The attack came with frightening speed. One moment the creepy cultist in the graying black armor was standing on the podium, gazing down at Eik, and in the next, four gloved fingers reached for his face, mere centimeter from his eyes.

Shocked, Eik reared back, but the fingers never touched him, an instantaneous slash of Andihar's great blade separating the limb at the elbow. With a grunt of frustration, the cultist retreated back to the podium.

His entourage of ornately patterned robes gathered around him and this time he didn't stop them. His eyes scanned the enormous, raging battle field and he clicked his tongue in annoyance. With the reinforcement brought in by Andihar and his house of Dayarunar the tide was quickly turning in the favor of Forest and at this point barely any of the cultist were throwing people through the fractures anymore, too busy defending themselves from the onslaught of the elven warriors.

"Dayarunar?" the cultist asked, a new forearm already sprouting from the cut on his elbow.

"The one and only," Andihar replied, tapping an insignia of a some manner of deer-like creature embedded in his polished breastplate, not even a sliver of fear or concern on his elven face.

"I did hear you had a hero complex. Now I see that it's true."

"And I don't have the slightest clue who you are. But then again, what use would it be to me to know who you are when your death is mere minutes away?"

"Heh," the cultist chuckled. Then he exploded forward, a long whip suddenly in his hand, dark red energy traveling up its length from his hand to envelop it completely.

Andihar engaged and they exchanged five or six blows in quick succession that sent deafening booms thrumming out across the square. The fight was vicious and overpowering. Eik could barely believe that such power could be produced by a person.

The elven warrior took a swing of the whip with the cheek of his great sword and when then deadly tail came around in an arch to strike his back, he simply kicked it away without even looking at it.

Andihar handled the colossal blade as easily as if he had been wielding a pool noodle. Occasionally, Eik even felt gusts of wind stirred up by the sheer force of his attacks. In fact, shock waves thrown out by all clashes between the two titanic fighters shook Eik's internal organs like the enhanced bass at a techno music festival.

The first couple of whip strikes Andihar simply side stepped or deflected away from his own body but when the extreme destructive power of the attack took a dozen lives of both cultists and Earthlings by accidental collateral, he was forced to stop them in their entirety.

By that measure, he was at a clear disadvantage against an opponent who viewed the losses as an extraneous consequence.

But how was he even here? Although they hadn't exactly done anything to actually test it, surely Earth couldn't already have reached the point where it could support the power of an S-rank Awakened, could it? They had only just made it past the B-rank ceiling after all. There's no way it would jump from an upper limit of B-rank all the way to at least S-rank. Right?

Then that would mean that the blackened cult leader was also an S-ranker. Was the Earth already being directly and personally targeted by an S-ranker. And had Eik just put himself in the spotlight?

Actually, what the hell did he know? All he knew was what the people from the alliance had told them and even they had admitted that there didn't seem to be any hard and fast rules when it came to the Unified Mass. The essence of the world — the spirit — seemed to operate on whims more than rigid law.

Mikla had told them that once a world began to become saturated with more beings — be it people, monsters, plants, or what have you — with power great enough to push on the spiritual limits and boundaries of the lining of that world, it could propel it toward an accelerated rate of expansion.

Eik's thoughts snapped back to reality when the black armor danced around Andihar's lunge and leapt for him once more. In that split second, Andihar looked worried.

Out of nowhere, Molanda's fist crunched into the helmet of the black armor, radically warping the metal. She followed up with a quick, three strike combination that sent the cultist flying back and away from Eik which allowed her husband to reengage.

"Give me another fracture! Now!" the black armor shouted, franticness sneaking into his voice.

Obeying without a word, one of the patterned robes ripped a fracture in the air, the movement whirling up the deep hood enough to reveal the lower part of their face. Instead of a mouth, two orifices, one of each side seemed to make up the beginning of the digestive system of this particular alien species.

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One was filled with sharp, triangular teeth, like those of a saw blade, that spiraled inward toward the esophagus. The other was simply two flat plate for crushing and mashing. One for flesh and one for fruits and greens perhaps?

The black armor twirled his whip in front of him and a red shock wave sent Andihar flying back, his heavy boots sliding through dirt and pebbles with a metallic rattle.

Without pause the golden warrior leapt back into the fray but the black armor was already in front of the fracture. Another shock wave flew forth, but this time a pulse of energy generated by the swing of Andihar's blade rippled out to meet it.

They clashed with a boom, but at impact the blade wave disintegrated the red energy and bisected one of the patterned cultists cleanly. In the next moment, Andihar's blade came down to strike the death blow.

Sacrificing yet another arm, the black armor used the limb to redirect the course of the heavy blade just enough to only lose half a leg instead of his skull.

The patterned cultists rushed in to aid their leader but Andihar's great sword met them before they could take any action, a broad yet lighting fast horizontal cleave snuffing out the lives of three of them. Two bolts of fire slammed into the pauldron of the golden armor but the elf shrugged it off as if it had been a water balloon.

Another fracture had opened up adjacent to the Dayarunar portal and now poured out countless alliance forces who all went directly to work on exterminating the cultists. At this point the enemy had also begun to deploy additional troops through their many open fractures but the scales were gradually tipping against them.

Andihar's next slash caught the leader in the hip and tore him completely in half with a sound that was lost in the cacophony of war but there was no doubting the damage it had done. One of his minions grabbed the torso before he could tumble to the ground and leapt back into the chaos of battle.

Andihar immediately gave chase but before he could reach them, the minion tossed him bodily through a fracture as the black clad maniac's final whispers slithered into the ears of everyone present in the square. "Thank you for the initiates, and for the supplies. I'll see you again."

A second later, all cultists dove for fractures. The forces of Earth and the forces of the Nidafjeld Alliance did their best to get in their final blows, but refrained from following the enemy into cult controlled territory. One by one, the escape fractures shrunk in on themselves and vanished.

Wails of pain and horror echoed among the survivors. The dead lay silent. And the dead were numerous. Not only the cultists had fallen, but the people of Forest littered the ground as well.

Including those who had been murdered as they were dragged from their homes and those who had willingly gone over to the Moon Shall Swallow to join their abominable ranks, their city had probably lost almost a third of their total population. It was a massacre. An extermination. It was evil incarnate.

"Eik!" Olivia shouted as she appeared by his side. "Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?" she asked frantically, padding him down for injuries like a airport security officer checking for dangerous objects.

"I'm okay, I'm okay, Oli! Somehow. You?"

"Just a few scratches," she said. A few scratches on a B-ranker was still a feat in and of itself. "What h— Hey! Where are you going, Eik? There might still be—"

"I have to go back and find Heath and Sonja! Knowing them, they joined in once it all kicked off. If they're hurt I need to get them back here to get fixed up by Molanda!" he said and ran back they way they had initially come. "You should gather as many injured as you can find to be treated!"

Molanda had already begun casting large scale healing spells — wave after wave of pulsating, teal light streamed from her body as she concentrated, rapidly healing superficial wounds of all those struck by it. Apparently, it also helped her identify more serious injuries because she sent out members of a corps of healers she had brought down with her to treat individuals as she deemed necessary. She directed them with the practiced ease of years of intensive experience.

As he dashed through the battle field, step by miserable step, the true devastation of this abhorrent invasion only became clearer. Could they even recover from this? Even the major monster waves hadn't even caused this much death and suffering.

Countless people lay dead, dying, or injured, and survivors cried over the corpses of their loved ones. The cultists had lost some of their numbers, but considering that they had managed to both get new initiates, to kidnap a large number of Earthlings, as well as commit mass murder, they had gotten a good deal for their sacrifice.

He handed out home made healing chunks and painkillers as he passed but never stopped running. Eik wanted to stop at each and every one of them to offer his help, his condolences, anything. But he didn't. There was a place he needed to go first.

By the time he made it to the outskirts of the battle field where the huge square turned to buildings and streets, his head was on a swivel as he scanned faces for familiar faces. For almost half a minute he looked without seeing either of the two siblings and he began to think — hope — that they had decided to stay in safe and avoid the fight altogether.

But when his eyes searched one of the many streets snaking out from the square, he saw a great, wide back clad in armor and he breathed a sigh of relief. That was without a doubt Heath. The large tank was kneeling by a damage house wall with his back to Eik.

"Heath! I couldn't find you for the life of me! I got worried, man!" he called as he approached. When he got closer he could see the top of Sonja head behind her brother's massive shoulder, her short hair a disheveled mess. "Hey, Sonja! Did you get hurt? I've got an A-rank heal—"

The words caught on his lips when he saw her whole body. Half her neck was simply gone with nothing but charred, exposed flesh where it should have been. Eik came to a shuffling stop as he stared, the surreal sight not registering in his brain whatsoever.

What he was seeing didn't make any sense after all.

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