NOVPUBStanding before Rieker and his team, Kaius took in the stream of options that coursed passed his vision.
His fourth spell, coming straight off the back of his third. He’d been looking forward to this selection—the type of fighter that he was, he’d been certain that an additional avenue through which to advance, manoeuvre, and retreat would improve his lethality almost as much as his Drakthar spells would.
Judging by the options provided, he’d been correct.
Trussant’s Expedient Shunt:
Runic Hymn - Tier I (Mobility)
Affinity: Force
Glyph: Aelina
100 Mana
Selection Available!
This Hymn rapidly shunts the user five long-strides in a chosen direction through an explosive burst of force mana, shielding them from the effects of their sudden movement. At any time, the user may halt their movement via a secondary, opposing, burst.
…
Verdant Traversal:
Runic Hymn - Tier I (Mobility)
Affinity: Nature, Life
Glyph: Aelina
200 Mana
Selection Available!
This Hymn twists surrounding flora to slightly assist the user’s movements, and hamper any opponents within two long-strides of their person for one hour.
…
Wave Dash:
Runic Hymn - Tier I (Mobility)
Affinity: Water
Glyph: Aelina
100 Mana
Selection Available!
This Hymn summons a surge of turbulent water that assists the users movements for fifteen seconds, while leaving them unhindered to its currents.
…
Chotnik’s Obscured Retreat:
Runic Hymn - Tier I (Mobility)
Affinity: Dust
Glyph: Aelina
150 Mana
Selection Available!
This Hymn summons a dense cloud of dust with every step the user takes for 30 seconds, obscuring their form. While inside this cloud, the user moves moderately faster.
…
Shadebound Return:
Runic Hymn - Tier I (Translocation)
Affinity: Dusk, Shadow
Glyph: Aelina
300 Mana
Selection Available!
This Hymn detaches the user from their shadow, leaving it sealed in place. Five seconds later, the user is returned to their original location.
Kaius grinned as he read the spells—there were a couple that immediately jumped out to him. Shadebound Return, Chotnik’s Obscured Retreat, and Trussant’s Expedient Shunt all looked extremely promising.
The first was simple—even a translocation spell as limited as this one would provide extreme utility in combat. He doubted there would be any enemies at their current levels of power that would be easily able to deal with him suddenly appearing behind them.
His only worries were that it would be almost useless when he eventually got a more potent and usable teleportation style spell, and that it cost an eye watering three-hundred mana. The cost, in particular, drove him away from selecting it—that was two Stormlashes or three Hateful Nails, something that would make it exceedingly difficult to justify inscribing more than a couple of casts.
Thankfully, the other two spells of interest seemed far less restrictive.
In spite of its name, Kaius thought Obscured Retreat would make for a brilliant offensive mobility spell—one that would hamper his opponents vision, and empower his ability to manoeuvre around them. That, and it would come in handy if they ever had to make a hasty exit.
Still…he couldn’t quite pull his eyes away from his final selection—the first one he had been shown.
Expedient Shunt sounded…extremely flexible, if somewhat complicated to utilise to the fullest extent possible. Suddenly flying in any direction would be a significant boon, and if the explosive force was large enough, he might even be able to use it offensively.
That said, it was a gamble. If the shunt was uncontrollable, it could be a liability on the battlefield. A sudden dodge or advance was one thing, but if it sent him flying into an uncontrollable tangle of limbs, it might just get him killed.
It was still hard to get the idea out of his head. If it was hard to control, it might still be worth it—he was confident that he at least had the bodily control to learn if he had to. The potential for vertical mobility alone…he could already imagine a dozen different stratagems that he could utilise the spell in, especially since the spell was cheap enough he could likely chain multiple casts together, or combine it with the distance shrinking effects of Slip Step for an extra boost.
He turned to his audience, one and all watching him with expectant expressions.
Grinning at their obvious impatience, Kaius shared his options—and his thoughts.
Rieker scratched at the stubble on his jaw, nodding thoughtfully.
“I think you’re on the right track—if perhaps not for the reason you have considered.” the guildmaster eventually said.
Kaius cocked his head at the man, curious about what he had missed. “Oh?”
“Those spells will scale with you, and they are cheap. A sudden, semi-offensive, burst of force to hurl you in any direction you want? Capable of being halted at will? I can see that being strong at higher tiers.”
Ianmus’s eyes widened in realisation, before he nodded emphatically.
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“You’re right!” the mage replied, before turning to Kaius. “You’ll inevitably reach the point where it would be trivial to keep dozens of this spell inscribed. If the detonations continue to grow in strength, the spell might well become a viable method of attack in its own right.”
Before he could even fully process the idea of turning himself into a living bomb, Rieker chuckled.
“While that is true, I was more thinking about how many serious injuries I could have avoided in my life if—at any time—I could have suddenly decided to be moving in a different direction at extreme pace. That’s something that you won’t outgrow. Plus, with your lack of channel time, it will literally never be anticipated.” the guildmaster said.
“It’s alright, elf-boy, I thought your idea was fun.” Porkchop chuffed, nudging Ianmus with his shoulder as the mage’s shoulders slumped at his assumption being off the mark.
Kaius smiled, but found that he agreed with both of them regardless—Trussant’s Expedient Shunt seemed like the best pick of the lot.
“I’m going to pick it.”
Rieker nodded. “In which case, I’m going to leave you—I have work to attend to. Go see Ro tomorrow morning, we can discuss your next mission then.”
Turning to leave, the guildmaster looked over his shoulder. “You’re doing well, Kaius. While you might lack the honed class focus of someone like Porkchop, you’ve still got the strength expected of your class rarity, and are developing a monstrously versatile power set—you’ll have very few true weaknesses by the time you’ve gotten all of your skills, I have no doubt.”
Finished with giving one of his rare compliments, Rieker strode out of the hall, his plated feet clanking on the stone with every step.
Kaius beamed at the guildmaster’s words, happy that someone of Rieker’s experience saw the value in what he was trying to create.
“Well then, I best get this over with, I suppose—then we can go eat.” Kaius said to his team, taking a seat on the floor.
Pulling up his spell options, he made his choice and was whisked away to a familiar office.
….
Kiaus stood in front of a wide wooden table, his team crowded around him. They were in what seemed to be a small library only available to higher ranked members of the guild.
Judging by the material on the shelves, access was limited less because of the contents of the books, and more because it was private and secluded. A place for the powerful to plan without being intruded on by hopeful juniors.
Ro had led them up there quickly, before flying back downstairs as soon as she was done—muttering something about chasing up on overdue reports.
Across the table, Rieker stood facing away from them, his hands roving as he picked his way through the shelves that lined the walls.
“Ah, here we are.” Rieker finally said, his hands settling on a rolled canvas.
Pulling it free, he set it down on the desk with a solid thump, rolling it open with a flick of his wrists.
A move that sent a gentle puff of dust gusting upwards—the infrequently used canvas revealing itself to be a map of Deadacre and its surrounding regions. A valuable one at that, judging by the size and detail it held.
Leaning over, the guildmaster tapped one finger on a section reasonably far to the northeast of the city. The region he pointed to looked odd to Kaius’s eyes—the map maker had drawn it in the same colours that it had in the deadzone that surrounded the city.
The environment, at least, looked reasonably easy to identify. Stacked stoned and rocky pillars had been drawn alongside strange piles of what he assumed was dead wood, bleached white in the sun.
“The Bonefields, ghastly place.” Rieker said.
Kaius’s eyes widened in surprise, the context enough for the white drawings of what he had assumed to be wood to resolve themselves into slightly abstracted piles of bleached bone.
“What’s there? I’ve never heard of it.” Ianmus replied, bending down to get a closer look at the drawing.
“A whole lot of not much, usually. Some think it's cursed, but it’s not. Just…dead, much like the lands around the city. A lot of bone, stone, and one pesky little native critter that has proven to be a growing problem.” Rieker replied.
That was enough for Kaius to be certain that these ‘critters’ were about to be served a death sentence.
“What are they?” Kaius asked, his focus honing—he planned on getting as much information as he could out of the guild master. 𝔫𝖔𝖛𝖕𝖚𝔟.𝖈𝖔𝔪
“Bone biters.” Rieker grumbled. “Not new—they’ve always been there—but they’re bloody weird. Never really bothered to cull them—they’re aggressive, but don’t really leave the Bonefields, which are leagues from anything important. Plus they never really used to get above level fifty or so.”
Kaius brushed his hand through his hair. If they were out of the way, and were generally a non-issue, he wondered what had changed? Guild contracts didn’t exactly come out of nowhere.
After he asked, Rieker chuckled in response.
“I’ll be honest—it is a relatively low priority mission, a caravan strayed too close and got harassed. However, I wanted someone to check them out. Reports said they’d grown to level one-ten and up, and it's odd for them to venture out of their habitat at all.” the guildmaster responded. “Mostly, I thought it would be good experience for the three of you.”
Looking to his team, Kaius raised his eyebrow questioningly. They nodded back, giving him their confidence.
“Alright, you’ve got our attention—I want to learn more about them first, before we commit to taking the mission on, though.” he said, turning his attention back to Rieker.
“Good man,” RIeker grinned, pleased that he was doing his due diligence.
….
It turned out that calling bone biters weird was an understatement. They were supposed to be doglike, if front heavy and over muscled—but they were covered in thick plates of bony armour, leaving them looking bulky and skeletal.
Apparently, most had assumed they were undead, or abominations—nope, plain old beasts. Weird ones, who seemed to subsist by gnawing on the ancient remains that littered their demesne, and by hunting the various smaller creatures that lived in it.
They travelled in packs, with wide ranges, and were highly aggressive. It was the main reason that a mission could even be justified. If they were starting to leave the Bonefields, they could prove to be a lethal threat to the nearby caravan routes.
Each group laid claim to a large territory, and Rieker wanted them to clear out the group that patrolled the edge closest to the caravan trail. Hopefully they’d simply lost a territory dispute, and had been forced to exit the Bonefields.
If they hadn’t, they would need a larger, more comprehensive culling of their numbers. Something that Rieker insisted was not their job—going so far as to demand they leave if it turned out multiple groups of biters were ranging out of the edge, or they saw evidence of persistent hunting in the area surrounding the Bonefields.
Ultimately, they were being tasked with a scouting mission—they’d earn their pay on information alone. Killing the pack that had assaulted the caravan would bring a bonus, but a small one. It was a convenient source of experience, but not one the guildmaster would have them risk everything for.
It was their tendency to hunt in numbers that worried him—their levels were high, and even if it would be nothing like the unending siege of bogglings, it would still be dangerous. Thankfully, they had rarely been spotted at numbers higher than twenty strong.
The group they had been tasked with investigating was supposed to be in the upper reaches of that number, but not larger—though he was loath to fully trust any second-hand report from a panicked caravan. The last few missions he had taken had proven that information from their issuers was to be taken with a large grain of salt.
Still, even with that being the case, he was confident in their abilities. They had hunted a drake. Even if it had been lower level than these bone biters, it was immensely larger, and a pseudo-dragon—two things that made it immensely stronger than simple levels could gauge.
After that hunt, they had plenty of coin to make preparations, and due to the low-priority nature of the mission, would be able to take as much time as they needed researching the surrounding area.
That would be critical—with how far the beasts travelled they’d need to bait the creatures to them. Thankfully, that likely wouldn’t be all that difficult with how aggressive they were.
Rieker suggested they make use of the plentiful rock formations to create a defensible position—one where Ianmus could perch safely up high, while he and Porkchop focused on the more hands-on aspects of battle.
Happy with what they had learned, Kaius accepted the mission.
Rieker gave them a nod, before his face grew stern.
“One more thing, before you leave to make your preparations.” the guildmaster said, stopping them as they readied themselves to leave.
Kaius looked up, meeting his eyes.
“Stay on your toes. You’re making great progress, but It’s been over six months since you killed that spider. If anyone noticed, they’ll have been watching and will have seen your growth. If you notice any sign of being followed—any suspicion at all, high-tail it back here.”
Kaius’s face went grim, mirrored in the hardened stances of his team. They nodded.
“I’d send Ro after you if I could, but…any more absences on her part are going to be questioned—and we’ve both got a lot on our plates with everything that’s been happening. I’ve done my best to keep you hidden, but just be careful, alright? I’m only human.” Rieker said.
The man was genuinely concerned, Kaius realised, warmth at the guildmaster’s fondness for them warring in his chest against the gnawing worry at their potential discovery.
“Take this.” Rieker tossed him a similar medallion to the one they had been given before the drake hunt. “It’s a message token—if you get in trouble, use it. I promise I'll come looking.”
“We will—thank you.” Kaius replied, slipping the disk into his belt pouch.
Rieker gave them a small nod, before he busied himself with clearing away the map and notes that had gotten strewn across the table during their debrief.
Taking it for the dismissal that it was, Kaius led his team out of the room—potential men of nefarious intent or not, they had a mission to plan.
