247 The Gap Between Ranks

As I tried to figure out what happened to the chihuahua, we helped Hayley and Hope finishing the rats and pigeons.

She just extended her open hand in a direction, and the rats would be frozen solid.

"Shatter."

As she said that at the time that she clenched her fist, the rats exploded. We all looked at her since she had been doing that since the beginning.

"It was Dante's idea, controlling this ability is difficult and doing it this way helps me focus…"

She said slightly embarrassed. Now that I think about it her shatter was an epic ability, and I do something similar when I use my legend rank skill. To change a rule, I often use a phrase to channel the desired effect, like the "Let's go Back to Yesterday" to go back in time.

I did it that way because it indeed helped me focus on the effect I wanted to achieve. When I changed the gravity or the way the bacteria affected the human body, I did the same. Using a phrase or word to focus an ability was indeed a useful way to focus the power the way you wanted… I wonder if the space infusion I tried earlier would work better if a name it.

It's worth a shot. After a while we managed to finish all the remaining rats, the sheer numbers were so high that made me wonder the extent of Pinky's army. Hope kept floating around looking for more targets, but she couldn't find anyone else… maybe she is the battle maniac of the family.

"Is that all?"

"Why you sound so disappointed?"

"Well… wasn't it kind of… easy?"

I understood her feelings, but there wasn't really much we can do… F and E Rank beast weren't even near our level. Besides all of us being at least 1 rank higher (2 in the case of Hayley and me), there was a massive gap between E and D Rank which I understood when I got to D-Rank.

D-Rank was an especial level where your potential was really unlocked. In my case, I was able to go beyond human's limit, and my attributes were able to go over 25, this is something that I think is common for everyone. So besides the difference in the power rank, there is also a gap in the base level you are capable of achieving.

When I was an E-Rank, I was lucky cause I had a massive number of Esper powers and was able to get a time-related power, which together with the space-related powers are probably the strongest in the lower ranks. That ability coupled with the number of abilities I had allowed me to fight against D ranks, but every time I fought against a higher Rank (those Alphas for example or Jamie) I had no chances against them.

It was the same now, but the roles had been swapped. F and E-Rank beasts had no real chances of putting up a fight against us unless their ability was somewhat unique.

Deep inside I liked that these battles were easy, even if we all want to live some kind of adventure on some level I don't like the idea of seeing the people I love struggling to survive, but the mission showed me chances that I couldn't just ignore.

Finding my mother and Rose's and G's parents.

Looking for Isabella's husband.

Stopping whatever the NDR was planning.

Even if I would love to just stay happily in Green Shelter and live a somewhat normal life, I know deep inside that this is not possible, this was just the beginning, and I have to… no… WE have to become stronger.

And to become stronger struggles were bound to happen.

"Don't worry stronger beast will appear sooner or later. By the way, I didn't get a notification for the chihuahua, so I want to check that place."

"The chihuahua survived?"

"I think so, maybe we even attacked an illusion or something like that."

Everyone but G, who already knew about it, was surprised about the chihuahua. The only thing we could think of was that it was an illusion, but everything felt so realistic, the blood in the spear, the way it froze and shattered that we have doubts about his power.

As we went to the place, we find no remains of the shattered dog, but the blood from my attack was still there. Somehow I couldn't use my Aura View ability to track it down so with no clues left we had no choice but to let the chihuahua go for now.

Rose still tried to survey the surrounding to see if she find it but to no avail. In the meantime we were able to find the remains of the lost hunting team, I didn't know the effect of the blood, so just in case we decided to burn the bodies to prevent them from coming back as undead.

…

Back in Green Shelter, I went ahead to report the extermination of the crocozard's group together with our findings of the effects of the corrupted blood and the weird chihuahua.

The dressing code was changed so the clothes would prevent the contact with the blood until we have a way to know the exact effect of the corruption in human bodies, and of course, the information we obtained was spread to the team leaders of the active groups. We don't know the effect that the appearance of undead might have on the population of Green Shelter, so we decide to keep it low profile for now, and tell the leaders to not spread the information for now.

To be honest, I wasn't too worried about it since there was no extra mission from the system, so I think that as long as we kill the corrupted beasts from the mission it should be okay.

The next days I used my space ability to explore the city and track down the cat and the chihuahua, I wanted to find them before going to the swamp forest, but as Pinky mentioned they were slippery.

The only news we got from the chihuahua was his sudden appearance, barking and that way he killed some rats, but disappeared afterward leaving no clues behind, finding him that time was just by chance, but thanks to these reports at least we knew that he was still in the city.

The cat was seen from time to time under the sun napping, and if it weren't because of his red eyes and the tail which was a missing part leaving only the bones visible no one would have guessed that it was an undead. The cat never engaged in battle and disappeared each time it was located, I managed to see it once, but it blinked away as soon as it noticed me.

The search for those two beasts was going nowhere, so I was planning on going into the forest for the next search, but first I had to train the new batch of recruits.