Runeblade-Chapter 286B3 : Wealth of Growth, pt. 3

Under the curious eyes of his companions, Kaius finally delved into the offerings of his latest skill.

Sigil of Vesryn’s Pact—a skill so different from the spellcasting glyphs he already possessed. As soon as he saw it, he knew he had to have it. Even if it provided him no personal benefits in its current form, his brother’s strength was his own, and he would happily sacrifice a skill to ensure Porkchop’s safety.

Kaius also doubted that he had—the skill’s epigraph had mentioned freely shared power eventually being returned in kind, and he suspected that even without the skill evolving, later tiers would come with functionality that empowered him directly.

He was getting ahead of himself, and his curiosity was burning hotter by the second besides.

Focusing fully on the words that floated in his vision, he delved into the options that waited for him.

**Ding! Glyphic Body Formation available for selection - Sigil of Vesryn’s Pact!**

Leap of the Untethered:

Glyphic Body Formation - Tier I

Affinity: Force

Glyph: Sigil of Vesryn’s Pact

Selection Available!

This Body Formation improves the inscriber’s bonded companion’s ability to leap by reinforcing their movements with small bursts of explosive force. Using this ability requires 5 Stamina per second.

…

Soul Subverts the World:

Glyphic Body Formation - Tier I

Affinity: Space

Glyph: Sigil of Vesryn’s Pact

Selection Available!

This Body Formation allows the inscriber and their bonded companion to channel 1000 mana to swap places when within 100 long-strides of each other.

…

Unbroken Through Suffering:

Glyphic Body Formation - Tier I

Affinity: Soul, Life

Glyph: Sigil of Vesryn’s Pact

Selection Available!

This Body Formation grants the inscriber’s bonded companion a small fraction of their resistances to afflictions and affinities.

…

Wild Spirit:

Glyphic Body Formation - Tier I

Affinity: Nature

Glyph: Sigil of Vesryn’s Pact

Selection Available!

This Body Formation infuses the inscriber’s bonded companion with a slight connection to nature, faintly warning them of incoming and hidden challenges.

His surroundings faded from Kaius’s notice as he stared at the offered formations, the flickering brazier light becoming little more than a muted glow in the corner of his eyes.

While he’d known that the skill would be odd, what he saw in front of him was outside of his expectations.

Traditionally, body formations were nebulous things—minor passive enhancements, or channelled abilities. Except for the weakest effects, they always had a cost—either leeching some form of resource regeneration while active, or requiring active expenditure to use. Niche as they were rare, it was only very occasionally that you saw someone who had invested so heavily in them as to make it a focus of their class—really, only a small selection of runewrights and their closest retainers.

The ones he saw before him were different. For one, they were stronger than what he remembered of the little he knew of body formations. Sure, he might be limited to picking a single enhancement per tier of the skill, but these were permanent enhancements—ones that would exist in excess of Porkchop’s already substantial class and general skills.

As a flicker of uncertainty entered his chest, Kaius reopened the description of Vesryn’s Pact, narrowing in on how it scaled.

‘Each level moderately increases the potency of inscribed formations, new and existing.’

He ogled the words that flew entirely in the face of standard understandings of formations.

Almost all rune skills improved the arrays and inscriptions one could produce, but they almost never affected what had already been created—with one exception, formations that were bound directly to their creator, something almost exclusively seen in body formations and his own spell-glyphs.

And yet here was something that blurred those lines. Sure, it likely rested entirely on the depth of his soul-bond with his brother, but it was still a shock. At first, he’d assumed that he’d misunderstood the wording in some way that would become clear when he saw the formations themselves.

A scaling increase to Porkchop’s strength—not just in direct power, but an expansion of his capabilities.

He grinned, pleased he had taken the leap on the skill.

As for the formations themselves? They all seemed useful, but more than that, they were oddly familiar.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓

“Oh come on, you can’t just sit there blankly for a full minute and then just say something like that. What’s on the table? Are you finally going to turn me into the divine spirit I was always meant to be?” Porkchop groused as he let out a low whine and rolled onto his side.

Kaius snorted at his brother’s antics. “Nothing quite so insane, but each of these is good—it’s basically giving you another skill, though one that is a fair bit weaker than our usual fair.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Oh? That’s interesting,” Ianmus said, leaning in.

Kaius nodded, and ran through the formations he had been offered as quickly as he could. With how much his brother was fidgeting, Kaius was half convinced that even a second’s extra delay would lead to Porkchop deciding to sit on him—and a set of bruised ribs for the trouble.

Listening intently, Porkchop let out a pensive hum and sat up. “Kaius, don't these seem…”

“Oddly similar to bits of my skillset? Yeah, they do.” Kaius agreed, feeling the layers to his brother’s question flood across their bond.

“What do you mean?” Kenva asked.

“Both Leap of the Untethered and Soul Subverts the World feel…thematically close to my Aelina spell hymns, for lack of a better word. Expedient Shunt launches me around with bursts of force, and Slip Step is about as close to true spatial movement in the first tier as possible—excluding whatever this insanity is.” Kaius replied, staring at the formation that would let him swap places with his brother.

It pained him to see it offered—not when there was a far superior choice. If it had been a part of his Aelina glyph, he would have taken it in an instant—even if just for the chance to influence his skill further towards space and dimension magic.

“You’re right,” Ianmus replied, his eyes widening. “Unbroken through Suffering also seems to be quite closely linked to Rapid Adaptation, and the same for Wild Spirit—though that seems to contain fragments of Uncanny Dodge and Explorer’s Toolkit both.”

Pausing for a moment as she mulled over their words, Kenva eventually shrugged. “Is it really so strange? From what you said, your class required having a complete and equal soul-bond with a greater beast, and such a link is bound to cause you each to deeply shape the other. It feels poetic, in a way, that this skill reflects that.”

Crossing his arms, Kaius thought it over. Phrased like that, he found it difficult to argue with her reasoning—she was undeniably correct that his bond with his brother had fundamentally shaped him at every level of his being. Perhaps having an extrinsic representation of that influence was not so odd.

Still, it did make him wonder. If the formations he could inscribe on his brother were a reflection of his influence, how would Porkchop’s effect on him be reflected in the future? For if it was such a case, it made him all the more certain that the skill would eventually develop some personal benefit.

“Regardless, I want you to pick Unbroken Through Suffering.” Porkchop interjected, shaking him from his thoughts.

“What, I don’t even get any input on my own skill?” Kaius said, shooting him a grin.

Porkchop rolled his eyes. “Please, we both know it's the only real pick—I am a Bastion, and I’d sooner bite my Patriarch’s bollocks—”

Mid swig from his water skin, Ianmus choked.

“—before I believed there was a more ridiculous resistance skill than Rapid Adaptation. If I can gain even a fraction of your resistances, I will be all the more able to keep myself and the rest of you alive.”

Kaius nodded his head in full agreement. “Sage words.” he said, before turning to the rest of their team—both ranger and mage doing their best to school their expressions. “Shall we pick then?”

They nodded, and he sat back down before confirming his selection.

Everything went black. Again.

…

Kaius blinked and found himself sitting at a familiar desk, surrounded on all sides by floor to ceiling bookshelves stacked with tomes; each leatherbound and dyed with the subtle colours of mana affinities.

Lounging in a padded chair, he relaxed as the hearth that roared behind him caressed him with its warmth. In some ways it was an illusory comfort—after all, his body in truth still lay slumped on uncaring stone—but in every way it mattered the plush padding and gentle heat was soothing to his month of continued discomfort.

It was a respite he relished, considering he doubted he would be seeing many creature comforts in the coming delve through the Great Depths. His tent and cooking could do much, but there was something about the sense of safety that came with this place that was a balm to his soul.

He blinked again, and opened his eyes to an aged doppelganger smiling at him as it leaned on the far wall.

“Nice to see you again so soon, not that I expected a long wait.” his system guide said.

Kaius returned the gesture, grinning. “How could I resist?”

Shaking their head, his guide stood up, flicking their hand as they moved forward. A detailed, three dimensional diagram of Vesryn’s Pact appearing in thin lines of blue over the surface of the desk.

Around it, a circular glyphic array of startling complexity encircled it in a ring. Interestingly, the main glyph was paired—a subtly different twin floating below the main construction, though minimised as it lacked the ringed formation of Unbroken Through Suffering.

Staring at it deeply, Kaius began to pick apart the individual sections of the array—doing his best to consign them to memory, and see if it had any similarities to his other glyphs and spells.

Immediately he could tell it used the same glyphic language as everything else he had obtained—individual runes jumping out to him that matched examples from his other skills. There was a certain…lilt to Vesryn rune construction that he had been growing familiar with. A grace to its grammatic construction and syntax he was starting to recognise.

Unfortunately, such an insight was nowhere close to letting him understand what the runes did. Each glyph he had seen seemed to have runes that weren’t present in the others—though that number had been falling with every acquisition. Plus, the fundamental geometry and construction of each one differed in ways both small and large. A mixed blessing, one that made the language as startlingly flexible and powerful as it did to make it hard to parse and unravel.

Chewing his lip, Kaius’s eyes flicked to his guide, who was still focused heavily on the formation.

“An interesting skill you have picked—body formations are niche in standard runecraft. Normally, they’re just an intermediate stepping stone before true glyph binding is discovered and it's rare to see more standard glyph binders make use of its potential in an enhanced form.” the system guide mused, rotating the diagram with a few finger flicks as it stared deeply into its depths.

Curiosity roused, Kaius tried to see what the nigh-omnipotent entity found so enthralling. Unfortunately, like every other lesson, the language and function of its construction was foreign and arcane to him. He knew any questions on how and why it worked would go unanswered, as had been the case every time he had tried.

That wouldn’t stop him from trying again. Not when every facet he learned was another hint that would lead him to further discoveries in his own time.

“How does it work? Are those sections how the formation connects to the main glyph?” he asked, pointing towards a series of hooking flicks that extended from the inner edge of his first body formation. A matching set spilled out from the central edge of the main glyph, like grasping hands that yearned to touch.

The guide just tapped the side of its nose and gave him a knowing smile. “Tut tut, Kaius, you know I can’t answer.” Turning back to the formation, he zoomed in on a small section of an array on the outer edge. “Still, it is fascinating what Vesryn managed to accomplish by leaning on the innate nature of a bond of equals. Exciting stuff.”

Stepping forward, his guide pointed to a small cluster of runes, weaving around themselves in a downward spiral towards the base of the formation. “We start here.”

Kaius smiled, seizing a hold of his mana with Tonal Weaving while he waited for the system’s instruction.

Foll𝑜w current novℯls on fre𝒆web(n)ovel.co(m)