Rune Seeker

About forty minutes later, Hiral sat against one of the building walls and put the fourth and final crystal chest-plate down. “All done,” he said. “Runes of Rejection in all of them, as well as tying some Runes of Increase to what I think are a kind of hardness rune. That should do it.” He then appraised the items until View kicked in.

Crystal Armor – D-Rank

Provides increased protection against E and D-Rank attacks, though it suffers diminishing effectiveness against C-Rank and higher attacks.

“And Nivian, like the Rune of Attraction I made for your shield, this should work with your bark armor, increasing your overall defense,” Hiral said.

“Damage sponge,” Yanily said as he finally returned from looking around, carrying a familiar lightning-bolt-shaped sword with him. “Look what I found. And check this out!”

With his spear in his other hand, he dropped into a fighting stance, then thrust the sword forward. All at once, the sword and his body both condensed, then shot forward in the form of a bolt of lightning to appear right in front of the rest of the startled party.

Yanily himself had wide eyes, small sparks of electricity crackling up his arm and across his body. If the man had had hair, it would’ve been standing on end, and he gave a visible shiver. A clang echoed faintly behind him—somehow his spear had been left behind by the movement ability—but Yanily just looked down at the sword.

“Huh,” he said distractedly, then simply handed the sword over to Hiral without another word and jogged back to his spear.

“Any idea what just happened?” Hiral asked out of the side of his mouth.

“Maybe because he left his spear behind?” Seena asked.

“I’m just glad it wasn’t his pants,” Wule said.

“What should we do with this?” Hiral asked, holding up the sword.

The hilt was long enough for two hands to hold comfortably—even though the Infested had mainly used it one-handed—and the blade itself was about three feet long. Shaped like a jagged lightning bolt, the smooth crystal had a somewhat yellow tint compared to the clearer crystal of his RHCs and the Emperor’s Greatsword. A few seconds of looking at the weapon brought up a window, courtesy of View.

(Lost) Stormstrike – A-Rank

Effects: Grants user access to Ability – Stormstep and Ability – Lightning Strike

Ability – Stormstep: Briefly become intangible lightning to dash in one direction. If an object or entity is struck before reaching destination, reform and inflict lightning damage based on Wis.

Ability – Lightning Strike: Release a lightning bolt in a straight line to inflict damage based on Wis.

“It’s got a Lost tag, like Seeyela’s daggers, so maybe we can take it with us?” Hiral said.

“Give Yanily dibs?” Nivian asked. “He found it, after all, and I don’t think I could use Infuriate with it anyway. No way we want Wule using it; he’d cut off his own hand.”

“Maybe a finger, at worst,” Wule said, glaring at his brother.

“Yanily, you want this?” Seena called over to the spearman, who’d picked his weapon back up and was performing slow, measured thrusts with it.

“No,” Yanily said evenly, like he was too busy to do anything more than give the one-word response.

“Don’t tell me he got inspiration from the sword’s ability, like against those Lizardmen?” Hiral asked the others. “He’s trying to force another ability evolution.”

“Yanily may act like an idiot sometimes…” Seena said quietly.

“Sometimes?” Wule asked.

“…but he’s got a knack for the spear,” Seena finished. “Honestly, if anybody can force ability evolutions, it’d be him. But that leaves us with the question of what to do with the sword.”

“Do you want it?” Hiral asked her, flipping the sword around and offering it to her hilt-first.

Seena lifted her hand as if to reach out for it, but she stopped halfway, and her face sort of scrunched up. “Apparently I don’t,” she said, as if she didn’t even understand what she was saying. “My gut is telling me not to take it… like it wouldn’t agree with me.”

“That fire-leaning Hiral brought up earlier?” Nivian asked.

“I think so, actually,” Seena said, literally stepping back from the sword. “Is that even possible?”

“It might be that Seed of the Lost,” Hiral offered. “Maybe it’s giving you a hint at one of those special advanced classes.”

“Then I think I’ll follow it,” Seena said. “That just leaves you, Hiral. You want it? I know it’s no Emperor’s Greatsword, but maybe it’ll be useful if you don’t have room to swing that beast around?”

Nivian pointed at the large gouges in the road from where Hiral had fought the Infested. “Don’t think he needs to worry about that.”

“He does if we’re the ones around him,” Seena corrected.

“Sure,” Hiral said. “I’ll just put it in the storage ring for now.” With that, he concentrated on the ring and absorbing the sword into it, but just as it was about to vanish, he felt an odd pulse on his upper back, then an echoing pulse from the Ring of Amin Thett.

“Something wrong?” Seena asked.

“I…” Hiral started, but he stopped when a white, carapace-clad figure stepped out from one of the buildings.

Wispy webs hung from the woman’s shoulders, like a short cloak, and eight red eyes glowed from the otherwise smooth face. Peeking out from her back, just above her waist, were the hilts of a pair of daggers. She turned her head to peer at the party.

“What do you think?” Seeyela asked from within the armor.

“Jeez,” Nivian said, letting out a breath. “I thought you were the Lady of the Web.”

“That’s kind of intense, Sis,” Seena said. “How do you even breathe in that? Or move? Or see?”

Seeyela bent her arm at the elbow a couple of times, then looked at Seena again. “I honestly have no idea how to answer any of those questions. The whole thing feels solid now that I’ve got it on, but it doesn’t restrict my movements at all. Breathing just like normal, and if anything, I can see better. It’s like my field of vision is wider. I think I can almost see behind me, but not quite.”

“Took you a while to get into,” Wule pointed out, and Seeyela chuckled.

“Not really. Just to figure out how to get it on. And I’ve been dressed for almost ten minutes, but I was playing with the camouflage features inside. Felt a weird gravity pulse, though, so I decided to come out.”

“Weird gravity…?” Seena asked, then looked at Hiral and narrowed her eyes.

“Stop looking at me like that—I’m not going to explode,” he said, turning his attention back to Seeyela. “You felt it too?”

“Yeah, what was it?” Seeyela asked.

“I’m not sure… but… do the rings use gravity?” he asked.

Seeyela nodded. “I think so. Like the portals. It’s not exactly the same, but the rings pull whatever we’re holding through a gravity portal and drop them somewhere else. I can’t tell if it’s actually some kind of sub-space inside the ring, or somewhere really far away. Either way, yeah, it uses gravity. Why?”

“Well,” Hiral said, but his attention was on the ring floating at his back.

Concentrating on the Ring of Amin Thett and the sword in his hand, he tried to push the Rune of Gravity into it like he had the Rune of Energy. Even without looking at the device, he could feel the immediate success. The rune formed in the empty space inside the ring, and then the sword in his hand turned into solid energy and rushed up over his shoulder to vanish within the circle of crystal.

“Did your… Did your floating ring of death just eat the sword?” Seena asked at the same time a notification window popped up in front of Hiral’s eyes.

The Arsenal of Amin Thett

The Ring of Amin Thett can store weapons of A-Rank or below within its interspatial storage for retrieval with a thought.

“It did,” Hiral said. “Like the Interspatial Rings, but only weapons, apparently. Not sure what good it will do…” He trailed off, thinking of Stormstrike again. A brief pulse of energy, and the sword emerged from the space within the floating ring to hang in the air beside Hiral.

All eyes stayed locked on the sword, as if waiting for it to drop the ground, but when it didn’t, Hiral reached for it. Oddly… the weapon moved away from him as he stretched his hand towards it.

“It… doesn’t seem to like you,” Wule pointed out.

Another reach with his hand, and again the sword moved away. That can’t be right. This time, like he did when he wanted the ring to move, Hiral thought about the sword coming to his hand instead of hanging passively in the air, and he deftly snatched the weapon. As soon as he had the hilt in his hand, the weight of the sword fell comfortably in his grip, and the hold of the ring faded.

“Must be a safety feature or something,” Hiral said. “So I don’t stab myself when I summon out a weapon.” With another thought of the Rune of Gravity,the sword got sucked back into the ring, and Hiral shrugged at the others. “I’ll figure it out later. We don’t have a lot of time before this dungeon ends, and we should make sure we exit instead of getting kicked out. Who knows? It might kick us back to the beginning instead of the end.”

Seena winced a little at the thought, then quickly nodded. “We’ve got about five minutes, then. Is that enough time to get this crystal armor on? I don’t see any straps or anything, so does that mean it sticks to us like your crystals do?”

“Hey… hey, Seeyela,” Yanily “whispered,” though it was loud enough to reach down the street, and the entire party looked at the spearman. “While they play with their crystals, come spar with me a bit. I wanna test something, and Right’s not around.”

Seeyela visibly sighed under her armor, but she looked at Seena instead of Yanily. “I’ll keep him entertained while you get ready. He won’t stop if somebody doesn’t pay attention to him.”

“Like a kid…” Seena muttered, but she nodded at her sister. Then, back to Hiral, “So, armor.”

“Like you said, a thread of solar energy will connect it to us,” Hiral said, demonstrating by lifting the chest-plate up to himself and feeding it some energy. Within a heartbeat, it molded comfortably to his chest, and even went completely clear where the Rune of Separation sat. “Huh,” he mumbled, but he handed chest pieces to the other three as they came over. “Chest first. It’s the heart of the armor, so to speak. Then the biceps and thighs.”

“That’s it?” Wule said. “Five pieces that don’t even cover everything. Is it really going to protect us?” Despite his questions, he quickly put the crystal plate on his chest. Unlike Hiral’s armor, which took on an orangish hue, Wule’s faded to an icy blue.

“They’re all different?” Seena asked, and Hiral glanced at her.

The armor had thinned and conformed to her shape, as opposed to staying a flat, board-like piece of crystal, and had taken on a red color with streaks of vibrant orange. Nivian, on the other hand, now wore a deep brown crystal—wider than the others to match his larger frame—that bore a texture similar to a tree’s bark.

“Somehow, they must detect an aspect of our solar energy, and mold to fit that?” Hiral said. “Seena’s is obviously fire-related, and Nivian’s is like his normal armor. Wule, is there more to your rod than you’re letting on?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Wule said, looking at the magical rod he had looped in his belt. Like a two-foot-long icicle, the matching color was obviously the source of where the armor was pulling its inspiration.

“Figure it out later,” Seena instructed. “Get your armor on.” She already had the arm-plates attached to her upper arms, and was now working on the thigh-plates.

Hiral quickly followed suit. The arms went on smoothly, and his thigh-plates actually merged with the side-pieces he used to house his RHCs. Just like that, they were one solid component, though he could tell instinctively that a thought would separate them if he needed. Also, as soon as the fifth and final armor segment was in place, he felt a sort of field come to life around him. Barely a hair’s breadth above his skin, it was little more than a tickle, but it would be strong enough to block—or at least dull—any attack that managed to land on him.

“I take it back,” Wule said, staring at his hand as he turned it over, back and forth, back and forth. “This is great. Thanks, Hiral.”

“Thank the dungeon,” Hiral said. “I just… improved on it a little.”

“Speaking of dungeons, it’s time for us to go,” Seena said. “Three minutes left on the timer, and I don’t want to risk waiting until the last second. Hey, Sis, Yanily, we’re leaving.” As she said this last remark, she waved at the other two and pointed towards the dungeon interface.

“What about Left and Right?” Yanily asked as the party gathered around the interface, and Hiral answered by cancelling his Foundational Split.

The glowing double-helix script wrapping his arms and legs quickly dimmed, then faded, his original tattoos and Meridian Lines emerging from deep within his skin to merge and join on the surface until they were once again complete.

“I’ll resummon them once we get out,” Hiral said. “Then, depending on what the situation is like out there, we can ask them what they found. I don’t know about you, but I’m really curious.”

“Let’s not keep you waiting, then,” Seena said, waving her hand over the dungeon interface’s crystal. “Exit Dungeon.”

As expected, a portal appeared.

“I can’t wait till I figure out how to do that,” Seeyela mumbled, her eight-eyed helm fixated on the portal like it held truths only she could see.

Hiral, however, was more concerned by what he saw through the portal: more dark tunnel.

“Do you really think it’s the other side?” he asked.

“Only one way to find out,” Seena said, tapping Nivian on the shoulder.

“Of course I’m going first,” Nivian deadpanned. “There’d better be a floor, or this is not going to be funny.”

“I’m sure your new defensive ability will protect you,” Seena said reassuringly.

Nivian gently shook his head, took a breath, and stepped through the portal.