Rune Seeker

Guided by the Primal Chord, Hiral pushed himself in on planes of Rejection, weaving side to side to dodge the pair of acid streams that came his way. Even though he was too far away for the Lost Echoes to do any damage with their explosions, he let the two duplicates form, adding afterimages to his movement to confuse his attacker. With is absurdly high Dex, plus the Rejection, and copies of himself, he was all up in the hyena’s faces before it even realized he was there.

Left, right, his punches snapped out across in front of him, catching the hyena’s faces each on their inside jaws. The two blows blasted the animal’s heads out to the side, and just as the worm-heads started to pucker up, Hiral ducked low and to his left. Quick-stepping around the hyena’s forelegs – it had four in the front now – he moved to its flank, and increased the power to his runes. Setting his feet and pivoting at the hip, he threw a punch that’d make Right proud, flaring all four runes just as he hit.

Instead of a man-sized fist – which seemed pretty small compared to the large canine in front of him – his blow hit like a titan was punching the Chimera. Ribs and papery skin collapsed around the impact site, throwing the beast to the side, but its two snake-heads were already counterattacking.

Snapping in with venomous fangs glistening in the rain, Hiral – for once – didn’t have any inclination to see what kind of debuff they gave. A weave to the right evaded the first head, and he knifed his left elbow back and up to catch the snake in the chin as it darted past him, then twisted and leaned back even further to dodge the second. Continuing the rotation, and with the rest of the Chimera’s bulk turning to get him back in front of it, Hiral spun down low, between the hyena’s legs and directly under its belly.

Coming up on the other side, the two Lost Echoes exploded right where he had been – their damage stacking with every consecutive eruption – and Hiral got ready for his next punch. Modifying what he’d done on the fly, he threaded Compression in with Expansion, then pulled back on Impact and upped Breaking. If everything worked, his fist should still hit like a warhammer, but he’d also send out a kind of resonating force beyond where he struck.

Huh, this would’ve been great for the Rune-o too… if it works. Only one way to find out!

Even as he thought that, he was midway through the rotation of his hips, and his fist slammed into the hyena that had no idea he was even there. Like before, his blow cracked bone on impact, but this time, he felt the power of his Rune of Breaking rush ahead in a line from his punch.

Almost like he’d hit the hyena with a Piercing Shot, the damaging effect passed straight through without slowing, and was nearly a foot wide. Unfortunately, while it definitely tore at the monster’s internal organs as it went, it didn’t outright destroy anything, and the surprised monster staggered sideways with a grunt.

That still needs work…

Conveniently, he had a test-target directly in front of him. Thinking back to what he’d done against the Roc Boss in the Fields of Prey, Hiral began cycling Separation in with his other runes. While one option was making his punch sharp – kind of like what he’d done against the Wild-Boss – he had a different plan in mind.

One that had to be put on hold as twinned snake-heads spotted him, and then lunged in his direction. Tsking at the annoyance of the interruption, Hiral smoothly swept his left hand in, around, and then out to catch the snake-head and guide it past him. One, two, a pair of jabs blasted it in the throat, Breaking and Impact wreaking havoc and stunning the limb. With the thing’s eyes wide and glazed over, he ducked and twirled under it like it was his dance partner, and then pushed it across in front of him.

Just in time for the other snake-head to arrive, fangs bared and chomping down. It realized too late what was happening, and as soon as the razor-sharp teeth pierced the scales of the other snake, Hiral caught the bottom jaw in a short uppercut. More Impact forced the mouth closed, driving the venomous fangs all the way in. Then, before either had had a chance to recover, he pivoted his left shoulder back and forward, throwing an open hand thrust.

Impact and Expansion slammed into the two heads like they’d gone running straight into a granite cliff-face. Scales ruptured, teeth broke, and both snakes flopped away to hang behind the Chimera like limp noodles. At the same time he did that, though, the rest of the large chimeric body was turning in his direction. Twin hyena heads were snapping and yipping in anticipation of catching him from behind, but his sensory domain had long told him they were coming.

A straight mule-kick reinforced with his runes sent a painful reverberation through the nearest hyena-head, even though it wasn’t enough to arrest the beast’s turn. Using that momentum from the contact, Hiral tossed himself forward into yet another roll, before leaping to his feet and dashing to the side. With the snake-heads unconscious, the Chimera had lost its full-field-of-view benefit, and he took advantage of it.

Back to cycling Separation in with his other runes, he pruned it down from a single, infinitely sharp blade around his hand. Instead, like he’d done against the Roc, he filled the expanded – and compressed – aura of Breaking with thousands of tiny blades. It was almost like the CuttingField ability Death Knell used to have, but much, much smaller. There was also far less guarantee it would work.

So, he did the only thing he could, he dodged around the Chimera’s frantic movement to try and spot him, then darted in for a brutal combo to its flank. Picking the same spot he’d earlier landed a haymaker, this time he opted for a flurry of lighter blows. With his runes empowering the punches, lighter was very much a relative term, and the already fractured bones crumpled under the assault. More than that, though, was the combined aura of Breaking and Separation that drove inward like a shockwave with every punch.

After three hits from each fist, Hiral was forced to abort the tactic and back up – his gloved knuckles burning from the acid through the broken skin – and he quickly surveyed the results. High-Speed Regeneration+ was already taking care of the damage he’d suffered, and apparently he’d gotten a new debuff he could use, something called Hemorrhagic Acid. More importantly, thanks to his sensory domain and connection to his runes, he got a pretty good idea what had happened to the inside of the monster in front of him.

Honestly, he’d imagined his punches tearing through the beast like a thousand tiny meat-grinders and leaving trails of devastated internal organs in their wake. Instead, as far as he could tell, there were some minor lacerations, and that was really about it. Damage from the blows would definitely add up over time – kind of like Drahn’s Pollen Poison – but it wouldn’t be dropping high-defense monsters like flies.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Yanily wouldn’t have anything OP to complain about, this time.

Not letting his lack of gruesome success dissuade him – and with the hyena again turning to try and eat him – Hiral fell back on a proven technique. Grasping Impact and Increase in one hand, then Expansion and Rejection in the other, he swept his arms forward to cup his palms together. The resulting combination of effects ballooned outward to catch the entire side of the hyena and flatten it on the growing sphere. After that brief second of it hanging, curved in the air, the laws of nature took over, and the beast shot off the path and into the woods. Breaking wood and pained yelps followed the trajectory of the monster carving a furrow through the rain-soaked dirt.

With the thing’s health hovering at less than ten percent and gradually dropping – Probably from the internal injuries – Hiral took a moment to see how the others were faring. From the looks of things, his attackers hadn’t been the only ones to somehow combine, with Yanily and Seena fighting a beast with three of each head. Constant streams of lightning and fire had the thing cowering and writhing on the ground as its flesh… well… did bad things under the unrelenting barrage of elements.

Elsewhere, Right and Seeyela had corralled the final hyena, though it moved with a slow and obvious limp. That wasn’t even accounting for the numerous stab wounds and fist-prints dotting its body.

“How are we doing?” he asked, letting the runes around his hands fade. A practiced motion drew his RHCs, and he activated Piercing Shot on each.

“Under control,” Seena said. “This guy leveled up to Mid-B-Rank when three of them combined. How the hell can they even do that?”

“Hitting it doesn’t work so well for some reason,” Yanily added. “Lightning and fire though? Yeah, that hurts it.”

“Correction,” Seeyela spoke over the party chat. “Stabbing and slashing don’t seem to work so well. Right is putting this thing in its place.”

As if to accentuate her point, the double swept in – his speed far more than what the B-Rank hyena could cope with – and battered one of the already damaged heads with a barrage of blows. Bones crunched under his empowered fists, a Rune of Impact from the crystal knuckles Hiral had long ago given him going as far as popping an eyeball out of its socket. The carnage didn’t end there, though, with Right knocking out teeth, shattering the snout, and then finishing with an uppercut-hook that filled the woods with a final crack.

Neck clearly and gruesomely broken, the mashed head flopped to the side, while the rest of the beast recoiled sideways to escape the source of the pain. Directly towards Seeyela and her dangerous daggers. Fangs of the Lady glowing with powerful venoms, she took no time darting in, needling with her weapons, and then teleporting out of there before acidic blood fountained from the new wounds. The monster’s health bar dropped to a point barely visible, less than a sliver, really, and it wobbled like a strong breeze would fully topple it.

And from its stuttering steps as it continued to stagger to the side, it may not even take that.

Except…

“Yan, look out!” Hiral shouted, spotting the snake heads carefully watching the position of the spearman. No sooner had he said that, than the beast’s faltering body seemed to take on new life, and it lunged at the spearman with everything it had left.

That everything still wasn’t enough, Yanily managing to dive out of the way. But, as soon as the spearman evaded – and the Chimera didn’t slow – it became apparent an attack had never been the monster’s plan. Instead, it barreled directly into its packmate that’d been held down by the combined assault of Seena and Yanily.

Little more than a charred husk that still smoked and glowed with heat, the second beast wasn’t in any better shape than the first. In fact, with its health bar also desperately low, it looked like the collision of the two large bodies would be enough to finish both monsters off.

Too bad that didn’t happen.

With a repeat of that horrible, wet, schlurpingsound, the two chimeric bodies erupted into what could only be described as goopy, shapeless piles the instant they touched. And then, in the next second, a new beast emerged. Four of each head. A full health bar. And a new name above its body.

(Chimera) Chimerebus – Mid-B-Rank

“This just keeps getting better and better,” Seena said.

“Uglier too,” Yanily said, and that seemed to piss the monster off. Four worm-heads – now sitting in a line across the monster’s chest beneath the row of hyena heads – turned in his direction and puckered up all at the same time. A second later, streams of hissing acid shot in the spearman’s direction, and only a bamf followed by a body check from Seeyela got him out of the way in time.

From the pair of pained grunts that came over the party chat, she’d only managed to mostly get them out of the way, and the much larger beast was already turning its attention on Seena. Which lined it up nicely for the gout of fire that sprayed across eight of its heads at the same time. Only the four snake-heads managed to lift themselves above the roaring flames, and that was enough. With those eyes locked on her, the Chimerebus knew exactly where Seena was, and the six-legged beast charged forward.

Reacting quickly to the sudden turn of events, Seena cut off the fire and snapped her hands across in front of her. Wings of flame emerged from her mantle to encompass her as she activated her defensive ability, and the monster slammed into it. Paws scrabbling with curved claws, the thing practically mounted the flaming shield, heedless of the way it burned. Then, with four, puckered-faces, began spewing acid like a waterfall across the crossed-wing-shaped shield.

Hissing, spitting steam erupted from the contact as the shield quickly began to degrade under the assault. Hyena heads yipped in excitement at finally getting their fangs around one of the enemies causing them so many problems. Snake-head tails…

… crashed to the Chimerebus’s back as physical pressure slammed down on the area, the influence of Hiral’s Intimidating Aura+ washing over the monster. One hyena head managed to turn in his direction to find him with the Emperor’s Greatsword held straight above his head.

“Get. Off. Her!” he said, flooding the weapon with power and his runes. Expansion, Impact, Breaking, Increase, Rejection, Energy,and Gravity melded together in the wake of his swing. The resulting crescent of power carved a line in the ground between him and the Chimerebus before slamming into its side and hurling it off the party leader.

Monster and attack both barreled through the woods off the side of the path, breaking branches and falling trees marking its trajectory. The thing went a solid fifty feet before the trail of crashing finally came to an end, and Hiral turned to check on Seena.

She gave him a thumbs up, and a smile that reminded him why he enjoyed looking at her so much. He really should’ve found a way to spend more time with her before they came back down to the surface…

That small regret got cut off as another stomach-turning schlurp echoed from within the trees.

What…?

A glance to where he’d left the two-headed target he’d been fighting before showed the ground empty. The monster was gone. And, worse, looking at the path he’d carved through the woods with his attack on the four-headed version, the rain had gotten heavier. A lot heavier, with lightning criss-crossing the sky above them in a wild show that lit things up like midday.

The lightning wasn’t the only thing flitting around up there, either.

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

ENEMY DETECTED!

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!