Rune Seeker

“That’s a lot of Chimeras,” Hiral said what they were all thinking.

“A lot of experience, you mean,” Yanily corrected, and Hiral just nodded.

“Going to be tough to fight through all that,” Drahn pointed out.

“Even though this is a dungeon,” Seeyela said. “I don’t see many – any? – Elites. Anybody? That Unnamed thing we’re supposed to watch out for?”

“Nothing,” Hiral said. “Lot of different kinds of monsters, though. Warthogs, hyenas, smaller cats than the Lionesses, and – ugh, sorry Yan – spiders of some kind. Few other types too, I think.”

“Birds in the air as well,” Drahn said, pointing higher. “They must not be very strong though, because they’re getting shot down as soon as they get near the wall.”

“We going to try and fight our way through that mess?” Gran asked, though her body language didn’t look like that was a complaint.

“Too slow,” Seena started. “Hiral, can you get us all across? Or we should we use our mounts?”

“I can get us across,” Hiral said. “But! Seena, Yan, you want me to drop you off on the way? Your domains will tear these things apart with how packed in they are. While you get that started, I can take Drahn and Gran to the wall. Drahn’s domain will help them hold that breach, and Gran can patch up the defenders.”

“Won’t be any shortage of things to hurt for my abilities to feed on,” Gran said, nodding her hooded head. “Leaves you all without a healer though.”

“I’ll grab Left and Right from the wall,” Hiral continued. “Bring them back out into the melee.”

“We can ease the push on the wall a bit,” Seena said. “Make sure you focus on clearing a path to that wall in case we need to retreat first.”

“Do you really think we can make a difference in all that?” Drahn asked.

“Doesn’t matter what I think,” Seena said, then looked at the tracker. “We will. Everybody good enough on solar energy and cooldowns?”

“Could be better,” Seeyela admitted. “But with that many enemies, the Chord will help out. TRAPs are ready too.”

“Then we’re going,” Seena said, tapping Hiral on the shoulder.

“I’ll only land for a second,” Hiral explained. “Then on to the wall. Won’t be gone long though.”

“You better not keep a girl waiting,” Seena said.

“You? Never,” Hiral replied, making sure he had them held tightly in his scarves. Then, without another word, he launched off with a burst of Rejection. The sheer cliff face he’d been standing at – more than a hundred feet straight down – shrunk behind him as he soared through the air. Gravity and Rejection kept him moving, his feet barely needing to step as he closed the distance. Seconds was all it took before he passed the first of the monsters below. Stragglers really, with no possible way to reach the wall through the press of Chimeric bodies. But what a press it was! With every second that passed, the monsters got thicker and thicker beneath them – from singles, to doubles, to dozens, to hundreds.

“Where did they all come from?” Gran asked quietly.

“We’ll figure it out when they’re dead,” Seena said. “Hiral, looks like a good spot coming up.”

“I’ll clear a space for you to start,” Hiral said, picking a cluster of monsters about two-hundred feet in front of the breach in the wall. Beyond them – and even among them, really – he couldn’t see the ground for all the bodies. So, he’d make some space by grinding some of those bodies.

Another step and then Hiral changed his angle, shooting up instead of forward. There was a squeak of surprise from one of his passengers, but he ignored it as he flipped in the air and began channeling the power of his runes into his hands. Similar to what he’d done to the RocBoss in the Fields of Prey, he forged different powers in each hand.

In his left went Expansion, Separation, and Energy. His right got Impact, Breaking, and Compression. From there, the power of his runes and Edicts of Connection and Increase amplified the two forces and linked their potential. Unlike last time though, Hiral added his willpower in the form of his concept. Of how he wanted the twin spheres of caged annihilation to behave when he combined them.

All of that taking barely a second – his runes had grown so much faster to use in B-Rank and with the aid of his Edicts – and Hiral shot back down towards the ground. Another squeak from one of his passengers, and Hiral plummeted so fast the Chimeras didn’t even have a chance to look up as a shrill whistle tore the air.

Ten feet above the mass, Hiral brought his hands – and the orbs in his palms – together at the same time he blasted Rejection out to ensure he didn’t splatter himself on the ground. Unsuspecting of the force from above, the Chimeras barely had any space to move, with only a few directly beneath him getting pushed to the ground as his descent slowed.

Until his hands connected.

Twisted energy erupted out, utterly destroying the nearest beasts, before he reached the ground. This time, instead of a massive sphere – of fun and death, as Yanily would call it – Hiral’s attack reached the earth and then expanded outward in a horizontal circle. Whatever it touched, be it Chimera, stone, earth, or plant, simply vanished.

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Ten feet around him, everything evaporated.

Twenty feet, and the bodies turned to a stained shadow on the ground.

Thirty feet, and the bones lasted a split-second before they scattered to dust along with everything else.

Forty feet, the flesh sloughed off like melted wax, leaving the area a foul puddle of goop.

Fifty feet, and there were survivors. Horribly maimed, and entirely unrecognizable, the pitiful creatures cried out in agony.

Sixty feet, the weakening wave ruptured flesh and tore messy gashes in anything it touched, but the press of bodies finally stole its strength.

Still, the Chimeras that’d watched their death approaching stood frozen in that outer ring, even the constant press from behind not enough to edge them forward.

“First stop, Chimeras,” Hiral said.

“And you wondered if he’d be able to pull his own weight,” Yanily said to Drahn as Hiral dropped the spearman off. “I’ll take this way,” he then said to Seena. At a nod from the woman, Yanily’s storm-cloud wings appeared, and he used his lunging movement skill to charge one side of the mass.

“Don’t be long,” Seena said to Hiral. “May not be any left for you.” With a wink and a shoulder tap – while he gave her Killing Spree+ with Shared Strength – she spun on her heels and used her own movement skill. The Phoenix Rush covered the sixty feet to the outer ring of the empty area in a heartbeat, then continued deeper into the press – incinerating bodies as it went.

Bodies which, of course, rose with flickers of flames along their limbs, only for them to take a step and explode themselves. From the Ashes was going to tear these monsters apart.

“Time to take you two where you need to be,” Hiral said, leaping up again to bolt towards the wall. Aiming for the golden dome of glowing light where his doubles would be, Hiral spared a brief look at the monsters beneath him.

Closer to the wall like this, he could see where the defenders had bled the Chimeras for every inch of ground. Unfortunately, their numbers had already dropped to less than four-hundred and thirty remaining. Atop the wall, no corpses of defenders remained, but it wasn’t hard to guess why.

Just as he approached Left’s glowing Banner, Hiral spotted one of the injured defenders convulsing on the ground – and Right already on the way. It didn’t take more than the blink of an eye for the Chimericblood to overwhelm the man, his body twisting while it changed.

Five fingers converged into three, with six-inch-long claws growing out. Skin turned so pale it became alabaster white, while vertical mouths opened around the eyes, small tongues growing out to lick the orbs like the thing was blinking. Knees cracked backwards, becoming reverse-jointed, while the feet split into long, two-toed appendages that looked closer to tentacles. Worst was probably the mouth, which tore in a vertical line down the throat, the chest, and finally the stomach. Short, curved, needle-like teeth emerged from the sides of that chest-mouth, while multiple tongues stretched out to taste the air, yet another mouth on the end of each one.

The whole transformation had happened almost instantly, but then again, so had Right’s punch. Purple flames slammed into the monster as it stood, bones and flesh shattering before the whole beast shot like a ballista bolt into the mass of oncoming Chimeras. If the newly-birthed monster survived the trip – or the thing it hit – it was impossible to say as the crowd of bodies absorbed it.

“Bout time you showed up,” Right said as Hiral landed beside him with Drahn, Gran, and Seeyela.

“You took down a Mid-Boss?” Left asked, while other defenders looked in their direction to see if they were a new threat. Maybe it was the way Left and Right weren’t attacking, or maybe it was because it was matching outfits, but no attacks came their way.

“Yeah, but not the one you would guess,” Hiral explained quickly. “We’re going back out there. Drahn and Gran will plug up the hole here.”

Even as he said it, the two had spread out, Drahn activating his new domain ability for a massive flower to begin growing on the wall near the breach. Gran, meanwhile, had begun tossing deadly needles into the mass of monsters, then connecting them to defenders in bad shape. That got her a few strange looks – and almost some attacks – before it became very obvious it was helping the ones who looked the most injured.

“No plans for me?” Seeyela asked Hiral.

“Terrorize the monsters and make them regret ever setting their eyes on the wall,” he said simply.

“Oh, I can totally do that,” the woman said.

“If you want to work with the defenders,” Left added in quickly. “There’s a man in that direction, wearing a bright yellow bandana around his head. He’s one of the leaders on the wall. He might know where you can do the most good.”

“Not here?” Seeyela asked.

In response, Left looked out into the sea of Chimeras where a localized storm seemed to have formed. Lightning bolts fell from the sky like rain, raking the poor monsters underneath to leave them as smoking husks. Just off to the side of that – their borders barely touching – another domain likewise shredded the enemies. In this one, torso-thick, spiked vines of scorching fire slammed, tore, and crushed anything that got within reach.

“This is getting under control,” Left said. “However, if there were to be another breach, we wouldn’t be able to hold.”

“Got it,” Seeyela said. “Yellow bandana around his head.” Then, with that, the woman vanished in a bamf of purple flames.

“Thanks for holding the wall as long as you did,” Hiral said. “Let’s get out there before Yan or Seena get overwhelmed.

“Before we go,” Right said. “We haven’t seen a Mid-Boss or a Boss. Not even many Elites. This can’t be the worst of it.”

“We were thinking the same thing,” Hiral said, then stepped in closer to his doubles. “How about these people, are they Bonders?” Even as Hiral asked the question, he noticed it wasn’t just the people on the wall fighting back. What he’d taken for attacking Chimericanimals seemed to be fighting to defend the wall as well.

“They are,” Left said. “Each of them has what they call a ‘pet’ or ‘companion’, though they treat them far more like siblings. I don’t know much more than that, but it seems they trigger many of their abilities through this bond.”

“Are they strong enough to hold the wall?” Hiral asked.

Left shook his head only enough for Hiral to see the motion. “Many here are C-Rank, and the few B- we’ve seen don’t have nearly the gear we do. I can’t imagine they have many – if any – advanced classes. If we hadn’t shown up…”

“You mean if the PIMP hadn’t led us here,” Hiral said, but looked at Right before the double could say anything. He’d been in Hiral’s head, so he knew how Hiral had been feeling about things. “I’m good,” Hiral said. “It annoys me when the PIMP tries to take choice away from me – from us – but if it’s to save people like this? I can’t argue with it.”

Right wiped an imaginary tear from under one eye. “They grow up so fast.” Then, like he hadn’t even been sassy, his face hardened. “So, let’s stop talking and get to the saving.”

Hiral nodded at his friend. “Drahn, Gran?” he said over the party chat. “We’re going. You good here?”

“Seena and Yanily have already taken the pressure off,” Drahn said, and Hiral spotted him strafing Explosive Arrows across the seemingly endless Chimeras. “We’ll hold here. Call when you find the Boss.”

“Got it,” Hiral said, then wrapped his doubles with an energy scarf.

“I’ll leave the Banner of Courage here for now,” Left said, planting it where he stood. “Cooldown is starting now.”

“No problem,” Hiral replied, looking out at the Chimera beast wave pressing against the wall. “I’m sure we’ll need it.”