Monarch of Profound Toxin [Progression, LitRPG]

Eik's squad was made up of Olivia, Jake the flame user and Olivia fanboy who had helped Eik out in the past, and a small group of A-rankers from the mission to rescue the oracle which included Sinki the healer controller hybrid and the double shield user who Eik now knew was named Kalavax.

They were heading to the fourth cult base and spreading thin the defenses of Moon Shall Swallow. Even if the cult had spies within the Alliance, if they were hitting everything it would be difficult to organize a proper defense to counter it.

This was a proper war now.

Naturally, the strongest opposition would still be met at the larger sites with more crucial infrastructure and value. These blitz attacks achieved their purpose of causing chaos and shaving down personnel.

"Do you even know how envious of Goo I am right now?" Michael huffed, twirling in his hand the wicked new mace Heath had recently made and gifted to him. Courtesy of the miraculous cleaning ability of Profound Toxin, it was squeaky clean despite having seen plenty of use the past days. "What's his power rank again?"

He and Heath had jumped on the opportunity to get some more much needed levels. They had both begun to feel themselves hit metaphorical walls in their pursuits of the medical arts and the smithing arts respectively, the need for more experience in the field painfully apparent, and when Michael had decided to do a bit more of the ol' adventurin', Heath had decided to join him.

But really, who wouldn't? When your S-ranked buddy and his merry band of goofy A-rankers went out to plunder, you would be a fool to stay home and twiddle your thumbs.

"D-rank second grade, I think," Eik drawled and quickly checked. Greater Brood of the Monarch — II. "Yep, D-rank second grade."

"See? What the hell, man? Goo, take it easy, will ya? You're getting stronger even faster than your damn daddy here! It's too much!" Michael complained, stabbing a finger in Goo's direction.

The blue cat simply stared and tilted his head in puzzlement, much like a dog might. "You're making me feel bad!"

"I don't think he really understands complex sentences like that, man," Heath said with a laugh. "If you're expecti—"

"Loser," a small voice uttered, interrupting Heath. The voice was strange to say the least. It lacked that fullness and humanity a voice gained when passing through the voice box. Instead it was flat and stumbling.

Everybody stopped what they were doing. The attack had just begun, Eik's squad bringing in totally unbalanced fighting power to overwhelm the cult base. Now that the Alliance had begun to go in in earnest, the cultists had been waiting but they had neither power rank nor the manpower to put up a real fight against a band of A-rankers led by a devastatingly mighty S-ranker like Eik.

"What… the hell?" Heath wondered out loud. "Who said that?"

Michael eyed Goo sitting in the bloodied grass. "Lemon!" the blue cat shouted.

"It's… Goo. Goo speaks…"

"Holy shit, Goo! You're amazing!" Eik whooped, picking him up and throwing him high into the air in celebration.

"Dude, he said 'lemon'. He didn't exactly utter any great truths," Heath said, petting the blue cat on his squishy head. "Isn't he just imitating you?

"How often do you think I say the word 'lemon' anyway, man?"

"Loser!" Goo interjected with glee, eyes boring into Heath.

"Plus, saying that to the two of you is about as true as it gets," Eik added, barely able to suppress a giggle.

"Loser!" the blue cat then said, this time to him.

Heath and Michael were flat on the ground with laughter, tears in their eyes. "Ain't that just the truth! Loser Eik and his loser friends!"

Eik ground his teeth, glaring at Goo who didn't seem to register the atmosphere of the conversation at all, head on a swivel as he excitedly took in everything around him, his Learn ability working at full throttle. "Traitor!" Eik hissed, winding up and hurling the cat into the fray, the Profound Toxic beast guardians tailing him dutifully. "Go and get some EXP, you ball of gum! You know the rules, no attacking those who don't attack first!" he yelled after the cat.

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"I guess we'll go and get into it as well, then," Michael said and took Heath along as they circled around the base to go in at a different angle. Eik sent two Profound Toxic beasts along with them. That added safety would reduce the experience for their ability levels but there was nothing to do about that. Eik wasn't about to let his low-rank friends get killed and if the blue guardians stayed at a bit of a distance, the impact on their levels probably wouldn't be as severe.

Eik walked around the grounds, keeping an eye on the goings-on as his comrades fought. It went smoothly for a good couple of minutes before Hannan, the stealth specialist and scout, touched down at his side. "We've got incoming, boss," she muttered.

"Anything worth a reaction?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Oh yeah?"

She nodded. "I'm counting at least seventy signatures among which I would place more than a dozen at A-rank."

"And what about S-rankers?" he asked, a jolt of excitement flickering through his chest. At this point he was so strong that it was difficult to really test himself properly. Even the Crucible test was no longer a good option. X-rank monsters did exist, but not in a way where one just went out to find them like any other monster. And even if they could be found so easily, subjugating them was only really possible in theory.

That's why the S-rank crucible damage test was just more S-ranked monsters, leading to a not very accurate measurement of the actual damage output of the individual S-rankers. Eik had been giddy to test out his own.

"None as far as I can tell. If there are, they have completely hidden their aura and signature."

"So you're saying there's a chance?" he asked, brow arched.

"Uuh, yes… but let's hope there isn't one, yeah?"

"ETA?"

"Sorry?"

"Estimated time of arrival?"

"Oh, well, now," she said, the words perfectly timed with an enormous explosion rocking the base and its buildings to the east. Trailed by Hannan, Eik rushed toward the site at a speed that the version of him that had been Prince of Toxin would have had trouble even registering with his eyes. In a second he was in the middle of the fray, just as another explosion cracked the air.

He felt both the guardians sticking to Heath and Michael as well as the ones following Goo already far in the other direction with their charges in their possession. Good. None of them could handle A-rankers. It was far too dangerous.

Some of the A-rankers from his squad—for which he would soon have to come with one of his amazingly inventive and perfect names—had already been present to meet the powerful newcomers but they were quickly losing ground and becoming overwhelmed.

Activating Profound Union, the layer of brilliant blue flowed over his body like a symbiotic takeover. The flame-like, gaseous discharge that flared up and off his body rose high into the air, making him very easy to see. Wicked horns sprouted from his forehead, making him look even more like something not quite human.

Instead of the smooth facial cover devoid of features that the Profound Unity had had until then, it now morphed into a visage covered in eerie and bizarre like the spectral mask that would sometimes manifest in front of his head in heated situations.

When he spoke, his voice was warped and pitched low, sounding almost like it was being pulled through the tremble effect of an electric guitar amplifier. With a sweep of his arm, a blob of Profound Toxin spanning several dozen meters by several dozen meters snapped into existence, enveloping absolutely everything including both allies and enemies.

The cacophony of high-rank combat had been earsplitting, but it was all extinguished into silence in a single moment. Unnecessarily, Eik raised his arm as he directed the enormous shape into the air where it hung like an enormous diving pool in defiance of gravity, not even a drop dripping onto the ground below.

One by one, the members of Eik's squad who had been caught up in the blue prison fell through, not a mote of Profound Toxin on them. Coughing and hacking as their aura flared up in panic, they tried to clear from their systems what had never been there.

"You're good, guys," Eik's haunting voice said as he stepped closer under the floating construct. "We never attack our friends, do we, buddy?" A tendril of toxin on his arm wobbled from side to side.

"Wh-What is that?" one of his companions gasped as he got back on his feet, staring up into the blue above.

"A flex," Eik said with a grin.

"Don't tell me it's going to start spitting spears at us."

"Nah, I'll spare you," he laughed. "I'll do this instead."

With a forceful whip of his arm, he sent it soaring skyward at great speed. After a couple of seconds of flight it stopped below the clouds and hung still and silent as everybody stared. Holding up a palm toward it, Eik clenched his hand into a tight fist.

The reaction was violent. Extremely so.

The entire thing detonated in the most cataclysmic Accelerant he had ever caused. Until then Accelerant activated outside of an infected system had only been achievable with Living Manifestations. That was no longer so.

Except for Eik himself, every single person present at the cult outpost were crushed into the ground violently. The shock wave shaved off roofs and crumbled walls on the ground and outright killed some of the weaker cultists still fighting for their lives. Thankfully, Michael, Heath, and Goo had been taken further away in anticipation of the destruction.

Everything around the explosion was dispersed in all directions, creating a hole in the cloud cover that allowed the rays of the sun to shine through on an otherwise overcast day. Including the more than a dozen A-ranker, every single cultist inside the giant cube of toxin had been vaporized completely along with the toxin itself, and even the blood and poison that should have rained down upon them all was pulled back into Eik as if by magnetism.

For those whose ears weren't ringing after the detonation, the silence that followed was deafening as they got back onto their feet.

"I am… so glad that you're on our side, boss," one of his friends breathed.

Had Eik detonated the cube on the ground instead, he would have altered the surrounding topography.

"The cult still has S-rankers left, right?" Eik asked Hannan, his eyes still on the hole he had opened in the clouds.

"Of course," she confirmed.

His teeth were bared as he smiled. "Good."