Monarch of Profound Toxin

"They got this thing up and running pretty quickly, huh?" Eik noted as they pushed their way through the throng of people. Gimleh was in high spirits today and the local district of the Alchemist Guild had been decked out with all manner of celebratory decorations. "It didn't even take two full days."

Bright green flags with a white logo of a bubbling cauldron waved and snapped in the breeze from spires and poles.

Along walls, trees, and shop stalls hung glowing, spherical baubles on string like Christmas ornaments in a multitude of vibrant colors, casting the entire district in a festive light. Some stores even sold themed meals and pastries, sporting the colors of the Alchemist Guild, or drinks that resembled a sizzling potion.

And if that wasn't enough to make it clear what was going on the banners would probably be.

Cord had been hitched between the roofs of taller buildings and massive banners had been spread out for all to see. They bore a variety of messages.

Big pills for big wallets

All hail, all hail, the new Elixir King

Who will be the new Elixir King? — Ooh, bi~~g mystery

From zero to hero

Elixir King? More like Cake King!

And many more. None of them appeared particularly official and were clearly handwritten with differing degrees of quality. As a matter of fact, as far as Eik could tell, not even a single one of them had been hung up by the Alchemist Guild of Gimleh themselves. If nothing else, that just went to show how large of an event it truly was.

"Isn't it a little… much?" he wondered out loud.

"Don't tell me a big man like you is getting shy now?" Olivia jabbed, her face made of one big grin.

Most of their friends and family who had been able to would be coming to participate in the event and to witness Eik's appointment to Elixir King.

Even Olivia, with her ridiculously time-consuming job as the primary decision-maker of Forest while the brass took their sweet time choosing an appropriate and capable council to govern the city, had taken time to show her face. The demanding position had made it very difficult to continue her combat training so, naturally, Eik had offered to provide her with a weekly grant in the form of a large handful of grade 4 Legendary Mystery Medicine pills.

That alone had apparently been a better motivator than even the continued prosperity of her home because ever since he had started forking them over, she had worked like an insane person.

But then again, it was an incredibly powerful asset to have. If Eik's findings were correct, then the permanent empowerment gained by the Legendary Mystery Medicine had no impact on Levels or power rank progress at all.

In other words, no matter how ridiculously overpowered for one's power rank one became thanks to those pills, the System didn't have a way to really calculate that into its rewards to Levels and power rank. It basically seemed to be a way to cheat the system into thinking you were weaker than you really were.

It essentially allowed an Awakened to absolute farm experience from opponents that, technically, were on the same level but in reality were fodder for a meat grinder.

Normally, it was an undeniable fact of an Awakened's existence that one had to risk life and limb in order to advance through the ranks of strength, but with enough Legendary Mystery Medicine, that risk could largely be removed.

In Eik's own case, that hadn't been the case, of course, because he had simply used that extra power to go against even more dangerous opponents. That, in turn, had then also given him even greater rewards for his troubles, but that didn't have to be how, say, his sister, girlfriend, friends, or children did it.

He would make sure that they could enjoy the same benefits he had, only without the same depths of danger to overcome.

"I'm not shy! Just a little… overwhelmed, okay? Did you know that there hasn't been another Elixir King in like, what, seventy years?"

"Yes," Ihasu and Gul said in unison.

"Not you! You grew up here so that doesn't count. I'm talking to my annoying sister here. Did you know that, Oli? There's a huge pressure on my shoulders!" Eik insisted.

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She arched an eyebrow skeptically. "You serious right now, bro? How is this friendly event held to appoint you a title that you have already been chosen for overwhelming compared to what you're already juggling?"

He shrugged. "I don't know, okay? It just is, kind of."

"What's wrong, daddy?" Bin asked, squeezing his hand that she was already holding.

"Nothing, cutie. Just a little nervous."

"Why?"

"Daddy's getting a big promotion at… work? No, that's not right. Someone wants to give daddy a big fancy title and that kind of thing is just a little bit awkward for me, you see."

"Why?"

Eik titled his head as he thought. "Well, because it's not something that happens every day and a lot of people will be looking at me like I'm very important and sometimes I feel like that is not something I can live up to, I suppose."

"Why?" Bin continued.

He frowned slightly. "Because a lot of the things you have to live up to in this world can feel rather arbitrary and not very well defined, which leads to a ton of uncertainty and a feeling of never quite living up to these obscure standard even if you have long since passed them."

"Why?"

"Well, I think that's really a matter of people and the way society operates at large. On one hand we wish to set realistic and achievable goals for ourselves and those around us, but an intrinsic need for optimization and improvement buried deep in all of us causes everything to become muddled together until you can simultaneously lose sight of what your actual goals should be in the first place and become unable to gauge your own ability to the point of becoming helplessly paralyzed to even attempt to conquer even relatively small obstacles in your path forward."

"Why?"

Eik held up a finger. "Now, here we come to the meat of the matt—"

"Eik," Ihasu broke in, putting a gentle hand on his back.

"Yes?"

"Stop talking."

"Yes…"

"Eik, did I hear that you were called into the guild to discuss your responsibilities as the Elixir King?" his father, Rasmus, asked.

"Yep, that's right."

"What do they require of you?"

Eik pursed his lips. "Honestly? Way less than I had expected them to. My first guess was that this was nothing more than a glorified slave position where they give me some arbitrarily high status in exchange for free use of my abilities."

"And it wasn't?" Heath chimed in, looking as surprised as Eik had felt at the time.

"Not at all, actually. All they're really asking for is my support should they come into trouble in one way or the other—with the exception of a situation where I might be on the opposite side of it, of course."

"Is that all?"

"No, there's some other stuff," Eik continued. "Like, I've promised to act as social and economic support for some of the promising new alchemists whom the guild routinely sponsors. I'll also have to attend events here and there and that kind of stuff. It really seems like they're just hoping to make use of my status as a powerful figure in the Alliance, you know, being an X-ranker and such."

"And you get?"

"Tons of ingredient support such as access to their gathering networks, rights to purchase from and through them as a VVVVIP priority customer, not to mention access to everything they have as far as information, alchemical knowledge, recipes, assistance and that kind of thing goes. It really feels like I'm getting the long end of the stick in this, no matter how I twist and turn it. With this, I will basically be a more prominent figure in the guild than Guild Master Ganyak hir Gawak himself."

Ihasu shrugged. "The Elixir King is a rarer existence that the guild master. There has to be a guild master for the guild to function optimally. That's just how their management structure is set up. The Elixir King is more of a, uhm… an occasional bonus appearance. There doesn't need to be one. It's more like a final elevation for that once in a hundred years alchemist, you know? It's all symbolic."

"Yeah, but still," Eik drawled. "Even though I know it's dumb, my mind has been trying to figure out how they could possibly be trying to scam me with this."

"Boy, did you forget who you are?" Gul cackled and threw Bin onto his shoulders. "You think anybody would try anything against you, knowing what you can do? By now, it's common knowledge that both you yourself are an X-ranker as well as a recognized friend of another X-ranker. Any one of you could destroy them in a literal blink of an eye. And most people probably think you can read minds or listen to the voice of the world to know all lies. They are terrified."

"Hm," Eik hmm'd. "I hadn't really thought of it like that. I guess I'm good then."

"I'm not scared of you, daddy," Bin said.

He caressed her cheek. "That's because I'm not a scary guy, little cutie. Oh, we're here!"

"Look at Goo!" Bin exclaimed with a giggle.

With the boy on his shoulders, Eik couldn't see him but in a second he was tapped into a tiny Living Manifestation on one of the high roofs within the grounds of the Alchemist Guild of Gimleh.

Tiny Profound Toxic beasts like that were scattered around them—small but powerful enough to deal with anyone trying to cause harm.

In a moment, a little thing like that could infiltrate any system and cause untold havoc. Even now, in the middle of festivities, Eik was more prepared for a potential invasion than ever. If any of those filthy spawn dared attack again, he would melt them into nothingness.

Through the Living Manifestation's eyes, he could see that Goo was gaping up at the enormous main building of the guild. From a spire atop the highest roof was a flag measuring at least twenty meters from end to end, billowing in the wind.

Eik reached up and squeezed his son's cheeks as well. "I guess you don't remember the last time I brought you here, huh? It's not that long ago, is it?"

"He was counting the cobblestones, if I remember correctly," Robert said with a chuckle as he pushed open the main door for them.

"Robert?" Rasmus said with surprise. "You're here early?"

Eik elbowed his dad with a smirk. "I bet he slept here."

With a frown, Rasmus looked at his son and then at Robert. "Why would you have slept he— Oh! Ooh, I see what's going on here," he giggled and proved what parent Eik had gotten his mischievous smirk from.

Robert rolled his eyes. "Will this ever end?"

"Probably," Eik said and pulled him into a shoulder hug and led him back through the double doors and into the vast, inner courtyard. "You didn't have to come all the way out here to greet us."

"Nah, I know, but I figured I would warn you ahead of time."

Eik's eyes narrowed as he got a bad feeling. "Warn me? About what?"

"The guild is expecting… shall we say, a bit of a performance from you."

"What? When?"

"What do you mean when? Obviously when everybody's looking at you."

Eik groaned and massaged the bridge of his nose. "Ah, nuts… It starts in an hour! Like, what do they want?"

"Dude, how am I supposed to know? Here, I'm just the boyfriend. Just do something Elixir King-esque or something like that."