Eik took a deep breath in an attempt to calm his racing heart.

  He was engulfed in dark miasma, unable to see much more than a couple of centimeters in front of his nose. And yet, fear was not what had thrown his heart into such a sprint. No, it was excitement.

  The time had finally come. Something he had not had until then now stretched out before him, whether he could see it with his eyes or not.

  A hostile world completely devoid of any friendly life. How could it be described if not as a really, really big rage room? Perfect for going all out.

  Despite the murky, dark substance permeating the whole atmosphere of the world, the blinding glow of the Death Star still shone through like a sun. Unlike at the demonstration, which had been attended by thousands of spectators, Eik pumped this one full of power until it was close to bursting.

  Within seconds, the little sphere reached a rate of revolution so rapid that it caused it to emit high-pitched, banshee-like shrieks while its already extreme radiation of light brightened even further. Considering his overly keen senses, it was actually rather uncomfortable to be this close to.

  The moment it hit maximum power and began to wobble and oscillate uncontrollably, he knew it was time and launched it skyward like a firework that would have been very illegal if such regulations had been at all relevant at the moment.

  Since Eyes of the Beast didn’t work on something like the Death Star, Eik couldn’t tell if the miasma persisted above the clouds in the stratosphere but it didn’t really matter right now.

  Now that all of his little summons had been killed, the throng of spawn that were responsible swarmed in like moths to a flame, hissing and snarling out there in the black, clearly able to move through it unhindered.

  But a sphere of crystal was already closing around him and the chunk containing the three live specimen. As the Death Star reached its apex, the construct engulfed him completely, reinforcing itself a hundred times over.

  A mental command was all that was left to set it off.

  Rather than trap his human body helplessly inside, he had opted for Toxic Liquefaction and placed himself in the very center of the protective ball.

  Eik could feel everything through the crystal and suddenly, a force unlike anything he had ever experienced hammered down from above, crushing the sphere into the earth. Just like when he had first tested it, the virtual shower of annihilating energy washed over everything and continued to erase everything for almost twice as long as the previous installment.

  And with far more power. With every millisecond, the blast shaved off massive chunks of the solid Profound Toxin that was keeping Eik from, presumably, being blown apart by his own skill. Truthfully, he couldn’t know how well he would stand up to something like that, but now wasn’t the time to test it.

  Luckily, his manipulation of the toxin was so smooth and instantaneous that he could rebuild the layers faster than they were being eaten away, although whether that was also the case if he had been closer to the point of detonation was a matter he had less confidence in.

  When it was finally over, Eik let the crystalline layer melt away as he flowed back into his human form, leaving the three spawn of the Lord of the Moon still in their azure prisons.

  At first, he mistakenly thought the miasma still permeated the atmosphere, only to discover that the world was simply engulfed in thick, falling dust.

  “By Balder’s dry balls, man,” he coughed, a renewed barrier of shimmering aura settling in front of his face.

  At once, he jumped into the air, higher than he had before, propelling his ascent further with controlled blast of Accelerant beneath his feet. After several hundreds of meters, the dust began to clear up and soon he could gaze out over the landscape.

  …

  Or what was left of it, rather…

  From his albeit brief venture around the area through the Eyes of the Beast, he knew for a fact that there had been some kind of moderately large body of water to the south of the original fracture location. A forest of ashy, brittle vegetation had bordered it and a few kilometers to the east there had been an elevation in the land that had proven to rise at least three hundred meters into the air but likely considerably more than that in reality.

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  Now that he could start to see the ground below, none of those otherwise noticeable landmarks were anywhere to be seen. Everything had been totally obliterated leaving nothing but an inverse dome-shaped crater like that from an enormous meteor impact.

  The miasma which had flowed so thickly and thoroughly had been cleared, leaving bright, cloudless skies and an unobstructed view of the horizon in all directions. However, like a flattened, blank canvas, all signs of life, miasma, or any kind of protruding topography had been removed. It honestly looked a little sad.

  But there wasn’t anything to do about that. This world had already been doomed from the moment it had been pulled into the schemes of the Lord of the Moon and covered in miasma. Yes, a cleansing was the right thing to do.

  A substance that so obviously served some kind of purpose to the Lord of the Moon could never be allowed to remain undisturbed. What really concerned him was that they still weren’t sure what the real use for the miasma was.

  Sure, the empowering effect it had on at least one spawn was a witnessed fact but besides that it was entirely unclear. Was that really all it was or was there more to it? Were they searching for answers and explanations for something that wasn’t there? Were these ashen, darkbound world nothing more than custom-built fuel stations for the Lord of the Moon’s rise to power?

  Well, whether it was one or the other, there was value in throwing a stick in the wheel of it.

  A second Death Star flared into life in Eik’s palm, immediately screeching into an energetic spin. These spheres of pure destruction really were completely unfit to be used in a battle with any friendlies present on the same continent. It was basically one of the simplest skills he had ever gotten, as far as he could tell.

  All it did was create an ultra compact mass of hyper volatile Profound Toxin. It did have one rather unusual and counterintuitive property. Or rather, lacked a property that should otherwise have been a given.

  It completely lacked any toxicity whatsoever. If not for the heavy spiritual pressure emanating from the glowing globe, you could probably have dropped a baby on top of it and it would have been just fine. Well, maybe…

  But what it lacked in toxicity, it clearly more than made up for in explosive force.

  With a mental command, Eik launched the Death Star along a lateral trajectory toward the horizon. From afar, more of the filthy miasma appeared to be creeping in, seeking to fill the void and equalize high concentration and low concentration areas.

  The land-altering second Death Star blast ruined any chance of that, however, as it shaved yet another region down to a barren wasteland and scattered the black substance into insignificance. For a moment, he considered his options as a grin split his face.

  “Spaghetti Jones, can you come out for a second?” he called.

  Gracing reality with its mighty presence, the serpent emerged, gazing curiously at its master, the Supreme Divinity of Toxin and awaited further instructions.

  Eik had to crane his neck to look into one of Spaghetti Jones’ massive eyes. With a beckoning wave of his hand he shouted. “Can you get a bit lower, please? Yep, like that. Lower. Lower. Lower. Perfect!” he exclaimed and hopped onto the beast’s head. “Say, you like sightseeing, don’t you?”

  Whether as a show of indifference or incomprehension, Spaghetti Jones only offered a slight shrug of his titanic body in response.

  “Well, if you’ve ever felt the desire to explore a bleak and sad world on the brink of destruction, then, boy, do I have good news for you, my friend! Forward!”

  With only a token show of hesitation, the serpent shot forward over the surface of the corrupted world like a whip as Eik sent one Death Star after the other into the murky blackness, clearing gigantic swathes of land with a single skill.

  For the first time since his Awakening as an F-ranked Worldbreaker those years ago, Eik truly felt like that moniker suited him well. He was a man who could make a difference in the fight against those who wished to bring harm to his loved ones and his allies.

  So much miasma had already been and continued to be cleared that surely the sciency guys back at headquarters must be getting readings, right?

  Well, there was one way to find out. Just as he sent off another Death Star, he retrieved the beacon stone from his belt pouch of holding and crushed it to dust in his fist. If there was an open line back, they would receive his signal and open a fracture for him.

  Then he could go to the two other corrupted worlds and clear those as well. It was extremely lucrative work.

  He had been getting levels here and there for various stuff recently but this was the first time in a little while that he got a good amount at the same time.

  [Acquired Monarch’s Will — Lv. 345]

  [Acquired Monarch’s Will — Lv. 346]

  [Acquired Monarch’s Will — Lv. 34…]

  [Acquired Monarch’s Will — Lv. 362]

  [Acquired Monarch’s Will — Lv. 363]

  [Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 456]

  [Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 457]

  [Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 45…]

  [Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 470]

  [Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 471]

  Given how tightly the spawn had swarmed around just the relatively small area he had originally sent his Living Manifestations out to explore, the kind of extermination he was causing with numerous Death Stars must have been in the billions.

  And even with the extreme difference in strength between him and them, this kind of display of total domination raked in the levels like a mind reader raking in chips at a high-stakes casino.

  Whether these worlds contaminated by miasma were intended to serve as fuel for the Lord or the Moon or not, there was one thing that was certain—they did serve as exactly that for the Supreme Divinity of Toxin.

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