Rune Seeker

Half an hour—and three more dead groups of Lizardmen—later, the party finally decided to move forward while they reviewed what they’d learned.

“Groups in ten-minute intervals, and always four warriors and a sorcerer,” Left recounted. “The sorcerer’s fireball ability is pretty powerful, but slow to activate.”

“Even slower than my Spearing Roots was before I got this circlet,” Seena said, pointing at the equipment she’d gotten from Splitfang Keep.

“Which makes it easy to deal with, if the warriors don’t occupy our attention,” Left agreed.

“Not much chance of that, now that we know their attack patterns and abilities,” Nivian said. “Yan, what do you think of their spear style? Can you make use of it?”

“For sure,” Yanily said. “And I think it’ll mesh with Balyo’s current style even better. She’s mainly just got single, hard-hitting attacks. This’ll give her something to work with while she’s getting into position to set up. For me, I think it’ll be a little better than my Reed Spear Style if we’re dealing with multiple enemies.”

“Good to know,” Seena said. “Nivian, any trouble keeping their attention on you?”

“Other than Wule and how much they seem to hate the cold, not at all. A single hit with my whip or shield will keep them on me. I don’t think Lonil will have any problem with it, if that’s what you’re asking about.”

“It is, thanks. You all know my sister’s party and their abilities. As we’re finishing off this dungeon, keep them in mind. How can they make things easier? What are their strengths? Weaknesses? If Lonil is back at peak, it shouldn’t be a problem. If he isn’t, well, anything helps.”

The group nodded while they continued jogging down the stone road.

Hiral could already see another Lizardman group running in their direction—right on schedule—but it would take several minutes for the two groups to meet in the middle. In the meantime, he looked to his left at the towering briar patch that stood only fifty feet away. The darkness crawling between the plants was anything but natural, stretching almost like thick webs to completely obscure what little space existed between the twists and thorns.

If the totem they’d destroyed before had something to do with the darkness, it was only partially responsible. There had to be at least one more. Probably with the second dungeon Mid-Boss. But, it was strange. The roots under the darkness looked almost… sick. Corrupted. Like the darkness was feeding on the life of the plants even as it reinforced them.

Why would the dungeon protect the Boss like this? No, that’s not the right question. This dungeon is a snapshot, which suggests it is, or was, real. So, why would the Lizardmen protect something like this? And if they worship the King and Queen of the Swamp like those statues on top of the mountain suggest, why weren’t they protecting them more?

I’m missing something. What is it?

“The road splits ahead,” Left said, drawing Hiral’s attention from the briar back to more immediate concerns. “Straight seems to go toward the city, while left wraps around the briar patch.”

“Which way should we go?” Nivian asked.

“I’m all for the experience of taking on a whole city,” Yanily said. “Buuuuuut…”

“Let’s go left,” Seena said. “Something about that city feels off. Does it actually look like it’s getting closer at all? I swear it hasn’t changed a bit. Even the clouds above the mountain look like they’re in the same place.”

“Now that you mention it, you’re right,” Hiral said. “It’s almost like it’s a painting.”

“Maybe the city isn’t actually real?” Wule suggested. “We don’t know the boundaries of these dungeons. If that city and all its inhabitants were actually part of this, that would suggest the dungeon is bigger than Fallen Reach. I can’t even imagine how much solar energy it would take to do something on that scale.”

“All the more reason to go left,” Seena said. “But… I’ve got an idea for after we finish this run.”

“What’s that?” Nivian asked.

“We’ll talk about it later. For now, let’s take out that next patrol, then we’ll head down the other path and hope we don’t get attacked from both sides at the same time.”

“Speeding up?” Nivian asked.

“Speeding up,” Seena confirmed, and the party went from a light jog to a spirited run. Within a minute, they met the Lizardman group and crashed into them like a battering ram.

During the last three fights, they’d worked out tactics that trivialized the encounters. Seena took care of the sorcerer in the back with her Spearing Roots, while Nivian made sure the four warriors were either focused on him or on the ground. Hiral and Wule supported from behind, their ranged attacks mainly intended to distract or disrupt the Lizardmen’s concentration while the damage dealers did their jobs.

Working together like that, the fight was over before it ever really began, and within a minute, five Lizardmen bodies lay bleeding on the stone road.

“You seriously kept shooting them in the feet?” Yanily asked as Hiral and Wule caught up to the close-range fighters. “I almost feel bad for their little scaly toes. Lizardmen have toes, right?” he quietly asked Vix.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Hiral pointed out, but Seena was already urging them to get moving again. “I can see the next group, but they’re pretty far off.”

“Let’s keep the pace up to put some more distance between us,” Seena said, pointing down the fork in the road just ahead. Like Left had said, it curved around to the other side of the briar patch.

“You got it, boss,” Nivian said, running ahead and down the fork.

The group didn’t have any trouble maintaining the pace, though Hiral kept an eye on the city in the distance and the Lizardmen running in their direction. Oddly, kind of like Seena had said, no matter how he looked at the city, it always appeared exactly the same.

Definitely something strange going on there. I wonder where it really was… and if it’s still there. There’s so much about this world we don’t understand. Will these dungeons actually make us strong enough to get some of those answers?

A quick check of his status window showed he’d reached level 18 at some point since they’d entered the dungeon, and he quickly let his PIM auto-allocate points into Dex and Atn while he ran. That still left him with 18 unspent points.

Need to stop procrastinating and just spend those.

“After we get out of this dungeon,” he mumbled to himself, then turned his attention ahead. “What’s that?” he asked louder, stone walls now visible off to the right side of the road as it continued to curve around the briar.

“I see roofs over the tops of the walls… Oh… and Lizardmen manning those walls. A town?” Nivian asked, slowing down as the Lizardmen lifted bows to take aim at the approaching party.

“They aren’t shooting at us?” Yanily asked.

“Still too far away to be accurate,” Hiral said.

“What about for your RHCs?” Seena asked.

“Also too far,” Hiral said. “I only count four archers. Two on each side of… Is that a gate?”

“It’s seen better days,” Vix said, and the pugilist wasn’t wrong. Maybe it had been a gate at some point, but now it looked like something had torn the whole section of wall out to leave a thirty-foot gap.

“That hole in the wall is our entry point,” Seena said. “Mid-Boss must be in there.”

“And the archers?” Wule asked.

“Worried you’ll have to actually heal?” Yanily asked.

“Worried I’ll get an arrow in the eye, thank you very much,” Wule said.

“Would that be considered a debuff?” Yanily wondered aloud.

“Blindness?” Vix said.

“I’ll do what I can about the archers,” Hiral said to Wule before he whacked one of the damage dealers over the head with his rod.

“And I’ll help with my Splinter Storm,” Seena said. “Need to level it up anyway. But I’m sure they’ll get a few shots off, so don’t slow down once we get going.”

“Probably more warriors inside as well,” Nivian added.

“And the road continues on past the town, or whatever it is,” Left said. “Back toward the entrance of the dungeon?”

“The left path from the beginning,” Hiral said. “Makes sense.”

“Everybody ready? Good on solar energy?” Seena asked.

The party members all nodded, and Seena gave Nivian the shoulder tap, setting the tank in motion.

Unlike the usual formation, Hiral hurried ahead to keep pace with Nivian, one RHC out in his left hand, but his right empty, and solar energy gathering in his Rune of Rejection. The tank raised an eyebrow in question at his presence there, though he didn’t say anything. At about three hundred feet from the corner of the town wall, the first Lizardman let an arrow fly.

Hiral nudged the arrow in the air with his rune—easy from this distance—and it flew wide. The next arrow followed a few seconds later, also pushed aside, and then the third and fourth. One at a time, they were no problem, but now all four archers drew back their bows and lowered the angle of their shots at the much closer party.

The arrows would come all at once—and faster—so Hiral threw out his hand and released a constant cone of Rejection. With solar energy quickly draining at a rate of one percent per second, it was an expensive tactic, but the arrows jerked off in wild directions as soon as they hit the edge of the cone.

“I can’t shoot and deflect the arrows at the same time,” Hiral said, the constant application of his rune taking more concentration than he’d expected.

“On it,” Seena said, a barrage of splinters shooting toward the nearest Lizardman.

Most of the small projectiles bounced off the archer’s tough hide, but a ball of concentrated cold followed and splashed into the Lizardman’s chest. That got its attention, and it staggered back while it swiped at the ice with its free hand.

Ignoring their comrade’s pain, the other three archers let loose their arrows—easily deflected by the wall of Rejection—but then they did something strange. When they drew their bows again, they held the arrows back. Energy began to gather in the arrowheads as they strained to delay their release.

“Some kind of special attack,” Yanily shouted.

“Can you block it?” Nivian asked.

“Don’t want to risk it,” Hiral said, sheathing his RHC and cancelling his Rune of Rejection.

Then he threw out his left hand to pull on the arrows with his Rune of Attraction. Already straining against the force of whatever they were doing, two out of the three arrows popped out of the archers’ grips to clatter to the road below the wall. That still left one charging arrow—the furthest away—and a ball of energy as big as a watermelon coiled in front of the archer.

Hiral reached out for the final arrow, but he was too late. The projectile shot ahead, screaming through the air like the screech of a hundred dying cats—straight into a wall of Spearing Roots that burst out of both sides of the road to meet in the middle.

The arrow hit the roots with a cacophonous BOOM, shredding the wood and sending purple flaming splinters in every direction. Nivian, fast as always, shifted in front of the party with his shield now as big as he was, and absorbed the worst of the fallout.

With more likely on the way, Hiral dashed around the tank and through the smoke hanging in the air from the strange explosion, his RHCs coming out along the way. As soon as he broke through to clear air on the other side, he lined his barrels up with the second archer on the wall. One blast smashed the bow into two separate pieces, while the second shattered the archer’s wrist.

One down.

A whistle through the air, and Hiral flipped himself to the side just in time to avoid the arrow that would’ve gone straight through his chest. The moment his feet touched the stone, he pivoted and went back the way he’d come. A second arrow was already blazing toward him. He aimed his weapons back at the furthest archer, who was once again gathering power in front of its bow.

His twinned bolts of Impact collided with the growing black ball of energy to release a KA-BOOM. Just like that, a massive explosion engulfed the entire far corner of the wall.

That just leaves you, Hiral thought as he shifted his RHCs to the lone remaining archer and pulled the trigger on the weapon in his right hand. His bolt of Impact met the archer’s arrow midflight, shattering the arrowhead and the shaft behind. Then the bolt from his left weapon slammed into the center of the Lizardman’s forehead.

The archer’s eyes visibly crossed from the stunning blow to the head, and Hiral’s next two shots hit it simultaneously in the center of the chest, knocking the Lizardman back and over the edge of the wall. With weapons still trained on the top of the wall for movement, and the pounding of feet on the stone behind him, Hiral skidded to a stop.

“Reckless!” Seena scolded him as the others caught up.

“The smoke from the explosion covered me, but we can talk about it later,” Hiral said. “I don’t think I finished more than one or two of them off.”

The first archer that had been hit by Wule’s cold blast stood up on the wall. With two trigger-pulls, Hiral shot the Lizardman in the arm and the side of its face, dropping it back to the ground.

“Warriors incoming,” Nivian said, taking his position at the front of the group. Charging Lizardmen were visible through the gap.

And there, at the far end of the street in the small town, stood a thin Lizardman in shimmering black robes. A thick, dark tome floated in the air to its right, and it held its left hand out to the side, balls of flame roiling into existence in a line above its outstretched palm.

(Mid-Boss) Sssolasss the SsScholarly Sssealer – Unknown Rank