Rune Seeker

The muck gripped at Hiral’s boots—his legs were too weak to force them free—and his brain couldn’t do anything but look at them as the shadow above him grew.

Should… move… maybe?

Something grabbed his left arm and yanked, the suction of the mud popping as his boots left it, and then he was rolling on the ground. A second later came the vibration of something large hitting, and a wave of mud and swamp water washed over him.

Coughing out the disgusting fluids from his mouth and noise, Hiral wiped his face with the back of his arm and pushed himself to a seated position. The fallen body of the large snake was barely a few feet away.

Somebody… pulled me out of the way. Who?

He looked to the side as the muck burst upward, and a pair of all-too-familiar eyes looked at him. “So, let me get this straight,” Right said. “Improvising included you taking on the Elite snake solo?”

“Wasn’t planned like that,” Hiral said, the inside of his head feeling like the thick swamp fog had seeped in and slowed all his thoughts. “It just sort of happened. I wasn’t…” He cut off as a pair of yellow notification windows popped into view.

Congratulations. Achievement unlocked – Water Walker

You crossed more than 50 feet of water without sinking.

I did?

A thought dismissed the window—he wouldn’t know what the reward was without the dungeon interface anyway—and a second achievement window sprang to life.

Congratulations. Achievement unlocked – I Got This!

You defeated a High-Ranking Elite monster of your Rank without aid.

Please access a Dungeon Interface to unlock class-specific reward.

“Hey, Hiral, you okay?” Seena asked, jogging over with the rest of the party behind her.

Hiral closed his notification window and gave her a thumbs-up.

“Uh… did he hit his head? He’s got a stupid grin on his face for being covered in mud,” Yanily said.

“Used Eloquent and Enraged,” Hiral said, doing his best to scowl at Yanily. “Just recovering from the backlash. Do we have a minute?”

“Doesn’t look like there are any more of those snakes,” Seena said. “Left, can you keep an eye out for us?”

“Of course,” Left said, and he took a step back from the group to look around.

“I only caught the tail end of it, but that was pretty impressive, Hiral,” Nivian said. “Can you do it again if we run into another pair of the snakes?”

“Not unless we wait an hour for the cooldown on the buffs to finish,” Hiral said, the fog in his head finally starting to clear a bit. “Even then, I’d say there was a whole lot of luck involved in this. How about you guys? How’d it go with the other one?”

“Good, actually,” Seena said. “Seems it had these, uh… these kind of weak spots? Maybe that’s the best way to describe them. Vix, check the one Hiral killed. See if it has the same thing.”

“Gotcha,” Vix said, and moved to inspect the snake’s corpse.

“Oh?” Hiral asked.

“Inside of its mouths, for one,” Yanily said, pointing inside his own mouth with his spear like he was going to bite it. “Straight to the brain.”

“Guess you don’t have that weak point, then,” Nivian mumbled.

“This one has them too,” Vix said. “Not in exactly the same places, but the scales look the same. And, yeah, they’re softer.”

“Soft scales?” Hiral asked.

“It’s like it’s a spot where the spines broke off,” Seena said. “The scales and flesh underneath are almost… rotten. Hit that and it seems to do big damage.”

“Should make fighting more of those that much easier,” Hiral said, then looked at Right beside him. “How about we get out of this mud?”

“Think you can stand on your own?” Right asked.

“Not sure. Give me a hand?” Hiral said.

“Sure.” Right hefted himself up, then pulled Hiral to his feet as well.

“Thanks, and… there we go. Debuffs are gone. Phew, that feels better.” Hiral slid his RHCs back into place on his thighs, and stretched his arms above his head. “Ready to keep going when you are.”

“Unless we want to fight more snakes, I suggest we move,” Left said. “I see at least two pairs moving out there, like patrols or something.”

“We could fight them for experience,” Yanily said. “Though, it looks like we need to kill eight more to get to the next level of Racial Growth. Man, ten of those things is a lot.”

“Better than having them at our backs,” Nivian agreed.

“Do you think we could get past them without fighting, Left?” Seena asked.

“Definitely. They’re following the same pattern over and over. If we time it properly, we can get past without either pair noticing us.”

“Past to where?” Hiral asked.

“I can see an actual path over there,” Left said, pointing. “Dry ground.”

“Dry sounds pretty nice right now,” Hiral said.

“If this is anything like Splitfang Keep, we should expect a Mid-Boss around here somewhere,” Seena said. “Let’s find and deal with it, then we’ll take care of those snake patrols after that for the experience.”

“Works for me,” Yanily said.

“Left, lead the way with Nivian,” Seena instructed, and the group got moving again. “Hiral, keep your eyes peeled for anything Left might’ve missed.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Hiral said, and Seena raised an eyebrow as she looked at him. “What? They all call you that.”

“I know. Just sounds strange to hear you say it. Anyway, seriously, good job with that other snake. Reckless, again, but I can’t argue with the results.”

“It was trying to sneak up on Wule,” Hiral explained. “Believe me, taking it on solo wasn’t what I wanted either. Did get a couple of achievements from the fight, though, so it was pretty worth it.”

“Achievements? Anything we can get easily?”

“Uh… crossing fifty feet of water without sinking, and taking on a High-Level Elite of my own rank solo. Doable?”

“The first one is just… What? How did you do that? The second is risky, unless the reward is really good. Let me know what you get from that, and we’ll see if we can’t figure out a way for the others to get it. Maybe back at Splitfang Keep, if we decide to reset it.”

“I’ll let you know,” Hiral said, his eyes tracing one of the patrols Left had identified.

Just like his copy had said, the two snakes seemed to follow the same path around and around. Left timed the group’s movement for when the snakes were the furthest away, so the monsters never even noticed they were there.

With that, a few minutes later, they were back on solid ground. They quickly moved away from the edge of the marsh before pausing again.

“Hey, what’s that in the trees there?” Hiral asked, pointing to what looked like bones tied together and hanging from a scraggly branch. “Some kind of… totem or something?”

“The snakes are craftsmen?” Vix asked.

“If the Troblins can be, why not?” Yanily asked right back.

“No opposable thumbs?” Vix said flatly.

“There’s another one over there,” Left said, pointing. “And there… and there.”

“They’re evenly spaced out, almost like a line straight across. A border?” Hiral suggested.

“Let’s find out what’s on the other side,” Seena said at the same time a chorus of croaks echoed through the trees.

“Oh, good. I was wondering where the lizards were,” Yanily said, actually licking his lips.

“You’re addicted,” Vix said, branches cracking on both sides of the path.

“Here they come,” Hiral warned as his RHCs came out.

“On our left!” Nivian shouted, blurring and appearing in front of Wule as a lizard launched out of the woods like it was ejected.

Despite the monster’s velocity, Nivian braced with his shield, roots crawling out of his legs to connect to the ground, and the lizard stopped like it’d hit a stone wall, bones popping from the force of the impact. With a subtle shift of his shield while the lizard crumpled against it, the monster flipped up and over the party to land hard on its back.

Yanily moved without hesitation, spearing a barrage of strikes at the lizard’s exposed belly, then leapt back as two more lizards appeared on either side of the first. As soon as his feet touched down, he lunged in again at the monster on the left, stabbing until the spearhead glowed purple. His next strike splashed purple fire across the lizard’s body.

Hiral, meanwhile, leveled his weapons at the lizard on the right. His first shot bounced off a head spike, but the second scored a direct hit against the beast’s eye, exploding it like an overripe orange. Croaking in pain, the lizard lurched to the side, whipping its tail around in a vicious sweep as Hiral dashed in with Right at his side.

Both men leapt over the swinging tail like it was in slow motion. Hiral cut out wide to pepper the lizard’s flank in shots while Right landed, then immediately jumped straight up into the air.

With its remaining eye searching out the source of the stinging blasts tearing scales and spikes off its side, the lizard didn’t even see Right’s arm burst alive with purple light above it. The man twisted in the air, lining up his shot, then brought his fist crashing down like a piledriver on the lizard’s skull. A column of purple fire erupted from the impact, reaching for the sky, and left the lizard’s head a smoking, charred husk.

Still, the beast wasn’t dead, and though it was now blind in both eyes, it lashed out with one of its foreclaws. The five-inch blades hit nothing but air—Right was far too nimble to be caught by a blind strike—then two of Hiral’s blasts smacked into its blackened head. Charcoal-like flesh blew off to reveal the white of cracked bone, and Right followed the blasts in for another combo.

A left hook sent the lizard staggering to the side, then a right uppercut lifted the front half of it off the ground. His body still twisting from the punch, Right snapped his hip around and drove a powerful kick into the lizard’s exposed underside. Bone cracked from the blow, and the lizard somehow managed to backpedal without falling over—until a ball of ice caught its right leg.

The leg twisted then snapped, and the lizard collapsed over backwards, two more balls of biting cold from Wule’s rod striking its exposed size. A pained croak wheezed from its scorched mouth, and it tried to right itself, claws grasping at the ground for purchase.

Hiral blasted one of the claws, shattering the finger-like toes and bending them at awkward angles while Right stalked in.

Holding his hand above his head, Right poured solar energy into it. The fist burst alight with purple flame, then purified itself until a corona like a purple sun surrounded it. Energy smoked out of the Meridian Line running along his arm, then Right brought his fist down like the hammer of an angry god.

BOOOM. The blow cratered the ground under the lizard and blasted the air away in a visible sphere, rattling the trees and tossing aside fallen leaves and debris. And the beast itself didn’t fare much better—its insides ejected out through its mouth, spewing gore across the side of the last lizard still standing.

With that, the entire party focused their attention on the remaining monster, and it was dead less than a minute later.