Monarch of Profound Toxin [Progression, LitRPG]

Eik overtook the Apocalypse Canvas and hit the walled city like a rocket. As thousands upon thousands of deadly shards ran down upon the city-wide barrier in much the same way as it had when they had attacked Luna, Eik conjured a massive spear gun.

In front of the wall was a long stretch of plains, providing an excellent view of anybody traveling toward the city. It spanned at least a couple of kilometers ahead of the main gates but that just wasn't a distance that Eik had any issues crossing anymore.

As he approached the wall, he filled most of the large barrel up with small Profound Toxic beasts, put a plate on top of them and put a dreadful projectile on top of that. Without even a beat of hesitation, magical and ranged attacks caught and neutralized by super hard shells as they rained down over him, he slammed the mouth of the barrel into the wall and triggered Accelerant.

With agility befitting his S-rank, he hopped up at placed his body above the powerful blast, driving a stake connected to the gun deep into the ground to give the barrel support against the recoil. The shells already lining his back shielded his from most of the blast itself and sent him soaring upward and over the wall.

On a pair of blue wings and with his body covered in blue shells and blue Armor of the Scourge, Eik was nearly invisible like a color-changing octopus against the backdrop of the glorious Apocalypse Canvas raining down death from above.

Sailing through the air, he scanned the horizon for the Life Harvesters. Supposedly, they were quite large but the place was filled with plenty of large buildings as well so it wasn't so easy to spot. It was a genuinely enormous city with millions of cultists living there permanently.

Despite having been to Luna before, for some reason Eik had been expecting some manner of medieval-type town. That was far from the truth, unfortunately, and the infrastructure, like in Luna, was just as advanced as that of the Alliance headquarters. Gimleh was much more down to earth, especially in the outskirts but that was a stylistic choice, not a matter of necessity.

Having clearly been expecting an assault at some point, the city was already swarming with activity, reminding Eik of an agitated ant hill as looked down from above. Something akin to sirens blared throughout the city, stirring the inhabitants to action.

The Alliance had brought no warriors below B-rank and fielded more A-rankers and S-rankers than Eik had ever seen. They would be a devastating force when they hit the city and widened the hole he had already opened in the fortified wall.

But they had been able to get no certifiably accurate numbers about the number of A-rankers and S-rankers within the city, especially since Moon Shall Swallow would certainly have fortified their most valuable sites after the abduction and or rescue of the oracle. But they expected significantly tougher defenses to meet their troops this time around, even if the city was smaller and less important than Luna.

Like Luna, this place seemed to be divided up into districts of monotonously uniform architecture denoting the primary purpose of each area, such as craftsmanship, training, residence, worship, and so on.

Eik immediately dismissed the areas with the most densely constructed buildings as it would be unlikely that the cultists would have tried to squeeze the Life Harvesters into those darkened alleyways and narrow streets. That would have been a death sentence given the apparent fragility of those explosively volatile abdominal sacks abdominal sacks.

Once he made it a bit into the city and further away from the point at the wall, the swarm of cultists began to gradually thin out, and then, eventually, lead in a different direction. Well, would you look at that. Follow the river to find the fish, or however the saying went.

He was tempted to drop down into the midst of the gathering flow of cultists and decimate their numbers like a biological weapon activated in the middle of a crowded shopping mall, and he would, but not until they helped him locate the first Life Harvester.

They had feared that the Life Harvesters would all have been moved, and some might well have been, but they weren't easy to move. Once they were placed, matured, and beginning to accumulate energy, they couldn't just be moved at a whim.

The oracle had assured them that even with the strictest and most careful precautions taken, moving even a single Life Harvester was slow and hazardous work. While they might well have managed some, it was unlikely that they had had time to move them all.

Eventually gathering around and going into a large, freestanding building, Eik decided to dismiss the crowd as a good lead and the place as a likely location for a Life Harvester. So he moved on, hanging on to a tall, pointed roof spire for just long enough to drop a massive weight of Profound Toxin ala Visage of Death into the midst of the crowd and into the building where they were all entering.

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He considered just going standard and kill the lot of them, but chaos and confusion in the middle of the city would probably end up causing a bigger impact on the clash overall.

The weakest among them would be frothing at the mouth as the madness taking over theirs minds sent them flying at whoever was closest to them, while those who were stronger would probably manage to keep themselves more or less in check all the way up until someone accidentally bumped their shoulder or blocked their way. Then they would fly off the handle and follow the low-rankers into uncontrolled anger.

And the ruckus that would ensue would draw more cultists in. It would essentially create two fronts.

He found another stream of cultists further inside the city and followed the same direction, quickly ending up at large plaza which was sheltered against the elements by what looked like a huge tarp tensioned tightly between five poles. It covered the entire plaza, making it impossible to tell what was under it from the angle Eik was coming in at.

Entering a steep dive, he plunged into the middle of the gathered cultist but didn't initiate an attack. Instead he leapt forward, taking in the space underneath the tarp, immediately concluding that he had finally come to the right place.

Rapidly scattering blue gas trailed him as he moved all the way up to a large box which could only contain a Life Harvester. Only a few A-rankers managed to react at all before a solid dome of toxin sprung up around the Life Harvester, locking out all but an unfortunate group of cultists trapped on the inside.

"Kill him!" a robed woman who moved like an A-ranker shouted, the others scrambling to obey as the situation finally began to become clear to them. Weapon attacks and abilities rained down upon Eik but he batted it all away with playful ease as he ripped open a large door in the box, barely bothering to look at them but nonetheless careful to keep harm away from Life Harvester as he studied it. From the way the Oracle had been talking, even the Monarch of Toxin wouldn't come unscathed out of the kind of explosion that would come out of a burst abdominal sack.

The thing was absolutely disgusting. Eik wasn't sure what he had been expecting a Life Harvester to look like but this was just… too grotesque.

Four long, spindly legs stood on broad, flat feet. Powerful toes sporting long, razor-sharp claws dug deep into the floor as if holding on for dear life, the ground made of some strange material that seemed to have hardened around the digits.

He slapped a sword away effortlessly as Profound Toxic beasts tumbled out of the inner wall of the dome and threw themselves at the cultists. Eik handled the A-ranker himself by hurling a shard of crystalline toxin through her chest with one hand and detonating it before it could come out on the other side. She collapsed soundlessly as he returned his full attention to the Life Harvester.

Outside, Living Manifestations were also coming out of the dome in numbers, engaging hungrily with the cultists.

A circular opening on one side of the body seemed to be a mouth, but nothing else indicated the existence of a proper head on the Life Harvester. It appeared to have neither eyes, ears, nose or even teeth in its maw.

Its dark brown body didn't have any kind of coherence. Like fleshly blubber it spilled out over the abdominal sack like a soft cheese melting in the sun.

Green and murky, the abdominal sack was no better. It hung, as one might expect, from its abdomen, caught in the middle of those four stationary limbs. Being semi translucent, Eik could just about make out some manner of hyperactive something swirling about behind the membrane.

Was that the energy it had absorbed? The membrane certainly didn't look particularly durable. As a matter of fact, Eik reckoned even an F-ranker might be able to poke a hole in that with a sharp object. That would be… decidedly not great.

But if they were called Life Harvester, then they how did they harvest the life? The thing stunk to high heaven but he took a deep breath and held his breath as he inched closer. Conjuring a small pedestal to stand on, he got all the way up close to study the flesh.

Narrow, almost invisible wrinkles about half a meter across covered its entire dark body with such frequent intervals that he had mistaken them for skin folds. Craning his neck to get an even closer look, the particular wrinkle he was studying seemed to suddenly react to the proximity.

Eik nearly choked on his own held breath as a gaunt and pale face covered in black slime abruptly popped out. The eyes were lifeless, rolled back into the head. Clumps of hair slid out and slapped wetly against the ground below. As the jaw fell open, teeth followed the hair, clattering lightly as they fell.

More appreciative of his S-rank physicality than ever before, he managed to leap back in time to avoid being splashed by the slack body as it spilled from the slimy opening, bones fracturing audibly as it hit the ground. Eik usually thought he had a pretty strong stomach, but that sight brought him to the limit.

"By Odin's greasy fuckin' beard, what is that?" he gasped out loud. The slit, now dilated, seemed to be waiting. "Yo, no!" he hissed. There was no way to understand that that didn't fill him with disgust. Tapping into Eyes of the Beast and watching through the Living Manifestations outside, there seemed to be two stairways into the floor a few paces away, also covered by the tarp above.

Shivers ran down his spine as the truth of it dawned on him and he sent a beast scrambling down the stairs. Cells filled to bursting with people, living shoulder to shoulder, lined the walls, continuing along a corridor spanning more than a hundred meters in length.

The Life Harvester was awaiting another victim, ready to envelop and absorb ever more energy.