Even before the dust settled, the outline of a Gohkamorian body was easily recognizable. A long forehead with a brutish build rippling with muscle.

But this one was of a caliber that Eik hadn't encountered before. This was no mere A-ranker.

Eik wished the Earth-born man had gotten to give Eik his name before he perished. Now he was buried beneath a ruin, the truth of his fate never to be known to anyone but Eik, and he couldn't even tell anyone who he had been or find anybody who he might have known. He was lost to history.

Still enveloped in a dust cloud, the figure snapped out of existence, the super rapid movement setting in motion a powerful whirl of air that sucked in all of the dust and ejected it up and out of the underground space.

The edge of a three meter long greatsword appeared suddenly mere centimeters from Eik's face but his hand was already there to catch the blade in the air. Energy from the swing alone tore into the floor Eik was standing on, obliterating his footing and threatening to unbalance him but Profound Toxin flowed down and solidified under his feet.

Backflow enhanced by Monarch's Will and Profound Unity powered up his physical strength many times over and he snarled as his fingers dug into the cheek of the blade. It shattered as the Gohkamorian S-ranker ripped it back, eyes going wide at the extreme strength Eik had just displayed.

Immediately, the greatsword began regenerating, the alien metal flowing from an unseen source and reconstructing the wicked edge in less that ten seconds. Now much more cautions, the warrior took a proper stance, reminding Eik of the D-ranker chosen as a talented representative of Gohkamoria during the Championship. The S-ranker began to circle Eik, looking for a defensive opening to exploit. Then he stopped and glowered intensely before beginning to speak.

"You have made a mistake coming here today, Alliance scum! Do you not realize the forces at play here? There is nothing you can do to interfere with the noble work of Moon Shall Swallow!"

Eik threw a thumb back at the stairs leading back up. "Maybe you haven't realized yet, but the Life Harvester you had stationed up there is already dead. I killed it."

The way the cultist's eyes narrowed with ire told him that he had in fact realized.

"Our mission is for the good of all. You will see. For now, I will face you in battle. My name is Jh—"

"I don't care what your name is, you shitty fanatic," Eik interrupted, scoffing, and conjured his own sword—a dope ass katana—but didn't bother to take a stance. Instead, he rocketed forward, the pressure generated from his move causing the air to explode loudly.

He hadn't had a serious fight against an S-ranker since his own rank up where he became the Monarch of Toxin but he could already tell that that sense of overwhelming resistance facing such an opponent had elicited before was now being replaced by something else. A confident, calm certainty that he would be victorious.

The Gohkamorian's actual technique and swordsmanship were magnitudes better than Eik's. Even a glance could confirm that the guy had gotten to S-rank the hard way and that he could read an opponent's movements like an open book and adjust his own movement accordingly.

Unfortunately, even for an S-ranker, Eik was very fast.

Attempting an overhead slash, the cultist charged in, a movement skill sending him into hyper speed as a spectral edge of icy white energy hummed into existence along the massive blade. But this time Eik didn't catch the weapon but rather flickered away like a ghost, activating his own Movement Boost to the highest order, reality seeming to warp around him as his body defied its natural limits to a ridiculous degree.

An afterimage of blue was all the sword cut Eik observing the scene from over the Gohkamorian's shoulder, the katana quickly shortened to the length of a common dagger before being plunged into the thick trapezius muscle running along the neck. A quiet grunt of pain was all the reaction the S-ranker gave as he leapt away.

Eik followed, getting all the way up into the cultist's face, stacking up the stress. A sudden but powerful burst of Tyrant's Pressure rammed into his psyche, forcing him to stumble.

The Gohkamorian looked surprised. He probably hadn't met a match like Eik in real combat in many years. Being on the back foot was not something he was used to at this point.

But as far as Eik was concerned, being on the back foot was just an inevitable part of living in the Unified Mass. The overwhelming power he now possessed was still new. And he wasn't about to miss a chance to strike when it presented itself.

Before his opponent could regain his balance, he applied a Movement Boost at full throttle localized to his hand and arm. The conjured blade reshaped itself back into a katana mid swing and bit brutally into the Gohkamorian's thigh.

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It would have taken the whole leg as well if not for the S-ranker activating some manner of defensive ability just before it was too late. Halfway through the femur the katana was abruptly stopped, the skin and flesh hardening to an extreme degree while a matte, dark gray hue colored turned it metallic.

Now stuck firmly inside the deep wound, the katana was shattering into pieces like glass as the Gohkamorian gritted his teeth, grunted, and stomped down.

Eik only barely managed to throw up a solid wall of crystal between them and the rest of the hopefully still living prisoners before the floor shattered as well, bringing down the walls with it and turning the entire corridor into one massive crater.

Nervously, Eik glanced up toward where the stairs had just been. Was this bastard absolutely shot in the head or what? He should be well aware of the Life Harvester still very much full of volatile energy up there.

But one look at the cultists disabused him of that assumption. Red miasma crackling outward, the swordsman's face was a mask of unbridled fury, his look in his eyes appearing to be completely devoid of reason. Crap.

Eik didn't know what the hell this madman was thinking activating a berserker ability in the middle of his own city, and right next to a Life Harvester no less, but he had to get them away from there.

Movement Boost surging through his legs, he jumped straight up, ascending more than a hundred and fifty meters at once. Sequential, mid air conjurations of small blocks of crystalline toxin kept him airborne, like a primitive type of air step, essentially. With blue plates under his feet he Accelerated them to propel himself in any direction he desired.

It was a difficult trick to coordinate and control, but since hitting Monarch of Toxin, it had become significantly easier.

A glance down told him that the dome containing the Life Harvester had been no more than a couple of meters from being rocked and damaged by the S-ranked swordsman's stomp. Sharp fragments of rock or or crushing under the rubble could all have resulted in the abdominal sack bursting and leveling this part of the city.

The dust cloud Eik had already raised from the basement with his jump expanded abruptly, but instead of the Gohkamorian a chain was flung up, Eik only barely managing to avoid it. A split second later, the dust cloud whirled up even further, announcing the arrival of the cultist a moment later about thirty meters below Eik's position in the air. And there he stopped, hanging freely in the air.

Suddenly Eik felt kind of dumb having to essentially explode his own feet just to stay up. Movement Boost had offered him something he had thought would be something like what the Gohkamorian was doing now, but it had turned out to be something that simply allowed him to leap much further. It was a great trait, but it wasn't as cool as standing in the air like a boss.

"Stop showing off, you big, bulky bastard!"

"What?" the cultists asked with clear confusion. The berserker trance seemed to have faded. Maybe he had more control over it than Eik had initially thought.

He was moving his legs as if he was walking very slowly. Around his feet the air seemed to shimmer and gather, as if thickened by an agent like a cornstarch mixture in a sauce. He seemed to essentially be treading air in the same way one might tread water.

The cultist took a stance again and whirled forward at speed, slower in the air than he had been on the ground.

Eik received the blow with a thick shell of toxin grown around his forearm and was flung back, but a hastily constructed and consecutively Accelerated block of toxin at his back propelled him back in an instant, taking the cultist by surprise.

Eik claimed the arm holding the greatsword in a single, fell slash, just as the cut leg had begun to get back to original condition. Despite the relatively clean severing, the force of the attack sent him flipping back, the S-ranker kicking the blade out of his own falling hand and catching it with his other.

He collided with another solid block from which hundreds more blocks spread out, forming a globe of interconnected pieces. The cultist immediately smashed it with his sword, but any damage he did instantly reconstructed itself, and when he attempted to pry the blocks apart, they would simply melt into each other and make it impossible to separate.

Furiously, he pummeled it with his fists, roaring like a patient in a padded room. "Let me out!" Whirling around he found Eik covered nearly completely in thick plates of crystal, more growing to cover the gaps as he watched.

Seeing Eik charge up for something, the swordsman rushed in for another attack but a handful of blocks behind Eik detonated and sent him rocketing forward like a bullet, the blocks immediately regenerating.

Frantically, the cultist slammed Eik's shell-covered body away with the flat of his blade but Eik simply collided with another portion of blocks which exploded on impact. Eventually he built up enough speed that, combined with the unpredictability of his trajectory, the Gohkamorian could only swipe his sword through the air randomly while the ball of crystal constantly slammed into his body.

After a handful of hard hits, the swordsman managed to finally catch it with the same chain he had hurled earlier and got in a good slash, cleaving the ball in two. He breathed heavily as he watched the two sides slide to the bottom of the globe.

Worry welled up in him when neither side came away bloody, none of the blue crystal dispersing.

The Alliance bastard was still alive. Hefting his sword, he looked around, berserker ability reigniting. "Well, thanks for helping me test my strength, mate," Eik said as his body reformed from Toxic Liquefaction above the Gohkamorian's head and he plunged a dagger into each side of the cultist's neck. "But I don't have all day, I'm afraid."

His opponent gasped as both blades widened inside the wound. In a moment his life was extinguished as Eik Accelerated both weapons, blowing the cultist's head clean off.

The globe dispersed and let the headless body plummet to the ground where Profound Toxic beasts were still fighting cultists.

He reinforced the protective measures around the Life Harvester by encasing it in a solid chunk of toxin. Leaping back into the air, Eik looked around the city. He was not too far from the city wall a few kilometers from his initial entry point.

Before he could do anything else a bright light suddenly blinded him completely and an explosion rocked the atmosphere and sent him hurtling back as a shock wave tore into him.

One of the other Life Harvesters had detonated.

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