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

Despite it seeming like Flowers had decided to, finally, develop a small modicum of sense, not all of his party were so convinced.

Kaius stared at Rosenhall. He was lightly armoured compared to the rest of them — probably a rogue, judging by the shortswords he had belted at his hip. That man had been trouble this entire conversation, and now that Flowers had shared the slightest bit of information?

The lord was going red — a vein pulsing on his forehead. Kaius could practically hear it, a basso thump of apoplexy.

“Lord Flowers! You can’t be thinking of agreeing with these curs?!” Baron Rosenhall spluttered.

“Silence!” Flowers hissed, shooting the man a glare. The baron clenched his jaw and glared at Kaius.

Whatever happened, that man was going to be a damn problem, Kaius was sure of it.

Flowers groaned. “Fine — I can see we may have miscalculated. I can acquiesce to your need to intrude on ducal business. Though I will state plainly: the Wellspring is a Flowers’ asset, and sits firmly in our lands — if you spread word of its location, or even its simple existence, you will make yourself my enemy.”

Kaius rolled his eyes — by the bloody gods! What reason would they ever have to do that?

“What now?” Frostbloom asked, still eyeing the dagger in Kaius’s hand.

He mulled it over for a second. There was no chance in the hells that he planned on staying within a dozen leagues of the nobles — not after everything.

An idea came quickly.

“I find myself thin on trust, so you will stay here, and we will take Flowers for a short jaunt up the road. Come nightfall, we’ll leave him behind for you to fetch. Any sign of you following, and I’ll assume you’re planning to betray us.”

“He is a marquess!” Lord Steelroot said, staring at him in disbelief. “The son of the Duke! How can we trust that you won’t simply vanish, chasing a ransom?”

Kenva huffed, scowling at the man. “For one, our identities are known and public, and Porkchop isn’t exactly the easiest person to disguise. For two… deal with it. I’m sure you have some method of tracking him.”

Flowers sighed before his teammate could respond. “Sir Violetguard is a beastmaster. If you allow a bound bird to accompany me, they will be able to verify my safety.”

“That’s an admission,” Kenva mused.

It certainly was. No doubt that was how they had tracked them out of the city. Now that they knew that, it would be much harder for the man to get the drop on them again. It was a good sign — an intentional disarmament.

“Fine — but just a common bird, and definitely nothing large enough to bear your weight.”

….

A Father’s Gift sat heavy in his hands as Kaius flowed smoothly from a low guard to a rising parry. It was a comforting weight — well balanced, and one that let him put far more of his strength behind his blows. For a mortal man, it would have been unbearable — more than ten times as heavy as a normal sword.

But this one had been made for him.

Flowing through his stances, he spun and cut, dancing across the nose of the pegleg. He moved with slow intention — it was more meditation than any real training exercise. A ward, to banish the lingering bitterness of their recent clash with Flowers’ party.

What a fucking nightmare.

Spinning into a thrust, Kaius saw the man himself sitting prone against the sloped rise that held the hatch below decks. His hands were bound tightly, and they’d stripped him of his storage ring. They’d give it back, but the man was a hostage — and a bastard, but that had little bearing on his belongings.

A common sparrow perched just a few strides behind the lord, watching Kaius with just as much intensity.

“Your blade is of an odd make, yet it fits your strange style perfectly,” the lord mused.

Since the reveal that they weren’t trying to steal his shit, he’d grown remarkably calm. As if being a hostage was normal. Bloody nobles. Should have been reasonable from the start, and they could have avoided this mess.

“Is it an heirloom?” the lord continued. “It’s certainly powerful.”

Kaius grunted, rising out of his lunge. Porkchop has said that Flowers had been silent during his shift — what changed?

“My inheritance.”

He left out that Father forged it himself. No point spilling potentially dangerous secrets to a man who had proven himself a liability.

“You’ve a House, then,” the noble grinned. “I knew it. The rest can be explained. Aen are one half of the oldest roots of Hiwiann culture, and their clan Scions can match any ducal lineage; your mage is a known talent, one empowered by blood of uncommon potency, and a greater meles is a greater meles. But you? You’re an enigma. I would say you’re some scion from a Chaswerdon princedom, or maybe even the Everfields to the far north — you certainly have the stature — but you ooze the stench of the Frontier. In hiding?”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Kaius snorted — the man had certainly gotten chatty.

The reason was obvious. Flowers thought he was more than some talented commoner now. He’d latched on to something — a claim to reassert his belief in a right and true world.

That there was a nugget of truth in the man’s assumption was biting — and everything that he was trying to change. There was no reason that power descended on family lines. A legacy should be built on a lineage of deeds and capability — not a collection of Skills.

“It’s a lost House — too old to be relevant to anything now. I barely know anything of it myself, only that our enemies still live — so you will forgive me if I keep the name to myself.”

“Hence, the Archivist?”

Kaius sheathed his sword with a huff.

“I don’t get it,” Kaius said, crossing his arms to stare at the lord. “You act the unreasonable lunatic, and now, what? You want to be friends? Did you forget that you ambushed us after we told you openly who we were and what we wanted?”

Flowers arched his brow, unshaken. “Whatever your name and title, it’s plainly clear that you’re from a lost House if you can’t see why this played out the way it did.”

Kaius gave him a flat look.

Flowers sighed, shifting his bound hands to push himself up a little straighter.

“The Dukedoms are on the verge of an economic crisis. Our fields have shrunk, slashing exports, and trade in general is choked and glacial — that is without even considering the astronomical military costs of paying a rapidly strengthening force, or the fact that we are at dire risk of losing territory anyway. Then, the Guild attacks the very foundation of our political power — an instability that could lead to total collapse. Mere weeks later, hidden actors spirit away the single man that might have provided an anchor point to nucleate additional stabilising power around.”

Flowers scowled, looking more bitter with every word. He thrust his arms towards Kaius accusatorially.

“Then you appear, with hair-thin justifications and obvious-seeming schemes.”

How much of that was actual, honest-to-the-gods, truth, and how much of it was just words? Kaius was smart enough to know it was in the man’s best interest to humanise himself, and he knew Flowers was too.

On the other hand, the world really had gone to shit — something that he had a part to play in.

“You thought us saboteurs?”

Flowers shook his head. “No, you seemed like a naked and unvarnished threat, levelled at my throat. Perhaps a mistake, but time will tell.”

“You still think me a liar?” Kaius asked, raising his brow.

The lord looked at him in disbelief as a gust of wind rustled his hair. “A liar? Perhaps not — but how can I trust your intentions when your motivation is so opaque. What I want is obvious: security and stability for my lands, and the strength to maintain that. You, on the other hand, are an unknown quantity, roaming the land in search of slaughter and seemingly ancient history. None of you, save perhaps your mage, strike me as warrior-scholars, so it cuts strangely.”

Kaius scowled. The man wanted to know his motivations? Fine, but it was on his head. He had engraved the very essence of his being onto his very soul, moulded it into pillars that supported his rise to the very peak.

Sinking deep into himself, Kaius mirrored an echo of what he had done before, flooding his Authority with his deepest Truths. Truths that resonated so strongly that it would be impossible for the man to deny.

How no matter victory or defeat, all that mattered is he would be honed further for what came next. How to his deepest, truest core, he only hungered for that improvement — for the endless, impossible climb that would see him broken and moulded anew. How he would suffer agony and he would suffer loss — but he would never stoop to betrayal, or the conniving, snake-like, bullshit that seemed to seep out of the pores of every godsforsaken noble on the face of fucking Vaastivar!

“I seek to cleave my way forward through blood and fire to open a path that others cannot or will not walk,” he said, stalking forward as Flowers went pale. “I seek power, to crush this integration beneath my boot, and shatter the bones of my enemies. I seek to master myself, because I must; because, above all, I seek to see what lies at the end of it all — what meaning there is behind this slaughter and this death. I seek vengeance, and I seek friendship — and I have very, very little time for politics!”

Kaius crouched down, cutting off his Authority as he looked at Julian eye to eye.

To his surprise, Julian laughed.

“And I thought I had ambitions!” the lord said, grinning. “So, just a warrior then — the obvious ruse was the true answer all along.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re an insufferable prick?”

“I dare say they haven’t.”

Kaius was going to throttle the man until his eyes popped out of his head.

“You know, with what you’ve just told me, I’d have to be a fool to believe that you would leave the Wellspring untouched,” Flowers said, that small glow of playful interest proving fleeting as a sharp glint returned.

He barked out a laugh. Once a bastard…

“Maybe once, you pompous asshole — but you went for the throat first. That’s due some reparations, don’t you think?”

Julian grimaced, like he’d bitten into something sour. A moment later, he sighed. “I suppose that much is true, and warranted. The bitterness is mollified by the fact that, against all good sense, you seem genuinely uninterested in the institutional power of controlling such a Place. All you really care about is that it might give you another tool for your unending climb, don’t you?”

And why did that matter? What would he even do with such a thing? He had no House, no retainers to defend a claim, or even benefit from it in the first place. It wasn’t like he or his team could take it with them, and none of them had any interest in establishing a hold. Especially not in the territory of a sovereign power.

Julian nodded to himself, as if Kaius’s expression said everything. Then he started staring at Kaius’s ring. The one that let him talk with his team.“Another point in your favour — I cannot deny your strength will prove useful. Both for defeating this Onyx-aligned Gold, and for dealing with any monstrosities that might reside in the crater.”

Lifting his arms up as if to spread them wide, only to be stopped fast by his bindings, Julian gave him a smile. He was still staring at his ring.

“I acquiesce to your demands.”

Julian looked up from the ring to meet his eyes, then back down. He waggled his eyebrows expectantly.

How did he recognise it? The thing had an analysis block. More importantly, did the man think he was a moron?

Whatever — he had to admit he was curious. What was Julian trying to say that he didn’t want his avian watcher to overhear?

“Whatever, lordling. I’ll be back.”

Kaius rose to his feet and yanked open the hatch set into the deck next to Julian.