Rune Seeker

Left and Right peeled off to fall into step beside him as he started toward the approaching Lizardmen.

“Oh, somebody’s confident,” Right said.

“With good reason. That may not be the full power of the Emperor’s Greatsword, but it’s nothing to scoff at,” Left said.

“What’s the plan, Hiral?” Nivian asked as Hiral walked up beside him, then strode past.

“Back me up if I get in trouble, but I want to see what this thing can do,” Hiral said.

“Uh… did he hit his head?” Yanily asked Nivian, then looked at Hiral. “You do remember how to count, don’t you? There are five of them and… three of you. Literally. Wow, that’s still strange to say.”

“I know, the odds aren’t very good,” Hiral said.

“For them,” Right added, his entire right arm up to his shoulder flaring with purple flames along his Meridian Line.

“This shouldn’t be a problem,” Left added, his right hand going up to his left shoulder.

A blue, flaming wing erupted out to extend almost eight feet to his left, the air around it shimmering cold and dripping snowflakes. Another quick touch to his forearm, and the Dagger of Sath left a glowing trail like water behind him.

“Sorry you only got one wing,” Hiral said.

“And half of the Spear of Clouds,” Left said.

“What!?” Hiral asked, looking at Left.

“Your new runes are on your back, which activated half of our back runes,” Left said. “Unfortunately, that’s not enough to shape the spear.”

“Maybe not for you, but it got my Meridian Line on that side working,” Right said.

“Damn,” Hiral sighed, but he still turned his attention back to the Lizardmen charging at him. Just over five hundred feet away, they’d be activating their movement skills any second now, then the sorcerer would rush up and start preparing its fireball.

“We’ll back you up if we see you getting in over your head,” Right said, then he and Left stopped. “Let’s see what you can do.”

Hiral gripped the sword in both hands, the weapon practically thrumming with power, then lowered his shoulder and dashed forward at the same time the Lizardmen used their movement skills. Moving faster than they expected, he cut out wide and then in at the side of the right-most warrior just as it stopped. His sword arced out and around, a trail of energy hanging in the air behind it.

The Lizardman, no novice to battle, reacted quickly enough to start bringing its spear around to parry. Start—but not finish. Hiral’s glowing blade struck it in the upper arm, then kept going right through the chest beyond. Completely cleaving the monster in two, Hiral couldn’t help but be impressed at the sheer destructive power of the weapon, though that wasn’t even its true strength, if he understood the runes properly.

Slamming his front foot to the ground, he halted the momentum of his swing, flipped his wrist, and pushed solar energy into the gravity rune in the crystal. A thought tethered the blade’s gravity to the next Lizardman as he shifted to bring his trailing foot forward, and his backswing practically launched upward.

Even with the Lizardman’s spear in the perfect position to parry, the strike lifted the monster right off its feet and hurled it backwards—and Hiral almost went with it before he severed the gravity tether. Still, that took him out of position as the next warrior in line moved at his exposed back. He could feel it coming straight for him, expecting the easy kill. There was no way Hiral could move such a huge sword around fast enough to stop it, after all.

Except, with a touch of solar energy, the massive greatsword suddenly weighed nothing, and Hiral pivoted around on his foot, bringing the weapon up and over for a vertical, downward strike.

The Lizardman’s eyes widened in surprise, but its spear came up in a line to parry.

Another touch of solar energy removed the weightlessness of the sword, and instead multiplied the weight by a factor of over fifty. Hiral’s fingers struggled to hold on to the weapon as it crashed down on the Lizardman like a falling building, the warrior’s arms shattering as it tried to turn aside the unexpectedly heavy blow. As soon as its arms failed, the warrior’s head was next, and the ground shook a heartbeat later from the sword slamming into it.

Hiral returned the sword’s weight to normal as the Lizardman’s two halves fell in opposite directions, then turned his attention to the fireball forming over the sorcerer’s head. Have to take care of that now.

Tethering the sword’s gravity to the sorcerer, Hiral turned and heaved, throwing the sword at the distant Lizardman, whose eyes widened in shock. Then, with a touch of Rejection, he adjusted the spinning weapon to cut the sorcerer clean in half from the waist down. That just left two more warriors, and his weapon sailing away from him.

The Lizardman he’d batted away earlier was the first to react, turning from the pieces of the sorcerer still falling—and the flying sword—to charge at Hiral.

Shouldn’t have looked away… Hiral thought, then reached out with his left hand and activated his Rune of Attraction. With the momentum the sword had, it didn’t stop and return to him, but instead arched like a boomerang, swinging end around end. The poor warrior never saw it coming, and his chest exploded in a shower of blood twenty feet away. Hiral caught the hilt in his hand, then turned his attention to the fifth and final warrior.

For the first time since he’d entered the dungeon, Hiral saw one of the monsters hesitate. Its spear came up, but its eyes went to Hiral’s weapon—it’d seen how little good parrying had done its allies.

“What’s it going to be?” Hiral asked the monster, shifting his own stance to comfortably take the weapon in both hands again.

He’d mostly trained with two weapons to build ambidexterity, but his instructor had insisted he get familiar with a single, heavier sword as well. Not that the Emperor’s Greatsword was any heavier than Hiral wanted it to be at any given moment.

Still no movement from the Lizardman, so Hiral darted in, his Dex giving him a speed near the top end of E-Rank, and beyond what the warrior could handle. He swept his blade across from the right, letting the warrior get its spear up in time to parry, but didn’t add any of the gravity-manipulated weight to the blow. As soon as the weapons touched, Hiral cocked the blade back and around to attack from the other side.

The warrior parried again as it stepped back, confusion on its face as to why it wasn’t dead yet.

Because I need practice using the runes.

Again, as soon as the weapons hit, Hiral brought his sword back, up, and then straight down, this time pulsing solar energy into the rune. When the warrior brought its spear up to parry, the unexpected weight drove its weapon down, and the edge of Hiral’s sword bit into its shoulder. Though he could’ve ended the fight right then and there, he quickly withdrew, a line of blood following his blade as he double-stepped back.

Free hand going to its shoulder wound, the Lizardman lifted its spear straight at Hiral in challenge, then charged in. The movement skill came first, trying to catch Hiral off guard, but he’d seen it more than a dozen times by this point, and he simply shifted his feet and brought his sword over beside his body to block the horizontal cut. Next was a withdrawal and quick stab, lightning fast with the warrior’s natural strength, but an application of solar energy made Hiral’s sword as light as a feather, and he easily slid it into place to block the thrust.

A feint, thrust, slash combo came next, aiming to catch Hiral’s lead leg with the final blow. He neatly parried it all aside with his sword, each time adjusting how much solar energy he fed into the blade to see the effects. With the next one—a slash at his right shoulder—he pushed the sword’s weight in the opposite direction, more than doubling it, and blew the warrior’s attack away with his parry.

The instant the Lizardman shuffled off balance, Hiral readjusted the weight of the weapon in quick succession, going from heavy to light to very heavy, then tethered it to the Lizardman. Like the creature knew what was coming, it didn’t even bother bringing its weapon up to try to parry, and its decapitated head fell to the ground a second later.

“You made that look easy,” Right said, coming over to join him with Left.

Hiral dropped straight to a cross-legged seated position in response, the energy-half of his weapon vanishing. “This thing gulps up solar energy like you wouldn’t believe,” he said, his capacity barely at three percent after the fight.

“Not like you started at full,” Left said.

“No, but I’ll never be at full using it,” Hiral said. “I’ll need more practice to conserve energy as I fight.”

“You sure you want to?” Seena asked as she walked over.

“And that’s the power of an S-Rank weapon, folks,” Yanily added as he followed.

Hiral was already shaking his head. “I wasn’t using it at any more than E-Rank. That was maybe two percent of its power.”

Yanily openly gaped at Hiral, then looked from his spear to Hiral’s sword. “Not that I don’t love you, baby, but when are you going to do that?” he asked the spear.

“Two percent, and it was that one-sided? And they were Elites,” Seena said.

The mention of Elitesreminded Hiral of his One Man Army achievement, and sure enough, the bonus now sat at fifteen percent.

One percent per solo kill?

“If we weren’t sitting here farming enemies on a predictable schedule, I wouldn’t want to be so low on energy. I would’ve had to fight differently. Don’t worry, though. I’ll figure it out with a bit more practice.”

“Any chance we can help?” Yanily asked flatly. “I mean, yeah, we got experience for them, but no chance to improve our skills. I’ve gotta get all my skills to the top of D-Rank now!”

“Sorry,” Hiral said. “That was selfish of me. Wait, you got experience without doing anything?”

“We did,” Vix said.

“Well, that’s good to know. In the dungeons, you get credit just for being here,” Hiral said, filing away the interesting tidbit for later.

“Either way, it’s fine,” Seena said, glaring at Yanily. “At least he’s already D-Rank himself.”

“And now I’ve got to get to C-Rank. Do you have any idea how much experience I need for that?” Yanily shot back.

“Yes, you’ve only been telling us since you evolved,” Vix said. “Or maybe unevolved is more accurate for you.”

“Ouch,” Yanily said, putting his hand over his heart. “You wound me.”

“Wule, patch up Yanily’s ego, would you?” Seena asked before turning her attention back to Hiral. “If you’re going mix and match using your RHCs and that sword, we’re going to need to work it into our tactics. Everybody, let’s use these next few groups of Lizardmen to do that. We’ve still got more than ninety minutes before we need to go take care of the Prince.”

“Unless Hiral solos it too,” Yanily said, pouting.

“He’s not going to solo the Boss,” Seena deadpanned, then glanced at Hiral sideways. “Right?”

“Uh, no way,” he said, though the image of leaping onto its back, driving the sword in, and maximizing its gravity did pop into his mind. Would that work…? “We’ve got to use the totems, after all,” he said instead.

The looks on everybody else’s faces told him they knew what he was thinking, and he gave them his best innocent smile.

Nobody believed it.

“Whatever,” he grumbled.

Seena chuckled at them, then clapped her hands together. “Let’s just get back to farming before we finish up in here.”

Everybody looked at each other, the same worries about the other party passing through their heads, followed by the question of what they’d find when they got out. Like before, though, nobody voiced the concerns, and instead they turned their attention to the next group of distant warriors.

They couldn’t leave the dungeon early, and worrying wouldn’t do them any good. They’d deal with whatever was waiting for them on the outside when they left the dungeon. But first…

“Uh, actually,” Hiral said, scratching his nose as they looked at him again.

“Hey, you said we could help,” Yanily said.

“It’s not that,” Hiral said quickly. “I got an idea from the last fight. I need a few minutes to figure out if it’ll work. So, could you…?”

“He wants to be lazy again,” Seena said. “Solos one group and then he thinks he can just sit back and relax while the rest of us do the work.”

“It’s not like that at all!” Hiral said. “Okay, maybe part of it is! Shouldn’t take long, though. One group, tops. I’ll be ready for the next one.”

“Not if you keep talking,” Seena said, and led the party around to make sure they were between Hiral and the next Lizardman party approaching them in the distance.

“Thanks,” Hiral said, then turned his attention to the sword across his lap. The way he’d tethered its gravity to the warriors and then later used his Rune of Attraction to pull it back after he’d thrown it—could he combine the two? With the idea in mind, he got to work experimenting.

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