"No, dad!" Eik screamed, panicked, the sound of his booming voice reverberating throughout the dense woods. But his words fell on deaf ears, Rasmus showing no signs of stopping at all.

The roiling flame coming to life within the smooth beak only continued to grow, far larger than what it had prepared for its previous breath attack. His father would have absolutely no hope of surviving something like that.

If there were C-rankers or weaker people among the Awakened on the ground — a group of twenty, which made it likely, then such an attack from an A-ranker would probably take out most of them as well. Briefly, Eik wondered how they had even managed to take down the first of them.

Desperation guiding his hand, Eik reached for the smooth beak, several tendrils of Profound Toxin snaking out swiftly like striking cobras. Even as the flame grew ever more radiant, the blue appendages slithered into and around the large maw, filling and crystallizing absolutely everything.

With temperatures that Eik could hardly guess at, the fire instantly melted the solid toxin immediately around it like candle wax against a blow torch, but Eik kept sending out more and more without slowing.

Her whole body like a torch, Olivia appeared in front of the building flame. Before the ability could completely manifest, she sent a bolt of flame of her own into the bird's open beak. Being angled behind the creature as well as throwing up four layers of toxic shells saved Eik from being flung off the monster's body as the interference caused the half-finished blaze to explode violently.

Both the facts that it had been incomplete and that it had still been within the beak at the time of detonation likely reduced the overall potential power of the explosion many times over.

Even though it had been its own attack, the A-ranker was clearly shaken, and the crystallized toxin that Eik had managed to build up over the past few seconds was shattered and sent flying. Olivia too hurtled away, crashing through several trees as she disappeared into the canopies.

The moment the monster recovered—and it took only a second—another fire ignited and began to grow, smoke still billowing from the blackened beak. Olivia seemed to be in no position to help so Eik started over, the toxin flowing up and around the face.

Occupied by the constant stream of attacks from the Scandinavian Awakened, the bird had no time to shake him off, resorting to only physical attacks with its wings and feet as it prepared the fiery destruction.

With a glance, he saw that his father had made it almost halfway to him, now more than within range to be utterly incinerated. And if the bird began to thrash and struggle as it died, Rasmus would almost certainly die.

In the ten years since they had last seen each other, his father had grown a thick, full beard that reached the middle of his chest. Since Eik's mother would complain about itching when kissing or cuddling, he had always been careful to keep it shaven.

But now there was no longer any reason to. Caroline was gone and Rasmus had been forced to come to terms with that. Although it didn't seem like he had managed to do so healthily, considering what Laura and her friend had told them about him. He had lost the will to care for his own life and throwing himself into any and all danger presented to him. Truly, if he had gone about life so recklessly for two years, it was nothing short of a miracle that he was still alive to reunite with his son today.

"Dad, please stop running!" Eik roared and for the first time, Rasmus seemed to comprehend the words he was hearing. Coming to a skidding stop, he gaped up at the giant towering so high above him.

"Eik, what are you doing?" he yelled, cupping his mouth to direct the sound. "You're going to get yourself killed!" Rasmus' eyes revealed every milliliter of terror he felt as he watched his son cling onto the feather of a huge bird monster, blue goo slithering out from his hands like a jelly-making machine set to 'bubblegum flavor only'.

"I'm fine dad! I'm strong!" Eik answered, the crystalline toxin now reaching past the bird's beak and flowing up to cover its eyes, leaving it blinded. "Just… get away! Please! I don't want to lose you again! It's been ten years! Please don't die!" he pleaded.

His father nodded and made to retreat but as he began to move, the flying beast, frightened by its sudden inability to see anything, suddenly jerked forward and slammed the serrated beak into the ground, impaling and immediately killing a woman preparing to cast a green bolt of energy.

The moment it stood back up, the charged flame looked ready to go. The death of his parent flashing in his mind's eye, Eik launched himself up toward the back of the fire-breathing head. He conjured a smooth disk of crystalline toxin with a thin, needle-like protrusion in the middle of the flat and slammed it into the flesh of the base of the bird's skull.

It didn't pierce fully, but it didn't have to. He just needed it to connect. With a thought, he triggered Accelerant in that creation, as well as the impromptu mask of toxin, to devastating effect. The explosion which essentially crushed its head from all sides couldn't stop the bird's attack from being released, but it did ensure that it didn't go directly into the group of human's below.

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Rather than a stream of fire, a compact bolt of heat energy came out, sailing wide of the general gathering of Awakened and impacting the trees ahead.

An explosion that shook the earth ripped up trees and super-heated the air, bathing them in a blistering pulse of pain. The wave of fire that raced out from the point of impact reached more than a hundred meters in each direction, boils visibly appearing on Eik's father's skin as he screamed.

Even with one destroyed head, the A-rank monster's other head didn't seem particularly interested in lying down to die.

Two more gigantic steps that ripped up everything from the forest floor brought the creature, with Eik still hanging on by a feather, into range of his fleeing father. Another peck of the beak left a crater ten meters across, the force of the explosion throwing Rasmus off his feet and sending him tumbling across the ground where he hit his hip on a rock with a crack and a scream.

"No!" Eik howled and pumped Backflow past limits he had thought impassable. He screamed as his skin ripped itself from his flesh in glowing blue strips, coming off his body as he screamed.

But even then he didn't allow his determination to fade. On the periphery of his vision he could still see his father prone on the ground. Having fallen unconscious, he was now defenseless.

Eik noticed the fading of the pain before the color shift even registered. When you were frantic and stressed out, the relatively subtle difference between blue and purple really wasn't something you paid any kind of attention to.

The third thing to become apparent was the madness. Eik had always thought of it as something that didn't happen overnight—much less in an instant—but the insanity washed over his mind from one moment to the other.

His feelings must have had at least some manner of influence over him even in this mental state, because rather than the crazed, cackling glee he had been overcome by when Backflow ala Visage of Death had first coursed through his veins, a profound, black rage plunged into the pit of his stomach where it seemed to shout for him to act. To kill. To maim. To massacre.

And caught in the grips of the Visage of Death as he was, he obliged.

An army of purple Living Manifestations streamed out of his sleeves, diving straight for the closest wounds they could find without bothering to merge.

Abruptly, the bird flung itself sideways in an athletic spin that should have been impossible to do with a body and a physicality like that. Eik, who was still clutching a feather along the back of the creature's shoulder, was hurled skyward by the momentum as if fired by a catapult.

As the massive body came around and the bird looked directly up at Eik, it whipped its head violently, the serrated spikes on the beak coming loose in a flurry. Five layers of blue appeared in extension of each other in front of Eik, immediately shattering into pieces as the spikes crushed through them.

The effects of thirty five Living Manifestations under Visage of Death flowing aggressively through its system were beginning to take effect, although the reaction was difference from the fear the hydra had shown. Eyes wide, the bird's entire body seemed to tremble as its screeched in deranged wrath. Its movement shifted from controlled to erratic and reckless.

When the fragments scattered and melted into liquid Eik was nowhere to be seen. The A-ranker was caught in the back by the close-combat B-rank fighter as Eik, shifted into Toxic Liquefaction, dove into an open wound.

For over ten seconds, he poured liter after liter of toxin out inside its body before he ejected himself back into the world.

Anger urging him to make it hurt, Eik willed all of the toxin to gather into thousands of little crystals. Immediately, the monster's demeanor shifted, fury yielding to fear.

Huh. Were the feelings elicited by Visage of Death determined by the state of matter of the Profound Toxin affecting it? The liquid state caused an intense feeling of anger while the solid state pulled the victim into a spiral of fear that was then heightened by the activation of Accelerant, like he had seen when he rode the hydra out through the underground tunnel system back in the Championship challenge forest.

Even through his own dark wrath, there was a sliver of curiosity as to how the enormous A-ranker would react if he Accelerated a liquid form of the toxin under Visage of Death but he quickly dismissed the thought. This was only ending one way—his own overwhelming victory.

Shifting out of Visage of Death, the Profound Toxin followed suit and with a thought, every single one of the tiny shards of poison inside the bird's body detonated, ripping it apart from head to toe. Blood poured out from everywhere, drenching the monster in mere moments.

Collapsing under its own weight, it died then and there.

Immediately, Eik's wooden plaque was buzzing like crazy under his shirt and normally he would have been ecstatic at the prospect of the rewards for killing an A-rank monster as a C-ranker, however he barely noticed it as he ran to his father.

"Dad!" he gasped, ice-cold fear pulling taut his stomach and sending shivers through his hands and fingers. Eik's legs almost betrayed him as he ran for his father, the strain of having used Backflow at maximum output making itself known. The fact that he could actually run to his father, however, made clear just how much better he could withstand the adverse effects at this point.

Perhaps Perfect Consumption didn't just boost medicines and potions, but also the power of his own toxin on his body. With how much he had advanced recently, even just since hitting C-rank, he was having trouble figuring out what power-up was thanks to what ability or trait. The struggle of the powerful…

His father Rasmus had his face in the forest soil, lying deathly still. Oh, no… It couldn't be.

With only a few steps to go, a fist suddenly came for his face. Now that both the effects of Potion of Mighty Strength class 3 and Backflow had faded, Eik was incapable of reacting in time to avoid or block the blow.

He must have lost consciousness for a few seconds because he woke up on the ground. Groggily and with his head ringing, he looked up. He must have been punched almost ten meters back and slid through the dirt. His father still lay untreated on the ground.

As the Scandinavian Awakened stepped forth to block his way, fury entirely independent of Visage of Death welled up in him.

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