Michael eyed Eik as they ran through the crisp night air. The man had changed a lot since they had first met. From the beginning the sense of desperation to save Olivia had been constantly present beneath Eik’s usually flippant attitude. He’d been a guy thrown into deep water.

  He was still that man. When they ate dinner together or he came to visit at the clinic, there was hardly a trace of what was brewing under the surface.

  The Worldbreaker was exerting some sort of influence over him, that much was clear. As if he was touched by something primal and ancient. Something bestial. It was a worrying notion, but at the same time there was not a sliver of doubt in Michael’s mind that this ruthlessness was born from Eik’s drive to protect.

  There was nothing he would not do to make sure they slept safely at night.

  Whenever danger showed itself or he got a chance to let loose, such as at the damage tests in the Crucible, the Worldbreaker’s influence intensified. Michael just hoped his friend could keep the power at bay.

  They stopped running about a dozen houses down from their goal, covering the last distance at a less conspicuous pace. Crawling through overgrown gardens, they eventually came close enough to see a man sprawled lazily in a torn up chair. Despite his apparently languorous posture, there was no doubt that he was awake, watching the night.

  For a good ten minutes they simply sat there behind a dense bush and watched the building for any kind of patrol or general comings and goings. Besides the man shifting in his seat a couple of times, the night was quiet and uneventful, the only indication that there was anything extraordinary about the building being the watch outside.

  While they watched Eik glanced over at Heath. “Hey, by the way, buddy. How long did Eik’s Legendary Mystery Medicine end up lasting in the end?”

  Heath gave him a raised eyebrow. “Dude, it never faded. The effect of that pill is definitely still there. I can feel it.”

  “Are you serious?” Eik hissed, barely stopping himself from shooting to his feet in excitement and revealing their presence to the watch. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “I mean, we already talked about it back when I first took it. I just figured you had realized that it’s probably permanent.”

  “Yeah, but it would still have been nice to know, you know!”

  “Alright, sorry. So can you get me more of that stuff?”

  “Nuh uh!” Sonja broke in, uncharacteristically animated. “It’s my turn next!”

  Heath shot her a look of incredulity. “Shut it, sis! You don’t even know what it is!”

  “Eik’s made some new alchemical whatever that you’re trying to keep a secret from me for as long as you can, and it’s called… Eik’s Legendary Mystery Medicine? Of course I want some of whatever it is!”

  “Right,” Eik said.

  “So what is it anyway?” she asked.

  “Potion of Mighty Strength but brewed with a substance made by fusing my aura with Profound Toxin. Its effect is way weaker than the original but apparently it… never goes away.”

  “What? How’s that possible?”

  Eik shrugged, palms up. “Beats me! Next time we see him, I’ll ask Mikla what kind of dough you can usually demand for that sort of thing.”

  “Uuh, guys?” Michael broke in. “Maybe we could talk about this stuff at another time?”

  “I’ll take care of him,” Eik whispered and swallowed a Potion of Mighty Strength class 2. Exploding forward like a rocket, he collided with the man who never managed to utter a sound before blue toxin flooded his nose and mouth, silencing him completely.

  In less than a second the fluid had enveloped the unsuspecting man’s entire head like a helmet, completely shutting most of his senses off from the world. Throwing him over his shoulder, Eik legged it back to the group and signaled for them to follow him back through a couple of gardens where he chugged the guy into the tall grass.

  “Bind, please!” he said to Michael.

  The healer did as requested. “What’s his power rank?”

  “No clue,” Eik said. “He never really struggled enough for me to know.” He laid his hand on the toxic layer and drew it back in through his skin until only his hand was covering the man’s mouth. The bandit stared up at him with extreme fear as his hands came up to grip Eik tightly around the wrists and tried to rip them away.

  “He’s probably low E-rank or high F-rank if I had to guess,” Eik mused as he studied the man closely, the poor guy breathing devolving into hyper ventilation. “Honestly, with the level of strength coursing through me right now, I’m having a tough time telling the difference.”

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  “What do we do with him?” Michael asked.

  “Kill him?” Sonja suggested. “That’s definitely the safest thing to do.”

  “I’d rather not,” Eik muttered but the look in his eyes didn’t necessarily support that claim. “Let’s knock him unconscious for now and then, depending on how it goes inside, we can come back to finish the job later.”

  “Fine,” Sonja conceded.

  “Actually,” Eik said and paused. “How many?” he moved his hand just enough for the man to be able to speak.

  “W-W-What?”

  “How many in the building? You are the Black Fang, right? And this is your lair of absolute evil, right?”

  Swallowing hard, the man nodded hesitantly. “T-Ten or… eleven.”

  “And Frank? Is he in tonight?”

  Another nod.

  “What’s his rank?”

  “C-rank.”

  “He’s mine then,” Eik muttered. “And the others?”

  The bandit’s eyes darted around in panic. “M-Mostly F-rank a-and E-rank. I think there’s a D-ranker as well.”

  “Alright.”

  “Eik, let’s hurry,” Sonja urged.

  “Right. Well, buddy,” Eik said to the muffled man. “Thanks for the answers. I guess you’ll find out what happened later… Or not.” He raised a fist as the bandit’s stifled screams were drowned out by the hand covering his mouth. The fist came down like a sledgehammer, slamming the man’s head halfway into the soil, instantly silencing his struggles.

  “Uuuh…” Heath mumbled and stared down at their now exceedingly quiet captive. “I think you might have put a bit too much strength into that, Eik.”

  “Ah, yeah, you— you might be right about that. Do you think he’s still alive?” It struck him that the horror of possibly having just committed an accidental murder was considerably less intense than it probably should have been. And it wasn’t just because of the influence of Profound Toxin either.

  Their lives had changed. Changed on an absolutely fundamental level. They had been through a lot of things that would have numbed any person. This man wouldn’t even be the first person Eik had killed within a few months, nor even the second. The third, maybe? That depended on how you looked at it.

  The sanctity of life. Do not kill. Those had been convictions held by all on old Earth, or at least any typical citizen of society. But what about now? Only time would tell since they were still in the middle of the greatest transition their world had ever experienced.

  Michael checked the man and nodded to himself. “He’s still alive, but he’s not going to be feeling very good when he wakes up. Well, I think he’ll wake up. I’ll Heal his neck and head a bit for now but I don’t know how much it’ll actually do,” he said with a glance in Eik’s direction.

  “Let’s get going then,” Sonja said and stood up. She didn’t seem to spare the unconscious man a second thought as she checked her blade in its sheath.

  “Let me just check it out first real quick.” Eik leapt across the property in two long strides and laid his ear to the door the now neutralized bandit had been sitting in front of.

  Muffled voices could be heard from the other side but they were so faint that it probably wasn’t a room immediately behind the door. Supposedly, there was a basement inside.

  Carefully, he opened the door and stuck his head inside. It was dark but the moonlight streaming in through the windows illuminated a scattering of broken furniture strewn across the floor. The voices were still faint.

  A narrow sliver of light trickled out from the gap in a trapdoor in the floor of the rearmost room. This was the place. Outside he signaled for the others to join him.

  “It sounds like they’re down there. You guys stand ready up here in case they try to run away.”

  “And you? Sonja asked.

  “I feel like I should try to talk before going feral… right? We need to know who actually hired them in the first place as well.”

  “There’s no way he’ll tell you,” Heath noted. “Not a guy like that. And I’m not sure he’ll give you the time to ask questions anyway.”

  “Mmh, yeah, maybe…”

  “Neutralizing the threat comes first,” Sonja concurred.

  “I’ll give it a try and if it goes to shit, then they’ll learn that I’m not that fun to fight in a confined area,” Eik said, a hint of a grin appearing on his lips.

  “Just… be careful, please,” Michael said with a resigned sigh.

  “I always am,” Eik said and worked his fingers into the narrow handle of the trapdoor.

  “Uh huh,” the healer said, rolling his eyes.

  “Ready?”

  Heath raised the Captain’s Tower and backed up to block the door out of the room, Sonja and Michael hidden behind the shield.

  Eik pulled the trapdoor open and stepped into empty space as he conjured a massive block of solid toxin above his head like an umbrella. Dropping through the narrow shaft like a rock, he sealed the exit tight with the block.

  Almost soundlessly, he landed at the bottom. For a second he covered his eyes with a hand, blinded by the sudden light after spending a while outside in the dark.

  Looking around, the space was actually pretty cozy, all things considered. Several tables, chairs, and cots covered the basement, a much greater concentration of bio luminescent flora making it feel less damp and gloomy.

  Initially nobody seemed to particularly notice his presence. In groups of two or three people, the members of the Black Fang sat gathered around the tables, playing cards, reading, or simply talking among each other.

  Eik supposed a lot of people came through this place every day, so the arrival of someone new would hardly be a thing of note. He walked up to the nearest table and looked over the shoulder of a guy playing cards.

  “Who the fuck are you?” a guy missing several front teeth, who sat across the table, shouted.

  “Greetings!” Eik raised a polite hand. “This guy’s got shitty cards,” he said, pointing to the guy he’d been standing behind.

  The chatter had died down completely, a gathering of hostile eyes meeting him in silence.

  “Eik Magnasen,” a voice said from a table in the back. A man with a fat, black mustache pushed out a chair and stood up. “Where’s Jane?”

  “Jane? Who’s Jane? Never heard of her.”

  “Wrong answer,” the man huffed, flashing an crooked, ugly smile. One of his incisors was as black as charcoal.

  “You must be Frank of the Black Fang,” Eik guessed. “Do you know how I can tell?”

  “Enlighten me,” Frank said, wet tongue moving across his teeth.

  “It’s because you’re so ugly.”

  The mustache rolled like a worm as he snorted at the remark but his face conveyed no amusement. “I assume you’ve shown up here for a reason?”

  “Who hired you to mess up my business?”

  “I believe that’s private.”

  “Come on, man. That’s the only topic I prepared,” Eik whined.

  “Talking’s over then. Get him.”

  Eik downed a Potion of Mighty Strength class 2 as well as a handful of chunks of poison as the Black Fang all leapt for him. “That’s more like it!” Eik grinned gleefully.

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