Monarch of Profound Toxin

Chapter 338 - 338: Discovery

To tell the truth, Chop had never actually expected Eik to be as strong as he was.Yes, it was certainly true that this had been the first time he had ever fought a Worldbreaker, and there had never been any doubt that Worldbreakers were something else compared to a common Awakened, which he more or less was, even if it was a common Awakened at X-rank, but this was… frustrating.

Eik was a grade one X-ranker, for goodness' sake! Chop was so far above him in that sense that there really shouldn't have been a question at all about who would win the duel. It was a travesty!

Not to mention his literal magnitudes more combat experience. It was like comparing a master blacksmith to a toddler trying to make a figure of his mom out of three dry sticks. There wasn't supposed to have been any question about it.

So why the hell was he lying here on the ground, dust from the great battle settling around them as Eik stood over him and made sure the Profound Toxin in his system had been converted to Panacean Quintessence?

"You good, gramps?" Eik asked, nudging Chop with a foot. "That was pretty insane, huh? You almost lost your head for a second back there, huh?"

Chop made a complete exhalation and let himself roll back off his knees and onto his back. His eyes sought Eik's. The battle frenzy had faded like vapor. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?" Eik asked.

"How do you fight the way you do? You weren't a fighter before you awoke were you? You were just an unawakened shop keeper."

"Dude, harsh. But, no, you're right. I did have a few close calls with low-ranked monsters before we made it to the group that would eventually go on to found Forest and establish it as a proper settlement, but otherwise I did everything I could to stay safe. After my brother died I kind of lost the rest of the little nerve I had."

"So how?"

Eik looked at him through heavy brows. "How what?"

"How does it make any sense? You don't fight like someone with the level of experience you really have."

"And how am I supposed to fight?"

"Either like an amateur, or like a trained fighter."

"Okay?" Eik drawled, trying his best not to be offended at the indirect insult. "And, knowing you, I'm guessing you're charging up to tell me that I'm even worse than an amateur and how that can't be possible."

"Not at all, actually," Chop said to Eik's surprise. "Considering how many years you have been active, you should, at best, be sticking to a practiced routine of moves that fit your fighting style. And at worst, crudely imitate others or stumble through basic combat moves."

"And I am, what?"

"Unpredictable."

"Unpredictable?"

"One of the best things you can be in combat. I realize that you have rocketed through the ranks and achieved unimaginable power in a span of time that should have been utterly impossible, and that should obviously mean something for the way you fight, but you are much more comfortable with your skills than I would have ever expected. It's shocking, frankly."

"Oh, uuh… thanks?" Was this the first compliment the old man had ever given him that wasn't topped with a thick blanket of sarcasm and scathing insults? How was he supposed to react to this?

"The way you seem to intuitively and instinctively understand your own abilities to the point where you can chain them together and use them creatively on the fly is not something that's very common. And especially not in a young Awakened, your power rank notwithstanding. Do you get Profound Toxin to take control of your body to fight?"

And there it was. It had been a little unsettling to have the geezer speak so many words without weaving in a verbal slap in the face. "No, I do not, you wrinkly old walnut. Although you're not wrong when you describe it as instinct. Or at least, it feels like I'm running on instinct when I fight. The ideas just kind of come to me, and I do think Profound Toxin affects me."

"How so?"

Eik pursed his lips as he tried to think of a way to explain his thoughts that made any kind of sense. "I don't know. It's like… ever since I first Awoke as an F-ranker, Profound Toxin has been sitting in the back seat of the car I'm driving, you know?"

"I don't know what a car is."

"Horse carriage, whatever, dude. It's not like it steers for me, but more like… our souls are synced and that syncs our thoughts and emotions to a point as well, I guess," Eik tried. "Are you following?"

"To an extent," Chop said with a nod. "You fight like someone who's spent years familiarizing themselves with their abilities, because your passenger is an ancient being who had done exactly that."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"I guess, yeah. But what about you? You didn't seem to do that many different things. Mostly just normal slashes. Although that mirror image thing was wicked. Like a certain blade master."

Chop shook his head. "No, I did do quite a few different things. It's just that a lot of my skills and traits are variations of my own swordsmanship, so they're not nearly as distinguishable from each other as most of yours. But I didn't bring out everything, of course. This was just a sparring match, after all."

"You were trying to kill me," Eik reminded him.

"No, I wasn't. I was just trying to get you to take it seriously. You were holding back."

"Yeah, because I didn't want to kill you!"

"That insulting."

"You just said you weren't trying to kill me either, so you insulted me too!"

"No, because I'm stronger."

Eik threw his hands up in frustration. "I won!"

"Help me up," the geezer said and reached a hand up toward Eik who begrudgingly complied, grumbling under his breath all the while. "I'm hungry."

The old man was doing fine now thanks to the combination of Eik's Panacean Quintessence and his own natural healing factor, but he was walking with his head down and his shoulders slumped.

"Hey, that one thing you did when you hit me in the mist," Eik began, unconsciously running his fingers over the stomach wound that had already knitted itself together again. "it completely broke my True Toxic Harmony skill and basically stripped me naked of buffs. How did you do that?"

"Shatter, you mean? It essentially severs your connection to the Ak'ki in your body, if for only a moment. It can be very effective if used at the right moment."

"I noticed…" Eik muttered, shivering as he recalled the sensation of his guts nearly spilling out and onto the ground. "I thought I was dead."

"You were never in danger of dying," Chop insisted.

"There were a few times where I only just barely avoided having my head cut off."

"You're imagining things."

"Dude…"

"Can we go home now?" Chop suggested, choosing to completely disregard the current conversation. "My sweet tooth is beginning to complain."

"Weren't you literally in the middle of eating a donut when you arrived earlier? It's not even been an hour."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Man… You have a problem, you know that?"

"Just open the damned fracture, boy!" the old man barked.

Eik craned his neck to look into the horizon where the miasma still lurked. "We should probably finish up here before we go, but we can get that done in a jiffy if we ride around on Spaghetti Jones. He's real fast, I tell ya."

They were a few minutes into a steady delivery of Death Stars left and right when Chop suddenly slammed a hand down on Eik's shoulder. "Hey, stop for a second. No, don't throw that one!" he hissed.

"What?"

"Can't you sense that?" the old man said, his eyes locked on to something deep within the miasma.

With narrowed eyes, Eik followed his gaze and focused on his senses. After a few seconds, he did notice something, but it was extremely faint. "What the hell is that? I thought the miasma blocked everything that deep inside."

"Take us there."

The sensation only grew more intense as they approached. Its signature was undeniably similar to the general feel of the miasma. This was something connected to the Lord of the Moon.

Displacing the miasma with their auras, the source was finally revealed to be an effigy of some kind. Made of a pitch black material that resembled charred wood, it exuded a foul energy that sent ominous shivers down Eik's spine.

"What… the fuck is that?" Eik wondered aloud.

Chop hopped down and knelt to get a closer look. "I've never seen it before."

"If they were on the other worlds as well, I must have destroyed them before noticing them."

"We should bring it back with us. Put it in that pouch you have."

"I'm not touching that," Eik said in decisive refusal.

"Oh, come on, boy."

"You can grab it, then!"

Chop scowled. "I'm injured. You hurt me."

"You're totally fine now! Also, I'm not sure it's a good idea to bring that back with us to Gimleh. We don't know what it does. We should take some of those sciency guys back here with us instead."

"Whatever," Chop said with a shrug and stood. "Then let's get this over with and get back. I'm getting seriously hungry."

***

"How is it going with the recipe?"

Meri hir Gawak looked up from her work station where she had been performing some manner of analysis of… something, and shot Eik a sour look. "How does it look like it's going? Ugh."

"Damn," Eik said as his eyebrows shot up at the harsh tone. "I know you sleep in the same bed as my right-hand man and all that jazz, but do you really, honestly think that that tone right there is an appropriate one when you're speaking to the biggest of big bosses—also known as me?"

At those words, she shrunk visibly and her gaze fell back down to her work. "Uuh, no, definitely not. I'm so sorry."

"Nah, I'm kidding," Eik said.

She looked up at him with confusion. "What?"

"I'm just pulling your leg, as they say. You've been bamboozled," he assured her. "But you do tend to snap at just about anyone. It's not a good look and some other person, who's not me but might still be your superior, will not respond as nicely as me. Gods forbid you get on the bad side of this muggy guy I know. You may have heard of him. His name is Pölse and he's an S-ranked general of the Nidafjeld Alliance. A real party killer, he is, that guy."

"Yeah, okay…" she said hesitatingly. "I'll keep that in mind."

"All right, good. You've been warned."

"Yeah."

"So, it's not going well, I take it, then?"

She sighed and scooted her chair over a bit so he could look over her shoulder. "Not exactly, no. I might have been a bit too enthusiastically optimistic when you asked us to figure out how to create a grade 7 potion for X-rankers."

"Oh, yeah?"

"I'll be completely honest with you here, boss… I don't think any of the materials we have access to anywhere, whether from the Alchemist Guild, the general markets, or the auction houses, will be even close to sufficient to create this thing."

"Damn, really? Nothing at all?" Eik asked, frowning.

"Well, for the foundation there are a few options, but for the actual catalyst, we really do need something very powerful. I pulled out all the stuff and even tapped into your privileges as Elixir King but the stuff that's available just isn't cutting it."

"What can I do?"

"Is there any way you can get your hands on the corpse of an X-ranked monster or something like that?"

Eik sank into one of several chairs against the wall and groaned as he scratched his head furiously. "I don't even know where to start looking for one. Chop tells me they're so rare, that they might as well not exist."

"Crap," Meri muttered. Her workspace was absolutely flooded with notes, calculations, and general clutter. Remnants of countless test ingredients stained both the floor and the walls, and the trash can was filled with so many balls of crumpled up paper that the new ones had bounced off the top and ended up on the floor.

Eik scratched his stubbled chin absentmindedly as he considered his options. Eventually, he sat up.

"Tell you what, I'll try to figure something out. We found something earlier that might lead to something."