“So you’re more afraid of some old business men than you are of me?” Eik asked tilting his head. “After all I’ve done?”

  The blue needle was still stuck in her arm but he had recalled most of the toxin already. Profound Toxin still sat on his back, looking over his shoulder and whispering to him.

  “I’m not afraid of a bunch of useless swindlers like them.”

  “Then who?”

  Again, she refused to elaborate.

  “It’s Frank of the Black Fang, isn’t it? The leader of the Black Fang,” Jeff asked, still absorbed in their conversation.

  “Frank of the Black Fang? What, he has a black tooth or something?” Eik questioned.

  “That’s actually exactly why he was dubbed that, yes,” Jeff said with a nod. “It’s a rotten tooth or something like that. Anyway, he’s a really bad guy. I’d bet he’s who she’s afraid of.”

  “Aha!” Eik exclaimed, patting the woman on the shoulder. “A ruthless leader of a gang of bandits, eh. Who could have seen that coming?”

  “He will kill you!” she snarled. “When he finds out about this, he will kill you!”

  “Not if I kill him first,” Eik whispered, the thought of fighting a strong opponent causing a renewed thirst for blood to well up in him.

  “The Black Fang boasts more than a dozen members. You don’t stand a chance.”

  “I have friends too, lady. And some of them are pretty tough, if I have to say so myself.”

  She kicked him in the stomach at full power but she was clearly still weakened from the poison so it didn’t do too much. Trying to roll away, she tore open the injection wound, spilled blood painting the dirt red.

  Eik leapt and mounted her back as he swallowed another Potion of Mighty Strength. With the blade edge of Viper Fang resting against the woman’s throat, he spoke into her ear. “Don’t move. Where can I find your boss, Frank of the Black Fang? I need to have a word with him.”

  She struggled in his grip but kept silent.

  “Jeff? What can you tell me?”

  “N-Nothing about this, I’m afraid, Mr. Magnasen.”

  “Great,” Eik muttered and flipped her over. “Then we’re going to have to do it the hard way after all,” he said and punched her twice in the face.

  “Let me give you a piece of advice, you dumb brat,” she hissed and spat in his face. “If you don’t drop this little show of yours right now, Frank, I, and everybody from the Black Fang will not only hunt you down, but we’ll make sure every person you call friend or family will curse you for having run afoul of our organization.”

  A shadow came over him as he felt the thirst for blood intensify. “Are you threatening my loved ones?” he whispered, Profound Toxin flowing around his fists.

  “I’m not threatening anything,” she said with a twisted grin. “I’m making you a fuckin’ promise.”

  Her nose broke with a nauseating crunch on the very first punch and she lost two teeth on the second. But Eik didn’t stop. His heart was racing away like a galloping horse and he tasted blood as he bit through his own lip. “I will never…”

  Another three punches cracked into her face, splitting her lip. “let you…”

  Four more hits. “do a fucking thing to them!”

  Profound Toxin began to stream down his body, enshrouding her as if she was being mummified. She screamed in agony as she struggled hard to shake it off but it clung to her like tar while he kept wailing on her mindlessly.

  “Where are your damn colleagues?” he snarled as yet another punch connected. By now she wasn’t moving anymore. “Tell me!”

  “Uhm, M-Mr. Magnasen,” Jeff stammered. “I don’t think she can hear you anymore.”

  “I can see that, Jeff!” he shouted, causing the man to back several steps away. Obediently, the toxin retreated back into Eik, once more revealing the woman’s bloodied face. Her skin was now bright red, with discolored blisters swelling painfully across her body. It looked just like the time when the toxin had accidentally gotten on Heath’s skin, only much worse.

  “Hey,” Eik said, shaking her hard. “I know you can hear me, lady of the Black Fang. I know an excellent healer who can make all this pain go away in a jiffy. How does that sound?”

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  The whispers Eik was hearing weren’t exactly words and the sound could hardly be called a voice. It was more like the wind playing a trick on his mind, only it wasn’t the wind. It carried with it a will that desperately tried to impose itself on his mind.

  Was it working? It was difficult to tell.

  It probably was. Even now, staring down at a woman in clear suffering, he didn’t really feel much. It certainly made it easier to torture someone for information, but it was strange nonetheless.

  The sound of something scratching on wood came from his shirt and he pulled out the plaque, keeping the woman down with a hand on her throat.

  [Acquired Resistance: Toxin — Lv. 39]

  [Acquired Profound Toxin — Lv. 45]

  He nodded to himself and put the wooden plaque back into his shirt as she opened her eyes, whimpering in pain. He'd been doing his best to increase his Resistance: Toxin but it was getting more and more difficult.

  She looked up at him, much of the defiance from earlier vanished as if it had turned into smoke.

  “It doesn’t feel great, does it?” he asked her, holding her head in his hands. “I know it sounds dumb, but I actually know how you feel right now. I had a little accident with it before, you see,” he chuckled. “Unfortunately, I’m not going to stop.” Ice crept into his voice.

  She glared up at him, and while there was plenty of hate in those eyes, fear seemed to be the emotion that occupied the front seat.

  “You’ve convinced me that your group would come after my friends and family and I’m not about to let that happen. I need to know where your hideout is.” Eik let another thin tendril of Profound Toxin flow out from the tip of his finger and into the shape of a needle. Slowly, he moved it toward her open eye, her body beginning to shiver in his grasp.

  “Lady, I really haven’t got all night for this shit.”

  “Alright, alright!” she gasped, tears appearing in the corners of his eyes. Her hands trembled intensely as she slowly pushed the needle away from her face. “I’ll… I’ll tell you where to find them, okay? Just… please stop it.”

  “That’s a great choice!” Eik said with a smile as the needle vaporized into blue motes which were instantly sucked back into his body as if by a vacuum. “Now, you’re going to follow me back, I’m going to get my team together, and then you will tell us exactly where to find this damned Frank of the Black Fang.”

  ***

  “The Black Fang?” Heath asked with a yawn, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “I didn’t know they were the types to commit theft. I thought they mainly dealt in violence, extortion, and the occasional murder.”

  “We didn’t commit the theft!” the woman growled, some of the fight having returned to her demeanor after a bit of time away from Eik’s terrifying toxin. “We don’t do shit like that.”

  “Yeah, the thefts were courtesy of my new friend Jeff here, whom we will also hand over to the guys at Mission Central before striking the hideout.”

  “And if I can ask,” Michael started, controlled concern in his eyes. “why is it that we’re suddenly going after these guys?”

  “Because she,” Eik said with a thumb toward the woman from the Black Fang. “promised me in no uncertain terms that the Black Fang would hunt down anyone I hold dear. That includes you, my friends, and I am not about to let them come for us. And since I have taken her away while she was out to confirm the theft of my potions Frank of the Black Fang will know that she’s compromised the moment she fails to turn up to report.”

  “Yeah…” Michael muttered, clenching his fists. It was remarkable how much more composed he was now compared to those first few times after they had initially formed their team.

  “So, if they’re going to come for us, whether to maim or kill, I would prefer to be the one to come for them first,” Eik said, blue toxin rippling across his clothes. “Even if they intend to only give you a rug burn I am not willing to take that chance.”

  “And why aren’t we bringing your sister to go scorched earth on their asses?”

  Eik sighed. “Travis finally let her go on assignment again now that she’s recovered and even if everything goes to plan, her return will only be just in time to come along to the Championships and I think it’s too risky to put it off. We’re going to have to do it without her, unfortunately.”

  “And what about gathering an army from Mission Central?” Sonja suggested.

  Eik chewed on his lip for a moment. “I’d like to say that it’s because I want us to get the experience or that I don’t want to owe Travis any favors, but the truth is that I’m just not sure who to trust. The longer we allow to mobilize a force, and the more people we involve, the more we risk word getting to the Black Fang about our intentions.”

  Sonja nodded gravely as she listened.

  “If they disappear, they’ll know we’re after them and will most certainly come for us and we won’t know when or from where. We have to act quickly.”

  “Right,” Heath agreed. “We proceed quickly but with caution.”

  Jeff kept begging Eik to let him go free but it fell on deaf ears. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time, as they say. What “time” meant in this post apocalyptic society Eik wasn’t entirely certain. The laws on that weren’t quite as rigid as they had been almost ten years ago anymore.

  The woman’s name, they found out, was Jane. Eik had tried again, with similar tactics, to coax out the name of whoever had employed the Black Fang.

  Before, where defiance had kept her mouth shut, the previous experience of the pain inflicted by the toxic mummification and the blue needle had changed that into a hysterical insistence of ignorance.

  Apparently, only Frank of the Black Fang knew who the real employer was, but she suspected Jeff’s guess that it was one of the major merchants was probably correct. With no more time to spare, they had left her in the custody of Mission Central as well, hauling her along to guide them too risky considering her D-rank strength.

  “What if she’s lying? About the location of the hideout, I mean.”” Michael asked as they ran toward the outskirts of Forest, heading for the location described by Jane. In the basement of storage building that had been abandoned for a safer location closer to center of the city the Black Fang had apparently established their home.

  Some of the members of the group lived there permanently, while some members had chosen to sleep elsewhere. Frank was one of the ones who was there most of the time. According to Jane, he required every member to report in at least once a day unless other orders were given.

  Eik jaw tensed and Profound Toxin reacted to the icy promise. “Then I’m going to make her wish she had told the truth.”

  “And what about these Black Fang guys? How are we going to bring them in?”

  “I’m not sure if we can bring them in.”

  “So what then?” Michael asked, his glance at the others hinting at a guess.

  “If it becomes necessary, then we kill them all,” Eik said calmly as luminescent toxin trailed him in the night and wet his hair with blue.

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