Rune Seeker

“Damnit,” Seena cursed. She looked like she was almost ready to punch the interface, and with her flaming-gauntlet-thing, there was no telling how much damage it would do.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Hiral said, holding up his hands to delay her frustration. “Let me try one thing first.”

“Thought you said there wasn’t anything we could do,” Seeyela said.

“I doubt it’ll work, but it’s better than hitting it, right?”

“Debatable,” Seena said, still scowling, “but go ahead.”

After one more look to make sure she wasn’t going to start swinging as soon as his back was turned, Hiral went over to the crack in the floor. Stone crumbled underfoot as soon as he got close, and he had to quick-step back so he didn’t fall in. He approached more carefully the second time. The damage inside the crevice was exponentially worse than the rest of the room, and he only spotted one cracked shard of crystal remaining on the near side.

If it’s still connected to the interface, maybe we can at least get something else from it.

Stepping over carefully to make sure he didn’t tumble down in the split in the floor—I wonder how far down it goes. Hrm, on second thought, I don’t want to know—Hiral crouched at the side. Then, leaning down, he fed solar power into his Rune of Energy. A sphere of light appeared in the palm of his hand, growing as he pushed energy into the rune, until it touched the edge of the broken crystal.

Almost immediately, there was a tug on his solar energy, like the totem they’d used to seal the Prince of the Swamp, or his Ring of Amin Thett, and Hiral gently let energy flow into it. Eyes on the crystal every second the energy moved, he watched for any changes, any instabilities that could result in another violent ejection of energy. His face was far too close to the crack for that to be safe.

“So far, so good,” he muttered, following the connected flow of energy with his mind.

Just like Cycling, in a way, the energy got pulled through several nodes within the interface, spread out to the area where Dr. Benza usually appeared, and then ran up towards the crystal. The nodes closest to the surface were horribly damaged, the energy stalling there and even visibly leaking out—which made the others take a step back—but all in all, nothing exploded.

Nivian would probably be disappointed.

“Give it a try,” Hiral said, eyes never leaving the flow of energy.

Nobody moved.

“Oh, come on, it’s probably not going to blow up,” Hiral said.

“He said probably,” Seena said.

“Give Yanily the shoulder tap,” Seeyela suggested.

“I don’t want the shoulder tap!” Yanily quickly said.

“I’ll do it,” Left said, and Hiral sensed movement behind him.

The next second, more energy pulled towards the interface crystal, and Hiral meticulously fed it.

The flow of energy changed a second later, rushing towards the floor off to the side of the pedestal, and suddenly Dr. Benza flickered to life.

“Welcome… Asylum,” Dr. Benza said, his speech broken as his image faded in and out. “If… that means… three… in the area. Congrat. I’m sure… ny questions, and… would… answer them.”

“Nice, Hiral, nice!” Seena said, moving closer. “Can you make it any stronger?”

“One second,” Hiral said, forcing more energy along the channels leading to Dr. Benza’s image. Something popped, a small section of the floor under Dr. Benza’s foot bursting, and his whole left leg vanished. “Damnit.” Hiral pulled the extra energy back, as he felt two more of the channels on the verge of rupturing. “No, that’s the best I can do. Any more and the whole thing will—you guessed it—explode.”

“It’s fine,” Seena said. “We’ll just have to ask him about it and piece it together. How long can you keep this up?”

Hiral took a quick look at his solar energy capacity. Nice, the belt and the Life of the Party+ efficiency boosts seem to be working for this. Still, energy is draining steadily. “A couple minutes at most,” he said.

“Left, banner,” Seena said quickly, catching on that his limit would be his personal solar energy.

Left reached over to his left bicep, a glow quickly forming on his fingertips as he touched the tattoo there. Not even a heartbeat later, he pulled his hand away with a streamer of glowing smoke. It stretched from his arm to his hand, then snapped into reality as he shaped the Banner of Courage. A dome of golden energy spread outward as soon as the banner was fully formed, and a notification window popped up in front of Hiral’s eyes.

You have been buffed by Banner of Courage.

Critical Strike Rate increased by 12% for 180 seconds.

Critical Strike Damage increased by 40% for 180 seconds.

Minor Healing Over Time for 180 seconds.

Minor Shielding granted for 180 seconds.

Immune to Fear and Fear-like effects for 180 seconds.

Solar Absorption Rate increased by 1 Rank for 180 seconds.

“Thanks,” Hiral said. “Still, make it quick.”

“Got it,” Seena said, turning her attention to the one-legged image flashing in front of her. “Dr. Benza, how we can stop the Fallen from waking up?”

“Infor… len… found… Tutorial…” Dr. Benza said, his speech broken, face contorting horrifically with each blinking word.

“Any idea what he just said?” Seeyela asked.

“He was referring to one of the Tutorials,” Left said. “But… this isn’t the same Dr. Benza who was telling us about Fallen Reach.”

“Damn, you’re right…” Seena said.

“No, he’s Left,” Yanily whispered quietly to her.

“… this is the younger version of him,” Seena went on as if Yanily hadn’t spoken. “How can we get old-man-Benza back?”

“We might not be able to,” Hiral said. “When we saw him, the room was in crisis mode or whatever. Red light in the dome. That has to be where the old him was coming from. With this crack, the connection is completely broken.”

“So, he can’t tell us anything?” Seena asked. “Nothing useful?”

“There is one thing we need to check,” Left said. “The path to the next zone where we’ll jump to Fallen Reach. We don’t know which Disc of Passage to take.”

“Can you figure it out, Left?” Hiral asked, energy continuing to drain out of him just by Dr. Benza standing there.

“I think so.” Left turned to Seena. “May I?”

“He’s all yours,” Seena said, gesturing to Dr. Benza.

“Thank you,” Left said. “Dr. Benza, can you show us the connecting zone maps, specifically to D-Rank zones?”

“… hzrfrap…” Dr. Benza’s voice came out completely distorted, and there was a sudden tug for energy on Hiral. He let the solar power flow out of him, the extra resources straining the channels, and fought to hold the flow just below the breaking point.

Come on, come on, he told himself, though he could feel the tiniest of cracks forming within the buried crystal lines even as a globe of light formed in the air. Unlike the globe they’d seen in the last Asylum, this one had huge chunks missing—even with only D-Rank zones selected—like it’d been the victim of some terrible worldwide war.

“Hurry,” Hiral said, all his attention now on making sure the globe had enough energy to do its job, but not so much it blew out the channels. “This is going to go any second.”

“Dr. Benza, show our location and Disc of Passage routes,” Left said, reaching out with one hand to grab the globe.

As soon as the red dot and blue lines appeared, he quickly spun the sphere this way and that, stopping a few seconds later on one section that looked to have the EnSath River flowing through it. A spread of his fingers made the globe suddenly larger, more solar energy rushing into the channels, and another one burst.

Dr. Benza’s right arm vanished up to the shoulder, along with another chunk of the globe.

“Warn me next time,” Hiral said, pulling and pushing different streams of energy in a battle to hold the system together. A battle he was losing.

“There shouldn’t be a next time,” Left said. “Seena, are these the Horns you spoke of?” He pointed at a mountainous formation on both sides of the river.

“Looks like them,” Seena said.

“Dr. Benza, please activate the Disc of Passage to take us to this zone,” Left said.

“..sc… age… vated…” Dr. Benza said, another surge of energy shooting off into the distance, and that was it, all the system could take. Channels ruptured throughout the room, small pops sending porous stone fragments jumping harmlessly into the air, then leaking thin lines of glowing smoke. Within seconds, it was over, Dr. Benza and the hanging sphere winking out of existence.

“Good job, Left,” Hiral said, cutting off his flow of energy as he stood and stepped away from the crack in the floor.

“Yeah, I was so focused on the Fallen, I’d completely forgotten about getting to the jump point,” Seena said.

“Does that mean we’re going now?” Yanily asked, but the man was leaning on his spear. And it wasn’t his usual confident lean—he was tired.

He wasn’t the only one.

They’d battled through two dungeons, practically back-to-back, without a real rest. Add in the emotional turmoil of leaving Nivian and Wule back in the city—They chose to stay… but it doesn’t make it any easier—and it was no wonder exhaustion was catching up to them.

“Do we have time to rest, Left?” Seena asked.

“I estimate we still have around one hundred hours,” Left said.

“Okay, let’s do a sweep of this place to make sure nothing crawls up through the crack to eat us while we rest, then we’ll get some sleep,” Seena said. “After that… well… we’ll figure out what our next step is.”

Hiral was nodding before he even realized it.

“Sounds good,” Yanily said, literally stifling a yawn. “But, if this is like the last Asylum, watch out for the rabbits in the garden. They have big teeth.” With that, he stuck his fingers in front of his mouth to imitate fangs.

Yup, terrifying…