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Monarch of Profound Toxin - Chapter 49
🕑 Added 2024-10-20 16:00:10 +0000 UTCEik put on his pants and ran into the hallway where Atla was knocking up the others. Mis followed him, seeing a chance to beg for a rare midnight snack.
Sonja was up and alert in seconds, Michael following soon after. Heath was still trying to get his eyes to open all the way by the time Eik made it there.
“She’s after us? I thought she had calmed down!”
“So did I,” Atla said, “but she’s on her way here nonetheless.”
“But… how did she even find out that we’re here?”
“The high score!” Sonja gasped. “The rumors must have gone around quicker than we thought. Or maybe someone she knows was present to notice.”
Eik sat on the edge of Heath’s bed and put his head in his hands. It had been thrilling to destroy that test, but with everything that had happened to him since he Awoke, Eik should have known that too much attention was the worst curse in society. Attention ruined everything.
“So what the hell do we even do?” he asked. “Are you sure she’s even coming here?”
“I’m sure, yes.”
“How?”
She dangled the same little card that identified her as an official of the Nidafjeld Administration of First Contact that she had used to silence the father son duo from the day before. “People tell me stuff that I want to know.”
“And then what are we going to do?” Eik asked, frustration and fear taking a firm hold on him. “Hide under our beds? How is she here? You have to fix this!” he hissed, fury burning in his eyes as he regarded Atla. The same righteous anger was reflected in the eyes of the others.
Her gaze was firm. "She was released."
"Released?" Sonja shouted with disbelief. "That's outrageous!"
Atla bit her lower lip hard, alluding to her own feelings on the matter. “Mikla will be here soon, hopefully. He’s a little tired, but he’ll open a fracture to the Crucible grounds. Michael, you’re E-rank soon, yes?”
The young healer nodded with trepidation.
“Alright, listen. I’m going to send you guys to the practical a little earlier than planned. Given what you showed me today in the individual challenges, you’re more than capable of completing the E-rank practical.”
“You’re sending us into danger to get us out of danger?” Heath asked. “In what world does that make sense?”
“To be specific, I’m sending you into E-rank danger to get away from A-rank danger.”
“She’s just going to come after us in there! You can protect us much better out here!” Michael protested but Atla shook her head.
“She’ll be powerless to touch you in there. The fractures are carefully constructed to collapse when exposed to power levels above the specified rank. If she tried to go through it it would implode once she was halfway inside and reject her violently.”
Once the others had gotten dressed and gotten into their gear with haste they followed Eik to his room so he could do the same. Mikla came in just as Eik had strapped on his belt containing healing spheres and the clumps of poison. He hadn’t the time to mix any more poison, so he’d have to make do with only a handful of the useful little things. Hopefully he’d be able to improvise somehow.
Mikla promised Eik that he would come back here the moment they were through the fracture and bring Mis back with him to his own quarters so she wouldn’t get caught up in whatever was to come.
“What if she sends a horde of subordinates after us instead of going herself then?” Eik asked. “Surely she has E-rankers she can order around or something.”
“First of all,” Atla said while Mikla ripped a fracture through the air. “I’ll do everything I can to prevent both her from doing anything to you. She is not justified in her persecution of you, but that doesn’t mean she won’t try.”
They stepped through, emerging in the middle of the second floor of the large building housing the Crucible tests. In the gloom it was difficult to see, but a sign read: “The Crucible — 2nd Floor — E-rank”
“Second, she wouldn’t send a horde of subordinates, as you put it. It would be far to easy to discover, track, and hinder. She would, at most, send a small team around the size of your own. Anything more would be too obvious.”
“And if she does?” Michael asked.
Atla kept walking in silence for a moment before answering. “You should kill them.”
“K-Kill people?” Michael stammered.
“That’s the kind of world you live in now, Michael,” the always gentle Mikla said matter-of-factly. “Sometimes people come for your life and if you want to keep it you’ll have to take theirs.
The young healer’s quivering pupils sought his friends, but their expressions showed that this was a fact they had already come to terms with. The moment individuals gained the personal power to level cities and perform feats of destruction that, just a few years earlier, would have taken a well-equipped army, the paradigm shifted.
The law could not reach everyone. The strongest could be touched by none. The second strongest could be touched only by the strongest. Might made right and that wasn’t going to change.
“We’re already about that deep in back home, Mike,” Heath said as they entered a room with about ten humming fractures lined up. “Rock Fist Bart tried to kill Eik and almost killed me. The next time that happens we’re going to have to start retaliating in earnest.”
Michael didn’t respond but the look on his face looked haunted in the gleam of the fractures.
“Are we even allowed to be in here?” Sonja finally asked.
Atla simply tapped her finger on the identification card that she seemed to have made a habit of pulling out. “I can do almost anything I want to.” she said seriously.
“So what’s the practical going to entail?”
“Kill the boss. Simple,” Mikla explained.
“How do we find it?”
“That’s part of it too,” Mikla smiled gesturing toward a fracture. “Your entrance is number three. This one here.”
“And if we get in trouble in there? How do we call for a rescue?” Sonja asked heaving her backpack onto her shoulders properly. Mikla had brought supplies for them to survive on until they could gather their own during the practical. They were lucky to have a guy like Eik who could act as they personal food taster, weeding out all the poisonous foods without the others having to try their luck.
Atla and Mikla exchanged looks. “It’s meant to simulate a real expedition or mission.”
“Which means?”
“That if you’re not back after seven days, then we dispatch a rescue party just like—”
“Just like what we were sent to do for those kids that were eaten by the Moon Shall Swallow cult,” Heath finished.
“Exactly.”
“A little extreme for training, don’t you think?” Eik said.
Atla pursed her lips. “The demand for powerful Awakened is always higher than the supply. People are free to pursue peaceful lives, but we need the ones who hunger for battle, adventure, and exploration to be the best they can be,” she said. “In fact, while Menka Tokanami would be too much to handle, an encounter with a hunting squad in there would be a valuable experience for you.”
Eik did not like the sound of that idea one bit. He was tired of being at the whim of every person more powerful than him.
Atla handed Eik a handful of flowers — a mix of purples, blues, and oranges. “What’s this?” he asked.
“Poisonous flowers for your convenience,” she smiled and regarded the others. “I know we promised you rewards for your contribution to the rescue of the kids back then, and you’ll certainly get them, but you’ll have to make do as you are for now. We’ll have them ready for you when you get back, I think.” They nodded.
She gave them a metallic case which, upon inspection, contained a row of three perfect, violet spheres nestled into pockets lined with some kind of cushioning. Viscous liquid swirled around on the inside with no visible air bubbles. “Healing potions,” Atla explained. “Considerably more potent than what you make Eik, although I admire what you managed to come up with using the materials you had at your disposal. Three of them were all I could scrounge up on such short notice.”
Michael clicked the lid closed again and placed it securely in one of the smaller pockets of his bandolier. He was the least likely to take a hit or get into close combat so they chose him to carry the medicine.
“How are they used?” Sonja asked.
“Just place one in your mouth and the protective shell will dissolve within a couple of seconds. They’re actually quite a bit sturdier than they look but are made specifically to break down upon contact with saliva.”
“Thank you.”
“You should get going,” Mikla said. “We can’t know when they might show up so we should stay ahead as much as possible.”
They were urged through the fracture with no further ado, suddenly thrust into yet another world full of unknowns.
Immediately they were blinded. In the Nidafjeld headquarters it had been the black of night but here the noon sun hung glaring above their heads. Another, smaller ball of light was visible in the sky as well, but it was no more than a fourth the size of the larger one.
“Where are we?” Michael said, blinking away tears as he cupped a hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the harsh beams. “And… Wait, Eik, why are you knee deep in that stream?”
“Huh?” Eik looked down and noticed for the first time that he was submerged halfway up his legs. “Gah, what the hell! Why am I the only one in the water?” He tried to step out of the stream but because his feet had instantly sunk into the soft, underwater bed he tripped and slapped face first into the muddy bank, soiling the entirety of the front of his outfit.
He wiggled and struggled for a few seconds of frustrated huffing. “Don’t just stand there laughing, Heath, you dumb bread! Help me out of this god damned river!” he scolded.
Wiping tears from his cheeks with one hand, Heath gripped his unfortunate friend by the wrist with the other and hauled him out of the mud as easily as if he had been pulling a snack carrot from a glass of water.
“I’m filthy!” Eik groaned, looking down his body dripping with gray sludge. “We’re like four seconds into this damned practical and I already look like I’ve been living in a swamp for eight months!”
While Sonja and Michael managed to restrict their amusement to covering their mouths and stifled chuckles, Heath was literally on the floor about to piss his pants laughing.
Eik hopped back into the stream and scrubbed his face, hair, and clothes, washing off all the mud in the flowing water as the others looked on, Heath barely keeping himself composed. “Is that a good idea, Eik?” Michael asked unhelpfully late. “We’re in another world and we don’t know what kind of parasites might call that stream home. Did you know that, in the Amazonian waterways, there’s a tiny, little fish that has been known to sometimes swim up men’s p—”
“Okay, okay, I’m getting out, I’m getting out!” he cried and hopped out of the water as quickly as he could.
“Damn, nice jump, dude!” Heath said.
Eik stopped and concentrated on his body, feeling around for a certain effect. It only took a second to notice the difference. “My Noxious Invigoration has activated. It’s not much but there had to be poison in the water, or maybe in the soil,” he said, stomping the muddy bank.
“Do you think all water in this world is poisonous to us?” Michael wondered, his nerves making themselves known again.
“I hope not, but I’ll check again when we find another source.”
They looked around the area they had landed, looking for early indications of an ideal path, but nothing seemed particularly strange compared to the world itself in general. Among the first things they noticed were the trees.
There were none. Titanic, mushroom-like growths seemed to dominate the region, reaching tens of meter into the air with wide hats which would block out the sun in most of its positions in the sky. The fact that there appeared to be two suns helped the light come through, but most of the ground was still cast in mild shade.
Otherwise, the entire place was covered in cool, soft moss, colors of dark blue, green, and purple dyeing the world in hues resembling a fairy tale. From the moss sprouted many smaller mushroom, breaking easily as they walked through them.
“I think we’ll have to take a page out of the book of that F-rank team we helped,” Eik said as he looked around, lost. “We’ll just have to pick a direction and start walking.”
Comments
Caleb Fritz
Hey I know this is older, but the phrase “knocking up the others” could be misconstrued
