Rune Seeker

A dozen more warthogs fell to Hiral experimenting with different variations on his Rune of Separation. By far his favorite application was the different iterations of the claw-like blades he’d attached to his knuckles near the ends of his fingers. Filled with Breaking and Compression to make them extra deadly, a quick burst of Expansion would turn them from short-range to long-range in a heartbeat. The only downside, of course, was that he lost a fair amount of cutting power by hurling them ahead of himself.

Still, they proved to be beyond what the warthogs could handle. Especially if he added Sever Life to the mix. A couple of quick attacks were more than enough to put one of the monsters down before he needed to move on to the next. Though, the next he usually needed to skip, because his doubles were just as efficient as he was. It’d only been a few minutes since they’d started killing, and they’d already left a trail of bodies in the curving path behind.

And, from the sounds of things – along with the flashes through the stone pillars – he wasn’t the only one cutting through the Low-B-Rank beasts like a scythe through wheat. With the kill count only at fourteen of seventy-three, they still had plenty more to go.

The claws he’d tested enough for the moment, though, so as soon as he spotted the next pig down the tunnel, Hiral let the blades fade from his fingers. It was time to try something a bit less direct. Rejection and Attraction powered his steps forward to close the distance, though this warthog was already charging in his direction. Apparently, the death shrieks of its brethren had warned it Hiral and the others were coming.

Too bad it wouldn’t change things for it.

Left and right, Hiral weaved as he rushed the monster, only to burst up and to the side as the thing tried to gore him. Gone so fast – the beast actually stumbled when it didn’t strike him – Hiral used the opening to flip over and rebound off a nearby pillar. Back at the monster’s side in the blink of eye, he didn’t opt to stab, slice, or otherwise dismember the warthog. At least, not directly. Instead, his hands pressed against the warthog’s side, and Hiral embraced his Rune of Separation.

Just like he had when he’d ‘opened’ the doors in the last dungeon.

His rune pushed into the creature beneath his fingers, but he immediately found a resistance there. It was his will against the warthog’s. In his mind, the beast was nothing more than a collection of cubes that needed to be separated, while the pig – understandably – disagreed. A panicked huff escaped its lungs while it instinctively tried to pull away. It may not have known exactly what was going on, but it could clearly sense it wasn’t good.

Hiral wasn’t so easily dissuaded though, bolstering the power though his Rune and Edict of Increase. The additional potency blew through the Chimera’s resistance – and then its body. Hundreds of cubes fell to the ground in front of him, losing their perfectly square shape the instant they met the earth. Blood gushed from the chunks of flesh, meat, and bones, and the whole yucky mess spread across the path.

“That’s a new level of disgusting,” Right said, catching up to him. “I didn’t think you’d be able to pull it off.”

“Wasn’t easy,” Hiral admitted. “And used far more solar energy than killing it a simpler way would. I really had to brute force it. Not worth the effort against most things, I think.”

“Something similar to what you did to the Troblin Lord,” Left said.

“Yeah, I’d used Eloquent and Enraged then,” Hiral said. “More brute forcing. I’m trying to find ways to use the runes that don’t just rely on me dumping all my solar energy into them. With this, I’m pitting my concept – my will – of what I want things to be like directly against my target’s. And they have the advantage since their natural state is already far sturdier than what I have in mind. It’s hard to explain.”

“It’s like debuffing something?” Left asked. “The target can resist. Except, in this case, they can both passively and actively act against you.”

“Exactly that,” Hiral said, spotting another warthog rounding a distant corner in the path.

“Then,” Left continued. “Can you separate something more related to you than it? You have enough weapons at your disposal, so must everything else you do be another one?”

“That’s… a really good point,” Hiral said. “I’ve been focusing on how to do damage with it, but I already have plenty of ways to do that.” He looked from the Chimera to his two doubles as he spoke, an idea already forming. Could that work? Do I want it to? I can already hear Seeyela complaining… and that might just make it worthwhile. “Okay, let’s try something.”

“It’s all yours,” Right said, gesturing to the warthog pawing at the ground, while it’s snake-tail hissed above its back. “Amaze us.”

Ignoring the snark, Hiral launched ahead, runes powering his steps. This time, however, he didn’t go full speed – he needed some time to try out his newest plan – and threaded solar energy into his runes of Unsealing, Time Dilation, and Dreaming. Then, the part that would either make this work – or not – he moved that same thread of energy into Separation, while focusing on his own image with every step.

Though Hiral didn’t turn his head, his sensory domain told him everything he needed to know – there was a trail of Hirals zig-zagging along the path behind him. Every step he took separated an image from him and froze it in time, combining with his Rune of Dreaming to reinforce the almost perfect, lifelike replica. None of the copies really did anything other than hang in space where he’d left them, but looking at the bestial warthog’s face showed they had at least confused it a bit.

For the moment, Hiral didn’t need the experiment to do any more than that – it was enough of a success, and he lunged in to slap the palm of his hand against the pig’s forehead. Again, his goal wasn’t cutting the beast apart – though he probably could’ve managed it – and he instead focused on his own image once more.

Though, this time, he Separated it from the warthog’s sight. There was that same resistance as before, but it was far less, since what Hiral was trying to do was much smaller. Just a temporary removal, like forgetting something for an instant. And he could already feel the effect wouldn’t last more than a few seconds, but it was also more than enough. Dark eyes widened as Hiral completely vanished to it, only the afterimages from before left hanging frozen in the air ahead.

The beast took a step forward, completely ignoring Hiral standing right next to him, then lunged forward to gore what it saw. The afterimage – nothing more than a thin layer of solar energy – collapsed at the contact, as did the images directly behind it. One, two, three, four more images fell in quick succession as the boar raged, but when it moved for the fifth, its back legs didn’t obey. Like it had been paralyzed, from the middle of its back, the whole thing stumbled to the side and into one of the stone pillars. Only the rock kept the monster upright, until a few seconds later, its legs started working again.

Another touch while the boar wasn’t paying attention had let Hiral separate control of its limbs for a few seconds. Again, against a more powerful opponent, it wouldn’t last long, but the less he tried to influence, the easier it was. Good to know.

“You almost done playing?” Right shouted. “We’re falling behind.”

“This one’s all yours,” Hiral shouted from behind the disoriented warthog, then spun on his heel and dashed further down the path.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“That little…” Right cursed at Hiral getting a lead over them, but the two doubles would make short work of that Chimera.

That’s enough Separation, for now.

He’d taken steps to using the rune in new ways, and he’d keep pushing those gains in future fights, but he needed to work on a few other things before he ran out of trash. And, as much as he would love to stick around and use a pig for multiple tests, they were also on a time limit. Against the last Chimeras – the hyenas – he’d used attacks that created resonant force through a target, and he was half-tempted to pick up where he’d left off there.

Except, Left’s point about having enough weapons was a good one, and he could also weave that testing in easily enough. It would be better to use these weaker boars to test something else he couldn’t risk against a beast like a Mid-Boss – Which will probably show up after we all clear our necessary kill counts.

Instead, now, it was time to do some experimenting not with just one of his runes, but also an Edict. There was still so much he didn’t know about them. The end of the current tunnel, a larger, open space, and three snorting boars looked like the perfect place to do some studying.

Hiral burst into the twenty-foot, circular ‘room’ – if it could even be called that. Really, it was just a space between the collection of burst columns of cooled stone, but it at least gave him space to play with. It also gave the boars space to try and gore him, which they promptly did.

With his pseudo-aspect and boosted stats, though, they didn’t even come close. Hiral nimbly side-stepped one, then another, and finally vaulted over the third. Even better – for Hiral, not so much for the warthogs – each of his dodges left behind a Lost Echo. Getting the chance to see them in action for the first time, Hiral paused his tests to watch each of the copies rush over to their targets and literally punch them in the face.

While they didn’t have the same oomph Right did when he hit things – really, that guy was a bit of a savant when it came to punching – these copies were still surprisingly proficient. Pig heads snapped to the side from the blows, Chimeric blood splashing, while a pulse of something resonated through Hiral’s senses. His eyes narrowed at the familiarity of it, but he didn’t have the chance to linger on it as the three copies all exploded.

Because, of course they did.

Flame and concussive force tossed each of the Chimeric Warthogs sideways, scorching their hair and dropping two of their health bars down to fifty percent. The third, caught amid two explosions was left with a sliver of red, and could barely stand up. Between the punch and the explosion, Hiral’s Lost Echoeshad done almost half the pigs’ total health in damage! That… wasn’t anything to sneeze at.

The solar energy cost per copy was a bit higher, but nothing he couldn’t deal with thanks to all the efficiency bonuses and his natural solar energy attributes. If he wanted, he could probably hit his kill target just by gathering all the pigs up into a big chain of monsters chasing him, then go dodge between a few. He even let his mind wander for a split second as he imagined it, then chuckled and shook his head. Fun, but he had testing to do.

As the three monsters staggered in front of him, Hiral embraced his Rune and Edictof Gravity. If Seeyela could do it, he had to be able to do it too, right? Taking the power he felt coursing between him and the Edict, Hiral envisioned two portals opening. One right in front of him, and the other across the small room.

Gravity condensed between them – similar to what he’d felt Seeyela doing previously – like he was trying to pull two places in reality to meet in the middle. Except as soon as it started, he could feel it wasn’t the same. Just similar.He’d successfully created a point in space midway between where he’d imagined the two portals, and the air rippled like a horizontal column was collapsing towards it. But it didn’t complete. He was missing something.

There was some other component to Seeyela’s magic he wasn’t seeing. Huh. Something that ties her more closely to the Void-Venom Empress? With this experiment failing – and the warthogs gathering their wits about them – Hiral cancelled the building force. If that didn’t work, he’d…

WHOMP, the room erupted with a concussive wave emanating from his test point, hurling the pigs outward – and one of them directly towards Hiral. Catching his balance from the wave rushing over him, a quick pulse of Rejection got him up and over the pig that crashed into a pillar right behind where he’d been standing. The painful and resounding crack of its bones shattering against the stone didn’t do the monster any favors. And neither did the Lost Echothat formed, ran over, punched it, and exploded.

Even Hiral winced at the unfortunate animal’s fate, but he still had two more monsters to deal with, and his kill-stealing doubles had just arrived. “Keep going,” Hiral said to them, pointing towards the exit across from where they entered.

One look at the wounded animals showed Hiral didn’t need any help with them, and the doubles dashed past him with a pair of small nods. They’d keep upping the kill count – and building Killing Spree+ – while Hiral did just a couple more tests. Though he hadn’t been able to form the portal like Seeyela had, which probably meant he wouldn’t be able to Bamf anytime soon, the resulting effects were unexpected. Like something compressed too far, when he’d released the pressure, it had rapidly expanded.

He'd seen Seeyela use her Gravity Wells to devasting effect more than once, but this was kind of the opposite. And, while he could likely replicate the wells themselves – thanks to his Edict of Gravity – creating little gravity bombs had a certain appeal.

Ugh, now the PIMP has me wanting to create explosions.

Putting that thought aside for the moment, he instead considered the implications of his previous test. First and foremost, the influence of the Edictallowed him to more easily use his runes at a distance. Normally, his runic effects centered on him, or at least originated from him. He could use his Runes of Expansion or Connection to increase the range – like he did with his hurled blades of Separation – but they all still had the same starting point. He’d been able to blur that line a bit with his sensory domain, though it definitely had limits.

With the Edicts help though, Hiral had clearly been able to start forming the portal entrances in places he wasn’t touching. Even if that part of the experiment didn’t work, it was revolutionary. There were bound to be range and strength limitations, but that didn’t hinder his excitement at all.

So, testing.

Taking hold of his rune and Edict again, Hiral started with the obvious first test – reducing gravity in the room. If he could lift the pigs into the air, they wouldn’t…

Nothing happened. At least, nothing obvious. The wounded – and now very angry – Chimerasspun in his direction, their feet pawing at the ground, and then both charged. They still weren’t fast enough to catch him, and Hiral didn’t want them to get killed by his Echo Aura, so he deactivated it before leaping up and over the beasts. Thanks to his Rune of Rejection, he soared into the air, easily clearing the attacking beasts.

And rocketed straight for the ceiling of curved stone pillars and the vegetation hanging from them!

The reduced gravity was working, and it took another burst of Rejection to prevent him from doing something very embarrassing. A quick application of Attraction brought him towards the ground while he twisted to watch the warthogs charge straight into the stone pillars.

Then bounce comically off them, their bodies lifting more than a foot into the air before they came back down, paws madly scrabbling the whole time. They landed around the same time Hiral did, and the three opponents once again faced off.

“Ready for what’s next?” he asked the two monsters, and they responded by predictably charging in his direction.