“What the hell is that dumbass doing?” Heath asked.

  After all of the challengers had been stolen away by a fracture each, the remaining crowd had begun to move to areas reserved for the viewing of the spectacle that was the first challenge of the Championships.

  Countless screens lit up the sky, displaying images of all of the challengers as they made their way through a terrain that resembled boreal forests back on Earth. Whenever a challenger was involved in a particularly interesting or tense situation, their perspectives were moved to one of several larger, more centrally placed screens to highlight their prowess and performance.

  At least here in the beginning, the challengers chosen for the big screens were cycled through very frequently, and anytime a new face appeared up there, the sections of the audience with the biggest concentration of spectators from the same home world would erupt into cheering.

  At no point since the beginning of the challenge had any of the participants looked directly into the “camera”, which probably meant that the transmission was being picked up via some manner of invisible broadcasting technique. That such a thing was possible didn’t bode well for the maintenance of common privacy and decency in the coming years on Earth.

  They had become especially certain that Eik didn’t know they were watching when he dug around inside his ear with his little finger and studied it for almost ten seconds with facial expressions ranging from disgust to fascination as he sniffed it. Two minutes later he was squatting down in a dense bush with only his head sticking up above the leaves, swiveling from side to side as he scanned the surroundings for any sign of enemies who might disturb his open air pooping session with an attempt on his life.

  Eik had made it up on the big screens a couple of times already. Once when he slammed a spike of solid toxin into his opponent’s back and detonated it in a rain of blood and guts while simultaneously taking an axe blade to the shoulder.

  Another when he calmly watched over his opponent as the man died a poison death. That sight of Eik always sent shivers through them. On the battlefield he was a different man. Ruthless but joyful.

  Right now, however, no trace of that ferocity was to be found in his behavior. “I think he’s… chasing little critters?” Michael guessed, his eyes never leaving the Dane’s ridiculous antics.

  “Yeah, I can see that quite clearly myself, so I guess a better question would be: ‘why the hell is that dumbass doing that in the middle of the first round of the Championships?’”

  “It’s obvious,” Sonja said. “You saw what he did earlier, right? He turned his body into poison, which is a new ability. What else could he be doing but trying to test out what he can do with it?”

  “Hmm,” Heath grumbled, tapping a dissatisfied finger against his jaw. “I still think he should be more alert and careful. He looks like he’s forgotten the world around him completely.”

  Michael snorted and looked at the tank with a raised eyebrow. “Oh, come on, Heath. Despite how he might act from time to time, there’s just no way Eik would be so foolhardy, no matter how carefree he might appear to be on screen.”

  ***

  Eik had completely forgotten the world around him, the little animal flitting about at insane speeds the only thing he could think about. A long and bushy tail — more than four times its body length — marked its passage as it circled trees, rushed through bushes, and climbed thick trunks with the ease of weightlessness.

  Its ears as well were absurdly long, flapping against its hind quarters any time it changed direction. If it hadn’t been so damned annoying, Eik might have even thought it was cute.

  “How is it that you’re faster than me, you dumb animal?” Eik hissed as he grabbed for the little speedster. “I promise, I might not hurt you. I just need to try something real quick!”

  The chase had lasted for more than a minute already and to put it mildly, Eik was growing more and more tired of this ridiculous dance by the second.

  Downing a Potion of Mighty Strength class 2, he triggered Movement Boost and ducked through a bush as the critter darted straight, looking back for Eik who had just disappeared, it changed directions once more. It had just begun to circle back when Eik kicked off a tree trunk and intercepted its path to slam a dome of blue down and trap it under it.

  “Gotcha, you annoying vermin!” Keeping careful control, he opened holes in the dome, revealing the inside, where the long-eared, long-tailed bastard dashed around the dome like a globe of death. He put his hand against the thick net and widened one hole just enough to fit it through.

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  Immediately flight turned to fight and the thing went absolutely berserk on his fingers, gnawing and scratching relentlessly. For a second, Eik jolted in surprise at the sight, but when barely any pain followed the attack, he grabbed the little guy around the neck in a death grip. “Damn, you are the definition of a pure speed build, aren’t you?”

  A barb as thin as a nail appeared on the tip of his finger and with a quick movement of the thumb, he cut a shallow but bloody wound across it torso, eliciting tiny squeaks. “Sorry, buddy. Could you stay still for a little bit? I just need to…” he muttered, his words trailing off as he began to concentrate. Ending with the hand holding the critter, he used Movement Boost with the Toxic Liquefaction trait that turned his body to liquid.

  The moment he became toxin he was overcome by an inexplicable urge to enter the bleeding wound. Caught up in the throes of experimentation and invasion, he rushed in and quickly spread himself throughout every path and space inside the animal’s dog-sized body. Coursing through a foreign body was an otherworldly feeling.

  It felt right, like he’d been stuck in the wrong body for his whole life without realizing it until this very moment. This was fun! Maybe the most fun he had ever had. Surely, after this, there was nothing else in life that could compare.

  Unfortunately for Eik’s enjoyment, the pleasure was short lived. He only managed to hold the transformation for a few second before it became undone.

  And when it did, it wasn’t pretty.

  Eik’s fluid body was scattered throughout the critter’s system when it began the rapid process of reassembling him into a human form. And, unfortunately for the animal’s continued ability to sustain life, Eik’s transformation had absolutely no regard for its body and health as mystic forces acted upon him.

  One could have stuffed it with a live hand grenade and gotten more or less the same result. Blood, guts, bone, flesh, and brain matter covered every single square centimeter of surface within a shockingly large radius, including Eik’s entire body.

  The Dane stood momentarily stunned, staring down at his body. “Damn…” he muttered under ragged breath. He could swear he was hearing the sound of raucous laughter coming from… somewhere far away. But that couldn’t be, right?

  What was Heath, Michael, Sonja, and the others doing right now anyway?

  Hoping to eventually find a body of water where he could wash off the blood, Eik resumed the trek through the deep forest toward the pillar mountain. Another Toxic Liquefaction transformation didn’t get rid of the blood although he felt it should have.

  Ha had spent a little bit of time looking for corpses around the area where the other battle must have taken place but there was nothing to be found and no time to look further into it.

  As he spent time with his thought, Eik became increasingly convinced that those smooth stones he had found clutched in the hands of his opponents after their deaths must have some kind of importance in the challenge. Something like points, maybe?

  From somewhere ahead, booms of distant combat reached his ears and he considered changing direction completely but the mountain was now visible above the crowns of the surrounding trees. And he had played enough video games back in the day to know what a light on top of a high and easily visible location meant.

  It meant there was an objective to be completed up there.

  The sounds of fighting were a little off to the side of the straight path so Eik activated Movement Boost without the Toxic Liquefaction trait and blasted all the way to the foot of the mountain.

  Even at the bottom it was an almost perfect cylinder rising up from the earth. It looked perfectly natural in the sense that there were no signs of construction. The mountain face was rough and uneven, sticking out in place with leafy plants, bushes, and flowers sprouting happily from rocky outcroppings.

  The fighting now seemed to have crossed into the exact path Eik had just taken so he began to climb without further ado. From this angle he could see neither the peak nor the light on the top. The climb itself really wasn’t a big deal for someone at D-rank. There were more than enough footholds to make the ascent quick and easy.

  Practically flying up the side of the gigantic rock formation, each movement carried him several meters up at once. He would be at the peak in less than a minute at this rate.

  Dotting the surface of the rock were numerous holes so deep that their bottom was invisible. With a diameter of about a meter, they also contributed to the effortless climb. At times, when he rushed past one of those holes, a rumbling, keening sound would escape from the depths.

  Perhaps they were hollow. Eik had heard of natural structures where eroded tunnels guided wind in such a way that it created sounds resembling musical tones.

  Maybe that was what this wa—

  The moment he passed by, a spiraling maw filled with teeth barreled out of one of the tunnels, colliding with Eik and carrying him bodily out and away from the rock, fangs chomping into his torso, drawing blood.

  Reflexively, Eik’s fingers sought the handle of Viper Fang but found only the blade he had lifted off the body of the lightning user. It would have to do.

  With one leg stuck inside the mouth of the ugly, worm-like beast, he stabbed the blade into soft tissue behind its head. A roar of exertion escaped him as he drew a deep gash through the flesh and then stabbed the gums between the undulating teeth repeatedly before returning the short sword to its sheath.

  Numerous teeth penetrating skin, Eik hissed and reached for Toxic Liquefaction as the gigantic worm, whose ridiculously long body still hadn’t fully come out of the tunnel, curved around and raced toward another opening further down the rock face.

  Now liquid, Eik rushed into the monster’s bloodstream through the stab wounds in the gums. Diffusing himself throughout the alien system, he quickly located the long gash in the thing’s neck and ejected himself, managing to return to his human form with his fingers buried in the wound.

  Still moving at high speed and heading for the tunnel, Eik leapt off its back and slapped against the side of the mountain with a grunt just before he would have been crushed in the small space.

  “Holy shit, I can’t believe that crap actually worked! This is awesome!” Eik had barely gotten the words out when a spear of light tore and then immediately cauterized a painful wound in his back.

  He screamed in pain and caught a glimpse of a face looking down from above, already preparing another spear of light.

  “Fuckin’… nuts!” Eik snarled as the worm erupted from the nearest tunnel and came straight for him.

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