Chapter 103 — What an A-Rank Looks Like

Chapter 103: Chapter 103 — What an A-Rank Looks Like

Garrick walked toward the guardian without hurry, and the strange, gathering pressure Arlen had felt in the air seemed to intensify with every step, until it settled into something almost physical — a weight pressing against his chest that had nothing to do with exhaustion or fear.

"Everyone, fall back from the guardian’s immediate range!" Ilyana shouted, understanding arriving in her voice before Arlen could properly process what was happening. "Now!"

Kess and Rurik pulled clear, dragging Doran’s wounded, half-conscious form between them, and Kaelis retreated with Selene’s collapsed weight supported across his shoulders, everyone scrambling to widen the distance between themselves and whatever Garrick was about to unleash.

Garrick raised his blade, and Aura gathered around him — not the familiar shimmer Arlen had grown accustomed to across a year of watching trained adventurers fight, but something considerably vaster, a corona of silver-white light that expanded outward until it seemed to swallow the surrounding air itself.

"Ground yourselves!" Osric shouted. "Whatever’s about to happen, brace for it!"

The guardian, sensing the shift, turned its full attention toward Garrick and lunged, and the Guild Master met the charge with a single, decisive strike that connected with a sound like the world itself cracking open.

The impact tore a furrow through the crystallized earth easily thirty feet long, the ground shattering and upheaving in its wake, and the guardian staggered backward with a wound that dwarfed anything the combined party’s sustained assault had managed across the entire engagement.

"That’s an A-rank," Halvard breathed beside Arlen, his voice carrying genuine, unguarded awe. "I’ve heard stories. Never actually seen it."

Garrick pressed the advantage immediately, his movements carrying a speed that seemed to defy the earlier ground-shattering weight of his strike, closing the distance again before the guardian could properly recover. He drew on something else now — the silver-white light around him shifting, gathering at his blade’s edge, and when he struck again, the air itself seemed to ripple outward from the impact, a visible shockwave that flattened the crystallized growth for yards in every direction.

"He’s holding it," Ilyana called, her voice tight with focused urgency. "Osric, now would be the time!"

Osric stepped forward, and Arlen watched, astonished, as the mage’s usual arcane casting shifted into something else entirely — his free hand gathering Aura the same way a warrior’s might, silver light coiling around his forearm even as lightning continued crackling from his other palm.

"Didn’t know he could do that," Arlen said, breathless.

"Dual-Affinity," Halvard said. "Rare, even at the capital. Guess we’re about to see why it’s worth the reputation."

Osric surged forward alongside Garrick’s continued assault, his Aura-wreathed strikes landing in perfect rhythm with his own lightning castings, each combined blow driving deeper into the guardian’s increasingly ragged form. The creature shrieked, a sound of genuine, mounting desperation, and lashed out with a wild, uncoordinated strike that Garrick met with a raised blade, Aura flaring to absorb the impact without so much as a stumble.

"Maren’s close!" Priya shouted from her position near the golden light, still pulsing steadily despite the chaos. "I can feel it — whatever this is about to do, it’s about to finish!"

The guardian, seemingly understanding its own desperate position, turned from Garrick entirely and lunged instead toward Maren’s kneeling, still-unbroken form, a final, desperate gambit to disrupt the purification before it could complete.

"No!" Garrick’s voice carried a weight Arlen had never heard from him before, and the Guild Master moved with a speed that defied everything Arlen understood about physical capability, closing the distance in what looked like a single, impossible step.

He interposed himself directly between the guardian and Maren, and the creature’s full, desperate weight crashed against him — a blow that should have, by every reasonable measure, ended him outright.

Garrick held.

Silver-white Aura flared around him in a dome that absorbed the worst of the impact, the ground beneath his feet cratering under the force he redirected downward rather than let pass through to Maren’s exposed position, and Arlen watched, heart hammering, as the Guild Master drove his blade upward into the guardian’s exposed underside with everything his considerable reserves still allowed.

The creature’s shriek tore through the clearing, a sound of genuine, final agony, and its massive form began convulsing, the crystallized plating along its body cracking and splintering as whatever held it together finally, catastrophically failed.

Osric closed the remaining distance, his combined Aura and lightning driving one final, decisive strike into the same widening wound, and the guardian’s convulsions stilled entirely, its massive bulk collapsing in a shower of shattering crystal that scattered across the ruined, cratered clearing.

The golden light at the clearing’s center flared, brilliant and sudden, and Maren’s voice rose above the settling chaos, strained but triumphant.

"It’s done! The purification’s complete!"

A ragged, exhausted cheer rose from the scattered, battered remains of the party, and Arlen found himself sinking to his knees, every reserve of strength finally, fully spent, watching as the golden light gradually faded and the crystallized corruption throughout the clearing began, slowly, visibly receding.

Garrick remained standing near where the guardian had fallen, his silver-white Aura fading gradually, his breathing heavy but steady, and Arlen understood, watching him, that he’d just witnessed something he would carry with him for the rest of his life — the true, overwhelming shape of power he’d only ever glimpsed in careful, secondhand fragments before this moment.

"Osric," Ilyana called, moving quickly toward him. "Report."

"Drained," Osric admitted, sinking down onto a fallen section of crystallized stone. "Haven’t pushed both disciplines that hard in years. Worth it, though."

Arlen made his way carefully toward Garrick, his own exhaustion warring with genuine, overwhelming curiosity. "That was—"

"A-rank," Garrick said simply, before Arlen could finish the thought, a tired but genuine smile touching his weathered features. "Suppose there’s no point keeping it quiet any longer, given what everyone just watched."

"I had no idea," Arlen admitted.

"Wasn’t meant for you to," Garrick said. "Rank matters less than judgment, in my experience. I never saw reason to lead with it." He studied the ruined, settling clearing around them, the crystallized corruption continuing its slow recession even as they spoke. "Today, though, I suppose the truth made itself plain enough on its own."

Priya was already moving among the wounded, her healing magic working urgently to stabilize Doran’s broken arm and Selene’s collapsed exhaustion, while Aria tended Grennig’s reopened wound with the same steady, practiced care she’d shown throughout the entire expedition.

Arlen sat down heavily near the clearing’s edge, his whole body aching with accumulated exhaustion, and watched the last of the crystallized corruption fade from the ruined earth, understanding, with quiet and profound clarity, that he had just witnessed the true, staggering scale of power this world actually contained — and that whatever remained of his own journey, however far it eventually carried him, would forever be measured against the memory of exactly what he’d seen today.