Rune Seeker

“Well, to the city,” Hiral amended. “The Playhouse is beyond that – near the water – but this is an A-Rank zone.”

“And we don’t want to rush in and get surrounded,” Seena added.

“Correct, we’ll move forward at a steady pace, see what this zone throws at us, and take it carefully,” Hiral continued. “Until we know just how strong these A-Ranks are.”

“Or if they’re Elite,” Yanily said. “Though, those would be worth more experience.”

“They…”

BLEEEEEEEGH, a shockwave shook the air as a seven-foot cone of vomit carpeted the road in front of the three parties. All at once, B-Rank reflexes moved everybody away from the source of the eruption – the massive, tough Shaper down on his knees. One, shaky hand rested against the ground, supporting his bulky upper-body, while the back of the other hand ran across his mouth.

It came away… gross.

“Loan?” Hiral asked quietly.

“He didn’t listen to my advice,” Seeyela said with a shrug. “Didn’t hold onto his lunch. Or his breakfast, from the looks of things. Just how much did you eat?”

“Was fine… until… the stop,” Loan said, cheeks ballooning like he was trying to keep something down. A few seconds of fighting, and he seemed to succeed. One more wipe of his forearm against his mouth, and Loan pushed himself to his feet. “Is that… how it always feels to be you?”

“It’s a little easier for me,” Hiral said. “Since I control where and how fast. Was it really that bad?” His question was more aimed at the others in his party who’d “traveled” with him in the past.

“Oh, I know exactly how he feels,” Seeyela said, thumbing at Loan. “We felt the same way the first time in the Rise of Fallen Reach. You’ve gotten way better since then, though.”

“This was better?” Loan asked quietly.

“Much,” Yanily said. “Trust me, you’d rather be groped by his scarves than ride the capsule of barf.”

“Some days make me wonder why we joined this group,” Gran said to Romin.

“Adventure,” the Bonder said. “Visiting new places. Growing in strength to be able to protect the things I love.”

Gran’s head tilted like she was giving a dramatic roll of her eyes. “What is it with tanks? Can’t joke.”

“Regardless,” Seena interrupted everybody. “Loan, you good to keep moving?”

“Yes,” the Shaper said, back on his feet. “Sorry about that. Seems there is something else I’ll need to train if we’re going to keep traveling like that.”

“We will be, unless we find your group some mounts that can keep up with ours,” Hiral said. “Who knows, maybe there’s something somewhere in the Cradle.”

“Let’s worry about this city, for now,” Seena said. “I don’t see anything moving, but these buildings are big. There could be entire undead hordes hiding inside of one like last time. Hiral? Left? Anything?”

“Nothing I can see,” Left said. “It is eerily quiet.”

“Not just the city,” Hiral said, turning back the way they’d come. Though the terrain had changed dozens of times along the way, the last stretch they’d gone through had been something like an orchard. If he had to guess, the lines of trees they’d run through had been some kind of apples. It had been idyllic. Peaceful. Empty.

What felt like it should’ve been a prime place for monsters – or an ambush – was instead the one place where he hadn’t sensed anything.

“There weren’t any Chimeras in the orchard behind us,” Hiral said. “Or, at least, not a single one that got close enough my sensory domain could notice it.”

That made everybody look more closely at the city ahead of them.

“You don’t think,” Ilrolik said slowly. “We’d be so lucky as to find a completely empty city, do you? That could be why there’s nothing else around.”

“More likely,” Fintol said, her voice quiet. “Whatever lives in here scared away anything from the surrounding territory.”

“Do you think there was a trial back in that orchard?” Devison asked, though he didn’t turn from the city. “Might be an opportunity to complete it while nothing is guarding it.”

“We’ve got our instructions,” Hiral reminded him. “Playhouse is our priority.”

“Yeah, I know. Just saying.”

“He brings up an interesting point,” Nivian added. “Does every area have a trial? Can it have more than one?”

“You’re wondering if The Playhouse is the only one here?” Wule asked. “There could be a second trial hidden somewhere in this city?”

“It seems big enough,” Nivian said. “And, from what Al was saying, I don’t think we saw enough zones to house all the trials he spoke of. Not if each only has a single one.”

“Another A-Rank trial could be good for us,” Seena said. “Depending on how we do with the first.”

“Good rewards and experience, for sure,” Yanily agreed. Though, something on his face changed as he looked at Seena. Much more quietly, he added. “We need to get you your advanced class before we go crazy.”

“I’ll get it, Yan,” Seena said without turning. “Don’t worry. I’m close. I can feel it.”

“I feel something too,” Hiral said, holding up a hand for everybody to stop what they were doing. Had it been his imagination? No, was that it again?

Hiral crouched down to place his hand along the strange stone of the road. Dark, almost black, upon closer inspection, it almost seemed to be made up of thousands of smaller, smoothed rocks, held together by whatever was giving it the black coloring. That wasn’t what interested him at the moment, though.

Threading energy into his runes, Hiral spread a little bit of Connection and Increase out through Expansion. He wasn’t trying to…

There it was again! A heavy vibration, like something nearby thumped on the ground. Again. Again. Again. Rhythmic. Regular. Thumped… or… stepped.

“Something’s coming,” Hiral said, standing and pointing straight down the street ahead of them. “A few blocks that way. And it’s big.” He looked at the width of the street he stood in. It had to be at least big enough to put half-a-dozen wagons side-by-side. Actually, looking at the yellow lines on the strange road, there were six… lanes? Is that what those were? To guide wagon traffic?

A shake of his head – again, not why he was there – and his hands went to his RHCs at his thighs. Likewise, the others around him drew their weapons. Ilrolik’s new axe still seemed a little awkward in her hands, while Bash and Gran looked like naturals with their new toys.

“Spread out a little,” Hiral said, thinking back to The Fourth Crusade’s breath attack. While Seena’s defensive ability could protect her party, it wasn’t big enough for everybody, and they didn’t want to invite a massive area-of-effect attack by clumping up. “Let’s have long-duration buffs. We’d need them soon anyway.”

A dozen pulses of solar energy enveloped the group in the next second, the buffs traveling across the new connections formed by the Raid Party ability. Auras of void, fire, and lightning shimmered along their bodies, bringing their familiar buffs, along with Gran’s new Blood Doping ability. Left quickly shaped his Banner of Courage and Herald of Peace, adding Aura and Circle of Peace to the groups. On top of the buffs Hiral expected from his group, several more came in quick succession from the other parties.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Wule’s Nature’s Bulwark and Nature’s Blade felt nostalgic in a way Hiral didn’t expect, and still gave solid bonuses while lasting a long time, now that he was B-Rank. Interestingly, he also gave them two new buffs, Nature’s Resilience and Nature’s Recovery. The first offered a fifteen percent reduction in all elemental damage the party took, while the second… the second was just kind of wow.

Much like Left’s Banner of Courage, it offered a full Rank increase in Solar Energy Absorption as well as a modifier for healing. From the way it read, it improved all healing by twenty-five percent. All healing? Does it work with Runic Regeneration+? That was a very interesting buff, as the healing part didn’t do anything on its own, but as soon as it was combined with other healing abilities, it became very strong.

And now Hiral had added it to his Primal Chord.

Thank you Wule!

The buffs definitely didn’t end there, though, with a practical onslaught of them coming from Ilrolik’s group. Well, from Sera. And, for a split second, Hiral understood Politet’s resistance to accepting buffs from other people. His natural inclination towards his mother almost seemed to result in an option to outright deny the buff from taking hold. But, just as quickly as he felt it coming on, he pushed it down.

They needed to be as strong as they could be for whatever was coming. Her buffs would help that. The only question was, what did they do?

Almost unsurprisingly, the first buff – Shimmering Veil – provided a bonus to elemental attacks. Though, unlike Wule’s buff, this one gave an outright chance to completely resist them – twenty percent – instead of reducing damage that got through. Together, the two buffs complimented each other very nicely, and this one clearly included toxic and poisonous attacks. It would stack very well with Seeyela’s That’s not a venom, THIS is a venom! If Politet did try something, he’d have a much harder time succeeding.

From there, Sera used Iterative Strike – which added bonus damage on every fifth melee attack – and Fundamental Focus, to increase all elemental damage.

Hiral had to – grudgingly – admit, both of those were solid choices for the raid. It wasn’t like she was done there though. The next buff was Cutthroat Vision, which was a lot like an amped up Predator’s Eyes, increasing critical hit chance and damage. Then, after she seemed to check to see if everybody else was finished buffing – Hiral had even expanded his scarves to the whole raid group to give them a percentage increase to their attributes – Sera cast one final buff.

Sanction – increasing the effectiveness of all buffs active on the targets by ten percent.

As Hiral and the others felt power surge through their bodies, it was a little intoxicating. Outside of Eloquently Enraged+, he’d rarely had such an outright empowerment to his body. And, with the noticeable increase to all his attributes, including his Atn, he felt something else very clearly.

“It sensed our buffs,” Hiral said. “Or maybe the solar energy we used. It’s moving faster.”

“How long?” Seena asked, fire swirling to life above her hands, while small totems erupted from the roadway.

“It’s here,” Hiral said, the footsteps having more than tripled in speed as their buffs had gone off. He pointed down the street at the same time a blocky, brass foot stepped around.

The leg attached to that foot was thicker than an entire Tomorrow’s Sentinel, extending up to a reverse-jointed knee. To match the motif, the body that followed was just as blocky as the legs, with thick arms on the roughly humanoid torso. All in all, the monstrosity towered at over a hundred feet, and took up more than half the width of the wide street.

All that in mind, it wasn’t the sheer size of the thing that was the most intimidating. No, it was the weapons it had. Over each shoulder, a thirty-foot-long cannon aimed in their directions. The fact it was narrow did nothing to reduce the intimidation factor.

“Well…” Yanily said, looking from his spear to the giant. “Huh.”

“Probably don’t want to get hit by…” Hiral started.

BOOM!

The party didn’t even have a chance to move before Nivian was in front of them, shield up and skeletal arms reaching up to brace his back.

A second BOOM, and Nivian was behind the party, flying backwards with shattered bones trailing him and a slug of heavy, flattened metal compressed against his shield. Twenty feet, and the tank’s feet touched back down, digging long furrows in the ground as he fought against the momentum of the shot. Unable to completely stop it, he instead of shifted his weight and the angle of his shield, hurling the slug up and over him.

Wide eyes from the rest of the party stared at the tank – and the fact he’d lost fifteen percent of his health blocking the powerful shot – then snapped back to the giant. There was still a second cannon.

A snuff from Wallop, and the Rune-o looked over at Ilrolik, then nodded towards the front of the group like he was saying ‘after you’.

Ilrolik didn’t seem to object, dropping Shaleclaw Grudge into the Shared Storage and slapping her hands to her shoulders. It only took a heartbeat for solar energy to gather around her hands, and she pulled them away as she Shaped. Thick, plasma like energy followed her fingertips, the abilities activating in quick succession.

As one of the oldest and most powerful Shapers on Fallen Reach, the Maker thumped with power, dwarfing even what the combined buffers had used. From her left hand, the tattoo of Juggernaut formed the briefest image of a musclebound titan before quickly vanishing, the energy streaming into Ilrolik’s fingers. From there, it ran up her body, igniting her Meridian Lines and spreading veins of glowing light outward.

Muscles bunched and expanded, the woman’s arms growing to the width of tree trunks – well, bigger tree trunks – while the stone beneath her feet cracked at the new weight of her body. Her neck practically vanished as her shoulders widened like they could carry the weight of the city – or the responsibility of protecting the raid party – on them.

For the second tattoo, it was one Left had but had been unable to use – Herald of War. Though she wouldn’t be able to use its full S-Rank power – her solar attributes weren’t high enough – that didn’t stop her from accessing some of it. At the same time her body grew from Juggernaut, a black and red shape formed behind her.

Four wings of blood sprouted from the back of a figure wearing deathly-black plate armor scarred and dented as if from endless battle. Steam issued from the grilled faceplate of the helm, while eyes glowed a ferocious crimson within. The Herald only had two arms – meaning Ilrolik only had access to two of the four abilities the tattoo could offer – but each carried a worn weapon. In the right, a greatsword – as tall as the Herald itself – with a serrate edge. In the left, a spiked mace with a head the size of a watermelon, flesh and gore still dripping from the tines. As soon as it fully formed, a bloodthirsty aura so thick it could be tasted rolled out.

A small head turn, and the Herald of War looked at Left’s Herald of Peace. Nodding, as if in greeting, it focused its attention back to the giant construct down the street.

“War,” the Herald whispered, and the world seemed to bend to that word, images of a thousand different battles flashing across the street. Armies charged each other like waves against a cliff, crashing and breaking in bloody and glorious impacts. Cries of battle echoed down the streets as flags raised and got torn down. Knights atop horses rode down foot-soldiers, crushing them beneath thunderous hooves. Barbarians stormed out of forests to strike rows or archers from behind.

Individual duels. Skirmishes. Fields of carnage. It all came and went in an instant, and when it finished, a notification window sprung up in front of Hiral.

You have been buffed by Aura of War.

Standing within the Aura of War grants you the ability to turn pain into strength, increasing damage by 2% for every 1% of health lost, while also giving you 15% overhealth.

Note: Damage to overhealth is taken after normal health, allowing you to surpass your limits.

Note (2): If you do not receive healing taking you back into your normal health pool before Overhealth expires, you will die.

Note: Leaving the radius of Aura of War removes all associated buffs until re-entry – including Overhealth.

The world almost went red to Hiral’s eyes, a lust for battle and a need to move rising within his chest. Around him, the others felt it too, their hands tightening around their weapons.

In front, Ilrolik leaned forward and roared a challenge at the same time the construct’s second weapon roared itself. The massive slug cut through the air straight for Ilrolik, time seeming to slow to Hiral’s eyes.

Now that he knew what was coming, the physical ammunition wasn’t so fast he couldn’t track or avoid it, but the big Shaper didn’t have the same Atn. Was she just going to try to tank something that had hurled the almost-immovable Nivian twenty feet back?

No, no she wasn’t.

Moving far faster than Hiral thought she could, Ilrolik’s hands snapped forward to catch the damn slug. Still, the shot spun in her palms and made even her titanic arms bend under the force. Her feet slid back on the stone, blood and friction-born smoke spraying from between her fingers as the slug inched closer to her chest.

One foot, two, five feet… and she stopped.

Another roar, and then Ilrolik stepped forward, arm cocking back before she whipped her hand forward. There was a shockwave of force as the slug left her fingers, the air carved by its passing, and then WHAM.

The shot rocked the construct back half-a-step despite its size, collapsing the brass around where it struck its chest.

“Come on!” Ilrolik bellowed at their massive, A-Rank opponent, and threw up her arms. Blood ran from her hands and down her forearms, but she hardly seemed to notice, fully caught up in her buffs.

“Damn,” Seena said, looking at Hiral, and he could read the look on her face.

Part of him felt the same way. If they’d run into Shapers like Ilrolik back in the Fall of Fallen Reach, would they have had a chance? Luckily, now, she was on their side.

And it wasn’t only Seena and Hiral who had opinions of the impressive display of power.

Wallop snuffed again and looked at Romin.

“Yes, I’m sure you could’ve done that too,” the Bonder deadpanned.