Rune Seeker

Dr. Benza said it would be around ten minutes before they got to Hugor, seeing as the Disc of Passage had been damaged by the crash and had its speed reduced. The slight delay was no problem. Everybody needed a few minutes to restore their solar energy after the constant battles. And… more than that, just to process things.

Yanily was gone.

Even his entry in the Party Interface had disappeared, leaving just the three of them remaining.

Seena and Seeyela had retreated to one edge of the disc, sitting with their legs dangling over and their hands holding each other tightly. They’d known the spearman the longest—grown up with him—and after all the other losses, they were holding on to each other tighter than ever. Part of Hiral wanted to go over and join them, but he still had too many questions about what had happened. It was probably a defense mechanism to prevent himself from falling into the grief of losing his friend, but his brain just wouldn’t stop.

So, while the two sisters comforted each other, and Left and Right kept watch for any monsters, Hiral stood on the back end of the disc and kept his eyes locked on where they’d come from. The slanted line of Separation through the sky hadn’t faded—if anything, it looked worse—and it was the focus of his biggest question.

How was Yanily able to exert so much power?

The Spear of Clouds in his hands didn’t seem to hold the answer, or if it did, he wouldn’t be able to figure it out while the spear “slept.” Was that slumber part of the answer, or was it something else?

Yes, the weapon had runes etched into it—just like the Emperor’s Greatsword did—but it had to be more than that. Sure, there were a few runes he didn’t recognize at all, but there were also several he did.

The Rune of Separation was pretty clear in what it did. Near it were the Runes of Sealing and Unsealing. Something in the back of his mind told him they had something to do with the Storm Dragon Li’l Ur had named. The beast had somehow been sealed within the spear, and Yanily had temporarily unsealed it when he needed to borrow its power. The more common Runes of Increase and Decrease were also there, but after that…? The blade itself held three more runes, and the entire crystal haft was etched with a script similar to Hiral’s double helix. Could the answer be somewhere there? Even if there was, would Dr. Benza have the answers? Would anybody else?

“Hey, Li’l Ur, can I ask you something?” Hiral said to the little lich through the party chat.

“I’m busy comforting our mistress.” Li’l Ur floated above Seena’s shoulder, gently patting the top of her head with his small hand. “There, there.”

“That’s unfortunate, as your future apprentice desperately needs guidance from his renowned and all-knowing mentor. But, if you don’t know the answers to my questions, I guess there’s nothing…”

“As a benevolent, reformed, legendary evil, I believe it is important for me to intervene during my future apprentice’s time of need. I’ll be back shortly, mistress. Just call out if you need anything.” Li’l Ur then floated away from her shoulder. Just a few feet from the woman, his altitude dropped to several inches off the ground, but the fact he was able to make it all the way over to Hiral without faltering showed he was growing in strength.

Is Li’l Ur himself getting stronger again, or is it their bond? Seena trusts him more, so this could be how that manifests.

“What is your question?” Li’l Ur asked from right in front of Hiral.

Instead of talking down to the small lich so much, Hiral dropped into a seated position, crossing his legs and draping the spear across his knees. “How did Yanily do what he did?”

“Ah.” Li’l Ur nodded like the question made sense. “The Spear of Clouds.”

“It has to be more than that,” Hiral countered. “Sure, the weapon itself is S-Rank, but Yan is… was only C-Rank. He had an advanced class, but I don’t think it would’ve been enough to do that.”

Li’l Ur followed Hiral’s gesture to the slant in the sky and clouds.

“One of the spear’s greatest—and most terrifying—powers is its ability to remove Rank disparity,” Li’l Ur said.

“Rank disparity, as in the power loss by a lower-Rank person using a higher-Rank weapon. Like Yan and the spear. It can do that? How?”

“Normally, I would not bother getting into the specifics of it, as most would fail to grasp the concept. However, as my future apprentice—just hurry up and die, would you?—you are uniquely suited to put the pieces together yourself.”

“Uniquely suited…? Runes? I’ve never seen a rune that could do that.”

“Correct, you haven’t, because there is no single rune that can.” Li’l Ur floated over and climbed onto Hiral’s knee. Carefully balancing on the spear’s haft, the little lich hovered over to the middle of it like a tight-rope walker, then pointed at the center of Hiral’s chest.

Looking down at the Coat of Ur’Thul and the bone-white runes etched across his chest, Hiral’s eyes settled on his Rune of Separation.

“I know the spear has that,” Hiral said, tapping the crystal blade within which the rune sat. “It’s part of how the spear removed the Rank disparity…? Wait. It didn’t remove it; it separated it?”

“Not just that,” Li’l Ur said, lowering his arm to point from Hiral’s chest to the haft of the spear he floated above.

Hiral turned his attention there and found script, like what was in the double helix crisscrossing his body. It had a striking similarity to the runes he used, but it was also very different in that it wasn’t a single character.

Runes like his Impact or Rejection were almost simple, like what somebody could write with a single brushstroke. Other runes, such as Separation or Gravity, were far more complex. They appeared to be a combination of the “simple” runes layered one on top of each other to build a stronger concept. He already knew a Rune of Time existed—well, he theorized it did—but instinct told him it was too powerful for him at his current Rank.

The script from his double helix, however, was entirely different. Yes, it was made up of individual characters, but none of them were runes he recognized. And they definitely didn’t layer over each other. Dr. Benza had once compared them to the “truths of the universe,” but what did that even mean?

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Whatever it was, the Spear of Clouds had the same thing etched along the length of its crystal haft.

“What is this?” Hiral asked.

“The Spear of Clouds can ignore Rank disparity by using the wielder’s lifeforce to bridge the gap,” Li’l Ur said.

“Yanily traded his lifeforce to artificially make himself S-Rank?” Hiral guessed.

“Not exactly. His body and abilities remained C-Rank, but in the eyes of the spear—if it had eyes, which it doesn’t, obviously—he wielded it as if he was Low-S-Rank as well.”

“So, that”—Hiral pointed to the sky—“is what an S-Rank person with an S-Rank weapon is capable of?”

“Low-S-Rank,” Li’l Ur said. “If Yanily had been a true S-Rank, he would’ve been able to strike at the body of the Enemy. As an artificial S-Rank, his strike wouldn’t have been enough to damage the main body of the beast, and he knew it. Instead, he went after the less-protected limbs to great effect.”

Hiral gently whistled. If cutting the sky in two was only Low-S-Rank, then the legends of the spear made a whole lot of sense.

“If the spear can do that, though,” Hiral began, then continued more quietly, “Why wouldn’t more people during Dr. Benza’s time have used it to fight back against the Enemy?”

“I don’t think you need me to tell you that,” Li’l Ur said, the little lich somehow looking like he was raising an eyebrow despite not actually having any.

“A cooldown?”

Li’l Ur nodded. “Correct.”

“Must be a pretty long one…”

“It can be. To raise somebody artificially to D-Rank, the cooldown would be measured in days. To C, it would be measured in weeks. B is months, A is years, and S-Rank—like what Yanily did—would be measured in decades. Perhaps even centuries.”

“So, what Yanily did can’t be repeated for… hundreds of years? Then Dr. Benza’s people—our ancestors—must’ve been saving the spear’s ability for a day they really needed it.”

“Yes. A day very much like…”

“Today,” Hiral finished for the lich. “You still haven’t explained how the spear was able to do that, though. I can see how the Rune of Separation could be used to help remove the boundaries of the Rank disparity, but the rest?”

Li’l Ur again pointed beneath his feet.

“I can’t read that,” Hiral said.

“What did they even teach you at school?” Li’l Ur complained. “You can read the other runes. Why not these ones?”

“Because they’re not runes.”

“Of course they are. Just because they’re written differently doesn’t make them any less than the others.”

“They’re runes? All of this?” Hiral ran his finger along the entire length of the shaft.

“To be more accurate, they’re actually three runes, and written in something similar to a cursive font, but yes.”

“Then, are you saying all of this on me is actually a rune?” Hiral pointed at the yellow double helix glowing on his Coat of Ur’Thul.

“Several, yes. They outline the functionality of your PIM, among other things. It’s quite a complex series of equations, actually. Once you’re good and dead, and we have the time, I plan on spending a considerable amount of effort studying them.”

“Let’s not rush ahead to the dead part right now,” Hiral said. “Back to the spear. How does this work? What do they mean?”

“Slow down, future apprentice, or you’ll explode in a manner that does neither of us any good. Suffice it to say, this combination of runes—along with the Rune of Separation—allows the complex process of exchanging lifeforce for the removal of Rank disparity. I would say you’re not ready for most of it, but since all runes come in pairs, and you already have the other in the set, I’m sure you should be able to figure out this one.” Li’l Ur floated over near where the haft met the blade, then pointed down.

Hiral focused on that section of the script. He had the other one in the set? All his simple runes already had their corresponding opposite, one on each side of his body. Impact to Absorption, or Increase to Decrease. That only left his complex runes—Gravity, Separation, and Energy—on their own.

The complex runes are also part of a pair?

That was somewhat intimidating, but a worry for another time. Right now, he needed to figure out what this equation-like rune was. If he had to guess, the opposite of something like Energy would probably be related to a solid material or a concept like that. That instinct he got from his Runic Artificer class told him he was on the right track, though it wasn’t the answer to this question. He’d have to think about it later.

As for what the opposite of Gravity would be… he couldn’t even begin to guess.

Which just left Separation. My first rune. What would the opposite of it be?

Connection.

As soon as Hiral landed on the concept in his mind, a short stretch of the characters on the spear seemed to light up to his eyes, and solar energy ballooned out of him. Poor Li’l Ur got punted towards the center of the disc, while Hiral and the Spear of Clouds lifted into the air. The double-helix script on his skin leapt off to circle around him, more of the individual characters growing less blurry and more defined. Unlike before, however, Hiral’s eyes didn’t wander to the script to try and parse them; no, they stayed locked on the spear’s haft.

With the way the characters seemed to lift off the spear and hang in the air—along with the hint the script was a different font—Hiral was suddenly able to recognize some of them. That there was Attraction, while the one further down was Absorption. Increase and Decrease were hidden in the equation as well, almost as if there were actually multiple layers to the rune.

Even as he watched one complete line of script rise off the spear, a second seemed to follow, then a third. And he understood.

Li’l Ur hadn’t been totally correct. Yes, the Rune of Connection was within this script, but the script itself wasn’t the Rune of Connection. It was a complicated equation dictating how the rune would interact with other components of the spear’s power to achieve its goals. It was like a set of instructions telling the ability how to work, along with the rules by which that ability would need to abide.

The truths of the universe indeed.

Finally, with dozens of the scripted characters hanging in the air, Hiral’s instincts guided him to a much smaller selection of them. Those were the true Rune of Connection, and as soon as he locked on to them, they shot off in a train of light to circle around him. Solar energy streamed out of his body with every beat of his racing heart, and the characters pulsed in time. One loop around him, and they absorbed his energy.

A second loop around, and they twisted and spun on themselves.

A third loop around, and they shot inward to sear themselves into his neck.

Pain flashed along his Meridian Lines—along with all the smaller solar energy channels he’d learned about through Cycling—but it faded almost immediately. Left in its wake were snippets of understanding: The connections of how his magic worked, how he bonded with his party members, and even small truths about the nature of the PIMP.

This Rune of Connection played a major role in all of it, and if he could…

The sphere of energy around him snapped back into place, dragging his double helix with it to re-imprint across his skin, and he dropped to his back on the disc. Beside him, the Spear of Clouds glowed faintly, and he once again saw a thin thread stretching from the weapon to the distant scar in the border of the dungeon.

Then he passed out.