Rune Seeker

Though the Chord of the Primal Echo couldn’t directly influence Vule and Velina, it was anything but useless to Hiral. Music shifted on the turn of the breeze on Hiral’s left, and he jerked to his right. Vule’s swinging Grinder narrowly missed as the man appeared out of his Time Slip, and a grunt of frustration escaped the Shaper’s lips. The scuffed skin on Hiral’s face from the aura around the cudgel healed before he was two steps away, and his focus zeroed in on the swarm of spectral fists swooping his way.

Feet churning up the sand under him, Hiral jerked his hands forward. The two swords that’d been hanging at his side shot ahead and through the oncoming hands like the mostly intangible limbs they were. Velina’s eyes widened in surprise, Hiral’s weapons suddenly reaching her at the same time her pummeling fists reached him.

Death Knell slashed across her thigh as Hiral dove to the side, dragging the sword remotely with him as he went. A roll across the ground to dodge two more fists that cracked the stone, and he was on his feet again, sweeping his other hand back across. The necrotic energy of the Blightsteel Sabre left a thin line of black energy where it scored her shoulder beside the hole from his earlier Piercing Shot.

Perfect.

Then he was dodging again.

The fists of Hundred Handed came hard, fast, and seemingly never-ending—Probably where they got their name—but Hiral’s Dex and Atn kept him just out of reach. For his part, with the two swords already beside Velina, the smallest gesture of his hands or fingers sent the cutting weapons slashing across her. Sure, she managed to block the occasional hit, even dodging one, but the cuts were adding up. And, at the same time Hiral followed the Chord to evade Vule appearing right beside him, he finally got one of the notifications he’d been waiting for.

A critical hit had afflicted Velina with both Blood Corruption and Blood Volatility.

Blood Corruption: Reduces resistance to blood-type damage and effects, and increases damage taken from blood-type damage and effects.

Note: Blood Corruption stacks with itself up to five times.

Suffer damage every second blood is infected.

Thanks to the effects of his Second Movement, each effect would last for fifteen seconds and amplify the damage of his already-existing Bleeding Wounds.

A tiny wince stretched the skin of Velina’s face as the two debuffs took hold, and her chasing fists hesitated for a fraction of a second. Plenty long enough for Hiral to turn his right hand over and jerk it straight down. The Reinforced Blightsteel Sabre followed his gesture immediately, twisting perfectly vertical, and then drove down through Velina’s left foot.

The woman’s wince turned to a grunt of surprise and pain, further slowing her hands, which let Hiral repeat the motion with his other weapon. This time, however, instead of punching Death Knell through her other foot, he simply plunged it into the ground near her. A thread of solar energy activated the weapon’s Cutting Field, and a pillar of blue energy grew around the woman. Small, razor-like blades began bouncing within the field, though they did next to nothing to the durable woman.

They did seem to count as another debuff to Hiral’s Predator’s Eyes, though.

“Stop running!” Vule bellowed, another swing of his Grinder sweeping for Hiral’s head.

Still too slow to catch him completely. Hiral ducked under the weapon—though it tore at the flesh across his back—and channeled solar energy into his runes. Since he’d already managed to combine two runes in each hand, he pushed for three this time. Impact, Rejection, and Expansion swirled like tiny, orbiting planets within the palm of his right hand, and suddenly he was beside Vule.

Ducked low like he was, his head was barely next to the man’s waist, and Hiral pushed his palm into the Shaper’s abdomen. “Who’s running?” he asked, releasing the power of his runes.

The three runes exploded out in a cone of force that lifted Vule from his feet and shot him away to slam into Gunimat against the far wall. The still-woozy, C-Rank Shaper couldn’t do more than grunt before he got squished between stone and stone-hard flesh. Even Vule, the B-Ranker, looked dazed by the sudden ejection and impact, but he wasn’t Hiral’s target for the moment.

No, Hiral turned from the two Shapers tangled against the wall and backflipped to dodge a swarm of spectral fists. His flip turned to a stumble as one of the fists managed to clip him, but he recovered quickly and shot away on a burst of Rejection. Just in time, too, as a rain of fists slammed into a ten-foot area around where he’d just been standing.

Velina is adapting. Spreading her attacks out over a wider range to try and catch me. Smart. And the reason she needs to go first.

From one plane of Rejection to another, Hiral zigzagged at the woman still pinned to the ground by his Blightsteel Sabre. From a quick look, it must’ve gone at least a few inches into the stone under her foot. Sure, she’d be plenty strong to pull it out, but she must’ve chosen to ignore it in favor of trying to catch Hiral while he was distracted with Vule.

Her mistake.

Hiral reached her less than a second later, Ever Changing+ and Vengeance+ now at their max stacks. The two buffs alone provided a whopping 45% critical hit chance bonus, and a 70% critical hit damage bonus. Velina also had five debuffs on her—Too bad multiple Bleeding Wounds only count as one debuff—giving him another 10% crit chance and 25% crit damage from Predator’s Eyes. On the downside, Frenzy had faded.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Time to correct that…

But before Hiral swapped back to his Bestial Axes to start stacking up Hack and Slash again, one of his runes twanged in time with the Chord. He’d felt something similar to that back in the Rise of Fallen Reach dungeon, and instantly turned his attention to his Rune of Connection. It wanted him to do something. No, that wasn’t quite correct. It was more like it had found an opportunity for creating a connection.

What is it?

Hiral’s feet hit the ground right in front of Velina, skidding on the stone while her fists closed in from behind. He threw two quick Impact-enhanced jabs crunching into her nose, then bobbed to the side to evade the first spectral fist coming his way. Unsurprisingly, the fist passed harmlessly through Velina—she couldn’t be hurt by her own ability. But it did trigger a Lost Echo.

Velina’s eyes widened as Hiral smirked, and he turned his focus to evading the other seven fists that reached him before the Shaper could stop them. Four more Lost Echoes appeared within the blink of an eye before Hiral was out of danger, and then all five exploded at once.

The explosion completely consumed Velina, but Hiral wasn’t expecting the damage to do more than a few percent to her. More importantly, it gave him a breather to activate his Rune of Time Dilation again.With a few extra seconds, Hiral strummed the thread of solar energy to his Rune of Connection and watched for sympathetic echoes.

Lines of energy lit his vision. Multiple strands connected Velina to her Hundred Hands, which wasn’t unexpected. What was unexpected, though, was them being the same kind of connections Hiral had seen between people and their buffs before.

Tattoos count as buffs? Oh, ho, ho.

Still, though, that wasn’t what the Rune of Connection was resonating with, and he pushed his attention to the other hanging lines. There were strands representing relationships between Velina and the other Shapers. Strong bonds with Vule and Gunimat, but little more than a frayed thread connecting her to Hizix—who’d remained on the sidelines the whole time. There were also dozens and dozens more threads stretching up into the air and off into the distance. Other people she was close to, from the looks of most of them.

Still not what the rune was trying to pull my attention to.

Hiral pushed the common strands of connection out of his mind and instead looked for something unusual. Something he didn’t see connecting to Vule or the others. His intuition told him it was something to do with Velina, so that was where he focused, even as the pressure of paused time built at the back of his head. It was worse than last time, probably because he’d used the rune twice without a long break in between. He only had a few more seconds at most.

Then he saw them: Faint red lines. Blood-red lines. What were they…? His debuffs. The lines weren’t connecting to Velina, not exactly, but to the Blood Corruption and Blood Volatility debuffs he’d afflicted her with. And they were trying to connect with… with… the Cutting Field?

That’s not unprecedented. Yanily charged the Cutting Field with his lightning before.

Time running out on his Rune of Time Dilation, Hiral pushed solar energy into his Rune of Connection and reinforced the thread he’d found. The strand flared with power, something about it expanding and bulging, and Hiral squinted to see what was going on. Somehow, even within slowed time, everything slowed down even more as the glowing strand filled his vision.

No longer just a thin line of energy, Hiral’s eyes picked out shapes within the thread. Not just shapes, either—characters. Characters changing as the connection was rewritten from both ends. The thread—No, all the threads—was a line of the same script from the double helix inscribed across Hiral’s body. All the connections he was seeing were actually runic equations.

What had Dr. Benza said? The Builder’s PIM was the truths of the universe written on their skin. Maybe “truths” wasn’t quite right. He should’ve said Builders have the rules of the universe written on their skin. All those connections—those equations—dictated how things worked and reacted to each other.

The equation finished its transformation within the next blink of his eyes. He hadn’t really done anything beyond enabling the change to happen, and he still couldn’t understand what the equation said, but it was completed. With that, his vision snapped back to normal, and suddenly the blue field stained red at the same time a notification window sprang up in front of Hiral’s eyes.

Congratulations! Forced Ability Evolution.

(Ability) Cutting Field has evolved into (Ability) Bloodletting Field.

Bloodletting Field: Drive the sword into the ground to summon a Blood Aura containing a field of small, invisible blades. Blades will bounce within the aura and inflict damage based on user’s Atn.

Note: Blades will do increased damage if Death Knell is left in the ground for the duration.

Note (2): Aura will not hinder movement in or out of its area of effect.

Note (3): Wounds inflicted by the blades will afflict targets with Blood Corruption and Blood Volatility debuffs.

Hiral almost choked at the notification. A Blood Aura!? That was the damn thing—well, one of them—that’d almost killed him. Painfully.

As he imagined the dozens of small blades within the aura and the deadly affliction they carried, he almost pitied Velina. Then he remembered finding Seeyela and the others bound and broken. And how the woman in front of him had left them all on the surface to die. How his sister and mother were being held hostage in the nearby stands. His pity faded along with his Rune of Time Dilation, and his hands went to his Bestial Axes.

No, she definitely didn’t deserve his pity.

Time snapped back to normal speed at the same time the axes released their primal roar.