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

The ogre opened its tusk-ridden mouth wide and bellowed a cacophonous challenge. It stood in the middle of the carved plateau that made up the summit of the dwarven city, surrounded on all sides by a garden of lovingly carved statues.

Shimmering blue walls had sealed in the summit, linking the many columns that lined its edge. Kaius ignored the surprise barrier; it was always going to be do or die, a lack of escape meant nothing.

Like a physical wave, the roar echoed through the massive cavern, punching deep into Kaius’s chest. He was already sprinting forwards. The ogre heaved on its massive iron wrapped club, shattering one of the many statues that surrounded it with a contemptuous swing. Thanks to the Jack Rabbit tonic that he had imbibed, every touch of foot against stone sent him sailing through the air as he rapidly closed the distance - wind whistling past his ears.

Even though he was still at least a good hundred odd long-strides from his target, shrapnel from the shattered statue showered him, plinking off of his cuirass and helmet. A testament to the Siege Ogre’s power.

As he ran, Porkchop peeled away from him, moving through the questionable cover of the widely spaced sculptures to flank the Guardian. If there was to be any hope of it working, Kaius knew he had to hold the ogre’s attention.

Half the distance between them disappeared in an instant, his full sprint eating away at the gap. He gestured towards the ogre with his off hand, aiming for one of its sunken and beady eyes as his hand glittered with the detritus of burnt runes. An azure shard, nearly as big as one of his forearms, crackled with magical potency as it substantiated and then shot forwards. The runic hymn screamed through the air, calling out in violence and hate as its empowered form sparked with arcane discharge, Lunar Wisdom at work.

His heart thumped, a breath catching in his throat as he watched the spell with focused intensity. Howling in fury at his assault, the ogre lifted one torso sized hand to shield its face.

The azure shard slammed into its palm, shattering bones and tearing a ragged hole through its flesh. A small one. As it ruptured through the other side of its hand, it disintegrated, showering the ogre’s face in scintillating shards that gouged into its skin.

A bassy scream of pain and fury echoed out, stinging Kaius in the ears. Dark green blood poured from the wound he had left in its free hand, coating its face in gore as it swatted at the lingering arcane embers that had settled on its face after the dissolution of his spell.

With his enhanced acuity he saw the exact moment it closed its eyes. Explorer’s Toolkit screamed.

An opening.

He thrust out his left hand, aiming for its knee. There was no way he was leaving this to chance. He’d watched his spells eviscerate champions, and even empowered the most violent weapon in his arsenal had done far less to its palm. In moments golden rain fell from his hand as Kaius unleashed a salvo of Arcane Bolts, four crystalline missiles screaming through the air to punch into the joint.

A terrible crack sounded out across the plateau as his bolts slammed home with preternatural accuracy. The ogre cried out once more. It tried to move, tried to get out of the way, but the speed of his pre-prepared casting left almost no gap between his attacks.

Cartilage, bone, and flesh exploded out the back of the ogre’s leg, coating a statue of an enrobed magi behind it in gore.

The Guardian stumbled, but it didn’t fall.

His blood froze. The ogre roared.

Lashing out in fury, it whipped its club into another statue, sending chunks of stone flying towards him. Kaius tracked them with his eyes, sliding to the side and bending at his hips as Uncanny Dodge pinged him with a half dozen warnings. Blurring with speed, Kaius danced through the deadly granite rain, growling in frustration as a shower of lesser shards left light cuts on his exposed face.

Stepping towards him, the ogre stumbled on its ruined leg, barely able to put any weight on its partially shattered joint. It started to limp towards him. Slowly.

Kaius let out a sigh of relief. At the very least its injured leg had massively hampered its mobility. He would have much preferred if it was completely disabled of course, without any remaining spells he had to commit to melee, and a downed ogre was one much less capable of squashing him like a bug.

He could feel Porkchop lying in wait behind the Guardian, ready and waiting for him to begin his assault. They moved as one, racing forwards to challenge their opponent.

Thrumming through his veins with violent intensity, his blood started to sing as the ogre focused on him with a scowl.

Nothing could compare to this, the sheer rush of staring death in the face and daring it to try harder. There was always something bigger, something more vicious, and something more deadly waiting over the next horizon. Kaius wasn’t going to stop until every last one fell before him, and he stood at the summit.

Joy bled across his link with Porkchop, a visceral synchronicity of shared violent delights resonating between them. Kaius grinned, feral and bloodthirsty. He’d always known his bond-brother was a kindred spirit, but it was something else entirely to feel it.

The ogre howled, muscles in its arm and chest rippled under warted and calloused skin as it smashed its club towards him in a great sideways swipe. Multiple skills twinged, all at once. True Vision mapped the path of the club perfectly, while Explorer’s Toolkit and Uncanny Dodge worked in unison to evaluate exactly where and how he was threatened, even as the later joined with Adamant Body to help him move.

Kaius lept upwards, flicking his legs up and out of the path of the hunk of banded wood that was as thick as his shin was long. He leaned back into his vault, feeling the air whistle through the scales of his armour as the club sailed underneath him, missing him by barely a hair as it skitter-crashed its way across the reinforced dwarven stone.

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Feet touched the ground; he dashed in.

In a moment he stood before the ogre, pivoting his wrists to send A Father’s Gift into a blurring arc of a high cut. The point of his blade bit into the Guardians leathery skin, tearing its way through the base of the creature’s belly. Blood spilled free, but no entrails. No viscera. Even with masterwork steel and masterwrought enchantments, he still struggled to pierce the armour-like hide and thick blubber thanks to his poor angle and leverage, only just barely nicking the muscle.

The ogre roared, swiping down at him with its free hand and mana pulsed deep in the core of its chest.

Its first skill.

His senses tuned in, and Kaius danced back with skill-enhanced dexterity, out of the path of the blow. The ogres palm hit the ground in a clap of thunder, spraying dust and spilled green blood. Stone crashed, a wave of force emanating out from the blow and ringing him like a bell. Kaius gasped, whatever skill the Siege Ogre used punching clean through his warded armour to brutalise the soft flesh of his innards. A cough preceded the thick taste of iron coating his tongue.

Health roared free from his pool, staunching a dozen screaming wounds that coated his damaged internals. Spitting blood to clear his airway, Kaius wasted no time, launching himself into a deep lunge to plant a stride of steel into the already injured palm of the Guardian. His blade point punctured into the side of the hole his spell had left, avoiding its armoured skin as he did his best to sever the rope-like ligaments that ran along its bones.

It was like trying to cut through a steel chain.

Releasing a grunt that sounded closer to the boom of a landslide, the ogre whipped its hand back, forcing Kaius to disengage as it tried to swat him once more. A grimace crossed its grossly distended jaw as it forced its injured leg to bear its weight and heaved its banded club into a wild smash.

Kaius was already moving, a premonition of danger surging through his nervous system like a wildfire, priming his body for action. Deep in a lunge as he was, he forced all of his system enhanced strength into his front leg, quads burning as Stamina was consumed to fuel his superhuman movement. He launched up, and out, the club sailing underneath him once more.

That was when he felt Porkchop strike. Tapping into the well of power in the amulet suspended around his neck, Kaius’s bond-brother charged forwards with weighty primal fury. Azure talons, extensions of his own iron-hard digging claws, thrust out - ready and willing to tear into the flesh of the giant.

Porkchop hit the back of the ogres leg like an avalanche, stride long implements of death plunging deep into its ruined leg, widening the already viscous wound.

As strong and monstrous as it was, nothing took a magically enhanced charge from a King of the Forest with ease. Kaius’s lips slipped into a rictus grin as the Guardian bellowed in surprised agony, its leg giving out beneath it.

It fell to the ground on its injured knee, the joint crunching as the impact kicked up dust. The ground quaked.

His access blocked to the wound, Porkchop tore into the creature’s hamstrings with gusto, using the full weight of his body to drive his claws deep into the sensitive muscle.

Dazed as it was by the sudden, blindsiding assault, Kaius felt the opening. Its arms had dropped to arrest its fall. His hand blurred to the bandolier at his chest and he ripped a blink-knife free. Hurling the knife at the Guardians face, it spun end over end.

Calloused hide, even that as thick as the ogre’s, was no match for the armour penetrating enchantment of the thrown weapon. It flinched, then reeled as the needle fine point of the knife sank into the corner of its eye.

Kaius hissed in displeasure. He’d missed. While the wound had certainly pained his foe, a wound to the tear duct wasn’t going to blind it. A moment later there was a pop of displaced air as the knife reappeared in his bandolier, dripping with green blood.

Pained and beset from all sides, the ogre screamed in frustrated fury. It balled it’s free hand into a fist, swiping it behind him in a hammering blow. Kaius’s breath caught in his throat. Porkchop tried to move. He was just a hair too slow, the weighty blow clipping his shoulder as he pulled back.

Giant strength was more than enough to send Kaius’s bond brother flying back, the pain of a cracked shoulder bleeding through their link. Porkchop withstood the blow with a stoic snarl, shoving the agony down deep as bestial vigour and platinum skill allowed him to push on. Digging his claws into the stone for traction, he threw himself back into the fight.

His fear replaced by righteous fury, Kaius raced back in. Two more blink knives shot towards the ogre’s face. It was ready for them this time, bringing its free hand back around to its front to ward off the stinging projectiles.

Enchanted knives sunk into its forearms. Against its bulk, they may have as well been gnat bites.

Great hissing gusts of ill contained dimwitted hatred whistled out between the tusks of the ogre. It raised its club, planting the weapon tip first on the ground with a crack of stone. Muscles as big as he was contracted on its leading leg. It rose.

Kaius darted in, spinning around a contemptuous slap to try for an arterial strike at its groin. His blade sunk in, nearly a stride of steel releasing a tide of blood from its flesh. Porkchop wasn’t going to be out done, lunging forwards to sink his teeth into the back of the creature’s calf.

They barely did anything.

It was too large. Too thick. Too mighty.

Kaius’s eyes flicked to the wounds on its knee, drinking in the injured joints state in seconds. They were still enormous. Even with the regenerative panacea of Health, the injuries were simply too big to heal quickly. Unfortunately, even if a wound of that size would mean his own end, it was a light wound to the Guardian.

It swiped at him again, still rising from its half-kneel. Kaius twisted, lashing out at the passing forearm that was thicker than his waist, his blade cutting lightly into the meat. The ogre growled, lashing out again.

Despite his harrying, the Guardian rose once more to its full height, barely worse for wear. It hefted its club, causing him to tense, only for it to slam it down tipfirst once more, shattering one of the gargantuan flagstones that paved the plateau.

Its head tipped back. Its warted chest expanded as it sucked in air, leaving itself open. Kaius blurred, taking the opportunity to fall into a vicious stream of slashes, widening the wounds on its knee.

They needed it disabled.

Paying them no mind, the ogre let loose an ear piercing roar. Mana streamed from its centre, coalescing and suffusing its flesh. Kaius noted it instantly. It was channelling.

Screaming a warning through his bond for Porkchop to pull back, he launched away from the ogre, creating distance. Whatever its second skill was, he wanted time to react.

A stride. A handful. Then a few dozen.

Its mana pulsed. The Guardian snapped its head towards him, cruel beady eyes shining with malevolence.

Doom screamed.

It took a step. The ground cratered. A multi-ton, wall-breaking missile shot towards him as if launched out of a trebuchet.