The Villain has Perished

What's the difference between the Mortal Ascending Ranks and the true ascender ranks?

Everyone has their own answers, but all would agree on one point. Mortal Ascending ranks are where you reach the full potential of your physical body.

Whereas from Master ranks, one has techniques that can accomplish feats beyond their physical limits, by tampering the fabric of reality. These techniques are called Skills.

The simplest explanation of skills is to think of them as weapons.

If you think of Mortal ascender as a normal human, then Master rank ascender will be a normal human with a sword in his hand.

Both are human, but the presence of the sword creates a qualitative difference in their combat ability.

A normal punch won't be fatal unless you aim it at weak points, however for a sword, it's the opposite. Even a slight graze by a sword can leave grievous wounds, and a single swing that has landed on the enemy is deadly.

Clearly, a bare hand human is far inferior to the one equipped with a sword.

Then what about Grandmaster?

If we use the previous example, the Grandmaster rank ascender is a normal human with a Gun.

A bare hand human is weaker than someone with a sword, but he still had a chance to win. However, a gun made the previous difference in combat ability laughable.

The gun has better range, more lethality, and faster attacks. The jump in combat ability is as clear as day.

Such is the difference between ranks.

Although the gap in power, range, and diversity of skills changes per type of skill, the contrast between ranks, in their quality, cannot be ignored.

Why was I explaining this?

Nothing, just wanted to share my messed up situation with 'you'.

Schwing!

Baratos' sword moved to me to behead me without hesitation. Shifting my weight, I bent my back to dodge.

The tip of the sword passed inches away from my eyes. Before Baratos followed with another attack, I condensed my Mana to its limit and crammed all of it in my legs.

Then before Baratos completed his swing, I kicked his temple while using my sword as support from the same position. The attack was fast and precise. It went into Baratos' blind spot when his body was off balance. He wouldn't be able to avoid the attack.

Yet, my foot cut through empty air.

Baratos jumped back. He moved as if he had known about the attack before I even moved and dodged it easily.

<Throw>

Using the spin from the kick, I spun on my heels and threw the invisible Gylothyn at Baratos.

It forced Baratos to change the trajectory of his next attack to intercept the sword.

I kicked the ground and retreated to create distance between us. 'He blocked the invisible sword, so he must be using <Mana Sense> continuously.'

A plan started forming in my head.

'Release'

Five treants and ten hound wolves surrounded Baratos. The <Phantom Step> also helped me reduce my presence as I hid behind the trees.

Humans have a stat limit of 100 for [Physique] and [Magic Power]. These stats can be extended with ranked skills. If Baratos had a F rank or E rank mana reserve extending skill, it would increase his total MP by roughly 250 and 500, respectively.

'He can't fight all the time by using skills or he will run out of mana within a minute. He is killing my summons quickly because every second he uses Body Strengthening, his precious mana is being used.'

Then it was clear what I needed to do. Tire out Baratos by forcing him to use his skills.

Baratos, who was being surrounded by summons, didn't attack immediately. Instead, he spoke. "You started learning the sword earnestly only a few weeks ago, around two weeks, I'd say."

'!!!' I gasped inwardly. 'Did he understand that much from that short confrontation?'

The confidence in Baratos' voice was clear. Those words that judged my expertise with a sword showed that his title as the second strongest was not for show.

Baratos muttered to himself, "Two weeks ago, the timing matches."

I frowned while listening to him. 'Is he trying to buy time to refill his mana reserves while muttering gibberish? Well, that works in my favor, too.'

Since I had used almost all of my summon capacity while infiltrating the Orc village, I didn't have many summons on myself at the moment. 3 Treants, 5 hound wolves, and 4 boars. That was all I had in the summoner cards.

While Baratos was buying time, I was canceling the summons at the orc village border and creating news here.

"Are you the 2nd Prophet of Goddess?" Baratos spoke while staring at the tree that I was hiding behind.

He added more words when I didn't answer. "The wall of flames won't allow you to go where the young baron and the overlord of the forest are. You might not have realized it, but the flames are moving to separate you from them. Since you can't leave, why don't you answer me?"

My eyes widened inwardly at the revelation. 'They knew that I was coming here! And purposely separated me from the Griffin!?'

"Can you see this?" said Baratos. He removed a plate from his armor and showed the insides.

What came into view weren't his hands under the armor, but luminous blue plating that served as a second layer beneath the armor.

The Holy Knight Commander pointed to the luminous plating. "This is the 2nd layer under my armor, it is made of mana stones. If you are trying to tire me out by forcing me to use mana, then I'm afraid it is a useless endeavor."

The distance between us made me unable to judge if the blue plating was really mana stones, but there was no reason for the Holy Knight Commander to lie.

'I can't use the plan of stalling time. At this rate, forget saving Griffin, I'll need to save myself first.'

"You aren't answering. Was I right?" Baratos rubbed his chin. "You must've entered the inner section for the treasure. So, you know facts only the 1st and 2nd prophets should know. But you don't know about the mana plating inside the armors.

Then… you aren't the 2nd prophet. Maybe you've kidnapped him and forced the information out of him. In that case, I don't need to be gentle to capture you."

'What nonsense is he spouting—'

Bam—!

Baratos raised his leg and kicked the ground. The ground shattered and webbed cracks appeared on it. Rocks flew into the air from the force behind the impact.

He jumped and climbed in the air using the rocks that were floating as footholds. As he reached the highest point, an even greater pressure blew out of Baratos.

"Holy Swordsmanship 7th Verse: Ring of Solus"

A ring made of golden mana appeared in the sky. As the ring expanded, it dropped rays of light as if it they were droplets of water. The ground melted where golden droplets fell. My summons died without as much as being able to resist.

Baratos was standing below the area directly beneath the empty middle region of the ring. He simply stood and watched the destruction fall.

'Dammit, there is no other way! Activate Crown. Duration: 16 seconds!'