"Monster?" Eik asked, his stomach tying itself into a knot. "What monster?"

Others had now climbed out of the same leaf-covered burrow and came up to join the conversation. After Laura, Eik's neighbor from another life had recognized him as someone she knew, the initial trepidation of the others had lifted at least somewhat.

Another woman, whom Eik could tell right away he did not know, had approached at a jog. "A while back our previous base was found and attacked by a gigantic monster. It destroyed everything and killed so many," she said with a hand on Laura's back when she found it difficult to answer. The woman spoke Swedish but Eik understood it well enough for the translation spell to only translate a few choice words that he apparently wouldn't have caught. "We had to run away from there."

"Yeah, we found your old base," Olivia said with a nod. "That's how we made it here, by following some shoe prints that led away from the scene."

The woman's jaw tensed. "Well, the strongest of us actually managed to kill the monster that attacked us. But we didn't know it had a companion that was as strong as the first one, or maybe even stronger. It revealed itself to us in an attack about a month ago and we managed to drive it off back then but not defeat it. Our fighters located it and attacked again a couple of weeks ago, but they had to retreat."

"And now?" Eik asked.

"Now they're trying one more time to hopefully kill it completely."

"Why did my dad go? Is he strong?"

"No, he's… He's become reckless ever since Caroline, uh, your mom, passed away two years ago. It's like he stopped caring about his life. Together they had held onto the hope of seeing you and your brother again some day. When she died, I think that hope died with her and he lost any care he had for his own life and well-being."

A deep sob rocked Eik as he listened. They'd suffered so much while he had lived more or less peacefully. Guilt jolted like lightning from his brain, through his heart and into his stomach, filling him. He should have come for them sooner. Much sooner.

The moment he learned of fracture travel he should have fallen to his knees at Mikla's feet and begged to be sent here. He couldn't have saved his mother in time, but maybe he could have spared his father some suffering. Even one second less of what he must have been going through would have been fine.

But no, he had been too afraid of what he might learn to even attempt to search for them. What a pathetic, ungrateful, egotistical little shit he was.

"What's my dad's rank?"

This time it was Laura who answered. "I think he's at the final stage of E-rank, if I recall," she said with a glance at her friend who nodded in agreement.

"And he went to fight a monster that's, what, A-rank?" Eik exclaimed, franticness creeping into his voice and face. "How in the world is he hoping to help against something like that if he's only E-rank?"

Laura looked as sick with worry as Eik felt. "He said that, when someone's injured, he'll run in and drag them away so they might be able to survive. We tried to stop him, but he wouldn't lis—"

"Where is it?" Eik hissed, seizing Laura by the shoulders and shaking her so hard that she yelped in pain, forgetting how much stronger he was. "Tell me where to go to help!"

"Eik!" Olivia shouted, pulling him away.

A man pointed into the trees. "A little more than ten kilometers that way!" he shouted.

"Thank you!" Eik said as he zoomed past at a speed boosted to the extreme by two Potions of Mighty Strength class 3 as well as a medium strength Backflow. Branches and trunks whistled by as the air howled past his ears like gale force winds. Pushing Movement Boost to its limits, Eik moved faster than he ever had before.

With a single glance over his shoulder, he saw that Olivia was lagging behind, looking just as surprised as him at that fact. But he couldn't afford to slow down for her. Against an aggressive A-ranker, even a broken finger nails could fly with enough force to take his life in a heartbeat. Every second could be the difference between his father's life and death.

The only reason why he didn't push Backflow to the maximum was that he retained enough reason, even among the chaos that was his mind, to realize that he would probably need that for the fight he was about to jump into.

As he leapt from branch to thick branch, he awkwardly reached his hand back to rummage through the rucksack of holding on his back and retrieved the beacon stone he had gotten from Mikla. When they found the site of the battle, he'd smash it.

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Judging by the previous times they had used it, it would take at least fifteen minutes for a fracture to actually appear, but the faster they could get reinforcements the better.

Additionally, he fished out the emergency beacon stone that Andihar Dayarunar had gifted him. This one he hadn't used before, but considering the idea behind it, he was hoping for a swifter response that the non-emergency version. He was hoping for something shorter than five minutes, but he wasn't sure if that was something he could realistically expect purely from a logistical standpoint.

Soon distant booms reached his ears and he somehow increased his already ridiculous speed even more. Olivia had fallen further behind but would still only be seconds behind him probably.

He hadn't had the time to ask what type of monster it was, nor whether it had originally emerged from a gigantic fracture and been spat out directly on top of their first base, but when a titanic bird suddenly rose up from the tree tops, he got his answer to all of it. It hadn't simply appeared out of nowhere. It had flown in to attack them.

A massive, five meter long spear of radiant blue materialized in his hand as a full load of Living Manifestations poured out of him. They merged even as they fell toward the ground, flowing smoothly into the forms of the speedy flyers he had managed to take out with his explosive forehead within the Profound Toxic realm.

Although their speed was impressive as they jetted toward the massive birds whose attention was still wholly focused on the ground below it, they too couldn't keep up with Eik.

Like an Olympic javelin athlete, he crossed three more large branches as he wound up for a massive throw and let it fly, empowered by a localized, fully powered application of Movement Boost. It blasted off like a bullet shot from a sniper rifle, piercing the air with a crack.

Eik never slowed as he prepared another and repeated the feat just as the first one made contact. It caught the monstrous bird under the wing, knocking it off balance as it buried itself in the limb.

It was midnight black like a raven, but Eik could honestly say he had no clue what bird it had evolved from. For one, it had not just one but three pairs of wings running down the sides of its body. It also had two heads.

One of the beaks was absolutely covered in sharp, serrated protrusion that would make a peck from the beast even more deadly than its size and rank would already ensure. Before Eik's eyes, a gout of angry fire spewed forth from the smooth beak, scorching a long line of trees below. So, at least they'd found the fire user that rivaled Olivia.

As Eik's second thrown spear of solid toxin slammed into the bird's neck, thick, spectral chains whipped up from the forest floor to wrap around the creature, severely limiting its movement.

From its position in the air and the need to keep itself up, it didn't quite seem to have the freedom of movement to free itself. Eik thought he could hear the chains straining against the upward momentum generated by the beats of the monster's wings though, so they probably wouldn't hold it forever.

Moments before Eik himself reached the bird, a man raced up the length of the chains, his fists bathed in swirling, pulsating light. With a defiant yell, he pounded his fist into the massive rib cage, causing the bird to lurch in the air. A relentless barrage of fists followed, the light from his fists seemingly penetrating and flowing into the monster's enormous body.

A wing came down and knocked the man down, sending him hurtling to the ground with a boom, magical projectiles from other Awakened pelting the enemy with varying degrees of success.

In a clenched fist, Eik shattered both beacon stones at once and pushed Backflow to its maximum output, topping up the effects of Potion of Mighty Strength class 3.

Conjuring a gigantic pick axe of blue crystal, he hammered it furiously into the bird's side before it could react to his appearance, ripping open a large gash in its skin through which he had free access to its system as his body reacted to the activation of Toxic Liquefaction.

With the freedom to cause as much mayhem as he pleased, Eik let out all of his ire and wrath in a massive outburst of emotion that sent him on a rampage. Releasing riotous amounts of deadly Profound Toxin, he coursed through the circulatory system like a living plague. And in his passing he left only death and decay.

While Eik was still ravaging the inside, he felt the bird dive suddenly and impact the ground hard. Immediately it was struck from the front but an attack from the back also landed a moment later. Presumably, Olivia had arrive, ablaze and on the offensive.

He never let up on the release of the toxin, all of the anger, hate, grief, and confusion the news of his mother's death and his father's heart wrenching loneliness had brought with it unleashed here in full. Unleashed like a broken dam, both figuratively and literally, as if his tears were being converted into ever more of the deadly poison.

Despite the monster's A-rank body, the harmful effects of his ability were already beginning to show, Eik feeling the tissue throughout the system becoming corrupted and necrotic.

As the monster's movements grew gradually more sluggish, the poison taking its toll, the intensity of the barrage of attacks raining down upon it also increased, the humans suddenly finding more openings to take advantage of.

The duration of Toxin Liquefaction was approaching its limit and Eik ejected himself through a gash in the beast's uppermost shoulder. As he turned human, he caught hold of a massive feather to avoid plummeting to the ground.

A couple of seconds later he heard a quiet voice, full of disbelief, calling his name. In the next moment it was a full-lunged bellow.

"Eik!" It was his father. Eik spotted the man stumbling out from behind a huge tree. "Eik!" Rasmus began to run to his son.

"Dad, no! Dad, wait, don't come!" he howled back, his father's slow dash proving his E-rank clearly. "Dad, stay back! Please!"

But his father didn't listen. His eyes saw nothing but the son he had thought gone forever. A hope he had let shrink into nothing was now relit to the size of a raging fire. The A-rank monster was forgotten completely, only the sight of Eik remaining.

But the fucking chicken was preparing a last stand, fiery breath welling up in its maw, ready to reduce Eik's father to ash.

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