Return of the Runebound Professor

As soon as Noah returned to camp, he made a beeline back to his tent. Lee lay curled up in a ball on a bed of vines. A second bed was across from her. Noah made his way over to it quietly, sitting down and closing his eyes.

He slipped into his mindspace and the black void of his soul swallowed the night. Noah’s runes sparked to life, swirling around him. Each one glimmered with power, just waiting for him to call upon it.

Noah’s chest felt tight with excitement. Even though it had only been a few months since he’d arrived in the Arbalest Empire, he was already getting close to catching up with Moxie and Lee.

But it was still too early to celebrate. He needed to combine his Runes first. Fortunately, Noah still knew exactly what he wanted to make. Drawing in a deep breath and letting it out slowly to still his nerves, Noah called out to his Runes.

Pressure shifted in his soul as he brought them together. Noah’s heart thumped and the very foundations of his soul trembled as the seven Runes grew closer, pressing against each other with increased force the nearer they drew.

Noah focused his intent, picturing all the forms that a natural disaster could take. Even though his memories of earth were fuzzy, there had been more than enough videos of them on the news.

Energy roared in Noah’s ears. His clothes billowed around him. Noah set his jaw and clenched his teeth as the pressure bearing down on him intensified. His Runes inched closer together, their outer edges starting to overlap.

The roar reached a crescendo, completely drowning out everything but Noah’s thoughts. There was a loud click. Seven became one, and a brilliant blast of invisible force erupted in the center of Noah’s soul. A bright flash of white light momentarily blinded Noah.

He blinked furiously, squinting through the dots floating in his vision. A single Rune floated in the vast emptiness. It was made up of a mixture of jagged circles and interlocking polygons that twisted before Noah’s eyes.

Noah felt energy pump in his body from all the excess power that the combination had created. He couldn’t physically see the size of his soul, but he could tell that it had grown once again.

But, to Noah’s slight disappointment, the Rank 3 Rune wasn’t perfect. It was twenty five percent full, a full fifteen percent off what it could have been.

If I had to guess, I’d say its my duplicate Runes. I can probably find some better ones later to really fix this up. For a first attempt, though, twenty five percent is really good. I can’t imagine how hard it would be for normal people to constantly create perfect Runes without the help of Sunder.

Even though the Rune wasn’t perfect, Noah was still thrilled. He could feel the power radiating off it. He glanced up at Sunder, pleased to find that the pressure coming off the enormous Master Rune felt like it had reduced ever so slightly once more. The new Rank 3 Rune was pressing back against it just a bit more than the Rank 2s had, which meant more of Sunder’s power would be his to command.

Noah’s senses brushed across the cold rivers of energy that still resided within his Soul. Renewal’s power was still there, deeply intertwined into him from his constant deaths and revivals.

Is Rank 3 enough to let me form the Rune now? Or do I still need more? There’s only one way to find out, and that involves killing myself. Mildly annoying.

Noah let his eyes drift open. The temperature in the tent had fallen by several degrees as the night entered its deepest stage, and his body throbbed, mostly around his feet and chest. Lee had somehow rotated along the ground and had curled up at his side, likely trying to take advantage of the warmth that the Imbued Combustion rune instilled him with.

Lee’s face looked peaceful in her sleep, but a flicker of pain occasionally danced across it. The damage to her soul was clearly bothering her a lot more than she’d admitted to them. Shifting his weight, Noah rose to his feet. Lee grumbled in her sleep as he stepped out of the tent.

The moon hung low in the sky, and even though Noah was well aware his sense of time was worse than abysmal, he was pretty sure it was just about his time to take watch. Making Moxie keep it for too much longer would be unfair.

Noah found Moxie standing at the edge of the camp, leaning on a thick vine that curled out of the ground. She glanced over at him as he approached, raising an eyebrow and tilting her head slightly to the side.

“You came back in a hurry. Something happen?”

Noah held his hand out in response. Energy swirled to life above his palm, materializing into the shape of the Natural Disaster Rune he’d formed. Moxie’s eyes flicked down to it, then back up to him. She paused, then looked back down at the Rune.

“Holy shit. You hit Rank 3?” Moxie asked.

“Yeah,” Noah replied with a grin. “I’ve been hunting monsters for the past few weeks. Took me long enough, don’t you think?”

“You were Rank 1 a few months ago. Even if you were hunting monsters this whole time, that rate of growth is insane,” Moxie muttered. “How could you possibly rank up that quickly? You aren’t taking on Runes that you aren’t planning to use, are you? Don’t sacrifice your long term strength for short term–”

“Every single Rune I’ve got was intentionally chosen to fit my style,” Noah said, closing his hand and dismissing the Rune. “Did you forget what I told you about my special abilities?”

Moxie cleared her throat. “Right. Honestly, it’s one thing to hear you say it, but it’s another thing to see someone catch you that quickly. What, did you just rip apart the Runes from Evergreen and Dayton’s scrolls, using them to massively boost yourself?”

“Pretty much,” Noah said with a chuckle. “A lot of them were basically full Rank 2 Runes when I was done with them. Definitely shaved a few months of work away.”

“I don’t think I can put into words how jealous I am of you,” Moxie said with a shake of her head. “Let me guess. It’s a perfect Rune?”

“No,” Noah admitted. He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “Twenty five percent full instead of ten. I’ll go back and fix it later. I didn’t want to wait around at Rank 2 for any longer. Now that I’m Rank 3, I have a chance of finding a way to fix Lee’s soul damage – not to mention I should be able to start working on fixing her and your Runes.”

Moxie’s vine slithered back into the ground and she shifted her stance to look fully at Noah. “I’m trying not to get too excited about that so I don’t get let down. Can you really do something like that? I know you’ve said you can, but…”

“It’ll be easier when I just show you,” Noah said. “I just need to do a little work with my Runes first. I don’t want to accidentally cut you in half in the process of fixing things. Fully Imbuing all your Runes is less than ideal, right?”

Moxie waggled a hand in the air. “If I Imbued my lynchpin Rune, then it would be bad. I’ve combined a few of my other Runes myself as well, so all of those Imbuements would give me soul damage. I could probably survive it, but it wouldn’t be pretty.”

Noah grunted. “That’s really odd. I’ve fully Imbued quite a few Runes, but I’ve never noticed any real problems with my soul.”

Moxie tilted her head to the side. “Seriously?”

“Just about every single one,” Noah confirmed. “A few of them happened when I already had soul damage, but I didn’t notice any real changes in the damage. It recovered soon after.”

“Could it have something to do with whatever power you’re using to mess with Runes?”

It was a moment before Noah responded.

“I don’t think so. I think that’s separate.”

“Weird,” Moxie muttered. “You know I would quite literally kill to study what in the Damned Plains is going on with your body and soul.”

“That’s the creepiest way someone has anyone told me they’re interested in me.”

Moxie’s cheeks went beet red and she glared at Noah. “That’s not what I meant, asshole. You remember I was studying Skinwalkers back in Arbitage, right?”

Noah nodded.

“Well, I was doing it because Skinwalkers have a similar physiology to humans when they’re transformed. They’ve got some major differences, of course, but their souls actually shift together with their bodies. Humans don’t have that level of control over their souls, but if we did, then healing serious soul damage wounds would become far less of a major issue.”

“Interesting. Is that why you were chasing that Skinwalker when it tried to get into my room?”

Moxie cleared her throat. “Yeah. I managed to make it follow me into my room and I was hoping I could lock it down, but it managed to slip my vines when I went to restrain it.”

“How were you planning on studying its soul?”

“There are ways you can enter something else’s soul,” Moxie said. “They aren’t easy, but I have a few potions that help with it. I was planning to knock the Skinwalker out and then poke around its soul to see what made it different from a human one.”

“I see. You know, if people could easily heal from soul damage, then Rune Oaths would become pretty survivable, wouldn’t they?”

Moxie’s eyes darkened. “To a degree, yes. Your Runes would still get shattered no matter where they were, but you might be able to grab the pieces and pull them back together fast enough if your soul wasn’t ripped to shreds at the same time.”

Looks like Moxie’s interest in souls might be more than just purely academic. I wonder if she’s got a Rune Oath to a person in the Torrin family that she’s trying to find a way to break. Probably shouldn’t ask, as even if she does, there’s no way she’d be allowed to admit it. I’ll just try to find a way to help her indirectly.

“Well, once the survival exam is over, I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to take a look at my soul,” Noah said. “Maybe you could help me make sense of it as well. There’s a lot about it that has me pretty confused.”

Moxie blinked. “You mean that?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”

“People don’t usually want to bare their souls voluntarily, you know. They’re your most vulnerable location.”

“Eh. If you’ve studied souls, then you’ll probably be able to help me figure out what the hell is up with mine. Something’s certainly off with it.”

“Well, I won’t make you ask twice.” Moxie’s smile turned to a yawn and she glanced up at the sky. “I’m going to head to bed.”

“I’ll cover watch,” Noah said, giving her a thumbs up.

Moxie bid him goodnight, then made her way to the stone tent where Lee was still sleeping and ducked inside. Noah rolled his neck and started to walk around the camp. He instinctively reached for Tremorsense, only to find that the Imbuement had vanished with his arrival at Rank 3.

I’ll have to replace that once I get a good grasp of my new Rune.

The night slipped away, and before Noah knew it, the sun started to rise over they gray landscape. Just as it poked over the tops of the clouds and started to warm Noah’s back, he spotted a lone figure trudging across the sloping hills and heading in their direction.

It was a woman. Her red hair stood in stark contrast to the dull ground, hanging limp around her face like the corpse of a scraggly dead animal. Noah’s eyes narrowed.

Contessa.

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