“Frank, that wasn’t a potion,” Eik said with an ear splitting grin.

  “What…?” Frank stared down at the empty vial in his hand. Not even the tiniest of drops remained in the glass, as if the substance had possessed a will to be consumed. Suddenly his stomach felt very strange. Something was rushing around in there, like a river flooding its banks.

  Desperation set in immediately and he tried to throw up whatever he had taken, but it stayed inside stubbornly. “What the hell have you done to me?” he gasped.

  “What have I done to you?” Eik asked with a perplexed expression. “I’m fairly certain I haven’t done a thing to you, Frank. Here I was, peacefully minding my own business and taking a sip of my drink, and you jump out and snatch it right out of my hands!”

  “Wh-What was that stuff?” Frank stammered, clutching his stomach that was now beginning to bubble and rumble hotly.

  “Oh, just my toxin,” Eik sang.

  Frank’s knees gave way as pain began to set in, growing exponentially more intense with each passing second. How had he been so stupid! It had only been a few seconds but he could already feel the pain spread to his extremities. “Fuckin’ lunatic,” he hissed.

  For the briefest of moments, the bandit leader clenched his eyes shut as a spike of overwhelming agony suddenly rammed through his stomach. And when he opened them again a thin twig of solid toxin hung right in front of him, snaking out from Eik’s outstretched hand.

  With a choke of surprise he jolted backward, but not in time to avoid the tendril as it made contact with his forehead. Instantly, he felt some relief from the pain coursing through his body. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  For the first time since emerging from the basement, Frank looked around the house. Cool wind blew in through several large holes in the wall. Three people, a tank, an archer, and a third guy, whom he’d never seen before were fighting five of his subordinates.

  They must be Eik’s teammates. Judging by their movements they were barely in D-rank but his intel had put them solidly in mid E-rank.

  Eik shrugged innocently. “A show of good faith, I suppose. I only took a little bit of what you ingested. Cooperate and I might just remove the rest of it as well.”

  “And what do you want in return?”

  “Nothing too crazy. Just tell me who hired you to ruin my business. Isn’t that simple enough?”

  “You’re going to take my word for it? How dumb are you?”

  Eik sighed. “Yeah, it is pretty stupid, isn’t it? I guess I just wish integrity was a bit more prevalent here in our little society. People don’t give a shit about people and I’m tired of it. If you don't want to tell me, then I'll just take it from your hideout after your death. I just hoped we could make this whole thing easier for the both of us.”

  “Yeah, fuck that,” Frank snorted and threw three daggers in rapid succession, the power of his attack considerably greater than any before.

  Boosted by another round of poison and potions, Eik leapt to the side to avoid the projectiles but had to slap the third one down with a block of solid toxin lest it tore through the flesh of his thigh. With a piercing clang, the dagger slammed into the ground and dug itself deep into the earth, leaving an oblong crater in its wake. “So much for that, huh…”

  Triggering Movement Boost, he rushed in close, Viper Fang ready in one hand and a spear of solid toxin in the other. It was probably pure luck that he could still use his injured shoulder but he suspected that the potions did something for that as well, along with Profound Toxin whose true influence on him remained a mystery. Frank was ready for him and met him with a dagger in hand, a second one grazing Eik’s ear as it flew back into the bandit leader’s hand.

  Eik blocked two attacks and tried to stab the blue pike into Frank’s leg, but a dagger flying in from the flank shattered the improvised weapon before he could make contact. Dancing back, he used the cheek of Viper Fang to once more bash the dagger into the ground while two wings of toxin manifested from his shoulders to block enough of the momentum of the second to only graze him.

  Glowing motes erupted from Eik’s body as he closed the distance yet again, another spike of toxin already snapping into existence in his hand. Having now experienced the agony of the Dane’s Profound Toxin, Frank seemed significantly more wary of even slight contact with more of the substance.

  Eik tried to chase him but a heretofore unseen movement skill carried Frank away as if on wires, rather similarly to Sonja’s Disengage. There were differences but it was difficult to tell exactly what.

  By now they had moved out into the night proper, the confines of the house unable to contain the destruction, an entire wall crumbling to a couple of stray knives.

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  The barrage of flying daggers never ceased and Eik’s confidence in continuing to deflect and avoid them was quickly waning. When a projectile drew a burning gash in his side as it rocketed past, he created three spike and hurled them at nearly the same velocity as Frank threw his, courtesy of a burst of Movement Boost focused on his arm and fingers.

  Just as two daggers returned to the bandit leader’s hands and he swung to shatter the spike, fearful dread shining in his eyes, it burst in to motes that showered the man. Stumbling back, he waved his hands desperately to break their floating approach.

  But Eik had already thrown two more, forcing Frank to stay on the defensive as he closed the distance again. Liquid poison flowed freely from the intricate ducts running along Viper Fang’s sleek body.

  Several shallow cuts bit into the bandit leaders’ barely protected arm, each strike delivering small but mounting doses. And this time Eik would not offer any goodwill cleansing.

  Unfortunately, while his toxin offered distraction and fear in melee combat, Frank’s weapon handling was simply superior and that discrepancy had already earned Eik more than a dozen wounds. Among those, four deep gashes were bothering him enough to reduce both power and speed.

  And the knife wielder didn't seem to be slowed that much by the toxin already running through him.

  So when the man decided to disengage again, Eik couldn’t help but breathe a little easier. As Frank sailed backward through the air, Eik erupted with mist again like a smoke bomb, concealing himself as he swallowed more Potion of Mighty Strength class 2, a handful of poison, as well as a Potion of the Metal Body for good measure.

  The knife thrower must have possessed some manner of sensory ability, because even with the luminescent veil, dagger after dagger jetted at him with nearly the same frightening accuracy as before.

  “Eik Magnasen!” Frank’s voice boomed through the night. “Blinding me like that was a clever little trick, but don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your precious little friends!”

  Eik drew in a sharp breath as his stomach tied itself into a knot. Activating Movement Boost, he leapt for his team but before he could even make it out of the toxic cloud, Sonja’s shrill scream sent shivers rattling down his spine.

  No, no, no! Not them!

  “Frank, you fucking coward!” he howled. “I’m the one you’re fighting!”

  The man cackled as a deafening clang of metal on metal echoed between buildings and trees. Heath grunt, barely holding on to the Captain’s tower when it was struck head on by a flying dagger. “What, you think the Black Fang is some manner of regimen of honor bound knights or something? We live in a broken world, man! Get with the times! I can do whatever I want with them.”

  When Eik reached his friends, Heath had thrown himself on top of Sonja and Michael, his shield held up to protect against the projectiles. A dagger came for the shield but curved at the last second, avoiding the barrier and tearing a deep, bleeding gash into his thigh.

  Sonja’s midriff was a bloody mess as well, the dagger that had buried itself in her hip already returned to Frank. If not for the supply of Mighty Strength class 1 and Metal Body coursing through them, she might well have been killed by the attack.

  “How is she?” Eik asked, afraid of the answer.

  “Not good,” Michael answered gravely, doing what he could for her while staying hidden under the shield. “We’re really going to need to get her some better treatment than what I can do here — and soon.”

  “Shit. Heath, you?” he asked the tank. His eyes flitted between the enemy ahead and his sister, panic clearly dominating his mind. He barely seemed to register Eik’s voice. “Heath! Talk to me! Tell me you’re okay!”

  Heath blinked up at Eik who deflected another two daggers, blue barrier on constant rotation the only thing that broke the velocity enough for him to keep up the defensive flow without losing Viper Fang. “I-I’m okay, I think. For now at least. But I don’t think I would be able to move if another of those curving ones comes this way.”

  “He’s thrown a few of those already, but they’re not that frequent so they might be on some sort of cooldown.”

  “What the hell do we do?” Michael yelled with hands glowing brightly, thumb stuck deep into her wound to stop the flow of blood. “We’re sitting ducks here!”

  The never ending recreation of the poison barriers was beginning to take its toll on Eik’s mental energy. Between that and the simultaneous knife work, his concentration was stretched thin to its breaking point. He clenched his teeth as he failed to completely avoid a dagger that sliced deeply through the flesh on his shoulder. “I don’t know! The moment I leave your side to confront him, he’s going to focus you down. There’s no way I’m going to let that happen and he knows that.”

  “Fuck!” Michael shouted, frustration oozing out of him like sweat.

  Unable to think of anything that might provide an advantage, Eik hurled a pair of blue spikes at Frank. But as the distance to Eik’s body grew, their connection seemed to wane until they fell apart into a liquid state and splattered uselessly to the ground.

  What a blunder. With the decision to involve the team in this mission he might just have ensured their deaths. None of these fucking bandits deserved the chance to get away. What had he been thinking?

  He raged. Frank had said it himself. The world was broken, and Eik was trying to keep it from falling apart. But maybe the way to repair it wasn’t by gluing the diseased pieces back together. Perhaps that which had become spoiled and corrupt should be cut away completely and eradicated.

  As if it had been waiting for his mind to reach that line of thought, the presence in the back of his head swooped in and established itself. Eik felt some of his reservation evaporate like water poured onto molten metal.

  A dagger buried itself in his side but he barely felt the pain. His head was a simultaneously muddled and clearer than it had ever been. Instinct took the wheel as Profound Toxin flowed out and around the dagger, enveloping it completely in a cube that solidified in an instant.

  When it left to return to Frank the toxin followed, and while it lost its shape at a certain distance like before, the weapon remained coated in the liquid as it returned to his hand. Quickly letting it go again, he left it to hang lazily in the air next to him.

  Another projectile tore through Heath’s leg but managed to tear a large chunk of out his calf. Now unable to support his weight, the tank fell backward with a groan of pain. It was all he could do to keep the shield held high.

  His brain barely comprehending what he was seeing, Eik’s mind darkened as a bestial snarl warped his face. Something welled up in him and he felt power surge into his body like water through a sluice gate as his skin began to crack, revealing a bright and luminescent blue underneath.

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