Rangers Endgame

Chapter 131: Inbetween

“Researchers often bicker about what to call this place,” Itsuki said as he stroked Dash’s muted fur, calming the fox’s distress. “But in the guild, we call it the Inbetween, a sort of liminal space that lingers between our reality and…someplace else.” He let his gaze wander. “I’ve only heard stories. I’ve never been here myself.”

Yakeru scanned his surroundings, which dissolved into black embers infinitely. Without the passive feedback of hues, it almost hurt to see. It was as if his eyes desperately tried to register color within this otherworldly domain where such a concept didn’t exist. “So we have limited information about this place.”

Kenji knelt to inspect a withered flower. It let out a whispering cry as his fingers brushed against its petals. “Would you happen to know how we can get out of here, Itsuki?”

The veteran set Dash down once the fox’s quivering somewhat subsided, and he stood to pat himself off. “From what I’ve heard, rangers who have escaped from this place all say that they destroyed something that they call the Core. However, they advise keeping it somewhat intact since its remnant can be used to craft a rare item. I don’t have a description of what it looks like exactly, but what I do know is that it shines brightly within this…realm.”

Kenji cupped his chin in thought. “So this Core likely produces a field that transports anyone to this realm who passes through it. If it shines in a black-and-white place like this, I’d imagine it wouldn’t be very difficult to find.”

“Then we'd better find it quickly,” Fuyumi said, gesturing with her head for the others to look between the trees ahead. Unidentifiable monster corpses lay in heaps of their own flesh and skeletal remains within the twisted foliage.

They approached the corpses and examined their bodies. Soulless white orbs lay sunken in their sockets, and their skin was dissolving into black embers.

“Again, I don’t know much about the Inbetween, but if I had to guess…” Itsuki swallowed as he willed himself to look at his arm.

It was faint, but they could make out flecks of his skin also flaking. Everyone examined themselves and found that they were suffering from the same deterioration all over their bodies. Now that Yakeru noticed, the slight pain of his body slowly evaporating pricked at his being.

“If we stay here too long…” Kenji trailed off, but everyone understood the implication.

Yakeru took a few steps ahead and tested something on his mind. He activated his pulse emitter, but a colorless crackle replaced the blue flash. It was impossible to know whether the artifact shifted to green to indicate potential threats nearby or remained blue. He then used his print finder to check if he could see the deceased monster’s prints. When the primer struck and a capsule broke to highlight the prints, however, the realm immediately suffocated their warm hues, effectively rendering the artifact useless as well. He performed the same test with the vapor siphon, but again, there was no way to see the change in color in the engravings.

Looking at his arm slowly disintegrating, he tested another theory and reached into his satchel to pull out a health elixir. The soothing liquid slid down his throat as he drank its contents. He felt its restorative properties bounce around within his body, searching for injuries, but after a minute or so, he didn’t feel any different. The decay chipping away at his being persisted.

Yakeru looked down at his shining talisman for a moment, then stuffed it in his back pocket, his face fierce. “We’ll stick together from this point forward. I’d rather not linger here any longer than necessary.”

The group nodded in agreement and set off posthaste.

They stuck to the high ground, trekking through the quiet chaos of perverted flora that snaked through muted silhouettes. Yakeru carefully kept his aching eyes focused ahead, as lifting his gaze to the sea of nothingness hanging overhead would cause his mind to fabricate grotesque hallucinations—or at least what he hoped were hallucinations.

To take his mind off it, he drew his scope and scouted the achromatic landscape as they walked. The others did the same in search of the Core while Itsuki covered the rear. The blend of silhouettes made it difficult to distinguish where some patches of terrain started and ended.

They moved along an unobstructed cliffside, cracked rock suspended at the edges, so they could easily survey the distant land. One at a time, they leaped from one mass to the next. Dash occasionally sniffed at the ground, longing to pick up any kind of scent, but the apathetic air granted his keen nose no stimulation.

Yakeru slid down a slope through some trees and landed softly onto stable-looking ground. He looked around, then turned to spot Fuyumi as she came down next. As he spotted the rest of the group, she went further ahead into a small clearing to use her scope.

Kenji slid on his side and landed awkwardly, but with Yakeru there, he righted himself again. Dash hesitated, then climbed into Itsuki’s arms, where he then relaxed. Itsuki rolled his eyes at the fox, then slid down on his back, kicking up charcoal-colored dust, which hung in the air longer than it should have.

When Dash leaped out of his arms, Yakeru found it hard to tease him for being on edge.

Although they’d been traveling for about an hour, Yakeru, and he assumed the rest of the group, didn’t feel any different from when they first arrived, aside from the jarring feeling of being ripped from their reality.

“Right or left?” Kenji asked, soothing his dematerializing arm as best he could while looking between a stretch of open land that crumbled in reverse and a canopy of static wilderness.

Yakeru regarded his mentor. “Thoughts?”

Itsuki considered both paths, his quiet gaze lingering on the right path longer than the left. “It’s safe to say the Core doesn't produce a light that acts as a beacon; we would've seen it by now. I'm thinking if we stick to the open areas, we'll eventually find it.”

“Yakeru,” Fuyumi muttered with a grim note in her voice. He turned to see her frozen, watching something through her scope. “We're not alone.”

He walked over and looked through his scope to where she pointed. At first, he failed to spot anything out of the ordinary—aside from the parallel reality—until he caught sight of movement through the trees. The disintegrating jungle rippled slowly as a lumbering mass pushed through toward their direction. The distance and lack of saturation made it hard to understand what he was looking at. Still, it was likely that another stray monster had gotten ensnared in this realm. He couldn't let anyone get distracted from their main objective.

A spike of pain stabbed at his innards, and he pressed himself against a tree to keep himself steady. Itsuki gnashed against the growing pain, the realm gnawing tears in his neck, as he went to check on his student.

“I’m fine,” Yakeru assured him, pushing himself off the tree. To Fuyumi, he said, “Keep tabs on it for now. But the exit is still our priority.”

She nodded, and they started moving again. The terrain’s inverted crumbling became more apparent the farther they traveled. Eventually, they reached a point where the ground finally gave way to another drop. Itsuki tied his rope around the base of a gray-scaled tree, gave it a good yank to test its stability, before the group descended.

Finding solid ground again, he cut the rope and slung its remaining length across his shoulder, which was now no longer than twenty feet.

As they pressed forward, the darkness on the horizon finally gave way to a flaring light, its brilliance cutting through the realm’s deathly atmosphere.

“That must be it,” Itsuki deduced.

Fuyumi still kept a vigilant eye on whatever was moving through the trees, but even though it was still several hundred yards away, the worry creeping into her carefully worn mask of calm was telling.

Yakeru watched the thing with his scope and immediately knew exactly why she was growing tense. They’d taken a path that arced around whatever object was moving, not to mention the floating debris that offered them some cover. Yet despite this, the thing had altered its course with them, still proceeding in their direction.

“Is it following us?” Fuyumi asked anyone willing to answer.

“Even if it is, it’s slow. As long as we keep our distance, we’ll be fine.” Yakeru assured her.

“I don't think that'll be possible,” Kenji said. “Look.”

Everyone followed his gaze, and they saw movement heading towards them from the trees. It was still too hard to see, but its abnormal height could've easily dwarfed even Kateshi.

“Hide,” Itsuki shouted in a hushed voice.

Yakeru whipped around a thick tree while Fuyumi snapped behind some entangled brush. Dash jumped into a ravine covered by undergrowth to hide with Itsuki, and Kenji rushed behind a boulder still intact enough to conceal him.

Then they waited.

The thing’s bare feet slapped harshly against the stone, and the dense trees groaned as its wide shoulders forced them aside. When it strode out into the open, Yakeru’s blood ran cold at the sight of the ten-foot-tall humanoid. Umber leathery skin was pulled taut around its skeleton. Oversized hands swung carelessly at the ends of razor-thin, gangling limbs, and where its face should’ve been, there was an abyssal void where existence ended.

Yakeru gripped his side as an intense wave of pain rolled over him, more of his skin peeling into the still air, but he willed himself to stay silent.

The thing’s bounding steps carried it toward Kenji’s boulder as a ghastly bellow tumbled from the reflectionless black in its face. Kenji was about to flee when Yakeru signaled him to stay put, as it hadn’t seen him yet, but the swordsman readied a hand on his pommel just in case.

The thing’s large hand reached around the rock, preparing to seize the conjurer, when Kenji ignited his staff. Amber wrapped around its fingers, slowing their flexion for him to escape. He stumbled away in suppressed pain as the skin on his back finally gave way to embers.

When the hand closed around nothing, the thing didn’t acknowledge it. It simply retracted its hand, rotated its body stiffly, and resumed its rigged march toward him. Yakeru channeled radiance into Blitz Step and crossed the gap in a blink. But as his blade cut into its flesh, the impossibly dense bone underneath killed his momentum in an instant, painfully jarring his shoulder.

He didn’t have time to process the injury as he Blitz Stepped away to wrench his sword free and escape the thing’s attempt to grab him. He and Kenji stayed far out of range, and Yakeru gingerly rolled his shoulder to test if it had dislocated.

The thing didn’t pursue them but turned in Itsuki’s direction, still crouched inside the ravine with Dash nearby. Regardless of having stayed out of sight, the thing thumped over to their hiding place and reached inside.

Dash easily scurried out of the way, while Itsuki sidestepped into its blind spot. Drawing his claymore, he drove the broad blade into its giant foot to pin it down before his prosthetic delivered a heavy right cross to its knee in quick succession.

He hopped back to observe the creature’s reaction, but frowned in disappointment. It simply plucked the sword from its foot, dropped it with a weighted clatter, and marched toward him again, undeterred.

No blood rushed from the wound.

The air trembled with another bellow, but this one didn’t come from the creature before them. To Yakeru’s right, he found an identical humanoid trampling through the warped brush toward Fuyumi’s position. She didn’t wait until it got close. She exploded out of cover, dashing between its slow gait. Before it reoriented itself, she leaped and plunged her daggers into its back, unleashing a jetstream of radiance directly into its body.

It didn’t struggle. Didn't wail. It reached back, but Fuyumi was faster. Launching herself from its back and pulling her daggers out, she landed several feet away. Gritting her teeth, she clutched her collarbone as the disintegrating force opened another wound in her flesh.

A third bellow came from behind Yakeru, and he activated Blitz Step again, avoiding another humanoid’s grasp. His speed carried him to its backside, and his blade sliced through the tendons in its ankles. As he skidded to a stop, he expected to see it topple with a crash. Instead, it readjusted itself and stamped toward him.

It was a hopeless battle. Every second they spent fighting was a step closer to death, either by the humanoids or by disintegrating into nothing.

“Everyone, retreat!” Itsuki roared, realizing their dire situation.

Yakeru funneled radiance into his legs again, preparing to create distance, but a fiery blade of pain carving through his midsection sank him to his knees. In that moment, the giant seized him around his arms and torso, squeezing with a force just enough to quiver bones but not break them.

“Yakeru!” Itsuki rushed to assist.

He struggled with all his might, but its iron grip wouldn’t budge. As the creature brought him face-to-face with it, his futile resistance gradually weakened, and he suddenly felt colder. The pain of disintegrating cells lifted as an unseen force dragged him into the inky universe of nothingness. Willing his gaze to look back through the shrinking window, he saw his body shriveling as if time accelerated through him, his eyes shifting to a soulless white.

Kenji weighed the creature’s hand down, blood leaking from his mouth from straining his scarred channels. Fuyumi hacked away at its wrist, but even Armor Killer's serrated edges weren't enough to saw through the bone. Dash launched himself to clamp onto one of its fingers.

Their efforts barely made a difference. Until Itsuki leaped into the air and used the sheer weight of his claymore to smash down onto its wrist, pulling Yakeru’s body away from its gaping maw.

His consciousness slammed back into his body, and he gasped for air. The wrinkles trenching his skin smoothed out until he was youthful again.

Itsuki's strike had managed to weaken its hold on him just enough for him to break free and stumble to a knee. However, he didn’t have time to catch his breath as the humanoid shattered Kenji’s restraint on its hand by simply standing back up.

His ears hummed with more haunting bellows. More giants lumbered from the dark wilderness. They didn’t waste anymore time. Ignoring his aching arms and searing flesh, Yakeru and the others fled the area in a sprint.

Whether the creatures weren’t capable of running or chose to give chase through trudging, he didn’t know. Regardless, they made plenty of distance.

As they ran towards the Core, however, they spotted more movement ahead. They changed course, winding through the unnatural obstruction until another group of humanoids emerged from the trees onto their path.

Detour after detour led them to a rocky perch that finally offered them a moment of respite as they gasped for air.

“These things…they’re everywhere.” Kenji squeezed out, his chest heaving with both low stamina and the growing agony of his body dissolving.

“And they don’t know pain,” Fuyumi said, collapsing to catch her breath.

Itsuki silently looked over Yakeru for any semblance of himself after being briefly captured, the veteran’s face regretful. Dash put a worried paw on the kid’s leg, and Yakeru patted his head gently.

“I’m fine,” Yakeru reassured. To the group, he said, "Hiding isn’t an option. They seem to know where we are at all times.” He looked at Itsuki, who was rubbing his ribs as his condition worsened. “Any suggestions?”

His mentor grimaced as he readjusted himself to sit more comfortably to speak. “They’re similar to forest lurkers, as in they’re not very threatening alone, but can overwhelm in numbers if you let them. Sneaking past them is unrealistic, but taking them head-on is suicide. We don’t have the equipment or reserves for that.” He ran a frustrated hand through his spiky hair. “But we don’t have much of a choice at this rate.”

Yakeru gnashed as a tendril of agony burrowed through his skin into the back of his neck.

Their curse only served as a reminder that time was not on their side.

He forced his torment down, clearing his muddled thoughts to make space for a plan. But the longer he weighed their options, the more he agreed with Itsuki. Fuyumi had a similar grim expression, which then hardened into acceptance.

Kenji, however, had his gaze on the ground with an unreadable expression. His eyes softly darted as if analyzing the many stratagems that might prove the most viable in their situation. He glanced at the rope still slung across Itsuki’s shoulder, then at the brilliant light the Core issued in the distance, and finally drew his print finder, pulse emitter, and vapor siphon to look at them absently.

Yakeru could practically see the relentless calculations and estimates cycling through the conjurer’s head. “What are you thinking, Kenji?”

With fierce determination in his eyes, Kenji looked back at the group. “I have an idea.”