Rune Seeker - Book 3: Chapter 28: Bait

It didn’t take more than a few hours for the party to work their way through the ant territory, their speed really only limited by the storm wall moving ahead of them. Predictably, the monstrous ants came for them in droves, and it actually turned out to be more difficult to not kill them by the dozens. Finally, they opted for sprinting through the remaining area, keeping the EnSath River on one side, and avoiding as many monsters as they could.

That didn’t stop them from reaching level 2 along the way, and Hiral dumped his points into Dex and Atn as usual.

“They’re not following us anymore,” Right reported, having trailed behind the others to keep an eye on the ants. “Stopped about half a mile back, but they’re all buzzing about there like they’re waiting to see if we’ll return.”

“Ants don’t buzz,” Yanily pointed out. “More like a clack?”

“Fine, they’re clacking about to see if we’ll return,” Right corrected.

“We won’t be,” Seena said. “At least, not this rotation. Maybe next time around; we’ll have to clear the other two dungeons in the area at some point to get the complete set.”

“Any idea where they are?” Hiral asked.

“No, actually,” she said as the group slowed to a comfortable walking pace. “The ant one was just a guess.”

“And if you had to guess about the other two?”

“We’ve got the Yetis and the goats by the Horns, so there might be one around there. The dungeons seem to be loosely based off the monsters we find around them… unless they’re Lost dungeons,” she added with a flick of her hand.

“And the other?” Hiral prompted.

Seena didn’t answer immediately, and instead shared a look with her sister and Yanily.

“Probably one of two places,” Seeyela answered. “And neither is a place we normally go.”

“There are some ruins over… that way,” Seena said, pointing off to the left after orienting herself. “They only just become accessible as the islands pass through and push the storm wall away for a few hours. That’s it, though. Barely a few hours before the storm swallows it up again. We haven’t sent anybody in that direction in more than a generation.”

“My dad went over that way once,” Yanily said, and both women gave him a surprised look.

“Your father?” Seena asked. “He told you that?”

“You never mentioned that, Yan,” Seeyela said, her words sounding like she was picking them carefully.

“It never came up,” Yanily said.

“What did he find?” Hiral asked.

“Not much. Ruins,” Yanily said. “Kind of like that first town we stayed in. The one where we found the Troblins and their painting.”

Everybody in the party shuddered at the memory.

“It took too long to get there, though,” Yanily said, “so he didn’t have a chance to do more than see the buildings from a distance before he had to head back. He did say there weren’t a lot of monsters over that way.”

“Dungeon might not be there, then.” Hiral turned to Seena and Seeyela. “The other place you were thinking of?”

Seena and Seeyela shared a look with each other, then glanced at Yanily. “Over there, across the river,” Seena finally said to Hiral. “We think that’s where the Rocs nest most of the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a dungeon over there, since we haven’t explored it that well.”

“Could be one up by the worms too,” Yanily offered. “Another underground dungeon like TheEndless Tunnels. Maybe even The Endless Tunnels Too—that’s T-O-O, because the PIMP tries to be witty for some reason.”

“Somehow that wouldn’t surprise me, naming and all,” Seeyela said with a groan.

“Definitely something for us to look into next time we pass around,” Hiral said. “Though, will we even need to clear D-Rank dungeons by then?” They’d all raced to C-Rank; what would they even be when the islands passed over here again?

Assuming they saved Fallen Reach at all.

That thought had him looking back towards the islands in the distance, and his eyes landed on a huge set of wings silently diving in their direction.

“Cover,” Hiral said, pushing the party unceremoniously into the trees on either side of the wide path they’d followed with a pulse from his Rune of Rejection.

No sooner had the others gone flying than two massive talons came streaking for Hiral. Longer than he was tall—even curved like they were—and ending with spear-like points, they tore huge chunks out of the ground as he dove aside, but he wasn’t quite fast enough.

Leg snagged in the clumped earth and roots wedged between the claws, Hiral was suddenly lifted into the air as a buffeting flap of the monstrous wings bent and broke trees all around. Wood cracked and broke while leaves and debris got swept into the air. If he hadn’t knocked the others away before the Roc had descended, a single beat of its wings surely would’ve done the same thing. Or worse.

The others weren’t his concern at the moment, though. That one flap of the wings was followed by another as the huge bird shot away from the ground. It’d come in at a racing dive, straight in line with the sun so they wouldn’t spot it, and its momentum had already carried them a hundred feet from the ambush point. Wind whipped past his face, the sheer speed of the bird on a whole other level.

For something D-Rank.

With his newly minted C-Rank body, Hiral barely felt the effects of the wind trying to bend him backwards. Instead, flexing his stomach muscles, he pulled himself forward, lifted his arms towards the Roc, and cupped his hands together.

He hadn’t exactly tried anything like this before, but there was nothing better than live tests. And, if it worked with the blunderbuss, it should work for him. Assuming he didn’t blow his own fingers off.

Regeneration+ will take care of those, won’t it?

Pushing that thought out of his mind, Hiral simultaneously threaded solar energy into his Runes of Expansion, Increase, and Impact. Force exploded outward, shaped by his cupped hands, like one of Seena’s pets had gone off. The egg-shaped concussion hit the unsuspecting bird at point-blank range, folding the feathered body around it, and something snapped nearby.

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Beak parting in surprise, the Roc let out a pained screech that seemed to shake the sky at the same time its clawed feet released their grip on Hiral. And, just like that, they were falling. As they spun end-over-end around each other, Hiral got his first good look at the beast that had swept him up. First off, it wasn’t the same massive monster he’d seen from a distance—this one had to be a third the size of that thing—with wings barely seventy feet from tip to tip. Its entire body was covered with iridescent, green feathers like emeralds, tipped with a ruby red, except for its neck and head. There, the color pattern was reversed, with primarily red feathers tipped with green. Then, of course, there was the hooked beak snapping in Hiral’s direction.

An Impact-enhanced punch sent the beak careening off to the side before it could close around him—leaving a wide crack along its length—and Hiral moved solar energy into his Rune of Gravity. A split thread activated the Rune of Decrease in unison with it, immediately slowing Hiral’s descent.

The Roc wasn’t so lucky.

The huge bird crashed into the forest canopy, snaps and cracks echoing as it collided with the trees. Whether it was wood or bone breaking was impossible to tell, and Hiral pushed more solar energy into reducing his gravity until he stopped midair, the lower halves of his Coat of Ur’Thul fluttering in the breeze.

Huh. That actually worked.

Below him, one more thunderous crash rippled the treetops for hundreds of feet all around, while leaves and broken branches continued to fall. That wasn’t enough to kill the Roc, though, which was already shifting under the debris. Hiral drew the Emperor’s Greatsword from over his shoulder, and a quick flip in his hands had the weapon pointed downward as he activated it.

The blade burst to life, past the physical bounds of the crystal, to produce the new, less-restricted fallen-star form of the weapon. Just holding the sword sent resonant power up Hiral’s arms—maybe part of it was just advancing to C-Rank so he could control more of it. Whatever the case, it was head and shoulders above what he’d used at D-Rank.

Practically glowing like a daytime star high above the shifting Roc, Hiral tethered the weapon’s gravity to the monster, increased its weight more than a hundredfold, and then simply let go. As it fell, the sword whistled through the air, building speed, then slammed into the ground hard enough to crater the earth and flatten trees outward in a hundred-foot circle.

What was left of the Roc was a barely recognizable mass of feathers and gore, the shockwave from the sword’s impact tearing it apart from the inside out. A quick notification in the corner of Hiral’s vision gave him experience for the kill and told him the beast had been Elite all along.

No wonder people are afraid of them. Elites outside of dungeons aren’t so common. At least, not when the sun is out.

“Hey, are you flying?” Seena said over the party chat.

“Uh… floating, actually,” Hiral said, looking out across the forest canopy and at the surroundings from his new perspective.

From that high up, he could see the stony Roc territory across the wide river, a low mountain range—more hills than mountains, really—in the same direction they’d come from, and, in the other direction, the end of the forest.

“Is there a difference?” she asked. “Never mind. You okay?”

“Fine,” Hiral said. “Just caught me by surprise.”

“Sorry about that,” Left chimed in. “I should’ve spotted it.”

“It’s okay,” Hiral said. “Pretty sure it came at us like it did on purpose, with the sun at its back, so we didn’t see it. Oh, and it was Elite.”

“I saw the notification,” Seena said.

“Thanks for the free experience,” Yanily added.

“Here to help,” Hiral said.

He then reached down and pulled on his connection to the Emperor’s Greatsword with his Rune of Attraction. A small thread of solar energy reduced its weight to almost nothing, and the Roc’s broken body jerked as the sword leapt back into the air. Hiral caught the gore-soaked weapon with a grimace, but a slight pulse of Rejection removed what the sword had taken with it on its bloody exit.

That’s so handy.

“You coming back to us?” Seena asked.

“Yeah, let me just figure out where you… Ah, there you are,” Hiral said. “Be there in a minute.”

The floating part was easy, though it was odd the wind wasn’t moving him as he hovered in the air like that. There must be something else at work here. That was a question for later, though, and he slowly let natural gravity take hold of him again, gently floating down to the ground. Landing softly beside the wreckage of the Roc’s body, he jogged off toward the party’s last known location, then used the Party Interface’s direction ability to finally find them.

“Hey,” he said, coming out of the woods at a walk so the others didn’t take him for another monster trying to ambush them.

“Welcome back,” Seena said.

“Sorry about the wait,” Hiral said. “Bird carried me further than I expected. I do have a question, though.”

“What’s that?” Seena asked.

“When I was up there, I saw some higher ground back the way we came. Is there a jump point back that way?”

“No,” Seena said. “Well, I mean, maybe there is?” She looked at her sister.

“Not that I know of,” Seeyela said. “We almost always tried to come down on this side of the ant territory since we couldn’t get through it at D-Rank. There wasn’t a point in finding a jump point back that way,” she added, thumbing over her shoulder.

“There’s one back that way,” Yanily said. “Just off the coast. Need to swim to get to it, though, and that’s not easy.”

“What? Really?” Seeyela said.

“Your… dad?” Seena asked, a pause in her question.

Why are they acting so odd?

“Yeah,” Yanily said. “This was his favorite area to hunt each year, so he explored it a whole lot. Told us stories about the things he found. Pretty much the only time he talked to me.”

Hiral stopped at that last statement, and the looks of compassion on the sisters’ faces spoke volumes. There was something there between Yanily and his father—something the spearman had never mentioned—and the two women were treading carefully around the sensitive subject.

“Want to head back?” Seeyela asked, obviously changing the subject. “We could use that jump point.”

Seena thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “No. The islands will also be in range of our mounts and the jump point within a few hours. We could hike all the way back and not find a place to make the climb.”

“We don’t need to climb with the mounts,” Yanily reminded her.

“True. I keep forgetting we have an option to fly,” she said with a shake of her head.

“That huge Roc is still back that way,” Hiral said, shielding his eyes as he looked for the shape gliding through the sky. Actually, now that he looked, he spotted more than one. “Make that a few of them. How far off the shore is that jump point?”

“Don’t know exactly,” Yanily said, looking back the way they came, “but I think the islands are probably past it now. From the way he told the story, it was a difficult swim. He could’ve been talking it up, but I don’t think so.”

“And the Rocs are likely hunting large fish of some kind over that way, so their numbers will only grow as the sun stays out,” Left said.

“That’d make sense,” Hiral said. “I can’t really imagine anything big enough to feed them over here.”

“Says the guy who was almost lunch for one,” Yanily pointed out, jabbing him in the ribs with an elbow.

“I don’t think I would’ve tasted very good,” Hiral replied.

Yanily nodded like that was probably true, but didn’t say anything else.

“Let’s stick with the plan,” Seena said. “It’s a few hours either way, and there’s no reason to risk getting any more Rocs’ attention.”

“You sure?” Yanily asked. “We can use Hiral as bait a few more times.”