(Second Book Complete!) Runeblade: A Delving & Skill Merging LitRPG

In the bow of the Pegleg, Kaius sat at a sturdy desk that was pressed up against one angled wall of the master cabin. It was moulded directly to the curved wall, though the wood was a distinctive red ochre, compared to the rich oak-brown of the rest of the panelling — a mana dense timber that must have cost a fortune.

His heels were kicked up, irreverent of the finely engraved tessellated geometrics that were set into its surface. Nor did he feel the warmth of the golden sun, streaming in from the reinforced windows set just above it. Even the landscape of golden autumn that streamed past feel beneath his notice.

The fluttering beat of his heart was just a little too fast to enjoy simple ambiance.

Damn nerves.

Despite all this time, VOS was still a creature that had proven itself worthy of a wary respect. He’d used it much, and often delved deeper into its mysteries than was perhaps wise — but not once had it let him forget how small and insignificant he was.

A quiet shiver of revulsion squirmed its way up his spine as he remembered the onslaught when it had first been revealed to him. A singular, purely distilled secret of the universe, crammed into his fleshy meat skull. The System may as well have shoved a fork up his nose and twirled it.

Most of the moment of terrible understanding was long gone — his perspective too limited to hold onto the truths that had been cut into his mind. The ghost of it still remained, an expanse far beyond the simple sliver he currently had access to — in both breadth and depth.

Every time he drew upon that damned great rune, it was like he was fighting a god; begging it to be a little less generous.

But experience had brought him some minor blessings. Every time he used Redoubt of the Speaker to shield himself from the great rune, his soul was inured just a hair to the magnitude of its influence. The growth of that tolerance was magnified by his Animus, The Ceaseless Warrior, and bolstered further by a combination of his Authority, and the qualitative improvement of his ascension to the second tier.

It helped — without it, he doubted that he would feel comfortable using his insight as much as he did, let alone voluntarily meditating on the great rune’s depths. That said, he wasn’t even close to mastering the strange power. An Ascendant herself had found it notable — ‘conceptual magic’, something that most barely brushed on, let alone so early.

Sighing, Kaius reclined further on his chair to stare up at the ceiling. Built for the rich and well-connected, even that had been carved into an elaborate trio of many-spoked concentric stars that radiated out from the wardlight in the ceilings centre. Each had more points than the last — a truly staggering number of them, really. He frowned, taking a few seconds to count them. Sixteen on the closest layer, then sixty-four, then two-fifty-six. The same numbers as the three tiered system of nobility that the Empire used.

“Putting it off?” Porkchop asked, noticing his reticence to meditate despite being at the other end of the landyacht.

Kaius cracked a smile. “Please, you like it just as much as I do.”

“Your soul goes all weird! My apprehension is normal.”

“My point is made.”

Porkchop somehow pulled off the mental equivalent of rolling his eyes, before Kaius felt his brother’s attention drift back away.

Giving himself two quick slaps on the cheeks, Kaius sat back up and shuffled closer to the desk. He had to focus.

Before Kaius could second-guess himself, he snapped his eyes shut and called upon the great rune.

It slammed into him like a landslide, burying him beneath an endless tide of shifting curves and scouring revelation. He gasped, physically rocking back despite the light of his Muthryn glyph burning on the back of his throat.

Every part of him wished to channel the pouring torrent into something. The great rune was many things, but static and motionless was not one of them. It yearned to flood and expand and destroy and grow and a million other impulses that washed over him in an onslaught that threatened to consume him utterly.

He could feel the pull — a calling void, begging him to take but a step over the precipice.

Kaius refused. Focusing on the pounding of his heart, and his own heavy pants, he moved back. It was hard. Channeling VOS into one of his spells gave the great rune direction. It was like it had a will of its own — one that rebelled against calm consideration.

But without consideration, there could be no understanding — and without understanding, there could be no control. Without control, VOS was nothing more than a rabid hound.

Slowly calming, Kaius opened his eyes and watched a gust of wind kick up a spray of leaves. The great rune still sat heavy in his mind, but the distraction helped to steady him.

VOS was… VOS. By nature, it defied verbal description — but the sliver he’d brushed up against was effectively Empowerment. He knew there was more to that than just the rather brutish amplification of spells he had pulled off to date, just as he knew there was more to VOS than Empowerment alone.

Exploring either of those avenues was tricky, though. Right now, he could barely manage pulling back from the onslaught; maintaining his control and sense of self as he was bombarded by half-heard forbidden secrets. He needed to master that first.

The great rune called, and Kaius watched — absorbed by the endlessly shifting lines that made his very soul ache.

It seemed bottomless — an infinite well that he could draw deeper and deeper on, until its waters threatened to extinguish him utterly. Even if he never learned how to stretch his current insight to empower more than just his spells, or understood the other aspects of VOS that always seemed just out of reach, he knew it would scale with him to the very end. As long as he could withstand the cost, that is.

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Yet that dissatisfied him. By learning to stay steady in the face of its magnitude, he could sit with the great rune. Ponder it. Explore it.

Looking at something so eldritch out of the proverbial corner of his mind’s eye broke his perception in ways he hadn’t even realised was possible — but it did pay off. For all the rune shifted and morphed, he was damned sure he was seeing it from a single perspective. Even that was an incomplete picture. His ill-equipped mind of soupy meat just couldn’t perceive every dimension it existed on.

As foreign insight was forcibly thrust upon him again and again, he felt more and more certain that it was his current perspective that had limited the great rune. Using it to simply strengthen magic was simplistic, brutish, and damn-near brainless compared to its totality. His ghostly memories of his first exposure made that clear.

Kaius was also certain that anything more than that was well out of reach for now.

However, he’d barely scratched the surface of what he currently had access to. What else could the great rune empower? His other skills? A cut from his blade? His body? More?

The thought made him grin. It was a tantalising prospect, one that made his Will slip. VOS slammed back into the forefront of his mind with all the subtlety of an eruption.

Kaius gasped, lurching in his seat as his soul flared bright and an iron tang filled his mouth. Wood crunched in his grip, splinters grating against his palm as the end of his handrest snapped free.

**Ding! Latent Glyph of Muthryn, Throat of VOS has reached Level 161!

The sudden shock of the noise pulled him back. He banished the great rune, and stared down at the chunk of wood in his hand. He could see the broken edge shifting minutely, repair enchantments slowly going to work.

That was enough for today — but he’d done well. He lasted longer every time, growing just a little more familiar with VOS as he did so. Epiphany called to him, just out of reach. Once he could maintain his control, he could work on stretching his current insight in new directions. His non-glyph Class Skills first — it seemed like the shortest gap to bridge.

Kaius groaned, and stretched. Rotten roots, his bloody soul ached — like he’d been snatched up and wrung out like a sodden rag. He could only hope that the burden would grow lighter as he continued to grow and walk his Path.

“Done braining yourself with a brick?” Porkchop asked, nudging him mentally.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“You should join the rest of us up top. We’re only a few leagues from the crossroads.”

They were that close to the end of the woods already? He hadn’t realised — though he did wonder why that was important. They were just continuing straight through to follow the road to Tennereth for another couple of days.

“Did you guys spot something?” he asked, making his way out of the master cabin.

“Yeah, a big caravan train — looks like it mugged a rainbow, too. Kenva said it was Hiwiann — good chance they’re heading the same way.”

Kaius paused at the base of the stairs. Hiwiann? “Does she want to meet them?”

He wasn’t sure if they had the time for that — they had far to travel, and only the gods knew what Kanmost was being subjected to at the heart of Vainblood.

“I think so, but the caravan’s moving surprisingly fast — we wouldn’t lose much time matching them.”

That was impressive. Their landyacht was fast, and, quite conveniently, it didn’t need to stop to rest. Though, he supposed that Hiwiann had been breeding wagon-beasts for as long as their culture had existed.

Pushing open the hatch, Kaius stepped onto the top deck. His team were standing at the Pegleg’s bow, staring ahead. In the distance, Kaius saw the orange and brown of autumn leaves fade into thick grasslands. The road that they were following split just before the horizon — continuing straight, while the path heading north-south led to a number of other settlements in the region.

A train of wagons sprawled across the northern road, forty in total — far more than the three or four he saw most commonly. Each one was larger than the body of their landyacht. Blocky things with six to eight wheels, some were two story abodes dotted with windows and heavy steel shutters. Their panelling was a wash of bright lemon yellows, cerulean blues, and a dozen other colours. The railings, ladders, and frames were painted equally brightly, each hue seemingly chosen to jump out as much as possible from the base coat. Other wagons were simpler — rolling warehouses, full of goods. Reinforced and monolithic, they were painted just as brilliantly.

Teams of six gargantuan mauve lizards drove each wagon, as large as Porkchop, and built like scaled hyenas. They looked closer to warbeasts than creatures of burden, with stubby club-tails and two sets of recurve horns that tapered to a vicious point. They tore at the ground at a constant clip, muscles rippling as their cloven hooves kicked up dust.

The roofs of the wagons were packed with armed men and women, constantly scanning the landscape. Well, Kaius presumed that was what they were supposed to be doing. Three quarters of them were staring at the Pegleg in naked fascination — he could see their jaws hanging despite the distance.

Kaius couldn’t help but smile. Four times he’d been in Threefields when a caravan had been spotted on the horizon. It always started the same — someone sprinting into the village like they had a pack of direwolves on their tail, yelling to everyone they passed. Inside of the hour every street had been packed as people eagerly awaited a sudden influx of foreign goods and stories.

“Isn’t that a nice sight,” he said.

“Brings a bit of sanity to the world, doesn’t it?” Ianmus replied, looking back at him with a similar grin on his face. “Come the day the hells overflow, and the Hiwiann would still be trawling their way across the continent.”

Kenva snorted, though she didn’t take her eyes off the distant wagons. “As if a few beasts are enough to keep us from the road.”

“Porkchop mentioned you think they’re heading to Tennereth?” Kaius asked, joining his friends at the bow.

“Yeah,” Kenva replied. “The storage wagons are packed to the rafters — the suspension bars are bending like reeds every time they hit a pothole. I’d bet they filled up in Baanswell and some of its outlying towns. The southern road doesn’t have any major settlements — Tennereth’s the only place they could move that much product. Probably plan to run some supplies to Sidora after — the shipment delays between the two will leave plenty of room for a tidy profit.”

Porkchop turned and stared at her, his head tilted incredulously.

“What?” Kenva asked when she noticed the look. “I grew up on one of the things — you pick it up.”

“Sounds like you did more than pick it up,” Porkchop replied.

Kenva shrugged. “I’m the scion of one of the leading families in my clan — I was expected to know, even if everyone knew I wasn’t going to pick the merchant life.”

Expectations. Hard to avoid those when a Legacy was involved, even for Kaius.

“Want to say hello? I’m sure we could make up for lost time by speeding up for the next couple of days — though I don’t long for how bumpy it will be,” he asked.

“Of course! If this is a regular route, then the caravan master might be able to tell us a bit more about our target. If there’s a sizable camp, then there’s a good chance they’ll be getting supplies — merchants tend to notice that sort of thing. Besides, we have valuables to trade.”

“We do?” Ianmus asked, looking at her in surprise.

“We do! I guarantee you they will be very interested to hear that we’ll be clearing out the main pass.”

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