Rune Seeker

Since Romin had kept the stairs clear of Spectres trying to retake the roof, the party moved down to the top-floor of the tower with little trouble. Wallop had to decrease his size to fit, but that was the worst of it, and they quickly found a reinforced door blocking their progress.

“Locked,” Romin said, one hand on the door as he pushed. “Or barred. Either way, it’s not opening up without some force.”

Snuff.

“Wallop says there’s not enough room for him in here, otherwise he’d make short work of the door. We could use our Onslaught ability…”

“No need,” Yanily said. “Hiral has a key.”

“Yeah,” Hiral said, stepping up beside the Bonder. “Save your cooldown. I doubt we’ll finish this trial without meeting a Boss of some kind.”

The tank gave him a nod of understanding – but kept his blunderbuss at the ready – while Hiral pressed his fingers against the door in front of him. Then he used the key Yanily had mentioned.

His Rune of Separation.

Luckily, the door wasn’t anywhere near as sturdy as stone of the tower, and the thick wood – or whatever it was that looked like wood – fell apart in a shower of perfect cubes. Interestingly, in the instant before the door fell apart – while his runic energy moved through it – Hiral didn’t feel any sort of mechanism to actually open the door.

Still, there were other ways to simply break the door down, so raid groups taking the trial would have options. It was unlikely they’d be as fast as his key, but at least they wouldn’t be completely blocked from progressing to…

“A hallway,” Romin informed the others, a second before he stepped out, swung to the left, and pulled the trigger of his blunderbuss. “More Spectres too.”

“Right, Yanily,” Seena said. “Go show some more prejudice to the Spectres. Hiral, can you see the layout of the floor yet?”

“Pretty straightforward,” Hiral said, his sensory domain ballooning out through the halls with every beat of his heart. “This hallway is short, with three more of these doors connected to it. Two seem to lead to the main part of the floor – since we’re at one side here – while the other probably leads to another staircase.”

“We’re inside,” Nivian said. “Stairs going both up and down.”

“Got it,” Seena said.

“Nivian,” Hiral quickly added. “If you do find something down there to either control or destroy the tower, hold off on triggering it?”

“What, you don’t want to explode along with the tower?” Wule joked.

“He might like it,” Yanily said. “Rest of us? Not so much. Boss, Spectres are cleared.”

“That was fast,” Seena said as the rest of the party filed out of the stairwell.

“Weren’t many of them,” Right said. “Kind of felt like stragglers. Romin probably got most of them trying to come up to the roof. Hardly put up a fight, too.”

“Good to know,” Hiral said, walking over to one of the doors he suspected led to the main part of the floor. “Ready?” he asked, fingers on the wood.

Romin braced his blunderbuss in reply, a miniature Wallop at his side, and nodded he was good to go. The rest of the party was close behind.

A surge of solar energy into his Rune of Separation once again opened the path in front of them, the cubes cascading to the floor in a clatter, and the party rushed into a much larger room. Occupying what had to be almost the entire top floor of the tower, the room itself was mostly empty, with only two major things of note standing out.

The first was an orb on a pedestal at the far end, light swirling within the glass in waves of color.

The second was the six Spectres standing between the party and said orb. These Spectres weren’t the same as the ones they’d been fighting up to this point, either.

Two at the front wore heavy armor and carried shields almost as tall as they were. Between and behind them, a Spectre in a robe held a long staff with a crook at the top. Next to that one, a second robed Spectre carried what could only be described as a wand, while a skull floated in its other hand. Finally, on either side of those two, the last pair of Spectres were lightly armored, and each wielded a sword and dagger pairing.

“A party of Spectres?” Seena asked, and that was exactly what it had to be – though they’d gone with a two-tank setup.

Interesting choice.

“We found one too,” Nivian said over the party chat. “Engaging now.”

“Make that three,” Ilrolik added. “Damn these halls are narrow!”

As if the other parties meeting spectral groups was a cue, solar energy began to cycle around the Spectres in front of the orb.

“Incoming,” Hiral said, though he needn’t have bothered, his party already reacting to what they’d all felt.

Romin and Wallop combined into their Onslaught form, the towering Runeocerous-beastman stomping forward. Heavy plating covered him from horn-tip to toe, and his large fists practically creaked as he Blink-Charged at the two tanks. Well, past the two tanks…

Or, at least that had probably been his intention, with both of the large shields flashing before Romin slammed into them. Somehow, they’d interrupted his partial-teleport ability – kind of like Infuriate, but impacting the ability on a fundamental level – and pulled the Bonder right back to them.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Except, if the two tanks thought that would be enough to stop the charging Bonder, it seemed all three tanks’ plans didn’t turn out quite as they’d expected. With momentum befitting his Runeocerous origins, Romin hit the two Spectres with enough force to carry all three tanks back through the ranks of the Spectre-party. Phasing out of touch, the two robed Spectres managed to evade the charge, their weapons lifting and pulsing with power as soon as they reformed.

Wrong choice.

Hiral’s hand caught the face of the Spectre with the wand as he dashed past, pseudo-aspect glowing with power and casting shadows through the ghostly-green opponents. Runic energy – Breaking, Separation, and Impact – cycled into a painful cocktail in his palm in the second before he reached the far wall, where he promptly slammed the Spectre against it.

The Spectre’s body flickered like it was trying to phase away from him, but the stone wall of the tower prevented it from moving in that direction, while the energy of Hiral’s runes kept it within his grasp. Between his spread fingers, he met the thing’s blue-flame eyes, though they remained dead and thoughtless. Like all the other Undead they’d fought here, the thing was a mindless drone, following orders.

Not for much longer.

Hiral released the runic energy in his hand, and power flashed into and through the Spectre. Without a real will to talk about, the thing had no good way to resist the power of his runes. Especially not when one of them – arguably the most dangerous – was reinforced by an Edict.

Cracks – like the Spectre was a statue – quickly spread from its face and down its body, green and undead-blue light leaking out. The wand moved as if to point in Hiral’s direction, but his free hand snapped out faster than the Spectre could think, pinning the arm against the wall. That still left the other hand – and legs – free to try to counterattack, until three of Hiral’s own spectral limbs reached out and pinned those as well.

Thanks to Hundred Handed+, he had more than enough arms to hold the Spectre in place while his runes ravaged it from the inside out. Churning energy through the thing’s body – and its solar energy channels – Hiral absolutely ruined it internally.

Within a second of the cracks forming, the wand-user began to seize. Within two seconds, light leaked out of the cracks like it was fleeing the horrible things happening within. By three seconds, Breaking was spreading from those cracks, consuming the transparent material that made up the Spectre’s body. As four seconds passed, the seizures turned to full-on convulsions.

At five seconds, the Spectre completely ruptured, exploding outward in a wash of A Violent End.

Part of Hiral paused at the efficient – and brutal – method he’d just used to exterminate the Spectre. Really, he’d expected it to be able to fight back more than that, but the mindless Undead hadn’t had any defense against what Hiral brought to bare against it.

That hadn’t been a fight, it’d been an execution.

In his sensory domain, the rest of the spectral party wasn’t doing any better. Yanily and Seeyela had taken one of the dual-wielding Spectres, while Left and Right teamed up on the other. Spear and twinned-daggers – along with the two Primal Chords guiding their movements systematically cut their target down. Despite being a B-Rank opponent – one clearly focused heavily on Dex – the Spectre looked like nothing more than an amateur fighting before the two Growers.

They didn’t even need to activate any of their powerful abilities or cooldowns as they worked in tandem to overwhelm their opponent. It barely took them more than a few seconds longer to find a fatal opening, each lunging in to bury their energy-charged weapons deep into their opponent’s body. Lightning and terrible venom seemed to flash behind the blue-flame eyes for an instant before the thing simply dissolved on their daggers and spear.

As for Left and Right, the two doubles wouldn’t be outdone when it came to coordination and efficiency. Powered by Hiral’s pseudo-aspect, the pair in their glowing Coats of Amin Thett first disarmed their opponent of its weapons, and then its actual arms. Left removed the first with a vicious, two-bladed-spear uppercut into the Spectre’s armpit. When the trailing stream of purple-and-red liquid caught up, the blast completely severed the arm at the shoulder.

Just as the Spectre reeled from the appendage getting removed, its other arm reaching for an opening against Left, Right snapped his hands out. Then in an even-more-brutal move than what Hiral had done, Right took hold of the wrist and forearm, snapped his foot up to brace against the Spectre’s chest… then pulled.

There was a strange sort of stretching of the thing’s arm before Right literally ripped it off. Then, before the Spectre could even process what had just happened, Right spun around and smashed the arm – like some kind of flail – across the side of the Spectre’s head. The sheer savagery of the blow kicked the opponent up sideways, right into the path of Left’s descending spear.

Another trailing stream rushed forward as the blade struck torso, cleaving the target in two before it also dissolved into greenish energy.

As for the two tanks that’d thought to delay – or maybe overwhelm Romin – they’d quickly found they couldn’t disengage from him. Like a juggernaut himself, the Onslaught lived up to his class name, rune-enhanced blows battering the shields – and the tanks holding them – in a never-ending stream. Infuriate forced the tanks to stay in range, and they could do nothing but watch their party get pulled apart one at a time.

That included the sixth and final Spectre, a healer of some kind, by the way it tried to channel abilities into the others. Tried and failed as the flames hit it. Unfortunately for the spectral healer, it was Seena’s target, and she had the opportunity to test a few of her advanced class’s abilities. The first was – of course – her Aspect of Rebirth. Six, flaming, lily-petal-like wings sprung from her black, while her skin had taken on a dark, greenish tint. Spiked vines – much like her old Lashing Vines ability – burst out from her back to strike and grapple the healer, wrapping around and shredding spectral limbs as they tightened.

As soon as the thorns pierced whatever the Spectre had for flesh, Seena’s Unnamed Grasp activated, robbing the target of its power. Energy and meaning flowed up the vines to Seena, and she probably could’ve just let that continue – the Spectre was hardly strong enough to fight back – but it seemed she had another ability to try.

From the petal-like-wings at her back, orange pollen burst out and floated directly at the Spectre like it had been caught on the wind. Another few heartbeats, and it covered the spectral healer from head to toe.

Then it burst into a clinging, gel-like flame. Pollenuption lit the Spectre up like a bonfire, completely consuming it within another few seconds. All of a sudden, the entire flame winked out, leaving the four vines holding nothing but air, as the Spectre had clearly been outright destroyed.

Back to the two tanks that had thought to contain Romin – and been contained themselves instead – one lay sprawled out on the ground, an Onslaught-sized fist-print in the side of its armored helm. The other? Well, it had a number of needles and crimson thread restricting its movement before Romin horn-charged into it.

With the Rune of Impact enforcing the horn, the Spectre’s armor and intangibility did nothing to protect it. A roar of effort ripped out of Romin’s lips as he plunged that horn straight through the center of the other tank’s chest, then snapped his head up. Instead of getting stuck on the horn, the spectral tank got hurled hard straight into the ceiling. Its body splayed out against the energy-resistant stone of the tower – hanging there for a second like gravity forgot what it should be doing – before it began to fall.

Even before it hit the ground, Romin’s big hand snapped out and caught it by the leg, just above the ankle, then whipped his body around. Hauling on the Spectre, up and over, Romin slammed it down right on top of its comrade. The two spectral bodies crunched on each other – They can do that? – before Romin took a step in their direction.

The second step involved him lifting his huge foot above their stacked chests, then crushing it down.

Brutal.

Needless to say, those two Spectres dissolved quite quickly as well, leaving the party in a now-empty room with just the strange orb.