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

Kaius stopped fast at the threshold between the root-bound cave and the carved tunnel, staring at the notification that told him he had entered The Great Warren. Porkchop stepped up next to him, also pausing with a low growl as he saw his own version of the notion.

“Seems we have a decision to make.” Kaius said after he had had a moment to digest the information.

“Agreed.”

“Well.” Kaius said, walking to the side of the cave. He rested his back against the wall, looking at Porkchop with his arms crossed. “Do we want to stay where we are? Keep looking for a Guardian?”

“I’m ready for something new,” Porkchop said. “There’s only so much of walking through the same bloody caves I can take for weeks on end.”

Kaius frowned. “You have a point. Though, I didn’t expect that it would take us so long to at least find one. Most stories I’ve heard from delvers say that they can usually clear a biome in a couple of weeks or so. Unless they are walking straight there I don’t see how that’s possible. We’ve spent so long just bloody wandering.”

“Known biomes would explain it. If they already know where the Guardian is it wouldn’t take anywhere near as long. We’re basically just exploring at random,” Porkchop replied.

“That would explain at least part of it.” Kaius said, reaching up to rub his chin. “But lots of delvers explore passages in the wild. There must be some method.”

Porkchop snorted, mild amusement flowing across their link. “That might be so, but we don’t have any way of following their method. Especially not if it is some sort of two-legged artifice. We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Finding a Guardian can wait, you still have skills to merge, and we both still have a long time until our full induction into the system.”

“You’re right.” Kaius sighed. “But we can do that, and probably find more Champions, here. The Overgrown Graves are a known quantity, and this next biome is a warren.”

“And?” Porkchop replied quizzically.

“Oh. Right.” Kaius said, feeling a little foolish. Of course Porkchop would have no reference for what the biome being a warren meant.

He stood up off the wall, pacing slightly as he explained what he knew. “Father spent a lot of time discussing biome names with me. They can reveal a lot of what you can expect to find in that section of the Depths. For example Overgrown Graves suggested that there would be undead and probably beasts as well. Its no nowhere near perfect, there’s a lot of room for interpretation, and it gets a lot more complicated at lower levels.”

“So, a Warren would have things that normally live underground?” Porkchop asked, tilting his head at Kaius.

Kaius nodded. “Most likely, but not just that. Things like ‘warren’, ‘infestation’, or ‘siege’ suggest that it’s probably going to be horde enemies. Sort of like a swarm, but across the whole biome. Lots of enemies, but comparatively weaker even if they have similar levels to elsewhere.

“Still better than here. I’m sick of fighting undead. They taste disgusting which means I have to avoid biting them. It’d be like fighting with one of your arms behind your back.” Porkchop’s distaste was almost palpable, the faintest hint of vile rot slipping across their link. Kaius went a little green.

“The Great Warren it is!” He readily agreed. “Let’s be careful though. We still don’t know what sort of depths-born we will find, and there will be new traps as well.”

They set off, Kaius taking the lead as they entered the new region of the dungeon. Kaius took the lead, sword in hand as he scanned their surroundings for any sign of traps.

The tunnel was clearly manufactured, very unlike the natural caverns they had just left. Whatever had dug them was..inelegant. Like they had been excavated with picks alone, no concern for anything other than breaching further into the bedrock. The supports were haphazard. Uneven, and scattered at seemingly random intervals. Half had clearly been scavenged, and not treated well besides. The carved beams were splintered, and in some cases had been chopped to length in order to fit the tunnels uneven width. Hells, half of them looked like they would fall to pieces at the slightest touch.

The other supports weren’t much better. Hacked tree trunks, with little to no time spent on curing the raw lumber. It was blatant they had been hammered to place while still fresh, and as soon as the logs had dried they’d shrunk. More than one of the amateur supports looked to have completely given out due to that very reason, though luckily the tunnel itself held stable.

As they took turn after turn, passing through intersections, the oppressive darkness started to pull back. Whatever had inhabited these tunnels, or the Depths itself, had hung crude oil lanterns on every second or third support. It was weak lighting that draped the tunnels in deep shadow. Luckily, his Low Light Vision was unaffected. Nothing would be able to hide itself in a patch of darkness to ambush them when they passed.

Ducking under a support beam that had slumped, falling down to his chest height, Kaius felt Explorer’s Toolkit twinge.

“Wait. There’s a trap.” He said, stopping fast.

“Got it.” Porkchop said, halting before he backed up to give Kaius room. They’d figured out that one the hard way. Kaius wasn’t always successful at disabling the traps, and there’d been one time he’d almost gotten impaled by a spear trap when Porkchop had accidentally body blocked him.

He backed up, searching the area for any sign. His skill nudged him to the beam itself. Looking closer, careful to keep his distance, Kaius failed to spot anything that jumped out to him as wrong. No trip wires, no pressure plates, nothing suspended above.

“Hmm.” He thought to himself. Whatever had set of his skill was either supremely well disguised- unlikely at this low of a layer- or it was hiding in plain sight.

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Activating Eagle Eye Kaius winced when he was suddenly inundated with visual information. He tampered down on the skill, reducing its effect until he no longer felt like the tunnel was spinning every time he shifted his footing.

**Ding! Eagle Eye has reached level 2!**

He leaned back, taking a closer look at the support beam.

Ah. There it was. The ceiling above was covered in a spiderweb of hair fine cracks. The supports themselves were barely holding on, a fragile equilibrium held together by tension and pressure. The slightest touch could set it off. Glad he caught that. Health or no, a cave-in would have been disastrous. With no digging equipment, even if they survived there was a high likelihood that they would have been doomed to a slow death of dehydration.

With exceeding care Kaius ducked under the struts, making sure to avoid brushing up against the fragile beams.

Kaius eyed the gap, before looking at Porkchop. Luckily there would be plenty of room, as long as his friend crawled on his stomach. The tunnel was plenty wide enough.

“It’s the struts themselves. I’m pretty sure if you knock them the ceiling will come down, so you’ll probably have to crawl.”

Porkchop huffed, hunkering down to awkwardly drag his bulk across the floor as he grumbled the whole time. It was down right undignified. Kaius suppressed a chuckle with his hand.

“No laughing.” Porkchop growled. “Matriarchs would have my hide if they knew a two legged had seen me scuttle across the bloody floor,” he trailed off in a barely heard mutter.

Kaius grinned at his friend. He knew that Porkchop had meant for him to hear the last part, or it never would have made it across the mental link that all greater beasts used instinctively.

As they moved deeper into the biome, the traps grew more frequent. Some were similar to the cave-in trap, but more and more frequently they started to be crafted things. Crude, with a savage viciousness, but definitely placed by thinking beings. Log falls, rocks suspended by the roof that swung down at head level, spikes attached to springy lengths of wood and held in tension. Frequent enough that he managed to get another level in Explorer’s Toolkit.

**Ding! Explorer’s Toolkit has reached level 11!**

That surprised him. With how broad the skill was, it no longer received the full experience that Trap Sense once did. It was the problem with most legacy skills. Breadth was useful, and worth the trade off, but they grew slowly unless you went out of your way to engage with all of their aspects.

No skill was perfect though. Not even a legacy skill, and especially not at the low skill levels of an unclassed. Inevitably, Kaius eventually missed one. They had been walking through the tunnels, having yet to see any sign of the caverns that usually held depths-born.

The only warning he got was the faintest snap as his foot passed through a wire. Something slammed into the side of his chest, cracking his ribs. He fell to the ground with a gasp, clutching at the wound. Agony spread through him, clouding his mind. Porkchop yelped in surprise.

His gaze snapped up, looking for unseen enemies. Ready to move. Wound or no.

All he saw was a rough wooden spike hanging in the middle of the tunnel.

“I’m alright.” He said, waving off Porkchop’s concern. Ignoring the sharp pain in his ribs he pushed himself up to his feet. Taking a mental grip on his health he directed it to the wound. Healing it faster. He still had no confidence in using the skill in battle, it took far too much concentration, but it was incredibly useful for situations such as this.

Peering at the spike he saw that someone had dug a tall and narrow slot in the stone wall of the tunnel. A tension loaded spike trap jutted out from the opening. It’d been hidden behind the profile of one of the struts, causing him to miss it entirely.

He had less of an excuse for the snapped trip wire that now lay across the ground. A painful reminder that even skills didn’t remove the need for him to focus.

“We should slow down.” Porkchop said, moving in to look at the hidden trap himself.

“No, it was a careless mistake.” Kaius shook his head. “Let’s keep moving.”

Porkchop gave him a concerned look, but didn’t press the issue further. They moved on.

After another quarter hour, and several more traps, the tunnel started to open up. It was a cavern. Just as rough hewn as the passage Kaius looked in from, several trunk-sized logs haphazardly held up the ceiling.

Kaius ducked to the side of the tunnel, frantically gesturing at Porkchop to do the same. Inside he could see a good dozen or so creatures huddling around a small fire. They were squat green things, maybe as tall as his chest. Covered in rustic leather and spun clothes. Jagged dagger-like ears poked out from their heads, while cruel eyes were set deep into too-sharp features. Each and every one of them held a wicked looking blade.

They were as foreign to Kaius as anything. He’d never seen anything like them. Identify helped with that.

Goblin Outcast - Level 15:

Depths-born, Low Race

Kaius’s eyes widened at the notification. Goblins! That was unexpected. He turned to Porkchop, frantically waving for his friend to move back down the way he came. Porkchop assented in silence, padding away as Kaius followed close behind.

Once they were at a safe enough distance to not be heard, Kaius called for them to halt.

“Goblins! Never thought I would see one in my life. Well, not until I went north that is.” He said, still excited at the chance to see the creatures. Even if they were notoriously vile things.

“Goblins? You know what these things are?” Porkchop responded curiously.

“Yeah, sort of like a northern boggart.” He said.

Porkchop made a noise of disgust. “And this pleases you? Boggarts are a plague.”

Kaius rolled his eyes. “No, I know that. So are goblins. It’s just cool to see them after having heard so many stories from my father about them. They were his favourite monster to use whenever I asked for a scary story as a kid. Apparently they live in the northern mountain ranges. Supposed to be a major problem for the Stonehold’s.”

“I can imagine that if they are like boggarts.”

“Apparently they are worse,” Kaius said. “You know how boggarts inevitably flame out when a tribe gets too large?”

Porkchop grunted and gave Kaius a short nod.

“Yeah, goblins don’t. Imagine a boggart that was half as stupid, knew enough farming to just barely not starve, still bred like locusts, and had a tendency to fall under the banner of the biggest and meanest lump around.” Kaius chittered, gesturing wildly with excitement.

“Kaius. None of that is a good thing.”

“Uh, yeah.” He scratched his head. “I know that. But it’s still cool to see them! It’s like seeing the Hiwiann bloodstones! Barely anyone travels to the Stoneholds, and if you don’t go there, you don’t see goblins.”

“Kaius. Focus. Do you know anything that will actually help us clear this biome? Or do you just know stories.”

“Hmm.” Kaius took a moment to think. “Well, they’re not much for building. As you can probably tell by the state of these shafts we’ve been exploring. But they do have a tendency to make use of anything they find. Apparently whenever the dwarves lose one of their deep settlements it gets turned into..a..warren…” Kaius trailed off.

“So. What you’re trying to tell me is that there might just be a city of these things down here.”

“....yes?” Kaius said after a moment.

“Great. Still better than undead.” Porkchop pushed past him, striding towards the goblin camp with intention. “Let’s go.”