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

Kaius lurched towards his brother, laying his hands on the dense and gore drenched fur that coated the meles’ thick muscle-bound form. He felt his brother’s physique straining, fibres snapping as they pulled away from bones that shattered of their own violation.

Panic surged through him, his heart racing as he watched Porkchop undergo some sort of metamorphic change, more akin to something he would have expected to see in the Fleshwarper’s Laboratory than a natural process.

Porkchop’s head snapped back as his thick neck contracted uncontrollably, feature’s warping as the bone and cartilage of his face snapped in a dozen splintering crunches. His features shifted, expanding as muscle and skin tore, and new flesh arose to take its place.

Before Kaius’s very eyes, his coat began to shift. It stayed the same tinted black, but the red morphed, shifting to a green so deep it was almost the colour of scorched slate, only showing its inner hue under the shine of the false sun above. A ring of milky white sprouted from his neck, dripping down to the top of his chest and running along a section of his spine as the ruff of his neck lengthened- turning into a half-mane.

He realised what was happening and took a step back, crossing his arms in annoyance.

“Porkchop, you fucking asshole. You could’ve mentioned that awakening your bloodline came with a side dose of body horror.” Kaius muttered.

His bond-brother did not respond, insensate as his jaw dislocated with a stomach churning crackle-pop and the bone shattered and grew. At least it was obvious now why he’d wanted his barding removed. Depths-wrought enchantments were generally more flexible than artisan made ones, but everything had its limit. Who knew if its resizing enchantment would have stood up to the growth. Then Porkchop’s claws fell off.

Kaius shuddered, watching the strings of tissue that tied the daggers that once capped his brother’s digits snap as new talons grew in their place. They were…stone-like. A slightly translucent forest green, it looked to be some sort of crystal that had been honed to an edge so sharp it seemed like it would cut him with a bare look.

Cocking an eyebrow, he looked on in interest. Now that he knew Porkchop’s life was not at risk, there was a certain morbid fascination in watching his bond-brother’s body dismantle and then rebuild itself, and by holy fuck was he getting big.

He’d already been a living weapon before, roughly bear sized and tall enough to come up to the bottom of Kaius’s chest. It looked like he would be taller than him at the shoulder now, at the very least. Though, it was hard to tell with how oddly proportioned he was, what being mid-evolution and all.

That wasn’t all, if his brother had been built like a strongman raised on a diet of whole cattle before, now it looked as though his muscles had muscles.

That was…moderately terrifying. There was a reason greater beasts were so feared. Considering how strong his brother would be due to his sheer physicality, the improvement from his stats would be all the more impressive.

Shaking his head in amazement, Kaius stepped back and waited for his brother to return to him.

…

Kaius watched Porkchop stretch, his face still a little pale from watching his brother’s body crack and morph as he settled into a new, empowered, form.

Rolling his shoulders, Porkchop ambled up to his feet, though he stumbled a little on legs that looked to be much longer and more powerful than he was used to. Kaius whistled as he took in his brother’s new height.

“Fuck me, you’re huge.” he said, mouth agape as he looked up at Porkchop’s green shrouded face.

Porkchop’s ears twitched, and his head snapped towards him. He moved, bounding over to Kaius and smothering him in a wall of blood streaked fur.

Kaius laughed, wrapping his arms around his brother and heaving in an attempt to leverage his newly enhanced Strength to muscle Porkchop to the ground. He was about as successful as he would have been trying to uproot a fully grown oak.

Porkchop batted him back with casual ease, sending him stumbling to the side before he started to rear up in excitement.

“Kaius! I did it too! Got a Heroic!” Porkchop said, exhilaration and pride streaming across their bond.

“Really! That’s great! What did you get?” Kaius asked excitedly, slipping under and away from Porkchop’s descending paws. “And be careful of those claws, they look sharp.” he chastised, staring at the spots where they had dug into the solid stone floor.

“Whoops, sorry.” Porkchop replied bashfully, settling down onto his haunches.

It still left the meles clearing his height easily, which felt… odd. Porkchop had never exactly been small, even at his old height he was taller on his hind legs, but being trounced when his brother was sitting was something else entirely.

Not that it made him uncomfortable. With how often Porkchop ended up getting walloped due to his rather…direct fighting style, he needed all the physical advantages he could get. Kaius sincerely hoped that whatever his brother had gained from his bloodline would be enough to avoid a repeat of what had happened with the Guardian. Seeing him shattered and broken as he tried to crawl away from the siege ogre had been one of the most terrifying things he had ever experienced.

Evidently his old worry seeped through their link, as he was treated to a cold nose the size of his palm smushing into his forehead.

“No worrying! The ancestral blood didn’t just make me bigger, the magic of the transformation will have increased my baseline even more than what simple size would do. Besides, one of us needs to draw our enemies ire, and you are much more suited to dealing out damage quickly. I picked the Warden of Sacred Jade with that in mind.” Porkchop explained.

“Oh?” Kaius said, reaching up to scratch Porkchop behind his ear. His brother reacted as he always had, leaning into his touch. It gladdened him, physical change or no, he was still the same old Porkchop. “Going for the path of the bastion, then?”

It did make sense. Porkchop’s legacy skills were well bent towards drawing attention and persisting through the fire of battle. Yet he would have had to get something good. While all bastions relied on appropriate skills and tough bodies, without fail they lended themselves towards heavy armour and impenetrable defences. Things that would prevent wounds. Even if all you took was light cuts, standing as the anchor of a battle would mean that eventually enough of them would accumulate to do you in.

“If you’re doing that we’re going to have to invest in some heavier barding. Full plate at least, if not heavy-plate. I’m sure we’ll find someone in Deadacre who could do it, but we’ll probably need to commission it, and it won’t be cheap. Thank the gods we’ve got a few artefacts we can part with, I think we should be able to cover it with the blink daggers.” Kaius said, already planning how he could support Porkchop to the best of his ability. They were a team, and with how little equipment Porkchop generally needed he would have to be a complete miser not to splash out on something good for something so central.

“Self Repair and Durability at the very least, though I might need to sell off the helm to make that happen, I could do with some simple steel for a while.” he muttered, scratching at his chin.

“No, we don’t! I got a good pick for my first bloodline skill, see?” Porkchop interrupted him, before he backed up a few paces.

Kaius cocked his head in interest. “Oh?”

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“Watch!” Porkchop said with a grin.

Mana flared within his brother’s chest, building to a crescendo over a handful of seconds as Porkchop focused with intensity. Whatever skill he had gained, it was taking a lot of mana for a skill in the first tier.

The accumulated power peaked, glowing with the shimmering colour of crystal affinity, though strangely tainted by a shining green. It rushed forth, exploding from his brother’s body in a forceful wave to settle heavily against his fur.

Kaius’s jaw dropped.

Wherever the mana touched, thick slabs of heavy jade were left in their place. Bound to each other by oddly delicate chains of the same material, they formed an impressive suit of barding. Heavy-plate barding, though it looked oddly incomplete.

Almost rough cut, the angled plates of jade conformed to Porkchop’s body. A gorget and chestplate covered his front and neck, while more overlapping plates stretched up his neck and down the top of his spine. A skullcap of barely transparent greenstone was affixed to his head, while a stout nose-guard stretched down his snout.

More sections hung from the spine armour, draping over his ribs and forming into short half-pauldrons that left his legs free and mobile.

As the armour popped into existence, Porkchop let out a soft grunt as he adjusted to the added weight and bulk of his summoned armour.

“I…What?” Kaius said, shocked. When Porkchop had said that bloodlines were similar to classes, he had expected the skills to be a little more aligned to primal and beastly flavours. Something that summoned armour was nowhere near the top of his list of what he had been expecting. “Is this…normal?”

Porkchop snorted. “What, for a beast to get skills that let them use and create two-legged things like plate? No, absolutely not. As far as I can tell, our bond might be having some influence on our options.”

“But that is besides the point! Look at this! Much better than leather and piddly metal.” Porkchop said excitedly, craning his neck to take in his new skill produced defences. “It’s called Celadon Aegis.”

Kaius grinned, with this he felt much better about leaving Porkchop to push the assault while he mopped up. It was a nigh on perfect combo. One agile, one stout, and both capable of dishing out significant offensive power, they would be terrors.

Though he did wish that the armour covered a bit more. The jade plates had plenty of gaps, and left Porkchop’s limbs and flank relatively undefended, like a beastly version of a breastplate and helm.

“What’s its scaling like? Anything other than basic improvements?” He asked.

“Breakpoints, like your glyph. Though a little better at every fifty levels. Improves the armour’s coverage.” Porkchop said, dismissing the skill. The armour plates dissolved like smoke, dissipating into glowing mana that dispersed into the surrounding air. “What about you, have you had a chance to test Stormlash yet?”

Kaius smiled. “No, I thought I would wait until you got back. Practically the hardest thing I’ve done.”

“Well, what are you waiting for! Let’s see!” Porkchop replied, his ears twitching in excitement as he launched to his feet.

Kaius grinned, and turned off to the side, facing towards a nearby cluster of statues. They would serve as good a target as any.

Dropping his hand to his side, he felt for the inscriptions that spiralled out from his Drakthar glyph. They pulsed in his mind with barely constrained potency, ready and willing to leap to his call.

The barest brush of will was all it took. Chained mana was unleashed, surging through runic circuits in moments. Pure arcane was shifted, changed, and reforged, unleashing with crackling might.

One jagged line of script that wrapped his thumb and crept around his wrist smouldered with orange light, dissolving in a shower of sparks as the spell hymn was burnt.

Stormlash activated, a peal of thunder booming as a thick rope of crackling plasma appeared in his hand. He could feel its electrifying might charging the surrounding air, the hairs on the back of his arm rising.

It lashed like a living thing. Potent, aggressive, vindictive.

He moved on instinct, guided by the thrumming intent of his spell. With the barest flick of his wrist, bound lightning snapped towards the statue with a crack and a blinding flash of light. It lashed around the statue’s throat, before two more cracks echoed out in quick succession and the spell jumped to two more in a chain.

Electric blue lightning mana surged as stone hissed and scorched, Stormlash writhing as arcing beams of purple lanced off the bolt to strike at the statues. Reverberations shook the statue, cracking stone in a shower of dust. Resonance Amplification at work, no doubt.

Then it was over, the lightning disappearing with as much suddenness as it had been formed.

Kaus gaped at the result of his spell, staring at cracked and scorched stone, at the molten details on the statues neck where Stormlash had produced enough virulent heat to soften stone. The reverberation had been potent too, finger length cracks running down the chest of the statue. Hells, even the light. He was sure that without Truesight the lightning would have been bright enough to leave burnt-in afterimages floating in his vision. Though, he did expect that would be of limited utility in battle as he grew in levels. Simple mundane effects like that would have little effect on someone with significant Endurance.

But the sheer power. For a moment there, before he had cast, he could feel it. The constrained might of a storm, held in the palm of his hand. That was… too much. Far more than what should have been possible from a simple tier one spell. If this was the power of a Heroic class and skill, what would happen when he rose through the tiers? What if he managed to increase its rarity?

Then, before he could muster his senses, Porkchop tackled him from the side - driving him to the floor.

“Kaius! That was fucking awesome!” He said, nuzzling him affectionately and managing to smear him with cold blood once more.

He couldn’t help but laugh, though he did shove Porkchop off so that he could get to his feet, “I just held a fucking lightning bolt, what the fuck!”

Kaius wiped off the worst of the gore, before frowning at the smudge of green on his hand. “That said, we need to get cleaned up. No way in hell am I going back into the Sea so…sticky. That, and see if your fat ass will still fit into your barding.”

“Hey!” Porkchop replied, indignant.

Kaius simply laughed and went to collect their things.

“Come on! Fast job’s a good one.”

…

In the end, returning to the manor to resupply and get cleaned up took them barely more than an hour. With how close they were to leaving the Depths, neither he nor Porkchop were keen on wasting any time before their return to the forest.

Damp and clean, they hurried to redress. To both their delights, Porkchop still fit his barding, and a quick test proved that it still worked with his Aegis. Somewhat at least, apparently it chafed terribly. Unfortunately, with their designs on the plunder held in the kitchens, they had need of it if they wanted to carry out as many artisanal spices and foodstuffs as they could carry. The spices especially. With how expensive and exotic most were, Kaius knew that there would be many that he would most likely never get the chance to try again.

Given how light they were, and how far they stretched, he planned on getting everything.

That said, they did decide it would be for the best to sell off the light barding at the soonest opportunity. They could replace it with something more designed for utility. Some simple padded leather to cover the gaps in Porkchop’s Aegis, and saddlebags for their gear.

After storming the kitchen with the rabid fury of a full troop of pillaging raiders, they returned to the mountaintop weighed down heavily with their spoils. No matter what happened next, they would be eating like kings for a week at least. Though, probably not much longer if Porkchop’s appetite had increased to match his new size.

Skirting around pools of blood, they approached their target. The glowing circle of runes that dominated the plateaus centre. They shone with crackling potency, pulsing as they grew closer.

Kaius stared at them with open fascination, still struggling to truly believe that they had actually made it. That they were finally here, finally leaving.

They stopped at the edge, both of them staring at the threshold. All it would take was a single step, and yet both of them felt the heavy weight of the moment, its primacy and dominance.

Kaius looked to his left, a grin slipping out when he realised he had automatically looked at Porkchop’s chest, where his head would have once been. He tilted his head up, finding his brother already watching him with green-flecked-gold eyes.

“Together?” He asked, raising his hand to place it on Porkchop’s shoulder.

“Together, no matter what.”

They stepped forwards, crossing the threshold, ready to take on the world as men grown.

**Ding! Portal Entered!**

**Descend?****Exit?**

**Personalised Guardian Loot will be provided on selection of either option.**