Rune Seeker

Hiral moved mechanically to check the next corpse. Crushed skull. Third one he’d found like that. Add that in with the two completely missing heads, the four with collapsed ribs, and then the pair with fist-sized holes straight through their chests, and it didn’t paint a pretty picture at all.

Well, unless the whole point was to paint in blood…?

“None of these people were killed by spiders or monkeys,” Seena said, standing over yet another corpse. “Unless I’m missing something really obvious, Wule?”

“I agree with you,” Wule said, his hands closing the unseeing eyes of a dead child. “Some of these injuries could’ve been caused by theBladed Frenzy Monkeys, but I’d also expect to see cutting wounds. There’s none of those.”

“None of the rocks they were throwing either,” Hiral said, looking at the street and nearby walls. He’d had to walk carefully to avoid the pools of blood, but aside from the casualties, the section of the street looked like it was in good condition.

Almost perfect condition, in fact.

“Whatever attacked, it hit them hard and fast,” Hiral said, putting the pieces together. “How many of the soldiers even have their weapons drawn? I’m only seeing one… two, maybe a third over there. Most of these people were dead before they even knew what happened.”

“All the more reason we shouldn’t be standing around here?” Fenil said.

“None of these soldiers had PIMs like we do,” Seena said offhandedly, and Hiral looked at the three researchers to find that same paused look on their faces. Seena seemed to notice it, too, and changed her tactic. “We have to know what we’re up against to protect you.”

“Let them do their job,” Dr. Benza said, but he was also inspecting the bodies, nodding and grimacing the entire time.

“Are we sure we need to protect them?” Yanily asked quietly into the group chat. “Still no quest or anything. We might be walking into something bad here.”

“We didn’t always have quests leading us around the other dungeons either,” Hiral pointed out. “Usually didn’t get them until we got to the Boss fight.”

“You think that’s what’s coming?” Seena asked. “Oh, you think that’s what did this. The Boss.”

“I think it’s possible,” Hiral said. “Worse, I might know what did this. And… it looks like Dr. Benza does too.”

The rest of the party turned to look at the doctor like Hiral was. The man stood over one corpse in particular—one of the soldiers that had a hole straight through his crystal breastplate and out the back—and mumbled to himself while shaking his head.

“You have something you’d like to share, Dr. Benza?” Seena asked, the whole party picking their way through the corpses to join the doctor and his researchers.

“Ah, nothing conclusive,” Dr. Benza said.

“But you have a theory, like I do,” Hiral guessed. “One of those possessed people, or whatever they’re called, did this.”

Dr. Benza nodded slowly. “The evidence does suggest one of the Infested did this,” he said at length. “It would make sense.” He looked at the column of falling rain in the center of the city. The hole in the ceiling had grown further as they’d traveled, huge slabs of rock falling and shaking the entire city. “The Enemy themselves can’t come down here—it’s why we built the city in the first place—but they could send an Infested. If we’re lucky, it’s only one. If we’re unlucky…”

“How many could there be?” Hiral asked, while Yanily mouthed Infested? at Wule. The healer mouthed Picoli right back at the spearman, who just cursed.

Oblivious to the exchange, Dr. Benza’s attention stayed on the corpse. “We’ve never seen more than three in one place.”

“The type of Enemy that infests the host doesn’t seem to be particularly common,” Laseen further explained. “Statistically speaking, we believe they make up less than one percent of the overall Enemy population in our realm.”

“In our realm?” Hiral asked immediately, but the researchers’ faces all paused. Not going to get any more information on that now… but… our realm? Does that mean the Enemy is from another land? Or… is it bigger than that? Where are they really from, and how did they get here?

“Do these Infested have any weaknesses?” Seena asked. “Anything we can exploit?”

“Their only weakness, per se, is that they aren’t as strong as the other varieties of Enemy,” Fenil said. “On the other hand, they’re also the only kind that would be able to get in here.” He vaguely gestured to their surroundings.

“What Rank are they, usually?” Hiral asked.

“Rank?” Fenil asked, sharing a look with Laseen.

“Like the PIM system you’re working on,” Hiral said, and the researchers shared another look. “Yes, we know all about it. Need-to-know information, remember? We also heard you had Ranks to measure strength. Where would you put these Infested?”

Picoli had been strong—stronger than them at the height of E-Rank. They’d gotten more powerful with their D-Rank evolutions and gear, and maybe if they were prepared for it, they could take something like Picoli on. But if these Infested were actually C-Rank or above, nothing they did would make a difference.

“Uh, we haven’t actually measured…” Fenil said.

“And the Rank system is purely theoretical at this point…” Laseen added evasively.

“If you had to guess?” Hiral pushed.

“D-Rank, minimum,” Dr. Benza interrupted. “Mid-D-Rank, to be more accurate. I believe they will be able to grow stronger over time, but whatever did this… no, it’s Mid-D-Rank.”

“Mid-D isn’t so bad,” Yanily said.

“Mid-D-Boss-Rank,” Seena clarified, and Yanily winced.

“Why do you believe this one is Mid-D?” Hiral asked. “How can you be sure it isn’t stronger? It… Look what it did to these people.”

Dr. Benza crouched down in front of the soldier he’d been staring at, then gently reached out and tapped the dead man’s breastplate with a hole in it. “See the fracturing of the crystal around the hole?”

“Yes?” Hiral said, looking closer, and something in the back of his mind triggered a stream of information from his class as he inspected the armor. “That crystal is E-Rank, or thereabouts, isn’t it? Those fracture patterns, they tell you how much damage the armor sustained. E-Rank wouldn’t be able to put a hole through it like that, but C-Rank or above would’ve completely shattered it. I get it.”

“Exactly,” Dr. Benza said, turning his head to look at Hiral. “Are you by any chance looking for work? You’d make an excellent assistant. A full researcher, even, in a few years, I’m sure.”

“You’re not the first person to tell me that,” Hiral said with a quirked smile, and the memory of his friend Gauto passed through his mind.

“You’d get more than a footnote,” Dr. Benza said, like that was supposed to be somewhat enticing, and Fenil actually gasped.

“Now’s not the time for job interviews,” Seena said, looking from the bodies towards the eastern side of the city. “Would the Infested be looking to kill as many people as it could?”

“Probably,” Dr. Benza said, following Seena’s gaze.

“So, eastern gate kind of seems like a bad idea now,” Yanily said. “North? South?”

But Hiral was already shaking his head, and he wasn’t the only one.

“We can’t leave these people to deal with something like Picoli on their own,” Seeyela said. “If we can stop it, we need to.”

“And we need to know if we can take on that Picoli-thing if we meet it again,” Seena said. “We may not be able to run away next time.”

“Yeah, I know,” Yanily said with a sigh. “Somebody had to ask, though, right?”

“Yes,” Right said.

“No, I wasn’t talking to you,” Yanily said.

“Were you talking to me? But, I’m Left,” Left said.

“No… I was…” Yanily said, then just threw up his hands as the two doubles smirked.

“Dr. Benza,” Hiral said, tuning out the jokes, though it did make him smile. “The Lady of the Web… was it just a coincidence we found her with you? Is this Infested going to come looking for you too?”

The doctor crossed his arm in thought, though the other researchers were already shaking their heads… until they stopped and looked at each other, their eyes widening.

“It couldn’t be…” Fenil said.

“No… no way,” Laseen said.

“It could be more than a coincidence,” Dr. Benza said. “It’s possible the Enemy have learned of our research and sent their abomination to stop us. If that’s the case, this Infested could be looking for us as well.”

“Well, at least we know it’s coming,” Nivian said.

“Do all Infested use runes to fight with?” Hiral asked.

“You ask like you’ve fought one before,” Dr. Benza said, and Hiral nodded. “Not many people can say that. Most are dead. But, yes, from what we know, they all possess limited rune usage. Very limited, actually. We’ve only had reports of them using the Runes of Impact, Rejection, and Attraction. I can explain what each of these runes do in detail…” He trailed off as Hiral shook his head.

“We’re pretty familiar with what those three runes do,” Hiral said. “No Rune of Absorption? They usually come in pairs, so the odd number…” But this time, it was Hiral’s turn to trail off at the confused look on Dr. Benza’s face.

“Rune of Absorption?” Dr. Benza asked, looking at the other two researchers. “I haven’t heard of that one.”

“Ah, I saw one report there might be an Absorption rune,” Fenil said. “It acted similar to a Rune of Attraction, but there were differences. It wasn’t a report about an Infested, though. Another Enemy.”

“What other abilities do the regular Enemies have?” Hiral asked, but the three researchers all just paused.

No more information there, unfortunately. We really need to clear more regular dungeons to get access to better tutorials.

“Other than the three runes, anything else we should watch for?” Seena asked.

“The Infested are fast and strong,” Dr. Benza said. “They are also very durable. You need to kill the Enemy within the body to actually kill the Infested.”

“And they can squirm around inside, so it’s not as easy as ramming something through the chest,” Fenil said. “They enter through the stomach, and while most take up residence in the chest cavity, we’ve had cases of them residing within the leg or head as well. One even went as far as to move all the way down to the right hand.”

The whole party looked at Seena.

“What?” she asked.

“Burn it with fire,” Nivian said simply. “All of it.”

“I can do that,” she said. “Maybe it’ll even give me more information on that achievement.”

“Seeyela,” Hiral said, “your new daggers might also work really well. The Ghost-Web Venom targets solar energy, after all, and it sounds like these Enemies have a lot of it.”

“They do,” Dr. Benza said. “Though I’d be surprised if they created a monster with a venom that could hurt them.”

“It wasn’t just the Lady of the Web who had the venom,” Hiral said. “The regular spiders have it too. It might work.”

“It might,” Fenil said. “The Enemy is very resistant to poison and disease. You may need to try a few times to get it to work.”

“I just need to keep stabbing until it dies?” Seeyela asked. “Even without Hiral’s training, I can probably do that.”

“Do we have time for me to show her some basics?” Hiral asked, but Seena shook her head.

“I’m getting that feeling in my gut we need to be moving,” Seena said.

“Could be Nivian’s cooking,” Yanily said. “You did eat back at the…” The tank glared at him. “Nope, not the cooking. Alright. Got it.”

“You all… don’t seem to be taking this very seriously,” Laseen said.

“We are,” Hiral answered. “If Yanily isn’t saying something ridiculous, that’s when you should worry. The banter helps keep us level.”

“How far are we from the eastern gate at this point?” Seena asked.

“More than halfway,” Dr. Benza said. “You see the road curving there? It’ll straighten out a bit again after that, and then we’ll be at the edge of the city. There’s space between the city and the tunnel—they were going to put up a wall, they said—but it’ll leave us out in the open. Few hundred feet of it.”

“That’s where we’ll find the Infested,” Seena said.

“How do you know?” Wule asked.

“Because that’s where all the survivors are heading,” Seena said. “It’ll wait for us there.”

And just like that, a notification window popped up in front of Hiral’s eyes.

Dynamic Quest

Get the researchers and their work safely through the eastern gate before the Infested kills them.

Or before something worse comes looking.

“What could be worse than an Infested?” Yanily asked, but by the looks on the researchers’ faces, the answer was pretty simple.

Lots.