They spent the next hours combing through the city in search of the remaining Life Harvesters.

High-rank scouts were sent out in all directions to look for any trace of them. Given the large size of them and the fact that they had to be handled with extreme care should have made them pretty easy to locate.

"What the hell is going on here?" Gul spat as the tenth scouting team returned having located no additional Life Harvesters. All they had been able to find were abandoned locations similar to the one where Eik had found the one he'd killed. "That damned Oracle told us that there should be at least twenty five of those nasty things here!"

"She did say that they might well have managed to move some of them," Eik noted.

"Yes, but she said it would be unlikely that they had moved more than a handful due to the danger of doing so. Far fewer than what we've been able to find here."

"Why are we not discussing the possibility that the Oracle's information is simply a load of hot, stinking garbage?" Pölse broke in. "She is and has always been the literal head of the organization we're attacking at this very moment."

"Because it has been considered, discussed, investigated, and the concluded to be less likely. By officials of the Nidafjeld Alliance as well," Andihar said. "We certainly can't, and never should, dismiss the possibility completely, but as it stands we just can't ignore the risk that it's real. Everything of what she has told us that we have been able to confirm thus far has been true. We have been able to make critical moves against Moon Shall Swallow based entirely on her information."

"We've found three Life Harvesters, god damn it! Three! How the hell is that supposed to make any sense," Pölse raged, a thick vein popping out on his forehead. Eik had initially thought the man to be cool, but his panties were getting bunched up way too tightly right now. Had the guy never met adversity in his life?

Maybe Eik shouldn't really have an opinion on the matter, given his track record when it came to keeping cool, calm, and collected. Flying off the rails was kind of his thing.

Andihar's jaw tightened. "I don't know…"

"Shit!" the S-ranked general cursed. "What the fuck is going on here?" He kicked a lump of warped metal in anger and sent it flying with a resounding clang straight through the side of a building that somehow still stood more or less despite the massive battle. "I can't believe I agreed to participate in this farce! I should twist the neck of that cultist bitch myself!"

They had managed to capture a decent chunk of the city from their original breaching point on the wall and had established a perimeter with no cultists. Most of the city was still contested or completely in the cult's hands, however. At this point, it looked like what they had walked into was not exactly a trap but rather a dud. Despite four or five S-rankers, three of which Eik had taken care of himself, there really didn't seem to much to come after.

The three Life Harvesters they had found appeared to be little more than bait to make them stay longer.

"If there are at least twenty two Life Harvester from this city in the wind, then we have to expect similar numbers from the other three sites we were going to hit. That's about a hundred volatile abdominal sacks unaccounted for. That's not good," Eik said with narrowed eyes. "You seem a little overcooked so how about you calm down a bit and stop upsetting the rest of our people?" He eyed a station of healers treating wounded patients only about ten meters away from their discussion, all doing a terrible job of pretending not to focus one hundred percent of their attention on them.

"Who the hell do you think you are to be giving me orders, huh?" Pölse snarled, taking two steps forward and getting into Eik's face.

"Take it easy, Pölse," Mn'Toakh said. "We're all on the same side here. Not to mention that Eik is right. We're more effective when we're calm."

"No, I've been keeping my mouth shut but I don't like this guy running the show when he barely has any experience in the field! He's a whelp from a fresh world, for crying out loud!" Pölse's aura flickered and erupted, a sharp, silvery flow like a thousand blades of wind. "And you two," he said to Andihar and Gul. "just how low can you sink to subordinate yourselves to someone like him? And you even let him lay with your granddaughter, didn't you?" He spat those final words at Gul with undiluted disdain.

Ah, so that was how it was, huh?

The two other Alliance generals, Mn'Toakh the S-ranker and Balafo the A-ranker, clearly didn't share the prejudice against Eik, but Pölse seemed to think a lot like those shitty council bastards. Initially, he had seemed like a guy who minded his own business and got things done, but he must have been stewing with it for a bit to explode like this.

Eik stuck his hands in his pockets, arched the corner of his mouth to show teeth, thrust out his lower lip and furrowed his brows as hard as he could. "You got something to say to me, huh, bitch?" he asked Pölse. "I'll stick you in some ketchup and bite your head off."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Seeming somewhat surprised that Eik didn't appear to be shaken in the slightest by the flexing of his aura, Pölse turned it up another few notches, the nearby non S-rankers, including the other Alliance general Balafo, were now visibly affected by the pressure despite not being the primary targets of the assault.

Gul's purple aura was also peeking out as his face darkened at the insult to his beloved granddaughter. Andihar just shook his head, probably wishing that he was sitting at home in his garden instead of dealing with this crap.

Pölse's sharp aura sliced hundreds of tiny cuts into Eik's skin but Eik didn't react whatsoever, maintaining a face of stone.

Then he let his own aura go all at once, including Tyrant's Pressure at maximum output, the blue Monarch materializing above him for the third time that day. Where Pölse's aura leaked into the air and affecting the people around them, Eik's was held fast and steady in a mental vice grip with one hundred percent of the force concentrated on Pölse's body.

Onlookers suddenly felt the weight of the Alliance general's wild blade aura ease up almost completely as Eik's crushed it into the ground, the titanic avatar of the Monarch bending down and putting his eight meter long face in the man's face.

Much of the color drained from Pölse's face as his body and psyche were assaulted simultaneously. His jaw bobbed, eyes wide, but Eik didn't let up. By now he had learned that assholes like this needed to be put in their place once and for all as early as possible. And if he couldn't rip the head off someone who talked like that about the love of his life, then he sure as hell was going to make them regret it.

He honestly didn't know how best to handle this situation. On the one hand they were in the middle of a large-scale conflict and really should get going, but on the other hand the glass had already overflowed. It was on and he could either leave it burning or extinguish it right here and right now.

His aura grew denser, almost to the point of condensing into a liquid, its toxic properties scorching Pölse's otherwise pristine skin. Somehow, digging around in the corners of his spirit, Eik found a bit more force to pump out, his aura output so enormous that it rumbled deeply like an undersea earthquake. The air seemed to vibrate with energy as the colossal manifestation of the Monarch grew even larger.

And yet, everybody around them remained unaffected. Mn'Toakh stood to the side watching, the expression on her face making it crystal clear how her opinion of Eik Magnasen was changing. Most others had put some distance between themselves and the big blue monster.

When Pölse finally sank to his knees, his breathing becoming difficult, Eik began to let up on the spiritual torture. This was probably enough, right?

It took a couple of seconds but then Pölse quickly snapped back into lucidity, flying to his feet with a gasp. Embarrassment described his expression well. He seemed aware of what had just happened as well as the implications once rumors of it eventually spread around back home. As an S-ranker, few would dare say anything to his face, but behind closed doors and by the corner tables in the bars the laughter would flow like water through a river.

Eik grabbed the man by the collar and hauled him to his feet, dusting off his clothes with a hand. "All right, buddy. Back to work you go, eh. We've got stuff to do. And to be clear," he said, raising his voice so everybody nearby could hear him, all of them quickly turning away to hide how they had been staring. "let's all get back to work, shall we. We're in the middle of something, I believe."

His orders were immediately obeyed and he supplied as many Living Manifestations as he could currently summon to join the fray as reinforcements. The dragon Raised to the Occasion was already out there wreaking havoc.

He pulled Pölse by the shoulder and signaled for another huddle-up with the six commanders. "We have wasted enough time as it is, and I'll take the blame for that one," he said with a glance at Pölse, who was still disoriented from the ordeal he had just gone through, and then at Mn'Toakh, who was looking at Eik with completely new eyes from before. "We should get eyes on the other sites we were planning to hit."

"I agree," Mn'Toakh said with a nod. "Although it's likely that it's the same as here, we really should be confirming that as quickly as possible. And preferably, we should have a practical plan ready for what to do afterward."

"We're five S-rankers here plus the three others who came with us. That's eight of us for three additional sites. It would probably be a good idea to leave two S-rankers here just in case reinforcements show up now that we've spent so much time combing through the place," Eik suggested. "I don't think we need to bring the rest of the troops for this though. If it really is the same there, it's more effective to confirm it on our own and get the hell out of there afterward."

"Yes. No need to bring the cavalry for a scouting mission. Eik, your skills are excellent for large scale destruction, and so are yours Gul, so the two of you should not go together. Mn'Toakh, your arrows are also best suited for a smaller number of opponents, no?"

She nodded.

"Great, perhaps you could go together with Gul? I'll go with Zindi. She could destroy a city in moments. Balafo, you should stay here and keep the clean up going with the remaining two S-rankers,"

"Sounds like a plan," Mn'Toakh said.

"What about me?" Eik asked.

"You go with Pölse."

Eik looked at the muscled elf with incredulity. "You're kidding me, right? I don't want to deal with this guy! We just fought!"

"That was just a little quarrel for status," Andihar corrected. "Happens all the time." Mn'Toakh, Gul, and Balafo all nodded in agreement.

"Grandpa Gul? You serious? After what he said about Ihasu…"

"Oh, don't get me wrong, boy," the grumpy old man grunted. "I am still considering whether to rip the testicles off that little insect there, but… this kind of thing is pretty common. Lots of people have more pride than they know what to do with."

"All right, I'll go with him."

"I'm nev—" Pölse began.

"Shut it. It's decided," Eik snapped.

***

Eik and Pölse exchanged words only to coordinate their efforts as they searched the other base and exterminated the cultists trying to slow them down. They only encountered one S-ranker here.

It was much the same and they had only managed to find one Life Harvester by the time a signal flare went up on the horizon and they both sped back out of the city.

"Urgent orders to gather!" the messenger told them and ducked back through a waiting fracture. They both followed, the portal fizzing out behind them.

"A fracture mage found traces of a portal at our site!" Andihar said, marching up to them. "A really powerful one. We're following immediately!"

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