CHAPTER 40: CH-40

E grade?

The thought echoed in a hundred minds, a stark contradiction to the blinding spectacle they had just witnessed. They had seen the light surge through the ranks with the force of a tidal wave, had seen it shatter against the pinnacle of SSS-rank in a blaze of glory that threatened to break the stone itself. Now, they were presented with a result that was not just low, but insultingly so.

The tension broke with a derisive snort from the back of the crowd.

"E grade!" a voice shouted, laced with scorn. "He doesn’t even qualify to lead a scavenging party, let alone a real hunting team!"

The spell was broken. A wave of muttered agreement swept through the onlookers. They knew the harsh reality of the world. An E-ranker was background noise, cannon fodder, a body meant for carrying supplies or, on a bad day, distracting a monster so the real hunters could strike. Worth, in their eyes, was a number etched in light on a stone, and that number had just declared Baelgor worthless.

Even Cisco was baffled, his mind scrambling for a purchase on this impossible cliff. One moment he was guiding a demigod, the next a dud. The whiplash was dizzying.

Then, a new murmur began, born from the need to reconcile the impossible display of power with the humiliating result.

"How, then?" someone asked, voice rising above the din. "How did he defeat the Notorious Five?"

A theory, desperate and greedy, was offered like a lifeline.

"An artifact!" a hunter yelled, his eyes alight with sudden revelation. "He has to be using a power-nullifying artifact! I’ve heard of them! Lets even the weakest stand against the strong!"

The explanation spread like wildfire, instantly satisfying the crowd’s cognitive dissonance. It wasn’t him; it was a thing. A tool. It made perfect, cruel sense. Their disappointment curdled into something uglier: avarice. A hundred gazes locked onto Baelgor, no longer filled with awe or fear, but with a naked, hungry greed. They weren’t looking at a man; they were looking at a treasure chest. They imagined wresting such an artifact for themselves, of wielding that incredible, negating power.

But then, memory served a cold dose of reality. They recalled the casual way he had shattered enchanted steel and swatted aside A-rankers like gnats. The image of their broken, groaning forms was a potent deterrent. The greed in their eyes flickered, banked by the embers of primal fear.

The crowd’s energy shifted again, from immediate avarice to patient, predatory calculation. Shoulders relaxed. Jaws set. They exchanged knowing glances. Let him have his toy for now. Dungeons were dark, unpredictable places. Accidents happened there all the time. They would watch. They would wait. And when he was isolated, far from the neutral ground of the testing hall, they would strike. The artifact would be theirs.

The focus was no longer on the man, but on the prize he carried. And in their minds, his fate was already sealed.

Baelgor, meanwhile, remained a placid island in the sea of their murmuring speculation. He was utterly oblivious to the greedy calculations and dismissive scorn swirling around him, not out of ignorance, but from a place of such profound disinterest that their thoughts were as significant as the buzzing of gnats. The ranking, the device, the gasps of the crowd—it was all meaningless theater. He knew the simple, unassailable truth: there was no mana stone conceived in any dungeon, no artifact forged by mortal or immortal hands, capable of quantifying the ocean of his power. When the light had sputtered and died at the lowest rank, he hadn’t been surprised or disappointed; he had merely confirmed the stone’s limitations. It had broken under the strain of trying to comprehend a fraction of a fraction of what he was.

His purpose here was transactional, a box to be checked on the path to a far more interesting goal. Cisco had informed him this registration was a prerequisite for participating in the surface world’s mating rituals, and so he had complied. The drama was an irrelevant sidebar.

"The badge," he stated, his voice flat and devoid of any reaction to the E-rank result. He extended his hand toward the woman at the counter.

Her demeanor had undergone a stark transformation. The keen interest, the respectful poise, it had all evaporated, replaced by a cold, professional indifference that bordered on disdain. Where moments before she had seen a potential genius, she now saw a talentless noble’s son, another spoiled heir playing at being a hunter with daddy’s expensive toys.

She had seen his type before; they were a nuisance, cluttering the guilds with their arrogance and their purchased power, looking down on those who had earned their strength.

Without a word, and without meeting his eyes, she slapped a dull, tin-colored badge into his palm. It was cold and cheaply made, engraved with a single, stark letter: E. She immediately turned her attention to a stack of parchment, dismissing him entirely. He was beneath her notice, and therefore, beneath her courtesy.

Cisco watched the exchange, his initial surprise giving way to a pragmatic shrug. The merchant’s mind was already moving on. The badge’s color didn’t matter; the weight of the lord’s coin purse did. Whether his power was innate or borrowed, the client still clearly had vast resources, and Cisco intended to reap as much of them as possible. The goal remained unchanged: guide the strange, monstrously equipped lord, get paid, and disappear.

Baelgor closed his fingers around the insignificant piece of metal. His mission here was complete.

"Haha! E rank!

A harsh, mocking laugh cut through the murmurs of the hall. It was Sebastian, propped up by two of his groaning hunters, a newly-healed jaw working with vicious satisfaction. A guild healer had clearly attended to him, stitching flesh and bone back together enough for speech, if not for wisdom. One might have thought the previous encounter would have instilled a shred of humility, but it had only fermented his rage into a more potent, focused hatred.

Just a filthy E rank dared to mess with me?" he spat, the words now clear and dripping with venom.

The revelation of the grade had been a balm to his wounded pride. It provided a framework he could understand, a reason for his defeat that didn’t shatter his worldview. It wasn’t that Baelgor was powerful; it was that he had cheated. And a cheater with no official standing was a dead man walking.

Every onlooker knew it. A hunter with an E-rank badge and no guild affiliation was a ghost already; he just didn’t know it yet. Sebastian’s vengeance was now a certainty, not a threat.

"Your days are counted," Sebastian snarled, his eyes promising a world of pain. "Let me see you in a dungeon. You will wish you were never born." With a final, contemptuous glare, he turned and limped from the hall, his retinue stumbling after him.

A lesser man might have felt fear. Baelgor felt only a profound, simmering irritation. He turned, his gaze settling on Sebastian’s retreating back like a weight.

What is wrong with that puny human? he wondered, a genuine flicker of curiosity in his ancient mind. I extended an act of mercy by allowing him to keep his life. Yet he returns it with more foolish noise. It seems there is no currency for mercy here. Perhaps the language these creatures understand is simpler, more final.

Cisco saw the shift in Baelgor’s posture, the subtle focusing of intent that promised an end far more definitive than a few broken bones. A public execution of a A ranker was very, very bad for business, his business.

"My lord! A moment, please!" Cisco interjected, his voice strained with panic.

He stepped closer, lowering his voice to an urgent whisper. "This... display... gains us nothing but more flies. The time for such distractions is over. If we leave now, I can immediately show you the most exclusive avenues to find a suitable mate. The finest establishments, the most celebrated companions in the city await a man of your... resources."

He held his breath. It was a desperate gambit.

Baelgor’s gaze lingered on the doorway through which Sebastian had vanished. The promise of obliteration was a tangible heat in the air. Then, Cisco’s words registered. Mate. The primary objective. The reason for enduring this tedious pageantry.

The lethal tension in his shoulders eased. The petty nuisance was, for now, irrelevant compared to the grand pursuit. With a dismissive sniff, as if swatting the thought of Sebastian away, he turned to Cisco. "Lead on," he commanded, his voice once more a flat monotone.

He followed the merchant out, not granting the hall another glance. He did not see the looks of pity mixed with greed on the hunters’ faces. He was unaware that in their minds, his fate was already sealed. But as he walked away, a single, cold certainty settled in Cisco’s gut: Sebastian was a goner. It was not a matter of if, but when the lord’s patience would finally expire.

---

In the now-quiet testing hall, the woman at the counter finally approached the Grading Monolith. With the crowd dispersed, she could inspect the device that had behaved so erratically. Up close, she saw it. A fine web of cracks covered its surface. Gingerly, she reached out and touched it.

Her fingers met not solid stone, but a fine, silken powder. With a soft sigh, the entire structure collapsed inward, settling into a small, neat pile of grey dust on the pedestal.

Her blood ran cold. She rushed to her superior’s office, stammering out what she had seen.

The Guild Master, an old man with eyes that had seen centuries of power come and go, listened in silence. He did not seem surprised. He simply steepled his fingers and said, "Keep it a secret. Replace the old one with the reserve monolith. Tell no one what you saw."

After she left, shaken, the old man rose and walked to his window, looking out over the sprawling city. His expression was unreadable, a mixture of deep unease and solemn acceptance. The mana stone, capable of measuring the might of SSS-ranked behemoths, had not just broken. It had been utterly annihilated by a touch.

"A new change is coming to the world," he whispered to the fading light outside, the words a vow and a warning. "And it does not care for our rankings."