Rune Seeker

His swing made an audible whiff as the weapon swept past, flames and force from the continued application of Here Today, Gone Tomorrow spinning Hiral in midair. Barely a second and he was past, the Wild-Boss completely undamaged by his attack.

“Uh… Hiral?” Seeyela asked into the party chat as he whirled like a moving top before finally cancelling the ability.

As soon as the jets of force from the rear of the weapon extinguished, Hiral brought his momentum back under control. Another quick application of Rejection stopped him in place – even though his head still spun like he was under the effects of the Disoriented debuff – and he forced his focus back to the Uniclops.

“The hammer’s ability has a miss-chance-penalty,” Hiral said.

“Yeah, sure it does,” Seeyela said flatly, landing on this Wild-Boss’s shoulder like she had the staff-wielder. There was only a small slit in the helm the thing had to see through, and the woman made no mistake aiming straight for it. In and out so fast, Hiral could’ve imagined it, the pained recoil and scream – along with the trail of sap-like blood on her Fang – meant he definitely did not. Still, even with the precision strike, the Wild-Boss was only at seventy percent.

It wasn’t dying fast enough. Not when they had two of their bigger damage-dealers on a timer. They had to go all in. And… Hiral had to not miss his next attack.

“Eloquently Enraged+,” he said into the party chat. “Gran, can you handle another ten percent?”

“No problem,” Gran said. “This four-legged oaf may not be dodging anything, but he’s doing a good job of taking very little damage.”

A snuff of pride from Wallop, and that was all the attention Hiral had for him, activating Double Trouble+ and Eloquently Enraged+ in quick succession. The double helix of his PIM exploded off his skin and energy ballooned off him, his attributes spiking in power even as the Edicts drew closer to his attention, like even the ones he wasn’t connected to – yet – came within his grasp. It wasn’t actually true, but it was close.

Nearby, Yanily, Seena, and Seeyela likewise activated their own versions of Eloquently Enraged+, and even Nivian used the uncombined versions of the individual abilities when he realized what they were doing. That done, Delicate Balance came next, funneling another ten percent of their health into double that in damage.

Three minutes. That’s how long they had to kill the three Wild-Bosses in front of them now.

Fingers tightening around the haft of the Weight of Tomorrow, Hiral wrapped in in threads from his runes, empowering its attack and preparing for the wild, nearly-uncontrollable potency of the weapon’s ability. Then, he cocked his arms back, preparation for his attack triggering Dual Power Attack+. Like when he used it with his RHCs, the first second surrounded the weapon with glowing blue energy like smoke. The second transformed the smoke into a cocoon of crackling energy, while the third second solidified the energy’s form.

This time, instead of what looked like a massive barrel for his RHCs, a second hammer appeared around the original, easily triple the size and made of blue energy. It was ready, and Hiral was not going to miss. Tethers of Gravity connected the face of the hammer to the Wild-Boss’s chest, and Hiral shot forward, this time activating Here Today, Gone Tomorrow just a second before he reached his target.

The same jets on the back of the hammer gushed flames and force, like the hammer wanted to rip his arms out of his sockets to fly ahead on its own, but he held on. Attraction kept the haft firmly in his fingers, while the tethers he’d laid out guided the hammer to his target like it was on rails.

WHAAAAAAM, the hammer struck the chest of the axe-wielding Arborean Uniclops, crumpling the armor there like it was little more than paper. Not that the hammer stopped with the armor, the body within likewise collapsing, even as the excess force of hammer-meeting-anything exploded outward in a vertical shockwave and a horizontal line through the Uniclops’s back – thanks to a healthy dose of Expansion mixed in with Piercing to create the resonating force.

With a combined power of at least three strikes – all multiplied by an additional forty-five percent, on top of his runic shenanigans, the blow didn’t blast a hole clean through the Wild-Boss, but the thing likely wished it had. Everything in the line of his hit had to be broken, mushy, and blended, and that wasn’t even the end of it.

Behind Hiral, a Building Resonance had taken form, a shadow of himself and his hammer, thrumming with enough power that even Hiral’s allies battling the Uniclops took a step away. There was no way anybody wanted to get caught up in the fallout of that.

Practically stunned on its feet, the Uniclops’s helmed head lifted to look at Hiral, while its right arm – the one with the axe – twitched. But, it didn’t get to do any more than that, Loan quick-stepping in to catch the weapon. The enlarged hands of his Body of the Sun grasped the haft of the axe, holding it in place even as a feral roar seemed to rip out of the weapon.

That brief pause was all the time Hiral – or, more specifically, his Resonance needed – the apparition’s hammer following the exact path Hiral had. This time, modified by an additionalforty-five percent, the coming blow almost looked like it had the power to launch the target up and through the false sky above.

Right appeared to make sure that didn’t happen, practically materializing behind the Wild-Boss. Timing his swing with the coming hammer, the double slammed his small, gauntleted fist into the Uniclops’s back. The tree there exploded in a shower of wooden splinters before the might of Right’s Auroran Conqueror. Needles on the branches practically disintegrating as the double’s fist continued through without resistance to strike the center of the Wild-Boss’s back at the same time the hammer hit the front.

The sound the Boss’s body made at the dual impact was… not something Hiral would ever forget.

Flattened between the two nearly unstoppable blows, there was a terrible squelch, like a Shaper had taken an orange between their powerful hands and simply squeezed with all their strength. The effect on the giant even looked the same, with a grotesque jet of amber goop blasting out of the visor-slit in a jet. The stream of things-that-are-supposed-to-stay-inside climbed fifty feet in the air, while more of the substance erupted from seams in the armor along all its joints down to its knees. Very suddenly, the entire Uniclops was covered head to toe in the thick ooze, while its chest cavity was comically – almost – paper thin.

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Despite all that, the Wild-Boss was still at twenty-percent health, and the streams of Connection representing the physical-invulnerability buff to its two allies hadn’t vanished with the destruction of the tree. They still needed to finish off the creature before they could move on to the other two.

The others attacking the beast seemed to realize the same thing, with Loan ripping the axe free from the giant’s weakened hand. Then, with his next motion, he stepped in with a simple punch. Like he’d ingrained into Hiral – which had transferred to Right – Loan swore on the perfection of a basic punch.

Steady and set feet. Proper rotation at the hips. A shift in weight of the shoulders. Nothing complex. Nothing fancy. It was the most basic – and first – punch Loan taught to anybody. And one he made them practice over and over and over. A thousand times in a day? Not nearly enough. Ten thousand? Closer, but still not perfect.

Hiral had thrown that exact punch so many times in his ten years under Loan’s tutelage, his own body almost started the motion in unison with his teachers. But, unlike when Loan demonstrated the strike in slow motion, this blow came with all the power and focus the Shaper could muster.

Along with the uncapped potential of Rising Inevitability.

Loan’s fist glowed with a black corona as it came in straight and true, the ground ten feet below his traveling punch carving a trail from the lingering weight.

“HA!” the man shouted as his blow landed against the side of the giant’s knee, and the punch somehow did three things at the same time. The first was the absolute shredding of the joint, to the point Hiral was surprised it didn’t sever the limb from the terrible impact. The second was how the force of it continued to blast into the other leg, sweeping both of them out from under it to kick the Uniclops up so it hung sideways in the air.

Then, the third, was the ear-shattering shockwave from the impact, that – combined with the first two effects – seemed to bend the Wild-Boss’s body around the force and leave it paused in midair. Paused for what…?

“SMAAAAAAAAAAAASH!” Bash roared, a leap lining him up with the floating Uniclops,both of his hammers held above his head before coming down like a pair of twinned meteors. The small hammers in the Troblin’s hands didn’t look like anything that could possibly hurt such a massive opponent.

Until they hit.

If the shockwave from Loan’s hit was impressive, the one from Bash striking with all his small might was catastrophic. One second the Wild-Boss was hanging sideways in the air, the next there was a giant-shaped crater in the ground, dust and stone shards blasting outward.

Correction, two half-giant-shaped craters.

The force of Bash’s attack had torn the Uniclops in two, before slamming both halves to the earth in an impact that even made the other two Wild-Bosses pause in their battles. Single eyes widening on their faces, they each instinctively took a step back as the feral Troblin turned his battle-lust in their direction.

And – worse for them – they realized their physical invulnerability had faded with their death of their third.

“Yan,” Hiral immediately said. “Nivian’s target should be vulnerable to physical and elemental damage now. You’re up!”

“Bout time,” Yanily said, his Aspect having already faded. There had to be another two minutes left on the cooldown too. Well, there would’ve been, if the spearmen didn’t use Turn Back the Clock. Resetting his cooldowns with the ability, Yanily once again triggered his Aspect, and even Eloquently Enraged+ again.

Did that reset the timer until the side effects?

Hiral didn’t have a chance to dwell on the question before Yanily transformed into a massive bolt of lightning that shot for the sky. However, instead of immediately bouncing off the false heavens above, his transformed body seemed to linger there for the blink of an eye. Just long enough for all the lightning rods running along the walls of Domain of the Sun+ to disgorge their payloads. Not at the Wild-Boss like they’d been doing, but instead up to the sky.

The moment the dozens of lightning bolts struck the clouds, they funneled directly into the where the spearman’s lightning form paused. A second, that was all it took, and the world stained white. Nothing existed except for the bolt that fell.

Even Bash’s fervor for smashing and violence crumbled before the might of Yanily’s Skyfall+, and the beleaguered giant had only an instant to glance up. The expression of challenge – of rage against the heavens – vanished in a wave of hopelessness before Yanily struck.

A pull of Attraction hauled Nivian away from ground zero, the lightning completely enveloping and consuming the entirety of the fifty-foot-tall giant. Within the column of supercharged air, a tremendous crash shook the valley, yet another shockwave washing out. Trees along the edges of the surrounding forests flattened like Yanily’s ability had lived up to the name – the sky falling.

Then as the energy faded, crackles and bolts of electricity still dancing along the ground, between blades of shredded grass hanging almost weightlessly in the air, the giant once again became visible. Arms and legs hanging over the lips of a small hollow, its torso had been driven into the ground, with Yanily standing atop its chest, spear driven half-the-haft into it. Still, it lived, despite the charring and the state of its half-empty health bar.

If it thought it had gotten off easy, though, Yanily leaning forward and opening his draconic maw clearly said that wasn’t the case. The color that’d just started to return to the world fled again, getting sucked into the whirling vortex of energy building as Dragon’s Breath whirled to life. Behind Yanily, a Building Resonance even began taking shape.

Not that this one looked like the spearman, though. At least, not exactly. Instead of taking the form of Yanily’s draconic hybrid form – half-man-half-dragon – this one was completely a dragon. A primal dragon.

Heaven’s Punishment’s avatar stretched above Yanily, the dragon’s mouth likewise spreading as an even more terrible power gathered.

Yet, that wasn’t even the most frightening power building.

Above both Yanily and his sponsor, one other stood on planes of pink butterflies. One who’d been particularly annoyed at her target not burning. In a world otherwise washed into the monochrome, the red and blue flared defiantly.

Seena glared down at her target, hands held above her head, palms up, while Li’l Ur chanted. His words echoed across the valley, building in intensity with every ancient syllable, bringing with them a chill of creeping death. Inevitable. Unstoppable. Inescapable.

From his words, script of blue flames wrapped around Seena’s sheath-covered arms, wrapping their way toward her hands, and what waited beyond. Held above her outstretched limbs, a new sun sat waiting. This wasn’t an illusion placed in the sky to fool the senses. No, this was the true birth of a sun, with enough flames to fill the valley condensed down into a ball of deadly plasma only thirty-feet wide.

If it was fire alone, it would already be terrifying beyond words. Hot enough to melt anything foolish enough to touch it, there simply wasn’t an option of surviving contact. Yet, somehow, Li’l Ur had instilled even more danger into the sphere. It was… absolute death. Simply looking at the ball felt like it frayed at the edges of Hiral’s lifespan, and he instinctively knew something like That All You Got? wouldn’t work.

This attack of Seena’s simply removed the option of rebirth in any way, shape, or form.

Would even a Phoenix be able to resurrect after that?

Hiral didn’t have any answer to the question, but he was also out of time to consider it. All three attacks were ready.

“I think I understand what you meant about not knowing how big she could go now,” Nivian said from below Hiral. The tank’s eyes were both wide and proud at watching his two former teammates unleash their attacks.