Runeblade-Chapter 291B3 : Wealth of Growth, Finale

Metal chimed as Kaius slid his cuirass over his head, buckling it down with his belt—now missing his clunky potion pouch considering the ease with which he could use them from his new spatial rings.

Looking around, he saw his team were suited up for war.

They waited by the door, already fully dressed with their armour buckled, their limbs dripping with accessories, and their weapons in hand. Porkchop stood out to him in particular, with the memory of the subtle glow of his new body formation strong in his mind—he’d inscribed it this morning, before refreshing the last of his own spells. It had been inscribed on his sternum, and the crisp light of its mana made the runes clearly visible despite his thick fur. In mana sight, at least.

Summoning his helm to his hand, Kaius pulled it over his head and felt his set enchantment activate as the weight of his armour ever so slightly lessened.

“Alright, final checks everyone,” he said, assuming his role as party leader. “Tonics, general supplies, artifacts, all of it.”

His team sounded off, confirming they had everything they needed. With the frankly obscene convenience of them all possessing spatial artifacts, he’d split their supplies of restoratives and common conveniences like rope and food. In the unlikely event they were separated, they should each have what they needed to hunker down and survive long enough to reunite.

“Perhaps a final review of our plan?” Ianmus suggested, his staff clacking softly against the light brown stone.

Kaius nodded, taking a breath. “We’ve escaped, and this is our best way to lose any potential pursuers—but our overall goal is going to be gaining enough strength that we’re never at risk of this happening again.”

Walking to the door, Kaius eyed the square formation carved deep into the stone next to it—glowing with internal fire to his manasight, he was fully confident that activating it would open the colossal stone door that prevented them from entering the biome in truth.

“We’re going to need to go slowly—Porkchop will take the lead while Kenva and I search for threats with our ocular Skills. Even when it might be helpful if one of us scouted ahead, we stay together; there's far too much risk of one of us being picked off if we separate. At first, we aim for singular isolated threats—gain as many quick levels as we can.”

“Are you sure you can stop us from running into a stray Champion? What if they’re roaming?” Kenva asked, watching him closely.

“We’ve been over this,” Porkchop said, grunting. “Kaius and I can sense them. Even if the distance isn’t the most precise, we’ll still have a heading and be able to tell if they’re getting closer. Avoiding them should be easy.”

Kaius nodded. Avoiding the most dangerous creatures of the Depths until they had sufficient strength was absolutely vital. With their current levels, there was far too much risk of losing someone—especially since both Kenva and Ianmus were nowhere near as strong or durable as he and his brother.

“We move laterally, passing through the biomes. Hopefully in the direction of Deadacre, but I'm not so sure how we will manage that.” Kaius continued.

Ianmus shrugged. “That should be an easy one—direction is roughly the same in both the overworld and the Great Depths. Mostly, at least. Distance isn’t as tightly bound, and we’d likely get turned around some, but as long as we can figure out a heading, we can do it.”

That in and of itself was a problem. Kaius hadn’t exactly been paying the closest attention to their orientation when they had entered the depths, nor did he have the vaguest clue where the compound they had been kept in lay in regards to Deadacre.

Thankfully, Kenva came to the rescue. novelbuddy-cσ๓

“That way then,” she replied, pointing towards the far corner of the room to the left of the door.

Kaius’s eyes widened in surprise. He knew she was a ranger, but to so confidently know their heading in the absence of proper directions was impressive. He wondered how she did it. Even with Explorer’s Toolkit and all of his mundane experience, he knew he had little hope of leading them in the right direction without some sort of waypoint.

Seeing his expression, Kenva shot him a smile.

“Way of the Survivalist,” she said simply. “Once I saw the sun outside, I knew roughly where the compound was—at least, within fifty leagues of accuracy, that is.”

Kaius nodded, and continued. “Once we hit the level cap, or things grow too easy, we’ll start hitting Champions while we head for the nearest Guardian. Our goal should be to push down diagonally in the direction of Deadacre—it’ll be the best way to accrue powerful artefacts, find Honours, and work on our Skills and Aspects.”

“You don’t think we should just head straight for the Guardian now? We’ll level on the way, and there might be an Honour in it for us if we’re still below level one-fifty.” Ianmus replied, crossing his arms.

Kenva winced. “I’m a lot more confident in our chances now I know more about your capabilities, but that’s pushing it, don’t you think?”

“It feels wrong to say this, but I agree—once we’ve hit the tier cap, we’ll have plenty of opportunity to push as hard as we can for Honours, i’m confident that we’ll be able to get at least a couple before we leave, especially with the freedom to experiment with discovering niche ones like Kenva’s.” Porkchop interjected.

Kaius was in full agreement. As much as he hungered for obtaining more Honours before they levelled too high, it was far too much of a risk to take for a reward that might not exist. Besides, there were usually a legion of depthsborn that had to be dealt with before reaching a Guardian—they would likely end up capped anyway, in far more dangerous circumstances than otherwise.

Ianmus chuckled. “The sky must have fallen if I am the one whose ideas are being turned down for being too risky. Regardless, is our goal the same?”

“It is.” Kaius replied with a nod. “We stay until we’ve capped both our class and at minimum our general skills and first few class skills. That, and I want all four of us to have completed our aspects—hopefully fast enough that one of us can get access to an Honour, and the next information packet, if it exists.”

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Finished with their review, the silence grew long—tension and anticipation building in the eyes of every one of his friends.

There was nothing left to do, nothing left to prepare. His supplies were ready, his spells inscribed, and his weapons were hungry.

One by one, his companions gave him a nod. They were ready.

It was time to see what the Depths held for them.

Heart kicking in his chest, Kaius placed his hand on the square formation set at shoulder height beside him. Rough and cool, it almost tingled with magical potential.

Knowing that once the door was open, they could be beset at any time, he drew his blade with his main hand and flushed the formation with mana. Glowing energy surged deep into the stone, intricate system runes that seemed to almost shift in front of his eyes, drinking hungrily from the magic he provided them.

For a moment, nothing happened—the silence in the entry room growing weighty with expectation. Then a low grinding rumble echoed through the space, nearly causing him to jolt at the sudden noise.

Dust showered as a thin wire of light appeared at the base of the door, tons of stone slowly retreating into the ceiling above.

Porkchop stepped front and centre, holding the entrance while his shield slid through the air to guard his front—a warden to defend them from sudden assault.

To little surprise, Kaius felt a gust of burning hot dry air billow in from under the crack, a stunning brightness illuminating the floor of the room in new detail. If the carvings Ianmus had shown him had been consistent about one thing, it was the presence of ever encroaching sand.

He still gasped at what he saw when the door opened enough to reveal what lay behind it.

Through the open portal, the light brown stone continued into a walkway that terminated in stairs—which in turn plunged deep into a seemingly endless sea of sand. Beyond the bounds of their island-structure, it was desert as far as his eyes could see.

That wasn’t what held him enraptured though. Far above, stretching into infinity, was a brilliant blue sky, with twin suns screaming down from overhead.

“Blighted fields…” he cursed, staring at the impossibility in front of him.

It was utterly unlike what he had expected. Sure, he’d known that biomes got weirder as you delved deeper into the Depths—Father had made that abundantly clear in his stories—but sky?

Even with Truesight he could see no illusions, feel none of the telltale signs of a false projection. They were underground! No matter what spatial magics the system used to arrange and expand the spaces in the Depths, an open sky should have been impossible.

“How?” he asked, still staring.

“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Ianmus replied, stepping forward as he shaded his eyes with one hand. “I’d had a few lectures where we discussed the relationship between biomes and pocket dimensions, but seeing it for myself is something else.”

Kaius gave him a sharp look. It was real?

“In plain Common, please,” Kenva said, stepping forwards as she cut across the sand with narrowed eyes, her bow held at the ready.

“Not much more to say—whatever it’s doing is so far beyond us it's almost impossible to study, let alone the difficulty of getting researchers so deep.” Ianmus replied. “We just know that places like this use some kind of spatial and dimensional magic—I have no clue if they’re constructed whole cloth, or portals to somewhere real, or something stranger though.”

Kaius grunted, recovering from his surprise. Unknowable magic—he could work with that. It wasn’t like the system wasn’t nigh omnipotent anyway.

“Regardless of what it is, we have ground to cover,” Porkchop interjected, stepping forwards to take his place as their vanguard.

Falling in, Kaius stepped out onto the stone walkway. Taking a curious look behind him, he saw that their entrance room seemed to be the spire of some monumental building buried in the sand—only a single pyramidal roof capping the square peak visible.

Leaning on the tugging sense he had of the biome’s Guardian and the nearest Champion, he peered out far over the sands. The Champion was significantly closer, and relatively level with them, but the Guardian seemed to be held below the surface of the desert—far off to his right.

Looking in the direction of the Champion, he leaned heavily on Truesight to pierce the hazy air created by heat and distance. He could just barely make out another building. Far larger than their own, what was visible looked almost like a terraced stone manor—jutting a full three stories out of the sand. Even with that, it was clearly buried as well—an unknown volume tunneling deeper below.

What it was originally for, he had no clue—but he suspected that whatever temple-palace this biome was named for would be where they found the guardian.

Looking right, he thought he could almost see it. A hazy smudge on the horizon—one truly large, to be so clear despite so many leagues between them. Such a distance was shocking in and of itself, it meant that this space had to be orders of magnitude larger than even the cavern where he and Porkchop had cut their way through a full dwarven fortress-city.

“Kenva,” he said, grabbing the ranger's attention. “Structures, there and there. One Champion, and one Guardian.”

She nodded back, looking at what he saw. “I found one too, over there.”

Following her point, Kaius quickly spotted another building off to their left—angled only slightly off from their intended heading. Potentially the home of another Champion, or perhaps even a biome exit—not that he even knew what an exit would look like in an open space like this.

“Ianmus, any ideas of how we’ll find the end of the biome? Did your lectures cover if it was a general transition, or portals?”

“Portals, usually. Though what they look like varies significantly—it should be obvious though. Either a highly visible structure, or something that stands out starkly like a rift in space, or a common wooden door where it doesn’t belong.

Kaius nodded. “We move then, towards the structure Kenva spotted—we’ll adjust our heading if it turns out to have a Champion. Stay alert for ambushers.”

So far the desert had looked utterly dead, but he didn’t trust that for a second. There was no way in all of the blighted hells that the depthsborn of this biome were confined solely to the buildings they had seen—especially not with the carvings in the entrance hall depicting beasts living in the sands.

Still, none of his skills had alerted him to anything present, and Kenva hadn’t warned him of anything either.

Following behind Porkchop, he took his first steps onto the sand, the burning heat warming the souls of his feet through his boots. Even with his enchantments on some of his gear keeping him cool, Kaius could still feel himself starting to sweat. The heat was immense—and he’d bet a full platinum that soon his armour would be hot enough to burn mortal skin.

Every step was a battle—the sands fine grains sucking at his feet as they gave way beneath his weight. It would make battle all the more difficult, especially for his brother, with his immense weight and fur.

At least, with his new earring, Porkchop ran the least risk of suffering under the heat.

The bastard.

Ignoring the building discomfort of his quickly-heating helm against his skin, Kaius pushed on—his eyes constantly roving for a sign of the deadly battles that he knew would soon come.

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