Rune Seeker

The party dealt with two more attacks by the Draugr Ragers before they reached the turnoff indicated by Odi. Like their name suggested, the longer they fought, the more of a berserker rage they went into—so much so that Hiral was tempted to try to use his Rune of Absorption to see if it was a buff. One look at how they couldn’t tell the difference between friend and foe had him stopping that plan before it even started.

It might be a powerful buff, but the downside was far too risky if he could accidentally activate it with the Chord of the Primal Echo.

“This seal guardian, what can you tell us about it?” Seena asked Odi as the group moved away from the wall and down a narrow street.

Even though there were buildings on both sides, it felt more like being stuffed between two walls. The lowest level of each building was solid stone, with just a single, heavy door. Even the windows on the second floor had slanted windowsills to prevent an easy grip, and thick bars over the windows. The whole section of the city behind the palace walls seemed like it had been built to repel an invading army. At least it sheltered them from the rain a bit.

A holdover from the time when they battled Troblins?

“… like the ragers,” Odi was saying, and Hiral forced his attention away from the architecture and history questions rattling around in his head to the slightly more pressing topic. “It has become almost mindless while feasting on the energy of other undead attracted by the seal. It won’t be an opponent who uses guile and cunning. Just pure, brute force.”

“Is it a draugr?” Seeyela asked.

“Maybe once it was,” Odi said. “It has evolved into something more than that. Or, maybe devolved is a better description. Physically, it is much larger, and its scales have become stronger, but there is nothing other than the primal instinct of a hunter left behind. A very territorial one.”

“We can expect it to get stronger and faster as the fight goes on?” Nivian asked.

“Yes,” Odi said. “I’ve watched it single-handedly tear packs of the Draugr Ragers apart, with any injuries it suffered only fueling its unholy rage.”

“Wonderful,” Nivian said, hefting his shield a little higher in front of him.

“Anything else special about it we should know?” Seena asked. “Any tricks up its sleeve?”

“It doesn’t have sleeves,” Odi said, indicating his own ragged scraps of clothing.

“Any tricks?” Seena asked again.

“It doesn’t need any,” Odi said. “Physically, it is probably the strongest creature within these walls. Even Ur’Thul wouldn’t be able to face it head-on.”

“Good to know,” Wule said.

“We should be getting close to its territory now,” Odi added, now about three blocks in from the wall, where the streets were eerily quiet. “Once you defeat it, you should have some time to rest before anything else realizes its territory is up for grabs.”

“Rebuff,” Seena said to Wule, and the healer quickly threw out Nature’s Blade+ and Nature’s Bulwark. “Good. Odi, get in the back there. Hiral, Left, see anything?”

“It’s too quiet,” Hiral said, fingers tightening around the RHCs in his hands. “Left, why don’t you scout with Way of Shadows?”

“I’ll go too,” Seeyela said. “If there aren’t a lot of other undead in this thing’s territory, it’s a good chance to get a lay of the land.”

Seena seemed to think it over for a few seconds before she finally nodded. “Okay, but be careful, both of you. Use the party chat if you find anything.”

“You bet I will—one soloed Mid-Boss is enough for me,” Seeyela said, and then she vanished with a bamf.

“Give me a lift to the roof?” Left asked Hiral.

“Wait, you’re asking him to throw you?” Right asked. “Psycho.”

Hiral quickly sheathed his RHCs and cupped his hands. As soon as Left had his foot placed, Hiral hefted with his very minor Str, but added a solid boost from his Rune of Rejection. The double arced gently above the forty-foot-high roof—Coat of Ur’Thul flapping—then vanished in the darkness as he activated the Way of Shadows tattoo.

With him gone, Hiral’s RHCs came back out in his hands, and the party started moving again.

“How long do you think we’ll have to wait before…” Nivian started.

SMAAAASH! The ground shook as something crashed several blocks away.

“Aaaaand I found something,” Seeyela said. “Maybe it found me. Either way, incoming!”

The group looked quickly at the narrow streets, barely more than ten feet wide, and Hiral caught a glimpse of something leaping from roof to roof ahead of them.

SMAAAASH! Something else came crashing down like a comet, through the edge of the roof on the left, and then into the building on the right. A cloud of dust—and more urgently, stones the size of Hiral’s head—shot out from the explosion.

“Huddle!” Seena shouted, a powerful surge of solar energy pulsing inside her while she swung her arms forward. Within the blink of an eye, the hanging curtain of flames from her Mantle of the Phoenix exploded in size, then wrapped around the party like two giant, flaming wings.

Just like when her class evolved.

Stones with the velocity of ballista bolts rocketed towards the party, and where Hiral half-expected some to pass through the hanging flames, they instead deflected off the wings as if they were solid. Glowing, molten rocks slammed into the nearby buildings, melting more stone where they landed, and even the hanging dust cloud vanished on contact.

Another crash echoed inside the building to their right, and then the wall just ahead of them burst outward in another shower of stone shards. Like before, these projectiles did nothing to Seena’s fiery wings, but a quick glance at her told Hiral she was almost at her limit. Not a second later, her arms dropped to her sides, and the protective wings vanished.

“Trying to take my job?” Nivian asked, though he had his shield up and moved to stand in front of the party as something stirred within the cloud of dust.

“Long cooldown, even with the tiara,” Seena said.

“Oh, no, is everybody okay?” Seeyela asked over the party chat. “I didn’t think it would do that.”

“What is it?” Wule asked.

“The Mid-Boss,” Seeyela said at the same time a towering monstrosity lumbered out of the shattered building. With shoulders stretching from one side of the street to the other, arms as thick around as all of Hiral, and at least twelve feet tall, monster was an understatement.

Green scales covered it from head to toe, a thick tail leisurely swung behind it, and spined ridges reminiscent of the King of the Swamp ringed its neck and ran down its arms and legs.

(Mid-Boss – Undead – Draugr) Hulking Behemoth – Unknown Rank

Hiral barely had time to read the nametag above the monster’s head before another notification window popped up.

Dynamic Quest

You’ve found the guardian of the first seal (or did it find you?).

Defeat it and locate the seal.

Note: Considering what it’s wearing, it’s probably not carrying it.

“Oh, hell,” Nivian said as the behemoth’s right arm cocked back, then swung forward with the inevitability of the setting sun.

GONG! Fist met shield, the tank bracing with everything he had—including the armored gauntlet and roots around his legs—and pressure blasted out from the impact. What little dust remained in the air shot away, rain fell upwards, and the buildings even shook like they’d been hit with a localized earthquake.

But Nivian held, and Right and Yanily darted around him while Hiral pulled his triggers. One RHC hit the undead with a Distracting Shot, while the other was just for damage. The yellow health bar dropped down a solid five percent, then almost immediately refilled.

Yellow? Like the Lady of the Web? But, then, why did it fill back up so quickly?

Spear sparking like a wild beast, Yanily lunged in and struck the extended arm, sending electricity coiling around the scaled appendage. Lightning in the shape of some kind of horned lizard head spat and struck as it ran up the arm, then bit into the shoulder, a second, fainter lizard following in its path a heartbeat later. The effect from his Cloak of the Tempest?

Right, on the other side, slid to a stop in time with the rhythm of the Primal Chord, then brought his fist around in a mighty haymaker. Purple flames washed off his swing like a tidal wave, and then he hit with just as much force as the undead had, a second shockwave blasting outward.

Neither of the blows even made the Mid-Boss twitch, despite ripping massive chunks off its health bar… which quickly climbed back to full. Hiral didn’t have time to wonder about that before its left arm came around in a wide, surprisingly fast hook. Right barely managed to duck the blow, and Nivian got his shield up in front of it. There was a second GONG, then a WHOMP as Nivian hit the wall a foot above the ground, stone cracking around him. Even before his feet hit the ground, another punch came his way—met by the shield—and he ground along the wall for five feet before he managed to stop himself.

Solar energy pulsed from Wule and into his twin while Nivian lashed out with his thorned whip. Three biting lashes slapped against the undead’s hide just as its head turned to the closer Yanily, but its eyes snapped back to the tank.

Yanily, for his part, barely managed to press against the wall as the undead charged past, completely ignoring him in favor of crushing the tank that had Infuriated him.

“Good, Nivian, keep it on you,” Seena said, the floating tomes opening beside her as she clawed her hands sideways. Cinder+ slashed across its chest once, twice, three times before another fist crashed into Nivian’s shield.

“Easy… for… you to… say,” Nivian said, his whip gone again as he braced everything he could into his shield. Even though the tank was parrying the blows, his health dropped with each impact. Wule didn’t let it add up, though, quickly pushing energy into his brother, his Sphere of Winter’s Touch pulsing in time to each spell he cast.

With the monstrosity practically filling the narrow road, it wasn’t like Hiral could really miss it, and he took aim at the thing’s head. If it was like other undead, they’d need to destroy that either way. Two pulls of his triggers, and his searing bolts of Impact slapped into the undead’s forehead with about as much effect as a finger-flick.

More lost health instantly restored. Is it a problem with the damage, or something else?

“Right, Left, we’re going to need to use the Chord,” Hiral instructed.

“Working on it,” Right said from behind the Mid-Boss, where he and Yanily were hitting the monster’s back with everything they had while dodging the club-like tail. Easily as thick as a tree trunk, the thing shattered stone walls and cracked the road every time it made contact with something.

“Sis?” Seena asked, but she needn’t have bothered.

Two shapes leapt off the roof above the monster beating on Nivian’s shield. The first shape, trailing lines of sickly green energy and wearing a cloak of writhing blood, struck the undead’s right shoulder, while the second shape, with a blue-flame wing, drove a liquid dagger into the left shoulder.

The stream of purple water following Left snapped to catch up with him, then drove into the wound with explosive results. Black blood, thick like tar, erupted from a wound so big Hiral could’ve stuck his fist into it, and the beast roared in pain and shock. Around came the wrecking-ball backhand, the monster’s attention finally torn away from Nivian, and Left leapt backwards.

The huge fist hit the stone wall and tore straight through it, hurling a barrage of stones at Left, Right, and Yanily. Like he knew it was coming, though, Yanily smoothly slid in front of the two doubles, his spear a spinning blur of lightning that pounded like thunder. Stone after stone, no matter how large or small, got deflected away from the whirling shield, piling high on the ground in front of him.

Meanwhile, Seeyela’s cloak gripped the undead with bloody claws, anchoring her in place as she held on to one dagger driven into the undead’s shoulder. Even as it bucked like a wild Tri-horn, she needled her other weapon into its shoulder nonstop, pumping dose after dose of the deadly Ghost-Web Venom into the creature. After at least a dozen hits, the whole shoulder practically glowed green under the beast’s scales, and it turned its head to look at her.

Then it brutally shoulder-checked into the wall right beside it.

Bamf. Seeyela vanished a heartbeat before getting squashed flat, and the undead smashed its way into the building.

“That much venom should be the end of it, right?” Seena asked, but she had four fireballs forming over her outstretched hand.

“I don’t… I don’t think so,” Seeyela said into the party chat, though there was no sign of her. “I’m getting notifications saying the venom is being… suppressed?”

“Then we keep hitting it,” Seena said, hurling her four fireballs into the opening the undead had made in the wall.

BOOM! Flames shot out of the enclosed space to char the wall on the opposite side of the street, and everybody other than Seena put their hands up in front of their faces to ward off the heat.

“Did that…?” Wule started to ask before the wall beside Nivian exploded outward.

The tank, for his part, managed to get his shield up in front of himself, but his feet left the ground as the undead barreled across the street and through the next wall. Nivian grunted into the party chat at the impact, his health bar losing a deep chunk in the Party Interface, and then he and the Mid-Boss were gone.

Hiral, the closest to the new hole in the wall, darted toward the behemoth’s back as it continued on, smashing Nivian through wall after wall. He fired shot after shot into the wide shoulders, interlacing Distracting Shot with normal damage. Anything to try to slow or weaken the monster. Every hit was doing decent damage, but it wasn’t sticking. And, Hiral noted as his eyes went to the behemoth’s shoulder, even the deep hole Left had put there was gone. Healed over like nothing had happened.

“This thing is healing too fast,” Hiral said, sheathing his RHCs on his thighs and bursting forward with his Rune of Rejection.

Yanking onto the undead with Attraction, Hiral hit its back and grabbed onto its wide neck, taking a few nasty gashes from its spines at the same time. Rubble rained down on him as the huge undead’s head gouged through the ceiling of the building, then WHAM, it went through the next wall.

Hope this works like it did on the Troblin Duke.

Nivian grunted again from the pain—which meant he was still alive, for now—so Hiral pushed power into his Rune of Separation. A brief connection formed between his hands—directly through the Hulking Behemoth’s neck—and everything along that link parted. Flesh, bone, muscle, tissue—all of it became tiny, perfectly formed cubes of matter in the blink of an eye as the Mid-Boss staggered. Within the floating cubes, a stream of blue energy flowed up into the head, similar to the solar energy that peeled off Hiral to form his doubles.

Then, right in front of Hiral’s eyes, that matter reformed. Reconnected. Just like that, the monster’s throat was back exactly as it had been.

Still, the whole ordeal wasn’t completely ineffective, and the behemoth’s steps slowed as it stumbled to the side. One huge hand went up to rest against the wall for balance, while the other tossed Nivian to the side.

The tank’s health bar was somehow still at fifty percent—Good thing he’s so durable—and Hiral tried to activate his Rune of Separation. Nothing happened, and a quick look at a notification window showed him there was a cooldown of two minutes on using it. Even worse, that distraction had cost him. A massive hand latched onto his left arm.