Runeblade

At the very edge of the jungle tree-line, less than a league from the cavern wall, Kaius clung to the side of a trunk hundreds of longstrides above the ground. He grinned, enjoying the warm and humid breeze in his hair as he was treated to an uninterrupted view of leagues upon leagues of the biome's border.

"There!" Kenva yelled, her voice carrying across the yawning chasm between their chosen trees.

Switching the hand that held onto the jagged bark, he turned — seeing the ranger pointing far off in the opposite direction. He spotted what she was directing him towards. A cavern opening, only an hour or two's walk away. The sight of it stoked a warmth in his belly.

FInally — he was ready for something new.

Straightening his legs and leaning away from the trunk, Kaius looked down to see the rest of his team shaded beneath a fern at the very edge of the clearing surrounding his tree. Ianmus had his back against its stalk, while Porkchop looked up at him.

Kaius waved. "We found it!"

"Great!"

He grinned, kicking off. Stomach lurching as he fell through the sky, Kaius let out a whoop — this was what magic was really about. Freedom.

Adrenaline surged as his heart kicked into gear, his own certainty of his safety not able to override his base instincts that balked at the rapidly approaching ground.

A second before impact, he detonated a pair of closely staggered Expedient Shunts, bleeding off his speed to land lightly on his feet.

"Show off!" A faint call came from above and to his right.

He turned, laughing as Kenva slowly clambered her way down by hand. The descent would take her a good few minutes, even if it would be an easy one. Their strength might have long outstripped the burden of their bodyweight, but it was still a long vertical climb.

Still, she did make it look easy — dropping a handful of longstrides at a time before her hands snapped out to grip the craggly bark like a vice.

He didn't worry too much about the noise they were making. Sure, something might come looking — but they would just end up as more meat for the grinder.

While he waited for Kenva to arrive, Kaius took a seat next to Porkchop — leaning against his brother's warm bulk.

Reaching the far side of the jungle had taken them just over a week, and had been a constant churn of slaughter and battle. It was a far faster pace then when they had first arrived, but such a difference wasn't surprising after how much they had grown. With their new abilities, individual and even groups of depthsborn had become easier and easier to manage.They'd been cautious at first — only targeting them in ones and twos.

That had changed when they'd been ambushed by a full pack of five kolnirs hiding in the branches far above their heads. The troop had rushed them — leaning on their durability, strength, and occasional bursts of speed to hammer them in an all out charge.

They'd been butchered for their efforts. The beasts were still fearsome, but Kaius and his team's stats and skills had grown too much — especially with the addition of their final abilities.

Hells, they'd even managed to kill another Champion! To Kaius's complete lack of surprise they'd been ambushed on another river crossing. Though, thankfully, the attack had come only shortly before they'd reached the far side. The Champion had been called the Fangless Devourer, a beaked turtle the size of a Hiwiann caravan wagon.

It had been a slow fight, but a good one. If Old Thousand Eyes had been amongst their worst possible matchups, the Fangless had been among possibly the best. Tough and hardy beyond all reason, with slow building attacks that hit like an unstoppable landslide. That had been its downfall, along with its bulk and lacking agility. The poor bastard had barely been able to clip them, and it's natural instinct to try whether their attacks with its shell hadn't worked when they could out-manoeuvre it to target its openings.

In Kaius's opinion they'd made off like bandits — Two cubic longstrides of premium cuts, and another tier two artefact to their name. This time something they could use. Kris of Sapping Winter — a second tier Rare — it was a knife that they had found buried to the hilt in its shell. The blade was a pretty thing, with a waving flame-like blade that shone with a purple, oil-like, glossy sheen. It was good too, with a potent slowing affliction, and a blade so sharp that Kaius was worried he would cut himself everytime he so much as looked at it.

They'd given it to Kenva — she was the only one of them who actually used short blades. Plus, now that they'd grown more able to handle the threats of the biome, she had been making the effort to weave more close quarters combat into her bag of tricks. It was a fascinating thing to watch, the way she would break line of sight and then use her stealth skill and vinestride to close the distance between her and her targets.

Even with Truesight, he could see the way the shadows and jungle itself would warp around her, breaking up her form as she leapt to the side of a tall fern — only to suddenly explode towards the backs of her enemies with a blade in each hand.

All in all, it had been a fruitful journey, bringing them levels galore. Both Drakthar and his Bladerite had reached their caps, with Aelina only a spitting distance away.

Even better — both Vyrthane and Eirnith were in the low nineties. Kaius grinned, he could already taste his next few spells. He had high hopes for Vyrthane in particular.

Warhaven was an eminently useful skill, proven by not just the security it gave them when they made camp, but the sense of security it gave him for the safety of his back line. Its capabilities in that regard had been proven more than once, most recently in a fight against a swarm of beetles — flesh tearer scarabs. The beasts had been an unending tide, flying at them like a cloud of black death. The shield had given them sanctuary, held them off long enough to give them the time they needed to wipe the weaker than average creatures off the map. Without it, the battle would have been far less comfortable — Porkchop's initial brush with the beasts during their ambush had led to them eating a hole in his leg the size of a melon.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Unfortunately, even with all of Warhaven's utility, its high cost and selective use case made Vyrthane an utter pain to train and level. Getting it as high as he had had taken him intentionally casting it as frequently as he dared whenever they made camp. A second spell, preferably something a little broader — and a lot cheaper — would go a long way to fixing that problem.

Even better than the progress of their Skills, their classes had exploded with the amount of hunting they had done. Kaius found it almost impossible to believe, but he'd made it to level one-ninety-five! Within spitting distance of the finish line — even with their growth, his Skills would take longer to cap at this point!

They were close — Kaius was certain that by the time they made it to the Guardian of the next zone, they would know for sure if he and Porkchop had been fast enough to earn an Honour for their haste.

Dropping the last few longstrides to the jungle floor, Kenva quickly made the run back to them.

"Good little climb, that — way different to the cliffs I'm used to back home!"

Kaius laughed, pulling himself to his feet, "I'm not sure I've done much of any climbing at that scale — I'll agree it was a rush. Especially the jump — makes me excited for when I'll get a flight spell."

"Yeah, yeah — no need to brag," the ranger replied, rolling her eyes without stopping her smile. "Anyways, we should get going — as nice as this greenery has been, I'm excited to see what's next."

Kaius nodded enthusiastically, joined by Porkchop and Ianmus's eager agreement.

Buoyed by their enthusiasm, they all but jogged to the biome exit — cutting the journey from an hour to barely a quarter thanks to their enhanced stats.

The cavern loomed ahead, a maw of stone teeth twenty strides high. It seemed twisted in disgust, a scowl pointed towards the black pit at the centre of the jungle.

Kaius walked into its shadowed depths carefree. He was ready — like Kenva had said, as nice as the jungle had been, he was looking forward to something new. Half the fun of the Depths was the unpredictable nature of what you could find.

Picking his way past the spires of grey stone that littered the cave floor, Kaius glanced towards Ianmus — wondering how the man was going with adjusting to the new state of his mana. He'd been settling quickly, but he saw the tells — the occasional hesitation when his spells quavered unexpectedly.

"How's the change going?" he asked. "Still struggling with your channeling?"

Ianmus shrugged. "It still feels odd, every now and then, but I'm getting there. Almost completely adjusted, really — I think I got the hang of it in our last fight. It's more of a crossbow with a hair-trigger than the slow draw I was used to before. The benefits are worth it, I think. See?"

Mana bloomed from the tip of Ianmus's staff, weaving into a ring of golden light that shone with the pentacles and overlapping tessellations of his keyseal that had begun to grow so familiar. Substantiating, it lit the shadowed cave in honeyed hues.

Kaius grinned — Ianmus really had taken to his last skill like a fish to water.

All of his team had, really. At every camp, Kenva had spent hours sitting next to the closest jungle tree — spinning out arrow after arrow as she continuously drained her mana pool to half, before returning to join them as it regenerated. She must have crafted hundreds of the things by now, grown from the heartwood of the jungle's imperators.

They'd served her well — the trees of this biome weren't just large, they were a gods' damned tier two material. Each of the ranger's new arrows hit like a ballista bolt, the natural energy they held released explosively when they were shattered by her bow's enchantments, or her holding a devastating energy that was released when she used her Maiming Rain.

The fact they were rendered single use was a shame, but it had been brilliant for the skill's leveling.

Porkchop too — his skill was bizarre to say the least. It made him grow ghostly antlers of all things, warping his features to become more fierce and ferocious as he grew half his size again. Everything he did in that state was empowered — though it came at a steep cost to his resources.

If Kaius had thought his brother a terror in combat before, he was verging on apocalyptic now — he'd watched the lunk tear an uninjured beast clean in half with nothing but brute force and gumption.

Only he hadn't dared to delve deeply into his final skill.

He'd tried it at camp, once. The glyph was interesting, as was its hymn. The looping palindrome had been itchy to inscribe, circling his glyph as it filled his tongue, before it wrapped the inside of his throat in black script. That had been alright.

Speaking VOS, however… leaning on that brutal revelation, even with the shielding of his latest ability, had been an experience he was nervous to attempt again. The unknowable, agonising rune had filled his mind to the bursting — his ears ringing with an unwanted scream. His lungs and throat had nigh-been torn open, battered by the violence of a language beyond his ken. The three-thousand mana he had invested into Redoubt of the Speaker had lasted for a bare moment — had shielded him only the thinnest of hairs.

He'd barely even brushed his understanding of the rune — had only held in mind for the briefest of flashes!

The experience had battered his soul — left him feeling confused and weak as the fire in his centre shuddered under the weight of enormity. Redoubt of the Speaker had helped him recover — but it had taken hours, and if he'd been left stronger for the experience, he had no idea. The tempering was small, only infinitesimal by the System's scaling, but he'd hoped it would be stronger.

Picking his way further through the cave, Kaius shuddered at the memory. It was eminently clear that VOS would require delicacy to master. Delicacy, safety and time that he couldn't afford in the Depths — not when so many other things could go wrong.

Still, it was sure to be worth it. The single Nail that he'd cast during that moment of psychic agony had been devastating, exploding into a tangled mess of wire that had stretched a full two strides across as it vibrated so intensely the grass and undergrowth it had pierced had started to burn.

Turning a corner at the back of the cave, Kaius had his train of thought derailed as he saw a crack in the stone at the back of the dead end. Sunlight shone through — a deluge that revealed a far off slope of jagged rock, snow, and alpine tussock.

Right through the middle, a streak of red glowed with violent intensity. A singular river of glowing fire, crawling its way down the side of the mountain.

Kaius grinned, letting out a whoop as he raced ahead of his friends. He ran through the crack, bursting out onto a ledge that was two-thirds up the side of a U-shaped mountain range.

**Biome Entered: Crown of Fire**

He stopped fast. Where there should have been two threads pulling him across the biome, he found three. One was as it should have been, but the other…

Why the fuck could he feel two Guardians?