Eo motioned for his Essov comrades to come over. He told them in a whisper what had happened to his legs, and asked to see the entire wolf skeleton.
The gang looked at the huge mound of bones, and then looked at the handicapped Eo. In the end, they just decided to bring Eo to the bones, so they picked him up and carried him.
Kyros and his buddies had just slain one of the wolves when he glanced over to Eo. Seeing him being carried around on other people like a king, Kyros' jaw slackened.
"I didn't know Eo was that kind of person… perhaps I misjudged him to a great degree."
There was one wolf left. Seeing as it was the last one to live, it turned away and fled. Kyros' group finally exhaled.
"That was one difficult battle! Right, Utaris?"
"I agree, Prezna!"
Meanwhile, Eo was staring at the corpse. He struck a knife against the bones. It ricocheted off, leaving no trace.
"Say," Eo said, "who here managed to dismantle the previous corpse the best? You know, when I said that 'the best dismantler will get a prize'?"
"It was me, boss."
Wifjad beamed in pride. Eo looked at the others to check their expressions. They all looked sort of sullen, almost as if what Wifjad said was an irrefutable fact.
"Do one more thing for me, Wif."
"Yeah?"
"Dismantle this skeleton. Then I'll reward you."
Eo could see the other members in shock. Eo mentally laughed.
Eo called out to the others in Kyros' group.
"I'm going to sleep, so let's take a rest."
"WhaT?! Hey, you can't just boss us-"
"I think we should take a short rest too," Kyros interrupted.
Eo smiled. Kyros was too good to not be the protagonist of a story.
The large group of people decided to create temporary camp within the midst of Zone E. Eo could see about half of them sleeping. The other half were still too buzzed from the recent fight to rest. As Eo lay still on his mat, he heard the voices of some of them outside.
"Look, I brought along my essence meter!"
"Whoah, I want to see if mine went up!"
"Honestly, I wouldn't be too surprised if it did."
The essence meter was exactly what it sounded like. It measured the amount of essence outflow from a person and translated it into a numerical value. The value itself was determined from the average person's essence, which was defined as 1000. Most recruits would have somewhere around this level when they joined. However, by training and exercising their powers, their ability to produce and control their essence greatly developed, and as a result their measured output would also increase. Given that rising to greater ranks required an essence measurement benchmark, measuring one's essence was a way to approximate one's rank.
By the time one reached Yellow Rank, one would've had to increase their Essence Output by at least 10%. This continued for the next two ranks until one reached the Intermediate Tier. Then the benchmark would increment by 50% each time. This would continue on to be higher and higher each tier. In this way it could be seen almost as a stitching of exponential curves, each one shooting up much higher than the one before it.
Eo pressed his ear against the tent wall. By this time he wished he hadn't done the dumb jumping thingy with his legs. They had lost some of their numbness by now, but Eo still couldn't move them. Instead he decided to listen to see how much more OP his comrades became.
"So, Enmio, what'd you get on the ess'meter?"
"I got a reading of 1109! Isn't that great?"
"Dang… you could apply for a Yellow Rank test by now! Give me the meter! I want to see what I got as well!"
Eo could hear a bunch of people gather around and test themselves. Eo really wanted to also test his. At the same time, he didn't really want to stand out, so he decided to just rest for real and do it early in the morning.
Eo tried to sleep, but then he heard Kyros' voice outside.
"Cool, what is this?"
"Whoah, it's the savior! Here, hero, try this out! It gets to measure how cool and powerful you are!"
"Ooh, let me try!"
Beep.
"Whoah, Kyros got a really high number!"
"What - that's amazing!"
"Wh-what did he get?!"
"N-nineteen hundred fifty…"
"Th-that's more than thirteen hundred but less than two thousand... That's almost Tier II: Purple Rank!"
☆
Eo shot up. He quickly took out his watch and glanced at it. It read 'early in the morning o' clock'. Just kidding. It actually showed Eo it was about 5:30 in the morning. Eo crawl-snuck to the tent next to him, which had the meter, and quietly zipped open the flap.
Inside he saw a couple of people sleeping in weird positions all over the floor. Eo grimaced at their painful positions and looked for the meter.
He spotted it in an awkwardly placed spot between 2 hairy legs. Eo winced. He really didn't feel like reaching down there to get it. Plus, his legs were still acting weird. Eo thought for a bit and realized he could grab it using essence.
Eo tried to synthesize chains as quietly as possible while also coating it in tangiform. It was an excruciating 30 seconds of silet metal excretion, but he finally got a chain of long enough length.
Eo weaved the chain around the bodies and limbs and finally grabbed onto the meter.
(Yes, finall!y!)
Eo quietly retracted the essence meter towards him and held it. Then, he turned it on. A soft humming sound could be heard and Eo felt the device warm. Eo looked at the display. There was a number showing the raw output measurement and a dial below it showing approximately what power level it would be equivalent to, in ranks.
After waiting the mandatory 10 seconds, the device softly beeped the result.
Two thousand thirty-one. Purple rank.