Eik stared open-mouthed at Atla, whose smile never faltered.

“You-You want me to what, sorry?” he stammered.

“I’m saying I want you to fight that kid over there. I want to know what the new guy is capable of, and it’ll benefit the kid’s growth as well. Win win, I’d say.”

Eik looked around. The lecture above had stopped and both the instructor and the kids were eyeing their conversation. “I, uuh… I don’t know about this, Atla.”

“It’s going to be fine,” she said and waved the instructor over. “I want to set up a match between my friend here and the blonde boy over there. Are you okay with that?”

Atla had a short conversation with the tattooed instructor and Eik turned to Mikla. “Can I get a translation thing on me? I have no clue what anybody but you two are saying.”

Mikla nodded. “I’ll figure something out soon.”

After another minute of talking, the instructor walked away. “Where’s he going?” Eik asked.

“I asked him to get a healer, just in case.”

“Oh, great…” Eik drawled.

“How do you fight, Eik?” Mikla asked.

Eik brandished the hectona fang. “My main thing is the [Toxic] ability.”

“A pretty dangerous skill. And is that your weapon?”

Eik nodded, handing it over for Mikla to inspect. “It was the best thing I could find that complimented my skill. I only awakened a week ago and we were overrun by monsters.”

“I wonder who’s targeting you,” Mikla wondered out loud, scratching his chin in thought.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, somebody’s sending those monsters through the fracture to cull your fighters. I’m just wondering what faction it is. I hope they’re not members of the Nidafjeld Alliance as we generally frown upon invasions of new worlds.”

“Are you saying someone’s been sending all those monsters to kill us for almost ten years? To kill my family?” Eik said, a spark of rage growing into a hot flame in his stomach.

Mikla was silent for a while, seeming taken aback by the question. “I apologize. I thought you knew.”

“Who?” Eik asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

“That is very difficult to say with any kind of certainty,” Mikla said, clearly uncomfortable with the tension of the topic. “Maybe if I could see some of the monsters, I could make a guess, but you must remember that there are many, many civilizations out there capable of sending forces like that.”

“Would Earth’s membership in the Nidafjeld Alliance stop the attacks?” Eik asked.

“Not if they’re relatively small in scale as you’ve described. We don’t usually interfere with matters like that,” Mikla said, shaking his head. “What we would do, however, is deter S-rankers or even an X-ranker from traveling to Earth the moment your atmosphere becomes capable of holding their presence.”

“And that could happen?” The notion tied knots in Eik’s stomach.

Mikla shrugged. “It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. While the Upper Laws of the Unified Mass protect you from dedicated, full-scale invasions while your world is still in its infancy, that will not be the case forever.” he said, looking at Eik somberly. “Soon, A-rankers could arrive en masse to slaughter your peoples if you don’t have an allied force like the Nidafjeld Alliance to back you.”

To a skeptical ear it could sound a little too convenient that this Nidafjeld Alliance showed up on Earth’s doorstep when things were starting to take a turn for the worse, but at the same time it made complete sense that an organization like the Nidafjeld Alliance would exist and thrive in a cosmically ancient, multidimensional macrocosm filled with hostility and super powers.

With humanity’s currently limited perspective, the only thing they could really do was trust what they could see. And thus far, siding with the Nidafjeld Alliance, whose representative had displayed the capability to obliterate their entire settlement single-handedly, was looking a bit more appealing. At least for now.

When the tattooed instructor returned with another man, Atla stepped up onto the stage and shooed off all but the blonde boy she had picked out earlier. She turned to Eik and waved him up. Feeling all eyes boring into his back, even from the adjacent platforms, Eik ascended the stone steps, heart pounding away like a forging hammer.

Even as he stepped toward the middle of the stage, people were gathering around the edges to watch the match. Great…

“Kim di gahu lom naru wa,” the blonde boy chosen to be Eik’s opponent said with a respectful bow.

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Eik stared blankly for a few seconds, eliciting a frown from the boy, before Atla translated for him. “Nice to meet you, is what he said.”

“Oh, nice to meet you too,” Eik said with a nod. The boy looked slightly miffed, but nodded back nonetheless.

“Five steps back, each of you,” Atla ordered, raising both hands.

Eik saw a fire appear in the boy’s eyes as they stared each other down, waiting for the signal.

“Fight!” Atla shouted, and the blonde boy was immediately advancing like a hunting dog, drawing a pair of knives.

Eik drew the hectona venom fang and danced away to the side, keeping tight to the edge of the stage. The boy course corrected and kept going straight for Eik. Before he made it all the way to Eik, he threw one of the knives, the blade taking Eik by surprised and drawing a shallow but bloody gash across his thigh. The boy had thrown away one of his two weapons immediately after the match began, so Eik saw his chance to rush in for a fight at an advantage.

Before he reached him, a grin crept onto the blonde boy’s as he whipped back his empty hand violently, Eik’s back exploding in pain. He gasped as warmth spread out from his lower back. There was an almost invisible string wrapped around the boy’s finger connected to the flying knife. The boy whirled his arm again and the knife was ripped painfully from Eik’s back, returning to its owner’s hand.

Swallowing the pain, Eik went on the offensive, ducking under a quick lunge and triggering [Movement Boost] to get an edge. His body began to spin as every part of him sped up, and his feet skidded on the unpolished tile floor, almost bringing him to down in a clumsy fall. He knew he’d succeeded when the hectona fang hooked in the back of the boy’s thigh, causing his young opponent to yelp in surprise as the weapon went deep enough to bury a third of the length.

Eik was hesitant to go all out as he had on the monsters, so he tried to only pump in a bit of his Profound Toxin. The boy cried out and fell to his knees, clutching his leg as spasms ran through it. It was a difficult thing to watch, and doubly so knowing that he was responsible, the blue, luminescent substance oozing out of the wound, mixing with the flowing blood.

Eik’s back wound throbbed, but he was better off than the boy. He approached his opponent at a slow walk, a hand on his side to quench his own bleeding. He was reaching out to help the boy to his feet when he was sliced across the palm, the sting jolting his hand like a shock of electricity.

The knife-wielder kicked off with his good leg, blood still pouring from his leg, a crazed look in his eyes. With a howl the boy was upon him, knife raised above his head, skill and technique seemingly forgotten.

Eik hopped back, whipping his hand at the boy, spattering his skin with globules of Profound Toxin covering his eyes and face, the kid went down for a second time, screaming and clawing at his eyes.

This time, Eik approached with caution, hectona fang at the ready, the toxin already flowing freely from the tip. If his opponent had been that ready to ignore his leg wound just to win a simple training match, then Eik would trust the healer as well and not hold back anymore. His opponent was already beginning to weaken, growing quieter by the second as his movements became sluggish and aimless.

Triggering [Movement Boost], he dove towards the downed knife-wielder, who looked up just in time to see Eik whirl away in front of his eyes, appearing on his back like a predator as the fang descended.

Eik had just seen Atla out of the corner of his eye, as he attacked, half a second earlier, spectating from the side with an intense frown on her face, and yet there her hand was, fingers wrapping around his weapon. Her grip was as if his hand had been encased in a block of concrete.

“That’s enough, Eik,” she said, voice quiet. “You’ve done enough.”

Eik was breathing hard. Every muscle in his body was tense and it took seconds before he finally began to relax. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, letting the hectona fang drop to the tiles with a bony clink. “But this is your fault.”

“What?” she asked, taken aback.

Eik looked at her askance. “Are you serious right now?” he asked, feeling his cheeks flush. “You took me here and decided, on your own, that I have to fight some kid fifteen years my junior in a place I’ve never been before, surrounded by people I’ve never seen before,” he fumed, forgetting who he was talking to.

“And you’re saying I’ve done enough? I’m scared, Atla! What was I supposed to do, huh? I sold medicine in my quiet little store until a week ago! I don’t know how things work here!”

Her grip on his hand loosened, but she didn’t look remorseful. “I should have stepped in earlier, but I don’t regret testing you, Eik. I needed to see what kind of person you are.”

He side-eyed her. “Did I satisfy?” he grumbled, pulling his hand free of hers.

“I’ll think about it,” she said with a crooked smile, patting his back and pulling him to the side as the healer worked on the boy, who appeared to have lost consciousness.

“Is that kid going to be okay?” Eik asked, throwing glances over his shoulder. Now that the fight was over and the kid was just lying there, remorse began to take a hold of him.

“He’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Deek is really good, so the kid will be walking around again soon.”

“Then why are they carrying him off like that?” Eik asked, pointing.

Atla followed his finger, where the healer was disappearing somewhere with the boy thrown over his shoulder. “What did you do?” she asked, some of the intensity from the city square back in Forest returning to her eyes.

“We just fought,” he said, holding his hands up placatingly.

“You use [Toxic], you said?”

He hesitated.

“Show me your skill sheet,” she demanded, leading him away from the crowd with a hand on his shoulder. Her face told him that she was worried. “Eik, it’s important. Deek is just a C-ranker. We need to know if there’s something going on!”

He swallowed and fished out his wooden plaque, scratching the circle with three dots to draw out the sheet that would show his abilities.

He was afraid.

[Acquired Abilities:]

[Resistance: Toxin — Lv. 24]

[(Unique) Profound Toxin — Lv. 5]

[Movement Boost — Lv. 3]

“Unique…” she muttered under her breath, face showing more emotion than he’d ever seen her do. Eik couldn’t quite tell whether she looked ready to kill him or praise him. “You have a unique ability… Do you know what this means?”

“Honestly, no, I don’t have a clue,” he admitted.

“It means what it says,” she said, poking a finger in his chest. “Nobody within the Unified Mass has this ability. It’s a big deal. You should keep this secret.”

“But you know…”

She nodded. “It’s better for me as well to be the only one to know.”

“Alright…” he said, throat dry. “What about the kid?”

“I’ll make sure he gets some strong medicine,” she said as she turned to leave. “You better keep it a secret, you hear! People will ignore alliances and covenants if they can cull a Unique Awakened before they climb the ranks. Unique skills are called Worldbreakers for a reason.”

Then she vanished, leaving Eik to be overrun by kids asking him questions excitedly, none of which he could understand a word.