Chương 354: (347) 5.43. Ranker Revelation

"So if I'm understanding you correctly… you stumbled upon an entire civilization of Phils. Thousands upon thousands of battle-maniac Phils. And you managed to actually get away in one piece?" Spur asked, looking more than a little surprised.

"I don't know if you've got an actual running record of your achievements, but if you do, I think you should add that one to the list."

"I know you deal with stress with humor, but this is serious," Vin said, looking around the room at the gathered council members and their special guests. Golrim and Theodore were sitting in on this meeting at his request, though he had only just finished explaining the full story of what had happened during his recent time away.

"If it's that serious, why not call for an emergency meeting last night after you got out of the hospital?" Witherson asked.

"It's serious, but not immediately time sensitive," Vin said, rolling his eyes.

"The rankers have been trapped in their section of Edregon for months, I doubt they're going to get out in the few hours it took me to get some rest. I was in prison for most of the last week, and then the hospital! Shame on me for wanting to get an actual good night's rest, I guess!" Vin hadn't wanted to risk bringing out his shimmerwing mattress while locked up in the rankers' prison, which meant it had been nearly a week since the last time he'd gotten to enjoy his stronghold of slumber.

After he and Lumel had left the hospital and headed back to their apartment, the very first thing he'd done was pass out in his own room.

"But your very arrival proved to them that breaking through their eastern border could be done," Phil pointed out.

"You should have come to us immediately."

"Guys, Vin was just captured and imprisoned in an enemy fragment," Alice said, frowning at Witherson and Phil.

"Maybe cut him a bit of slack, alright?"

"We don't have the luxury of cutting anyone slack at the moment if what he says is true," Spur sighed, drumming his fingers along the table.

"You're certain about that number? Somewhere around ten thousand skilled warriors?"

"Presumably they are less skillful the higher up the rankings you go, but yeah, Tarnis definitely said roughly twelve thousand rankers were currently on the list," Vin confirmed.

"Based on what I saw from the ones closer to the position of the king, they've got some serious fighting power."

"How does this ranking system even work?" Witherson asked.

"They can just look at another warrior and see a floating number over their head?"

"I'm not sure how they visualize it, but they definitely know a person's rank just by looking at them. Though I doubt it's something they can passively sense, as I personally witnessed one ranker launch a surprise attack on another one. Actually, this whole ranking system is why I asked Golrim to sit in with us," Vin admitted, turning toward their resident Logistician.

"My gut tells me this is some sort of soul magic, seeing as it got carried over to Edregon from their world, and you're the only person here who has concrete experience with that sort of thing."

"It does sound like soul magic," Golrim nodded, scratching his stubble as he thought.

"Perhaps a minor ritual performed upon warriors gaining their initial class, or some such ceremony. If it truly was performed on millions of people back on their world, it would have to be something fairly simple. Doubly so as you mentioned they don't really have many mages."

"No mages, and not even combat classes that specialize in ranged attacks," Vin added.

"As far as I could tell, they believed exclusively in fighting via melee combat, though I saw a rather wide spread of melee weapons while I was there. They're also not opposed to throwing their weapons when needed," he added, grimacing at the memory of the ranker king's sword slamming into his stomach as he shot away from the keep.

"At least the ranker king isn't."

"You said he hit you with a thrown sword from over a quarter mile away, while you were shooting through the sky?" Phil asked, looking simultaneously excited at the prospect of fighting the ranker king while still being worried for Terra as a whole.

"That's some serious strength right there, not to mention accuracy. I certainly wouldn't be able to do something like that."

"Okay, let's back up a step here," Spur said, laying his hands flat on the table as he leaned forward.

"We've got a fragment with roughly twelve thousand battle-hungry warriors who we know have a thing for conquest, seeing as you said they conquered their entire continent back on their own world. And the only reason they haven't picked up their conquering habits once more here on Edregon is because of the fragments surrounding them?"

"That and due to all the infighting," Vin nodded.

"Tarnis said when their whole ranking system got reset and they all snapped back to level 1, it was all-out chaos for a bit as people clamored their way back up the rankings. That seems to have at least stabilized from what I saw, so yeah, now it's just the fragments."

"How is the mist filled with exploding jellyfish monsters keeping them trapped?" Alice asked.

"You said it yourself that you can just run through it if you're fast enough, right?"

"They have this weird honor code they live by where they can't turn down a challenge," he tried to explain.

"From what I understand, that includes challenges by monsters as well."

"So if an exploding jellyfish shows its face, they have to fight it," Spur concluded.

"Which means seeing as they fight exclusively with melee weapons and don't have any magic, that fragment is functionally a death sentence for them." Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"I don't like our safety relying on a people's sense of honor," Witherson frowned.

"Who's to say they won't change their minds sooner or later and just run straight on through to begin their conquest?"

"Actually, there is a good chance that their 'honor' isn't quite as intrinsic as it seems," Golrim said.

"That minor soul brand that pulls them into the ranking system... It may include a slight tweak to the soul to force them to accept anything perceived as a challenge. Based on how important challenges are for moving up and down the rankings, it would make sense."

"Well, that's some good news at the very least," Spur said, grinning at Golrim.

"Who knew having someone with experience making soul-slaves would be such a useful asset."

"I've told you a hundred times, Curash willingly became my soul-bound," Golrim responded, rolling his eyes.

"Speaking of, I know it's off topic, but I received a tug on our bond the other day to indicate he'd finally finished tracking down and eradicating the final two members of the Red Dawn who fled the battle. He should be returning to Terra before too much longer, unless he gets side tracked by anything."

"That's going to be a whole issue with Waltz, but it will be good to have another strong fighter with the whole ranker situation," Vin admitted.

"So you've got the exploding mist fragment working to keep the rankers contained," Alice said, bringing them back on track.

"But that's just one fragment. What are the other ones preventing them from heading out and attacking their neighbors?"

"Other than the fragment with the valley hidden in the mist, the only other one I'm personally aware of is the neilan fragment," Vin said, pulling out his journal and looking at his map.

"Their barrier should be more than capable of holding against the rankers, so we should be fine on that account."

"I'm sorry, the what?" Spur asked, giving him a weird look.

"Neilan? What the heck is a neilan?"

"Uppity alien-looking dudes with large heads and long, bendy fingers?" Vin said, raising an eyebrow in response.

"They're the ones…" He paused, blinking as he recalled that he hadn't told any of the council members about the neilans. Not that he didn't trust any of them, but he'd been worried about their ritual magic capable of more than doubling a fragment's monster production as the neilans shoved their own monsters somewhere else.

"Uh…"

"So that fragment covered by a force field you claimed you spent two days trying to get past," Spur said slowly, narrowing his eyes at him.

"You did manage to get in, didn't you?" Letting out a tired sigh, Vin nodded. After everything he'd just been through, he didn't have the energy to try and keep up the lie.

"Yeah, we did. It was a whole thing. They have a giant, ridiculously complex ritual that maintains a massive force field over their entire fragment, at the cost of using up all the magic in their fragment. That means no replenishing animals or plants, and they have to pick a neighboring fragment to shove their own monster problem into. When we found them, it was only after going through another fragment that had been utterly wiped out from being on the receiving end of their ritual.

My friends and I buried hundreds of bodies that day in a mass grave."

"Vin…" Alice said softly, laying a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

"Sorry you had to go through with that."

"Hey now, he doesn't get to play the pity card and escape consequences for not telling us about the fragment!" Spur said, thrusting a finger toward him.

"It's literally your job to run around and tell us what we're dealing with!"

"The neilans are never going to leave their barrier, they're terrified of death and pain!" he shot back.

"I didn't tell you because I was afraid you might send a hit squad to try and kidnap them and force them to use their ritual magic for you! They're already responsible for killing an entire fragment, I don't want to see that happen again!"

"I would never…" Spur paused, clearing his throat as he nervously tugged at the collar of his shirt.

"I mean, I probably wouldn't -""I'm not happy about Vin keeping this from us either, but it is a matter for another day," Witherson said, cutting off Spur's meager attempt at defending himself as she stared at Vin.

"The rankers can't get through the barrier?"

"No, not with their lack of magic," he confirmed.

"But you told us they were in some sort of an alliance," Alice pointed out.

"And how one of the two fragments they're aligned with is filled with mages. Couldn't they eventually figure out a way through it?"

"That's just it…" he said as they finally got to the hunch he'd been working on. During his time in the jail cell, when he wasn't working on Mage Hand, he hadn't had much else to do but contemplate some of the oddities he'd witnessed. Such as the strange alliance he'd heard about.

"I don't think the alliance is really what it seems. They call it that, but I'm pretty certain the beastkin and the orcs have both already been conquered in all but name."

"If that's true, that's both good and bad," Phil said simply.

"What makes you think that?"

"For starters, the fact that the two liaisons both tried to save me," Vin said, thinking back to the moment in the throne room before he was captured.

"When it became clear I wasn't going to give the ranker king what he wanted, the beastkin Emrelda sounded panicked as she tried to convince me to go with it, and the orc Grunch knocked me out, I think with the intention of saving my life. In hindsight, I'm pretty certain the ranker king was about to try and kill me. Not to mention like you said, having a group of mages at one's disposal should allow them to bypass just about anything. It just doesn't make any sense."

"So you don't think the other two alliance members are working with the rankers to get out into the rest of Edregon?" Spur asked.

"No…" Vin said, shaking his head.

"If my theory is correct… I think they're actively working against the rankers. Doing everything they can to keep them contained and saving all of us from being attacked."