Rangers Endgame

The following morning, Kenji roamed the busy capital streets, catching glimpses of new missing person posters through the bustling crowd. While on his way to the guild, he came across a vendor and eyed the various elixirs on display. Some were green, some blue, and some yellow.

"Can I help you?" the merchant asked his potential customer.

Kenji blinked several times before breaking out of his trance.

"Oh, Uhm, sorry. I was just looking."

"Well, is there something you're looking for in particular?"

His mind flashed back to his experiences as a ranger. In just under a week, he'd had more failures than his two party members combined. His father's words floated in his head ever since that one-sided argument.

After departing from Hanataru, he'd begun to slip into the depths of self-loathing for his inadequacy. Anyone would want to fight alongside the strong while the weak were discarded. He saw that now. There was only one solution: Power.

Clenching his fist, he asked the merchant,

"Do you have any enhancement elixirs?"

"Why of course."

After purchasing the elixir, the merchant thanked him for his patronage before he continued making his way down the street.

At the guild, Yakeru and Fuyumi we're already browsing the mission board. Yakeru had on his new light armor over a plain kimono and tattsuke bakama.

The board had more high-ranked missions than usual. They assumed this was due to the Ripper.

It was either more high-ranking rangers prioritized hunting him...or there weren't enough left to deal with him anymore. Yakeru could only hope it wasn't the latter.

"We'll do this one," Fuyumi said, taking a sheet from the board.

He gave it a quick look over.

[Fungus Blight Infestation]

D-rank

Location: Dark Ember Swamp, Inner rim

A good find. This was one of, if not the only kind of monsters low-ranking rangers could fetch a decent reward from. This all stemmed from the Fungus Blights' unique ability to continuously evolve.

Born as E-tier fodder, if the infestation is left unchecked, they could rapidly grow stronger until reaching S-tier. The first recorded infestation went neglected for approximately a year. That's all it took for those creatures to multiply into the thousands while growing in strength similar to that of an S-rank ranger, plunging the continent into a state of panic.

Regrettably, it took the Phoenix Feather Bombing and the loss of hundreds of innocent lives just for humanity to acknowledge their destructive potential.

"Oh. Okay...I thought you'd want to do something more relaxing after what we've already gone through." Yakeru assumed.

"We're killing monsters," she responded with a trace of resentment in her voice.

"Right..."

Something told him that if the mission didn't involve slaying monsters, she wanted nothing to do with it. If this was the case, he wondered if he'd be able to keep up with such a single-minded party member.

The guild doors swung open and a familiar face stepped in. Yakeru almost mistook him for someone else. The way he sauntered over to the two exuded a slight aura of confidence Yakeru hadn't seen from him before.

'Kenji?' Yakeru asked himself as the conjurer made his way over. "Hey, good mor-"

"So what mission are we doing?" Kenji interrupted, catching Yakeru off guard. He seemed more eager to go on a mission this time around but Yakeru chose to shrug it off.

Without greeting him, Fuyumi flashed the mission sheet to him as he skimmed over it.

"I see."

After notifying the guild receptionist, she stuffed the sheet in her satchel and the trio set off.

*****

After hours of travel, they'd arrived at a mucky swamp land. A foreboding gloom hung in heavily in the air. Massive roots bulged from the mud, lifting trees into the air as the rangers passed under them, following the wooden path.

Scanning the area, thick algae stained the stagnant waters and plant life fell victim to decay. Within this eerie realm, a rare phenomenon would occur. What appeared to be black flakes peeled from the water's surface, mingling with the ominous atmosphere.

Yakeru stuck out his finger and curiously tapped on one of these flakes only for it to disintegrate upon contact.

The stench of rotten wood intensified the further they went. As usual, Fuyumi marched ahead, leading the group forward.

'Does she ever slow down?' Yakeru wondered.

She pushed aside a wall of moss that drooped from a nearby tree. Both Yakeru and Kenji did the same, meeting her on the other side who now had her sights set on a humanoid figure in the distance. Their lower half was submerged in the mucky water. It seemed to have noticed them because it began to stagger through the water toward them.

"I take it you've found one," Yakeru said as it approached, its features becoming more distinguishable. A dry hiss escaped through its rotted teeth. Cordyceps sprouted from one side of its face and its body was coated in fungus.

"Seems so," she muttered a reply.

The water rippled to their flanks as more of these creatures began to surface. They wobbled toward them with outstretched arms, revealing their bony appendages. Their bodies were malnourished and incomplete, their missing patches of skin exposing fragmented bones.

Some had yet to grow in their eyes, wandering aimlessly as a result while others had underdeveloped muscle groups hindering their movements. Yakeru and Fuyumi drew their blades.

"Alright, Kenji. Stand back and cover us. We'll-"

Fuyumi exploded into battle, immediately slicing through two blights in front of her. Yakeru grunted in annoyance.

'I know these things are just D-tier now but does she have to be so impulsive?!'

She left him with no choice but to join her in the fray, slashing through a blight's neck before moving on to the next. Fuyumi leaped through the air, firing double radiant arcs that slammed into two assailants on opposite sides of her.

𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘮!

Mushrooms exploded into brown clouds of mist as she then pounced onto another, driving her two daggers into its head. Using its momentum when it collapsed, she rolled over its corpse, slicing through another blight's midsection.

Yakeru swiftly cut down his assailants, dismembering them with an imbued blade. In one fluid motion, he ducked under claws swiping at his head and slashed through a pair of thin legs. When it dropped with a slash he twirled the hilt to reverse his grip and thrust his blade into another blight that was too sluggish to evade.

Like forest lurkers, fungus blights weren't very strong at this stage but they made up for it with sheer numbers. Yakeru was starting to realize this as blights began slowly filling his field of view.

Kenji picked up on this early on and fired in their direction, carving away at their weak bodies. Although his projectiles didn't pack much of a punch, they were enough to stagger them. Fortunately, their bodies were still fragile at this stage so it wasn't hard to disrupt their movements.

"Thanks!" Yakeru exclaimed as he brought down his blade on one of their necks.

"No problem!"

Yakeru cut down as many blights as he could after they were hit by Kenji's attacks.

Amid the battle, the water splashed violently behind the conjurer. The ground trembled ever so slightly with every evenly paced splash that he assumed were footsteps. The sounds of crackling wood made him freeze. Slowly turning, his eyes widened as he was engulfed in a shadow.

A towering creature stood before him. Vines strangled its body, pulsating around its bulky frame. Releasing its jaws, it exposed its black jagged teeth, a thick brown mist pouring from its mouth. Its yellow eyes peered down at the frozen conjurer as it trudged toward him.

With widened eyes, he watched as it effortlessly ripped out a tree root, holding it like a club. Yakeru watched as the beast raised its makeshift weapon high, preparing to bring it down on his petrified friend.

"Kenji, move!"

His shout was enough for Kenji to snap out of it.

𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘮!

The "club" came crashing down right when Kenji leaped out of its path. Mucky water exploded into the air then crashed down on the boy and nearby blights. The black flakes, once floating through the battlefield, disintegrated without having time to disperse from the shockwave.

Fuyumi snapped her head toward the commotion. Yakeru was occupied fending off a wave of blights to assist Kenji. Was it up to her to save him again?

She began to move but was cut off by a blight. After cutting it down another appeared.

And another.

And another.

For each blight she dispatched, three more took its place. She was already too far from her party and she was only getting pushed further back as more blights filled the space between them.

Kenji exploded from the waters gasping for air, algae now entangled in his hair.

He scrambled to his staff and held it up to the monster looming over him. He launched multiple projectiles at the beast but it remained unfazed. Unlike its brethren, it wasn't just this blight's body that was much more developed, it had heightened intelligence as well, demonstrated by its ability to use the environment to its advantage.

It howled in his direction and swung its weapon once more. Conjuring a barrier, it smashed through it with ease, shattering it upon impact and sending him skipping violently across the stagnant water's surface.

He screamed as pain radiated across his body as he struggled to stand. His party was too preoccupied with this creature's pawns to save him this time.

𝘛𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘱! 𝘛𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘱!

Glancing back, he found the monster trudging his way, carelessly trampling on the smaller blights. The brute's face twisted into a look of dissatisfaction when it realized this insignificant pest was still breathing. As it sped up its pace, Kenji remembered something he'd brought with him.

He rummaged through his satchel hoping to find it.

'Come on!'

The stomps were getting louder by the second but luckily he'd found what he was looking for.

'Yes!' He pulled out a vial of yellow liquid. Fortunately, it hadn't broken from getting tossed around. He popped open the lid and downed the substance.

Tossing the empty vial to the side, he felt his body begin to change. His muscles tensed making movement rigid as radiance began to envelop him. He felt his body absorbing more radiance than it should making it more difficult to contain by the second. The water beneath him levitated, the light from his body shooting through it, giving it a brilliant glow.

Through the small gaps in their fight, Yakeru and Fuyumi could spot the vibrant light suddenly emanating from the conjurer.

'What is that?' Yakeru wondered.

By this time the blight had reached him, raising its club overhead with both hands this time. Kenji sluggishly raised his staff in return. If this wasn't enough, at least it'd be a quick demise.

'Please work!' Kenji prayed, shutting his eyes in case it backfired.

As the radiance in his body reached its maximum capacity, he unleashed it all in an extravagant beam of energy, the recoil launching him backwards. The beam roared, parting the water and effortlessly tearing a hole through the brute's midsection before slamming into a tree behind it, exploding into wood fragments.

The tree crackled as it tumbled, the blights unlucky enough to be standing underneath it crushed into nothing.

"Woah..." was all that Yakeru could muster as Kenji's attack rendered him almost speechless.

When Kenji opened his eyes, he found himself lying flat in the mud. Taking the time to reorient himself, his eyes widened when he saw that the brutish fungus blight was now lying motionless.

As he stared at its body, more blight began to swarm him. However, a newfound confidence welled within him. This was his first time killing a monster...and it was at least C-tier.

He turned to a fungus blight that had gotten within range and raised his staff to its chest. He could still feel the palpable power raging inside him–a good indicator that the enhancement elixir's effects hadn't worn off.

He fired another blast, eviscerating more monsters than he intended to. His gaping mouth of surprise curled into a smile as he blasted another wave of blights.

"Ha...haha..." he chuckled as he easily tore through their numbers. Before, he'd be at the mercy of even E-tier monsters. But now...

After finishing off the remaining blights, Yakeru sprinted over to Kenji.

"You okay? That hit you took looked pretty bad..." he asked worriedly.

By now, the excess radiance enveloping Kenji had evaporated and his muscles were finally able to relax. He had a few cuts, a couple bruises, a bit sore and was completely covered in muck but otherwise, he seemed okay.

"Yeah, I'm fine. In fact," Kenji looked over at what remained of the monsters he'd just slaughtered. "I feel great."

Fuyumi walked over to them while sheathing her daggers.

"Didn't expect you to have an enhancement elixir."

"Yeah, well, it's good to be prepared I guess."

With that, she began making her way out of the swamp, leaving them behind assuming they'd follow.

"We're done here. Come on."

Before Yakeru could follow, he turned to find Kenji caught in a trance, staring at the corpses he'd left behind. Yakeru felt his hairs stand on end when he saw his expression. An ear to ear smile split his face and his pupils were contracted within his widened eyes.

He'd never seen him with such a disturbing expression before, his words getting caught in his throat.

"U-uhm," Yakeru mustered. "A-are you sure you're okay?"

Kenji snapped out of his trance, his face returning to a neutral expression before he looked at Yakeru.

"Yeah, of course."