Eik woke up gasping as he frantically grasped at the gash in his throat. His last memories were of his vision darkening as he bled out right there in the arena.

It was intact. There was no bleeding gash to desperately fumble to put pressure on. No darkening vision as his consciousness faded. As a matter of fact, no matter how he felt around the skin, it was now smooth and unharmed.

Had he been saved quickly or… brought back to life? Nah, that shit was pure fiction, obviously. Eik knew for a fact that a sufficiently powerful healer could mend even such a grievous wound in time to save the victim.

It seemed pretty obvious that the healing skill previously demonstrated by Gih the Madman, as he now knew the cultist in the black armor as, was not at a level like that. The old man, then? But he had been the one who sliced his throat in the first place.

A scare tactic, perhaps? Eik was drenched in cold sweat. If it was a scare tactic, it had fucking worked.

He was sitting in a cell quite like the one he had spent the past weeks in already, except this one wasn't quite as nice. No, actually, the only thing that was really similar was the cubed shape and the thick pane of reinforced glass that allowed him to look outside.

Three of the walls were reinforced stone, which he couldn't break even for the brief moment where he activated all personal buffs he had access to, including Monarch's Will. Across from his cell was another identical cell, empty.

If he squished his face up against the glass, he could see a couple more rows of cells further down a corridor, but it didn't look like there were any prisoners in those either. He seemed to be in a cell at the very bottom of the hallway, the end of which he couldn't see from this angle.

Now that he was back in a cell, was it just a matter of time before someone would be by with a knife to restart the torture that he had almost gotten used to? Hopefully not.

Wherever this was, there were no windows, skylights, or outer doors to offer an indication of the time. It could be noon or midnight for all he knew. Well, waiting was something he could do.

He sat down with his back against the inner stone wall of his cell and checked his status. The level ups were done with, but something he had been hoping for did announce itself.

[Skill evolution available. Skill available for evolution: (Unique) Profound Toxin]

[Choose one]

[Profound Toxin — Infected Trail]

[Profound Toxin — Eager Dispersal]

[Profound Toxin — Panacean Quintessence]

Panacea? As in medicine? Was he getting a healing ability? No, that couldn't be right. It didn't make any sense. Profound Toxin was about as offensive and destructive of a skill as they came.

But how the hell else was he supposed to understand this? Quintessence was just some kind of fancy word that didn't really reveal anything about the trait on its own, but panacea seemed too straightforward to be anything else.

Healing saved lives. And there were many lives to be saved, not to mention his own from time to time.

Without further consideration, he chose Panacean Quintessence.

Immediately he knew that this trait wasn't just another healing ability.

Focusing on his mind, he activated Panacean Quintessence and felt the sensation fill his entire body like a hot soup going through your esophagus and into your stomach on a cold morning. It was comforting.

Calling out a fist-sized globule of Profound Toxin proved his suspicion. The normally blue toxin was now a bright, lime green. Panacean Quintessence was the soft healing version of Visage of Death. It fundamentally changed the properties of Profound Toxin to heal instead of kill.

Reverting to regular toxin, Eik conjured a blade of blue and hissed as he sliced a deep gash into his own arm. No pain no gain, or however the hell it went.

With a thought he entered Panacena Quintessence again and called forth a new mass of lime liquid and poured it all over the wound. Instantly, he felt relief spread all across the site of the injury. There didn't seem to be any actual pain relieving properties, but the gentle, cool sensation made the pain more tolerable.

Being high C-rank, his natural physical regeneration was already quite powerful, so that likely also had something to do with it, but a gash of that size still closed up completely in only about a minute. And when he added the boost of Monarch's Will on top, it was pushed down to sub forty seconds.

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This would change everything.

With a sigh, he drew another deep line of blood across his skin. This time he released a few puffs of green mist to inhale. The liquid hadn't, but this definitely provided pain relief. Quite effectively as well.

It was like modern medical grade pain killing drugs without the brain fog. He still felt completely lucid although the still bleeding wound barely hurt more than a mosquito sting at this point. The effects persisted for a good number of minutes after inhalation, the pain returning gradually.

He tested the solid form of Panacean Quintessence but it appeared to just do the same thing as the liquid form.

Backflow ala Panacean Quintessence simply seemed to grant a general, full body healing effect that didn't target anything in particular.

He did some more testing, just to be sure that it worked as he thought, but otherwise spent the next many hours waiting for whatever would happen next.

Without a proper sense of time, it was difficult to say just how long he really sat there. Hours? At least. Days? Most likely. Weeks? Probably not. He spent much of the time with his mind deeply engrossed in his aura.

Meditating while under the effects of Monarch's Will seemed to make Profound Toxin obedient to the point of complete servitude. Like a soldier bowing to its emperor. And this meant that, almost too easily, he became capable of fusing the two forces into the substance he had found out could create Eik's Legendary Mystery Medicine.

None of the pain, suffering, and fear of death and crippling was necessary to create it now. He sort of just ordered Profound Toxin to act nice and assimilate to the nature and essence of the Ak'ki as well as it could and it seemed to work.

Before Monarch's Will, such esoteric and abstract commands would have been beyond his abilities. Now, however, he could release it into his aura for the first time. What that did, he could not say right now.

All he could say for sure was that the essence of Profound Toxin weaved intricately into the aura gave the otherwise transparent, white haze a blue tinge.

Even though the process of actually producing the substance had become magnitudes easier, it was still the most draining thing he could do with his ability, he found. He couldn't maintain it for long yet.

For however long he waited, he kept practicing with his aura.

Hour after hour, until finally, the clack of a door somewhere down the hall reached his ears and he sat up. More than anything, he hoped that whoever it was had brought something to drink and a plate of food. He hadn't had anything to drink since the evening before the black armor— no, Gih the Madman had come to transport him to that cursed fighting arena.

The steps were light. Soon, the terrifying old man came into view, looking just as not at all terrifying as he had in the arena. He was short, thin, and frail. So how the hell had he managed to move so fast and with such power and precision back then?

"Where am I?" Eik asked.

The old man put his face all the way up to the glass. With narrowed eyes he studied Eik for a long minute. Even when Eik repeated the question twice, no response was offered.

"Just what…" the old man muttered to himself in a quiet drawl. "What is with you?" He was speaking as if he was pondering a strange phenomenon or the weird behavior of a laboratory animal.

"What? What are you talking about?" Eik asked.

Again, the old man completely ignored his question and changed the topic. "My name is Oru, the Devouring Maw. Great General of Moon Shall Swallow."

"The Devouring Maw? What does that mean?"

"I suppose you must be hungry? Thirsty?" This bastard seemed to purposefully start a topic only to abandon it the moment Eik opened his mouth. Petty old fart…

"Haven't had anything to drink in like a week, I feel like."

"It hasn't been a week," the old man deadpanned. "You look fine."

"Yeah, thanks…" Eik mumbled, massaging his throat. A tray with a plate with some kind of filled buns was pushed through the same type of slit in the glass that had been in the other cell. A container of water followed. Eik accepted gratefully. "Why are you here?"

"I've come to bring you somewhere," the old man said, finally answering one of Eik's questions.

"Where have I heard that before?" Eik sighed, rolling his eyes. "Where am I going this time?"

"The Temple of Restoration."

"Wh— What's that?" Eik asked, taken aback. He hadn't actually expected Oru to tell him so easily.

Oru began to unlock the cell as he spoke. "The home of our hallowed oracle. And the site of the eventual awakening of our deity, the Lord of the Moon."

"Okay, and… why, exactly, am I going there?"

"Our oracle would like to speak with you."

"Me? Why the hell would your oracle want to speak to me? Actually, before that, how does your oracle even know that I exist?"

"I've been asking myself that very question for a while now. She will tell you that herself if she deems it right."

Eik frowned. "Is that why you had me thrown into that damned arena? To find out what was so special about me?"

Suddenly refusing to answer, Oru, the Devouring Maw pulled him from the cell and pushed him down the hallway, forcing him to shovel the food into his mouth as he walked. Why had he even brought it all the way here if he wasn't going to let him take a few minutes to eat in peace?

The old man didn't bother to put him in a modified iron maiden like Gih the Madman had done. Not even a pair of manacles to keep him in check. Then again, what would be the point? Eik didn't have to throw hands to know he would be obliterated the moment a fight between the two of them began.

The walk to the Temple of Restoration wasn't very long. Unlike Gih's personal laboratory, whatever building Eik had been held at seemed to be quite central. A lot more of the buildings in this area seemed to be unique, whereas the rest of the city was just carbon copy after carbon copy.

The temple was the biggest building yet. A central spire of black stone rose hundreds of meter into the air, large rings of an unknown material and held aloft by an unknown force encircling the structure.

The air inside was cool and dry, guards swarming the place like ants in a colony. The reverence they showed Oru was a testament to his power and status within the cult.

Eik was rushed through the temple so fast that he didn't have time to take it in properly, and before he knew it, they had stopped in front of a gigantic set of double door, guards flanking them on each side.

"Go in. She knows you're here."

"You're just going to let me go in to your precious oracle without supervision? Aren't you afraid of what I might do given the chance?"

"You won't," the old man stated with confidence.

Eik pushed open the door and let them close behind him again before he continued further into the room. It was completely bare with not even a chair to sit in. A large, glittering veil spanned the room from one wall to the other, obscuring half of the space. All Eik could see was the silhouette of a person.

A twinkling, feminine voice spoke from behind the veil. "Eik Magnasen. I have been awaiting your arrival."

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