Rangers Endgame

Chapter 106: Pieces Clicking Into Place

FUYUMI:

The air stung with the acrid stench of blood as the battle raged. The once beautiful meadow of vibrant green and sprouting bamboo was now stained with crimson and littered with corpses and viscera.

Fuyumi's daggers gleamed as her blades arced around her, drawing blood wherever they struck. Enemies rushing her were swiftly cut down as she bounced from one small battle to the next with athletic lethality.

Amidst the exchange of primitive cries, Sentinel Haruka fired roaring volleys of radiance that morphed into serpents before crashing down onto their intended targets.

Though the Second Grades were fewer in number, their augmented strength more than made up for it. Either their warriors bulldozed through the rangers or their conjurers shredded through their defenses.

Fuyumi ended up in a far corner of the battlefield, fending off several Second Grades as the wounded were evacuated. She was slick with blood from the handful of men she'd killed as both sides were drunk on adrenaline, flailing their weapons.

She slid under an axe that cleaved heavily through several bamboo behind her, her Armor Killer blade slicing cleanly through the axe wielder's chest plate. As he doubled over, she used that moment to drive her Bloodhound Fang into his neck.

Fuyumi bit her lip. Killing a monster was one thing, but taking the life of her own kind was another. She tried not to think too hard about it, blocking out her guilty conscience as it would only serve as a distraction.

She kicked away the limp body, flicked the blood off her dagger, and fired a projectile at a Second Grade that slipped past her. It collided with the back of his knee, lurching him forward before a freelance ranger drove his longsword into his chest.

Pivoting, she spun low to avoid a hammer sweeping over her head. Pushing off her back foot before he could wind up again, she closed the distance in a blink and carved through his bulky armor with Armor Killer.

As he fell, she scanned the field of bloodshed again, her hardened gaze settling on a Saberclaw member struggling against two Second Grades—one flailing a spiked club and the other pressuring with a spear. The spearman swept the ranger's legs during a small opening as his partner raised his club for the finishing blow.

Fuyumi rushed toward him and, using the chaos to mask her approach, drilled her Bloodhound Fang into the back of his neck. His partner didn't care, however, sparing his fallen ally only a single glance before continuing to attack the now recovered ranger. The ranger deflected his spear and kicked him away; the momentary breather was only meant to give him time to nod at her gratefully.

As he rushed to re-engage with his opponent, something dark blurred into Fuyumi's periphery. Her daggers snapped into defensive position, and the dark object slammed into them, flinging her away. She tucked into a roll, then backflipped away again as a similar object drove into the ground where she once was.

Landing out of range, she got a good look at her attacker. A man, a head taller than her with stringy hair, had sickly gold tendrils growing out of every part of his body. His tendrils dripped with excess radiance and writhed in anticipation.

He fired his tendrils toward her, but she evaded to the side. The tendrils sought her out as she dashed past other Second Grades. She slid under an axe but didn't bother with a counterattack. Instead, she let the tendrils eviscerate him on their path to impale her, his body erupting into a grotesque fountain of red.

Flipping over a spearhead meant to carve into her chest, another tendril whipped through the spearman's side, shattering his ribcage.

Fuyumi continued to lead the tendrils through the battlefield as they heedlessly left a trail of death in their wake.

"Not very impressive if the only thing you can manage is running, little rat." The man taunted, completely oblivious to her strategy.

During the battle, she was conserving as much radiance as possible, but this meant compensating with her physical prowess. Though she'd improved her stamina over the past few months, she'd been fighting for almost two hours at that point.

The tendrils began to catch up as fatigue started to weigh on her. She glanced back to see a tendril dart toward her head. As she slipped the lethal blow, it unexpectedly curled back and wrapped itself around her leg.

She was dragged painfully across the field, leaving a shallow trench in the earth. She hacked wildly at the tendril with Armor Killer, but the conjuration kept regenerating after each slash. Another tendril caught her by the wrist, and she gnashed her teeth as it squeezed.

The man held her up before him, her bones beginning to creak as the tendrils slowly tightened. A third tendril mimicked the motion of his hovering hand, awaiting instructions.

"What an annoying catch," he sneered, his bloodshot eyes brimming with satisfaction. "That'll be one less rat to deal with here."

He snapped out his hand, and the tendril followed, aimed at her sternum. Before it could skewer her, a serpent of brilliant radiance crashed into the man, veering the tendril off course and striking the ground beside her. She fell on her side and looked in the direction the serpent came from to see Sentinel Haruka venting her conduit.

Fuyumi rubbed her bruised skin as she looked back at the man. He was unrecognizable, lying in his own viscera.

She took another health elixir from her satchel and downed its contents, the cuts scabbing over and bruises fading. She'd already used up two of the three elixirs Aoi gave her, and the battle showed no signs of slowing down.

'At this rate, I won't be able to keep up.' She thought as she stood.

The ground cracked where the tendril had struck, a fissure slicing under her feet. Even when reacting quickly to leap away, the earth had already swallowed her. She rolled down the crumbling debris and struck the side of her head on something hard before coming to a rest on a stone floor.

Her body ached and her head throbbed as warm liquid slid down her cheek. Her vision blurred, and the lights in whatever tunnel she'd ended up in spun. She painfully rolled onto her back. Drunkenly feeling for yet another health elixir, she pulled out the vial and contemplated whether or not to drink it.

It was her last one, and there might be another situation where she might need it. Deciding against it, she slipped it back into her satchel and pulled out a roll of bandages to tie around her head. Then she lay there, patiently waiting for her senses to return.

After several minutes, the spinning lights inside the tunnel eventually came to a gradual stop as her vision focused. Her ears had also recalibrated, now able to make out the sounds of muffled battle cries and clashing metal seeping through the rubble.

Sitting up, she took the time to examine her surroundings. She had ended up in a dim hallway. Torches dimly lit the aged stone that made up the floor, walls, and ceiling, the thin dust cloud muddying the lighting to give it an ominous feel.

She assumed she found herself in the underground caverns that were mentioned in the mission. As she picked up her daggers, she heard distant footsteps approaching, accompanied by voices.

"—came from this direction." A voice said from down the tunnel.

"Let's see." Another said, sounding closer.

There was no time to think about where to go, and she didn't know how many of them there were. She quietly moved into the only branching hall available to her just as obscured figures approached.

She had no clue where she was going or where an exit was, but she knew she couldn't stay in one place. She stopped as footsteps approached from around the corner to another hallway. Quickly doubling back, she went to try another hall but stopped again when she heard more people coming from that direction as well.

She was getting pinched. Having no choice, she dipped into one of the many identical rooms and hid in the shadows of the poorly lit space.

"Let's get out there." A deep voice barked as it passed.

"They should've thinned the herd by now." Another voice, more nasally than the first, responded.

Multiple other footsteps barrelled down the hall until they faded into the distance. Fuyumi waited another minute or so before stepping out of cover. Her eyes glanced around the room, curiosity pulling her to the parchment on the counter next to a disarrayed bookshelf.

Picking up a few sheets, she skimmed through their writing. They were all notes taken from history tomes. Whoever was there was studying geography and the origins of radiance, although she noticed that the notes on radiance were scarce.

Moving onto another sheet, she found a small map of the Outer Rim, or what humanity had mapped out from the limited knowledge of it. The researcher seemed to be obsessed with the eastern region of the Outer Rim, specifically indicated by the circles and red dots around the uncharted terrain.

"Monsters will vacate when it stirs." She read a small note in the corner of the map. "High-tier monsters will pour into the Mid, and even Inner Rim, more frequently the longer we linger."

She read a few more notes, but they were all relatively the same.

'Monsters will vacate when it stirs?' She repeated. 'High-tier monsters will pour into the Mid and Inner Rim.' She cupped her chin thoughtfully. 'The Mid and Inner Rim...high-tier monsters...'

She wanted to write this off as the furious ramblings of a lunatic like the rest of the researchers' "colleagues," but something had prevented her from doing so. Her very own experience. An incident that caused the near annihilation of the entire Bison Clan.

The Misranked Mission.

Even if it was a stretch, there was an unspoken agreement that the behemoth just wandered into the Inner Rim. But now that she had more context...

"Did the behemoth flee from something?" A chill ran down her spine at the thought of a near-unstoppable titan running away from an unknown force.

Though it wasn't exactly a priority, she searched through more parchment to identify what the researcher was referring to but found nothing. She almost wished she hadn't been snooping. Now that she knew something was lurking in the Outer Rim that even behemoths were afraid of...

The faintest sound of a rolling pebble drew her attention to the bookshelf. Quick-drawing her daggers, she snapped into a defensive stance.

Now that her eyes had adjusted to the dark, she could see slight movement from between the shelf and the adjacent wall but couldn't make out any details. Igniting her daggers, she let the light disperse the darkness just enough to see the figure duck back behind the shelf.

Pushing more radiance into her blades in preparation for a fight, Fuyumi slowly sidestepped to see the cowering enemy while keeping her distance. The bookshelf's shadow panned as the light from her daggers moved with her. As she rounded the corner, however, she didn't see anyone at her eye level like she was expecting. She looked down to find a small form curled in between the narrow space.

A little girl.

She couldn't have been any older than six or seven.

Tears rimmed her trembling brown eyes, and a dirty bow sat lopsided atop her dark hair, two blonde bangs framing her round face. Soot caked her pale skin, and her simple blue dress was tattered. Her lips quivered with overflowing fear as she desperately scurried as far back as the wall behind her would allow.

"Please don't hurt me." She pleaded, her tiny voice cracking.

Fuyumi stared in disbelief. She tried blinking away what she thought was a trick her mind was playing on her, but the child was still there. She took a cautious step closer, and the girl pressed herself harder against the wall in a panic.

"No, please don't!" Her tears fell, mixing with the dirt on her face.

She didn't seem to have any symptoms of the elixir. Fuyumi doubted a child would survive the elixir anyway, but it didn't hurt to check.

She returned her daggers to their sheaths and crouched to her level. "Who are you? What are you doing down here?"

The girl didn't answer, too frightened to do so.

"I'm not going to hurt you, kid."

Still nothing.

Fuyumi sighed, debating whether or not to drag her out, but scrapped the idea when she realized the girl's struggle would likely attract unwanted attention. Instead, she went to the opposite side of the untidy room and sat against the wall.

"Better?" Fuyumi asked.

Though she wasn't expecting an answer, the girl's shaking subsided somewhat, but her quiet sobs persisted. Fuyumi leaned her head against the wall, the throbbing near her temple dimming. She touched her bandages to ensure they were still secure, then took stock of what she had to pass the time.

Minutes passed, and though the girl's crying had reduced to hiccups that gradually began to annoy Fuyumi, she still made no attempt to leave her safe haven.

"If you stay there, they're going to find you." She warned matter-of-factly.

The girl tucked her knees to her chest, still unwilling. Aside from her little brother, Fuyumi had no experience when it came to children, so she was at a loss as to what to do. She looked back at the girl, filth staining her skin and clothes. She reached into her satchel again and pulled out the roll of bandages.

She tossed it in front of her, making her flinch. "At least clean yourself up. You're a mess."

The girl stared at it for several agonizing seconds as if it was going to explode, but eventually reached out cautiously and picked it up. She slowly unwrapped it and wiped her face and arms, but her dress was too far gone to be made decent. She tried straightening the bow on her head, but couldn't quite get it, and it fell lopsided again.

Taking out a half-empty canteen of water, Fuyumi got up and took a step toward her, raising the kid's guard again. Ignoring her, she set it halfway across the room, then returned to her corner. The girl eyed the canteen as she licked her lips but held herself back despite obviously being parched.

Another five minutes—or ten?—went by. Fuyumi didn't hear anything from beyond the room, and she assumed most of the Second Grades were fighting the rangers by now. She wondered how the battle progressed. Hopefully well since they had a Sentinel with them.

She glanced back at the girl, who still hadn't dared to move from her corner. She was truly testing Fuyumi's patience. 'This is ridiculous.' She thought, annoyed at herself. She was supposed to be on the surface, shedding blood alongside her comrades. Not holed up in a safe haven watching over some child she had no connection to.

Fuyumi stood up and dusted herself off. The little girl didn't flinch this time but tracked her as Fuyumi crossed the room to the door. Peeking out, she scanned the hallway.

It was clear.

She looked back over her shoulder to find the child now carefully leaning out from behind the bookshelf, a worried look on her face. Fuyumi looked back into the hall in contemplation.

'What do I care?' She thought, reminding herself that the girl wasn’t her responsibility. Yet, she still hesitated.

"Please don't go." The girl begged from behind.

Fuyumi turned back to her, her irritation in her eyes making the girl duck slightly behind the shelf's protection. "First you're afraid of me, now you want me to stay? Make up your mind."

The girl shrank further into herself. Fuyumi sighed, taking some of her irritation with it. "What's your name, kid?"

After a moment of silence, the girl answered without looking up. "Ella..."

Fuyumi slowly walked to her side of the room. Though Ella didn't scurry back into the corner this time, she still tightened her hold around her knees. Keeping space between them, Fuyumi knelt in front of her.

"And why are you down here, Ella?" She repeated her original question.

Ella fidgeted with an elegantly designed circular pendant around her neck. At its center was a small glass marble with a red liquid inside. "I got lost."

Fuyumi narrowed her eyes disbelievingly, her mouth ghosting skeptical words before she responded. "Yes, I know that. But how in the world did you end up in these tunnels?"

Ella stayed silent for a moment, her gaze on the floor. After a minute, she lifted her head, and Fuyumi saw a familiar haunted look in the girl's eyes.