“Open it,” Eik said firmly, his words ringing with aura as they permeated the room as if they were made of liquid.

  “Y-Yes… sir,” he stammered and ran to the platform in the corner of the room that was specifically built with proper extra space in case a fracture would need to be opened inside. Before he could make it there, he came to a screeching stop on the clean floors and huffed it back to his desk, clearly painfully aware of the multiple pairs of extremely high-ranked eyes watching his every moves like hawks with laser rifles taped to their backs.

  “I, uuh— I forgot my calculations. Sorry…” He ducked in apology as he ran past Eik again.

  “No worries, buddy,” Eik said with a relaxed smile—another gesture he had to force himself to perform.

  As much as he would have loved to kick the guy’s ass into gear and get this fracture open in the next second, that would only make the portal specialist more flustered and cause him to work even more slowly.

  Eik was used to working with fracture specialists who had cooler heads than almost anybody, but this guy spent his days in here, sipping drinks and doing calculations quietly at his desk. Being ordered to complete a task that could alter the fate of the Unified Mass by possibly the most powerful man in the universe was just slightly more stressful with just sli ghtly higher stakes.

  “I’m going with you,” Andihar announced as he stepped up behind Eik, already donning his golden armor, blade, and the crystal-encrusted shield. Gul was right behind him.

  “I would really prefer it if you stay here,” Eik declined carefully. “Considering the fact that these blackouts could very possibly signal an escalation on the part of the Lord of the Moon, it would help me work more effectively if I knew you guys were here to keep things safe in Gimleh.”

  Gul threw a glance in Chop’s direction, who was sipping hot chocolate from a bottle. He was yet another poor soul whom Eik had lured into the heavenly well of the brown wine. “Isn’t he staying?”

  “Yes,” Eik said with an arched brow. “which is exactly why I need someone here who can kick him into gear if shit hits the fan while I’m away.”

  “Eik… Isn’t there a way we can be of h—”

  “I’ll be honest here, Andi,” Eik interrupted, holding up a hand to his mouth as if to keep the others from hearing his words but failing to speak very quietly at all. “I know I always seem like the kind of super clever guy who goes into everything with a thoroughly concocted strategy, but I must admit that my plan this time is rather… simple, if you catch my drift. It really only requires me.”

  Chop giggled, drawing eyes, but didn’t say anything.

  “Well, if that’s all settled, then I think I’m going to get going, all right?” Eik said and inched toward the humming fracture. “Gotta go now. No time to waste, right?” His eyes flickered from face to concerned face, his lips pursed. “Okay, see ya!” he hollered and dove through the shimmering, blue portal.

  ***

  Eik emerged into… a hell of a stink.

  There was really no better way to describe it since it was otherwise pitch black, Eik’ own azure eyes glittering just brightly enough to allow him to see the swirling miasma that totally permeated the air.

  He coughed. Then he coughed again. And then he coughed again. And then again.

  “Fuckin’… hell!” he muttered to himself between fits. “This is worse than I thought… and stankier”

  Although he now wished he had thought of it ahead of time, his aura snapped into place around him to shield his painfully keen senses from the flowing miasma.

  If nothing else, he could conclude that the ground beneath his feet remained in place and gravity still pulled him downward. So the world had most certainly not vanished. Their assumption that the miasma was interfering with the analysts’ skills seemed to be accurate thus far.

  Taking a few tentative steps away from the humming fracture, Eik leaped high into the air. The miasma flowed thickly all the way up. It likely filled the entire atmosphere.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  As he began to fall back down, he took note of the spiritual pressure generated by the proximity to the active Chasm. What had been pretty noticeable before now felt so weak that he had to focus in order to feel it, like noticing the legs of a mosquito latching onto the skin to suck blood.

  X-rank for the win!

  When he touched back down, the fracture had already flickered away, leaving him essentially stranded until the portal was reopened from the Gimleh side at the appointed time. Opening fractures that someone with his power level could actually pass through took serious additional juice but it was something they had made sure to prepare for in advance of any such travel.

  Naturally, he had brought one of the same beacon stones he had used to contact his allies before but at this point, it was honestly more than a little uncertain whether such a signal would be able to penetrate the thick miasma when seemingly nothing else could.

  Not that it mattered. He had no intention of getting into any trouble he couldn’t handle before it was time to go back.

  “Now, shall we have a quick look at this freakin’ disaster before we move on?” he asked his Living Manifestations as thousands of smaller fellas poured out of him.

  They scattered like ants, covering an enormous area in moments, Eik following along here and there through Eyes of the Beast which allowed him to feel through his summons’ senses and see through their eyes.

  Within seconds, he lost contact with the first few of the Profound Toxic beasts as their existences were snuffed out from one moment to the next. Since their purpose was nothing more than scouting, he hadn’t bothered to give them any real fighting power, but they weren’t so weak as to stumble over their own feet and crack their membranous heads open.

  Something was taking them out.

  A few more seconds passed, and more than a hundred more of the little guys were obliterated.

  Well, if nothing else, that was another piece of information to bring back to the others. The dark worlds were most certainly not abandoned. As a matter of fact, given the rate of destruction of his minions—about a hundred per second at this point—it seemed appropriate to call in colonized.

  It must be absolutely crawling for there to be such rapid destruction across such a large area.

  “Bring me back a couple,” Eik ordered and released a much larger Living Manifestation and sent it rushing into the darkness. This one was stronger than a regular S-ranker, so it could probably take whatever was wreaking havoc out there.

  It was kind of funny to realize how calm he felt in the situation. Whether it was a psychological effect of the X-rank evolution or the simple fact that nothing but the Lord of the Moon himself could threaten his life anymore, he couldn’t honestly say.

  All he could say was that he was filled with a steel-plated conviction that he was going home alive.

  It was when he was following the larger Living Manifestation through Eyes of the Beast that something slammed into his side like a truck, breaking his connection to the summon. Thrown off his feet by the force of the impact, he practically skipped across the ground like a stone across a tranquil lake.

  As his body came to a skidding stop, he climbed to his feet and patted down his dirtied clothes. “Eggs and bacon, man… Right when something interesting was about to happen too.”

  With narrowed eyes, Eik peered into the miasma but still saw absolutely nothing.

  Then, in the next moment, a maw lined with flat, human-like teeth, and a jaw that was gaping so widely that it resembled that of a python more than anything else, erupted out of the swirling substance like a rocket.

  Wicked eyes stared at its prey with grinning glee as it prepared to crush the human’s skull.

  “Never mind!” Eik shouted into the darkness as his fingers closed tightly around the spawn’s throat, arresting its momentum in a single, effortless instant. “I already found another one.”

  The monster struggled futilely against his grip, snarling and writhing as its broad grin was quickly replaced by that miserable frown Eik so loved to see. “Y-You… You will… peri—”

  “All right, anyway,” Eik muttered and crushed the thing’s jaw as if it were a paper cup, speaking directly to the thing. “I’m so glad I didn’t just eradicate this place the moment I got here. You know, I promised my friends at home, that I would get some more of you to study. But, oh!” he sighed as he padded his belt pouch of holding.

  The spawn’s eyes followed his every move, now silent save for a wet gurgle. It’s bone and tissue were trying to regenerate but his firm grasp made it impossible.

  “For a moment there, I forgot that you can’t put living stuff into a bag of holding. Pretty silly of me, wouldn’t you agree?” he asked, ripping its head off in one, smooth movement and stuffing everything into a pouch.

  “Oh, crap!” he exclaimed, slapping himself on the forehead. “They wanted a live specimen, not this garbage! Hey, I do need a couple more after all!” he called into the miasma.

  All of his smaller summons had perished by now so he released two more large ones and knelt down to get a close look at the ground. When he had been thrown to the ground earlier, it had been covered in something.

  Ash? Crumbling it between index finger and thumb, he gave it a sniff. Definitely not ash.

  A few handfuls of soil revealed a brittle and shallow but vast root net. Grass? Was this grass? But it was gray and dry to the point of breaking under even the smallest bit of pressure like an autumn leaf in a competitive sauna league.

  The question was whether this was a consequence of the miasma or a natural phenomenon of this specific world. Sure, most worlds in the Unified Mass were usually not too dissimilar from each other, but colorless, brittle grass wasn’t that weird, all things considered.

  Just as he was studying a bush in similar condition, his summons returned with three spawns of the Lord of the Moon. The spawn were strong enough to actually offer some resistance against the Living Manifestations but not quite to the point of actually breaking free.

  “Great work, guys!” Eik praised and encased all three monsters completely in crystalline toxin. “This will keep them safe, probably.”

  Now, where was he?

  Ah, yes, that’s right. Complete and utter eradication of all life.

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