CHAPTER 38: CH-38- BEATING UP A AND B RANKERS

A profound, disbelieving silence blanketed the chamber. The only sound was the dull thud of the axeman’s body hitting the stone floor some distance away. What is going on? The unspoken question echoed in the mind of every onlooker, a mantra of sheer bewilderment.

They had all seen it. They had witnessed the man’s furious charge, the axe wreathed in apocalyptic flames, the technique whose very name....’Splitting Mountains’...promised earth-rending power. They had braced for the impact, their minds already conjuring the image of Baelgor’s broken form flung across the room. He hadn’t even moved to defend himself.

Yet, in the space of a heartbeat, the laws of their world had been rewritten. The cataclysmic attack had not vanished with a bang, but with a whimper

a pathetic ’poof’ that was utterly disproportionate to the power it had contained. And the attacker was now the one flying, not the target.

A few wondered, hysterically, if this was some elaborate, cruel joke.

Their confusion only deepened as the fallen hunter groaned, pushing himself onto his elbows. A rivulet of dark blood traced a path from his hairline down his cheek, dripping steadily onto the stone. The sight was a visceral confirmation of the impossible. He was genuinely, seriously injured. This was no trick.

But none was more thoroughly confounded than Sebastian. Cradling his shattered jaw, his mind, fogged with pain and rage, struggled to process the scene. His thoughts churned in chaotic, suspicious circles. Are these people playing tricks on me? It was a desperate, illogical grasp for an explanation. He knew the strength of his party intimately.

He had seen that very strike cleave through A-grade monsters and, on rare, glorious occasions, even pierce the hide of an S-grade beast. The power was real. It was verifiable. Yet, it had amounted to less than nothing against this... this nobody.

He simply could not wrap his mind around it. The foundation of his understanding, that power was quantifiable, that rank dictated outcome, had been shattered.

While Sebastian descended into paranoid confusion, Cisco stood frozen, his mouth agape. He had to consciously remind himself to close it. He had known this mysterious lord was strong enough —but he had not conceived of this kind of strength. This was not a victory; it was an effortless negation. He sucked in a huge, shaky breath, his merchant’s mind whirring back to life even amidst the shock.

A new thought bloomed, cold and avaricious, overshadowing his fear.

He might be impossibly strong, Cisco mused, but he is still gullible. He possessed power on a scale Cisco could barely fathom, yet he lacked street wisdom.

A slow, calculating smile spread across Cisco’s face, unseen by the stunned crowd. His earlier panic was replaced by a thrilling greed.

If Baelgor could dispatch an A-ranker without lifting a finger, what unimaginable treasures must he possess? The potential reward for sticking by him—or, more accurately, for expertly extorting him later—had just skyrocketed.

The risk had not vanished, but the projected profit had become utterly irresistible.

A raw, guttural scream tore through the stunned silence.

"Malkovvvv!!!!!"

The remaining members of the Notorious Five watched their comrade’s limp form crash to the ground, and any semblance of strategy evaporated, replaced by a blinding, collective rage.

The rational course of action, to retreat, reassess, and understand the impossible force they faced.

But that never crossed their minds. They were hunters, apex predators in their own right, and their pride had been mortally wounded.

In unison, they unleashed their auras, a torrent of violent energy that clashed in the chamber’s center. Mana boiled from their cores, so potent it distorted the air. Weapons glowed with activated runes and deadly intent. A wild wind, born from their combined power, whipped through the dungeon, scattering debris and forcing the onlookers to shield their faces.

Baelgor watched the chaotic charge, his expression one of profound, weary disgust. Humans, he thought, the word a curse in his mind.

Such stupid beings. Can they not learn from their friend’s example? The evidence is before them—I am beyond their comprehension. And yet, they charge headlong into the abyss. What do they hope to achieve with such a pointless, suicidal plan?

They closed the distance in a heartbeat, a coordinated wave of destruction.

The first, a hunter wielding a longsword that hummed with vibrational energy, led the assault. His strike was a master’s work, a perfect arc meant to slice through space itself.

It never landed. Just as before, the terrifying power enveloping the blade simply winked out of existence the moment it entered Baelgor’s personal space. There was no flash, no bang, only the sudden, absolute negation of energy.

Before the swordsman could register the void where his power had been, Baelgor’s hand shot out. He caught the humming blade flat in his palm. With a contemptuous twist of his wrist, he shattered the enchanted metal as if it were cheap glass. The hunter stared, dumbfounded, at the useless hilt in his hand.

Simultaneously, another hunter had taken position. He braced a massive cannon-like apparatus on his shoulder, its barrel glowing with a concentrated sphere of energy capable of leveling a fortress and vaporizing an A-grade hunter.

"Die!!!!"

he roared, and a beam of pure annihilation lanced across the chamber.

Baelgor didn’t even turn to face it. His other hand came up, palm open, and caught the blast. The cataclysmic beam of energy struck his bare skin and simply... vanished. It was absorbed, dissipated, nullified, the effect was the same. It was as if a ocean wave had crashed against a cliff face and disappeared without a single drop of spray.

In one fluid, brutal motion, still holding the stunned swordsman by the wrist, Baelgor used him as a living club. He swung the man around and slammed him bodily into the cannon-wielder. The impact was sickening, a crunch of bone and metal. The two hunters became a tangled mess of limbs and broken equipment, hurled across the chamber to land in a heap against the far wall, where they did not move.

The raging wind died instantly. The blazing auras extinguished. The chamber was silent once more, save for the faint, metallic ringing of the shattered sword fragments settling on the stone floor.

A flicker of sense finally pierced the rage of the two remaining hunters. Seeing their three comrades broken and scattered in seconds, they abandoned the reckless charge and fell into a practiced formation, the last vestige of their training overriding their fury.

The one with a massive, rune-etched axe bellowed a challenge, charging forward as a brutish distraction. His partner, a lithe figure with a quiver glowing with latent energy, dropped back, nocking an arrow that hummed with concentrated power. It was a classic pincer maneuver: the brute force engage, the archer strike from a distance with lethal precision.

The archer loosed his shot. The arrow tore through the air, not as a simple projectile, but as a beam of solidified light, capable of piercing enchanted plate mail.

Baelgor moved with a speed that defied perception. He didn’t dodge. His hand blurred up and snatched the arrow from the air mere feet from his face, the projectile’s energy dying with a faint sizzle against his palm. In the same motion, he pivoted. The hunter with the axe was upon him, weapon raised high for a devastating overhead chop.

Baelgor didn’t retreat. Instead, he stepped into the blow, and with the captured arrow held like a dagger, he drove it deep into the meat of the axeman’s swinging forearm. The man’s roar of attack became a shriek of agony as his grip failed. The heavy axe fell from nerveless fingers.

But it never hit the ground.

Baelgor’s free hand caught the falling weapon by the haft. He didn’t even seem to strain under its weight. In one continuous, fluid motion, he turned and hurled it back toward the archer with impossible force.

The onlookers gasped. The axe didn’t simply fly; it tore through the space between them, a whirring disc of death.

The air screamed in its wake, and it seemed to carry with it the very weight of inevitability. Nothing in its path could have stopped it. It was a force of nature, not a thrown weapon.

The archer had only a half-second to widen his eyes in horror before the axe was upon him. There was no time to scream, only to flinch.

Thwack.

The sound was crisp, final. The axe’s blade buried itself not in his chest, but in the bow he instinctively raised as a shield, slicing clean through the reinforced wood and severing the hand that held it. For a breath, there was silence.

’AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!’

Then, the archer’s scream ripped through the chamber, a raw, terrible sound of pain and shock as he stared at the bloody stump of his wrist.

The axeman crumpled, clutching the arrow protruding from his arm, his own pain forgotten as he witnessed his partner’s mutilation.

A profound, deafening silence descended, broken only by the archer’s ragged cries. Every hunter, every onlooker, stood frozen, their minds struggling to reconcile the scene before them with everything they knew of power and hierarchy.

A single, terrifying question echoed in the mind of every witness, a fundamental challenge to their understanding of the world:

Since when did A and B rankers look so weak?