Runeblade-Chapter 231B2 : Pursuit of Mastery

Slowing down, his heart picked up the tempo of a measured march—endless and rhythmic.

Just his target, and the spell.

With the pillar filling his vision—a dark grey with flecks of reflective crystals—he flexed his will.

Lightning cracked, boiling in his hand with a fury that sharpened his senses. It roiled in his grip, fighting against him to rage and writhe in an effort to follow its design. A moment's pause calmed the mind, and Kaius swung.

Not at his target—its neighbour.

Searing gold cut through the air, wrapping itself round the stone pillar—dumping hot plasma and arcane reverberation into the material as streamers of energy burst free.

One snapped to the right, the opposite direction of his target.

Then the other dominated his vision, filling the centre of his focus with screaming cracks of storm’s fury. The focus of his will, bound in a destructive web of his own making.

**Ding! Latent Glyph of Drakthar has reached level 60!**

Kaius grinned, satisfaction washing over him at his success.

He quashed it a moment later, resetting his stance as he worked on honing his focus once more. Until he was successful twice in a row, he wouldn’t be satisfied.

A significant ordeal, considering how draining each and every cast was—even after a bare five casts he could feel the burgeoning throb that was setting in behind his left eye, threatening to pop the orb free with every beat of his heart.

Shaking off the fatigue, Kaius refocused.

Another dozen or so attempts—then he could take a break to drink some poison and reinscribe.

….

The hammer hit him in the chest, shattering his breastplate like glass and cracking his sternum.

Good as his dampening under-armour was, the guildmaster hit like a hill giant.

Porkchop growled, snapping at Rieker in frustration when his hand got a little too close.

The guildmaster snatched his hand back, wagging a finger at his face.

“You're going to have to be faster than that if you want a bite of me, meles.” he grinned.

Porkchop’s heart kicked in his chest as Rieker lunged forwards, warhammer swept up just slow enough that he could track it.

It was coming for his neck, he realised.

Shoving off the ground, Porkchop reared up, throwing his bulk into the guildmaster’s swing. He took the blow on his pauldron, robbing the attack of half of its wind up.

Throbbing agony rolled through him as his shoulder slipped in its socket, jade shards flying free as the hammer spalled enhanced crystal with ease.

Porkchop ignored the pain, letting it wash away in the growing heat of aggression. He dug his back claws in, using the traction to twist into a full bodied swipe—hoping to catch Rieker in his undefended and unarmoured stomach.

The guildmaster only smirked—spinning off his front foot to shatter yet another armour plate, this time one of long segments hanging off his mid back. A new addition once the skill had crossed level fifty.

“Come on, Porkchop! You’re better than this! Don’t just let me beat on you.”

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Rieker accompanied his words with a baleful blitz of smashing hammer swings that left his forearm, ribs, and shoulder blade splintered—shards of jade falling to the floor like rain.

Health roared like a pyre, stitching his bones whole in seconds.

Forcing mana into the construction of his skill, Porkchop felt the energy surge into his armour—fixing it to wholeness.

Rieker capitalised on the moment of distraction, swinging for his shoulder again.

Porkchop roared. He pulled his arm up, letting the guildmaster’s hammer hit him just below his armpit. The plates there were thin—just barely covered from the development of his armour skill at level fifty. Blood gushed as the thick slap of steel punched straight through, shredding muscle and caving in his upper ribs.

**Ding! Celadon Aegis has reached level 70!**

Snapping his arm down, Porkchop wedged the weapon into his side by the haft. Ignoring the burning ache, he kicked off with his jaw wide open—

—and sunk his teeth straight into Rieker’s shoulder.

Or, at least, he tried to. Was the man made of rock? It was like chewing granite!

Rieker laughed—a booming thing that filled him with apprehension.

“Now that,” the guildmaster said, releasing his hammer to grab him by the muzzle. His jaw creaked. “Is more like it.”

Rieker ripped his teeth straight out of his shoulder, shreds of flesh tearing free. The wound writhed, closing faster than Porkchop could blink.

A palm slapped his breastplate, cracking echoed filling the hall. THe force was undeniable.

He stumbled back.

“When someone is stronger than you, faster than you? Take the hit, and make them bleed.” Rieker’s bloody joy was infectious—his own hunting fury rising in response.

“Again.”

He charged, and Rieker raced to meet him.

….

Mana whorled around him—he’d always loved it. The way it responded to your very wishes, coaxed by will and manipulation. The way it curled around him, caressing him like a warm summer's breeze.

If it sounded easy, it wasn’t. Mana was a wild tempest—with its own wants and desires. It would make your wishes come true, but only if you had the skill, knowledge, and simple power to prove your worth.

He had all three, courtesy of his father and the teachings of Sun Spire.

Well, he thought he had—meeting the two maniacs across the hall had disabused him of that notion. That was true strength, woven from threads of persistence, maniacal disregard for injury, and simple grit.

It would have been oh so easy for him to retreat into his shell, to soothe himself with soft whispers that he was the more brilliant, only held back by a lack of access to their advantages.

Unfortunately, Kaius had made that impossible. Who would have thought that someone with that much bloodlust would have a keen mind for magic? Sure, he’d relied on a class that fed him spells—but Kaius had to, for there was no one else to learn from. It wasn’t like the man was resting on his laurels, what with the way he obsessively studied his glyphs every time he reinscribed. Desperately searching for minute commonalities between them.

Ianmus knew, it was only a matter of time until Kaius cracked the secrets of Vesryn runework. Even if it took a decade, Kaius would manage it.

If he wanted to keep up, he needed to give it his all.

Ianmus hummed a low note—an old habit to clear his mind before a particularly strenuous spell. Keeping his eyes open, he kept his teammates in his eyes, each in opposite corners of the expansive underground hall.

He reached for the comfort of Solar—feeling the delicate touch of familiar warmth.

Streamers of light coalesced around him—a cocoon of burning heat and nurturing joy. Thread by thread, he began to weave.

Sundrenched Strength served as the foundation of the spell—every good mage had a few basics in their tool kit, and his would be complete when he acquired a healing sorcery.

It was a small strain, but one that would weigh on him as he moved to the next phase. His Glass Mind stepped in, holding the weight of the will needed to keep the spell in place when he stretched it far beyond its design.

Hypercharged Spell was next—mana surged with new potency as he fed it through the working, filling his sorcery to the bursting in only a few breaths.

This alone was little strain, it was what came next that would test him.

Holding firm to his staff, he reached out with his mind—pulling on threads of raw Solar might. Spun gold danced to his tune, held in a grip of iron that forced it to obey. Touching his spell form, he unravelled the outermost section of the working.

Mana bucked, his Glass Mind straining to keep the unbalanced sorcery held in place. Moving as quick as he was able—painfully limited by the rate at which he could channel his mana—Ianmus ripped out the targeting solution by its guts.

A colossal weight settled on his shoulders as sweat beaded on his brow, half a dozen different class and general skills working in concert to keep the spell from detonating uncontrollably.

Latent the destabilisation might have been, he could still see it—the eddies in the tightly structured mana that spun around him.

Piece by piece, he rebuilt the spell. It was tough—straining him to the edges of his skill. The academy had only just touched upon the art of will imbuement—they hadn’t even seen fit to define it as separate from manipulation—and most of his advancements had come from simple experimentation since meeting his team.

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Mind clear and focused, he pushed his Glass Mind to its limits, offloading as much of the strain as he could. It was a simplistic thing, still bound utterly to his own consciousness, but capable of raw computation outside of his main stream of thought. It was also unfortunately terrible at deft work, so he was forced to rely on it only for feeding the work mana, and for aiding in stabilisation.

Grunting with strain, Ianmus felt the last reformed section snap into place, stable once more.

Visible to all who had mana sight, a circle of woven mana hovered in front of him. There were no runes—he knew little of the art, and even if he did he couldn’t even imagine the strain—but the geometry of the sigil pulsed with meaning. Aiding him just the slightest in keeping the whole thing from collapsing.

Another thing he had Kaius to thank for.

Fighting against the urge to sigh in relief, he released the spell.

A wave of solar growth rushed out. Where normally it would be a diffuse cloud that would settle into the bodies of his targets in a short range, this one had been split into two tight bolts.

Both crossed the hall in seconds—sinking deep into the bodies of Kaius and Porkchop, filling them with empowered physicality.

**Ding! Sundrenched Strength has reached level 67!**

**Ding! Solar Manipulation has reached level 76!**

**Ding! Hypercharged Spell has reached level 43!**

**Ding! Starlit Efficiency has reached level 68!**

**Ding! Focused Attention has reached level 69!**

**Ding! Magician's Potency has reached level 67!**

Wiping his forehead, Ianmus grimaced at the sheen of sweat that it left on his palm. His circuits ached, the metaphysical pathways through his body fraying under the burden he’d placed them under—understandable, after pushing half his mana into the spell.

A good result, all things considered. A year ago, and he would have been ecstatic to level two class skills and four general skills with a single spell.

Now, it just felt like there was more to do. He couldn’t fall behind, not when they were his ticket to understanding the secrets of mana.