“Ho-Holy… shit,” Michael breathed.

  Despite the several layers of barriers between Eik and the crowd, Michael still felt a slight wind ruffle his clothes as the waves sent out by the spear’s rapid and destructively forceful movement. Muttered chatter exploded among spectators with discussions of Eik’s performance.

  “What the hell was that even? Did you see what happened?” one asked.

  “No, it all happened so quickly that I couldn’t see what he did. Just that it was fucking crazy!” another responded.

  Others weren’t nearly as impressed. “Does this fraud seriously think something like that is going to convince anyone that he’s reached X-rank?”

  “My thoughts exactly,” came the answer. “That is the performance of a powerful S-ranker at best, and with a bit of preparation, I could see something like this being faked rather easily.”

  “I totally agree,” the other said and Michael saw the man out of the corner of his eye as he leaned in to speak into his friend’s ear. He had to strain hard to hear the words that followed but luckily his senses were just good enough to make it out from the few rows away. “I’ve been thinking about something else. Is it just me, or is that guy Chop the Blade a little bit suspicious as well?”

  The other guy hesitated to answer. “I don’t know. Seems like there were a lot of people along to watch when he showed off a few weeks ago.”

  “Yeah, and do you recall who else just happened to be there?” he said and pointed ahead. “Eik Magnasen, one of the richest men in Gimleh. Are you telling me you don’t think it’s possible that those people were paid to spread inflated rumors of the old man’s strength and false information about their relationship for the exact purpose of making us all more gullible to believe what we are seeing here right now?”

  “I don’t know, dude… That might be taking it a little too far. I mean, Chop the Blade is a legend among legends.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying, man! That’s what I’m saying! Don’t you think this whole thing is a little too much of a coincidence? This apparent X-ranked myth suddenly shows up out of nowhere after living in seclusion for literally hundreds of years and basically attaches himself to the one guy who, only weeks later, now has evolved into an X-ranker himself—a feat that has not publicly happened in so long that not a single person even remembers when the last time was!” the guy blabbered, riling himself up with every hissed word. “More likely than not, the real Chop the Blade has long since died alone on some distant, barren world.”

  Michael’s eyes rolled so far up into his head that he thought he saw the person standing behind him. This guy could really tell a story, even if it was about as conspiracy-driven as it could be. The healer already knew that Eik was holding back on his first attempt out of pure fear of his own power running wild.

  This guy was in for a rude awakening.

  A deep and wide groove had been shaved into the ground below the path of the thrown spear by the energy released. Eik kicked some dirt into it and looked back at them with a face that still didn’t quite seem able to get over what he had just done. If nothing else, it was a relief to see that the mythical X-rank evolution didn’t seem to have changed anything in his mind—the guy was still as ridiculous as he had always been.

  Holding up two fingers toward them, Eik nodded before turning back to the mountain range. What the hell was this insane bastard going to do next?

  ***

  Eik was thinking hard. What the hell was he going to do next? Ideally, there was some kind of gradual escalation of potency, just to make sure that he didn’t suddenly overdo and put the spectators in danger. Sure, he could send them all back at any time, forcefully if necessary, but at this point it wouldn’t actually be a bad idea to flex his power a bit to dissuade anybody from trying anything stupid in the future.

  An outright demonstration of might could also turn out to be a perfect game piece against the Gohkamorians whose warlike nature put strength high on their list of personal qualities. Perhaps, if he was strong enough, his reputation alone could cause this whole farce to fizzle out without anymore backhanded attempts at the population of Earth. Then the only question that would remain would be whether or not to eliminate their military to the last man.

  Regardless of their will to continue their feud with a proven X-ranked Worldbreaker, they had already caused irreparable harm and suffering to all Earthlings—and they would pay for that one way or the other.

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  For now, getting a feel for the limits of his X-ranked power was imperative. Firing off skills of ruination without even knowing the scale of destruction would be the peak of foolishness.

  Well, then, maybe throwing again might be a little boring, so how about a crystal rifle next?

  Like the spear, it manifested in his hands like a frame cut. Supporting the butt of the gun on his shoulder, he took aim at the mountain next to the one that had been destroyed by the spear. They were roughly the same size.

  Just like the instant travel of the thrown spear, nature seemed to behave very strangely when interacting with X-ranked power. He put more into the rifle than he had the spear and it also had zero travel time but something else happened.

  In a straight line air itself seemed to warp inward, as if filling out a void left by the passing of the bullet. The phenomenon elicited an odd, deep hum that tickled his inner ear unpleasantly until he shut it out with a delicate manipulation of aura.

  Aimed much lower than the spear, the bullet entered the base of the mountain with more power concentrated at a much smaller point. Those with low-ranked senses or a poor sense of judgment would view the lack of a cacophonous explosion as an indicator of a weaker attack than the previous.

  And the chatter rising from the crowd demonstrated just how many such individuals there were among the spectators. Eik could swear there was even some lunatic shouting about conspiracy theories and Chop the Blades false rise to fame. Whatever.

  Those who could see the truth of the would feel a chord of dread settle in their stomachs. With good eyes, one would be able to tell that a sizable, round hole had opened at the base of the mountain where the bullet had gone in.

  Eik had aimed the barrel of the rifle ever so slightly downward which meant that, rather than come out of the rock face on the other side, the trajectory of the projectile would allow it to continue deeper into the earth at a near horizontal angle.

  What frightened the perceptive watcher so was not a spectacular explosion but the grinding noise of the bullet’s path which, somehow, seemed to continue endlessly. Just what kind of monstrous piercing power did it have in order to go through solid matter like rock so effortlessly?

  Blowing up a mountain with a spear throw was nothing short of insane, but this… one could hide anywhere—behind an army of a million warriors, high in the stratosphere, or even kilometers under the earth—and yet all Eik would have to do was aim.

  Those who understood had suddenly gone very quiet as the reality of what they were seeing sunk in.

  On the sidelines, Andihar was contemplating his pride in his famous physique. He had enjoyed a reputation as an indestructible S-ranked tank. But what Eik had just done shattered that image as certainly as if it was glass. In front of an attack like that, he was no better than a beetle under a steel boot.

  Getting into the rhythm of things, Eik flowed straight into the next demonstration and deployed a skill that he had seldom had reason to use since first acquiring it. Extinction Zone.

  Shimmering like a desert at roasting temperatures, the air inside the Extinction Zone turned fatally toxic, promising an agonizingly painful but not at all slow death. At X-rank, even a powerful S-ranker would probably perish quickly.

  It easily filled the entire valley, and one didn’t have to be standing inside of it to know how terrifying it was. Even just looking at it made it appear as if it was boiling like a witch’s brew. The death field had barely existed for a few seconds when Eik’s second mental command went into action as thousands upon thousands of Living Manifestations swelled from the ground itself, coloring the valley in a glittering azure.

  In all different sizes they rose up. From tiny, blob-like serpents small enough to easily fit in the palm of a person’s hand to giants that could even rival a fully grown elephant. Immediately, they began swarming, scattering like furious ants as they scrambled up the sides of the mountains surrounding the valley on all sides.

  As soon as there was a free space, another Profound Toxic beast would sprout up like a plant and join its kin in the mad rush up the rock faces. As the flock swelled, the chatter from the crowd gradually died down. It made no sense. No Awakened should be able to call upon this many summons. It wasn’t possible.

  More and more they appeared, flooding their numbers until more than a million individuals decorated the canyon like fireflies.

  Now it was Gul’s turn to gawk as the thoughts swirled around his head like mosquitoes around a back porch at night lit by a single, old light bulb. He had always been the most powerful summoner. That had been an immutable fact for many years.

  Even when Eik had begun to rise to power they had been more or less equal. Where Eik’s Living Manifestations had been more powerful, Gul had controlled his with an ease that allowed for far more complicated strategies, not to mention the potentially infinite supply of shadow soldiers from corpse infection.

  But this… He couldn’t even maintain his usual scowl. His face was expressionless as his jaw hung ajar.

  Oh, how unfair the world was.

  The sharp crack of a finger snap reached their ears and every single individual in the more than a million strong army promptly Accelerated. The countless detonations tore apart the first few layers of the entire mountain range, causing a massive, valley-wide landslide that barreled toward the ground as debris plunged from the sky once more.

  Even at the distance of several kilometers, pulse after pulse of energy rammed into the spectators, rocking the organs in their torsos and threatening to pop blood vessels and ejecting whatever they had eaten for lunch.

  But before the landslide could truly reach the valley below, walls of cyan crystal shot out of the ground at the foot of the mountains from one end of the valley to the other.

  With a look of self-satisfaction, Eik turned back to the audience, waving his hand through the air in a theatrical flourish as the colossal wall blocked out all of the rolling boulders.

  “And for my next trick—a skill so new that even I have not seen it in action. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Death Star,” he announced and held up his hand.

  A single sphere the size of an apple appeared in the air above his palm.

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