Rune Seeker

Plan explained to the others – and their roles given in quick succession – Hiral and Left swept down out of the sky toward the massive brass beast below them. At the same time, the other raid-group members came at it from all sides.

Devison and Yanily – the fastest besides Seeyela, Hiral, and Left – leapt from sky-scraping rooftop to rooftop. Using nothing more than their B-Ranked bodies, they vaulted dizzying heights over the streets far below, until they closed the distance. Another leap or two would get them to their destination, except the swarm of metal flyers suddenly changed their flight patterns.

From circling above the 0M3G4 W34P0N in three iteratively larger rings, the bottom – and smallest – circle broke apart into two halves, each lancing at one of the two damage-dealers approaching.

“I can fry some of these, right?” Yanily asked.

“Clear a path,” Hiral told the Spear of the Storm, and Yanily leapt from the final rooftop, his body exploding with power.

The wings of storm and lightning on his back more than doubled in size, while heavy scales covered his body. His draconic head appeared with an echoing roar – and a Debilitating Roar, by how the flyers seemed to stutter in the air – before he thrust forward with his spear.

Electricity dancing across his body and the weapon in his hand, it came as no surprise when thick ropes of lightning lunged forward. With claws, teeth, and wings of its own, the Chain Lightning+ looked more and more like a stampede of unchained dragons with every cast of it, and it tore toward the momentarily frozen flock of flyers.

An almost literal wall of black stood in front of Yanily, as if it were a huge swarm of insects – each the size of a large bird – to block his path. From appearances, they looked similar to the ones Nivian’s party had battled in the tower-siege trial, which meant they’d have finger-length barrels on their backs to spit beams of high-intensity energy. Individually, they’d be little threat to an A-Rank opponent – or a strong B-Rank one – but with the sheer number of them, they could be dangerous.

Luckily, Yanily wasn’t just ‘could be’ dangerous. He was simply plain-old, outright, dangerous.

The first flyer his lightning struck ceased to exist within a heartbeat, while arcs of crackling energy spread in all directions like a net. From flyer to flyer to flyer – so on and so forth – the cascading electricity spread a web across the sky in front of him. Dust and small pieces of broken machines fell from the air like heavy rain from the initial hundred-foot radius of his strike-point.

And yet, that was as far as the absolute destruction went. While hundreds of the things had died in the blink of an eye – stacking up the group’s Allied Killing Spree+ and even Ever Evolving – nothing beyond that hundred-foot range died. Damaged, sure, but still flying.

“Stronger than they look,” Yanily said, another pulse of energy from his wings rocketing him forward and into the opening even as the swarm began to close. Dozens – hundreds – of red glows began all at once, the quick flyers moving in coordinated perfection, and suddenly Yanily was within a sphere of black. Almost like they’d sacrificed hundreds of their numbers – and planned for it all along – to capture Yanily like this, the flyers simultaneously opened fire.

Beams raced for the surrounded spearman with pinpoint accuracy, each closing to a few scarce inches before he seemed to even react.

Inches was all he needed, his body transforming into a bolt of lightning itself before he suddenly jerked straight up. Skyfall+ tore a hole through the collapsing sphere even as the beams struck time and time again, then reached the “ceiling” of the Cradle before jerking back down. More of the flyers evaporated in his descent, and Yanily slammed into one of the crystal domes Seeyela had identified. More lightning arced out from the point of impact, dancing along the brass and sparking as it tried to burrow deeper.

As for the dome? It’d cracked. Barely. An inch around where the spear had struck, and that was it. Atop it and looking down in clear surprise, Yanily smoked in dozens of places from where the flyers’ beams had struck his lightning form. While the change to Skyfall had protected him from the worst of the damage, it clearly wasn’t complete immunity from attacks.

And, all around the massive W34P0N, similar scenes were playing out, with the other two swarms having dissolved into smaller hunting packs to go after the party members. Even Left and Hiral had a large group racing in their direction.

“Going to be hard to focus on the nodes with these hassling us,” Left said, Daggers of En and Sath forming in hand. Really, they weren’t the best weapons for the enemies in front of them, but he didn’t have a lot of better options. Without access to the Way of Light tattoo – or the Spear of Clouds, since Hiral didn’t have the Edict of Piercing – his choices for dealing with swarm-type enemies were very limited. In fact, Hiral and has double had relied a lot on his other party members – namely Seena, Seeyela, and Yanily – to deal with large groups of weak enemies.

“Domains,” Hiral said into the party chat, partly to answer Left, and to give permission for the others to use them. Yan’s and Seena’s especially would wreak havoc on smaller enemies like this. Though, looking at the sheer size of their main opponent – almost eight-hundred feet long, not including the tails – their domains wouldn’t even cover the entire thing. Then again, the decision was to cull the flyers supporting it more than injuring it. Any damage it took from the domains would just be a bonus.

They still wouldn’t help Hiral and Left up there in the sky though, and Hiral’s domain wouldn’t do much of anything against what was coming for them.

Luckily for him, there were a few things he wanted to test, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Forging claws of Separation on his right hand as he and Left raced forward, he stuffed the blades full of other runic energy. Of course, there were the usual suspects. Energy and Separation were two of the prime ingredients for this self-made ability, as well as a solid dose of Expansion to give the claws shape.

This time, though, Hiral added a lot more Expansion, almost a ridiculous amount in a lot of ways. He even tried something a bit new, by adding it in partitions. If this worked – or at least didn’t explode outright in his face – the new technique he was trying – to section the runic properties – could revolutionize how he used the runes. There were just a few things he had to finish first.

Threads of Breaking and Impact joined the clusters of Expansion, to which – on a whim – he added in the same formula of Gravity and Connection he’d used to make his Gravity bombs. Next came Increase to make sure the whole plan had enough punch to deal with the flyers, and he topped it all off with Dreaming.

The Rune of Dreaming seemed to be the key to making his will more a reality than anything else. Even better, he could use it in such a way he didn’t trigger his Rune of Eclipse and still get just that small hint of its power.

With all that done – he hadn’t even realized he’d instinctively activated his time runes, which he released – Hiral swept his right hand out and around. Releasing part of his hold over the claws at his fingertips, edges more than razor-sharp cut across the space between him and the 0M3G4 W34P0N.

And the flyers in his way.

In four lines directly in front of him, everything seemed to slant to the side. The flyers he’d struck separated into two pieces so perfectly, they continued to fly toward him for a second before they even realized they’d been severed. And it wasn’t just one or two flyers, but dozens – hundreds – of them in the horizonal lines from one edge of the sky to the other.

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Still, with how sharpSeparation was, thousands of the flying constructs remaining completely untouched. Only those specifically along the lines of his cut had been destroyed. Which was exactly why Hiral triggered the second part of his ability in the heartbeat after his hand swept past.

To his eyes, the slash and parting of the flyers had happened almost in slow motion. To anybody else – including the small constructs – it would’ve barely been two blinks. So, when the next part of his attack came, it was actually almost instantaneous.

All along the cuts across the sky, his held-clusters of runic power erupted. Four rows of consecutive blasts exploded from right to left, following the path of his swing. The spaces so briefly seen as safe between the cuts filled with spheres of destructive Energy, Breaking, Impact, and Expansion.

Flying constructs were shattered, broken, swallowed, incinerated, blasted, and annihilated in quick succession, leaving a space forty feet from top to bottom completely free of the black pests. And through that space, Hiral and Left hurtled toward the W34P0N.

“Effective,” Left said, no beams racing in their direction yet.

Must be a limited range on them.

“Still not what I was hoping it would be,” Hiral said instead of dwelling on the flyers’ weapons’ range. “It only really worked because of how individually weak these are. Against any true A-Rank enemy – or even B-Rank, probably – that would’ve barely scratched them.”

“It did the job it needed to,” Left countered. “You can keep refining it as we go.”

“True,” Hiral agreed, arriving at the massive back of the W34P0N and dropping to all fours to absorb some of his momentum, then dashing off again as more of the flyers converged on their position. High above, storm clouds had materialized to blot out the clear sky, ominous thunder rumbling within. Then the first lightning bolt came, searing down through the swarm of black constructs to sizzle harmlessly on the titan’s back. At least the flyers the bolt had struck were blasted out of the air.

And more came after the first, Yanily’s domain taking hold of the area. Several bolts fell every second, coming down like rain, though it still wasn’t enough to handle the seemingly endless number of flying constructs on its own. To Hiral’s senses, he felt the unmistakable solar energy of Seena’s domain as well, this one below the giant Mecha-Armor, as they likely dealt with their own flyers down there. Beams and flashes of red burst from within the buildings that still stood nearby, as more of the party members engaged the horde.

Back and across, Hiral swept each of his hands, the blades of detonating Separation slicing into the area around him. More cascading explosions ripped apart the small, metal bodies by the dozens, but more always appeared to fill the gaps. At his side, Left shaped his new Bond of the Hidden Prince, a glorious eagle forming to rest on his arm. A shrug, and the double launched the eagle into the air.

On its own, barely bigger than the flyers it was sent to fight, it wouldn’t be able to offer much to the ongoing battle. Yes, it was A-Rank in power – thanks to the bonuses from the Second-Skin of Amin Thett – but its claws and beak were its only weapon. Until, that was, Left reached for this next tattoos. First came his Wings of Anella – even though he already had them on his own shoulders – and blue flames engulfed the Bond’s wings.

Now, as the Bond streaked through the ranks for metal flyers, every touch of its – Her? – wings coated the enemies in thick ice, blocking them weapons or weighing them out of the sky. Left wasn’t done, either, hands going next to his wrists, where the Daggers of En and Sath sat. Purple and red energy burst from the Bond’s claws as the infernal and entropic energies took hold, while flickers of black – like ink in the fire – swam within. Of course, the signature streams of liquid trailed behind the eagle, painting her path through the sky, until she chose a target.

A lightning-fast swoop, the trails of racing to catch up, then a detonation that obliterated the flyer – and everything within ten feet of it – and she was moving again. With her clearing her own path of destruction, Left next shaped The Pack, with the six huge wolves materializing at his side. Without even a word from the double, they howled – buffing Hiral and Left, while also debuffing the nearby flyers – then dashed out in every direction. Powerful legs launched even more powerful jaws to crush low-flying constructs that thought to sneak up on their summoner. Razor-sharp claws likewise lashed out and reaped lives as they passed.

The wolves themselves couldn’t fly, but it turned out they could jump the same distance as the apparent range on the flyers’ weapons. Neither side was safe, and both landed attack after attack, though The Pack was the more durable of the bunch. Heavy spines that emerged from the wolf-live creatures went a long way to dulling the bite of the energy beams, though as more and more struck, it was clear they would only last a few minutes at most.

“That’s the best I can offer for this type of enemy,” Left said, leaving his companions to do their grisly work. “More of those AFC-833’s are coming from the shoulder appendages too.”

“A..F…?” Hiral started to ask, then View finally activated as he focused on a flyer that didn’t die the instant his eyes settled on it.

(Construct) Autonomous Flying Construct-833 – Low-A-Rank

Ah, AFC. Wait… 833? Hiral looked at the massive creature beneath his feet – which oddly hadn’t really moved yet – and then thought back to the Mecha-Armor they’d fought. He couldn’t help but groan at Tomorrow’s naming conventions. 833… BEE?

“Of course she called them bees,” he mumbled, lashing out at another swarm of them heading in his direction. “We need to do something about the… about the hives where they’re coming from, or we’re going to be fighting these things forever.”

“Hives?” Seena asked. “Oh, I see. Bees. Hives. Do you two have the same sense of naming or something?”

“Fenil was always much worse than Hiral,” Gran cackled over the party chat. “If you can believe it.”

“I can’t,” Left and Right said at the same time.

“Regardless!” Hiral interrupted before the bullying from his own doubles could start. “The large, curved spines or horns or whatever they are…”

“They aren’t horns,” Romin said. “According to Wallop. They aren’t elegant enough.”

“Fine, the spines,” Hiral said. “Those are where the bees are coming out of. We’ve seen our own constructs back at the fortress getting made before our eyes, with smaller things coming faster. I wouldn’t be surprised if this thing could make an endless amount. So, the hives need to be taken care of. I’ll…”

“Nope,” Seena interrupted. “Overruled.”

“Huh?” Hiral stuttered.

“Party-leader prerogative here,” Seena explained. “You, Yan, and Right need to take out those dome-node things. You have the best-single target options for it. Seeyela is…”

“Working on something else,” the other sister said, and Hiral noticed he didn’t actually know where the woman was. He couldn’t sense her at all. As the raid leader, he should probably know what she was up to… but… he honestly found he didn’t mind. He trusted her.

“Gran,” Seena continued. “Think you can handle one of those hives?”

“I’ll sew it up nice and tight,” the vampire said. “But I won’t be destroying it, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Igwanda will take care of that,” Nivian said, even though he’d yet to make an appearance – he was waiting until the W34P0N itself moved.

“I’m embarrassed to say it will take more than one shot,” Igwanda said, a powerful arrow booming through the sky to slam into the base of the spine on the left shoulder. While it didn’t blow the thing clear off – the spine was the size of a building, after all – it did take a chunk out of the brass.

“Got your back,” Dole said, and Hiral spotted the man’s chains shooting up from a distant rooftop to engage the nearby bees.

At the same time, a sequential line of Grans, like dozens of still-images of her one after the other – courtesy of her strange movement ability – brought the woman to hover near that same spine. Out thrust her hands, dozens of crimson needles and strings shooting from the depths of her sleeves.

Bees between her and the spine did nothing to stop the racing needles, their own bodies left impaled and hanging on the threads as her ability continued ahead. Within heartbeats the needles reached the side of the spine-hives – dozens of bees killed along the way – and began their work on the massive, porous structure.

With nearly thirty needles and threads working at one time, Gran’s hands moved like those of a conductor, waving and weaving with every motion. Somehow, though her needles couldn’t punch through the heavy brass, she could still slip a little through the surface, giving her threads an anchor point.

“How…?” he started to ask, hands lashing out more Separation to give the woman space to work.

“Girl’s gotta have her secrets,” Gran cackled, though Hiral noticed the Shard of the Lost Epochglowing where it hovered behind her.

“Finotol,” Nivian cut in over the party chat. “Take over covering Gran for Hiral.”

“On it,” the Bonder said, and it only took a few seconds for sling stones to begin exploding around the vampire.

With that side taken care of, it just left…

“I’ve got the other spine,” Drahn said into the party chat. “Pollen Poison seems effective not just on the bees themselves, but on the systems making them. It’ll take me a few minutes to dose the entire thing, but consider it done.”

“And I’ll keep the AFCs off you,” Sera said. “They seem quite vulnerable to system interference, cutting them off from the larger swarm. I have several debuffs that fit the requirement.”

With the two spines – and the swarms of bees coming from them – basically taken care of, Hiral turned his attention to the real task at hand.

Finding a way to take down the 0M3G4 W34P0N itself.