Rune Seeker

Matter. Energy. Reality. It all ceased to exist within the path of the Fallen’s terrible onslaught of raw energy. The beam scoured a long, thousand-foot furrow in the earth where it struck the island, digging out a new ravine which immediately began to fill with water. Rock and debris were devoured along with everything else, and the powerful attack vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, no evidence left of what had caused the trail of destruction.

Vorinal, supreme in his power, gazed down on the devastation he’d wrought, and then his jaw dropped when he looked at the beginning of the newly carved canyon.

When he looked at the man still standing there.

Hiral, his body uncomfortably light, saw the notification pop up in the corner of his vision, but he didn’t need to read it to know what it said.

(Lost) That All You Got? has activated.

Remaining health: 1%

Cooldown remaining: 20 hours

Thanks to Yanily giving him Turn Back the Clock, he’d been able to reset all his cooldowns, including the slightly overpowered one that could cheat death. Still, it had been disorienting to be… disintegrated. To feel every cell of his body get incinerated in a flash. And then for it to all be gone as it if were his imagination.

My health at 1% isn’t my imagination. Huh, but I still have all my buffs.

Power flowing through his limbs, a quick look showed the others taking care of the remaining spheres, which meant this was his window of opportunity to actualize his plan. With the Fallen staring at him in utter shock, Hiral took the Emperor’s Greatsword in both hands and lifted it above his head. A thread of solar energy activated Double Trouble+, increasing the potency of his next cooldown ability by 100%.

Then, focusing on the Chord of the Primal Echo that practically sang to him, he breathed in and activated Terminal. Potential erupted out of him in a silent wave that washed across the island, rippling air, earth, and rain. Ambient solar energy bloated and constricted simultaneously, and lightning froze in the clouds above as if it didn’t know which direction it should go. Thunder echoed and rebounded in on itself, canceling out its own fury. The three Primal projections even paused in their battles against the monstrous squids, their attention briefly turned in the direction of… of what?

Congratulations. Achievement unlocked – By the Power of…!

You’re not? You are!

Please access a Dungeon Interface to unlock class-specific reward.

Hiral dismissed the strange notification and focused his solar energy into the sword held aloft above his head, the wording of Terminal floating through his mind.

Terminal (Active) – Once per 24 hours, you may initiate an ability or item at its maximum Rank for up to 180 seconds.

Or item.

The limits on the Emperor’s Greatsword detonated with tremendous force, cracking the ground at Hiral’s feet, while the blade erupted in size. The sword’s fallen-star form was now almost half-a-mile tall and hundreds of feet wide. Shimmering runes lined the glowing blade, and the clouds directly above Hiral fled in every direction, spiraling outward until sunlight streamed down on him.

Vorinal’s ocean of power vanished within the massive sword, sucked in at the same time it gobbled up natural solar energy so quickly the sky began to darken again. Hiral’s muscles strained as he shifted his feet, the seals on the sword growing visible to his eyes as gigantic chains wrapped around the blade.

He’d managed to unlock its S-Rank power—no, greater than that, thanks to Double Trouble—but not its full power. And it would only last seconds at most.

It’ll have to be enough.

As Hiral shifted his left foot forward, Vorinal finally snapped out of his shocked stupor, pushing as much solar energy as he could into his shield. If it held, Hiral had no more aces up his sleeve. If Hiral punched through, even the Fallen would be in danger. But, by the look on Vorinal’s face, the man was more than confident in his defenses.

So Hiral smiled back, then stepped forward and began his swing.

The massive blade of the Emperor’s Greatsword almost looked like it was moving in slow motion—the distant clouds where the tip pointed cleaving apart as the weapon moved, the weight of it like shifting a mountain. In that instant between suspension and motion, Hiral snapped out tethers of Attraction, yanking his party towards him, then turned his full attention back to the moving weapon.

Runes of Gravity, Energy, and Separation spread along the blade at a thought, and it suddenly leapt forward, so fast it became nothing more than a wide crescent of light. An ever-so-gentle tug on his wrist changed the angle of his cut by a bare degree, and he knew a critical hit was coming—along with all the bonus damage that came with it.

SCHOOOOM! Hiral swept the blade not at Vorinal or his powerful shield, but instead at the ground at the base of the tower. At the root system glowing red thanks to Seena’s Target ability. At the one place not protected by the Fallen or constructed with the nearly indestructible stones.

The sword cut earth and rock like they weren’t even there. Weakened and colored by the Fallen’s corruption, the twisted veins just beneath the tower shattered at the slightest touch, cutting off Vorinal’s connection to the island. Debris and dust blasted out the far side as the Emperor’s Greatsword finished its swinging arc, once again reverting to its usual size as its power surge expired.

“What have you…?” Vorinal started to ask as the whole edge of the island shifted and began to fall where it’d been completely cut off from the main section.

Dropping the sword to the ground, Hiral thrust out his hands and pushed every remaining ounce of solar energy into his Runes of Rejection and Connection. Using himself as the push point would only result in him rocketing back towards the city. But, by changing the connection point to the cut edge of the island…

The small piece of land where Vorinal’s tower resided jerked away from the main island. It wasn’t much—barely more than a few feet—but then gravity took over from there. Hiral dropped to his knees in exhaustion, but he didn’t need to follow his party members over to the new edge to know what was happening; he could feel it through the Rune of Connection.

Vorinal, still trapped within the top of his tower, flipped end over end as he fell through the sky. Hiral winced as the tower dropped toward the Growers’ islands almost two miles below—would his push be enough to…? The tower clipped the Grandfather’s island as it passed, stone exploding from the impact and sending Vorinal’s tower into an even more severe spin.

Around and around it went, falling three miles, four, five, six, seven… Hiral’s connection broke from the distance.

That… had to be it. Nine miles to the surface—even one of the Fallen should have trouble surviving a fall like that. All they needed was…

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Dynamic Quest Complete

Congratulations. Achievement unlocked – I Wasn’t Worried for a Second

Uh… wow.

Something Done: 1/1

Hiral couldn’t help himself from chuckling at the notification. Even the PIMP was surprised they’d pulled that off. As soon as he closed it, a second one appeared.

Dynamic Quest Complete

Congratulations. Achievement unlocked – When Words Don’t Work…

You defeated the Infested and (sort of) prevented it from (fully) releasing the Fallen.

Infested Defeated: 1/1

Fallen Contained: 0/1

Fallen Dealt With: 1/1

His eyes lingered on the wording at the end of the notification. Dealt with. Not killed. Not defeated. Not destroyed. Dealt with. Was Vorinal still alive? Even after that fall?

He didn’t get a chance to consider the answer before something slammed into him from the side and sent him careening to the ground.

“You did it!” Seena said, wrapping her arms around him even as he realized nothing was trying to kill him.

“Careful, careful!” he said. “One percent health here.”

Even a too-tight hug might be enough to finish him off until he had the solar energy to get High-Speed Regeneration+ working. Then again, as he looked at his status window, he noted the Aura of the Mother of Flame was slowly restoring him already. Maybe a hug wouldn’t be so bad after all.

“It’s done, then?” Seeyela asked as she Bamf’d beside them.

“That seems to be what the notification says,” Yanily said, also landing nearby.

“Yan, what are you still doing here?” Seena asked, pushing herself up while leaving one hand on Hiral’s chest and keeping him on the ground. “Get the Spear of Clouds back down to the Grandfather!”

“Uh, was thinking since we didn’t get a notification for it…” Yanily started, only for a window to pop up in front of Hiral’s eyes.

Dynamic Quest

Fallen Reach is beset on all sides by a powerful storm and the more powerful creatures lurking within.

Return the key to keeping the storm at bay to its current owner.

Spear of Clouds returned: 0/1

“Should’ve known,” Yanily grumbled.

“Good chance for you to see Thunderslippers,” Hiral said. “I bet he missed you.”

“His name is Thunderclaws!” Yanily rolled his eyes. “You’re right, though.” The next second, a thick mist with sparking electricity billowed out of his Interspatial Ring, and the gryphon pranced happily over to nuzzle up against the spearman. “Yeah, I missed you too, bud.”

“We won’t be able to keep up, but I’ll go too, just in case,” Seeyela said, Bliss already prancing up beside her. The Nightmare glanced down at Hiral, holding his eyes for the briefest of seconds as if acknowledging him, then looked away again. It didn’t even snort dismissively at him. “We’ll be back as soon as it’s done. You two okay cleaning up the Shaper mess?”

“Us four will handle it just fine,” Right said, joining them with Left at his side.

Seeyela nodded her apology for leaving the doubles out, and then she and Yanily were gone.

“How you doing, Hiral?” Seena asked after watching her sister and Yanily vanish over the edge of the island.

“Better. Cycling makes a huge difference, and High-Speed Regeneration+ along with that aura of yours is patching me up.”

“Let me speed things up, just in case.” Left touched his Waters of Frey tattoo, and Hiral instantly felt his health shoot up. “That’s just about the end of my solar energy, though, so try not to get completely annihilated again.”

“Uh…” Hiral started, glaring at his double for bringing that up, then looked at Seena.

“Oh, I’m mad, alright,” she said. “And we are definitely going to talk about it. Later. For now, though, some of those Shapers are still on their feet.”

“Yeah… later,” Hiral agreed, extending his hand to Right to help him up. As soon as he was on his feet again, he looked at Seena and his double. “Well, let’s go see whose side they’re on at this point.”

Right slapped a fist into his other open palm, infernal flames flaring along his Meridian Lines. “I’ve still got some left in the tank if they need some convincing.”

“Hopefully it doesn’t come to that after everything that’s happened,” Hiral said, kicking one of the seemingly inert spheres on the ground with his toe. It didn’t move. Cutting Vorinal off from the island—literally—had removed his control of the constructs, and hundreds of the things littered the ground.

Hrm, I wonder…

Hiral spotted a couple of the more intact devices as he walked with the others towards the Shapers, and he nonchalantly sucked them into his Ring of Amin Thett.

“Uh, Hiral?” Seena said.

“They could be useful later. Just a few…” Despite his words, he’d grabbed close to twenty of them by the time they reached the site of the Shapers’ battle.

Unsurprisingly, it was Loan and Ilrolik who separated from the crowd and approached the party. Blood ran freely from dozens of wounds, and numerous burn-lines traced along their bodies where they’d been hit by the spheres.

“The rebels have been… suppressed,” Ilrolik said.

Hiral leaned to the side to look past the muscular woman. There weren’t more than ten Shapers on their feet at this point. Half of the remaining were sitting, while the rest lay on the ground—whether they were dead or just resting was impossible to tell without a closer look.

“We took care of the… the cause of all this,” Seena replied.

“I saw.” Loan’s hands dropped on Hiral’s shoulders. “That was magnificent. Truly. Well done, Hiral, well done. I’m sure half the island saw that sword stretching to the clouds, and I’ll make sure everybody knows who was holding it.”

Heat climbed up Hiral’s neck at the praise from his teacher, one of the few people whose opinions actually mattered. “Please don’t. Then they’ll just be challenging me in the Amphitheatre of the Sun, and I’ve had my fill of that place for the time being.”

“Hah, let them challenge you,” Loan said. “They’d regret it.”

Hiral thought about it for a second, then nodded. “Yeah, they would,” he replied with a smile.

“The storm?” Ilrolik interrupted.

“We sent the spear back down to the Grandfather,” Seena said. “It should be there any minute now…”

Just then, a huge pulse of energy washed up through the island and into the sky. Visible to the naked eye, the column of light reached the clouds and then began to push them back from a central point. Widening by hundreds of feet per second, the hole grew to reveal clear, blue sky beyond.

As the clouds rushed past the silhouettes of the primal projections, the images faded, though a sense of their power—and approval—lingered. The monstrous squids they’d been battling shrieked as their cover and precious rain were removed, then vanished from sight. Without the falling water to make their large bodies visible, it was impossible for those watching from the island to spot them. Even Hiral, with his high Atn, couldn’t see them. Though, by the way the pained shrieks faded, the squids were fleeing just as fast as the rain.

The clouds moved further and further away, the last of the lingering rain splashing to the ground and rainbows springing up to replace them.

“The spear is returned?” Loan asked.

Dynamic Quest Complete!

The Spear of Clouds has been returned to its rightful resting place until it’s needed again.

Spear of Clouds returned: 1/1

Note: No, you’re not getting an achievement for this.

Hiral grumbled a little at the note, but it wasn’t exactly unfair. Their reward for returning the spear was the fact they got to keep living. All in all, a pretty good prize.

As soon as Hiral closed the notification window, though, a final one appeared in front of him.

Wild Dungeon – The Fall of Fallen Reach: Complete

New Record

Time: 2:18:59

Congratulations. Achievement Unlocked – Still Standing.

You have played a pivotal role in achieving a critical victory in the survival of your people. Of the world.

Please access a Dungeon Interface to unlock class-specific reward.

Hiral read the notification twice before looking at Seena to find a huge smile on her face. They really had done it this time. Wrapping an arm around her waist, he pulled her in close to him, and the two of them stepped away from the large Shapers to look at the distant storm wall.

Fallen Reach didn’t fall. Despite the destruction they were sure to find as a result of the storm, they’d saved their islands and their peoples. And, somehow more immediate than all that, they had Yanily back.

It was time to start thinking about later.

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