Rune Seeker

Eyes that had been unfocused before suddenly locked on to the party, the three large monsters snarling in challenge. Clawed hands took hold of weapons – nothing more than thick, wooden staves for the turtle and rat, and heavy gauntlets for the boar – while teeth bared.

“I guess we get to watch how we handle these,” Seena said.

“Mid-A-Rank,” Hiral said. “They all have the Beastman tag. Not Elite.”

“That’s it?” Gran asked. “The dragon who says they know me is clearly underestimating us. Mainly you lot, really. Whatever. What are you waiting for? Go kill those things.”

“Boss?” Yanily asked.

“Take ‘em,” Seena answered, both her hands going out to her sides where lines of Fireballs began to form above her palms. “Wallop, the boar is yours. Keep the others busy too if you can.”

SNUFFFFF, the Rune-o replied with a snort of replied challenge to the three monsters, then charged forward.

Ahead of him, the biggest of the bunch – the boar – stepped ahead to meet the charge. Slamming his fists together in show, his muscles bunched as he leaned forward, ready to try and catch the thundering Rune-o.

The ground shook as Wallop rumbled forward, runes glowing along his horn, and the twin Miniguns on his shoulders began spitting bolts of energy at his target. The boar snarled as it took the rapid-fire hits, its health dropping steadily in the seconds it took for Wallop to arrive. The other two Beastmen spread out behind their tank slightly – just enough to get out of the cone of fire from Wallop’s weapons, and set their eyes on the rest of the party, waiting for them to move.

Just as Wallop got to within ten feet of the boar – the Beastman stretching out his hands – the Rune-o vanished. Blinked completely out of existence to appear behind the boar in an instant. The powerful, rune-enhanced horn came up and around so fast, the ratman was only just turning a surprised look in Wallop’s direction.

Blood sprayed out of the rat’s back, the smallest Beastman lifting off the ground as Wallop’s horn gored him straight through the chest. There, hanging like that, the monster couldn’t do anything but bleed and flail as Wallop set his front feet, then kicked back with all his might.

The Rune-o’s feet slammed into the back of the confused boar-Beastman, Runes of Impact flaring with a crunch that launched the monster forward to skid face-first along the ground. Before that opponent even stopped swallowing the red-dust in great mouthfuls, Wallop had already turned on the final Beastman – the rat still impaled on his horn – then reared up on his back feet. Up… then down so hard he sent a shockwave of rippling ground ahead of him.

While the turtle had managed to get his staff up to defend himself, he hadn’t been prepared for the earth under his feet to buck like a wild horse. Out to the side his arms whirled to keep his balance, and it almost looked like he’d be able to hold it.

Until Yanily arrived in his Aspect form.

The Skyfall+smashed into the turtle with a column of lightning that blasted any lingering dust away in a powerful wave. The second impact came a heartbeat later, with the turtle Beastmanslamming into the ground, shell first, Yanily’s Shard of the Storm buried in its chest. And, if the turtle thought that was the worst of what could happen, it quickly learned its mistake.

Energy balled in front of Yanily’s mouth, his Dragon’s Breath spiraling to life as it cast the world monotone. Practically point-blank, he released the blast at the turtle’s face, and the energy cascaded away in a wave that carved the earth and barreled into the nearest pillar of stone, knocking it over to crash beyond.

When the fallout cleared a second later, the turtle’s head was simply gone. Had Yanily defeated the A-Rank enemy just like that?!

The turtle Beastman’s head popped out of its own shoulders – it’d retracted back into its shell! – at the same time its staff came whipping up at Yanily’s side.

“Son of a…!” Yanily cursed, though he got his spear up in time to block the racing staff. Still, the collision – and the strength of the Beastman – sent him flying off to the side.

Good thing the rest of the party arrived at that point.

Balls of flame met the rising turtle, completely engulfing it in fire, only for Wallop to charge through the flames – the rat still on his horn – and rear above the Beastman. Frozen in place by the shadow suddenly looming over it while the flames ravaged its skin, it had barely done more than prop itself up on its elbow.

An elbow that Left swept in to strike with his Daggers of En and Sath. Catching the joint between the two blades like a pair of liquid scissors, the trailing streams of Infernal and Entropic energy rushed ahead and exploded on contact. Somehow, the attack didn’t blow the limb clean off, but it did devastate the flesh and keep the Beastman in place for an extra second. Just long enough for Wallop to come crashing down with enough force to crater the ground with the turtle’s body.

At the same time the Rune-o came down, Seeyela appeared with a Bamf at the ratman’s back. Out stretched her left hand to grab the tip of the blood-soaked horn protruding from its back, and she pulled herself in to stand almost upright on the rat Beastman. Upright, at least, until she started stabbing, which happened pretty quickly.

Glowing its deadly green, the Fang of the Lady in her right hand rose and fell so fast it looked like she was wielding a line of light. And, while she worked her dagger with brutal efficiency, the cloak of blood resting on her shoulders split into numerous sharp tendrils, and drove themselves into the already gaping wound. None of this was even taking into account the scorpion-like tail needling the rat’s legs.

While the two Beastman behind the oblivious boar got pummeled, it pushed itself up to hands and knees. Spitting dirt and rocks out of its mouth, it left its face at the perfect height for Right to meet it with a rising uppercut that lifted the whole Beastman off the ground.

Up and back, the boar rose into the air, its spine curving like a reverse-C… until Hiral came leaping over his double, the Weight of Tomorrow already swinging around with flames jetting it forward. The hammer WHAMMED into the boar’s exposed gut, bending him back around in the other direction in an instant, before No Time Like the Present activated. An eruption of raw energy enveloped the Beastman even as the force of the blow shot him away like a burning meteor to strike the rubble of the same pillar Yanily had knocked down.

“See,” Gran said. “Underestimated.”

“No notifications or experience,” Yanily said.

The spearman was right! Even after all that, none of the Beastman had been killed. In fact, it was at that moment, they acted.

A staff whipped up from Wallop’s feet, slapping him in the side of the head hard enough to stagger him off the trampled turtle. At the same instant, the rat’s tail came out of nowhere to bat Seeyela off its back, while it reached down with both hands to grab the horn impaling it. Even as Wallop stumbled sideways, the ratman pushed itself off the horn – one hand at a time – until it threw itself clear. An ungraceful landing, a roll, and it was back on its feet.

Finally, from the rubble of the fallen pillar, the boar Beastman threw aside a boulder bigger than it was to reemerge. Blood ran freely through its bristly hair, one of its tusks had been broken off at the gum, and it clearly wasn’t able to take any deep breaths, but it didn’t look like any of that was going to slow it down.

The turtle pushed itself out of the crater Wallop had left it in, a broken half of its staff in its good hand, then dashed straight for Yanily. Despite the size of the thing – and how much it had to weigh – it moved fast. It wasn’t just speed either, with the thing leaping into the air and cartwheeling over Yanily before it reached him.

Landing and spinning, the damn turtle dropped into a leg sweep to catch the spearman from behind, with its stick coming around a heartbeat behind.

Not to be outdone quite so easily, Yanily somehow predicted the move, stabbing his spear straight down into the ground at his side to block both the kick and stick. Then, with the turtle directly in front of him, Yanily leaned forward and roared.

The sheer volume of Debilitating Roar staggered the turtle back, its hands coming up to the sides of its head as if that would protect it. Nearby, the other two Beastmen staggered from the intimidating bellow, though they’d only be suffering from the debuff at half potency.

“Right, help Yanily,” Seena commanded. “Left and Hiral, you’re with Seeyela. Romin, Wallop, you’re with me and the boar. Gran, do your thing. Delicate Balance, fifteen percent.”

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Everybody’s health dropped in the Party Interface, but Gran’s needles found them a second later – along with a splash of Waters of Frey – to start mending the intentional injuries. The thirty-percent bonus to damage would more than make up for it.

Then, as fire bloomed to one side of Hiral – Seena already getting to work on her target – and lightning arced on the other where Yanily and Right worked on cracking the turtle’s shell, Hiral let the Weight of Tomorrow fall from his hands. In its place, he tugged on his runes to form the claws of Separation along his fingers. Expansion, he held at the ready, while he began threading energy into other runes. He had a good second or two before he reached his target, and it looked like a melee…

The rat’s hands snapped up in front of it, so fast even Hiral could barely keep up, to make a strange gesture with its fingers in front of its mouth. Then the thing leaned forward and breathed fire at him.

A rat! Breathing fire!

Not just a small fire, either, a cone of it expanding to… completely vanish within a sheet of darkness that rolled down to intercept it. That had to be Seyeela’s Insatiable ability, while a second portal appeared on Hiral’s side of the black sheet.

Trusting in his teammate, Hiral didn’t slow, sprinting into the portal, streamers of flame wrapping around his hands and claws from Insatiable Generosity as he emerged from the other side – directly behind the rat Beastman.

Across in a vicious X, Hiral lashed out with both hands, his claws expanded with layers of Breaking, Increase, and Dreaming multiplying their power. His attack shredded what was left of the rat’s robe, revealing rotted hair and venom-infected flesh that sloughed off in great chunks to his Separation. At the same time, the flames from Seeyela’s buff spread up and across the rat’s shoulders, charring anything in its path.

Hiral only had a second to appreciate the damage he’d just done before the rat’s tail came whipping up for him. Quick applications of Rejection blocked the tail and jerked him off to the side as the ratman spun around to slash across with its own claws, though it hit nothing but air.

Skidding along the ground for less than a second, Hiral launched himself back towards the rat as Seeyela and Left arrived. With six deadly weapons coming at it from all sides, there was no way the Beastman was getting out of there without taking more heavy hits. The only question was – which one of them would it try to block?

The answer turned out to be none of them.

Instead of lifting its claws to try to parry one of the daggers stretching for its body, some kind of strange energy – it wasn’t solar – pulsed within the monster, and it threw its hand toward the ground. Smoke erupted from its feet with the gesture, and the thing’s presence completely vanished from Hiral’s sensory domain.

“It teleported!” Seeyela shouted even as the three of them cut through the rising smoke from multiple sides.

Micro-bursts of Rejection and Attraction through his scarves kept the trio from accidently hitting each other, and Hiral burst out of the other side of the smoke, eyes peeled for their enemy. Almost immediately, he spotted the rat on the top of the piled rubble of the broken pillar near where the boar battled Seena, Romin, and Wallop.

More of the strange energy preceded another hand gesture, and then suddenly there were six of the ratmen, a smug smile creasing their faces in unison.

“This one is stealing your tricks too, Hiral,” Seeyela said. “And five copies. It’s really showing you up here.”

“Don’t worry,” Hiral said. “I’ve made some improvements.” With that, Hiral poured solar energy into his runes, a clone emerging from each side of him.

At only two copies emerging, the ratman practically scoffed at him. Until those two turned to four. To sixteen. Thirty-two. Sixty-four. One-hundred-twenty-eight. Two-fifty-six. Five-hundred-twelve.

The ground around the ratman filled with Hirals, each of them cracking their knuckles, rolling their necks, or flexing their claws of Separation.

“This is a nightmare,” Seeyela said flatly, though she was smiling.

“Just for this rat,” Hiral said, then pulsed with solar energy, and all of him launched towards the rats ahead of them.

The rats – each copy far more substantial than Hiral’s clouds of solar energy – formed a circle to fend off the coming attacks. One for one, the rat’s clones were stronger than his, by far. But, he hadn’t brought these out to fight. No, like before, they were more distraction than anything else, and he began activating his Rune of Exchange.

Stretching out to Seeyela and Left as the first clones fell to a rat’s claws, he suddenly brought all three of them into deadly range. Daggers of venomous green and explosive liquid lashed out and struck immediately – like the two knew what was coming – before Hiral moved them to their next position. Rat blood splashed into the air while the victims spun in surprise.

By then, Hiral’s jump points – that’s all the clones really were – were everywhere. The sheer number of them had pushed beyond the boundary the rats had tried to enforce, swarming around them on all sides. For every one of Hiral’s clones that fell, Left, Seeyela, or Hiral himself made the Beastman pay for it in blood.

It only took seconds for the first of the five rat-doubles to fall to the barrage of attacks – mainly to a Fang of the Lady through an eye – and the next bled heavily. Hiral’s rune pulsed again and again, moving himself and his allies through the constantly shifting web of clones, focusing on that vulnerable target.

As soon as the rats began to pick up on what they were doing, Seeyela changed things up by adding her own Scything Bamfsinto the mix. Slicing wounds opened on Beastmen she teleported past, while small eruptions of flame accompanied each of her appearances thanks to Insatiable Generosity. The small change threw the rats into chaos, new wounds emerging on their bodies while the flames further obscured their vision.

Still, these were A-Rank enemies, and even though a second rat fell, the remaining four shored up their defense to even take the woman’s teleporting into account. It worked for a whole second – a dozen of Hiral’s clones falling in that time – before Left threw out the next twist.

As he replaced a clone who looked far too much like him, The Pack roared out of the double. Six wolf-like beasts with Infernal and Entropic energy running along the limbs and coating their teeth dog-piled the surprised rat right in front of them. Shaped at the equivalent of A-Rank themselves – thanks to the Second-Skin of Amin Thett – their teeth and claws tore into the poor creature, who fell amidst the snarling mass.

Three down, three to go.

But the trio wasn’t going down easily from there, fighting back – literally – tooth and claw. The three Beastmen shredded Hiral’s clones as they seemed to realize the purpose behind them, as well as their individual weakness. The clones themselves weren’t a threat, and now they knew it. They cut them apart with vicious efficiency, reducing the overall number by half in short order.

That was okay by Hiral, though. He’d used the few seconds of continued fighting to observe his enemy while still bouncing himself, Left, and Seeyela around them. They’d scored a dozen more wounds – and suffered a few of their own – but Hiral was sure of it now. The ratman couldn’t – or wouldn’t – use those strange hand-signal abilities while it had clones. And, though it’d gotten used to dealing with Hiral’s claw-attacks, there was no way it was ready for what was coming next.

Pulsing with solar energy, Hiral rapidly activated his Runes of Connection and Exchange, subtly moving his clones while whipping himself and his allies in and out of attack range. The sudden push was met with a furious counterattack, more clones exploding in puffs of solar energy, while the three rats moved back-to-back-to-back to defend themselves.

Exactly as Hiral had planned.

Another powerful burst of solar energy Exchanged Left and Seeyela with two clones on one side of the rats – closest to the most injured one – along with one more shape. Hiral, with claws of Separation glowing brighter than anything before appeared between Seeyela and Left, putting all three of them there on the weakest side.

Knowing they had to counter the combined assault, the three rats snapped their attention to the party members. Lashing out with their own natural weapons, two of the rats parried aside the four daggers coming their way, while the third met Hiral claw to claw. Except, that Hiral exploded in a cloud of solar energy.

Rat eyes widened first in surprise, then narrowed in understanding, before finally widening again in realization.

Just in time for Hiral to appear behind the three all facing in the other direction. The ground cracked at their feet as Intimidating Aura+ slowed their reactions just a fraction more, while the air tore at the Greatsword of Amin Thett coming around. With lightning arcing along the blade – thanks to Empower – the blade’s fallen-star form cut a crescent of energy directly in front of Hiral.

Two of the turning rats got completely bisected at the waist, while the third tried to lunge out of the way. That was only partially successfully, with almost a foot of blade carving a section out of the side of its abdomen.

More blood splashed along the ground as that third rat fell to the red dirt, the other two vanishing like shadows under the sun. All at once, Seeyela’s lingering venoms seemed to kick in – like they’d been slowed by getting spread amongst the five other ratmen – and the Beastman’s body convulsed in pain.

Having felt the effects of the Ghost-Web Venom, Hiral could understand the reaction. Not that he felt any pity for the monster. Left and Seeyela clearly had the same feelings on the matter, both leaping forward to plunge their weapons into the vulnerable opponent.

Up reached one of the ratman’s claws, like it stretched for the sky above, before it dropped lifelessly to the dirt beside it. With that, they finally got experience for the kill – a lot of it – and Hiral felt Allied Killing Spree restore some of his spent resources.

All in all, for how much he’d done, the expenditure hadn’t been bad. All those efficiency bonuses are paying off.

And, a look around told him the others were wrapping up their fights as well.

The poor turtle had its shell completely cracked open, its left arm was missing, and its whole body looked tenderized. Yanily finished it off with a downward spear thrust through where its heart would be, and it likewise stilled.

As for Seena’s opponent, the somewhat disturbing smell of bacon wafting across the battlefield told Hiral everything he needed to know, and, well, his sensory domain filled in the rest. The boar wouldn’t be a threat anymore.

“I think Gran was right,” Seena said.

“Don’t sound so surprised, girl,” Gran said.

“Tomorrow underestimated us,” Seena said.

“Yeah, that didn’t seem like enough for an A-Rank trial,” Yanily said.

Like it was a response to the spearman’s words, another growl echoed out of the forest of stone pillars. A second seemed to answer the first. Then came a fourth, a fifth, a sixth… more.

Before Hiral’s eyes, Beastmen came stalking out from between the pillars. Different animals, sure, but they all had one thing in common – the violent intent on their faces.

All of it directed straight at the party that was quickly growing outnumbered.

“That one’s on me,” Yanily said. “Shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Lot of Beastmen there,” Seeyela said.

“Yeah, but not enough,” Hiral said, leaning forward and his fingers tightening around his greatsword. “Let’s show Tomorrow just how much she underestimated us.”

Then, Hiral launched himself forward to meet the horde of Beastmen.