Rune Seeker

“That was eloquent?” Yanily asked.

“Practically a poet,” Vix said. “Nivian, you can go first.”

“Gee, thank you,” Nivian said, but he had his shield up and his whip cocked back to strike.

“Looks like doors between the torches along the walls,” Hiral said, scanning the room for more traps. “Might be reinforcements.”

“Seriously? The duke here isn’t a high enough CR on his own?” Seena asked. “Bah, whatever. If we kill him fast enough, reinforcements won’t matter.”

“Now… fight. Now… die…” the Troblin Duke said, heaving a massive battle axe off its back.

The thing had to be as tall as Hiral was, and likely weighed even more. The notched blade was balanced by a thick spike on the back of the haft, and most of it seemed to be wrapped in leather strips that looked uncomfortably like Grower skin.

“Hit him hard and fast,” Seena said, tapping Nivian on his shoulder, and the tank blurred and seemed to stretch out as he used his movement ability.

A second later, Nivian dashed into the ring of purple torches, skidding to a stop ten feet from the Troblin Duke, and lashed out with his whip. Thorny barbs tore the boss’s skin as the thing stepped forward, then swung its axe up and over in a vicious arc. With its long arms and the naturally large weapon, Nivian was forced to dive aside before the axe crashed into the ground right where he’d been standing.

The impact from the axe caused a shockwave that shredded the floor in an outward cone another ten feet long, and then the duke effortlessly ripped its weapon free—which pulled a ten-foot section of floor up with it. Wood chunks flew into the air, and the Troblin swung his meaty fist around in a wide sweep, slapping the debris and transforming it into a barrage of rocketing projectiles.

Hiral’s Rune of Rejectionturned aside most of the dangerous shards—just barely in time—but he wasn’t able to get all of them. Wule took an arrow-like splinter in the thigh, while Left threw himself in front of Seena and got skewered by a spear of wood through the gut.

The double toppled to the ground, solar energy leaking out of his wound like glowing smoke. He wrapped his fingers around the spike as if to pull it out. “Aaaagh,” he grimaced, his whole body twitching from even the slightest movement of the foreign object in his stomach. “That… hurts…”

“I’ll take care of Left,” Hiral said to Seena as he ran over to his double.

Seena nodded despite the look of guilt on her face, and solar energy began to gather inside her at the same time Vix and Yanily vanished.

Must’ve gotten pulled up by Nivian’s Swarm Tactics.

“Not sure if this’ll work, but let’s try,” Hiral said, reaching out his hand to touch Left’s shoulder.

“No! Wait,” Left tried to warn Hiral, but he’d already begun the process to pull his double back in.

The wood clattered to the ground as Left vanished in a puff of solar energy that flowed back into Hiral.

It worked…

All thought left Hiral’s mind as agonizing pain shot through his abdomen, and he dropped to his knees, then fell face-first to the ground. His hand went to his stomach, where his fingers were greeted by warm, thick liquid and a hole where his skin should be smooth and complete.

“Ugh,” he groaned, forcing his watery eyes open. Red stained his hand and the left side of his stomach, more of his blood bubbling out from the wound every time he shifted.

“Hold on, Hiral. Hold on,” Wule said, the sound of more wood clunking to the floor near Hiral’s head. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Sure… feels… like… it… is…” Hiral groaned, his bloody right hand opening and closing while he held the tattooed left over the injury.

“Really, it’s not,” Wule reassured him, and refreshing energy washed across his body, then gathered at his stomach.

You have been healed by Nature’s Regrowth

Minor wounds and damage repaired.

“Oh… that didn’t feel minor,” Hiral said, but the pain from his stomach was surprisingly gone. A glance down at his abdomen showed it still covered in blood, but the hole had vanished.

“The wound wasn’t as big as what Left had,” Wule said, offering his hand to help Hiral to his feet—which Hiral gratefully took, legs still shaky from the echo of pain. “If I had to guess, and I am, I’d say it was about a third of the size.”

“Great. So, I take their injuries back into me when I take their solar energy. Good to know.” Even as Hiral spoke, the ground shook under his feet. “The others?”

“Still alive—for now,” Wule said. “But that duke monster isn’t slowing down.”

Hiral looked to the center of the room, where the party battled it out against the Troblin Duke. It was obviously a contest of tight margins. None of the Growers looked to be injured, while the Troblin had half a dozen small wounds. Still, the duke’s weapon came terrifyingly close—and was getting closer—with each swing.

It was learning their patterns, even after only a few seconds of battle, and all it would take was one hit of the massive weapon to do some serious damage.

Definitely more than minor.

On top of its ability to learn, Hiral watched as Yanily scored a clean hit with his spear, and the weapon barely penetrated the thick hide by more than an inch. Green blood dribbled out of the wound, but it obviously wasn’t slowing the Troblin down. If anything, the duke’s counterattack cut even closer as Yanily narrowly ducked under the backhand swing that sailed over two of the burning torches. The sheer velocity of the blow snuffed them out.

Hiral activated his Foundational Split ability, and Left pulled away from his body, the double’s stomach thankfully whole and intact.

“That wasn’t very smart,” Left reprimanded Hiral.

“I didn’t know, but we can argue about it later. They need our help,” Hiral said. “Go for the legs. Anything to slow it down.”

“Got it,” Left said, shaping the Dagger of Sath with a touch to his left wrist and sprinting toward the duke.

Hiral was right behind him, not even bothering to draw Yanily’s knife—the small weapon probably wouldn’t even cut the duke’s skin—and instead pushed solar energy into his Rune of Attraction. As the Troblin’s axe came up and over to slash down at Right, Hiral gave a tug on the weapon, pulling it just wide, while the double darted in and landed a pair of strong blows on the monster’s hip. The two hits didn’t seem to do much other than get the duke’s attention, and it ripped its axe free of the shattered floor to try and backhand the pugilist.

Right, while not quite as agile as Hiral, was still pretty damn fast, and ducked under the blow to come in and land another pair of hits on the same hip. With his fist glowing, the second of the two punches packed enough oomph to actually stagger the duke back, and then Left was there behind it, Dagger of Sath slashing for the back of its thighs.

A push with the Rune of Rejection forced the Troblin back yet another step, closer to the ring of torches, and Vix and Yanily came at it from the side opposite Left and Right. Yanily’s spear blurred as he poured solar energy into his strikes, the weapon somehow dancing around the duke’s arm as it brought it up to block, which gave Vix the opening to slide around behind it.

Like Yanily, Vix’s individual hits did little damage—barely more than scratches—but the precision of his repeated blows finally opened a more serious wound on the Troblin’s lower back.

“You… annoying…” the Troblin Duke roared, sweeping its axe around again, but the Growers had all learned how it liked its horizontal cuts, and ducked underneath.

The great axe ripped through nothing but air, though it snuffed out two more torches as it passed, and then the Troblin stumbled under another push from Hiral’s Rune of Rejection.

Straight into a barrage of Spearing Roots.

“We’ve almost got it,” Seena shouted, Snaring Rootsgrowing out of her spears to try and latch onto the Troblin Duke. “Don’t let up!”

One swing from the duke’s axe shattered the Spearing Roots like kindling—leaving some of the spikes embedded in its skin—but that bought the other Growers a brief opening. Right and Vix continued to pummel the same spots they’d been focused on, while Left worked on the backs of the legs, and Yanily—with his longer reach—aimed his blows higher. Hiral activated his runes, one after the other, to keep the wild axe swipes from connecting with the Growers. A pulse of energy emerged from Seena, suddenly outlining the duke in red.

You have been buffed by: Target

Object of the Target Debuff cannot hide from your eyes for 190 seconds

You inflict 15% more damage to object of Target Debuff for 190 seconds

Nivian, meanwhile, was the one who got the duke’s attention with a snapping whip that caught the creature across the eye. The monster’s head snapped back in pain or shock, another great roar escaping its lipless mouth, then it brought its axe down unbelievably fast.

Hiral pulled on the axe, just barely in time to make sure it didn’t strike anybody directly, but the shockwave from it hitting the floor threw all those around it hurtling through the air and outside the ring of torches.

“Now… me… angry!” the Troblin Duke screamed, its axe sweeping back and forth as it snuffed out the remaining torches immediately around it.

What’s it doing? Trying to make it so we can’t see it? Won’t work with Target up… and yet…

“ANGRY!” the duke screamed again, and suddenly, jets of purple flame burst out of the numerous wounds dotting its body. At the same time, previously unseen etchings along the edge of the axe’s blade burned to life, the crude script giving off a sinister aura, like the axe itself had intent.

Dynamic Quest: Update

The Eloquent Duke has absorbed forbidden magic and grown stronger as a result.

Defeat the Enraged Eloquent Duke of Splitfang Keep to clear the dungeon.

“What does enraged mean?” Nivian asked a heartbeat before the duke exploded into motion, purple flames erupting from its back and launching it forward.

Up and over came the axe, trailing its own tail of purple flame like a descending comet. It slammed into Nivian’s shield hard enough to crater the wood floor as it drove the man to his knees beneath the blow. Not even giving Nivian a chance to catch his breath, the duke snapped his free hand around to grab the edge of the shield, completely ignoring the sharp thorns digging into his palm, then hauled the tank into the air so abruptly, his feet left the ground.

“Look out!” Seena tried to warn, but it was too late.

The duke swung Nivian like a flail straight into Vix.

Hiral poured power into his Rune of Attraction, but he was no match for the Troblin Duke’s sheer strength, and Nivian and Vix collided with a grunt of pain from both parties. Releasing its hold on the shield at the moment of impact, the duke let the two Growers go tumbling along the ground, then leapt into the air—clearly defying all physics with the speed and height of the jump—toward Right.

Purple flames dangled behind the leaping Troblin, like streamers in the wind, then suddenly condensed, hurtling the duke at Right with a whoosh of sudden speed. Right, still finding his feet from the earlier shockwave, poured solar energy into the Meridian Lines of his right hand, then cocked his fist back for a counterblow.

It won’t be enough!

There was no way Right would be able to deflect the attack, and trading hits would result in Right getting annihilated, so Hiral did the only thing he could think of: He cancelled his Foundational Split.

WHAAAAAAM. The Troblin Duke hit the ground hard enough to shake the entire keep, a column of purple flame exploding up to scorch the roof, and Right was simply gone. Waves of heat radiated across the room, and no solar energy passed into Hiral to bolster his own stores, though his tattoos appeared on the right side of his body.

Did it work?

Hiral checked his status window quickly to find his Solar Capacity at a measly twenty-one percent, then put half of it into Foundational Split. Right peeled off him a second later, intact and uninjured, but the Troblin Duke turned its attention on them, purple flames licking the wreckage of the floor.

“You got its attention,” Right said grimly.

“Yup, I did,” Hiral said, but something about the scene caught his attention. Several of the glyphs on the Troblin’s axe weren’t glowing anymore. And… and four of the torches in the circle at the center of the room were burning again.

What does that mean?

The Troblin Duke didn’t give him the time to figure out the answer to the question, planting its feet and sweeping the axe around.

No way it can reach me from that far…

A crescent of purple flame peeled off the axe like a tidal wave ten feet tall and thirty feet wide, racing toward Hiral and Right.

Slipping immediately in front of Right, Hiral poured as much power into his Rune of Rejection as he could in the split second before impact, then focused the narrow force straight ahead of him. He didn’t try anything fancy, or to stop the entire wave. Instead, he created a wedge of Rejection, just wide enough to part the roiling flames as they rolled over him.

Sinister heat bombarded him from all around, whispers in the fire clawing at his ears and promising him a myriad of different—but equally horrible—deaths. Then it was past, a cone of wood starting at Hiral and extending behind him amidst a charred and smoking floor.

And, most importantly, a fifth torch was burning again.

“There’s a limit to how many times he can use the flames,” Hiral shouted. “Look at the circle of torches!”

Seven more torches remained unlit. All they needed to do was survive that long, and then the duke should power back down. Simple… really…

The duke’s good eye narrowed at Hiral, apparently understanding his words, and purple flames danced within it.

Now it was just a question of whether they could survive that long.

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