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

Atop a peak that brushed the sky, Ianmus grit his teeth and reached for the mana deep within himself, leaning on his Glass Mind as much as he could.

He split his pool into two streams; great deluges that washed out from muscle and marrow. His grip slipped, as the power bucked and writhed — channeling like this was almost beyond him.

It wasn’t normal weaving, not the kind where he split his mana into multiple threads to work on a complex spell structure. That was doable. Not easy, but doable.

He’d been stuck at this point for hours.

At first, it had been disorienting to find himself atop a mountain in an unknown range, surrounded by alpine forests far below. But wherever he was — or more accurately, wherever Xenanra had recreated — the mana density was not so high as to make the weather dangerous. Even meager as it was, his Vitality was enough for the sharp cutting wind to only be an uncomfortable distraction.

Unfortunately, in his current circumstances, any distraction was detested.

When the System had told him what he needed to do, he hadn’t dared believe it at first. With his Mentis focused on the channeling and weaving of spells, he’d expected some feat of magery — something that pushed him to his limits.

Instead, it had demanded he cast two spells at once. An impossibility — at least at his tier.

It wasn’t the split and focus required. It wasn’t that he had to multitask — no, that was easy enough with a Glass Mind and high mental stats. Sure, it was far more difficult when the details you were paying attention to were utterly unrelated — but it was possible. He’d been doing it for a long time, speeding up his channeling and casting by threading spells together from multiple directions at once.

The problem with dual casting was the demands it placed on your intent and your will. The burden of channeling two different mana structures at once was crushing.

Few ever attained it.

He’d spent long hours in the stacks of Sunspire studying magic both historical and contemporary, and as valedictorian he’d often coordinated with his peers in the other spires. To his knowledge, there were only three in Mystral who had mastered the art to the point where they could cast two spells just as easily as one:

The Headmasters of Sunspire, Oceanspire, and Emberspire.

Three of the few publicly known third tiers in the city, with a wealth of stats that would have drowned his own.

Yet they didn’t have the benefits of a Glass Mind — let alone one as specialized as his. One born to cast.

Mouth pursed, Ianmus redoubled his grip on his mana and moved through the motions to channel Solar Ray — not once, but twice.

At this stage, he dared not attempt to duplicate anything freecast. The added time, complexity, and cost would be far too much. Simple sorcery was enough for now.

Even then, he stumbled often. Yet, his progress still came steadily — a complex stream of solar mana woven in front of each of his hands.

A quarter done. Then half.

His focus slipped as the burden grew too great. The spells shattered. Backlash rocked through his body, his stomach heaving with nausea as he grappled with the turbulence.

Yet he steadied himself, feeling the cold wind as he waited for his mana to refill.

Four more times he tried, and four more times he failed — each time his spell weaves broken by his own inability to split his intent into two simultaneous mana constructs.

Ianmus grit his teeth. No matter the purpose of this trial, he would not fail.

His Mentis was one of dynamism — of controlled and guided change. To avoid the stagnation he had seen in the ancient institutions of his home, he would learn, he would grow, and he would teach. If there was a way to do this so early, he would be the one to find it.

Rising from meditation, Ianmus gripped his mana once more and channeled.

Sweat built on his brow, a crushing pressure building in his skull. Oozing from his bones, his mana caused his muscles to spasm — phantom lightning surging through him as he demanded the energy to obey. Two streams split, and two knots of intent spun at the tip of each hand.

They built slowly, as if he were but an apprentice casting his first Spotlight cantrip.

The pace worsened by the fact that he did not even have his staff — his casting focus.

By the end, he was bowed over and trembling, but his mana tore free all the same; collapsed into a single moment of ejection, as he had demanded.

Two lances of light ripped across the snowy mountain peak, bright lines that connected earth and sky.

Joy burbled its way free of his chest as he stared at each. Ianmus howled his glee to the sky and snow. He’d done it! Stolen something that was in the realm of archmages!

It would be utterly unusable in battle — for now, at least. Any scenario worth spending so much time and effort casting two simple spells would be better spent packing more power and energy into a single one.

But to learn it so early...

There were secrets here. Secrets he would find, plunder, and apply elsewhere — and hopefully teach to others.

Eventually, at least. This was just the start.

He hadn’t mastered this trick by half. He barely felt the glimmering weight of Mentis, suffusing what Xenanra had called Authority through his mind and into the world around him.

Next, he would work on freecasting the spell, then later, separate and unrelated spells — something that he expected would increase the difficulty by an entire order of magnitude. The friction between the requirements would add to the strain on his intent.

It was one thing for his Glass Mind to duplicate what he was already doing. It was another for its task to be entirely different.

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He breathed out, grinning as he watched his fogged breath roll out over the icy peak.

”You best get back to it.”

…

Kaius smiled at his friend’s tale. For someone who had been so insistent that Kenva’s Corporus trial had been a little too light on struggle, it really did seem like the mage’s trial had been something he thoroughly enjoyed

”See, now your reaction seems a little exaggerated, because we all know you would’ve been having the time of your bloody life there. Rotten roots—throw any mage on a mountaintop and tell them they have as much time as they want to work on their spellcasting? I think you’d see some weep with joy. Hells, I think I would.”

Ianmus scratched the back of his head awkwardly. ”You might be right there.”

”I kind of feel that we all enjoyed our trials. Or, at least, found satisfaction and meaning in them. Sure, some of ours were more painful than others. But they were made for us. We all got something out of them, were moulded by them, and reforged. Hells, the only one I didn’t really like was my first — where non-combatants were at risk — but even then, there was a level of satisfaction I found in protecting them, and the fighting itself was still fun.”

He couldn’t find a reason to disagree. If anything, he would have been surprised if that wasn’t the case. Each of their aspects was tied to some fundamental way in which they approached the world and the challenges that could be found within it. Since the trials worked in tune with those elements, it would have been hard not to find satisfaction when they were overcome.

Sure, there had been elements of fear and discomfort and isolation — especially the isolation — but those lows had only made the highs sweeter.

”It’s possible,” Kenva replied. ”I suppose it really just highlights the differences between us. Honestly, the idea of standing on a mountain and endlessly channeling skills sounds horrifying to me.”

”And I can admit that jumping through hoops doesn’t sound particularly engaging to me, either.” Ianmus agreed. “What about your Mentis trial — was it just as fun?”

”It was frustrating,” Kenva said. ”But the victory was sweet, that’s for sure.”

…

Kenva cradled her bow, resting her forehead against its top limb. It was good to have it back, she hadn’t realized quite how uneasy she’d felt without her ancestors’ presence.

The day she had received it had been a beautiful one. Many among her people were archers — it was simply a useful skill to support oneself on the step. Few, however, had taken it to the extremes that her ancestors had. Grounding herself in that lineage had been a moment of importance for her.

The world had been so wide, back in that day. As dark and as clouded as the earliest stories of her clan were, there was a common thread: many had strived to explore and know the world around them. It was why her people were nomadic; why the aen and humans of the steppe had formed a confederation of allied tribes; why the welcomes so many into their clans. Yet, for all those histories, the world was smaller now. Few left the steppe for reasons beyond monetary. Few travelled beyond the well trodden paths between the temple cities, plodding along routes their families had followed for generations.

Few strived. Hungered in the way her ancestors had hungered. It was what had first drawn her to them, a commonality. A connection, and a desire to see their ways walked again. She wished to broaden the world, and bring back tales — so that others could follow, and just maybe, find their own untrodden paths.

Grateful for the direction her ancestors had given her since she was young, she would honour them with victory — complete this trial while the spirits of those who came before her could watch on and bless her shots.

Opening her eyes, Kenva looked around and assessed her surroundings.

She stood in a meadow — though a foreign one. The grass was lush and thick, ankle-height, but a dark red rather than the familiar greens or yellows she had seen back in Vaastivar.

At the center of the clearing stood a sort of gnarled oak; venerable and old. It was large, too — three times larger than any of the northern trees she’d seen.

Though, she had to admit, she didn’t have much to go on. Most of the central human kingdoms, apart from small pockets, were in low-mana environments. Life didn’t exactly grow as large as it could, and Kaius had said he’d seen some truly great examples, even on the outskirts of the Great Forest where he’d lived.

A league in width, the meadow was surrounded on all sides by a tangle of life even larger than the tree at its centre. Yet it wasn’t plant-life. Unlike the forests she’d seen — or the jungles she’d caught glimpses of in the far southern rainforests — it wasn’t open, with wide spaces between the trunks. Nor was it even full of trees.

Instead, clusters of fungus grew. A constant haze of spores wafting from mushroom gills as they towered upwards — overlapped to form a solid wall of rot.

The spores were held at bay. A field of some kind, emanating out from the oak at the clearings centre.

Kenva frowned, turning back to the oak — and jolted when something shifted across its bark. A colossal serpent coiled around its trunk and looping through the boughs.

Some beast for her to fight, perhaps? It did seem to be the source of the thin energy she could see suffusing the meadow.

The notification that spilled across her vision dismissed that thought. She grit her teeth — if only it were so simple. No, she had to keep the bloody thing alive — intercept shots before they could land on its massive frame.

It wasn’t going to be easy.

The first shots came quick — arcing out of the sporeclouds that surrounded the meadow on all sides. Archers. They were impossible to spot — only when their arrows shot into the clear air of the meadow could she see them. Even with Farseer she did not possess the smog-piercing properties of Kaius’s ocular skill — and her targets were far too distant for her to see their souls. Whatever numbers lurked in those fungal depths, they were hidden from her.

All she knew was that every minute or two, the snake would be fired upon, and she was tasked with helping it survive.

With only a bow, and arrows of her own — she had to shoot them out of the sky.

When there had been only one projectile at a time, she could judge its speed, vector, and trajectory easily with her Glass Mind. It was simple to know exactly where to put her own shot. Hells, she even had a little leeway, thanks to her skill, Shattershot.

That quickly changed as singular shots became volleys.

It would have been impossible if she’d had to deflect every single arrow. Thankfully, she quickly learned that only one arrow flew true — the rest invariably missed their mark.

She couldn’t fail here. She wouldn’t!

A dozen wounds peppered the snake’s body. It was hearty, strong, and able to heal — but that wouldn’t last forever.

Every time she failed, it came closer to death.

A faint whistle filled the air as dozens of black dots raced out of the swirling fog of spores.

She spun — spotting all of them immediatel y— her mind racing as she carved arcs through the air, predicting where they would land.

There were so many. She could do this.

There was less than a heartbeat before they landed, but heartbeats were enough. There! It was that one! Fletched with cream feathers, speckled like a quail egg.

She drew her bow to full extension, feeling the muscles in her back burn at the heavy weight of her bow. Tracking her target through the air, she fired — not at where it was, but where it would be.

An arrow grown from the very oak she defended — fletched with leaves — soared through the air as the wind screamed at its passage.

Kenva held her breath, watching. Tense as she tracked not just her target, but every arrow. Had she picked right?

Her shot slammed home, both arrows erupting into a shower of splinters with a loud crack. Staccato thunks carried through the meadow as shot after shot bore their way into the truck of the oak — not one scratching so much as a scale on the serpent’s skin.

Another volley dealt with — with more to come. No matter, Kenva could see her path forward, as she always had. She had plotted the route she wanted to walk, and regardless of the trials that came with it, she would forge her path on.

There was already a burgeoning spiritual weight in the back of her mind, a potential that had begun to build. In the break after her first trial, Xenanra had likened it to the connection she felt to her ancestors, but one that would reach out into the very world around her.

Authority, the Ascendant had called it.

She couldn’t wait to find out more.