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

The air whipped past Kaius as he fell, knife-like leaves grating against his armour. One sliced his cheek, blood beading before his healing could seal it closed. He didn’t react, still reeling in shock from his brush with a living titan. Red growth swallowed him, choking his view of the blessedly blue sky — absent of a darkness so pure it could have crushed him flat.

There was no fear in his belly, not even the faintest ache dulled by his fear resistance. Everything still felt distant. He barely felt the thick branch that smashed into his back just below his shoulderblades, his body tumbling wildly. Crystal-clear flashes of branches and leaves cut with snippets of his team below on the ground, looking up at him with worry and confusion — Truesight at work.

What would have been the point of fear? A creature like that went beyond a threat. It was a force of nature — he could not battle it any more than he could fight a storm, or a flash flood.

Another branch smashed into his waist. This one was thinner, snapping into a shower of splinters as a splintering crack rang through the bows. He still fell aimlessly, absorbed by the thought of those not-eyes, watching him so passively.

He could see them, in that lake of inky black that now swallowed the Crater. The creature hadn’t cared. He knew it in its bones — there had only been an idle curiosity of how such a lowly thing had seen through its magic. An oddity, to be observed and then accounted for.

Thank all the gods above it hadn’t simply desired to wipe him from existence.

He landed on the ground flat on his back, a geyser of mud erupting. Droplets splattered his armour with a soft patter, and he could feel the cold drips running down his face as he stared up into the shifting branches above. It was like nothing had even happened.

Adamant.

How the fuck was he alive?

Kaius snapped upright at the same moment his friends lunged to his side.

“Kaius! What happened?! You were frozen, and then the darkness swallowed us!” Porkchop said, hooking his claws under one of Kaius’s arms.

Kaius let himself be tugged upwards, his eyes snapping to his brother’s. “You saw the darkness move?”

It hadn’t just been him?

Ianmus nodded, leaning in as he checked Kaius over for injuries. “It was like a rising tide. One moment, the dark was a still lake, and the next it surged up and swallowed us whole. It was deeper too — I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face.”

“You saw what was causing it, didn’t you?” Kenva added, watching him closely.

Kaius swallowed, fighting down the uneasy shudder that wanted to roll up his spine.

“I did,” he whispered. “It’s not a Zone Effect.”

“What is it?” Porkchop asked. “I thought I felt something through our bond, I didn’t get anything more than an impression of power.”

Kaius took a heavy breath, running his hands through his hair. Cold mud stuck to his fingers, clumping in the strands. Walking to the nearest tree root, he took a seat — no way was he standing for something like this.

Facing the direction of the crater, he stilled at the deep blackness that waited for him. He could see through it, a monochrome forest that dipped low down the Crater before his vision failed and the darkness returned. A simple welling of power from the monstrosity at its centre.

“It’s a spirit,” he whispered. “At least, I think so — I wasn’t so much of a fool as to try and analyse it.”

His teammates followed his eyes, looking at the looming dark before they switched back to him.

Ianmus frowned, his brow furrowed. “What? A spirit? But that’s…”

The mage looked back at the dark in a long moment of consideration. “The Midnight Crater has existed in the records for millenia — and the basin is massive. To maintain an effect of that size… the mana drain would be monstrous. Are you sure?”

Kaius swallowed thickly, nodding. His mouth was dry, and his tongue felt like a slice of boot leather. He took a long drink of water.

“I’m very, very fucking sure.” Kaius whispered. “I don’t think it’s a Skill or spell, either. It’s tied to the creature’s aura, somehow.”

Kenva took a deep breath, gripping her bow a little tighter. Taking a backwards glance at the Crater, she walked over and sat next to him.

“Why don’t you start from the top — what, exactly, did you see? And are we safe — should we fall back?”

Kaius hesitated for a moment. Safe? Nothing within a thousand leagues of this Crater was safe — not when every living thing within that region lived only at the behest of the lord of this demesne. But… he didn’t think they were in any immediate danger. The spirit was utterly unrecorded in the Guild’s records. Excursions into the crater were rare, even before the phase shift, but they did happen often enough. If that spirit had been here for who knows how many thousands of years, it had little interest in lording its powers over others.

Hells, given his interaction with it, Kaius got the feeling it didn’t want to interact with anything. It hadn’t exactly been violent when he had blown its cover. All it had done is tested how his Skill worked, and then corrected its darkness to account for it. At least, he assumed. It was hard to say. Who could presume to know the thoughts and actions of a demi-godlike creature of living mana? Maybe it was just fucking with him.

“Kaius?” Porkchop said, nudging him gently.

“Sorry,” he replied, shaking his head. “Got lost in thought.”

He dove into his explanation. How he had seen the full scale of the Crater, and the weeks long journey they had ahead of them when they skirted its edge. The smudge of darkness at the deepest point — how it had moved. The eyes.

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Kaius froze for a moment, remembering that moment the creature had suddenly appeared before him, and the spark of pain and heat he had felt as it had shattered his defences like glass — testing his vision.

“Before it moved, I saw its aura. It blanketed the exact same area as the darkness you described — that I now see. It was Adamant.”

Ianmus and Kenva both paled, drawing back.

“Adamant?” Ianmus whispered. “You’re sure?”

Kaius nodded. “I’ve only seen a few grains of the pure stuff before, but I'm damn certain. It had that same dark grey sheen.”

“How strong even is that?” Kenva asked, nervously eying the Crater.

“Fourth? I think?” Ianmus replied. “Platinum and Mythril make up the third tier, at least. I’ve heard Celestine comes next — but I've never even seen that metal before. It’s supposedly used by my father’s people, but the Conclaves aren’t exactly a trade empire. Then… Adamant.”

Kaius breathed out slowly. An upper fourth tier. Hells.

A moment later, he saw Porkchop had stilled, looking at the darkness warily.

“I’ve never seen adamant before,” he said. “Did it look like this?”

The dull, almost slate-like shimmer of an aura filled Kaius’s mind’s eye. Kenva and Ianmus both jumped beside him — far less used to the sudden impressions that Porkchop could convey with beastspeak. Kaius barely noticed them, too fixated on the image Porkchop had shared. It was identical to the one he’d seen only minutes before.

“Yeah,” Kaius replied, mouth dry again. “Yeah, that’s it. You’ve seen something that strong before.”

Porkchop let out a slow grunt, still not looking away from the Crater. “I have. Only once — at a Den meet. It belonged to the oldest meles I have ever met — the Patriarch of the Den of Deep Waters.”

He turned back, fixing Kaius with a heavy stare. “That spirit is not a fourth tier, but a fifth — and we have no way of knowing how far through the tier it is.”

Ianmus’s eyes widened in shock. “Fifth?! What? How?! The records are spotty for anything above Gold, but the few snippets I've found have said that Celestine and Adamant follow Mythril.”

“They do,” Porkchop replied. “But beyond the third tier, aura changes less often — both the fourth and fifth tiers have a single colour.”

“Does it even fucking matter,” Kenva cut in, waving her hands up in disbelief. “Fourth, fifth, who the fuck cares? That is a creature that could smash the bloody Castellan into raw scrap metal! Why is it here?! This isn’t the Arboreal Sea — it’s not even the fucking Drozags! There shouldn’t be a creature like that in a no-name high-mana zone like this!”

“Well, clearly it is,” Kaius said. “I saw it with my own two eyes.”

Ianmus nodded slowly. “The records we found referencing the Crater were old — even Kanmost’s notes made mention of it. More importantly, I think we are forgetting something.”

“Oh?” Kaius said, looking at the mage. He failed to see what they might have missed that could explain an anomaly on this kind of scale.

“There is a Place of Power here. That means this was a place rich in magic long before the System arrived. We know little about how the System changed the ecosystem, but we do know that there were monsters and magical creatures before it arrived. What if this spirit existed in those days of yore — lived through those first days of the integration, and kept slowly accruing power since?”

That did make some sense. Clearly, despite its monstrous power, the spirit wasn’t overly aggressive — Kaius doubted he would still be breathing if it was. More importantly, as a spirit, and he did think it was a spirit, it wouldn’t need to hunt or fight to survive like a common beast, nor would it be at the behest of a mortal creature's lifespan.

But to live so long? Over ten thousand years, dwelling in one place, never moving? Content to simply exist and grow?

That was utterly alien to him — but was that really any different to the Witchlights of Nargen they had seen on their way to Baanwell? Those sprites had been more than content to simply bob around them, clustering in curiosity as they passed through Nargen forest. Though ones that had lacked that cunning gleam of intelligence he had seen in those eyes of midnight.

“What do we do?” Porkchop asked, breaking the silence as they all mulled over the knowledge of what lay a few terribly short leagues away.

What did they do, indeed? There was little that anyone could actually do about the spirit — a fifth tier was a truly apocalyptic threat. It would be hard to pull the kind of ancient masters who could deal with such a creature out of their abodes, especially when the thing seemed non-aggressive. If people that strong even existed. The elves, maybe.

Still…

“We tell the fucking guild, for one,” Kaius grumbled.

People had to know about the spirit. It was vital knowledge for anyone entering Vainblood. Even if just so that they could take steps to prevent antagonising the spirit that could smite them with ease. Plus, it would let the local powers, Guild and Nobles both, keep an eye on the creature. Better they had forewarning of a threat, rather than have a tide of midnight swallow the duchy whole without anyone being the wiser.

“No shit we tell the guild,” Kenva replied. “But what about our mission? Does this change anything?”

Kaius hesitated, before he shook his head.

“I don’t think it cares about us. The only reason it noticed me in the first place is because I was able to get around its darkness effect, and even then it left me alone when it had figured out how Truesight worked. We continue on — though if we find out the Wellspring is near the bottom of that crater, we best be very, very careful not to piss off the local sovereign. Kanmost is relying on us."

At the mention of the Archivist, his team nodded. None of them were about to abandon the man.

“What about Flowers?” Ianmus asked. “Do we tell him?”

“No, not yet,” Kaius said instantly. “No way to do that without giving the game away to his team that we know they are following us. We tell him once we’ve rescued the Archivist — this is his duchy, so it’s important he knows. Plus, even with as much of an asshole as he is, I don’t want to send him into the den of a bloody fifth-tier without forewarning.”

Kaius pushed himself to his feet, rolling his shoulders.

The pool of black loomed only a short distance away, calling to him like a siren song. He turned away from it. That spirit was a terror, but he would not let it sway his path.

Besides, if a creature that strong could be found here, what else lay in the hidden reaches of the world? His blood heated up just a little. One day, he too would be Adamant — he would make it so, by blood and toil. He remembered the magnitude of the creature’s power, his body growing numb as its aura pressed down on him. How would it feel to have that strength for himself?

No matter how sweet the thought was, it would have to wait. That amount of growth would take time, and right now they had a researcher to save.

“Come on, let’s get moving. We have a lot of ground to cover,” Kaius said, nodding along the edge of the crater.

His team shared a quick look, before Ianmus shrugged his shoulders.

“Not sure how sound of a plan ignoring the terrifying death-monster is, but I can’t really think of a better one.” Ianmus said.

They set off, trudging through the muck as they started to circle the Midnight Crater.

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