Rangers Endgame

Chapter 114.2: Pinnacle of Strength

DAI:

Dai readjusted himself on the boulder for the umpteenth time as he stared off into the distant village. The rangers he had sent off to assist Sentinel Sokuba and May had shrunk into the horizon. Had his colleagues stuck to the original plan with him raiding the village alongside them, maybe backup wouldn't be necessary.

Now he was stuck on containment duty with the obnoxious blabbering of his forces clashing with nature's tunes. He tried to occupy himself by sending minuscule bursts of radiance into a dark pole in his hands, splitting it into four and snapping the pieces back together with a thin tether of amber, but the rangers were a bit too boisterous for him to focus on anything else.

"Oh, come on!" Someone with a spiky mohawk complained from within the circle of rangers, throwing his hand of cards on the bamboo table. "You cheated!"

"Shut it, and hand over what you owe me." Another with a buzz cut and a smug smirk demanded.

Dai glanced to his left, focusing on another group of rangers. Most of them wore typical armor, which usually meant they weren't affiliated with any clan, while only a handful of them flaunted the Saberclaw emblem on their chests and shoulders like a trophy.

"And with one clean swipe, its ugly head went spiraling off its shoulders." A tall Saberclaw member exclaimed, ghosting an exaggerated swing to further emphasize his strength.

"That's crazy considering Scorpio Knights have tough hides." A freelancer with a dark cloak concealing his form said.

"It's even crazier that you encountered it in a Mid Rim. Aren't those things usually found in the Outer Rim?" Another ranger with a man bun asked, skepticism evident in his voice.

The boastful storyteller shrugged. "I was surprised myself, if I'm being honest."

To Dai's right, he found others gathered around miniature makeshift tracks crafted from dead bamboo and pitting insects against one another in a slog fest version of racing.

'Children.'

Dai scoffed silently while twisting a finger in his ear. If they'd put as much passion into their mindless activities as they did training...

Though it wasn't all ridiculous. Some, not many, were wise enough to practice their skills through sparring or target practice with far-off boulders as targets. It's what would ultimately separate the mediocre from the exceptional. Even so, he'd be shouldering the heavy lifting anyway.

Uncertain of the amount of time he had to spare, he continued his own small form of training. Closing his eyes, he reached for his radiance flowing through the intricate highways in his body. It responded to his command, coalescing into his forearm, then his hand, before fusing with the pole.

He guided his steady stream of power through the pole's components and grooves, disassembling it into pieces before reassembling it back to the way it was. His radiance responded to his fingers moving with effortless dexterity, the snapping and clicking pieces of alloy mingling with the hum of energy.

He didn't know how much time had passed when a strange light began to bleed through his eyelids. He figured it was some prank from a bored ranger. Annoyed, he opened his eyes, but instead of finding a ranger, he found a large explosion of light—radiance—flashing across the landscape that devoured the daylight. The shockwave roared past him, ruffling his dark hair and flailing the rangers' improvised entertainment around.

"What the—"

"Are you seeing this?"

"I don't even know what I'm seeing?"

Calmly assessing the sheer size and rich color of the blast before it diminished, Dai ruled out the possibility of it being the work of the enemy. And from the distress call from Sokuba that cut out, it was likely he and May that were directly responsible. He doubted Second Grades would pose much of a threat to a Sentinel, so perhaps they had a run-in with a Third Grade that forced them to unleash their full power. But he couldn't imagine the kind of damage they'd caused.

"To think they had the audacity to keep me away from the village so they could preserve it." He said to himself.

As the rangers behind him continued to speculate on the origin of the blast, blades of light flickered out from beneath the grassy fields in front of him before pillars of light exploded from the ground. Dai gripped the boulder as tremors rippled through the perimeter. The lights came as suddenly as they went, and a dust cloud blanketed the fields.

He glanced down at his detection artifact, which hadn't reacted to their presence. For a moment, he wondered why this was but figured it was because they were out of range.

Saberclaw rangers behind him rushed into their rehearsed battle formation while the freelancers scurried to fill the gaps. Dai kept his unfazed gaze towards the fields as human silhouettes appeared through the smoke until platoon-sized enemy forces came pouring out of the cloud.

"Alright, boys! This is it!" A Saberclaw member with short blonde hair stepped ahead of Dai and drew his spear. "We hold them here! No one gets past—"

His mediocre speech was interrupted when Dai grabbed him by the back of his collar and pulled him back on the boulder. He fell on his rear with a rattling thud as Dai stood to oppose the small army.

"W-What is the meaning of this?" The man sputtered angrily.

Dai didn't bother looking back at him. Instead, he pushed radiance into the rod in his hand. The pole flooded with power, but instead of disassembling it, it jumped to the pile of irregular metallic chunks beside the boulder he'd been sitting on. The metal glowed with gold energy as tendrils of radiance connected them, swirling towards the rod.

The colony of metal chunks spun and oriented themselves in their proper places until they resembled the shape of his warhammer, with radiance holding them together.

"If any survive, then I give you permission to raise your weapon."

Without waiting for him to respond, Dai slid his right foot back, his hammer igniting with fiery gold. The sheer pressure of its unhinged energy cracked the boulder behind him, making the ranger flinch.

Dai's features hardened as he waited a few more seconds for the enemy to draw closer. The moment the detection artifact flared red, he tightened his grip and swung.

The hammer's head blurred into a thick mass of silver and amber as he whipped it across his body. A towering wave of raging flames tore out from the head that raced across the fields. The Second Grades didn't have time to retreat or even react; their flesh, muscles, and then bones were simply reduced to embers alongside the terrain that was caught in the devastating tide.

Bamboo uprooted and boulders shattered as the chaotic chain reaction left the earth before Dai desolated. The fields, once a tranquil landscape of winding streams and bamboo, were now a barren wasteland of charred soil never to sprout life again. Dai retracted his radiance, the tethers snapping the metal pieces back into place to complete his hammer.

The rangers behind him stared wide-eyed, some falling back onto their rears at the sight of grassy fields being reduced to a hellish landscape.

"You all may stand down," Dai said as he rotated his hammer to rest his foot on the head and lean on its shaft. "Rest assured, none will be coming this way."