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

Porkchop charged, activating his amulet to crush through the final thrum of goblins that had packed themselves into the tight alley separating the two manors. Depths-born screamed as their bones cracked, the force of Porkchop’s charge crushing them underfoot. Sending them rocketing into allies and richly carved stone alike. Bursting through to the other side of the dense crowd, Porkchop turned and started to tear into the goblins’ flank.

Kaius waded into the fray, the cracked blade of A Father’s Gift lopping off heads and caving in skulls. The goblins were disoriented. Off balance. It made it disgustingly easy. A bruiser leapt to its feet, crawling out from beneath the shattered body of one of its allies to charge at him. He caught the blow, parrying it. Spinning his blade into an overhand strike that cleaved into its head. Spraying him with blood as it dropped.

Forced into a dense mob, tangled into a mosh of bodies and beset from both sides, the group of goblins descended into disordered mayhem. Kaius swept through their line like he was harvesting wheat. Each swing leaving more dead bodies in his wake. Some managed to muster a lacklustre defence, trying and failing to assault him with club and knife. They only served to charge his new vambraces as he deftly turned their attacks. Following through with perfectly timed fatal ripostes. Adding to the pile of bodies that littered the alleys.

The clean up didn’t take much longer after that.

Joining Porkchop on the street, Kaius stood panting. Staring out over the devastation they had just wrought. Dozens of short green bodies littered the wide and richly decorated street. The perfectly polished flagstones stained with dark green blood. They’d been set upon as soon as they had arrived in this newest section of the city. Barely making it a block before a horde had descended upon them.

Thankfully, it seemed the dwarves were far more lavish with their living arrangements than the austere military and crafting compounds below had suggested. Each house had a high slanted roof, immaculately tiled in stone. Providing very little viable vantage points for the archers. They’d crushed them first, weak and undefended that they were when confined to the street level.

It had taken them the better part of an hour to climb the gargantuan staircase that snaked its way up the outer wall of the next district. Long enough that the false sun above had once again begun to dim. Arriving at the top they had been greeted with yet another twisted and shattered metal door. Though it had been far more ornamented than the external gate, inlaid in gold and silver.

On the other side, they had found the wide street that he now stood on, regular posts topped with wire wrapped crystals providing a soft even lighting to the surrounding opulent houses. They were impressive things. Kaius looked away from the alley, roaming his eyes over the immaculately carved gothic engravings of the manors. They were tall, narrow things. Sharing walls with their neighbours. Tight little alleys leading to streets deeper into the district every dozen or so houses.

He was glad they had decided to make the climb before settling in to work on his next skills. Looking through wide, impossibly flat, glass windows, he could see each and every interior was decorated with plush furniture, art, and every type of fixture one could want in an abode.

Much better than hanging out in a barracks for a month or two.

Kaius wiped his sword, running his fingers over the chipped blade. Already they had started to shrink, filling out by a few hair’s breadths at most as the Self Repair enchantment went to work. Still, much like his scalemail it would most likely take at least a day to repair itself, if not more. Unfortunately, nowhere near as fast as his clothing. It was a simple fact that enhanced metal was harder to regenerate than cloth and leather - even the magically saturated kind.

Porkchop padded over to him, daintily stepping around pools of blood despite his paws already being absolutely saturated.

“Ready to check one out?” He scratched Porkchop on the head. “I’m dying to get this skill merged.”

“Lead the way, I want to lie on a bed again. I can’t believe how soft they are.”

Kaius laughed. Porkchop was in for a surprise. The thin barrack mattresses they had slept on the previous night barely even met the definition. He had no doubt that with how fancy everything else he could see in the windows of the various manors, the beds they would find would be massive feather stuffed things.

Though he should probably help Porkchop wash his paws before he ruined a perfectly good bed, he thought, eying the state of his friend’s gore-ridden feat.

He led them back the way they had come, wanting to pick a manor that didn’t have a pile of corpses right outside. He gave them a day at most before the next couple of streets started to reek, and he didn’t need that sort of distraction when working on his runes.

Picking a four story narrow villa that was near their entrance to the district, Kaius pushed open the heavy front door. Much like the section below, the houses here were immaculate, untouched, and absolutely laden with dust.

The first thing they did was open all the windows, spending a few hours cleaning out the thick layer of grime as best they could. It was nowhere near clean. But it was liveable. Taking a moment to ransack the kitchen, Kaius set himself up in a massive study. Dominated by a large desk, floor to ceiling bookcases lined the walls, while a daybed and a pair of armchairs sat around an unlit fireplace.

Almost immediately Kaius made a beeline for the books. Tearing one open in the hopes of finding some information on the city and its lost inhabitants. Foreign glyphs returned to him. A strange script with blocks, angular lettering that linked discrete works into solid blocks of sigils. Utterly unreadable.

That was … odd. Everyone spoke Common. Sure, there were variations on writing style. Some severe enough to make them barely legible. But it was all the same language. How else were you supposed to read the system if you couldn’t speak Common? I mean sure, it was possible for different languages to exist. Runes had dozens of different scripts after all. For everyday use though? Why would you use anything other than the words of the system?

Maybe it was a cypher. Or some sort of constructed language like hidden societies were supposed to use. Shrugging to himself, he slotted the book back home, reaching for another. More foreign script. The same as the previous book. Odd. Very odd.

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Returning to the fireplace, Kaius found Porkchop already napping on the day bed. He smiled, settling into one of the armchairs.

Closing his eyes he visualised the centre of his being. Tingles spread out in a wave from his spine, raising the hairs on his arms. It was time to merge his next legacy skill. Another step forward on his path. True Sight was finally in hand.

It was a supreme ocular skill, one that supposedly focused on truth and revelation. An apparent key-stone of his family’s long history of successful delvers if his father was to be believed. One of the few stories Father had told him of their dynasty. Letting it slip with a casual comment when he was teaching him the necessary methods to acquire its base skills.

He scoured his inner space, seeing his ten general skills orbiting calmly around the burning light of his soul. Four screamed out to him, their essence gushing forth in great waves to flavour the surrounding void.

The mutable, shifting defence of Rapid Adaptation.

The iron scented tang of Warforged, crystalised and constrained by the unclassed skill cap of twenty.

The furtive and alert curiosity of Explorer’s Toolkit.

The implacable flexibility and staunch rigidity of Adamant Body.

He turned his mind away from the skill, ignoring their calls for his attention. Their want. Their need to be included in what was to happen next. With each skill their siren song grew. The pull on his willpower strengthening.

The remaining six were lesser things. Dim and transparent to the sheer hyper-realised power of his legacy skills.

Soulfire leapt to his command, weaving itself into a tightrope. He dove for the first skill, tasting the impressions of Low Light Vision. It was a fascinating thing, clawing at the dark to reveal its secrets. Revelling in the comfort of an ease of sight beyond even the natural born denizens of the night. Light revealed all, but it was satisfyingly unselective. Piercing the shadow of dark through one’s own ability was much more satisfying. So many secrets for one to claim for themselves.

The cord of radiant illumination snapped in place. His legacy skills called to him, begging to be next. He moved on. Shifting his focus to his next capped skill.

T’was the mind of dreamers. Of artists, mathematicians, architects, generals, artisans, mages, explorers and more. A simulation as comfortable with rearranging furniture as it was displaying the impossible whorls of a grandmaster runesmiths sigils. It reeked of cold analysis, loving memories, and curious fascination. Mental Visualisation was a skill that contained multitudes, happy to reflect what he needed in perfect clarity.

His web of meaning and self grew, another thread of his soul thrumming as it enmeshed with the central power of the skill. His other skills were screaming now. Demanding that he return to them, to their flawless beauty. He shut them out. He’d grown since his last merge. His willpower was stronger, the fire of his soul more fierce. Boosted by the stats he had earned with his Honour.

His heart thumped with slow regularity as he turned his attention to the next part of True Sight.

Sense Illusion was the cold pyre of righteous conviction. The unyielding steel of truth. To deny fact was delusion. To twist the definable into false reality was heresy. Corrupting what things are into what they could be, treason. Fanatical certainty bled through the aura of the skill. Burning with a light that cared only for what was.

He coaxed another luminous thread from his soul, shutting out the wails of his legacy. Sense Illusion drank in the connection, suffusing with his Self.

Next was a power that shone with the light of a scholar. The mind of mania. Of spirits and hidden things. A magical world revealed. The engine of power that lay beneath the cold life of the material. Amorphous, ever changing, and always waiting. Needing just the right hand to shape and guide. To open the gap and allow the mystical to tear control from the material. This was a skill uninterested in such works. Preferring the joy of a voyeur. One that did not wish to effect change, only to peep at a truth most were blind to. Sense Mana.

More soulfire wove its way through his innermost conflagration. He could feel them now, clawing at his attention. The strain slowly hammering at his mind. It was still weak. Growing slow enough that he knew he could finish the merge without too much strain. But it was there. The mergers wouldn’t be so easy. Especially not once another voice joined the choir.

His focus shifted, honing in on a pleading supplicant. It had no will, no power of its own. Only that which let it beg harder, beg louder to its lord. One that simply wished to know. It wasn’t asking much. No great secrets, no exploitable weaknesses. Nothing that its monarch would truly have to ponder. All it wanted was a taste. A mere glimpse of what its lord witnessed through its omnipresent vision. A simple description of the world. A name. A fragment from the book of all things. Please.

Identify.

The connection snapped in place. Only a single piece remained. Focus narrowed, the final skill filling his mind.

The world was a beautiful thing, so full of details. An endlessly tessellated pattern that only grew into coherency through the obscuring haze of comfortable distance. A false coherency. The mountain on the horizon lied, hiding its rocks and bushes. The smooth consistency of a hares coat cackling in successful deceit, drowning the calls for justice of a thousand thousand individual hairs. Each in turn masking the plea’s of impossibly small building blocks. Clarity existed in accuracy. Truth, in precision. Without acuity, neither was possible. Eagle Eye.

Kaius hauled on his soul. Spinning out soulfire as fast as he could. Hurriedly connecting the last skill to his web before the screams of his other legacy skills could shake his conviction. Moving with surety and purpose he forged his chain from skill to skill. Each nexus of power lighting up like a beacon as they joined a greater whole. Pulsing, howling with furore and anticipation. The last skill snapped into place.

The web burned, a shock wave of meaning buffeting his soul. Sending ripples through his radiant soul. Buffeting his gaseous resources. Thrumming with power.

**Ding! Skill Merge Detected! Would you like to proceed?**

Kaius let go. Allowing the irresistible gravity of meaning to pull his skills into one. Dissolving them. Crushing their essence into a new liquid form. Crystalising into a higher truth.

A flash of revealing light, and it was done.

**Ding! Skill Merged! True Sight obtained!**