Rune Seeker

Slamming into the leg joint of the Mecha-Armor G14NT, the Greatsword of Amin Thett flared its supremacy, Edicts searing along the length of its energy-blade in unison. The A-Rank, brasslike metal didn’t buckle under the force of the blade. It didn’t crumple or bend.

No, it simply parted, like that was the most natural thing in the world. Like worshippers stepping to the side before their divinity to walk. Through and through, Hiral’s strike passed, a perfect line unhindered by paltry things such as durability or Rank. In its wake, Breaking followed. Though not powered by an Edict itself, the runic power rode high on the wave, basking in the glory of that which came before, and used that vulnerability to live up to its name.

Like frost retreating under the noonday sun, the metal gave way, rusting, decaying, and retreating from where the blade passed.

And then Hiral was by, his dash and the complete lack of resistance to his strike carrying him nearly forty feet beyond the legs of the G14NT before he slowed and turned. Just in time to see the repercussions of his party’s coordinated assault.

While his blow hadn’t completely torn the leg apart at the knee – the limb was simply too thick, though he’d cut through about three-quarters of it – it had compounded the Armor’s imbalance. Now, with one leg kicked up into the air from Wallop’s Charge, the other buckling under its own weight, and its hand seemingly stuck in one place, the whole thing twisted on the one, weakened joint.

Vulnerable and off-balance like that, it had no defense to the pseudo-aspect-clad doubles who reached its shoulders. On the one side, Right did what he did best, one hand snagging the barrel of the large cannon to whip down, over, and around it. Landing there, directly in front of the base of the weapon, one hand still on the barrel as the Armor stumbled, he lashed out with his other fist.

Strong as the metal Tomorrow used was, the party had long learned the joints or connecting pieces weren’t nearly as resistant to damage. Metal bent inward as Right’s Auroran Conqueror struck it, before the sheer power of his punch ripped the whole, damn cannon off its mounting as he let got of the barrel.

On the other side, Left didn’t have the same outright hitting power, and instead swept around with the combined spear-form of the Daggers of En and Sath. With a trail of liquid the length of the street from the alley where they’d started, the moment the blade slipped between the cannon and the shoulder it was mounted on, the outcome was a given.

And the eruption of force did not disappoint. While it didn’t have the same visceral impact of Right punching something, there was no denying the effectiveness of the attack, with a quick follow-up blow from the spear knocking the cannon toward the ground below.

During all of this – which happened barely within a second – the G14NT almost seemed like it would be able to hold itself upright for a heartbeat, before a white-clad Greed of MaliceBamf’d in place beside the vulnerable knee, her daggers coming in from each side. Glowing venomous green, the Fangs of the Lady looked far too small to ever be able to threaten even the damaged limb.

The two moons that appeared overlaying those Fangs, though?

This time metal did crumple, the force of the two, converging celestial bodies pressing together with the tips of Seeyela’s weapons. Green veins spread up and down the leg, like worms burrowing through the brass at the touch, before her daggers met in the middle. At that point, the knee was simply gone, and it only seemed like a hiccup in the natural laws of physics kept the Armor upright.

Not for long, with a thick bolt of lightning slamming straight into the center of the Armor’s chest, blasting it clean out of the air to crash into the ground. Pieces of the nearby building tore off, the stitching keeping them attached to the limb as the connected torso got ripped away, while more arcs of electricity spread out across the street like dozens of spider’s legs. Up the walls of the buildings on both sides of the road, the lightning clearly wasn’t behaving like it was supposed to, zipping along glass and metal with wild abandon.

When it reached the tops of the top buildings, it seemed to leap off in glee, arcing up and over the center of the street, directly above where Yanily stood atop the prone G14NT, his spear held above his head. Back down like it was running through a funnel, the lightning met at the top of Yan’s weapon, before he spun it and drove it down a second time into the chest of the Armor. This time, all that lightning burrowed down instead of out, sparks of it appearing in the joints and the mouths of the cannons’ barrels.

“Move,” Seena’s voice said over the party chat, and Yanily leapt straight for the sky, more lightning trailing him as he climbed hundreds of feet in seconds.

No sooner had he vacated the space, than something like orange dust rode in on the wind, coating the surface of the Armor, while the sky above it flickered as if were on fire. Well, not all of it, just the two twenty-foot suns.

Between the swirling balls of massive flames, Seena continued to float down, arms extended, with the flames spinning against her outstretched palms.

“For the Mistress,” Li’l Ur said from her shoulder. “You. Shall. Burn. Become the first of in her conquest. The lesson to all who would oppose her. The screaming effigy that will…”

“Let’s just burn it,” Seena said flatly, and hurled her arms forward.

From nearly three-hundred feet up and at an angle, the twin suns shot forward, only for blue lines to stretch out between them. As soon as the lines connected, the two suns began to spiral around each other as they raced for the G14NT lying on the ground. Closer and closer they drew to each other as they moved, their solar energy and power somehow resonating. Growing stronger with each rotation, while black flames of familiar necrotic energy swirled within.

When they struck, they would…

Hiral looked at how terribly close he was to ground zero.

Oh, nine hells…

Scarves of Connection and Attraction reached out to snag his doubles from the air where they’d leapt from the falling titan – but hadn’t landed yet – and then Hiral ran. Ran like his life depended on it, because it did from the feeling of the fire coming down behind him.

Burn indeed!

Two blocks away – as far as he could get in the short time – Hiral darted hard around a corner as the apocalypse erupted behind him.

Red and blue climbed into the sky at the same time Seeyela, Romin, Wallop, and Gran jumped out of a portal beside Hiral, while a roar like the world ending shook the Cradle.

“Think she overdid it,” Seeyela said flatly.

“You don’t say?” Gran asked with a cackle and shake of her head.

“Still smaller than when Hiral tried to cut the Cradle in two,” Yanily said from somewhere high above, his leap taking them over their heads to another distant building.

“Not shaking the Cradle as much either,” Romin said. “Wallop causes this much rumbling when he takes a d…”

Snuuuuuffffff!

“You’re right, they don’t need to know about your alone-time,” Romin said. “Though I’m sure most of the fortress heard your last…”

Snuff! Stomp, Wallop cut off anything the Bonder was going to say with a fair amount of vigor while the world ended a few blocks away.

Shadows on the walls stained red and blue as the temperature climbed, like they were in another world entirely, before it all abruptly stopped.

It happened so suddenly, Hiral had to blink a few times to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. But, no, that was it. The roar had vanished so quickly, there wasn’t even an echo. The temperature was back to normal, and the fake-sun-ambient-lighting returned to before the twin suns had appeared.

“What are you even doing over there?” Ilrolik’s voice came over the chat, her words punctuated with grunts like she was grappling with something.

“Ignore them,” Wule said. “It’s just not even worth asking anymore.”

“How can I ignore that?” Ilrolik asked.

“By maybe focusing on the Armor trying to pull Devison’s… oh COME ON!” Yully practically shouted over the party chat. “I just regrew that!”

“Good thing you get a bonus to it…” Loan chuckled over the chat at the same time a W45P with its wings ripped off got hurled into the sky.

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“Focus,” Sera instructed, cutting off the joking with her single, calm word. Like the mother corralling her rambunctious children, that was enough to quiet the chatter coming from the group.

“Yan,” Seena said, filling the space. “You going to finish this thing off?”

“You got it, Boss,” Yanily said from high above, his leap just now reaching its apex, as Hiral peeked around the corner of the building. In the sky, solar energy pulsed – that had to be Turn Back the Clock – and the spearman transformed into the customary lightning of Skyfall+.

Hiral glanced at the wreckage of the G14NT splayed out in the center of the street in the second of existence it had left to its name. Impressively, it was still alive after everything they’d hit it with – which made sense, considering it was A-Rank. Maybe it was more impressive they’d put it down so quickly, considering their own B-Rank status. High-B-Rank, all with advanced classes, sure, but Rank disparity really was difficult to get over… if they didn’t have Hiral’s Aim High.

As for the Mecha-Armor, the leg they’d broken at the knee was now entirely gone – even the thigh – where it had been evaporated by the twin suns. Joints had fused together, the head was little more than what looked like a melted, overturned pot, and the chest reminded Hiral of one of those wide candles that had been left to burn too long – droopy and runny in the middle.

Then Yanily came back down, painting the world in electric blue and white, to strike that crevasse he’d earlier opened in the armor. The centre of the aptly-named G14NT vanished within the pillar of nature’s fury – or heaven’s punishment – as the impact further cratered the street and sent a shockwave rushing up the nearby buildings. What few had survived the cataclysm of Seena’s attack simply gave up the ghost at this point, collapsing away from ground zero as the earth beneath them bucked.

The city shook and bellowed with the falling buildings groaning in protest as the metal and stone in them gave out, crashing them into their neighbours. Long, loud seconds turned into over a minute, while Hiral lifted those nearby into the air to make sure they didn’t get crushed by the fallout. He grabbed Yanily and Seena on the way by, and when they were finally all hovering above the rising dust cloud from where they’d battled, they got a second to look at each other.

“Good reminder not to fight anything A-Rank around people we need to protect,” Seeyela said somberly at the destruction.

None of them had planned to wreck the city like that.

“Or at least not to let those two.” Gran didn’t hesitate for a second to point at the two main culprits – Yanily and Seena.

“It was A-Rank,” Seena said in her own defense. “We had to give it our all.”

“You just wanted to see if you could make Tomorrow’s brass melt or – better yet – burn,” her sister accused right back.

Seena’s mouth opened, but she didn’t have a comeback. Her sister knew her too well. So, instead of whatever excuse she had planned to make, she just grumbled instead. “Stupid metal wouldn’t catch on fire.”

“Speaking of fire,” Hiral said. “Ur, was that necrotic energy I saw in there? Did you do that?”

Before answering, Li’l Ur held his small hand up to his mouth and blew a jet of blue flame across his fingernails, then rubbed them on the chest of his robe like he was polishing them. “I added in a hint of one of my signature abilities from my legendary-evil days; Blight and Burn.”

“You can do that now?” Yanily asked.

“As our glorious Mistress grows stronger – now on the cusp of A-Rank – more and more comes back to me,” Li’l Ur explained. “There are still… many holes… in my memory, and my strength is but a vague echo of my prime, but I do find myself able to channel the blueprints of my abilities through my Mistress.”

“Basically,” Seena said. “He’s using my solar energy to fuel the abilities he’s showing me how to use. The little guy can’t use them on his own. Yet? Ever? Not sure about that part.”

“Either way, that was pretty impressive,” Hiral said. “Who knows, maybe in S-Rank, your final advanced class will give you a third kind-of sponsor.” He looked at the lich floating on her shoulder. Li’l Ur had said he couldn’t be a sponsor – since he didn’t have access to his urn or old power – but Seena was already benefitting from the core of a dead-plant-sponsor-thing. And the way their abilities seemed to be growing more and more interlinked… could it be possible?

“That’s assuming I even get an option for another advanced class,” Seena said. “I barely got this one before we reached A-Rank.”

“Out of everybody,” Seeyela said. “If there is somebody – other than Yan – who I know is going to get their third advanced class, it’s you. Just because it took a little longer doesn’t mean anything. You’ve always been slow, but you get there eventually.”

“I’m… not sure if I’m feeling deeply complimented or insulted here…” Seena said slowly, then shook her head. “And, hold up, enough about me. We’ve all been ignoring that.” As she said it, the party leader pointed at Hiral. Well, not at Hiral specifically, but more the giant, glowing, Edict-etched Greatsword of Amin Thett in his hands.

The fallen-star form of it had definitely evolved, growing even a bit larger, while the Edicts running the length of the blade burned black. In his hand, the energy visibly churned – especially along the edges that gave off the unmistakable aura of Separation – while the air around it seemed to warp.

“Well,” Hiral started, then remembered he’d gotten a notification he’d ignored back when he’d been fighting the G14NT. A thought brought it up in front of him.

Dynamic Quest: Update – Unfathomable Power

You’ve merged the power of a legendary—yet broken—S-Rank item with some of the rules governing the universes, loosening the limiter on the weapon’s bound potential. Find a way to restore it to its original state.

Repair Progress: 75/100%

Sharing the notification window with the others around them, Hiral said, “Looks like I completed another step in the quest to unlock the sword’s true power.”

“That was fifty-percent last time, wasn’t it?” Seeyela asked, reading the notification. Hiral nodded. “Means… one more step?”

“I think so,” Hiral said. “Should be one more chain left.” He’d explained the spectral chains he’d seen wrapping the blade before, and though he hadn’t seen them this time, that was probably that sense of shattering he’d felt.

“How did you do it?” Yanily asked. “Progress the quest, I mean.”

“Used the Edicts directly on the blade,” Hiral said. “Kind of like what I did with the Edict-blade I’d created against the Ex-General.”

“Good job,” Seena said, giving his sword one last look before giving him a smile. Then, she turned her attention to the city below. The crashing of collapsing buildings had finally stopped, though dust still filled the space where they’d fought. In either direction, directly opposite the floating party, the other two groups were still engaged with their flyers.

While not as durable or powerful as the G14NT, the W45Ps were much more mobile, making them difficult to pin down when they wanted to play cat and mouse.

“Should we help them?” Seeyela asked, though she didn’t use the party chat.

“No.” It was Yanily who spoke. “They’ve got it under control. And, if they don’t, they need to be able to do it on their own.”

“They’re fine,” Hiral said, spotting flashes of the ongoing battles.

“They’re catching up,” Seena said, but Gran cackled at that. “What?”

“Maybe they’re catching up to me and new-guy here,” she thumbed at Romin. “But catching up to you lot?” She then pointed at the catastrophe directly below them. “Not sure you’re even in the same race.”

“They are catching up,” Hiral said, though he could see Gran’s point. “Especially Nivian and Wule. Maybe it’s the D-Rank advanced classes? I didn’t expect them to make such a difference – it’s just a couple stat points per level – but could there be some kind of more intrinsic benefit? Something deeper? Fundamental?”

“Sounds like something for Gauto to figure out,” Seena said.

“It does,” Hiral agreed. “And with some other people actually getting advanced D-Rank classes here in the Cradle, now’s the time to find out.”

“One thing at a time,” Seena reminded him, even as another W45P went hurtling through a building. “Once they’re done there, we’ve still got to finish this quest.”

At the mention of it, Hiral popped open the quest window to see how close they were.

Dynamic Quest: Update

Hidden Trial (A-Rank): Mechanized

Tomorrow’s 0M3G4 W34P0N stirs. Defeat more Mecha-Armor to initialize its systems. Defeating it will result in a hidden schematic unlocking new defenses and advanced classes.

Tomorrow’s Mecha-Armor, Mark G14NT Defeated: 5/5

Tomorrow’s Mecha-Armor, Mark W45P Defeated: 27/30

Tomorrow’s 0M3G4 W34P0N Defeated: 0/1

Just three more W45Ps, then they’d have to go find Tomorrow’s0M3G4 W34P0N, though he had a pretty good idea where it was hiding, thanks to his scouting previously. A massive facility lay hidden under the city – it was where the other Mecha-Armors had come from – so it was probably where this final monstrosity would be hiding.

“The last two fights were pretty quick, but let’s find a place to rest until they’re done,” Seena said. “Hiral, how about the roof of that one still-standing building below us? Can you take us there?”

“Sure thing,” Hiral said. The section of the oddly huge city directly below them really had taken the worst of the recent battles, though most of it stood tall, light reflecting off the glass windows of the towering structures. Is there really a place like this somewhere out there? I wonder what it’s like…

Hiral didn’t have time for such musings at the moment, though, so he drew himself back to the present. And, since it didn’t look like he’d need to hit anything for the moment, he cut off power to his upgraded Greatsword of Amin Thett. As soon as the energy faded from the blade, he moved to sheathe it over his back again, but completely paused at what was in front of his eyes.

“Uh… Hiral…?” Yanily said, also looking at the same thing he was. “I thought your quest was to repair it, not… that.”

In his hand, the greatsword was now little more than a hilt, a cross-guard, and about four inches of blade. That was it. The rest of the broken blade was just… gone. He’d thought the blade had gotten shorter after the last seal broke, but a big part of him had dismissed that notion as wild fancy or imagination. There was no way this was his imagination.

“It’s becoming more energy and less crystal as you complete the quest?” Romin asked.

“Seems that way,” Hiral said. “I’ll try to figure it out after…”

Hiral didn’t get to finish his sentence as a notification window popped up in front of him.

Dynamic Quest: Update

Hidden Trial (A-Rank): Mechanized

Tomorrow’s 0M3G4 W34P0N stirs. Defeat more Mecha-Armor to initialize its systems. Defeating it will result in a hidden schematic unlocking new defenses and advanced classes.

Tomorrow’s Mecha-Armor, Mark G14NT Defeated: 5/5

Tomorrow’s Mecha-Armor, Mark W45P Defeated: 30/30

Tomorrow’s 0M3G4 W34P0N Defeated: 0/1

The final W45P had apparently been defeated, which meant it was time to go find…

A far corner of the city erupted, stone, metal, glass, and an entire building shooting into the sky. That had to have been an entire city block going off. Some kind of explosion? No, the timing was too convenient with the notification they’d just gotten. That could only be one thing.

And, as a massive, metallic arm reached out of the hole in the city’s foundation, Hiral realized they wouldn’t have to go looking for the 0M3G4 W34P0N.

It had come to find them.