“It hasn’t gone away yet?” Eik exclaimed, shooting up from the couch once more, this time out of excitement rather than worry.

  Heath opened and closed his hand several times as he felt around his body. “No, yeah, it’s definitely still there. In fact, I don’t think it has faded at all. Eik, you might just have made something crazy here.”

  “D- Damn…” Eik muttered as he stared at Heath. “How long do you think the effect is going to last?”

  “I have no clue,” Heath said. “A couple of hours? A whole day…? Forever?”

  “F- Forever…” Eik whispered to himself, gaze far away. “By Thor’s damn biceps…”

  “Did you say you could make more of these, Eik?” Heath asked, hope beaming out of his eyes.

  “I—…” Eik’s thought went back to the dread of creating the fusion essence and the pain of each failure leading up to his one and only success thus far. The risk of death or permanent injury definitely felt like a possibility, but maybe the uncertainty itself was just as bad.

  But he’d already done it once. Even now, he felt the weariness deep inside and knew that a second attempt wouldn’t be possible right now. But it would later.

  “Of course I can. Just not quite yet. It’s super exhausting.”

  “Dude, that’s so awesome! I’d bet something like this would cost a literal fortune to buy in Gimleh!”

  “You think?”

  “Uh, yeah, obviously! It’s a freaking permanent freaking stat boost. That’s the fuckin’ best thing ever!” Heath said, pacing around the room. “People would pay out their asses for something like this, don’t you think?”

  Eik couldn’t hold back a grin.

  ***

  Eik bit into a sandwich full of chicken, lettuce, tomato, and some kind of dressing with the abandon of a starving man. He was carrying a wooden crate under one arm and holding the sandwich in the other. From inside the crate glass rattled.

  He was approaching the outskirts of Forest where residences and businesses were few and far between. Occasionally he would encounter another pedestrian as he walked, but within the city limits of Forest, an area like this was about as remote as one could get.

  Looking over his shoulder, he turned down a narrow alley, flanked on both sides by dilapidated houses. One of them had a roof that had been caved in completely by some kind of impact with half of the outer wall reduced to rubble.

  It was difficult to recall exactly when it had happened, but it had been a monster attack with a lot of dead. At some point, the buildings would probably be demolished and new shops and houses would be constructed, and new life would be breathed into the area.

  Not yet though. By the looks of it, they had stood abandoned for more than a couple of years, giving no real reason for anybody to come around.

  This was the perfect place for a secret storage.

  After passing a few houses, he went through a creaking garden fence gate, past the main building, whose door hung ajar, and into the back yard. He stopped in front of a small, ramshackle shed which, although the quality of the construction was questionable to begin with, was perfectly intact.

  When he set down the crate on the soft grass, it clinked musically.

  Wiping his brow with a cloth, he took a couple of minutes to finish the sandwich while scanning the surroundings nonchalantly. With a hum, he picked the crate back up and walked up to the door of the shed.

  It was equipped with a big fat padlock — one of those strong, modern one from a reputable manufacturer. They were pretty rare these days but Eik had managed to get his hands on one from Travis. He stuck the key in, turned, and pulled down hard with a grunt as it clicked open.

  He backed inside, narrowed eyes flitting around the bushes and corners with obvious suspicion.

  More sounds of glass rattling rung out from the shed. It was minutes of scraping and thumping before Eik came out again, the wooden crate now held loosely by its edge in two fingers. The lid must have been left inside because the interior was now clearly empty. There was no longer any glass to rattle.

  Making sure to lock in up tight again, Eik went back the way he’d come, walking without pause until he reached Eik’s Excellent Elixirs.

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  Dew had drenched his boots thoroughly and he stomped it off outside before going inside.

  “How was it?” Robert asked, busy pouring potion into vials from a large pitcher filled with the stuff.

  “No sign of ‘em…” Eik said with a sigh, kicking off the boots. “Just how long is it going to take? How long have I been doing this damn routine every single day?”

  “It’s been a week now, Boss.”

  “A damned week already! Let’s just face it… This shit was never going to work. They’re just not desperate enough to go for something like this.”

  Robert frowned. “Maybe they’re just being careful. They’re checking for traps and stuff like that. That’s to be expected. You just have to be patient.”

  “The Championships are right around the corner. I don’t have time to be patient.”

  “There’s still time left, Eik.”

  “Yeah, but… Lisa’s already a cranky woman as it is. If I use her like a human watchtower for much longer, she’s going to dislike me even more.”

  “So?” Robert asked. “Since when did you give a paper bag full of farts about what others thought about you?”

  “What? I— Yeah, you know, I care about that kind of stuff sometimes.”

  “No,” Robert drawled. “You always care about what your sister thinks. You usually care about what Sonja, Heath, and Michael think. You sometimes seem to care about what I think. You never care about what everybody else thinks.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said.”

  “I made you some food. It’s on the table over there,” Robert said, throwing a thumb at a table in the corner. It was the only surface besides the floor not overflowing with vials both empty and filled, alchemical ingredients, or other miscellaneous mess. “If you get something to eat it will make the wait easier. And then who knows, you might get some good news from Lisa tonight.”

  “I just ate a sandwich.”

  “So you’re not hungry?”

  Eik glared at Robert with narrowed eyes as he walked over and plopped into a chair, digging into the food. “It didn’t take you long to lose that deference you used to have, did it, Bobby?” he said with a mouth full of meat and rice. He was so happy that crops grew faster in the apocalypse.

  “You were the one who told me you disliked that kind of stuff. I’m just doing as the boss ordered.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  “And I’m still polite and respectful, even to you.”

  Eik tilted his head from side to side. “If you say so.”

  ***

  Eik had just finished a full batch of pain killers that would soon be delivered to Mission Central, partner stores at the market, as well as the few medical clinics established around Forest, including the one where Michael worked. Just as he was about to start mixing it with the edible wax to create individual chunks, there was a knock on the door.

  When Robert opened the door, a lanky man stood waiting on the step, dressed in all black. His nose, mouth, and hair were wrapped tightly in a dark cloth, leaving only his eyes visible. It couldn’t have been pleasant to breathe through all of that fabric.

  Dropping a clump of pain killing medicine on the floor in his haste, Eik rushed up. “What? Is it time?”

  The man nodded, face expressionless. Another chuuni? “My master is keeping an eye on them. If they leave before you can get there, she’ll follow and leave signs of the direction only I can follow and I shall become your guide.”

  “Alright, great, let’s go,” he said and went to grab his coat. “How many were there?”

  “I believe it was only a single person, Mr. Magnasen,” the scout said and led the way out of the door.

  “At the shed, yeah?”

  “Affirmative, sir.” The man began to run, gradually building up his speed.

  “What’s your rank?” Eik asked.

  “D-rank.”

  “Perfect. Let’s go faster, then. I want to get there as quickly as possible.”

  The ninja scout glanced over at Eik as he came up on his side, chugging a potion and swallowing a handful of home mixed poison clumps. “Sir, I wouldn’t recommend that. I am an Awakened specialized in speed and mobility. One such as you would not be able to keep up with me if I went all ou—”

  “Dude, less talking and more running, please,” Eik said as the energizing effects of Noxious Invigoration washed through his body along with the unmistakable sensation of a Potion of Mighty Strength class 2.

  Without another word, he doubled their current pace, overtaking the scout in seconds. Using a roof like a spring board, he leapt into the air at speed, creating a pair of solid wings that he used to glide through the air like he had done in the fight with the manticores. He gradually built momentum as he soared from rooftop to rooftop until he could barely hear the miserable scout calling for him to wait.

  A couple of hundred meters before he reached the garden where the shed stood, he landed quietly on a rooftop and leapt onto the street below. The moon was out so luckily it wasn’t pitch black as he moved past one house after the other. He kept to the shadows, making sure to keep his very visible, luminescent toxin inside his body until he needed it.

  He knew where Lisa was set up, on a roof a few houses down from the shed. It was far away but offered a perfect, clear vantage point of the garden. She possessed a sophisticated camouflage ability that really complimented this kind of observation work — a fact she had not appreciated him pointing out when he was trying to convince her to do it.

  “Lisa?” he whispered as he crawled up the wood on his stomach. “Lisa, are you still here?”

  “Be quiet!” she hissed in a voice that was simultaneously both barely audible but also as clear as if he’d been hearing it through a pair of headphones. “The guy is still down there.”

  “Don’t apprehend him. I want to see where he goes back to first.”

  “Obviously!”

  “Damn, sorry…” he mumbled as he settled in next to her. “How long has he been in there?”

  “Not long,” she said. “but it should be about time for him to come out.”

  “Good.”

  Eik heard the faint rustle as the dark ninja scout arrived on the roof behind them. He crawled up next to Lisa who gave him a look as if to ask why he was arriving so much later. The man clearly also had a great talent for pretending not to notice when he was being stared at.

  “What did you leave in there for him to find?” Lisa asked.

  “Potions.”

  “What kind?”

  “The expensive ones.”

  “You’re going to let him take the expensive ones?”

  Eik shrugged as well as he was able to while lying flat on his stomach. “It’s not like he’s going to get away with it in the end. And if I just left him bottles of mud, he’d know something was up. He’d never go back to the stash house or wherever he drops it off.”

  She didn’t say anything back, which probably meant that she agreed.

  Soundlessly, the door to the shed swung slowly open. A barely visible silhouette emerged, carrying something that Eik couldn’t make out and set off toward the inner city. Leaving the tracking to Lisa’s superior senses, the trio followed him.

  Then Eik would get answers, no matter what.

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  The Green Forest