The young man must have activated some kind of movement skill because with a single explosive burst, his speed almost doubled.

Aiming straight for Eik's neck, he brought about the shimmering green blade in a cleaving arc. To any normal human, the movement would have been so swift that it might as well have been a living bolt of lightning.

But Eik simply forged a shell of toxin directly on his shoulder to block the blade while simultaneously catching the young man's wrist in an iron grip.

He held him fast and erupted with a pulse of murderous aura of intimidation, the Ak'ki surging out from every pore of his body. Profound Toxin rose up aggressively behind him like a luminescent shadow of death. The two substances didn't quite fuse, but neither did they go at each other like they used to, showing clear progress in their naughty behavior.

He felt a change in his eyes as they took on that same glowing blue, a faint, eerie mask settling in front of his face in vague imitation of what had been triggered by Visage of Death.

The young man's entire body immediately began to shake in Eik's hand, frightened eyes flickering back desperately to the bearded shield user. The beard stood frozen, his face a painting of stress.

"Kasper…" he said slowly and carefully, as if they were standing face to face with an apex predator. His eyes never left the semi transparent mask of horror hanging freely in the air as it followed the movement's of Eik's face. "Kasper, don't move, understand? Just stay still and relax. And drop the weapon."

A tendril of Profound Toxin slithered across Eik's shoulder to almost caress Kasper's throat. The young man shivered and gave the subtlest of nods in understanding, his fingers mechanically letting go of the spectral sword that faded and disappeared into nothing before it could even hit the ground.

"Eik. You said your name was Eik, right?" the bearded man began, his voice now quivering slightly. "Listen. We'll hear you out, okay? Anything you have to say we will listen to and consider carefully. Okay? Just… Let the boy go, please. He didn't mean any harm. Not really. He's just a hotheat with a weapon that leads before his head."

"What's your name?" Eik asked.

"Harald. Now, please let him go."

Eik regarded the bearded man with narrowed eyes and then the man named Kasper. "Of course," he said and let go of the wrist and dropping all signs of his ability and the intimidating aura. "I'm glad we have all calmed down."

Kasper leapt back the moment he was free, landing in the relative safety of Harald's barriers. Relative in the sense that it was safer than before, but that both Kasper and Harald were painfully aware of the fact that either of the people before them could end their lives at a whim.

Harald elbowed Kasper in the ribs and he immediately let his head fall. "I am so sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. I panicked. Please don't kill the others. It was all me." Admirable. Willing to offer himself up if it meant forgiveness for others.

"No, this was my fault," Harald corrected, eyeing the young man.

Eik waved him off with a frown. "As we've already said many times, we did not come here to kill you, nor to rob you or torture you or whatever else you might be imagining."

This little scuffle had either just terrified them and made them even more wary of the outsiders, or hopefully hammered home how Eik and Olivia hadn't actually acted aggressively thus far despite a now very clear capability to.

It also wasn't lost on Eik how there were certain similarities between how the scene here was playing out and the first time Atla touched down on Earth to deliver her recruitment speech. He hoped the fact that he was a fellow human from Earth would add at least a bit to his trustworthiness.

"All we want is to give you the opportunity to join up with our settlement. It's large and powerful but we've recently… lost a part of our population in an attack," he said, deciding to offer more of the truth than he had initially intended. He just hoped it wasn't a bad move.

"An attack?" Harald asked, his suspicions clearly still very much alive.

Eik eyed Olivia and she nodded after a brief mental deliberation. Eik proceeded to explain, in simple terms, what had happened since the Nidafjeld Alliance had established contact with Forest. He told them about the Unified Mass and the many worlds within it. He spoke of their relationship with the Nidafjeld Alliance but omitted their own misgivings about the alliance and their attitude.

Both Harald and Kasper listened slack jawed, looking thoroughly undecided between mind-blown astonishment and unadulterated disbelief. Eik completely understood how they were feeling. That had also been his general state of mind for a while in the beginning. It was all just so… insane.

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Especially Kasper couldn't hide his discomfort when Eik got the part about the Moon Shall Swallow cult and the deeds they had already carried out in Forest. Eik did not neglect to mention the house Dayarunar and their exceedingly powerful patriarch Andihar Dayarunar. That would hopefully soften the blow of the information about the cult.

It was difficult to see through the beard, but Harald pursed his lips as he mulled over the cascade of surreal exposition. Finally he spoke. "Alright, let's just pretend, for a moment, that we actually believe any of this madness you just said, why would we go with you there? It's sounds exactly like the place we wouldn't want to be."

"First of all," Eik began. "We're going to rescue every last one of those taken away by the Moon Shall Swallow cult. We care enough about our own to do everything we can to get them back," he said to glances from his sister. This was not something they had spoken about, although since so many people had lost loved ones during the invasion, it was likely that it was a notion shared by many.

"Second," he continued. "It's not like we picked a fight with the cult ourselves. The larger groups and civilizations in the Unified Mass are constantly on the lookout for new worlds with which to ally themselves, like in the case of the Nidafjeld Alliance. Other groups, such as the Moon Shall Swallow, want us for more sinister purposes."

"Like what?" Kasper asked, face pale. Every bit the fighting spirit he had exuded when he first charged them had drained away completely.

"I don't know exactly, but we did once find a small cabal of them hiding out in an underground temple on a different planet where they had butchered and eaten some children." At this, even Harald's otherwise stoic expression blanched visibly, his knuckles turning white as he balled up his fists tightly.

"Again, you seem to be arguing against us joining your group," Harald reiterated. "We've never even seen the shadow of these cultists you speak of, not to mention anyone else from a different world."

"Moon Shall Swallow now possess knowledge of Earth and they know how to get here. Whether to pull you into their ranks of faceless fanatics or to harvest organs or whatever from you, we expect them to start searching Earth sooner rather than later. The real question is whether you would prefer to hide from them in fear until they find you or take a stand with us and fight for a chance to survive."

It was a rather black and white way to put it to be sure, but not really false either. What Eik knew of the cult was nothing good, but while he couldn't rightly say that Earth's relationship with the Nidafjeld Alliance was all positive, it was a far cry from the horror he had seen from Moon Shall Swallow. He believed every word when he told Harald and Kasper that living in Forest would be preferable to the literal hole in the ground they currently called home.

"Dad…" Kasper said, looking up at the man they now knew was his father.

Harald shook his head, eyes squeezed shut. "I just don't… I don't know if we can trust you. You show up out of nowhere and make these crazy claims. You have to understand that it all sounds a little strange." At this point the man had dropped his shield, apparently seeing no point in them in the face of an unbeatable opponent.

"I understand. It's a big decision and you have a responsibility to protect your family," Eik said, thinking of the little badge that would send a signal to home to have a fracture opened at their location. "But unfortunately we don't have the option to travel back and forth quite as freely as we would like. We still rely on the help of the alliance for long distance transportation until we can learn it ourselves. We might be able to come back for you another time, but I'd be afraid to promise it with certainty, especially if a monster or some such forces you to move."

If Harald was the strongest here, then they would be hard pressed to handle something like a B-rank monster or a group of C-rankers. And the appearance of an A-ranker would be a death sentence. It would be a matter of time before they were wiped out, and they probably knew that.

"I see…" Harald muttered. His face was pure conflict. "We couldn't go right now anyway. We have injured."

Eik's face lit up. "Maybe we can help with that!"

"How? Is one of you a healer?" the man asked, hope taking hold. "We have someone with a simple healing ability, but it's only E-rank."

"Better," Eik grinned. "We have healing potions."

***

"I can't quite believe that this is real…" Harald mumbled as he watched one of the residents of the hideout lighten up visibly just moments after swallowing the bright red liquid. Tears streamed down the woman's cheeks as she felt the grievous wound in her thigh begin to knit itself together. "Once all this crap started, I was waiting for more game-like stuff to show up but to think even healing potions are a real thing now…"

Once Eik had taken out the potions from his rucksack of holding — a sight that sent Harald and Kasper reeling again — and shaken it around a bit, Harald had finally yielded and let them follow him and Kasper into the depths of their hideout. After all, what was the point of keeping them out? If Eik and Olivia truly wanted to go inside, they could do so whenever they wanted.

There were almost twenty people living in a relatively small space underground. They all looked and smelled like they would do well with a bath but Harald was afraid of monster ambushes to bring them all the way to the water.

They had apparently had two companions who had been stronger than Harald but about half a year back, when a couple of strong monsters had stumbled upon their base, in an attempt to let the rest of them escape safely, they had both been killed. This had left their small group much more vulnerable.

With only four people stronger than E-rank — Harald at low C-rank, Kasper at D-rank along with two others — it was pretty much up to them to ensure everybody's safety. And when they couldn't, people died. Simple as that.

Where Harald had been hesitant about Eik and Olivia's offer to join up with Forest, almost all of the low-rankers in the group jumped at the chance to lead a life of something that resembled normalcy.

Eik saw a sense of failure reflected in the bearded man's eyes and understood. For years, he had been fighting and struggling to make sure those weaker than him could live without pain and death, and it hadn't been enough. In his mind, he had probably let them down. They asked to leave the moment they could after all.

Harald would make a healthy and stable addition to Forest's forces and local community. If they could convince him to come.

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