TBATE Ranker's fate | The Beginning After The End: Ranker's Fate

Rumors

Bear's Inn

Ezekiel POV

"Hey hey did you hear the rumor?" I asked as I put down my mug of beer.

The bearded man sitting next to me finished off his glass before slamming it on the table. "If you're talking about that infamous Plunderer taking over the southern part of Beast Glades, I say it's bullshit, Ezekiel"

With his flushed cheeks and his glazed eyes, it didn't take a genius to tell he was drunk.

"No, evidently it's real", remarked a slim kid who joined the conversation at our table and added to the rumour. "An acquaintance of mine works at Xyrus Guild." He disclosed this to me along with the information that "he is linked to the guild head of Xyrus' Adventurer Guild Kaspian Bladeheart," which he murmured for our exclusive hearing.

"Bullshit! He used to be well-known for robbing people of their hunts; he is only doing this to draw attention." Turman, the inebriated adventurer, said impatiently, "I don't think he deserves the renown he gets among the adventurers by plundering some low rated adventurers."

"But he was placed directly in A-rank at his rank exam," the skinny lad retorted. Chances of someone evaluating as B-rank is rare enough, but to be evaluated for A-rank it never happened before as far as I can remember.

"Bladeheart must have pulled some strings to increase their influence. Nobles are like that always battling among themselves to gain superiority by any means necessary" Turman, didn't buy that neither did I.

There might be some truth in the rumors but I don't believe him to be strong enough to be placed in A-rank right off the bat. In the first place just the passing criteria to be evaluated for A-rank is to battle two on one against fellow A-ranks and hold on for 10 minutes.

Even though it sounds simple and easy enough, there are many adventurers who are stuck in B-ranks for years, maybe decades; not able to gain the prestige to call themselves A-rank adventurers.

And for some even B-rank is far cry, I just shook my head, feeling sorry for myself; a borderline C-class adventurer. I had taken the exam to move up a class three times in the past three years-and failed each time.

"Maybe you are right but there is also that he can control more than 3 elements and even capable of using deviant of fire"

"That doesn't necessarily mean he is strong; the nobles are resourceful enough to provide them with excellent drugs to boost one cultivation growth" Turman was sobering up a little now and was just irritated by the fact that a little shrimp was supposedly better than him. He was a veteran B-rank adventurer with a decade of experience on field and will probably take a rank up exam soon enough.

Well there are many aspects of Plunderer that are mysterious in more ways than one. The rumors about him are so outlandish that...sometimes it's hard to even consider them.

The statements "Plunderer is not even 10 years" and "He is both augmenter and conjurer" strike me as the most absurd. A mage may only be an augmenter or a conjurer, which is an unwritten rule of nature. It is ludicrous to think that someone might be skilled in both. And claiming someone to not even be 10 years

Maybe at high stages of mana cores there isn't much difference between individual augmenter and conjurer. But even then an augmenter would augment his body weapons to fight in close range and the conjurer will utilize mana from the surrounding to launch attacks at enemies from distance.

Most of the information that is known about him is essentially a collection of unrelated facts that cannot be validated since he is out of radar for 3 months now.

The sole piece of information that is accurate is "he is somewhere in southern Beast Glades."

The door to the pub opened with a squeak, and I dropped my fork with meat as I saw the figure of the person entering.

"Well, Speak of the Devil!" Turman grunted, a snide grin on his face as he pushed himself up from his seat. "It's the wee little bandit everyone's hyped up about! Where's your loot?"

The Plunderer- the very one we had been talking about, the one responsible for all the ludicrous rumors-was here in the flesh!

According to the stories, he was wearing a mask, but I could still make out his dark eyes as they stared intently at Turman. Long, tan-colored pants, black fingerless gloves, and a long, silver-buttoned blue coat with three different coattails were all he was sporting. With a snake's head dangling over the left shoulder of the coat and its tail slithering down the right, all the way to the bottom of the garment, the collar is decorated with a white, serpentine design.

He was slightly over 5 feet tall, and although a small blue sword hanging from his belt suggested that he was an augmenter, outward appearances may be misleading.

He ignored the intoxicated man screaming him out and continued to stroll by, seemingly uninterested in Turman.

"Hey, you Bastard! Are you ignoring me? You believe you are superior to me just because you briefly gained notoriety from absurd rumours?" My inebriated friend had had enough; he pulled the sword from his back and hoisted it above his head.

"Calm Down! You know you are not allowed to kill anyone in here!" I tried to distract Turman, holding my arms up to stop him from swinging. But nothing of this bothered him even in the slightest as he continued walking towards the front counter.

This further infuriated Turman. He boosted his physical attributes and his sword, shoved me aside, and brought the blade down on the Plundered.

I gazed in horror as the inn was shaken by a deafening explosion, bracing myself to witness the bloodied body that must have been split in two by the force of that hit and the fallout Turman would experience for wounding a member of the Bladeheart family.

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Hey guys

Enjoy the story.

I'm halfway  to the original book Volume 8.

I do think the new powers he got are amazing but would've liked more if he had his mana core too, since in the upcoming battles all those previous tricks of mana are gone.

And I'm missing Sylvie. can anyone confirm is she back or not in the story since right now she is in comatose state in a stone.

The concept aether is too complex, and is also not as versatile as mana though much powerful like his rune of destruction and using runes to nullify attacks. But who knows since I have more than one and half volume to read.

What are your views on this?