Whether that was what the purpose had been all along was difficult to say, but Eik could now confirm at least one function of the gradually thickening miasma.

  The ugly ass bastard was reabsorbing all of it into its body, and Eik could feel the weight of its aura mount continuously as more and more flowed in.

  Fucking hell. He couldn’t let it grow too strong.

  A glance told him that his family and friends were still taking cover by the main building so the monster could obviously not be allowed to go there, but at the same time he couldn’t just knock it into the city either. It would cause mass destruction and result in even more lives lost than had already been taken.

  Was he seriously going to have to fight this asshole while keeping its movements confined to the Dayarunar estate ground, minus the central area where the others were? These were some shitty requirements to complete the mission.

  If dumping a powerful spawn in the middle of Gimleh was a deliberate tactic by the Lord of the Moon, then the fucker was becoming a menace much earlier than any of them had expected. They had had all thought that the real threat would be his personal appearance—an assumption that was probably correct, all things considered, but a direct fight was clearly not all the hostile Worldbreaker had to offer.

  And if his spawn had crawled under the radar and been dispatched throughout the Unified Mass as the Alliance feared, then the fact that this particularly powerful specimen seemed to be capable of absorbing the miasma and growing stronger as a result did not make for a good prognosis regarding the timeline of the empowering of the Lord of the Moon.

  If the servant could feed itself with the black substance, then surely the master would be able to do the same.

  This entire conflict might well come to a head much earlier than anyone could have predicted.

  The noise as the black miasma was funneled into the creature was a shrill, dreadful thing that echoed like a banshee’s scream. As it hung there, suspended in mid-air by an unseen force, it slowly turned its ghostly head to stare directly at Eik as he rushed in, that vicious grin splitting its lips once more.

  In situations where they felt like they had the upper hand, that grin would be permanently plastered on their faces but when they were being overwhelmed, it would more or less warp upside down like a a pair of Comedy and Tragedy theater masks, Eik had noticed. The fact that this one now had its wicked grin back meant it was confident in killing him.

  Fuck that.

  Bringing his massive blade to bear, Eik went in for a simple overhead slash, capitalizing on the spawn’s apparent immobilization during the absorption. But instead of eating the attack, one of its deathly thin arms whirled up to catch the blade while the rest of its body remained completely motionless.

  The edge bit deep and severed the skin and flesh between the first knuckles of the thumb and index finger but ground to a halt when it hit bone. Appearing completely unbothered by the injury, the creature closed its fist around the sword, showing for the first time since it had begun to absorb the miasma just how much it was powering up.

  Its strength was in a totally different league from just moments before and if this had been its potential all along, then it made a lot more sense why Profound Toxin seemed to consider it as a worthy offering for his X-rank evolution.

  Eik had been wondering why it didn’t feel like a stronger opponent when that single kill alone could elevate him so drastically. Turns out it was because he had been fighting it in an incomplete state.

  Great… Note to self: don’t celebrate too early.

  Rather than spending time trying to wrest the sword free of the strong grip, Eik instead let it go and let it melt in through the wound. Only half of the Profound Toxin made it into the open wound before the spawn whipped its hand in a wide arch, the momentum alone enough to fling off the otherwise extremely persistent and insistent toxin.

  Streams of liquid toxin flowed about them, pushed into high speeds by Eik’s will. Given the severity of the worsening situation, an open wound like that was like Christmas.

  Blue presents of death went in from all directions and despite the creature’s best efforts to avoid and shake it off, there was just no way to get rid of it all. Slowly but surely, the poison penetrated its defenses and made it into the wound.

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  With the additional effect of inhibition of regenerative capabilities, the wound simply refused to close up properly as the blue killer continued to flow in. Steadily, sickly, dark discoloration spread from the gash and Eik could almost feel the throbbing pain that must be spreading throughout the spawn’s body.

  With a howl of pure fury, the beast ripped its other arm free of the immobilization as if breaking free of chains. A wave of aura unlike anything it had displayed until then surged out and through Eik, paralyzing him if but for a single moment.

  Unfortunately, that moment was all that was necessary for the spawn to tear itself free of the absorption process in earnest. By the time Eik was capable of giving chase, the ugly thing was already in a dive head first toward his friends and family.

  “Oh, no you don’t, you gangly ass piece of shit!” he hissed, once more activating the reverse effect of Summon Royal Guard of the Monarch of Toxin.

  He must have already gotten completely used to the disorientation of teleportation, because his body was moving from the very moment he materialized, weaving his fingers through the air as he conjured a dozen layers of crystalline shells between them and the rapidly approaching monster.

  Rather than sacrificing momentum to correct its straight path, the spawn charged through and shattered layer after layer, barely slowed down by the resistance at all. Briefly, the spawn of the Lord of the Moon wondered if these didn’t feel somewhat more fragile than the blue demon’s other creations.

  As the final shell layer fractured against its might, the spawn suddenly found itself staring down the barrel of a very loaded gun. There was an attempt to bat away the weapon whose function the monster had now become painfully familiar with, but Eik had already pulled the mental trigger.

  Struck at point blank range, the monster’s head snapped back hard before whipping back, brain matter and blood showering Eik. The entire right side of its skull, including the eye and jaw had been erased, leaving behind a corroding mass of burnt flesh, still smoking from the sheer force that had devastated the spawn of the Lord of the Moon.

  “Die,” Eik uttered, almost as a command.

  “It doesn’t…” the creature somehow said even though it shouldn’t even have been capable of forming the thought to form those words, much less actually speak them. “It doesn’t… end with us… I simply… return to… him…”

  “You’re not going to do shit.” Eik fired again, this time at the chest, but, impossibly, the spawn twisted its torso serpentinely, rocked by the shock wave but avoiding the actual projectile.

  As if pulled in by an invisible hand, the beast was yanked off its feet and back toward the still looming miasma. The dense gathering of black sucked it up, eliciting a sense of dread in Eik’s stomach.

  “Fuckin’ hell! Gramps, you’d better keep my family safe, you hear!” he shouted to old man Chop as he leaped into the air after the spawn. “I’ll fight this thing on my own but then you take care of them.”

  ***

  Goo’s jaw was on the ground as he stared after his dad. Glowing under the effects of True Toxic Harmony and with the shimmering, blue cloak of his toxic armaments, the little boy were left with no doubts about his origin. This man was his father through and through.

  And Goo wasn’t the only one left speechless.

  To the point of wanting to rip her own ears off, Thalandi had been forced to listen to more than a few of her fathers stories about Eik Magnasen and, sure, she had been well aware that he was an incredibly powerful Awakened. The soft look of dismayed resignation on her father’s face when he had admitted to being weaker than this virtually brand new high-ranker had told her more than all the stories could.

  Eik Magnasen was the real deal. But that hadn’t meant that she had acknowledged it fully in her heart. They had been D-rankers together, for crying out loud! How the hell was he and S-ranker now? And stronger than her dad to boot?

  No, she hadn’t quite believed it no matter how many times she had heard it.

  That skepticism was… no longer so easy to maintain. What she had just witnessed was nothing short of ridiculous. It shouldn’t be possible to achieve this level of power in the short time Eik had been Awakened. She couldn’t help but be frightened.

  “My son really is… very strong, isn’t he?” Rasmus muttered as he watched Eik disappear into the thick miasma above. “How is this my little boy? You know, I remember once he missed the bottom step of the stairs running up to the second floor of the house, and hit his knee on the edge,” the red-haired man chuckled, seeing the memory play out in his mind’s eye. “My wife had to blow for fifteen minutes on this tiny, little bruise that I could barely even tell was there. Now… he’s like a different person.”

  Ihasu squeezed his arm gently. “Well, if only you could hear how your son speaks about you and your wife when you’re not there, you would know that he very much still thinks of himself as just your son, and that he is very proud to be.”

  Rasmus failed to hold back tears as he took her hand, eyes seeking his son in the clouds. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

  With a boom, a figure plummeted out of the clouds and crashed into the ground just a few dozen paces inside the Dayarunar estate grounds. The impact pulverized multiple buildings. One could only hope that the innocents living there had already fled.

  “Who is that?” Rasmus asked, his low-ranked eyes unable to discern the details at such distance. “Is that my son or that thing?”

  “Don’t worry, Rasmus,” Gul reassured him with a smirk, already feeling the change in the air. “That’s not your son.”

  In the next moment, a glittering blue, crowned visage broke through the miasma, the very air itself rumbling as it howled wordlessly. As it followed the fallen monster down, the rest of its titanic body was revealed, gigantic cloak of the Monarch billowing about its body.

  “By… God!” Rasmus breathed.

  Gul laughed. “But that is.”

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