The Runic Artist

Kiri held onto her Alliram mounts saddle with her hand. Her only hand. The thought sent a wave of despair and anger through her body. The despair was the weaker of the two emotions she was feeling. She’d thought she would handle such an injury better but even knowing her arm wasn’t lost to her for long didn’t change how she was feeling. The anger on the other hand, burned hot and was entirely directed at herself. She’d grown cocky, still riding the high of her Mythic Primary and Legendary Secondary Class. She’d thought she was untouchable, after all, what was some Rare Class Dungeon Boss against her?

The level difference might as well have been nothing. She’d done the maths in her head over and over again. Her Stats should’ve been higher than that winged kobold. Even with that, the fight had cost her an arm. The pain as its razor sharp teeth had bitten clean through flesh and bone had been excruciating. She wasn’t sure she’d have managed to bury the dagger in its stomach if she wasn’t already committed to the motion.

She knew she was being overly hard on herself. She’d effectively fought two level forties back to back without a break. It was an achievement worth bragging about. Unfortunately no new achievements were granted by the System. She’d gotten that achievement a couple of years ago with her Father’s help. It had been simple enough, or so he’d claimed at the time. He’d tracked down an ambush predator with a weak defence and then helped her line up a kill shot from fifty metres away. He’d gone so far as to craft her the arrow she’d used. The System didn’t seem to care about such things. How you got a tool didn’t matter to it, only who was wielding it at the time of the kill.

She’d wondered about it in the past, but when no answers had been forthcoming she’d given up on questioning the nature of the System. Now, with Nate in her life she was starting to wonder again. In a short time things she thought she’d known, absolutes in her life, had been turned on their head. People couldn’t change Classes or reset their System. Only apparently they could. Humans never started at Legendary. Except for when they did. Mythic was a pipe dream before level one hundred, and yet here she stood, spitting in the world's expectations. The beliefs she’d grown up with were crumbling, one at a time.

She fought back a tear as she slowly confronted everything. She really wished her dad was here. He’d have held her and assured her everything was going to be okay. Instead she had Deverell. He rode beside her on his own six legged mount, scanning the plains for their next target.

He was a good man too. No, that was the wrong word. Good was not the right word for Deverell. He was a reliable man. He and Nate shared that trait in common. But where Nate was kind, almost to a fault, Deverell was…efficient. In the time they’d spent together training, Deverell had only ever taken the most direct of methods. He’d pushed her as far as he knew he could, going so far as to plant literal daggers in flesh to drive home holes in her defence. To force her to grow. Of course, his efficiency didn’t end there. He’d always had beasts of the forest on hand for her to use Soul Drain on as she used her now evolved Soul Imbuement to heal herself. The lessons had been harsh, but fair in her mind, and incredibly efficient in terms of forcing her to develop.

It was that same task that they were working on now. She needed living things to drain so she could regenerate her arm. More than living, she supposed. The grass was living, but if it had soul energy in it, she couldn’t detect it. It had been the same with the trees of the forest. Something about being capable of basic thought was necessary for the presence of soul energy. She’d asked Frick about it but he’d clammed up before finally explaining he was forbidden from telling her by the Familiar Contract that allowed him access to this Realm of existence.

Deverell had reassured her though that if she performed well enough in the Tournament, the Adventurer’s Guild would likely give her access to some of the information they had on soul energy and soul based Classes. The only information he’d known was that Mentalist and some Healer type Classes seemed to make use of the same energy. Though the why was not something he was aware of. Apparently being a Gold Badge wasn’t enough to give access to such information. She supposed if some of the abilities were as insidious as Ember’s Suggestion or as frightening as Command had been, then she could understand why access to how to develop such were kept under lock and key.

It reminded her of that fight. She hadn’t even realised she was under the compulsion of Suggestion. Worse, she’d had to watch as her best friend almost died, sitting placidly on the ground as he waited to be cut down, unable to do anything against the power of Command. Could they expect to encounter more enemies with similar abilities? She hoped not, but she knew her hopes were like flowers by the side of the road. Pretty but ultimately pointless. They would definitely end up fighting such opponents again eventually. Her mind began to wander as she thought up methods for fighting them. She hoped her Willpower would be enough to simply shrug such off, but that didn’t help Nate at all. Maybe his ability to manipulate soul energy through runes would allow him some sort of defence. She supposed if he came up with a good defence she could engrave it onto his soul. That seemed like a likely path forward.

Her ruminations were interrupted as she felt a small rush of air as Deverell vanished from the top of his mount. A moment later he was standing beside her holding out some furred beast. A few cuts later and she’d absorbed the soul energy and the small amount of processed mana. The nub that was her missing arm had grown a few more centimetres. Regrowing bone required a lot of soul energy for some reason. She’d probably end up gaining another level though she expected they’d be out here for at least two days at this rate. At least she’d have finally caught up to Nate in level then, even if her Skills were still quite a bit behind his.

Deverell gave a nod, discarding the carcass of the beast on the plains before remounting as they continued across the plains. Thinking about Nate’s Skills, she had to admit to herself that she was in a worse position at the moment than was strictly necessary because of him, albeit indirectly. Not because of the demon. Neither of them had expected it to be able to follow them into the Dungeon. It had chosen its moment to attack them incredibly well and had almost succeeded.

Hearing Nate tell how he’d ended the fell creature had been oh so satisfying. No, the fight wasn’t his fault. However, while Nate seemed to be cruising along towards the Tournament without too much worry she realised she had one serious misgiving. Maybe she was being overconfident again, but she thought they could make the top eight. But what about Nate himself? Was he not her perfect counter? He knew all her Skills, or at least he thought he did. On top of that he could prepare runes specifically to counter her. Suppress her soul magic. For all she knew he could go as far as to seal her boosting skill.

So, she’d done something foolish. She hadn’t used the winged kobolds soul energy to heal herself. It’s soul energy had been almost as potent as her own and she likely could’ve had most of her arm back if she’d just used it with Soul Imbuement. Instead she’d stored it in her newest Skill, To Slay a Soul. Even now she could feel the energy roiling inside the Skill in her Class Core. It was begging for release. That winged kobold may not have been a dragon, but it certainly behaved like one. She’d started to sense flavours from the soul energy she absorbed. That one tasted like rage and fire. How terribly draconic of it. She’d save it for now though. Her trump card so that when she fought Nate, she stood a chance in the Nine Hells.

Even with it she had her doubts though. The image of the pieces of meat no bigger than an eyeball scattered across the tiled floor of the Dungeon replayed in her mind. Gods help anyone that ever truly made him mad, because when he had time to prepare, he was downright scary. That thought made her smile rather than feel fear. He was her best friend. Together they were going all the way to the top, starting with this Tournament. The sky was the limit and she didn’t have to fly there alone. Kicking her mount a little harder, she charged across the plains with her teacher at her side. The first step was regrowing her arm.

*************

Xalvoloth screamed at the sky, its rage disintegrating the stone that surrounded it. There wasn’t even dust remaining as its Concept consumed everything in a flash of light. Twenty levels! Twenty!! It prepared to scream again, the fury in its black heart unable to be quenched. It had known the cost of failure, just as it had been promised an equal reward for success. The Law of Reciprocity did not bind it yet as it bound its Master, as it bound the System, but the contract had been from the System so the rules had been ruthlessly enforced.

How could a mortal have defeated it?! It was a True Disciple of the Devouring Light! A terror of the Fourth Hell! Where it walked other demons knelt in awe and fear! To be a True Disciple was to be a step below Divinity. The holder of a Mythic Class. It mattered not that under the System suppression it had been restricted to a level of thirty. That meant it still had access to its Legendary Class evolution and the relevant Skills. That should’ve been more than enough for almost any mortal, let alone one making a life in such a backwater community. This is not how it was meant to go! It was supposed to kill its target and then it would’ve been in striking distance of Divinity.

Instead it was now at the border of losing its status as a True Disciple. If anyone or anything managed to steal much more of its mana it would drop back to level sixty and lose its Mythic Class. As a True Disciple it would be forced to accept the required challenges each month from any demons below it. A couple of losses would be all it took to lose that which it had fought so hard to achieve.

It was all that mortal's fault! How dare it suppress the Devouring Light! How dare it not die as the System had demanded! There would be restitution. The Law of Reciprocity may not bind it yet, but Xalvoloth would see to it that the mortal was destroyed for this transgression. Crossing the dusty plain of the Fourth Hell, it quickly arrived at Lord Sag’thoz’s castle. It was permitted to enter without fanfare as a True Disciple, making sure it sneered at the Guardians to let them know that they were beneath it.

Lord Sag’thoz sat upon his throne, a few demons clamouring for his attention. Unlike Xalvoloth, Sag'thoz's breed of demon had male and female variants. Xalvoloth felt its knees touch the tiled floor. Showing the proper respect was important, especially as it was about to make a request that its Master may not appreciate. Xalvoloth was not the only True Disciple under Lord Sag’thoz, but it was confident it was perhaps the only one with an actual chance at Divinity. The others had failed to push their Skills in any meaningful way in decades. They had likely taken themselves as far as they could, doomed to forever remain True Disciples.

What Xalvoloth was about to do was unwise. It did not know why Lord Sag’thoz and the other Demon Lords nurtured True Disciples, but it knew that many True Disciples had a habit of disappearing. It had often wondered if it was being raised like some kind of creature doomed to the slaughterhouse. It had intended to flee once it broke through to Divinity, just in case. But what it was about to offer would be bound by a System contract. There would be no fleeing after that.

“Lord Sag’thoz, your True Disciple comes before your eminence with a request and an offer,” it said in its native sing-song voice. Not like the gravelly thing it had been forced to use in the mortal realm.

“What does my True Disciple desire from its Master?” Lord Sag’thoz asked, his own voice deep and booming through the throne room.

Xalvoloth sent the System Contract to its Master. The booming laughter that followed sent the demons that had been crooning for the Demon Lord’s attention fleeing from the room as fast as their legs and other appendages could carry them.

Leaning forward on his throne, the smile that crossed Sag’thoz’s lips was one filled with satisfaction and cruelty, “I accept.”

*************

Garnet ground her teeth as Sapphire rested a hand on her shoulder. That pig-faced bastard knew that she would’ve killed him for taking such liberties under normal circumstances. But these were anything but normal circumstances and if she dealt with him as she desired, their master would see her dead for messing up not one, but two of his plans. Instead she shrugged her shoulder to force him to release his grip, ignoring his smirk of victory. She wasn’t some common whore he could take it any further with but he knew how he made her skin crawl.

“Keep it tight. No survivors,” Sapphire whispered, the smirk still on his lips as the team of twenty with them silently nodded to indicate their readiness.

Moving forward quietly she activated Heat Vision, counting the number of defenders in the fort. The Dungeon the fort protected was only of the Rare variety but they had spent a couple of months learning the recharge timer and layout of the fort. The goal was simple enough. Take control of the fort, hold it while they completed the Dungeon and abscond with the Dungeon Core while leaving enough carefully curated and subtle evidence to implicate the country of Asmuisil as the perpetrators. Why their master wanted to incite war with Etrua’s neighbour she didn’t know. Or if that was even his goal. Maybe he just wanted the Dungeon Core. But either way, this was a dangerous play and she needed to keep her head about her. Both figuratively and literally. If they were caught, being beheaded was the best she could hope for.

As Sapphire waved his arm forward she rose into the air, blooming with wings of flame. The choice was simple. Her life or theirs. She steeled her heart. None would survive.