Rune Seeker

“Hit it hard!” Seena shouted, seeing the same thing Hiral had. Hands straight above her head, she held what looked like a sun of condensed plasma. The same attack she’d used to finish off Banst, though this one radiated an even more powerful aura. Air around her popped and sizzled at the same time the Aura of the Void-Venom Empress buffed the party members.

Considering what she’d said before, this had to be most – if not all – of her remaining solar energy. An arch of her back, and she hurled it forward. Right towards where Yanily and Hiral still stood.

But he couldn’t leave. Not yet. Piercing changed to Separation on Hiral’s extended hand, and he ripped both hands out to his sides. On his right, the Greatsword of Amin Thett shredded back the way it had come, another tail of Expansion tearing a huge gouge out of the Boss’s face. On his left, the blade was thinner, but longer, slicing up and out at an angle, coming through the Colossus’s forehead.

Apparently, the inside of the thing wasn’t nearly as durable as the outer armor.

The split roots broke under the force of the extraction, but not before they tore at more of the inner workings.

Then they had to leave, the fire getting uncomfortably close. Rejection powered him away and to the side, a split second before the streaking sun struck the Colossus right between the eyes. Compared to the sheer size of the thing’s head, it honestly looked more like a finger-flick than anything that would do damage.

Until it exploded.

And a second sun hit immediately after, triggered by Resonance of Heroes.

Plasma erupted to wash down across the bridge of the nose and up across the forehead, searing light joining the oppressive temperature. Even moving away from the point of impact, heat scalded Hiral’s back, but he had to turn to see if it had been enough.

The health bar above the Boss’s head had dropped precariously – which almost surprised Hiral, until he remembered Right and Seeyela working away inside the thing’s chest – but the horns still glowed. Worse, whatever they were doing was nearing completion. Fully charged and glowing, a ball of energy began to form just in front of and between the horns. Color bled from the room as the swirling mass of energy grew in strength.

Oh shit, this is the same as Yanily’s Dragon’s Breath!

If that thing got released in there – at that size – the backlash alone would fill the room, before the primary blast tore through the rest of the dungeon. There was no way the researchers would survive. Then again, with his eyes on the building power, Hiral was far more worried about his party’s continued existence.

Acting on instinct, Hiral flipped in the air, Rejection and the Path of Butterflies solidifying under his feet before he shot back in the opposite direction – towards the death ball. Dreaming reduced the heat as he cut into it, and his fingers tightened around the hilt of the Greatsword of Amin Thett. Trying to meet the blast head on would never work – it was far too powerful. But, maybe he didn’t have to.

And the Chord of the Primal Echo seemed to be telling him the same thing. Judging by the speed of the power coiling and compressing in on itself, he’d have one chance at this.

“Left,” he said simply into the party chat, no time for more. The double would know what he needed – they were one in the same, after all.

Then Hiral was there, arm coming up and over, dragging an arc of Separation around on the greatsword. Gravity and Breaking added their own power, though he didn’t bother with any of his other runes. No, simple was better. Focused. Overwhelming.

Overpowered.

A buff notification flashed in the corner of his vision, though he didn’t have time to pay attention to it, his blade nearing its target. Empower and Follow-Up Blow triggered, borrowing power from Seena’s raging-sun attack to engulf his sword in plasma, while he activated Right Back At You. With the massive, sweeping hand he’d avoided – twice – his sword practically ballooned with power.

It would be enough.

Sching was the only sound his attack made – a critical hit, thanks to Seeyela’s Aura – cleaving directly through the tip of the gigantic, left-most horn. Just a foot of brass, that was all he cut off, but as soon as he did, the compressed ball of energy suddenly distended. Warped and pear-shaped in an instant, the integrity of the powerful attack completely fell apart.

Which – of course – meant it exploded. With Hiral right next to it.

Just before the expanding energy reached him, his sensory domain told him Seena wrapped the nearby people in her defensive ability. Then, all he saw – and felt – was the energy. It completely enveloped him, turning the world a searing white even as he closed his eyes. Surprisingly, there was no impact to the blast reaching him, just sheer and pure energy.

Reflexively, he reached out with his own Runes of Dreaming and Energy to counter the wave – much like he did against the Guardian in the Lost Refuge of the Lost – but it was like blowing on the ocean in a storm. There was simply too much energy.

Still, as he floated there in the energy, time seemed to slow. He was surrounded by it. Engulfed in it. Practically drowning in it. But, Left had saved him again, the Shield of Peace negating even this absurd level of damage. That wasn’t what was going through his mind, though. No, being there – safely – within that energy tickled at the back of Hiral’s mind. There were… clues there. Hints at answering a question he didn’t even know he had until they came to him.

Trusting in the instincts that had served him so well, Hiral reached out with his own Rune of Energy and grasped that which surrounded him at the same instant he activated his time runes. Immediately, the energy responded, like a kindred spirit. It had been formed by the construct, but it would heed his call if he had a use for it.

Ah, of course. The Edict of Energy.

It was everywhere within this sea of white. He had all this power at the tips of his fingers; he just needed something to do with it. A way to focus it.

Focus, huh?

Good thing he had the perfect tool for the job.

With a thought – and another application of his Rune of Energy – Hiral activated his Ring of Amin Thett. They’d killed more than enough Scorbalests for the death beam to be ready, and he used that charge to ignite the Annihilation of Amin Thett. The real fuel for it, however, he pulled from the energy all around him. Power spun within the ring, an almost infinite amount of it for Hiral to pull on. To compress like he’d seen Yanily and the Colossus do.

Over and over, he yanked on it in the paused time, until he was finally forced to let his hold on the time runes go – reality was just too insistent of being in control. As soon as he did, a whirlpool seemed to open within the center of the ring, while sparks crackled along its length. Fractures appeared in the crystal, the same places he’d put the device back together with Mold Crystal.

Except, looking at it – connected to it like he was – and with the full Regalia of Amin Thett in his possession, he realized something shocking. While he’d put it back together, he’d reconstructed it wrong. This Ring of Amin Thett was never meant to be a ring. At least not originally. It had fit together like that, but feeling it now with his sensory domain, it felt off.

Lost in thought like this, Hiral barely noticed as the energy around him faded, expended. No, all of his attention was on the ring at his back, even as his sensory domain told him something was happening with the Boss. Pieces of it were falling away, broken by the backfiring of its own trump card. Good, that gave Hiral a few seconds to focus.

The Ring of Amin Thett was full to bursting with power behind him. So much so, it was a miracle it hadn’t simply exploded into shards. But, why hadn’t it? It definitely wasn’t his skill with Mold Crystal, as putting the device back together had been one of his earliest projects. No, it was staying together because that was his image of it. He was keeping it together through his connection with it and pure will. Unknowingly.

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And it was waiting for him to give it back its proper shape. It wasn’t alive or anything like that, but there was an echo lingering within it. An echo of those who’d wielded it before. There had to be a clue to the Ring’s true form within that…

Of course. It’s literally right in front of my eyes.

With a thought, the Ring of Amin Thett shattered into dozens of crystal shards, the energy it’d been harnessing getting sucked into the individual pieces to leave them a glowing swarm behind Hiral. Then, another thought – along with applications of will and Dreaming – and he reformed the device. Something Li’l Ur had said made it all click.

The second wielder of the Greatsword of Amin Thett – the Little Queen – had manifested her magic as a crown above her head. She’d been Amin Thett’s disciple, so surely she would’ve mimicked her master in some ways. But, Amin Thett wouldn’t wear a crown – at least not a traditional one. He didn’t see himself an emperor, even though they called him the Emperor, not from what Li’l Ur described.

So, what would he have on his head in place of a typical crown?

The answer lay on Tomorrow’s Unbound Colossus.

Horns.

Like the crystal was finally going home, the broken shards swept up to the top of Hiral’s head. Starting at his temples, the pieces adhered to his skin, then reformed back along the side of his skull. Once they reached halfway down the back of his head, they curved back out and around themselves until they finished, pointed straight ahead and just a bit above eye-level. Much like the Kindred they’d seen in the Tempestuous Jailbreak dungeon, the horns crooked in the middle – just once – like a lightning bolt.

All the siphoned power flowed within the two horns of crystal – the Crown of Amin Thett – while the standard abilities of the ring felt stronger than ever. Namely, the Annihilation of Amin Thett. This was how it was meant to be used. It was almost too bad he didn’t have a target to…

Oh.

Attention back on reality, Hiral spotted the Boss in front of him. Its entire outer armor gone, the construct stood reduced to a skeleton made of brass metal, its ‘bones’ full of the whirling gears and components. Pistons pumped along its exposed limbs, while its right hand had retrieved the massive mace that had previously shattered its chestplate.

The horn Hiral had cut was now completely missing – obviously eradicated by the blast he’d triggered early – while half of its exposed face lay mangled and melted. Above its head, a new name and health bar stood prominent.

(Boss – Construct) Tomorrow’s Unleashed Colossus (Unknown Rank)

A large chunk was already missing from the health bar – as were both the thing’s eyes – but that wouldn’t make it any less of a threat. Seeyela and Right stood with the rest of the group, their solar energy low in the party interface. Everybody had been throwing everything but Eloquently Enraged at the Boss, and it was probably a good thing they hadn’t used it – it would’ve expired here in this third phase.

Hopefully the final phase. Still, even with the Banner of Courage up and helping them regenerate their solar energy, everybody was low. Even Hiral had used a ton of power with his Piercing-turned-Separation attack to rip out the inside of the Colossus’s skull.

Except, he had a whole new pool of energy to lean on now, albeit a temporary one. The horns on his head leaked energy in the form of solar smoke, the amount they’d swallowed well-past their ability to hold for long. He didn’t need long.

Just like he’d done with the ring, Hiral focused his Runes of Energy and Compression in the space between the two horns in front of his eyes. The familiar ball of energy appeared in an instant, completely skipping the phase of slowly bleeding color from the room. Instead, it threw them all into a sheer black-and-white landscape – as if to match Hiral’s Coat of Amin Thett and his pseudo-aspect – and the charge was primed.

So, Hiral didn’t wait, unleashing an apocalyptic Annihilation of Amin Thett.

The beam entered the lower part of the Boss’s chest before Hiral lifted his head, jerking the beam straight up. Through the upper chest, neck, and head so quickly it could’ve been his imagination, color returned to the world, a scar of simple red bisecting the construct.

The Colossus froze there, like it was confused what had just happened – or surprised it was still alive – before the explosion came. All along the line Hiral had torn through the Boss – and the wall behind, apparently – raw, terrible energy erupted in a partition hundreds of feet tall, and thirty feet wide. Everything it touched simply vanished.

Balcony. Wall. Sound. Light. The brass that made up the body of the Boss.

All of it was gone in an instant, the air getting sucked into the vacuum of sudden emptiness. When the energy vanished – consuming even itself – a perfect line separated the two halves of Tomorrow’s Unleashed Colossus.

WHAM, the heavy mace crashed to one end of the balcony, the spikes punching through the almost indestructible material. And, there it stayed, the construct’s fingers unfurling around it as the whole arm went slack. A groan of metal came as the weight of the two halves of the construct pulled it in opposite directions above its gut. That groan quickly became a series of cracks and snaps, the integrity of the whole thing completely compromised.

Another second, and the mountainous upper body crashed into the sides of the room, before sliding down to the pit where the thing’s legs had been. The whole process was a cacophonous mess. Enough of one, Hiral joined his friends and threw solar energy into Dreaming and Decrease, along with Expansion to create a zone of relative quiet. It didn’t do anything to address the shaking, but it gave them some peace.

He opened his mouth to ask how they were, but a notification popped up in front of his face, interrupting him.

Congratulations. Achievement unlocked – It’s Not the Size that Matters...

You’ve located and destroyed an early prototype for Tomorrow’s Colossus Corps, an army of titans designed as a last resort. They were never used. Could they still exist, somewhere?

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

As had apparently become a habit, Hiral narrowed his eyes at the notification. Was the PIMP foreshadowing something with this? And, if it was, was it something good for them? Or very, very bad? An army of those things?

He just shook his head.

“So,” Seena said calmly, one arm rising to point at the remains of the Boss. “Why didn’t you do that from the beginning?”

“There are more important questions than that,” Yanily said, and he pointed at Hiral’s head. “What’s up with those? And, can you make them into hair?”

“Hair?” Hiral asked, expecting every question but that one.

Yanily ran his hand over his smooth head. “We both… lost something,” the spearman said gravely.

“His was a mullet,” Right said, nodding at Hiral. “Not a loss.”

“It was business in…” Hiral started.

“No. Just. No,” Left immediately cut him off. “Don’t even try to excuse that abomination.”

“Guys!” Seena said, chuckling. “My question is…”

“Actually,” Seeyela interrupted. “There is a more important question than all that. We didn’t get a dungeon-complete notification. Why not?”

“Oh hell,” Seena said. “HiddenBoss?”

Left already had his Banner of Courage out, so even as the group spread to look for any new threats, Hiral added a touch of Increase, Dreaming, Energy, and Absorption to improve the effect. It probably wouldn’t be a lot, but anything would help if there really was a Hidden Boss waiting for them.

“Or,” Left suggested, then pointed towards where the group had entered.

Where Vorinal now led the other researchers into the room.

Oops, the field generator. Totally forgot about that. It must’ve been in the Boss’schest. Lucky?

“Well done,” Vorinal said. “We were able to watch the battle through the field. That was an impressive construct.”

“Did you have to… destroy it so completely?” Lusco asked. “If we could repair it…”

Hiral’s blood went cold at the offhand remark. Did the Fallen have one of these damn constructs hidden away somewhere out in the real world? Was that what the PIMP was hinting at?

“That’s not what we’re here for,” Vorinal reminded everybody.

“Or, is it?” Bellina asked. “I don’t see another way out of this room, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that monstrosity was the real prize of this place.”

Vorinal shook his head. “No, I’m sure what we’re looking for is here. Can’t you feel it? In the air? On your lips? That hint of something… different. It’s here, we just have to find it.”

“That sounds a lot like imagination or insanity,” Lusco said.

“Maybe,” Vorinal said. “But we don’t have long to find out if it’s either of those, or if I’m right. The council’s dogs can’t be far behind us.”

Bellina held up her hands in surrender. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ll start looking. Lusco, you want to start with those interfaces over there?”

“Who put you in charge?” Lusco asked, then shrugged. “It’s where I wanted to go anyway.”

“Thank you,” Vorinal said, while Bellina organized the search with the rest of the researchers.

“Would you mind helping?” Vorinal asked. “I know it’s not usually part of your job, but every extra set of eyes could make the difference.”

Seena looked at the party, and none of them seemed to have an objection. Since they hadn’t gotten the notification they’d completed the dungeon, there was something else here for them. And, Hiral couldn’t deny he was curious what this was all for.

With a nod to the others, the group split up, with Seeyela Bamf’ing up to where she’d manipulated the mechanisms of the room. Hiral, for his part, went to the edge of the balcony next to where the Boss had stood. Then he hopped over the side, channeling energy into his Rune of Gravity to drop at a reasonable speed, his sensory domain blossoming out around him.

The wreckage of the Colossus took up most of the space, the whole thing crumpled on itself and bent at awkward angles. But, that wasn’t what grabbed his attention. No, there, at the bottom of the chamber, almost buried…

“I found another door,” Hiral said into the party interface.