Eik attempted to dig his heels into the cobbled street to break his momentum, but the lightning-quick backhand tore into his shoulder nonetheless, hurling him back through the garden fence of the house he had looped around.
He gasped for air as the battle continued to unfold on the street. Lying on his back, he raised his head to see the girl with the red skin, weaponless, heading straight for the cult leader, a crazed look in her eyes. The boy was right behind her. Heath was just getting back to his feet and going for the fight again, the front of his shield a charred mess after taking the attack head on.
The elf-like man couldn’t charge up another attack while he was busy fending off the close combat assault of three people plus Sonja’s relentless, well-timed arrows. Occasional lunges and slashes broke through his defense, including an arrow in his upper arm which he had immediately snapped at the base. Even the short exchange had clearly taken its toll on him.
While he was distracted, Eik attempted another flanking maneuver, darting out and in from behind, keeping his head low to the ground as his shoulder ached painfully. He wished he had had time to get Michael to cast Single Protection on him—the healer’s skill that cushioned the damage of the next attack suffered by the target of the ability.
Michael had not been using the ability much since he got it, his passive fighting style not lending itself to the dynamic approach it required to get the most out of it. Eik hoped that would change soon.
Sonja saw Eik coming up from behind. “Michael! Cast Bind! Now!” she shouted, letting fly another arrow.
Michael obliged, his fingers weaving patterns through the air as the young man concentrated. Glowing strings sprouted around the cult leader’s wrists, snaking their way around his thighs to bind his hands to his legs. Their powerful foe broke free almost immediately, but not before Heath’s blade took him in the side, eliciting a gasp of pain, while the children managed punches to his face and body.
Meanwhile, Eik used the opportunity to stab a gushing hectona fang into his back, pumping Profound Toxin directly into the bastard for the first time. Grasping Heath’s sword and forcing it out of his guts, the elf howled as his skin began to radiate the same light that his spheres of energy had, the gleam streaming out as if through webbed cracks in his body.
Eik pulled out the fang and kicked off the elf’s back, sensing something bad coming. The others also retreated, but before any of them could create enough distance, a fat, intense pulse of light flashed out from the cult leader, expanding rapidly like the shock wave of a bomb.
Upon contact, their bodies were flung back and Eik felt powerful jolts of electricity running through his body. He couldn’t even cry out in pain as his muscles seized up and he landed hard on his bad shoulder.
Instead of coming for them, the weakened man sank to one knee, clearly exhausted, but readied another ball of frenetic energy. An arrow took him in the forearm, cutting short the manifestation of his skill, and Eik saw his chance to get in what could well be a decisive strike.
The cultist’s expression had turned from almost mindless fury into something better described as cold but terrible hatred, his eyes flitting to and fro as he assessed the situation. The moment Eik triggered Movement Boost and sped in from behind for the third time, fingers appeared out of nowhere, snatching him by the throat and slamming him into the cobblestones.
Pain erupted along his back as his mobility was taken away.
With a twisted grin marred by agony, the pointy-eared psycho dug into a pouch on his hip while maintaining a firm, vice-like grip on Eik’s neck. He drawled words in a sing-songy voice in a language not covered by the translation skill, but the general tone of it left no doubt in Eik’s mind about the intent.
The man’s slender arm disappeared far deeper into the belt satchel that should have been physically possible, the surreal sight almost distracting Eik’s mind from the deadly peril he was in. He had expected some kind of magical item of torture, or at the very least a frighteningly cruel ceremonial dagger, so when a simple vial containing a green liquid was uncovered from the depths of the pouch, he was unsure of how to react.
“Do my words reach you now, you filthy insect?” the cultist suddenly spat and smiled at the recognition in Eik’s eyes. “I thought they might. Do you know how long I’ve been working on these mindless cavemen? You ruined it! You!” he hissed, popping out the stopper in the vial with a thumb. An arrow took him in the back with a meaty thunk, but he only gasped and ignored it. “I’ll let you taste some of this, since you seem to love sneaky tricks so much.”
With his fingers, the unhinged cult leader pried Eik’s lips apart and forced the poison vial into his mouth. “The Nidafjeld Alliance is weak. They’re delusional!” he muttered insanely, emptying the contents into Eik’s throat before discarding the glass bottle on the street.
When another arrow came, he stopped it by letting it rip through the palm of his open hand, the point halting mere centimeters from his face.
Eik only faintly registered as the elf continued the crazed tirade, whatever it was that he had been made to consume wrestling from him all control of his addled mind.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Pain bubbled up in the vicinity of his solar plexus, growing in breadth and intensity with every second that passed, quickly reaching unbearable levels.
It felt as if his bones were being ground to dust while muscles and tendons twisted and tore under his skin, grating him down to a paste.
He thought he might have been screaming, but he couldn’t be certain. A whirlpool of rushing water rose up to swallow him into its depths, pulling him violently down and down until the pressure crushed him like countless cubes of steel balancing precariously on his chest.
Then, out of nowhere, a clarity sliced through the dull waves of pain and confusion, filling his body with incredible strength. His mind was still muddled, but whatever power had come to him allowed him to push through and open his eyes, gaze boring into the blabbering cult leader.
With force, he clutched the hectona fang which had laid limply between his fingers. He gritted his teeth, tasting the iron of blood, and called upon Movement Boost.
“Learn to shut up, bitch,” he snarled and thrust the fang into the cultist’s neck with speed that belied his rank, surprising the both of them. For a second, while the deadly toxin flowed in freely, the pointy-eared man sat stunned.
Blood tainted by luminescent, blue toxin gushed out when the elf finally yanked free the fang. He clasped a hand over the grievous wound, but the flood barely slowed. The expression of astonishment never left his face, even as he collapsed backward onto the cobbled road, pool of blood spreading ceaselessly.
Even with the strength that still coursed vigorously through him, he couldn’t gather the physical coordination to sit himself up. The wooden plaque tucked into his shirt was vibrating non-stop as messages were etched into its surface. Only when Sonja appeared above him, a look of concern painted on her face, was he pulled up by her hand. She had to catch him as he swayed on his feet and fell over again.
“I think I know what my new skill, Noxious Invigoration does now,” he said with a tired smile. “Toxins make me stronger.”
“Looks like it saved you this time,” she said and supported him on the way back to the others. They had been hit by the expanding energy pulse at much closer range than Eik and it showed. Both of the kids appeared to be unconscious while Heath was only just coming around again. Michael was treating a head wound on the girl with the red skin.
“I think he’s dead,” Eik reported hoarsely.
Heath cracked open an eye to look up at him. “Well, thank god for that. That guy was ridiculously strong. High E-rank? Maybe even low D-rank?” he wondered. “Without the initial poisoning he would have slaughtered the lot of us with ease.”
"I got this from him," Eik said and held up the little belt pouch into which the cult leader had somehow managed to stick his whole arm. "It's a bona fide freakin' bag of holding, dude!" He plunged his hand in but it hit the bottom as it would have a regular pouch.
"What's in there?" Heath asked, excitement seeming to clear his head.
"Nothing..." Eik said, feeling around inside the pouch, looking for anything he might have missed. He got Michael to light up the inside with the Heal ability, but it just looked like regular leather. "I swear, his whole arm disappeared into this thing!"
"Maybe there are special requirements for its use," Sonja suggested. "Like, maybe it's locked to an individual's... magical, uuh... signature?"
"Yeah, maybe..." Eik said, dejected.
Michael hauled a teenager under each arm while Sonja continued to support Eik. Heath managed to walk on his own. The trek back to the fracture coordinates was going to be long and perilous, but regardless of how tempting it was to break into one of those cozy farm houses and sleep for a whole day, none of them knew what else might be lurking down in those torchlit tunnels. The safest thing was to get going and put some distance between themselves and this cursed place.
They trudged, exhausted, through the jungle, backtracking with the help of the markings they had scratched into the trees on the way out. The kids woke up quickly and walked on their own, but the loss of their friends had taken a heavy toll on them. They weren’t just a random trainee team. Every single day had been spent together ever since they awoke, training, building practical teamwork, developing synergies, and much more. For more than a year, they had been tied at the hips.
And the concept of survival of one’s comrades as an utmost priority had been drilled into them thoroughly and relentlessly. They had failed at that, in the most cruel and horrifying of ways.
Eik and Heath cracked jokes in hopes of brightening the gloom while Michael offered a kind and sympathetic ear for their sorrows. Sonja walked the children through their terrible experiences and tried to make them understand that they had neither direct nor personal fault. She did this without downplaying the fact that they, as a team, certainly had committed mistakes that had led to this. Venturing into the depths of the temple with no preparation had not been a good idea, although Eik’s team had arguably done the same.
They cried a lot. To the Earthlings, it was insane that kids of their age had been let loose in a place like this on their own, completely unsupervised. But perhaps that was just the way a society ended up operating after a long history in the Unified Mass and constant threat and conflict based on the personal power of individuals.
Eik pulled out his wooden plaque and reviewed his levels. A lot had happened in that fight, proving, if nothing else, that the cult leader had been a formidable opponent.
[Acquired Movement Boost — Lv. 7]
[Acquired (Unique) Profound Toxin — Lv. 16]
11 levels of Profound Toxin from that? What a ridiculous chunk of progress. But then again, with the way he had more or less single-handedly managed to take care of all of the cultists and contributed to the defeat of that shithead of a cult leader, it wasn’t so strange after all.
Eik’s Resistance: Toxin ability also leveled up from the green, poisonous substance he had been made to consume, having now reached level 27.
With the six of them, they were able to deter or vanquish all monsters that approached them. All the way back they were just waiting for the titanic monstrosities they had hid from on the way out to make an appearance, so when the blood-covered wooden post came into view, they sank into the soft moss, forgetting for a moment that danger still lurked everywhere around them.
“It feels like it’s been a year since we left this sign here…” the girl with the red skin, whose name was Gillimi, said, holding back tears. The boy, Taf, was maintaining a stoic, silent frown that said he was doing the same.
The kids did not deserve what they had been subjected to here. As he looked at the children, Eik felt his respect for the Nidafjeld Alliance and the people who led it wane.
“Hey!” Heath exclaimed, the entire group drawing their weapons at the alarm in his voice. “I think— I think I’m hitting E-rank!”