Runeblade-Chapter 290B3 : Wealth of Growth, pt. 6

Stretching out his lethargy, Kaius spotted Kenva sprawled out on a thick fur in a corner of the tent. She’d been there since they pitched the thing—quiet and silent as she enjoyed the simple material comforts that had been denied to her for so long.

An understandable feeling, considering he and Porkchop had been doing much the same.

Sensing his gaze, the ranger looked up and gave him a questioning look.

“Just checking on Ianmus.”

She grunted, head flopping back down.

Smiling at her fatigue, Kaius left the silent warmth and returned to the carved sandstone and flickering firelight of the entrance room.

Momentarily eying the dark runes of the deactivated portal, he confirmed they still had more than a week before it brightened again, before he turned his attention to Ianmus.

Looming over, the mage was staring intently at the deep carvings on the wall. While Kaius couldn’t quite understand his fascination, he could admit they were interesting—as much as nonsense non-magical runes and deep reliefs of unknown monsters could be.

“Find anything interesting?” Kaius asked.

Ianmus jumped at the sudden noise, turning over his shoulder quickly before turning his attention back to the wall.

“A little. See this here?” he pointed to an engraving of an army of four armed warriors dressed in strange flowing tunics squaring off against something that almost looked like a stretched out spider with multiple tailed stingers. The warriors were guarding a lush city, while the beasts seemed to be swimming in a sea of sand.

“Yeah?”

“It’s a common motif, but half of them seem to show the sand encroaching further and further into settled lands—these scorpion-like creatures are almost entirely absent from the carvings on the far wall.” Ianmus replied, tracing a carved stinger.

Kaius frowned. “You think they’re going to be the one of the biome's threats?”

“Not just them,” Ianmus replied as he straightened and turned to face him. “Over by the door there were some depictions of some pretty bleak looking rituals—like the four-armed people had turned to dark magics in an attempt to save themselves. It didn’t look like it worked.”

“Undead?” Kaius replied pensively, hoping and praying it wasn’t so—he’d had enough of them for a lifetime after his first delve.

“I don’t think so.” Ianmus shook his head. “Hard to tell exactly what, but the rituals weren’t raising the dead—more imbuing them with additional power. Whatever it was, the carvings suggest it drove them mad. The last pictures, those closest to the roof, show the enhanced warriors turning on the general populace.”

Kaius nodded, thankful that they had at least some warning of what they were to face. The warped warriors were a concern—anything depthsborn that reflected a sapient race was always more of a threat than an unthinking creature. Even if they were normally neutered in their reactions, he remembered Ro’s warning. ŘáＮỖ𝐛ΕŠ

This deep, they would be smarter, and they would have enough trouble surviving fighting against foes that wouldn’t use tactics.

He could only hope that they could avoid the four-armed warriors, and focus more on the scorpion creatures that Ianmus had mentioned.

“Thanks for checking this out—it’s useful.” Kaius said, turning away from a carving of one of the twin tailed beasts. “I did have something I wanted to ask, though. Did you manage to find anything helpful in the artefacts we took from the vault?”

Ianmus tilted his head side to side. “A couple, but we seem to have picked out some of the more useful bits already. Most of it was Rare, and either less suited for us than what we already have, or more suited for rogues, bastions, and the like—heavy plate, axes, daggers and the like.”

Swallowing his disappointment, Kaius nodded. That was a shame—if they’d been able to gather a significant chunk of additional artefacts, they would have been far better off. Still, it was a wealth of resources that they’d no doubt be able to use to trade for better items once they returned to Deadacre.

“That’s too bad—what did you find, in the end?” Kaius asked, curious.

Ianmus crouched down and waved his hand over the ground, artefacts appearing on the stone with a subtle pop of displaced air. Four in total, Kaius saw an amulet of wrought silver that held a pendant of what looked to be polished granite covered in runework, a simple purple-gold earring, a rich cloak of charcoal grey with runic stitching around its hem, and a plain bangle of woven silver.

“What do they do?” Kaius asked, crouching down to take a closer look.

“Two are situational, and two are actual reliable picks.” Ianmus started, before gesturing to the amulet with the polished stone. “That can be charged with mana, and activated to summon a sphere of enhanced stone around its wearer—keeping them safe for up to half an hour.”

Nodding, Kaius thought it would make a great addition to Ianmus’s kit—something he expected the mage already intended. While it would only be useful in an emergency, it was a helpful last ditch defence for their most vulnerable member.

“For you, I take it?”

Ianmus nodded, before pointing to the next artefact—the earring. “This is…frankly a bauble, but I think it makes most sense for Porkchop to have. It will give him a rather extreme resistance to mundane temperature—to the point that if he stuck his paw in a non-magical fire, it would only feel warm.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

A trinket indeed, he could see what Ianmus meant. In battle, any form of attack was liable to be magical in origin—especially for temperature related affinities like winter, fire, ice and the like. It wouldn’t even work well in environments that were intrinsically magical, which only further limited its use.

A bauble, but one that would keep his brother from overheating thanks to his coat if they ended up somewhere unpleasant.

Ianmus moved onto the cloak next. “This makes sense for Kenva to have, if she is to act as a scout. It’ll help her blend into shadows, and muffle any sound she makes. Perhaps not the most valuable of effects, but they are rather potent, and should blend well with that Rare skill of hers.”

Pausing for a moment, Ianmus picked up the final bangle—a woven mesh of silver wire that had been bent into oddly jagged angles.

Kaius felt a smile tug at his lips. This one was obviously for him, and judging by Ianmus’s reaction it was a good one.

“You got the most lucky,” Ianmus said, hefting the bangle. “While it’s still not an artefact of phenomenal power, it does suit you perfectly. I’ll let you look for yourself though, catch.”

Kaius snatched the bangle from the air as the mage threw it to him. Lifting it up to his eye, he analysed it.

Bangle of Crackling Might:

Rare - Tier I

Beware the ire of the storm.

Made from storm affinity silver, this bracelet’s materials and enchantments empower the potency of your storm affinity abilities.

Artisan-wrought Artefact.

Accessory (Bangle)

Storm’s Potency IV, Durability I

Kaius grinned as he read the item's description.

“Oh yes, this should do nicely.”

….

A few hours later, Kaius lay against his brother's back as sleep eluded him. After his chat with Ianmus, he’d taken the excess artifacts off the man's hands to consolidate with the ring that was half full of useless valuables. He was the only one of them with two of the rings, and it was better that they each had a mostly empty one to fill with supplies and anything they found during their delve.

Ianmus and Kenva had both already long fallen asleep, but he was feeling restless. Porkchop was much the same, enjoying his company silently in the dim light of the tent.

Neither of them were plagued by uncertainty, or anything so dire, but it was hard to fall asleep when he felt so…dissatisfied with the path of their escape. novelbuddy-cσ๓

Being beholden to the whims of another was bad enough, but to have the most dangerous enemies within the compound escape from battle? To be forced to flee? It rankled, and there was little he could do to change that.

Nor were his lingering doubts about his actions during their flight particularly conducive to a restful slumber.

Twisting one of his storage rings around his finger, Kaius considered the men he had brutalised—callously slaughtered with far more wanton rage that he would have believed himself capable of.

Did he regret killing them? No, not exactly. He doubted a compound as secure as that one would hire just anyone—every man inside its walls had no doubt been scraped from the lowest dregs of Deadacre and its surrounding regions.

That didn’t mean he had to be happy with the fact he’d had to kill them, nor with the fact that more than a few of those had been…indulgent.

Suppressing a sigh, he decided to see how Porkchop was doing. He could feel that his brother was plagued by a similar dissatisfaction, but his sense of Porkchop’s emotions didn’t give him a perfect insight into exactly what was on his mind.

“How’re you doing? You’ve been more quiet than normal.” Kaius asked silently through their bond.

Porkchop rolled over, setting his head directly on Kaius’s chest—nearly covering his torso totally.

“I’m just frustrated. Our capture was…difficult. Not because of the pain, or how we were housed, but such a humiliating defeat chafes up against my instincts.”

“Oh?” Kaius asked.

“Besting a weaker opponent, only to imprison and brutalise them? It is not the way of beasts.” Porkchop huffed. “Battle may come quick and easy for many reasons—food, dominance, disagreement, territory—but it always ends in either death, or survival. Not the strange in between we were kept in for so long.”

Kaius sighed—he knew exactly what his brother meant. Perhaps not with the same subtleties, but every other battle he had fought had been with his life on the line. A temporary thing, where he either won or lost.

His brother let out a quiet rumble as he scratched him behind the ear.

“My instincts are urging me to hunt them down for their transgression,” Porkchop said softly. “But we are ill equipped for creatures like them—the kind that scurry and hide, cloaking themselves in the skin of sheep. And yet, my mind agrees that they are too dangerous to leave alone. Even an ambush predator will leave off if the danger proves too great, but those men will hound us, I'm sure of it.”

He patted Porkchop’s head.

“You’re likely right, but we have a plan. We’re not leaving until we have reached the utter peak of tier one, and hopefully have another handful of Honours under our belt. We will have the strength we need to best them, and given that they seem local, Rieker and Ro will no doubt be able to assist us in tracking them down. My only worry is this Old Yon leaning on his connections to pull in more powerful assistance than we have already seen—I doubt he’s going to take kindly to our slights.” Kaius murmured, relishing in the soft density of the snow white ruff of fur around his brother’s neck.

“Possible, but I have my doubts,” Porkchop replied, leaning into his touch. “Everything we have seen of these men says that they are cowards, and slimy. I have no doubt that the loss of his compound, our escape, and our theft of what I assume must be a significant chunk of his wealth will be a grand blow to Old Yon’s pride. People like that exist even amongst beasts—in my experience, he will throw everything he has against us, but will not want his loss of face to become more widely known. That said, if he has access to more second tiers, he will likely use them to try to remove us before we grow any stronger.”

Kaius stared up at the roof of the tent, thinking about the possibility of an overwhelming ambush. At this point, he thought it was safe to assume it was almost a certainty—especially if he had missed something with the vault, and Old Yon had a way to track him.

That flash of mana he’d seen when Porkchop had battered down the door was impossible to get out of his mind. It had been small, and fast, but he was almost sure it had come from inside the vault, not the door itself.

Yet it didn’t seem to have done anything—had left no trace that he or Kenva had been able to detect with their Skills. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a guarantee of anything. There were more ways than he knew of to mask spells and magic from detection.

Still…if they were successful in their delve? He was confident that they could kill Golds.

This content is taken from fr(e)ewebn(o)vel.𝓬𝓸𝓶