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

The ruinbringer’s tails spasmed, dragging furrows through the sand in spite of being separated from its body. Feeling the grievous wound they had inflicted—depriving it of its most dangerous weapons—the scorpion screamed, throwing itself at Porkchop in a furious rage.

Kaius laughed, a dark sound full of anger that seemed to actively claw its way out of his throat. They’d done it, removed the sole threat that remained to their backline. Now he could attack, and bring rage and ruin against the creature who had injured his friend so severely.

As his brother met the beast’s charge in a clash of chitin and crystal, he raced in with his blade held in a key guard, hilt pulled tight to his shoulder, and point trained on his foe. The world blurred, Slip Step removing the hold of mortal distance from him.

Arrows flew past him, each one sinking precisely into the sharp cracks that dotted the creature’s body—preventing the scorpion’s health from sealing its natural armour. Focused as it was on Porkchop, Explorer’s Toolkit pulled him towards an exposed crack in its right pincer.

His eyes flashed, blood roaring in his ears as he tapped into his Rend and Bladerite—arcane fire burning on his crystal blade. Touching the ground, he exploded into a thrust. A Father’s Gift shot right through the thin gap in its carapace, tasting its ichor for the first time. Kaius grunted as his blade suddenly slowed, forcing him to leverage even more of his strength to sink it deeper—struggling to cut through the weakened chitin even with the enhancement of his Bladerite.

Ripping his blade free as his Mystic’s Rend sent a burst of ichor out of the wound, Kaius dodged away from the scorpion’s flailing retaliation with a frown on his face. Even with the unnatural strength of a bound weapon, A Father’s Gift was still ultimately Common. He’d known it was likely that the sword would struggle against the defenses of enemies so far above it, but the reality of it still rankled.

The blade was a part of him, and the thought of setting it aside—even if just temporarily—for a lesser weapon made his palms slick.

Without a replacement on hand, it meant little for this battle anyway. He could only hope that he would find the last material he needed to awaken the blade during his delve—if he was lucky, the Honour that influenced his Guardian rewards would bring him something just as potent as the wyvern bone that waited for him in Deadacre.

The Scorpion grew mad under their assault, forcing Kaius to return his full attention to the battle as it snapped a pincer at Porkchop. Refusing to let the attack go unanswered, Kaius harried its attempt with a brutal Stormlash, its lightning now as thick as his wrist thanks to empowerment of his latest artefact.

Bound in a crackling storm, the ruinbringer soldiered on—one claw cracking the air as it snapped at Porkchop’s head. His brother roared, a bulky coating of jagged crystal forming around his arm as he blurred into a motion and hammered the attack away, Jadecrash granting him unnatural speed and might. Glimmering light shone within the coating as his skill leached the power of his deflection, and Porkchop slammed his arm home on the scorpion’s head, cracking its chitin before he dove into a lunging Warden’s Maw that splintered its natural armour further.

Hungering for its death, Kaius didn’t let up as he unleashed more bolts of lightning to fry the creature from the inside out. Each cast lit up the desert in pale blue, secondary arcs leaving molten patches of glass where they touched the ground as ichor steamed within the ruinbringer’s wounds—a bitter scent that scorched the inside of his nose.

The scorpion gave as good as it got. With Porkchop the only one in close quarters, it hammered his guard, pincers that snapped hard enough to crack with the boom of thunder. For every one Porkchop managed to block, deflect, or stymie with a Shardwall, another got through.

On any one else, the attacks would have been singly lethal. Each hit with enough force to cut through thick steel, and would shear through bone and flesh like it wasn’t even there. Porkchop only persisted through dint of his summoned heavy-plate, and his prodigious size that stopped the ruinbringer from getting a good grip. That, and his brother had a monstrous physicality in his own right.

He still took grievous wounds—hot red blood soaking into his padded under-armour and seeping through shattered crystal. Even if his brother was spending mana like water to repair his armour, it could only do so much, the assault coming quicker than the plates could fully repair.

Every crashing strike yanked on Kaius’s heart, his mind jumping unbidden to his brother lying limp and dying on the sand like Ianmus had been. Perhaps not the most logical fear, but it was a real one that stung his internals like he’d swallowed a hornet’s nest.

Kaius knew that he should stay at range—hammer its wounds with his spells, as they slowly wore it down. Porkchop was tough. Even if he looked like he was in a state, Kaius knew it would take much more than that to put him down. It still sat wrong with him. With his spells and skills, he was more than fast and agile enough to keep himself from dying, even if he was liable to get injured.

When his Glass Mind agreed that he could survive, he moved. An Expedient Shunt detonated behind him, blasting him straight at the ruinbringer as he shot a pair of nails right into the joint of its closest pincer. The spells slammed home, punching halfway into a gap in its natural armour, before they unspooled and shattered the chitin.

Kaius gritted his teeth and the ruinbringer struck straight for him—the twisted metal only slightly impeding it. Detonating another Shunt, he blasted side and down—blowing up an obscuring cloud of sand as he hit the ground at pace and raced forwards.

A chest sized pincer swiped through the cloud, causing his stomach to lurch. Reacting on the urging of his Glass Mind and Uncanny Dodge, he burnt a charge of SlipStep and kicked to the side with enhanced speed to duck under the blow.

His ears rang like a bell when the pincer snapped shut a handspan over his head, wind ruffling his sweat drenched hair.

Kaius cursed under his breath—it was bad enough the beast was as tough as granite, but it was disturbingly fast too. Imbuing his blade with the power of his Skills, Kaius raced in as Shardwall slammed into its side and sent it stumbling.

He stabbed, thrusting his blade deep into the same wound his had opened with his nails. A wave of caustic arcane rolled through the scorpion, leaving a persistent miasma that ate away at its armour.

Half a moment later an arrow slammed home—puncturing the beast’s weakened defenses before it shattered into a hail of vicious shards and shredded the far more delicate internals of the joint.

Kaius grinned, smelling the weakness that his skills screamed to him. Kicking back away from the ruinbringer’s flailing retaliation, he unleashed a salvo of four Hateful Nails, each one sinking deep into the wound that he and Kenva had successively widened on its pincer.

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They bloomed, and the limb shuddered and slowed. Kaius felt his Bloodsong rise to a crescendo at the victory, the burning sun suddenly feeling like it was shining for their glory alone. Not only had they hampered its movement, but the gnarled bundles of twisted metal he had left in the wound meant that the ruinbringer had no hope of recovering from its injuries.

Yet the ruinbringer wasn’t a beast well into the second tier for nothing. Before Kaius could spend more than a moment feeling the joy of his success, the scorpion blurred into motion.

Doom screamed in his mind, and he dodged back.

The ruinbringer was faster. Weathering Porkchop’s all out assault, it pushed through his brother’s Bulwark’s Challenge and snapped at Kaius with its remaining pincer.

He cast Expedient Shunt, bursting sideways—only to feel the sharpened point of its claw burst through the scalemail that protected his back, pain flaring in a storm of hellfire. It was only by the grace of the gods that he had enough momentum to carry himself free of his impalement before the pincer snapped shut.

Kaius clenched his jaw as he spun into a roll—agony flaring as hot sand worked its way into his wound. Tasting the well of blood that rose up his throat, he spun and Lashed the ruinbringer—stunning it right before it approached.

A shardwall slammed it back—Porkchop racing forwards to keep the pressure off him.

Kaius breathed hard, every movement an agony as his health poured into his wound. Settling as best he could into his stance, he nearly jumped in shock when he saw the state of the creature’s face.

Where there had once been six compound eyes, there were now only holes with the broken remnants of arrow shafts jutting out of them. Kenva had systematically removed its ability to see, and still it fought off his brother as if it could see him with perfect acuity—unknown senses guiding its movements.

“Heal, fool!” Porkchop growled—screaming another Challenge into the scorpion’s face when it attempted to skate around him and leverage its far better footing on the loose sand.

Before he could even summon the potion to his hand, Kaius felt a warmth envelop him from behind—a tender embrace that sunk deep into his wound, quickly recovering his still-dropping health.

**Ding! You have been Healed: Ray of Tender Recovery!**

Despite his pain, Kaius whipped his head back in surprise as solar magic encouraged his flesh to reknit.

There, with his robes utterly soaked in blood from navel to toes and his skin visible through a fist sized hole, stood Ianmus, surrounded by quickly crumbling granite with a determined grin on his face. Kenva stood in front of him, shielding his body with her own as she loosed another arrow—her eyes glowing with the internal fire of her Winter’s Mark.

Kaius laughed, loud and free as relief washed over him. Ianmus was alright—he’d managed to heal himself just fine. Porkchop would have let him know if Ianmus was truly in lethal danger, but it was hard not fear that the stone shell that had surrounded the mage might have become his grave.

“Gods’ Scorn, I knew you wouldn’t go down that easy!” he hooted, smiling wide as another healing ray shot past his shoulder to sink into his brother’s flesh, followed quickly by another, and another.

Ianmus was back in the fight.

…

It turned out that solar mage or no, a second tier beast was always a tough bastard.

Even with the full might of their team, its tails removed, its eyes burst, and one of its pincers lamed, the ruinbringer still fought them to a standstill.

Oh, its wounds worsened—each cracked section of chitin and ichor-weeping wound growing as they injured it faster than it could recover—but it resisted the grave with a single minded fury and bloody determination that would put a direboar to shame.

Even burning his spells like water, and arrows and rays raining down on it like a storm, it still fought back with brutal efficiency, leaving them with an outsized collection of their own burning injuries.

Kaius coughed as he leaned on Slip Step to dance around a cracking snap of its injured claw, a hole as thick as his thumb aching as his Lesser Regeneration-thickened blood oozed free. A gift from a sideways slam of its claw that had rammed one of the jagged spikes on its limb straight through his armour. He was lucky to be alive—a fingerwidth or two to the right and it would have gone straight through his heart.

Porkchop was in his own state of ruin. His greatshield had long since been discarded—torn and twisted from absorbing the majority of the ruinbringer’s ire. Selfrepair could only do so much after all, and in its current state they would risk permanent destruction of the artefact for little gain if it continued to be used.

His own armour fared little better. Even as a greater beast with access to potions, there were limits to his mana, and Porkchop had eventually been forced to grow more sparing with repairing his defences. Now the handspan thick plates of jade lay shattered—shards of crystal digging into his underarmour as torn flesh and yellowed bone wept an endless stream of bright blood to the hungry sand below.

Still, no matter their injuries, he could smell their victory in the air—a bright scent that brought him closer in tune with the flow of battle.

The prodigious vitality that kept the ruinbringer moving, despite its wounds leaving it looking like a moving carcass? It was flagging—and the beast’s reactions slowed further.

Howling a scream of conquest, Kaius summoned a whip of ireful plasma to his hand, the spell bucking like a living thing.

He’d had something of a revelation in this fight, discovered an accidental weapon of serendipity. His nails, persistent and gnarled as they were, grew quite hot in the presence of lightning.

Swinging for all he was worth, Kaius wrapped the ruinbringer in a cocoon of lightning—branching storm latching onto half a dozen nails that were half buried according to his will.

Beams of the sun and a spear sized arrow slammed home as storm mana surged through the beast’s body. Nails grew hot—first red, then white—as they shuddered and blurred, a tuning fork to the resonant force of his spells.

The beast screamed, legs shuddering as it stumbled to the desert floor in response to their assault.

Kaius grinned, baring bloodsoaked teeth as he renewed his spell, burning his last stormlash.

His brother raced in—ready to finish it. Desperate and in pain, the ruinbringer snapped at the air with a jerky claw. It only sealed its doom.

Activating Jadecrash, Porkchop flew forwards to intercede the aimless attack. A limb, looking more like a stone club thanks to its thick coating, burned with an internal fire as it smashed the blow aside.

In a single, smooth movement, Porkchop pounced. His arm crashed into the creature’s head, pulping the shattered remains of its carapace.

Lunging down with his jaws flanked by jade fangs, his brother tore into its head, wet cracks resounding across the sundrenched desert.

The ruinbringer shuddered, and fell still.

Laughing with the sheer exuberant joy of how close they came to death, Kaius collapsed to his knees and released his hold on his notifications, dozens of chimes resounding in his mind.

**Ding! level 246 Ruinbringer - Waiting Death slain - Experience Gained! Bonus Experience for slaying a foe of Significant Strength!**

**Ding! Runeblade Initiate has reached level 114 > 119!**

**+3 End, Str, & Int, +2 Dex, Wil, +1 Vit, Free - from Class & Racial Traits!**

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**Ding! Class Skill Notifications Consolidated!**

**Latent Glyph of Drakthar has reached level 131 > 138!**

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**Initiate’s Glyphic Bladerite has reached level 100 > 109!**

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**Latent Glyph of Aelina has reached level 119 > 124!**

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**Mystic’s Rend has reached level 75 > 87!**

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**Sigil of Vesryn’s Pact has reached level 1 > 4**

**General Skill Notifications Consolidated!**

**Liturgical Bladeform: Primus Ordo has reached level 131 > 145!**

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**Explorer’s Toolkit has reached level 98 > 107!**

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**Truesight has reached level 101 > 109!**

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**Tonal Weaving has reached level 97 > 105!**

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**Resonance Amplification has reached level 95 > 99!**

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**Uncanny Dodge has reached level 120 > 133!**