Rune Seeker

Hiral stared at the fist imprint in the door, his mind running the numbers on just how strong something would have to be to leave a mark like that.

He didn’t like the result.

CLANG! A second reverse-dent formed on the door as the walls shook again.

“Hinges and bar haven’t budged,” Hiral said, eyes tracking over the door frame. “But…” CLANG! “… I don’t think the door will hold for long. Fight or run?”

“Giant?” Seena asked, and Left was already at the window.

“Not as far as I’d like it to be,” Left said. “It’ll round the corner within a minute, and it doesn’t seem to have heard…” CLANG! “… that.”

“That’s all well and good, but how are we going to get out of here?” Yanily asked. “That’s the only door.”

“Out the window,” Nivian said.

“We’re almost two hundred feet up,” Wule said. “Last I checked, none of us has wings. Uh, other than Left, and he’s only got one.”

CLANG! A fifth indentation, this one right above the fourth. CLANG! Another, right beside the fifth. Whatever was outside had decided to focus its attention on one part of the door.

“If I do, I won’t have anything left for a fight,” Seeyela said. “Though, I… uh… may have an idea.”

“Oh, no, she’s making the same face Hiral does when he’s planning to test something reckless,” Wule said, sighing.

Seeyela answered by putting her eight-eyed helmet back over her head. “Better?” she asked, the red eyes reflecting the thin light of the glowing roots ominously.

“No?” Wule said weakly.

“What’s your idea?” Seena asked.

“A full portal depends on distance, direction, and the power of who passes through,” Seeyela said. “It gets more expensive if I need to change the plane of the entrance and exit. For example, going straight down a street is cheaper than the same distance going from a street to a roof.”

CLANG!

“So? Point?” Seena asked, her book floating beside her.

“If I open a door to walk from here out onto the street below for all of us, it’ll cost all my solar energy,” Seeyela said.

“I can get myself down,” Hiral said.

“Still, it’s too much,” Seeyela answered.

“The other option?” Seena asked.

CLANG! This time, the edge of the door shuddered where it met the wall, like it was getting torn away a little more with each punch.

“I’m going to create a drop-chute,” Seeyela said. “Like a tunnel straight down, right outside the window. The bottom end will be ten feet above the ground. You jump out the window, into the portal, then skip the hundred and ninety feet in between to come out right above the ground. Easy peasy.”

“You want us to jump out the window?” Yanily asked.

“We all jumped off the island,” Hiral pointed out.

“With wingsuits on… and parachutes,” Wule said.

CLANG! The bottom of the door scraped on the floor like it was getting battered in.

“We don’t have time for this,” Seena said, turning to her sister. “It’ll work?”

“Eighty-twenty odds,” Seeyela said. “It’s not like I’ve done this before.”

“She’s lying about the odds, isn’t she?” Wule asked his brother.

“Of course she is,” Nivian said, staring at Seeyela. “They’re obviously much worse than that.”

“We’re doing it,” Seena said, then walked over and tapped Nivian on the shoulder.

He just turned and looked at her. “Really?” he asked after a few seconds.

She shrugged.

CLAAAAANG! The whole door tilted at the top, one of the hinges finally bending.

Nivian sighed, then walked over to the window. “Let’s get this over with.”

“I’ll put the entrance right outside the window, but the bottom has to be high enough off the ground for you to get all the way through,” Seeyela said, solar energy pouring out of her to create a black hole in the air a foot below the windowsill outside.

Seena gave Nivian another tap on the shoulder, and the man stepped up onto the windowsill.

“Why couldn’t you make this inside the room instead of making us jump?” Nivian asked, looking down at the long drop beyond the portal.

“Like I said, it’s cheaper when it’s a straight tunnel,” Seeyela said. “Even if the direction happens to be down. Don’t worry. This’ll be like jumping off the first floor, not the seventh. You’re D-Rank now; it’s nothing.”

“Don’t see you going through first,” Nivian complained, but another CLANG at the door turned his face serious. One more deep breath, and he stepped off the windowsill. He hit the back hole not even a second later, and then there was a distant grunt far below.

“Did he make it or splat?” Yanily asked.

The party got their answer when Nivian stepped out from under the portal exit and waved up.

“Ground comes up real fast,” Nivian said. “But it’s not too bad.”

“See, told you,” Seeyela said.

CLAAAAAAANG! The door slammed against the bar bracing it, the whole thing ringing like a gong, and Hiral saw blue light glowing around the edges.

“We need to go now,” Hiral said. “If they see us leaving like this…” Then he noticed that Seena was already gone, and Wule was on the sill.

“You can get yourself down?” Seeyela asked Hiral, glancing from Left and Right to him as Wule jumped and Yanily followed right behind.

“I can. Go,” Hiral said, then quickly absorbed and resummoned his doubles, though only with one percent energy each. “I’ll call you down as soon as I hit the ground.” He climbed on the windowsill, where a small part of him noticed the runic script-like carvings all along the edge—Different than my runes—but then Seeyela was gone, and the room shook again from another titanic CLANG.

No time for hesitation, Hiral leapt out of the window, gravity quickly taking hold and dragging him down.

Maybe I should’ve tested this before I jumped…

But that option was out the window—literally—so Hiral pushed solar energy into his Rune of Gravity. Halfway down already, he suddenly slowed, but didn’t completely stop. He hadn’t reversed gravity, but simply lessened it like the Emperor’s Greatsword did to make itself lighter, so he still fell, albeit at around half the speed. From twenty feet up, he let loose a steady flow of Rejection, softening his landing, and he only had to take a single step to catch his balance.

With the others looking at him, Yanily mouthed overpowered, but Hiral ignored him to cancel his summons, then reactivated Foundational Split.

As soon as Left and Right peeled off Hiral, Seena looked at Left. “Lead the way,” she said, though the glowing roots were pretty obvious.

“See that building just ahead of the giant?” Left said, pointing. “It’ll turn at the street after it. That’s also our destination, up on the seventh floor.” He raised the angle of his arm ever so slightly as he pointed.

Hiral squinted at the building, and, yes, if he looked very carefully, he could just barely make out the guide-roots amidst the coil of regular plants. Well, if anybody could really call glowing roots regular.

As he watched, the Shambling Graveyard approached the corner where it would turn, and Left ran over to the wall of the building across from where they’d jumped, a faint clang echoing from above.

“Over here,” the double said. “Sometimes the giant looks back the way it came when it turns a corner.”

Hiral didn’t need to be told twice, his memory clearly recalling his recent race against the monster, and he joined the others with Left against the wall. With the stone at their back like it was, unless the giant turned its head just perfectly as it rounded the corner, it wouldn’t see them. The window across the street from which they’d come, however…

“How long until…” Clang! “… they get through?” Wule asked.

“Any second now, I’d guess,” Hiral said. “We should move.”

“Wait,” Nivian said, holding up a hand. “Movement might attract the giant’s attention. Just a few more seconds…”

Hiral’s eyes went from the giant to the window from which they’d jumped, half-expecting to see an undead horde come pouring out from seven floors up. If it was anything like the pedway, the fall alone wouldn’t stop them. And that wasn’t even counting whatever was smashing on the door.

Clang! Hiral lifted his RHCs off his thighs. If the undead were coming, he’d be…

“We’re moving,” Nivian suddenly said, running ahead, and everybody else fell in behind him.

Hiral took up the rear, splitting his attention between the roofs, the alleys they passed, and the building they’d just come from. An attack could come from just about anywhere.

CLANG! The sound came louder than the others, and Hiral turned back just in time to see the bent metal door come hurtling out through the window. The top of the door caught the sill as it passed, sending the metal into a wild spin that crashed into the center of the street, leaving it embedded in the stone.

“Faster,” Hiral said quietly into the party chat, knowing the others would hear him perfectly.

Nivian picked up the pace immediately, but Hiral still kept most of his attention on the window behind him. Were the undead searching the forge for the living they expected to be in there? Or, were they…?

The first zombie hit the window at a run, flipping head over heels as it plummeted towards the street. It wasn’t even halfway when the next… and the next… and a dozen more after that… all followed it out. Undead poured like a waterfall out of the window, crashing to the ground in wet thwaps as they hit the stone. Bodies and internal organs exploded from the impact, sending out geysers of gore to coat the street one after the other.

They came so fast Hiral didn’t even have time to see the ground coated in blood before it was covered in bodies.

“Okay, much faster,” Hiral corrected as some of the zombies got back to their feet, the bodies of the first jumpers having cushioned their fall. Then, like the party, the undead began to run.

The monsters lacked the normal grace of the living, arms flailing wildly at their sides as their legs churned, but they weren’t nearly as slow as something dead should be. And, as disturbing as the running undead were, something else sent a shiver up Hiral’s spine, his eyes climbing the building back up to the window where the undead still fell from.

Standing on the side of the wall—like it was the ground—was the same kind of undead Lizardman Hiral had seen in the pedway. The scaled skin was pale and dry, with the body underneath emaciated and thin. Blue blazed in the eye sockets and leaked down its cheeks as it turned its head in the party’s direction, and it lifted one arm to point at the party. Then it began to sprint along the side of the wall like gravity had no say in the matter.

Could I do that with my Rune of Attraction? one part of Hiral’s mind asked, while his other, more practical part led him to raise his weapons and pull his triggers. The undead flipped sideways—up the building—to dodge the two shots, the bolts taking chunks out of the stone where they hit.

“Something bad is after us,” Hiral said into the chat.

“Something bad ahead of us too,” Nivian answered, and Hiral spared a quick glance to spot skeletons streaming out of a nearby alley.

Just like that, they were surrounded.

“We’re not stopping to fight—punch through,” Seena ordered. “Sis, we’re not going to have time for the stairs.”

“I don’t have enough energy to get us all up there,” Seeyela said.

“How many?” Seena asked as Nivian hit the line of skeletons. The first monster practically exploded into boney shrapnel at the impact, though the mouth continued biting at the air despite flying away.

“Three, four tops,” Seeyela said. “And even that’s pushing it.”

“Is there anything we can…?” Seena started to ask.

“Just open the portal when we get close,” Nivian said, twisting to hit one skeleton with a shield bash while his whip pulled the legs out from three others.

“Look at you, sounding all confident,” Yanily said, dancing into the line of skeletons a pace behind Nivian. His spear trailed lightning as he went, and he swept it around in wide arcs to push monsters out of the way. And that wasn’t all; thunder rumbled from each swing to send a barely visible blade of force out that chopped through the undead like a bone forest.

That was all the attention Hiral had for the front, though, and he turned his eyes back to the monster running along the wall. It’d already closed half the distance, and it was still gaining. Closer now, Hiral could make out a name over its head.

(Undead) Vampire Monk – High-D-Rank

Nope, that’s not good at all.

Two more pulls of his triggers resulted in two more misses, the monster moving supernaturally fast. It’s got to have dexterity and attunement around the same level—or higher—than mine.

He kept the shots going, trying to predict where the vampire would run. Trying to cut it off or buy time. Trying anything to slow it down. Nothing worked. It came on like nothing could stop it, flipping, dodging, and even sliding under shots as it ran along the wall.

An explosion and wave of heat near the front of the group signaled Seena had gotten involved, and Hiral found skeleton pieces along the ground around him. A scuff of bone on stone forced Hiral’s attention away from the charging vampire, and he turned just in time to duck under a sweeping spear. A dodge to the left, then a springing leap over a pair of low-swinging spears got him past the crowd flushing in from both sides. He blasted two skulls into bone chips, then pushed out with a violent surge of Rejection.

The pulse didn’t kill any of the skeletons—it barely even hurt them—but it did help create some space to keep the mob off the party’s tail.

“Almost there,” Seeyela said, adding a few seconds later, “One portal coming up. I hope you have a plan, Nivian.”

Hiral fired two more shots at the vampire, but again it simply avoided the shots, this time by leaping clear off the wall. Three acrobatic flips in the air, and then a twist before landing, and the monster touched down on the street in the midst of the shattered skeletons.

Blue orbs raged as it stared at Hiral, an aura of hungry violence practically visible around the thing.

“It’s ready,” Seeyela said.

“You, Wule, and Seena get through. Go,” Nivian ordered while bashing aside another skeleton.

“What now?” Hiral asked as he passed Left and Right, the doubles coming back to cover him while he continued. The two crashed into the skeletons like a pair of wrecking balls, shattering bone or encasing it with ice with every motion. It wouldn’t be enough, though, as the vampire once again broke into a sprint. It’d be on them in seconds. Maybe less.

“What now?” Yanily echoed, bashing the haft of his spear through a skeleton’s head as Seena passed through the portal. “Like, now now.”

“Now I’m going through,” Nivian said, turning on a dime and ducking through the portal.

“Pardon?” Yanily asked as the portal blinked out of existence.

“Uh…” Hiral said, the vampire reaching his doubles.

Right threw a punch, which the vampire ducked and countered with a punch of its own. Snapping like breaking twigs echoed from the blow as Right folded around the monster’s fist. But Right wasn’t out of the fight just because of that; he slipped an arm around the undead and latched on while Left leapt in, Dagger of Sath swinging.

It didn’t matter.

The vampire swung Right around like a club, slamming him into Left, then whipping him back in the other direction lightning quick. Left hit the ground ten feet away at the same time the vampire smashed Right straight down into the stone hard enough for Hiral to feel the ground under his feet shake.

Despite the shattered stone, Right somehow still held on, though solar energy oozed off him in buckets of glowing smoke.

Hiral fired off two shots, the first striking the vampire in the shoulder and the second catching it in the upper arm. Part of Hiral had hoped a solid hit would tear the monster’s arm off.

No such luck. All he did was get its attention, and even with Right still clinging, the vampire turned and launched itself at Hiral.

Impossibly fast, it was on top of him even before his weapons were off cooldown. He was…

Nivian wishes to bring you to his position with Swarm Tactics

Accept? Yes / No

Hiral’s mind hit Yes without a second thought, and the world around him blurred just as the vampire swung its fist.

Stone cracked somewhere… distant… and Hiral looked around at the room he now stood in, the rest of the party nearby.

“Glad that worked,” Nivian said.

“I can’t believe you…” Yanily started, but Hiral interrupted him, spotting the dungeon interface in the middle of the room.

“Vampire is coming,” Hiral said, dashing over and swiping his hand over the interface crystal. However, instead of Dr. Benza appearing on the small, nearby dais, a notification window appeared in the air.

Dungeon – The Dark Jungle has been corrupted by outside forces.

Dungeon – The Dark Jungle has become: Wild Dungeon – The Lost Forge of Ur’Thul

Note: Wild Dungeons are rare instances containing powerful Lost equipment and unique quests.

Note (2): Wild Dungeon—The Lost Forge of Ur’Thul can only be attempted once before the corruption completely claims it.

Note (3): Wild Dungeon—The Lost Forge of Ur’Thul will count towards unlocking the Asylum if it is completed successfully.

Enter Dungeon?