Myriad Heavens: Rise of the Rune God

Chapter 267: Chapter 268: Living Script

Wukong stepped over a root that pulsed with flowing runes under his foot.

The surface of the root lit up with dozens of tiny moving symbols. They crawled across the wood like living insects, scrambling over each other in quick, nervous patterns before settling back into stillness. Wukong stopped. He crouched down low. He poked the root with one finger and watched the runes flare brighter for a moment, glowing warm gold against the dark bark, before fading back to their resting state.

”Thes runes are far more sophisticated from than the prison scribbles,” he muttered, pulling his finger back. ”If i were to compare them it will be like a baby scribbles against a computer printed document. They are really not on the same level.”

He straightened up and kept walking. His staff rested easily on one shoulder, tapping lightly against the ground with each step. At first glance the forest looked almost normal. Tall trunks rose on either side. Dappled light fell through the canopy in soft, shifting patches. The ground underfoot was soft and dark, giving slightly with each step. If you squinted and ignored the details, you could almost pretend it was just a forest.

But every surface carried living script.

Leaves turned slowly on their branches, revealing new lines of symbols on their undersides as they rotated. Bark rearranged itself in quiet, deliberate ripples, like skin shifting over muscle. Even the air between the trees carried faint glowing threads that only became visible when Wukong focused his eyes and let his perception sharpen. The threads drifted lazily, carrying tiny sequences from one trunk to the next, like messages being passed between old friends.

Wukong grinned as he walked. His golden eyes moved constantly, jumping from surface to surface, catching patterns, testing them, discarding them, catching new ones.

”Look at this one.” He stopped in front of a thick trunk and tapped a complex spiral of runes that wound all the way up into the higher branches. The spiral had three distinct layers, each one nested inside the other, each one governing a different aspect of the pattern. ”Twenty five full layers just to decide what color the leaf should be when the wind blows in certain ways. Absolute show-off. You didn’t need Twenty five layers for that. Two would have been fine. But no, someone wanted to flex. I wonder who this person is?”

He shook his head, but his grin widened.

”Well, at least these runes are easy to learn and will enrich my rune principles. So I guess this showoffs work is benefitting me.”

He closed his eyes for a few seconds and let the pattern settle into his mind. The symbols arranged themselves with surprising ease. They clicked into place like puzzle pieces that had been waiting for the right hand. Power that the heavy suppression had locked away stirred inside him and answered more readily than before. His limbs felt lighter. The constant crushing weight pressing down on his body eased by a noticeable fraction. Not gone. Not even close. But less.

”Ohhh.” His golden eyes opened again, gleaming with sharp interest. ”So that’s the real game here. The better you read, the more the ruin lets you move.Everything else stays locked away. Simple aaand Nasty. I like it.”

He started walking again, but his pace slowed. Every few steps he reached out and brushed a trunk or a low-hanging branch with his fingertips. Each time the runes responded. Some flared bright and eager, opening their patterns quickly like they had been waiting for someone to ask. Others were older, slower, more reluctant to reveal their structure. He did not force them. He simply read what they offered, tested a small application, felt the suppression ease another tiny fraction, then moved on.

A leaf drifted down in front of his face. He caught it between two fingers without looking. The underside was covered in a tight lattice of micro-runes that shifted and rearranged when he tilted it toward the light. Dozens of tiny symbols, all working together to govern the single leaf’s existence.

”Even the trash is written in advanced script,” he said to the leaf. ”You people really don’t know how to relax. One leaf. One. And you gave it a whole governance structure. This is just overkill.”

He crushed the leaf lightly between his fingers. The runes flared once, bright and brief, then dissolved into soft golden motes that sank into his skin. A tiny thread of power settled into his foundation. Not much. Barely a whisper. But enough to notice. Enough to confirm that the act of reading and understanding directly fed his strength here.

Further ahead the trees grew denser. The light between them carried more weight, more substance. The symbols moved with greater complexity. Some of them folded through one another without ever touching, passing through each other like ghosts while maintaining perfect structural integrity. Wukong’s grin widened into something almost feral.

”Now we’re talking.”

He spent the next stretch of time moving from trunk to trunk. Reading in short bursts. Testing small changes. Feeling the suppression loosen another fraction each time. His steps became lighter. His thoughts ran cleaner and faster. The staff on his shoulder felt less like dead weight and more like an old friend waiting to be used. His body, still forced into heavy physical matter by the ruin’s rules, began to feel less like a cage and more like a tool he was slowly relearning how to use.

A distant metallic crash rolled through the trees. It was followed by muffled shouting and the sharp clash of residual energy. Something large had hit the ground hard somewhere behind him. Wukong glanced toward the mountains in the distance, sniffed once like an animal catching a scent, and turned away without slowing his pace.

”Pirates can fight over the scraps. I’ve got reading to do.”

---

Near the crash site, the mountain still smoked.

Broken sections of the pirate ship jutted from the rock like the bones of a dead beast. Twisted metal. Shattered plating. Torn sails made of woven energy that now flickered and died in the dust-choked air. The smell of burned circuits and ruptured power cores hung thick over everything.

Figures crawled out of the wreckage one after another. Some limped, clutching broken limbs. Some cursed loudly, slamming fists against the ground. Some simply stood in the open and stared at their own hands in disbelief, flexing fingers that no longer carried the power they were used to.

The captain staggered into the open. His face was pale with rage. His uniform was torn and scorched. His aura, once solidly Adept-tier and confident, now felt thin and brittle, like paper held over a flame.

”Report!” he barked. His voice cracked slightly on the second word.

An Advanced-tier officer coughed blood and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ”Core’s dead. Every system is dead. Navigation, weapons, shields, all of it. And my principles...” He paused, swallowed, tried again. ”Most of them won’t answer. I reach for them and there’s nothing. Like they’re locked in a box I can’t open. Only runes still work.”

The silver-marked Expert stood a short distance away from the group. She had already turned her attention to the nearest tree. Her silver markings glowed faintly at her temples as she traced a sequence of living symbols along the bark with careful fingers. Her expression was focused. Controlled. But her jaw was tight.

”It’s not just the ship,” she said without looking up. ”The entire layer suppresses everything except runes. Every principle. Every technique. Every method we’ve spent our lives building. Locked. Rank means almost nothing here. Comprehension is the only currency that matters.”

A younger pirate slammed his fist into a trunk in frustration. The wood did not break. It did not even shake. It simply pulsed once with faint light and went still, utterly indifferent to his anger.

”So we’re supposed to sit here and study trees while someone else takes the real treasures?” His voice was high, panicked. ”While we sit here reading bark like students?”

”Unless you know a better way to get your power back,” the Expert replied coldly, still not looking up from her reading, ”yes. That is exactly what we’re going to do.”

The captain’s jaw tightened. He looked at the denser forest stretching away from the mountain. Then he looked at his scattered, weakened crew. Dozens of them. Some injured. Some in shock. All of them reduced to a fraction of what they were.

”Anyone who can still walk starts reading. Now,” he said. His voice was low and hard. ”The rest of you repair what’s left of the ship. Salvage what you can. We are not dying in the first chamber of some ancient library.”

No one argued. The desperation in his voice was enough.

---

Wukong felt the distant sound of panicked voices and the rising noise of argument. He snorted once and kept walking.

’Let them scramble. I’ve already got a head start.’

He adjusted his grip on the staff and moved deeper. His steps no longer wandered. They carried clear direction now, heading toward denser clusters of runes where the light itself seemed heavier and the symbols moved with greater complexity. Every few paces he reached out and brushed a trunk or a low-hanging branch, reading whatever new sequence revealed itself, filing it away, and feeling his available strength climb another small step.

The deeper he went, the quieter the outer chaos became. The shouting faded. The crashes faded. The sounds of desperate, weakened pirates arguing over nothing faded into nothing. And the more the living forest seemed to watch him in return. The runes on the nearest trunks shifted slightly as he passed. The light adjusted. The air grew warmer.

Wukong’s grin never faded.

”Alright then,” he said softly to the trees. ”Show me what else you’ve got.”

He vanished between the living trunks, already pulling further ahead of most new entrants.

Behind him, the outer layer of the living forest began filling with the rising noise of desperate fighting and clashing auras. Shouts. Crashes. The sharp crack of principles being thrown in panic. The sounds grew louder, then slowly began to fade as Runar put distance between himself and the chaos.

Ahead of him, the living script continued to open under the light of his eye. Layer after layer. Pattern after pattern. The forest breathed around him, ancient and patient, offering its knowledge to the one who knew how to read.

-------

Runar walked faster.

{Author’s Note:

Hey everyone.

I’ve put together a full spoiler document for the Myriad Script Reliquary Arc. It covers the true background of the ruin, the Rune Sovereign, the Ancient Will’s real plan, how the trials and treasures work, and several major character directions that won’t be fully revealed in the public Chapters for a long time.

If you want to know what’s actually going on behind the scenes (and avoid being completely blindsided later), you can grab the illustrated lore document here:

→ https://ko-fi.com/s/dd54697738

or(if that link isn’t memorizable) go to

→ ko-fi.com/sorion and go to the shop section

It’s optional, of course. The story will still make sense without it as it would be revealed bit by bit over various Chapters. But if you’re the type who likes having the bigger picture early, it’s there.

Thanks for reading, and see you in the next Chapter.}