Rune Seeker

Hiral simply side-stepped as the building-sized, Mid-Boss worm shot across the large room from one side to the other. Easily thirty feet around, and hundreds of feet long, the thing tended to keep most of its body underground, and just extend part of itself above to attack. It had long, whip-like, prehensile appendages lining the outside of its leech-mouth that it used to try and drag prey inside. However, one hit from Yanily’s spear had sent the creature straight into what the spearman called phase two of the fight.

Instead of just sticking its head up and trying to hammer or eat them, the worm instead barrelled across the room from wall to wall like a runaway caravan. Thanks to the magic of the dungeon – or maybe a natural ability of the worm itself – it could completely vanish into the earth without leaving cavernous holes wherever it went.

That, and the sheer momentum combined with the thing’s weight would make anything it hit seriously regret coming to the dungeon.

But, compared to Hiral’s B-Rank body – and his admittedly absurd Dex – the thing was slooooow. The others had a bit more trouble dodging it, especially his sisters, but he wasn’t rushing to attack. Neither were Seena, Seeyela, or the very apologetic Yanily.

Seena had lectured him for a full minute on pushing the Mid-Bossto its second phase before Nat and Milly had a chance to see what it could do. Since then, only Hiral’s younger sisters had been allowed to attack it. Well, try to, as neither of them was particularly well-suited for the challenge.

Which, according to Seena, was exactly why they needed to try and solve this phase of the encounter. Yanily said it would – at most – last until the Mid-Boss hit thirty-percent health, at which point it would return to the floor to just stick its head up. For a normal party with a tank and two or three damage dealers, each rush of the worm past them would be a great opportunity to layer on the pain.

For Nat and Milly, they couldn’t do much more than watch. Milly didn’t even have the option to use her Medium’s basic energy attack without the Fool practically crippling her. According to Hiral’s sister, trying to attack caused a sort of feedback loop from the tattoo, which would make her body almost do the opposite of what she was attempting. Left became right – and not the Foundational Split kind – while even standing up became a chore. No, she’d need another way to take care of things.

As the Mid-Boss charged past yet again, Hiral kept his eyes on it long enough for its name to appear high, high in the room above its long body.

(Mid-Boss) The Rumbler – Unknown Rank

“You think your sisters are going to be able to figure something out?” Yanily asked Hiral from nearby. The man was on strict orders not to stab the worm again, and he was clearly holding back every time an opportunity presented itself. “What would you do if you were in their shoes?”

“If it was me?” Hiral asked as The Rumbler made another pass at them. “I’d…”

WHAAAAAAM, and the whole cavern shook hard enough even Hiral had to step quickly to keep his balance. Off to one side, the Mid-Boss’s long body piled on top of itself against one of the walls, its health bar down below twenty percent. Blood oozed out of tears in its rubbery skin, and a large pool of the stuff expanded out from underneath it.

“I’d probably do that,” Hiral finished.

“And just what was that?” Yanily asked, his spear spinning in his hands again.

Noting the worm wasn’t moving quickly to enter its next phase – obviously still disoriented from the blow it’d just taken – Hiral took the second to explain. “Milly specializes in barriers, while Nat can control a target’s senses to limited success.”

“With you so far.”

“Spiked Shields does damage primarily based on the endurance of the target shielded, but also partially on how hard it’s hit. Usually,” Hiral held up a finger, “the strength of the shield is the biggest limit to that. However, Milly has Force Dome, which is nearly impervious to physical damage. She also has Adaptable Barrier, which lets her alter the form of any shield or barrier ability.

“With a little help from Nat to disguise the Force Dome shaped as a flat plane…”

“Seriously?” Yanily asked. “You telling me your sisters just got the giant worm to smash its own head against the wall?”

“With all that speed and weight behind it.” Hiral grinned. “That’s exactly what they did.”

As he said that, the disoriented Rumbler finally seemed to get some of its senses back under control. Groggily, like it’d been drinking, the worm buried its head in the packed earth of the floor, and slowly pulled its entire bulk back underground. Thanks, again, to the magic of the dungeon, it didn’t even displace the dirt. Also, while any living creature would probably run far away to recover, the fact they were in a dungeon prevented that from happening.

Predictably, not even a few seconds later, the Rumbler erupted from the ground again. Blood waterfalled from its mouth, where shattered and broken teeth had torn it apart inside. And, the decidedly flat look of its head probably wasn’t Hiral’s imagination.

“This should be the final phase,” Yanily said loud enough for Hiral’s younger sisters to hear.

“How are you going to handle it?” Seena called to Nat and Milly.

“Right,” Milly said, casting a barrier on him while Nat added a buff.

Timed perfectly, the spiked shield appeared just as a pair of the Mid-Boss’s whipping appendages slapped into the double. Almost slapped into him. Instead, both tentacles shredded on the spikes as they got close, the barrier cracking but not falling, before Right countered. With Nat’s Celerity buff, the double burst forward – though he still limited himself to D-Rank effectiveness – with a comfortable twenty-percent increase to his speed.

He dodged two more whipping attacks, let a third tear against the barrier – though that shattered his shield – then swept in with a combo of his own. Punches also benefiting from the buff, he laid into the rubbery hide of the Mid-Boss. Another pair of abilities came from Hiral’s sisters even as he attacked. The first was another modification of the barrier, wrapping Right’s hands in spiked shields, upping his damage even further. And, while Milly handled increasing Right’s offensive power, Nat seamlessly took care of keeping him safe.

With a wave of her hand – and a glow from the Afterimage tattoo on her Medium – three more copies of Right spread out on either side of him. Through the magic of – well, magic – even though the worm didn’t see, the three exact duplicates of Right fooled the monster’s senses. Instead of thrashing all its tentacles at Right’s real body, it instead split its attention among the four, which even committed to small dodges and attacks of their own.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

“Yanily,” Nat said. “Get ready for the opening!”

A grin appeared on the spearman’s face even as his spinning weapon took aim. Just as Right’s next punch landed, another of Nat’s tattoos glowed, and the giant Mid-Boss seemed to freeze up.

That’d be her Stuntattoo.

“Go!” Nat shouted, while Right landed yet another haymaker.

Yanily, at the same time, lowered his spear and leaned forward, wings of lightning and storm clouds bursting from his shoulders. Then, with a boom like thunder, he shot forward along the ground, twisting into a lunge as he reached The Rumbler. The razor-sharp, crystal spear plunged into the worm’s body – barely a toothpick compared to the size of the beast – and dropped the beast’s health below ten percent.

As if enraged at the damage, the flailing appendages around The Rumbler’s mouth whipped through the air in a frenzy. Tattoo after tattoo flashed to life on Milly’s Medium as she activated Chain Heal and tossed up two more barriers while the healing ability bounced back and forth between Right and Yanily. With their health topped off and the Spiked Shields making short work of the attacking tentacles, the two were safe for the moment.

“You’re up, Seena,” Nat said, tossing an Inspire buff the party leader’s way. The ability had a decently long cooldown, but it’d increase the damage of the next attack used. Seena didn’t waste it.

A flaming lance roared to life between her cupped hands, then launched with a whomp that pushed her back a pair of steps. A second later, it slammed into the worm’s body before drilling its way through the flesh. Again, it barely seemed like it was big enough to…

WHOOOOSH, flames gushed out of The Rumbler’s mouth at the same time it screeched in pain. The thing’s death throe – just one – echoed off the walls of the cavern, before it slumped to the side, the top part of its body causing the ground to shake.

“Hiral!” Nat ordered, a notification window appearing in front of his eyes.

You have been buffed by Rage.

Str Increased by 10% for 30 seconds.

Dex increased by 10% for 30 seconds.

End reduced by 20% for 30 seconds.

Critical Hit Chance increased by 5% for 30 seconds.

Critical Hit Damage increased by 15% for 30 seconds.

With Nat’s other longer cooldown buff on him – though, really, it was only a minute – Hiral didn’t waste even the blink of an eye before his Runic Blunderbuss was in his hands. Up and aimed straight down the worm’s cavernous throat in one smooth motion, he pulled the trigger. With three Runes of Increase, to go along with the Runes of Impact and Expansion, the bolt of energy seemed unremarkable as it passed through the rows of leech-like teeth.

Until it hit.

An explosion of force tore the Mid-Boss apart from the inside, out. Worm bits and blood blasted away in a ring to coat the walls and ceiling, before the back half of the worm – now severed – slipped down into the ground from the weight of its rear end.

“And that’s a dead Mid-Boss,” Seena said, not even bothered by the monster chunks scattered about the room.

“I didn’t even get to do anything,” Seeyela complained. She stabbed the air a few times as if in frustration, then sheathed her daggers on her back again. “Though, seeing even more copies of Hiral is going to give me nightmares.”

“Those were copies of Right,” Hiral pointed out.

“Who is nearly an exact copy of you,” Seeyela countered. “My point stands. I swear, I’m going to have dreams of an army of Hiral’s waterfalling off Fallen Reach to come visit Seena.”

Hiral actually stopped to think about it. With that buff cast on me, Left, and Right, how many could we…?

“Stop imagining it,” Seena said with a chuckle. “We’ve already spent half our dungeon time in here. Yan, didn’t you say there were a couple more good places for the girls to learn?”

The spearman nodded while leaning casually on his weapon. “The next section of the dungeon isn’t worms – it’s rodents. Moles, actually. They have more attacks than the worms do, and they’re big.”

“Dog-sized?” Hiral asked, thinking back to the rats they’d fought in the Rise of Fallen Reach dungeon.

“More like carriage-sized,” Yanily said. “The Mid-Boss isn’t any bigger, for once, but I’ll explain it when we get closer. After the moles, then we’re back to worms, but I think they were called Wiggling Swarms. Groups of hundreds of smaller worms that work together to attack, like they have one mind.”

“That sounds… fun,” Seena said, visibly shuddering.

“Yeah, one of the women in the other group was completely creeped out by them,” Yanily said. “Spent the whole section of the dungeon screaming at every little worm that got close to her. Which took a while, since they were good experience, and there were a lot of them.”

“Decent farm spot?” Seeyela asked. “How close are you girls to level twenty, anyway?”

“Close,” Nat said holding up her thumb and forefinger, with just a tiny space between them. “If we can actually farm a little more, just to be safe, we should be able to hit it in this dungeon.”

“Which means D-Rank evolutions,” Hiral said, excitement for his sisters building in his chest. There was something intoxicating about the progression the PIMP provided. Levels, evolutions, abilities and achievements…

Wait a second…

“I didn’t get an achievement for killing the Mid-Boss,” Hiral said to the others. Seena and Seeyela’s eyes widened as they realized the same thing.

“No Dynamic Quest completion either,” Seeyela added. “Now that I think about it, we didn’t even get a quest start.”

“Told you that already,” Yanily pointed out. “Remember, we only get the achievements for completing the dungeon.”

“I thought we’d at least get the flavor text,” Hiral half-pouted, then looked at his sisters. “What did you two get?”

“The achievement was called Let’s Get Ready to Rummmmmble!,” Nat said. “Says we have to get to a dungeon interface to get a class-specific reward.”

“For killing The Rumbler,” Milly added.

“That’s normal, you’ll get one for each Mid-Boss or Boss we kill,” Hiral said. “Which is how you get new abilities beyond tattoos. Oh, and if you do something that seems to impress the PIMP, you can get one for that as well.”

“I wouldn’t encourage that,” Seena said flatly. “That something impressive is usually risky, stupid, or both. Don’t follow in your brother’s footsteps.”

“I’m not that bad of an example,” Hiral said.

“Don’t worry, we’re smarter than him,” Milly said.

“That’s not very nice.”

“Doesn’t make it any less true.”

“Let’s see how much advice I give you going forward,” he grumbled.

“Children,” Seeyela said in her best mom-slash-big-sister voice. “Seena had a point, earlier, we don’t have all day. If we want to clear this dungeon in under three hours – and give Nat and Milly a chance to farm some more experience – we should get moving.”

“True,” Hiral agreed, his sisters nodding along with him. “Let’s go get you leveled up to D-Rank.”