As Eik sat there he hoped that the attacks by the snakes made of Profound Toxin had stopped. At least for long enough for him to try this.

To help him visualize the attempt he put his hands on his chest and felt around for the two opposing forces. They were aligned across from each other, keeping completely away from each other.

Eik first tried to simply mash the two together, but all he got out of that try was an extreme case of heartburn that tore through his torso as if he had swallowed a handful of red hot embers. The pain moved from his torso to his groin, then down into and back up his left leg and then into his right.

By the time the burning made it back up to his chest he was rolling around on the ground, screaming his lungs empty in agony. Clutching his throat as it moved again, this time upward through his neck and into his head, he put his head between his knees.

Several bouts of dry heaving shook his entire body, convulsions crawling through him despite nothing coming up. It was a headache that trumped the worst migraine he had ever experienced. For another minute he raged and cursed there in the grass as the pain waned, first into a dull throbbing that permeated all of his muscles but then it faded into pleasant silence.

“By Odin’s greasy beard, man. That was… the worst thing ever,” he said out loud. “Are you guys looking for a way to kick me into an early grave in there or what? That hurt like all hell!”

He rolled onto his back and watched the green clouds rolling across the sky above, thick, hazy light peeking through the cracks. He was definitely not trying that particular method again.

He sat up again, rubbing his head to get rid of the last bit of dizziness. Scanning the surroundings for more rustling leaves or streaks of blue and finding nothing, he got back into position and dove into his mind.

If mashing Profound Toxin and the multiversal matter together outright lead to this, then he would have to try something smoother and gentler. Like he had done outside his body, he moved them closer to each other at a snail’s pace until they touched lightly but even that sent needles of pain spiking through him, breaking his concentration.

He gasped through his teeth but forced himself to jump right back in. Pushing the precision of his control to its limits, he tried to twist and spin them around each other as if they were in mutual orbit.

It was impossible to tell if they were actually physically revolving in there but it sure felt like it. It took everything he had to keep them from going out of control and progressively increase the velocity of the orbit.

As they accelerated to the maximum of what he could manage right now he once more shrunk the distance between them which in turn narrowed their courses and caused an involuntary speed up that he quickly realized he was not equipped to handle. The two forces rattled and shivered in his hold as they grew unstable.

“Crap, crap, crap!” he hissed when the pain of contact began to well up through his body for the third time in ten minutes. Control was slipping and he feared he was on the verge of coming face to face with the consequences of his own actions.

The burning of the energies became too much to handle and he was forced to let it go, but as they came apart something happened. Profound Toxin and the multiversal matter had been clashing and crackling against each other on the edges of their reach without mixing but just as they separated completely the final motes that impacted one another did not reject the meeting, but rather blended like tea leaves in water.

It lasted for only the briefest of moments, barely long enough for Eik to even notice it, but it definitely happened. Instead of erasing any trace of the dimensional energy like it had done thus far, the Profound Toxin entered into the transparently white haze and spread itself out, permeating it with the familiar blue glow.

The blend flared up energetically and Eik felt the pairing become something that wasn’t just one force taking over. It was something more. He didn’t get a chance to study it closely, but that didn’t matter too much right now.

Well, damn, he’d done it. Those two troublemakers had proven that they were capable of working together. This would become something.

Eik had dived back into it and had just begun to spin the energies for another attempt when a sound pulled him out of focus. In a moment he was on his feet with a hand flying back to Viper Fang’s handle which still wasn’t there.

A blue snake got him right above the eye, giving him the opportunity to seize it by the neck and slam it into the ground like a whip. It was much bigger than any of the others thus far, measuring at more than four meters as far as he could tell.

It came for his head at a speed incomparable to the smaller snakes. The snakes he had met thus far were barely more than elongated blobs of poison, but this one had significantly more prominent features. Softly curving spines protruded from its forehead and vague outlines of eyes and nostrils emulated a real animal.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

A lifelike jaw snapped down with a crack right in front of his face, Eik barely managing to avoid the attack. An uppercut caught a glancing blow but still rocked its head back with a wet thump. Catching it with a foot on the way down, he crushed it into the ground with all the power he could muster. It continued to writhe and struggle under his foot.

He let Profound Toxin flow out through his foot to pour over the snake but it did nothing, its body simply absorbing the poison. Well, in hindsight he could probably have foreseen this particular result but sometimes you just have to give everything a try, eh?

Besides wanting his main skill to be of any help right now, there were two things he really missed right now. His trusty knife, Viper Fang, to slash through this annoying bastard and his supply of home mixed poisons to give him that extra boost from Noxious Invigoration that would bring his strength and speed up to par or near par with the regular physical prowess of an E-ranker.

He had gotten so used to fighting with the support of Noxious Invigoration that this pace of combat threw off his senses and reactions.

The snake’s tail came up in a blur and lashed him across the thigh and up his ribs. Eik gasped as the breath was knocked from his lungs. He knelt, putting a knee on its neck, and pulled on its head.

It stretched like a gummy worm and as whatever held together its fluid-like body began to give way to his endeavor, the tail whipped up again and flailed him across the back twice. He grunted under the pain and gritted his teeth but refused to stop.

This damn thing was several times more powerful than its smaller brethren. With a howl of effort Eik ripped the head off. The jaw hung open in his hand as it too dissolved into glowing blue motes that rushed into his body, energizing him more than all of the small snakes combined.

All of the aches and bruises from the fight healed to the point where it was as if they had never been there. Before another bastard of that caliber could show up Eik broke into a sprint and headed for the mountain. He wanted to get there this time.

The last trek had ended abruptly when he fell unconscious, but he wasn’t going to let crap like that happen now.

After running for an hour and a half and then another two and a half hours of walking the mountain still didn’t seem to have moved closer. Only the landscape had changed. Where the leaves had been a strange mix of soft green and crunchy orange, they were now all so crispy that they would surely turn to dust if stepped on.

Eik had been keeping the aura going non stop since his fight with the large snake. While he hadn’t had a chance to sit down and go deep for another attempt to merge the two forces, he had been practicing his control while he moved, circling and spinning the energies without letting them touch.

He was cresting a hill that overlooked a deep valley with a murky lake in its center when it wandered into view from behind the trees. It was large. At least five meter from snout to tail tip. It was blue like his toxin but there was a solidity to it that he hadn’t seen in any of the other toxic beasts yet.

This one was a quadruped with dense legs and torso, and a long tail that tapered to a thin point. A komodo dragon would not be a bad comparison but its movements seemed much smoother than the wild waddle he had seen those guys display on TV. This thing had longer legs that appeared to possibly allow it to gallop and the neck was longer too.

Much sharper spines ran from mid snout across its back to the tip of the tail, and he could see the ridges of scales and muscles in the membranous skin. Darker patches resembled actual hide.

The Profound Toxin surged inside its body as the intimidating beast regarded him with eyes that weren’t more than a couple of dark splotches.

Eik took a step back but that seemed to stir something in the toxic beast as it bent its knees and got low to the ground. He stopped and observed. For a few seconds everything was quiet but then the monster exploded forward with a shrill roar, the first sound any of the toxic kin had made.

Barely managing to register the monster’s movement, Eik threw up his arms only for the bone in his forearm to crumble nastily as the drake brought its entire weight to bear on him. Momentum carried them both through the air to impact a tree that shook enough to shed almost half of its dry leaves.

Eik coughed once before the tail came up and took him in the mid section, hurling him backward and sending him sliding through the leaves. With a roll he flung himself to his feet and started running down a steep incline into the valley as fast as his legs could carry him.

He was headed for the lake, not even sure if it would work, but it was the only thing he could think of. Those two strikes that he had received alone had confirmed without a doubt that this third iteration of Profound Toxin manifest was more powerful than he could currently handle. Even if he’d still had equipment and supplies of poison and healing it would have been a battle with little confidence in his chances.

A glance back over his shoulder revealed the thing sailing through the air. It must have leapt from the top. Eik too leapt as it came down, avoiding a crushing death by the skin of his teeth.

Something must have happened to his leg as well because his knee gave out as he stumbled, sending him reeling onto his face where he was tossed about in a couple of involuntary somersaults. Somehow he got regained his feet and kept running.

He was no more than thirty feet from the lake — a distance he could cover in seconds he could could on a single hand.

But just as he felt hope solidify in his stomach, a burning pain erupted through his back as the beast raked him with claws that he hadn’t thought to be sharp enough.

Sent flying the remaining distance by the force of the blow, Eik fell headfirst into the cool, murky water and immediately began swimming for the bottom. The water stung terribly in his open wound but he ignored it.

After a dozen strokes he twisted his body to look at the surface. The brightness streaming in from above burst into a pop of bubbles through which the third generation toxic beast’s head emerged, jaw snapping ferociously.

Eik felt hope rise once more as he saw its skin start to dissolve. The thing could not maintain its form in the water. It hemorrhaged blue into the lake, but the process wasn’t happening quickly enough.

It still came for him and in the water he was even less capable of defending himself than he had been on land. Not knowing what else to do, he raised the broken arm protectively and received a vicious bite that made escape impossible.

A blur of blue hurtling for his face was the last thing he saw before everything disappeared.