Rune Seeker

Hiral didn’t try to resist the pull—he would’ve lost his arm—as the monster hauled him off its back. The Hulking Behemoth swung Hiral up and over so fast he almost got whiplash, yanking him into the air and then down towards the very solid stone street at its feet.

Having been expecting something like this since the monster got a hold of him, Hiral pushed as much energy into his Rune of Rejection as he could in the split second before impact. WHAM! The wave of Rejection under him popped like an overfilled waterskin, cracking the large cobblestones, and then he hit the ground. Sharp pain lanced all through his body as he coughed crimson liquid, and the whole world blurred and darkened to his eyes.

Except, the monster didn’t seem to be through with him yet, hoisting him into the air for a second swing. The wind whistled past his ears, blood rushed to his feet from the velocity of the swing as the undead whipped him around, and then the ground came up to meet him a second time. A last-second burst of Rejection saved him from splatting all across the cobblestones, but not by much.

Bones cracked like dry twigs in his chest. He couldn’t pull air into his lungs, and he didn’t need to see his own health bar to know how dangerously close it was to empty. He tried to push solar energy into one of his runes—any rune—but the solar energy just wouldn’t obey his commands.

Thick fingers tightened around his arm, somehow the only thing not hurting, and Hiral lifted into the air for a third swing.

No, no, no…

He couldn’t take another one of those.

WHAAAAM! Hiral’s eyes closed out of reflex as he soared through the air.

Why was he in the air after the impact?

He opened his eyes at the same time he collided with something significantly softer than the street, and they tumbled with a shared grunt of pain.

“Got you,” his own voice said to him.

Maybe… maybe it was Left—it had his pronunciation—but Hiral couldn’t make his eyes focus enough to see for sure. Other voices trilled at him through the Party Interface, though they sounded a mile away. Barely more than whispers. There were other sounds, too: more impacts, the whoosh of flames, and the rolling boom of thunder. The others were still fighting. He needed to help. To get up and…

He couldn’t move. His whole body screamed at him in pain, and it was honestly all he could do to stay conscious as darkness clawed at the edges of his vision.

How am I even alive?

Congratulations. Achievement unlocked – Glutton for Punishment

You survived a direct attack from an opponent with more than ten times your strength—not once, but twice.

Please access a Dungeon Interface to unlock class-specific reward.

Survived… is… optimistic… Hiral silently thought at the notification window, and it fuzzed and blurred as the darkness closed in on him.

“Hold on,” Left said, his face right in front of Hiral’s. “Drink this until Wule gets here.”

Then there was something at Hiral’s mouth, the familiar warmth running over his lips and down his throat without him even swallowing, like the potion itself knew where to go. And yet, somehow, that made things hurt more.

He grimaced, but Left forced his mouth open to pour the rest of the potion down, and then another pulse of solar energy washed through him as Wule arrived.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Wule said—both of him—in front of Hiral. Could Wule use Foundational Split now too?

No, idiot. You’re seeing double.

“How bad?” Left asked.

“Not good,” Wule said. “Broken ribs, at least. Not sure about the lung.”

“Can you…?” Left started.

“I’ll stabilize him as much as I can… but the others need me against that monster,” Wule said, more solar energy pouring out of the healer and into Hiral.

Most of the pain eased almost immediately, as Wule used his most powerful abilities, but the solar energy only swirled around his shattered bones without going into them.

Right, Wule can’t heal broken bones…

And yet the energy was so close, like it was looking at the bones. Swirling around and around, over and over… so close and yet so far. All it would take was one little… pull…

Hiral willed the pain aside with everything he had—he just needed a few seconds—and then began the Cycling technique he’d learned back in the Lost Forge of Ur’Thul. On its own, it wouldn’t change anything, but it helped him visualize the energy around and inside of him. Then, with the healing energies firmly visualized in his mind, Hiral focused on his broken bones and activated his Runes of Attraction and Absorption.

Insane, spiking pain in his chest ripped a scream from his throat as he arched his back in agony, his hold on the energy lost in an instant, and he collapsed back to the ground. His breaths came in weak, ragged gasps, and the whole world spun to his eyes.

Then another wave of solar energy pushed into him, forcefully enough he gasped again. Except this time, the pain faded. His bones knit, and his lungs took their first full breath in what felt like an eternity.

“Don’t know what you did,” Wule said, “but I got an ability evolution from it.”

Another push of energy, and the ability flowed through his chest like it was aggressively hunting for injuries to mend. The pressure built for one second, two, three, and then it was over, and suddenly Hiral could see and hear clearly.

He was still a bit weak, but the pain was gone.

“Thank you,” Hiral said, pulling himself up to a seated position to look around. It was just him, Wule, and Left inside what looked like the building the undead had rampaged through. “The others?”

“Still fighting that thing,” Left said.

“And not making much ground,” Wule added. “I need to get over to them.” With that, the healer stood and dashed off.

Meanwhile, Hiral looked at his party windows. All of the others were injured, with Nivian as low as a quarter of his health.

“We have to help,” Hiral said. “Help me up.”

“You sure you’re in any condition to do anything?” Left asked, but he pulled Hiral to his feet.

“We don’t have a choice,” Hiral said.

“What were you thinking, anyway?” Left asked as the two of them walked out of the ruined building. Well, it was really still more of a stumble for Hiral, but strength was returning to his body.

“Same thing I did to the Troblin Duke,” Hiral said.

“Rune of Separation?” Left asked, and Hiral nodded. “Didn’t work?”

“It did, but then the Mid-Boss healed the damage immediately,” Hiral said.

“It’s still doing that. No matter what we hit it with, the wounds just close up. Seeyela has added at least a dozen more of her venom debuffs, but it keeps suppressing them, whatever that means. Yanily even managed to land one of his Skyfall strikes right on its head. Practically put his spear in one eye and out the back of its skull.”

“And?” Hiral asked.

“Slowed it down for a few seconds, not much more,” Left said.

The pair picked up the pace to a light jog, soon finding the party engaged with the beast in the ruins of another, larger building. The battle had taken them through a wall and torn out the entire second level, leaving the Mid-Boss raging around the hollowed-out building. Small fires burned in places, Seena launching Cinder+ after Cinder+ from a higher ledge. Seeyela bamf’dfrom shadow to shadow to attack, while Yanily, Right, and Nivian fought toe to toe with the beast.

Like the Party Interface indicated, none of them were uninjured, blood flowing freely from wounds across their bodies. From the looks of things, Right’s left arm swung loosely at his side, Yanily’s face was a mask of blood, and half of Nivian’s bark armor was missing. Cracked crystal hung from his chest where it’d obviously absorbed a blow, and he took another GONG’ing hit on his shield as Hiral watched.

“I don’t care what Odi said—there’s a trick to this,” Hiral said, observing his friends laying into the endlessly healing monstrosity.

“Any ideas what that could be?” Seena asked over the party chat, a powerful gout of flame jetting to wash over the Mid-Boss and buy the others a second to back away. “We’re hitting it with everything we have.”

“I even stabbed it through the blue-flamey brain,” Yanily added. “Didn’t work.”

“We might have to use Eloquent and Enraged,” Nivian said. “Maybe we can overwhelm its healing with that?”

“If the timer runs out before we do,” Wule said, “that’s it. We’re done. The debuffs will be the end of us.”

What’s different about this monster? Why can it heal like this? Odi said it fed off other undead attracted to the seal. Is it a result of being around the seal itself for so long… or… or is it because it’s eating other undead?

Hiral’s mind replayed the flowing blue energy running through the undead’s neck when he’d used the Rune of Separation. It had been going up. To the head instead of from the head. When they’d beheaded undead in the past, the head had kept moving, while the body instantly became inert. For them, the head was the source of their power.

That was why destroying it finally killed them.

But Hiral had completely cut its head off, and Yanily had driven a spear through it. Both of those actions would’ve stopped any other undead they’d fought immediately.

No, not any undead.

The Shambling Graveyards would survive that because their source of power wasn’t in their heads. It was their Heart of the Graveyard that powered their massive bodies. Smaller undead probably hid safely in the monster’s chest… hence the name.

What if the Hulking Behemoth was like that? What if its source was in its chest instead of its head?

Sure, they’d been pounding on it nonstop, but its torso was thicker than all of them put together. Nothing they could do would punch through that on its own. Even his Annihilation of Amin Thettlikely wouldn’t be enough at full power, and it was currently barely at half. They needed to hit this thing so hard it didn’t have time to heal, but none of them had a powerful enough attack to one-shot it.

So, we’re going to have to eight-shot it…

“I have a plan,” Hiral said into the party chat, hefting the Emperor’s Greatsword off his back.

… and hope it’s enough.