“Eik!” Michael screamed as the crowd stumbled over each other to get away. “Eik, what the fuck are you doing? That thing will kill us all!”

  But the nausea didn’t reappear and nor did the horrific force from the Death Star that had felt like it would melt the skin and muscle off their bones in mere moments. Others seemed to notice this as well and turned to regard Eik with apprehensive hope.

  He was still grinning, spinning the orb of death on the tip of his finger. “I do seem to remember telling you that it was my first time using this skill before. Now I know how it works. Suppressing the killing aura was a piece of cake once I got a sense of it. See?”

  “Once I get home alive from this, I will have a new goal for my life going forward,” someone muttered to their friend standing next to them, face buried in their hands. “To never, ever meet Eik Magnasen again.”

  “This one is a little bit stronger than the one before but we’ll be all right,” Eik added as he wound up for a throw.

  Heath tried to haul his apparently insane friend down from the remnants of the crystalline dome he was standing on, but the X-ranker didn’t move whatsoever. Michael shrieked pleas. “No, no, no! Eik, stop! I’m serious! We will really die this ti—”

  “Let it rip!” Eik roared as he hurled the tiny sphere skyward, the built-in launch capabilities of the Death Star carrying it deep into the stratosphere.

  “Fuck!” Heath shouted as he threw himself futilely to the ground.

  “Yeah!” Eik chorused, watching the orb traveling for as long as he could, the small glint of it soon lost against the bright blue of the sky now cleared of clouds by the previous blast. “Wait for it… Wait for it… Wait for it…” he drawled while people ran, dug into the ground to hide, or pulled fragments of blue crystal over themselves and their compatriots. The Gohkamorians had already made a rather large hole and were jumping in one after the other.

  “Don’t do it, Eik!” Andihar howled. “Don’t detonate it! It’s too powerful!” Chop cackled like a hyena all the while.

  Eik couldn’t hold in the giggles either. The rush of wielding such superior, unparalleled power had driven him into an uncontrollable thrill. “Too late!” he cried, facing it like a man waiting for the solarium to turn on.

  Just like before, but further in the distance, a bright star suddenly radiated light outward, high up in the stratosphere. Surreally, because it was so high above the clouds, it drove them down and into the land with great force where they were flattened and dispersed completely.

  The detonation was perfectly spherical, smokeless, and more than anything looked like the Death Star was simply expanding rapidly like a dying sun, engulfing everything in its path.

  Considering the newly discovered fact that the entity called Profound Toxin is simply an avatar of the world called Toxin, it wouldn’t be completely outside the realm of credibility that that was what was happening.

  With his hands in his pockets, Eik took a deep breath and watched the unfolding of his own extreme might. Vast distance combined with the inhibition of the potency of the Death Star made it safe and Andihar and Gul were the first to join him an Chop in watching.

  “It’s… This is…” Andihar tried but seemed unable to find the proper words to describe the feeling he was seized by.

  “This is not something that is supposed to be possible…” Clan Leader Gul finished for him, any trace of his usually grumpy tone gone.

  The Death Star seemed to be inclined to spread endlessly, swallowing more and more of the distant landscape.

  It was not difficult to understand why Chop had been so unwilling to show his full power during the previous power demonstration, when Eik had still been an S-ranker. Eik had nearly killed everybody in attendance and he had even been thinking that he was holding back more than enough.

  That was really one of the biggest issues of X-rank, he now realized. A genuine, all-out fight between two or more combatants at the level of X-rank would result in untold environmental devastation and countless casualties. It would be an uncontrolled disaster.

  That meant two things. They could never let it get to the point where the Lord of the Moon made a personal visit to Gimleh, Earth, or any of the other populated worlds under the Nidafjeld Alliance for that matter. And once they eventually did encounter that hostile Worldbreaker, only Eik and Chop the Blade could be allowed to be present on the world on which they encountered him and participating in the battle.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Fuck.

  “Hey, Spaghetti Jones, you can go home now, buddy,” Eik told the doomsday beast with a dismissive wave. “I’ll see you back in Toxin, all right?”

  With no other response to the order, the serpent began to retract its long body back up and away while Eik watched the last of the Death Star make its impact. The rest of the audience who had dared to trust Eik’s promise of survival had trouble deciding whether the explosion that could potentially eradicate a country or the creature that could wrap itself around a planet was the more worthy of their attention.

  The height of the Death Star detonation had left a lot more of the landscape below intact despite the increased potency but whatever had been directly below and in a few kilometers around the center had been absolutely erased from the face of the planet, leaving only a deep, curved crater of smoldering nothingness.

  “Faaackin’ cakes, man!” Eik exclaimed and let himself fall backward off the crystalline fragment still embedded in the ground, caught in a soft, blobby pillow of blue. “That was totally insane!”

  “Fuck you, dude!” Heath moaned and pounded Eik in the chest. “I think I pissed my pants, you asshole!”

  “Hey, hey, you’re all right, aren’t you?” Eik laughed. “Michael, you thought it was cool, right?” he asked the healer who had stood stone-faced since the second Death Star detonation.

  An expressionless face regarded him. “I just want to go home.”

  Many of the spectators seemed to share that sentiment and were already legging it hastily toward a newly opened fracture.

  “All right, I’m sorry, okay? But I swear I had it all under control the whole time!” Eik tried, failing to sound very convincing.

  Heath sniffed once and sent both Eik and Chop a death glare. “X-rankers fucking suck.”

  ***

  “Have you given it some thought?” Ihasu asked as she cut half a melon into smaller, bite-sized slices.

  “Have I given what some thought?” Eik asked back absentmindedly. He slid a plate of freshly buttered toast across the table to a Goo who was utterly absorbed in one of his colored drawings. Bin was playing at a friend’s house.

  As far as Eik could tell from the relatively early stage of the artwork, the boy was aiming to portray a cozy picnic scene in the backyard.

  Despite his chronically quiet nature, the whole family had known that the boy’s real feelings were openly and genuinely expressed in his drawings. They had all been delighted to discover that they could get the gleam into his thoughts that he normally kept hidden away.

  “What to do with the evolution for Living Manifestation? We ended up deciding to wait until after you had hit X-rank and then take up the discussion again, remember? Well, here we are. You’re an X-ranker.”

  “Right, yeah, I remember. And yes, I have given it some thought. No, a lot of thought, actually,” he admitted, taking a bit of his own buttered toast.

  “What do you think?”

  “Well, the choice stands between Harass, which I’m pretty sure will grant the ability to distract or draw the attention of an enemy, Fortification, which will most likely increase the toughness of all Profound Toxic beasts, including, in principle, our son. And then finally, Empower Original Life, which will no doubt offer an enormous boost to his strength, especially now that I’ve hit X-rank.”

  She nodded as she listened, eyes on the melon slices.

  “As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he grew strong enough with that one, big jump to suddenly rival a high-grade A-ranked Awakened,” Eik added.

  She swallowed at the thought. “Eik, that’s… He’s just a little boy. Power like that is going to—”

  “Which is why I think we’re better off picking Fortification,” Eik concluded, speaking through her argument.

  She looked up from the plate for the first time since the conversation began. “Really?”

  He laughed. “I know I’m a little crazy sometimes but even I think that’s too much for a little guy like him to handle. Not to mention that he’s already growing so fast that there’s no need for it at all. He’ll be a force to be reckoned with soon enough whether I do more for him or not. And Fortification, while it might not make him more offensively capable, will make him less likely to get hurt.”

  With a deep sigh of relief, she ate the first slice of melon. “That’s… really good to hear,” she said with a chuckle. “I don’t know why I was so nervous about it.”

  “I do,” he said with a smile. “Ihasu, I’m pretty sure I’m the same guy I always was, just with a bit more potential to destroy planet than I did before. Or, at least, I don’t feel like I’ve changed. That is really up for you, the kids, my dad, and the others who know me well to decide. Just be sure to tell me if you notice anything, all right?”

  “You’ll be the first to know,” she promised.

  “Excuse me!” A voice called from outside, pounding on the door with urgency. “Excuse me!”

  Ihasu threw a glance at Eik. He just shrugged. “It’s some woman in Alliance garb. Never seen her before.”

  “Come in,” Ihasu called and the woman hurried to step inside.

  “Eik Magnasen?” she asked as she pushed the door closed behind her, eyes finding him.

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  She swallowed hard, unable to tear her gaze away. “Th-The… The X-ranker?” she stammered.

  “Uh huh,” he chuckled. “What can I help you with?”

  “I’ve been sent to report an emergency. It’s, uuh…” She eyed Ihasu and Goo, hesitant.

  Eik understood. “You can speak freely. She my wife, and whether she hears it now or not, I’m probably going to tell her later anyway.”

  “Very well,” the woman said and collected herself. “It is about the Chasm proximate worlds. Two of them to be exact.”

  “What about them?” Eik asked, sensing trouble brewing.

  “They’re gone.”

  “Gone?” he repeated in disbelief, sitting up. “What do you mean they’re gone?”

  “Approximately seven minutes ago, we lost all contact with the two worlds. Monitoring has broken down completely. As far as we can tell, they have vanished as if they were never there.”

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