked up at her, his head still resting in her lap. Her eyes were not filled with despair and hopelessness like he had expected. He followed her gaze to the helmet of the newly arrived armor.

Until then Eik hadn't realized that where the metal of the armor of the caped bastard was a grayish black, this one was blindingly golden plates with rims of deep, navy blue. The helmet was open, the visor pushed up to show the face of the wearer.

It was Andihar Dayarunar, the S-ranked elven fighter whose enormous palace Eik had woken up in after saving the man's daughter. He sent Eik a smile that filled him with relief despite the chaos still raging all around. A titanic sword with a splatter of blood across the blade was slung lazily across his shoulder.

"You're late," Eik coughed.

"I'm sorry. I had to gather a few people," Andihar said somberly as armored Awakened after armored Awakened dropped from the swirling portal like a rain of metal statues. Immediately they scattered in all direction, engaging cultists with overwhelming power.

"They're gone. Everybody's been taken away," Eik cried, thick tears pushing their way out. "I couldn't do anything to save them." His vision was blurring, but his mind was still clear.

Olivia held his head in her hands. "There are many people left that we have to save. They're not all gone, Eik."

"I wonder," the armored cultist huffed, peeking out from the podium. "They will be soon." His arm was gone, severed cleanly at the shoulder by Andihar when he had descended from the sky. Or rather, while it had been a clean cut at the time, a disgusting, tentacle-like growth was now wiggling its way out of the wound that had already stopped bleeding.

From the slim appendage, fresh, red flesh grew, gradually turning into a new arm. It was a ghastly sight. The arm was thin and white as bone with long black hairs growing infrequently from skin that resembled dry, frail parchment more than anything else. Eik felt Olivia shiver.

The armor didn't recover. Then, thrown by a cultist on the ground, a human from Forest was tossed up and the newly grown hand pierced her through the chest as she gasped and died. Eik's stomach turned as the blood ran down the cultist's arm and across the black armor. And when it did, the metal began to regrow segment by segment as he snickered.

"You fu—" Eik snarled but was cut off by Andihar who stepped in front of them. His forces still continued to emerge from the fracture.

"I suppose I should be thanking you," Andihar said. "I can never get enough of cutting down you dumb, culty bastards. Your will not accomplished what you had hoped here." Both his appearance and his speech were that of the heroic main character. Eik thought it would be better if he just cut the asshole down first and left the yapping for later, although he realized he was hardly one to talk.

"We already got what we came for. All of this," he did a sweeping motion with his arms. "is just a bonus."

Andihar's wife, the A-rank healer Molanda, was suddenly next to Eik, pouring medicine down his throat. Two seconds later he stood on his own, body feeling energized and healed. "This will keep you going for the next five minutes or so. After that you'll feel your injuries again." It was the same medicine he had been given after coming out of round one of the Championships.

Red eyes inside the black helmet bore into Eik's. "There's just one last thing I want before I go."

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