Return of the Runebound Professor

The next two hours were ones that Noah did not care to remember. His prediction that the river would be the source of the monsters had been correct. And, out of everything that he could have been up against, of course the one that had been most populous had been giant, ridged octopi the size of small houses.

There were a number of outfits that Noah was willing to fight monsters with tentacles in. The ideal one probably would have been a tank, but he’d have settled for full suit of airtight armor. Anything that gave him any protection from the squirming monsters would have been much appreciated.

Fighting them naked, however, was at the absolute bottom of his list of his bucket list. Nobody in their right mind was going to get anywhere near anything with tentacles when they didn’t have clothes on. There was only one way something like that could go and Noah had absolutely no desire to tempt fate.

As far as he could tell, there was only a single way to handle the situation given the cards he’d been dealt. He had to make sure there was absolutely no potential way that the octopi ever got so much as near him.

Thus, two hours later, Noah stood on the scorched remains of what had once been a pristine riverbank. Scores of lightning had turned the sand around the river to glass and huge gouges had been ripped out of the earth, leaving behind jagged holes.

Smoke twisted up from burnt pockmarks covering bodies riddled with enormous, seeping wounds. Piles of monsters had built up in the river, forming a makeshift dam that the raging water was still doing its best to break apart.

Noah’s breath came out in short puffs as his head swiveled back and forth to scan the river, his hands curled and raised before him. He’d had a few chances to test out Crumbling Space throughout the fight as it had refilled from all the monsters he killed, but every usage of the Rune had gone nearly exactly the same.

Whenever he tried to make it stretch anywhere farther than the immediate area around him, it went rogue and collapsed in on itself. The rune just stubbornly refused to function at a range. But, even when he restrained its usage, it could only stretch about a foot in every direction.

Noah took note of every test, but his active mind was far more focused on making sure absolutely nothing wriggly got anywhere near him.

No more monsters showed their faces. He’d already mowed through enough of them to leave quite the message and earn himself a considerable amount of energy. That didn’t mean the monsters would give up after all the power he’d been putting out, though.

Noah kept his guard up and continued to use his senses to trawl through the area around him. Fortunately, the time he had left in the Bleached River was coming to an end. He made a beeline back to his clothes and belongings.

The only thing that would have been worse than getting himself caught by a massive octopus whilst naked would be popping back up in the transport cannon to greet Tim buck naked and without all his belongings.

Granted, the solution to that would have been killing himself, which tended to be the fastest track to most of his problems, but that was a state of mind he was actively doing his best to pull himself out of.

Noah tugged his clothes on and nodded to himself.

Moxie would be so proud of me.

Once he was fully clothed and protected from the elements and errant tentacles once more, Noah took a moment to actually process his findings. Something was keeping Crumbling Space from extending any considerable distance.

There was a pretty good chance a part of it was because the rune wasn’t perfect, much less Flawless. It had a good way to go before it was at a point where he’d be completely satisfied with it.

That said, the restrictions on the rune seemed a bit much, even for its quality. It drew so much power and was so limited in range that it felt more like a limitation of the Rune itself rather than his combination of it.

It’s that Space Magic issue again. There’s something holding it back. Maybe it’s just because controlling space just needs so much energy, or maybe it’s something else. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll be damned if I don’t figure it out.

At first, he’d been slightly worried that it might have been the same issue that he’d had when he’d made Natural Disaster at Rank 3, where the rune just wasn’t strong enough to contain its concept.

But, fortunately or not, his testing had revealed that it didn’t seem to be the same issue. The Rank 3 Natural Disaster had lacked fine control and efficiency, but it had been able to generally do what he wanted. Crumbling Space didn’t exactly feel inefficient, and it did exactly what he wanted when he operated in its constraints. It just seemed like it drew so much power that he didn’t have the energy reserves to make it do more than its base use case.

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Noah slung his grimoire over his back and picked his gourd up, waiting for the transport cannon to reactivate. Even if he hadn’t managed to get Crumbling Space to extend its range, his goal in coming here had been accomplished.

He’d gathered a considerable amount of energy. Natural disaster had gone up by a fair amount and was now getting quite close to being completely full. Crumbling Space had also seen some solid rewards and was up to roughly twenty percent full. It had moved up more than Natural Disaster had, but that was only logical considering it was a considerably worse rune in its current state.

The only way to test that further would be to break the rune apart and reform it, but he wanted to get a little more testing in before he did that. Now that Crumbling Space had some more power filling it, he could get around two casts off with every recharge.

Noah didn’t get time to contemplate for much longer. A familiar buzzing sensation raced across his skin and prickled at the back of his neck. He blew out a breath and relaxed his body as blue light enveloped him.

Then he was gone, a streak of light hurtling through the sky back toward Arbitage.

***

Noah landed in the tube of the transport cannon with a thud and a pained grunt. Tim waved to him from across the room.

“Welcome back, Vermil. Sorry about the landing. Running on a skeleton of the power we should have had isn’t doing favors for comfort. I hope your trip went well.”

Noah grimaced and rose to his feet, brushing his backside off and straightening his grimoire. It had absorbed a fair bit of the landing impact. He doubted it was too pleased with that, but it would get over it.

“It certainly went. Have you ever felt like a slab of meat in front of a starving dog? I have decided that I hate octopi and anything tentacle related.”

Tim let out a small laugh. Noah was pretty sure his words had gone right over the man’s head, but that was fine. Nobody was going to understand what he was talking about without any context.

“I can’t say I’ve felt like that recently, but there was a time or two in my younger days,” Tim replied. “You made it back untouched, so I should hope that it didn’t go too poorly.”

“I killed the monsters I needed to. Is the Bleached River a common place people visit?”

“Not particularly,” Tim replied. “And now? Even less so. Why?”

Good. That means nobody is going to stumble across the pile of corpses I left in the river.

“Just making sure,” Noah said with a shrug.

“Just in case, I’ve already gone and scrambled the location I sent you to. I did it the moment you were gone,” Tim said, rubbing the back of his neck with a shameful expression on his face. “Twice people managed to follow you through the cannon because I never changed its direction. That isn’t happening again.”

“Thank you. That’s definitely a smart move,” Noah said with a nod of approval. He reached into his bag and pulled out the Mind Meld potion he’d been carrying around. “So, shall we get to using this? No need to lose time.”

Tim’s eyes sparkled with delight and he nodded. He hooked a foot into the trapdoor and pulled it open, then gestured to Noah. “After you. We shouldn’t be interrupted down here for the time being. Nobody will enter an active investigation area.”

“Doesn’t it being an active investigation area mean people will enter it?”

“Nope. They call it active, but there’s no new information the Enforcers can get here.” Tim shrugged. “What could they do? See a missing artifact? All that remains is a normal energy storage, and the only people that visit are Space Mages that come by to fill it up every morning and night.”

“Perfect,” Noah said with a grin. “In that case, lead the way.”

Tim clambered down the ladder and Noah followed after him, pulling the trapdoor shut behind him as they went. A few minutes later, they made it all the way down into the core of the cannon.

The metal was still scorched from where Barb had blasted everything, but most of the damage had been repaired. Tim sat down in the center of the room and Noah handed him the Mind Meld potion before taking a seat across from him.

“Thanks again for this,” Tim said. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to properly repay you.”

“Not every gift needs to be repaid. That’s why it’s a gift.”

Tim smiled and raised the potion in a salute before breaking one of the seals and pouring half of it into his mouth. He handed the vial back to Noah, who broke the second seal and drained the rest of it. They both laid down as the potion’s effects took them into its arms and ripped both from the real world and into Tim’s mind.

Just moments later, Noah found himself standing in Tim’s welcoming soul. Seven runes floated around them — but only one of them was worth anything. Aside from the Rank 2 True Earth Rune, the rest of Tim’s soul was full of rubbish. Even so, things had come a long way from the last time Noah had visited. Many of the cracks had healed. Tim’s soul was far from strong, but it had recovered by leaps and bounds.

“Let’s get right to it,” Noah said, rubbing his palms together. “What Rune are you thinking of next? And have you thought of what you want to go for with your Rank 3 Rune?”

“Perhaps another True Earth?” Tim said after a second of contemplation. “And I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the future. Perhaps I’m overly optimistic, but I’d like to combine the earth and wind somehow. I’m not sure how I’ll do it yet, but that’s what I’d like.”

“I can tell you from personal experience that you don’t want to combine two different elements too early,” Noah said, rubbing his chin. “Maybe wait until you hit Rank 3 to start combining any wind related Runes, but I’ll get one into your soul now so you can use it when the time comes. It’ll also help keep you from unbalancing your soul too much with a ton of Earth Runes.”

“I suspect you know more than I, so I’ll go with your suggestion.”

Noah nodded. “Sounds good. In that case, I’ll start with a Rank 2 True Wind Rune. Your soul looks a lot better than it did before, so we might be able to get several runes replaced today. Just keep an eye on things and let me know how you feel. We don’t want to push too hard and break something.”

Tim matched Noah’s nod. He held a hand out and called one of his poorly made Runes to himself, then turned away from Noah. “Okay. I’m ready.”

“Great,” Noah said, baring his teeth in a grin and calling on Sunder until his veins turned black and power pumped through his veins like adrenaline. “Then let’s get you patched up.”

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