Eik felt his knees buckle like twigs ready to break under a heavy weight.

  Those large, slitted eyes of blue appeared to be gazing directly into his spirit—the deepest depths of his soul. If this was a Profound Toxic beast, it was far, far, far beyond anything he could even dream of releasing with his own ability.

  With a flat, broad head, the beast resembled a viper to the point that Eik couldn’t help but think that it had been thought up and created according to Eik’s own image of a venomous creature. Thick, pronounced ridges ran from its brows and continued down its back, kind of like what a crocodile had.

  Like the Profound Toxic beasts of the highest rank, its features were exceptionally sharp and detailed, lacking only color to complete the look of a genuine, organic being.

  Eik had already encountered many venomous and poisonous beings himself and there was no doubt that there were and had been countless more throughout history in the Unified Mass.

  So why a snake? If it was an attempt to intimidate him, then anything at that fuckin’ size would have done the job.

  Was he supposed to fight this damned thing? No way… right?

  Daring to tear his eyes from its gaze, Eik looked up into the cloud. They were still dense and all-encompassing with the exception of the spot where the serpent’s astronomical body was still coming through.

  Had this thing always been up there? Even when he had been transported up there during his rank evolutions? Did it normally live in that vast ocean of Profound Toxin that seemed to surround the whole planet?

  His thalassophobia spiked horribly at that thought and sent cold shivers down his entire body. At once, his mind was filled with images of this monstrous predator watching him every time he had been hanging there helplessly during his evolution, remaining just out of range of his vision.

  Through the hole in the clouds, the azure glow of that ocean shone down, bathing the landscape in its light.

  What the hell was this thing? Just another albeit very, very large Profound Toxic beast, or was it something more? Something closer to what Profound Toxin was? An incarnation of Toxin.

  The air was clear enough that Eik’s S-ranked vision could see the body of the snake dip and disappear beneath the horizon in the distance. It was literally wrapped around the planet, for fuck’s sake!

  What the hell was he supposed to accomplish here?

  “Hey, Profound Toxin, what the fuck am I supposed to do here, huh? What’s the point of this?” Eik shouted to his copy who was still standing behind him. With the earthshaking rumble that seemed to be emanating from the serpent’s throat, he had to yell lest the tiny, weak vibrations of his human voice were made silent.

  For some reason, the monster simply kept staring at him, staying impressively still for a being so enormous that it quite literally blotted out the faint light trickling through the thick cloud cover.

  Just what was going on?

  When Profound Toxin offered no response to his questions, Eik turned to look back only to come face to face with his flawless twin, only a couple of paces away and still walking forward.

  “What?” he asked, taking a couple of steps back as Profound Toxin approached without slowing. “Hey, what the hell are you doing? Get away from me, you d—”

  Before he could even finish getting out those words, Profound Toxin, shapeshifted into a perfect facsimile of Eik’s own body, walked right into his face and kissed hi— No, that wasn’t what happened at all.

  Profound Toxin’s avatar body practically melted into Eik’s as he spluttered, stumbled backward, and fell onto his ass.

  “What the fuck?” he spat, wiping at his face with his hands.

  Although he had been well on his way to a fit of anger at being lead around by the nose by a blue bastard who refused to provide him with a clear answer, any such thoughts fell away like sand once he realized what had happened to him.

  He had been opened up.

  Opened up to the world in a way that put into perspective just how shallow his perception had been until now. Even in his imagination, a sensation like what he was feeling now had never been feasible. It lay too far from the human experience.

  S-rank senses had felt like the absolute epitome of perception—able to see, hear, smell, feel, and notice such imperceptibly fine impression in the world that it could rival some of the greatest technologies of old Earth. But that had been it.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  What he was experiencing now was not simply impressions of events and objects on the physical world. It was as if he had tapped into the world itself.

  Toxin had become a part of him, and he had become a part of it. Now that he felt this, he could almost laugh at how ridiculous it had been that he had thought True Toxic Harmony to be the final stage of his fusion with Profound Toxin. At best, it had been a crude imitation of a true unity.

  And he now also understood why Profound Toxin hadn’t bothered to tell him what to do. Hooked up to Toxin’s… will, allowed him to listen in on the primal, wordless voice of the world and it left little doubt as to what he had to do.

  He looked up to see the world serpent still gazing down at him, showing no indication of intent. But then, abruptly, it soared over him, casting the mountain in shadow as it blotted out everything above.

  Without a word, Eik leaped into the air, his favorite katana shape manifesting in his hand. Grunting with exertion, he triggered a local application of Movement Boost and slashed the blade across the serpent’s rushing body with all of his might.

  It bit deep, certainly, but the thing was simply so large that even his S-ranked strength failed to cause it any noticeable harm. It didn’t even bother to pay attention to him anymore.

  He cut another ten gashes in the gigantic beast but they didn’t do any better than the first one, the serpent moving so rapidly that he had no opportunity to focus on a single target area. All of his attacks ended up as scattered scratches.

  It was when he tried to switch up his tactic and employ a gauntlet to bash a hole in the bastard that it dove. Straight down and into the earth like a god damned drill.

  The impact sent millions and millions of tons of debris into the air, disturbing the cloud layer as boulders the size of a skyscraper hammered through and into the toxic sea above. As if under inverse gravity, the azure ocean spilled down but mostly fell back up above the cloud cover.

  Abandoning the idea of another attack, Eik instead grew spikes on the gauntlets and plunged them into the glittering body of the beast, extending those spikes even deeper and hooking himself into the diving being.

  It was all he could do to hold on as soil and rocks battered his face and body at high pressure and velocity. He was being hauled through the planet by a force that rivaled even the most violent and powerful natural disasters.

  Even then, the will of Toxin echoed inside his mind, over and over and over again. Incessantly, the will was communicated to him. Wordlessly, yes, but clearer than even the most detailed sentence or images could have conveyed.

  Stop the serpent before it destroys the world. Without the world of Toxin, Eik would be left powerless.

  Unfortunately, what was somehow not conveyed to him was exactly how the hell he was supposed to achieve anything like that. This thing was so large, so strong, and so fast that he didn’t have a chance.

  Deep inside the earth, somehow, the spikes he had jabbed deep into the serpent broke and he lost his grip on its body. The immense pressure of the titanic beast writhing violently against the earth and minerals kilometers beneath the surface was simply too much for him to resist against, even with his S-ranked strength.

  A sense of claustrophobia welled up in his stomach as he was helplessly crushed against the wall in the darkness. Only the serpent and his own Profound Toxin provided any light down there, but the tunnel was so tight that it made no difference.

  He was trapped.

  Desperately, he attempted to conjure tight protective layers of crystalline toxin around his body but the frightening forces bearing down upon him kept ripping them away in chunks. He tried again and again but the resistance was far too great.

  Rolled through the tunnel by the passing of the beast, something struck him too quickly to see and ripped a deep gash from the middle of his chest and all the way down the side of his stomach until an impact against his hip bone knocked him off it.

  Groaning in pain, he sent Panacean Quintessence pumping through the horrendous wound. Another bump in the road literally tore his leg off at the knee, leaving it dangling by a meat thread, ripped away all the way in the next moment.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

  “Can I dmphrgl—” Even just short sentences were rudely interrupted by soil and rocks constantly pouring into his mouth. Once more he slammed spikes into the creature, gained some semblance of stability, and pressed his face hard into the serpent’s membranous hide and repeated the words. “Can I… die in here? I can’t, right?” he asked out loud. Eik wouldn’t put it past the blue bastard to have changed the rules of Toxin just to put extra pressure on for this particular test.

  No satisfactory answer was provided, but Eik felt Profound Toxin’s response in much the same way he could feel the will of Toxin. And the answer rang painfully, infuriatingly clearly inside his head—maybe.

  “God… damn it!” he howled, conjuring a shovel-like structure with a razor-sharp edge and hacked it into the monster’s body. Although it remained true that he couldn’t do enough damage to the thing to actually cause it any meaningful harm, he could still damage it. And maybe that could become this fact that saved him.

  Mashed against the wall of the tunnel as he was, he could barely move his body, and much less extend his arms for big swings. But he could just managed to dig out scoops of its hide, and in just a few seconds he had created a cozy little cranny into which he could crawl to avoid those fucking rocks that were tearing his limbs from his body.

  It was regenerating quickly so he was forced to continue to hack away at it to stay safe.

  Not to mention the time limit—the destruction of Toxin and the subsequent loss of his power.

  “Why the fuck would you try to destroy what is essentially your own self?” he screamed. “It’s not just my life on the line here! Everything will be erased, for fuck’s sake!”

  Amid the chaos, a little tendril of blue popped out of his neck and shrugged in the most nonchalant, annoying way possible before stunted words flowed out. “You know… me. And… I know you… For us, it’s… all or nothing… Gotta risk it to… get the biscuit…”

  “Oh, shut the fuck up, you dumb, shitty asshole!” he spat, his brain working hard to figure out what to do. This wouldn’t be a test if it couldn’t be beat. So what could he d—

  Struck by an idea, he felt around the serpent’s body. It was definitely the same type of toxic being as his Living Manifestations. Then surely…

  With a mental flex, he reached for Toxic Liquefaction and felt his body transform. And then, as easily as that, he was inside the beast, floating freely.

  Fuck yeah!

  Wasting no time, he rocketed toward the only place that made any sense—the long bastard’s brain.

  Check out my Patreon if you'd like to read even more than what is currently posted on RoyalRoad

  cat videos