Eik was in pain.

Even with the short rest, topped with both healing magic and healing spheres, he still felt absolutely horrible. If there weren’t still monsters roaming Forest, he’d have loved to be asleep by now.

One of the Awakened at Mission Central was kind enough to set his arm and provide a sling for support, and once his plight was noticed, a D-rank healer stepped in an provided some much needed relief, practically numbing the pain completely. He promised that the painkilling magic would last for at least a couple of hours. That meant Eik could go out again and not be as bothered by his injuries.

Chewing on a loaf of bread baked this morning, Eik leaned back in one of the chairs around the table he shared with Michael, Heath, and Heath’s sister Sonja, who had come back just minutes before. She was an archer whose personality did not resemble her brother in the slightest. So much so that Eik was tempted to ask if they were biological siblings.

As they spoke, Eik scratched two dots and a surrounding circle into his wooden plaque. Even as the letters etched themselves into the surface, he still couldn’t quite believe that he had become an Awakened. It was a surreal thought. He couldn’t hold back a grin as he read.

[F-rank — IIII]

“I went up a stage!” he exclaimed as he flew to his feet despite the pain. “I’m fourth stage F-rank now!”

“That’s amazing!” Michael applauded, Heath and Sonja giving him smiles.

“You must have been pretty close when you awakened,” Sonja commented. “Just a little more and you’ll hit E-rank.”

“Everyone!” a voice called from the main room. “If you would gather around so I can get your attention, please.” The speaker, a man with a wicked scar across his eye, gave them a couple of minutes as people shuffled up to listen.

At least a hundred people had made it to Mission Central at this point, new people seemingly arriving every minute. With the gradually falling number of monsters, the newly awakened with little ability to fight back had begun to flee from hiding to seek out protection. Many of the people here were original Awakened with combat experience, including some of decent rank. They had no B-rankers, but two C-rankers were in charge, with a couple of handfuls of D-rankers to assist.

Presumably, people were gathering similarly all over Forest in order to increase the odds of survival, much like they had done nine years ago, just on a global scale.

“My name Andrew Brooks and I’m the C-ranker in charge for the moment. The short and simple of it is that we’re running out of supplies,” he continued. “If any of you have something to spare, you could be helping to save a life.”

Seeing only a couple of people raising their hands, Eik eventually raised his as well.

“Yes,” Andrew said as he got to Eik. “What can you spare?”

“Ah, no, that’s not what I meant. I actually don’t have anything on me.”

The scarred man frowned. “What then?”

“If you can get me the materials, then I can make healing spheres,” Eik explained.

There was a moment of silence before a woman next to Eik piped up. “You’re Eik, right? I’ve been to your store many times. Really good prices for good quality and service,” she said as she turned to the C-ranker. “You can trust him. He had always been really good and fair to low ranked customers.”

A man smacked a fist into his open palm. “From Eik’s Excellent Elixirs! My friend took me there a couple of weeks ago. I knew I’d seen you before!”

“Eik’s Excellent Elixirs?” Andrew asked with a raised eyebrow.

Eik shrugged. This wasn’t the first time someone had questioned his fantastic naming sense. “The name just kind of stuck around. It’s a small store…”—A gloomy aura descended—“Was a small store…”

“Erh, well, okay. We’ll get you some materials. Your help is greatly appreciated.”

Eik nodded, and soon he was handing over a list of materials needed for healing spheres to one of the D-rankers. They got everything to him in ten minutes. Apparently Mission Central, the hub for Awakened specializing fighting monsters, had a well-stocked storage room with all kinds of materials, exactly for a situation like this. Because of the first wave a couple of days ago, the stores had just been replenished.

While Eik took care of the extremely delicate task of processing the active ingredients that would provide the actual medicinal effects—a mixture of some monster parts as well as plants that had begun to grow after the first fractures appeared nine years ago—he recruited his three new acquaintances to take care of the paste for pill-making.

Eik was holding up one of the finished healing spheres for scrutiny when Andrew walked up to him. “Looks great,” he said as he knelt down to take a look at the rows of healing medicine. “Can you make antitoxins as well? Just in case we meet something venomous.”

“Sorry, sir, but that’s not really possible. At my level, I can only create something like that to work for one specific type, so I’d need corpses of everything out there, and then make the medicine for each type one at a time. It’d take far too much time.”

The C-ranker chewed on Eik’s words for a while as he thought it over, lips pursed. He sighed. “Alright, I guess I’ll ask you to focus on the healing medicine then. We don’t have the time for anything more, I’m afraid.”

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“Yeah, I agree,” Eik said with a nod.

“You’re doing something very important here, Eik. Is there anything you’d like in return?” he asked.

“Well,” Eik began after some consideration, hands continuing to work on the medicine. “I’m an F-rank with no weapon. I’m capable of creating poison but I have no good way of getting it into the monsters yet…” Eik trailed off.

Andrew’s face morphed into a toothy grin. “You’re not the first one who’s not prepared to suddenly have super powers, my friend. But I’m afraid that we don’t have any specialized weapons like that lying around Mission Central right now,” he said “We’ve got bows as well as a variety of bladed weapons.”

“Uuh, can I have a sword or something like that then? I’ve never really used any weapons before,” Eik said and remembered his work knife which he fished out of his belt sheath. “Well, except for this I suppose, but I’m not sure it counts.”

“That’s a very small knife indeed. How about I grab you a dagger that’s slightly more dangerous instead?”

“Sounds perfect!”

Ten minutes later, Eik held a very sharp and very long knife in his hand. If he hadn’t already experienced several terrifying episodes recently, he might even have been frightened of the huge blade.

“Thanks for this,” he told the imposing C-ranker. “Now I just need the strength to stick this thing into the high-ranked monsters.”

Andrew laughed loudly enough to draw the attention of the nearby Awakened. “You’ll get there eventually, lad,” he roared and thumped Eik in the back multiple times, eliciting gasps for air from the F-ranker.

“Anyway,” Andrew said and clapped his hands loudly. “If everyone would gather again, please. We’re getting fewer and fewer reports of monster activity, so we might be seeing the end of this thing soon, at least for now. With that being said, we’re going to dispatch groups divided by rank to the few heated areas that we have identified. We’ll prioritize existing teams, of course. Talk to Julia here for your assignment, and get some of Eik’s healing spheres from the table over there as well,”

Eik was set up with Heath, Sonja, and Michael, which was a relief. The D-rank healer with the pain relief magic was kind enough to top him up before they left.

Once outside, the different groups split up, hopefully all going to fights they were capable of handling. Eik and the others headed north toward where the monsters had last been seen. There were corpses everywhere. Mostly monster, thankfully, but many people as well. It was difficult to look at.

Eik wasn’t very familiar with monster species except for the venomous ones, so most of the corpses were species he’d never seen before. He stepped over the decapitated corpse of one of the serpentine Hectona-3—a venomous monster responsible for many deaths, including his brother’s all those years ago. Eik stopped and considered for a moment before he began to search the ground around the decapitated corpse.

“What’s up?” Heath asked as the others doubled back.

“Just… looking for something real quick,” Eik drawled. “Got it!”

He ran to a little bush, the head of the Hectona-3 lying among the leaves, tongue hanging out grotesquely. He picked it up by the jaw and carried it out into the moonlight.

“What are you doing?” Sonja asked with a look of disgust.

“I don’t have a weapon that fits my fighting style yet, but I might be able to get something that can work until then,” he said and turned the head over to pry the stiff mouth open. “Hold that still for me, would you, Michael?”

Although the young healer complied, he looked less that pleased with the request as he took a firm hold of the skull. Eik put his feet against the protruding snout and grabbed one of the wicked long venom fangs with both hands. The fang came off with a bony crack, Eik’s whole body lurching back as it released. He stood up with a self-satisfied smile, the others grimacing at his antics.

“Check this out,” he said with a grin and held up the fang. Its length rivaled the knife Andrew Brooks had given him.

He pushed Profound Toxin out through his thumb as he pressed it into the base of the fang where the venom groove would have connected to the venom ducts. Almost instantly the luminescent blue toxin spurted out of the tip of the fang as if from a syringe.

“Huh,” Heath muttered as he scratched his chin. “That’s actually a great idea. You’ll be able to fight a lot more effectively with that.”

“Damn right,” Eik grinned, drawing a smiley face on the ground with the glowing substance.

“Can we please just get going?” Sonja complained, the repugnant sight making her pull a face.

***

It wouldn’t have been much further to the designated location when they were ambushed.

Rushing out from a broken down door, two monsters of the variant with many eyes and many legs that Eik had fought one of earlier were coming straight for them. Eik would never forget that awful baying.

The first slammed into Heath with a bang as he shouldered past Michael to get in front of the team, his shield not quite ideally placed, which caused the monster to veer off and essentially end up behind and to the left. Unfortunately, the large man had no time to address that blunder as the second came following immediately after, this time hitting the shield bodily, almost pushing Heath off his feet.

Before Eik could even register what had happened, an arrow impacted the fiend with a fleshy crack, the shaft protruding from what Eik could only assume was its clavicle. The monster howled and charged the archer. For a moment, the tumult distracted Heath as he glanced back to check on the situation, earning him a bite in his armored bicep.

His inner arm must not have been covered because he groaned in pain even as he crushed two of the monster’s yellow eye with the pommel of his sword.

“Eyes forward, Heath!” Sonja shouted and kicked her own opponent in the jaw.

By now, both Eik and Michael had regained their bearings and the healer put himself safely behind Heath, the now familiar green glow of his healing magic enveloping the tank’s upper arm. As Sonja was forced into close quarters, she had disregarded her bow in favor of a thin shortsword which she now used to keep the fiend at bay, and while her agitated opponent was focused on her, Eik struck just as it lunged again.

Everything was a blur. Eik leapt in from the side, burying the hectona fang deep in the monster’s flank. Even before the tip made contact with the skin, the bright toxin spewed forth hungrily. He managed, at most, a second with the fang inside the beast before he was shaken off, but he’d done what he had aimed for.

Sonja exchanged a few more blows, suffering a nasty gash in her thigh, before the effects of the poison became apparent. As Eik watched, head on a swivel in case more monster were drawn to their position by the absolute cacophony, the poisoned fiend’s movements slowed, becoming gradually sluggish as it swayed on its feet. When convulsion joined the existing symptoms, Sonja was free to hack the creature to shreds and focus on the last threat.

Heath’s defensive style had kept the monster at bay, but he’d still taken a few minor hits. Sonja disengaged nimbly and drew her bow once more and let fly. The arrow hammered into the remaining monster’s ribs, the impact sending it stumbling sideways where Eik met it with the venom fang, pumping in his toxin mercilessly. To finish, Heath’s thick-bladed shortsword fell, cutting through half of the beast’s neck, the blood announcing its demise.

As it collapsed, Heath sat on his ass with a metallic thud, breathing heavily, sweat visible on his forehead. “Damn. I hope I get used to this soon,” he remarked.

“Just don’t get so used to it that you let you guard down, big guy,” Eik smiled.

“I wouldn’t!”

“Except for that little slip up in the beginning, we seem to work together pretty well,” Sonja noted as Michael began tending to the gash on her thigh.

“Agreed,” Heath said, Michael and Eik nodding.

“Maybe we should go on a few hunts together once this monster rush is over and done with,” Eik said.

“Sounds good,” Heath said. Michael didn’t look quite as confident, but he didn’t say anything.

As Heath got to his feet again, Eik peered into the gloom with trepidation. “We should probably check out the rest of the area, just to be safe.”

The others nodded and they continued in formation, quickly swallowed up by the darkness of night.