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

Kaius was utterly prepared for everything to go to shit.

They’d backed up a full third of the way down the hall—as far as Ianmus was confident in still being able to make the shot—to create some distance just in case. Porkchop had taken front and centre, his armour summoned, and his body braced to cover the much more fragile members of their party.

Watching Ianmus channel, all Kaius could do was gnaw the inside of his cheek. His part was done, and now he had to sit and watch as their mage did his thing.

He hated not being able to take part in the final execution of his plan, not when so much was riding on their ability to get access to some real gear.

Gnawing at his lip, Kaius tasted iron as Ianmus focused on his target with an intensity that could have melted steel. At the very least, the man was treating his task with the weight it deserved.

It did little to quell the roil in his stomach. He was sure that he identified the right bits to disable the inscription. That didn’t mean he was a master of runework, not in the same way as the vault’s creator—especially not since he lost his enhanced ability with Vhaxanish.

He could have just barely scratched the surface—fallen into false leads that the runewright had laid for this exact purpose.

Slowly, Ianmus raised his arm, gesturing towards the vault.

Heart thumping in his chest, Kaius held himself back from listening to the anxieties that screamed at him to abort their attempt—that he’d made some mistake in his evaluation of the formation. They were in too deep now. There was no backing out.

Besides, he knew that it was unlikely the runewright had gone to such lengths—such work would have been expensive. Maybe if this was the vault of a Dukedom bank, or the homebase of a powerhouse, they would have gone through the cost and effort. Not for this though. Even if this ‘Old Yon’ was clearly rich and resourceful, there was a certain level of renown you needed to even be able to procure a runewright of that skill in the first place.

Mana pulsed deep within the circular sigil that Ianmus had formed above his hand, the wavering and hazy geometry crystallising into clean lines for the barest of moments as eight thin beams snapped into existence.

Each one roared with the might of the sun—and was only visible thanks to his mana sight, and felt in the substantial heat that warmed Kaius’s face. Ianmus had used his higher energy light—perhaps to assist in melting the stone.

They varied in thickness. Some were as wide as a finger, while others looked closer to overly long needles. They sunk into wood, stone, and steel with pinpoint precision—orange glowing in the dark as the materials charred and began to melt.

A few seconds later, the beams guttered out and the eight dim glowing points began to cool as Kaius’s blood rushed louder in his ears.

“Well? Did it work?” Porkchop asked, ears pricking up as he tilted his head at the door.

“Wait a moment…” Kaius replied, fists clenched tight.

A subtle buzz filled the air a moment later as the lines of script that Ianmus had disrupted started to smoulder, and then burn.

The whine heightened in pitch, light blooming as it spread across the entire formation like wildfire—an arcane maelstrom that ate at the delicate network of runes from the inside out. Multicoloured motes drifted free from the glowing runes—similar to the burnt waste that emanated from Kaius’s own glyphs every time he cast a spell, but at a volume so dense it almost looked like arcane snow.

Then, almost as soon as it started, the light winked out—leaving a quiet door with the scorched remnants of runic magic burnt into its face.

Kaius’s breath caught in his throat. “Wait.” he said, watching the door like a hawk, unsure if they’d succeeded.

Nothing happened. No magic glowed to his Truesight and, other than the rumble above and their own breaths, the hall was utterly silent.

The door stood still and silent. Inert.

As far as he could tell, they’d done it. The vault was now just a mundane door, with a mundane—if tough—lock.

“Porkchop, break us through!” Kaius yelled as he jogged forward.

“With pleasure,” Porkchop replied with an eager chuff.

Digging his claws into the stone floor below, Porkchop lurched into a full sprint. Right before he was about to hit the door, Kaius watched his brother drop his shoulder—a pauldron backed by tonnes of muscle and stone ramming straight into the thick bar of alchemical steel that sat across the door’s centre.

The vault all but exploded. Stone shattered as the momentum of Porkchop’s charge ripped the bolt, bar and hinges straight out of their housings with a bang. A faint flash of light gleamed from what Kaius assumed was a remnant charge in the vault’s inscriptions as steel screamed and twisted around his brother’s bulk.

Released from its bindings, the door shot inwards like a loosed bolt, a cacophonous crunch sounding as it smacked into a wall just a couple of strides later. Twisted and broken, the door still lay half in its arch.

The vault proper was just as small as they’d been told.

Kaius arrived with the rest of the team close on his heels right as Porkchop was pushing himself to his feet, stone and shattered wood sliding free from his back.

“Ready to get some loot?” he grinned, feeling the chill of his brother’s armour as he slapped him on his back.

“Why do you think I ran so fast?” Porkchop chortled as he hooked his claws into the broken door and yanked it into the hallway. “Now hurry up! I’d grab it all myself, but I don’t have thumbs, or my ghosthand artefact”

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Fizzing with excitement, Kaius all but jumped towards the open door.

“Are they always like this?” he caught Kenva whispering from behind him.

Ianmus sighed. “You get used to it. They’re serious when they need to be.”

They joined him a moment later, and they peered into the newly opened space. It was a featureless box—now littered with dust and rubble—that had a single, large, nook on the left hand wall. Kept clear from the door’s violent collision, its contents had been left untouched

“My bag! And our tent” Porkchop cried, looming on his hind legs as held onto the doorframe and craned his neck into the room.

A familiar satchel lay alongside a tightly packed tent on the plinth of stone, covered in dust. Despite the obvious joy his brother felt at recovering some of his most prized belongings, Kaius paid them no mind.

Instead he stood frozen, staring at four rings that lay on a purple silk cushion, their exteriors engraved with the inscrutable runes of the system.

He knew what they likely were. He still struggled to believe it, even with the evidence staring him straight in the face.

The tugging on his soul, the one that bound him directly to A Father’s Gift? It pointed directly to one of the rings. If that wasn’t enough, they all shimmered with the faintest purples and blacks of Dimension and Space attuned mana.

Swallowing thickly, Kaius analysed it with Truesight

Wayfarer’s Spatial Ring:

Heroic - Tier I

The most prepared don’t need to choose between packing light and travelling in style.

A band of spatially attuned iron, alchemically treated before being forged into steel. Allows access to a small dimensional bubble, with a diameter of three long-strides, that may be used to store non-living and non-spatially-enchanted objects. Due to dimensional distortion, only the raw volume of stored objects affects capacity. Simple enchantments hide visible signs of the ring’s magical nature, but can be defeated by intense scrutiny or analysis.

Artisan-wrought Artefact.

Auxiliary Equipment (Dimensional Ring)

Durability III, Dimensional Container II, Inert Disguise I, Self Repair I

Kaius couldn’t help but let out a soft gasp as he read the ring’s description. A Heroic item. One that held a greater volume than Porkchop’s bag, in a far more concealable form. And there were four of them.

The simple wealth they represented would be enough for the average commoner to support himself and a hundred of their friends for the rest of their lives. In luxury.

Perhaps not an unimaginable sum to the high-tiered, or the truly wealthy, but to him? It was more money in one place than he’d ever seen before in his life.

Feeling his palms go slick, Kaius realised they needed to move, and move fast. For all he knew, that flash of mana he’d seen when Porkchop had battered down the door had been an alarm triggering. Even the simple noise of their entrance could have people already on their way to investigate.

He lurched forwards, snatching up the bag and tent before he turned and tossed them to Ianmus and Kenva. They caught them with ease—faces looking just as tense as he felt.

Scooping up the rings from their bed, Kaius clenched them tight in his fist—the cold loops feeling heavier than they had any right to.

“Let’s go—back to one of those empty rooms we passed. Hopefully one of these will have some decent gear for us.” he said, getting nods in return as his team parted for him to take the lead.

They took off at a run, pelting down the hall.

As they moved, Kaius sent a thread of mana pulsing through the rings.

It brought an impression of their contents—an awareness and image in his mind’s eye, as if each item inside was laid out in neat rows in-front of him for his perusal.

Even without a detailed accounting of each item and their statuses, what he saw nearly made him stumble.

Rare alchemical reagents by the dozens—more than a few of which looked like tightly regulated ingredients that were used in the manufacturing of magical intoxicants. Considering that same ring also had what looked to be several stone weights of powder sealed in glass jars that smelt of a wasting death and pleasant dreams, he was almost certain he was correct.

The illicit substances were just the beginning.

An alchemist’s shop’s worth of tonic and potions, a good chunk of which seemed to be poisons by the smell of them, an armoiries’ worth of gear—including his sword and the rest of their equipment that they’d had when they were captured, and a noble’s estate of assorted old vintages, art, and jewellery made up the vast majority of their haul.

But it wasn’t all of it.

While the tonics and enchanted artefacts were the most pertinent to their escape, they weren’t what held his focus in a vice grip.

That went to a small wooden trunk, unassuming and simple. Like the kind that one might store a few more fragile belongings on a long caravan trip.

Or, more accurately, the gleaming platinum coins that had filled it to the bursting. What had to be thousands of them. Maybe more.

Kaius couldn’t help it, he cackled, long and loud—drawing curious looks from his team.

“What’d you find?” Kenva asked, not slowing from her run.

“You mean what didn’t I find—we’re rich!”

And that was just at a first look! The rings held enough that they wouldn’t have anywhere near the time required to properly analyse and categorise the contents until they’d escaped to safety. The simple weight of the value of their haul was still plain as day.

This bloody ‘Old Yon’ was going to rue the day he ever learned of their existence.

Plus, the simple size of the rings would aid them well in their escape—the only thing they were missing was mundane supplies and sundries, something they should still have in abundance in their Merchant’s Saddlebags if their captors hadn’t cleared it out. Even if they had, he was a good hunter, and he doubted that a Hiwiann ranger was a slouch when it came to securing her own food.

Turning the corner at nearly a full sprint, Kaius nodded his head towards an open door five back—a meeting room he remembered seeing a number of large tables inside of.

“That one!”

They barrelled inside, Ianmus pausing to slam the door shut and lock it behind them. Kaius had already moved to the closest table, and shoved it forward with a groan of wood on stone as he barred the entrance. Large enough to seat twelve, Kaius hoped it would delay any pursuers if they were discovered.

Racing back, Kaius skidded to a halt by one of the two remaining tables. Threading mana into the ring that held the collection of artefacts, he started to dump out equipment as fast as he could withdraw it.

He didn’t bother to sort through them in the ring—with both Ianmus and Kenva having analysis skills, it would be far faster to work together to pick out what they could use.

At first, his team was tense—worried about time. As gleaming cuirass after shining necklace after carved shield was laid out is a growing pile of power and wealth, they shifted to a silence driven by disbelief, jaws slackening in shock.

“That is a lot of loot,” Porkchop said suspiciously. “Are we sure that we’re not dead?”

“I said we were rich!” Kaius said, only half suppressing a giggle as he stared at the small mountain of artifacts piled high on the table.

“Now help me sort this!” he said, summoning his sword last as he buckled its scabbard back to his waist where it belonged with careful reverence. “We need to get geared.”