Runeblade-Chapter 207B2 : Infiltration, pt. 7

A faint rattling gasp slipped out of the boggart’s throat as his blade burst its eye and slid into its skull. Firelight played off the ashen tones of his blade, haloing the crystal set in its form.

It shuddered, falling limp.

**Ding! level 55 Boggart - Skulker slain - Experience Gained! Bonus Experience for slaying a foe of Significant Strength!**

Kaius breathed easy as he pulled his blade free, and glanced towards Porkchop.

His brother was making his way around the other edge of the room with a silent grace that belied his size. Stopping at the foot of a boggart, he would raise one paw—reaching over to press a point of his razor sharp jade claws into their head.

It was the fifth such room they’d encountered—and they were growing more common. Not all had been lit as this one was—others they’d almost walked straight past, only noticing the sleeping monsters due to their rigour in checking every room.

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Porkchop had insisted on joining him. While he wasn’t the most stealthy with his bulk and lack of dedicated skills, he did just fine at moving quietly—which was the most important thing with their targets sleeping.

Nominally, it had been insurance in case of one of the greasy ferals awakening. With each room holding anywhere from a handful to a dozen of them, they’d have to act fast to silence the wakers before a scream of surprise could give them away.

Another step and he looked down at the twisted figure, its chest rising and falling with easy regularity. Covered in hide blankets, it looked peaceful—even gentle. Much of its mishapen body and greasy hair was hidden by its covers, leaving only a strange and lumpy face. One that seemed all too human.

Not enough for him to forget its poisonous nature, but enough for him to find the work draining.

A thrust slid through bone, backed by just enough strength to overcome the reinforcement brought by its levels. After killing so many of the creatures, Toolkit had helped him discern a weak spot. Right between their eyes—a place where bone grew thin and its skull plates fused poorly.

**Ding! level 56 Boggart - Brawler slain - Experience Gained! Bonus Experience for slaying a foe of Significant Strength!**

**Ding! Runeblade Initiate has reached class level 51!**

**+3 End, Str, & Int, +2 Dex, Wil, +1 Vit, Free - from Class & Racial Traits!**

**Ding! Explorer’s Toolkit has reached level 47!**

Another dead boggart.

He moved on, padding his way through the room to the next prone form. There were only a couple left.

At the very least, the grizzly work had brought them a pair of levels. Not all that much, considering the gains he’d seen from a single fight in the past. At least Explorer’s Toolkit had been getting a bit of a novel growth from all of the sneaking about.

It was unfortunately to be expected. They were close in level, not particularly challenging, and their overall experience was being somewhat reduced by working in a team.

Still rather prodigious if he used the standards of normal growth. Most teams wouldn’t dare to take on more than a handful of equally levelled opponents. Even the elite ones wouldn’t attempt anything more that ten or maybe twenty levels higher, with extremely good matchups and preparation.

For a full fledged horde like this? If any even dared to attempt it, it would be against things drastically weaker than themselves.

A dedicated team might get a couple of levels a week, assuming they were fighting constantly as you would in the Depths. That slowed down further the higher you climbed. At a constant pace, an elite team might reach the second tier in a couple of years—most took far longer, since few had the drive and stamina to delve constantly.

They were making good pace, and Kaius had no doubt there were more levels coming. Potentially enough to take them to the precipice of their next skill.

Kaius thrust again, his blade stained red with the repeated executions. The boggart stiffened, shuddering through its death.

**Ding! level 56 Boggart - Brawler slain - Experience Gained! Bonus Experience for slaying a foe of Significant Strength!**

An arm seized, slapping to the side.

Right into the chest of the next sleeping monster.

It started, shaking its head as bleary eyes opened, staring up at him in sleepy confusion.

He reacted instantly. A lunge took him forwards, spearing the boggart between his eyes—already widening in realisation. It died, lips just barely opening to call out to its fellows. Both he and Porkchop gave up their pretences, speed more helpful than complete silence.

**Ding! level 60 Boggart - Skulker slain - Experience Gained! Bonus Experience for slaying a foe of Significant Strength!**

Sweeping his eyes across the room, Kaius double checked his count of the remaining monsters. Four, two more for him.

They were already shifting, sleep disturbed by the rousing sounds of their motion. One tugged at its blanket, pulling it over its head.

He nailed the hide in place, A Father’s Gift pinning the covering fast.

**Ding! level 49 Boggart - Scavenger slain - Experience Gained!**

Porkchop had already plunged his claws through both of his remaining targets, large enough to reach both.

The final boggart sat stark upright, eyes spinning around the room before it focused on them. Its face paled, horror and fear plain in its beady eyes. Death had come, and it knew it.

The boggart drew in a breath—ready to scream.

Kaius raced into a thrust, punching his blade through the base of its throat, cutting off the coming noise at the source. It gasped, wet and foaming. A splutter of blood misted from the opening, as the boggart clutched at his blade. Its hands were cut to the bone as it ineffectively tried to remove the weapon.

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There was no joy in this. No Song in his blood. Just cold certainty, duty, and the pounding unease of potential discovery.

With flat eyes, Kaius ripped his blade free. The wound he’d left started to roil, the boggart’s health burning to seal it closed.

He didn’t give it the opportunity to finish.

A flick of his wrists spun his blade into a heavy overhead, his sword edge coming home to roost in the boggart’s skull.

**Ding! level 54 Boggart - Mauler slain - Experience Gained!**

Flicking his blade clean, Kaius smothered the shimmering coals at the room's centre with a little water and a dampened hide. Covering the bodies with their blankets, he joined his brother at the entryway.

Unease gnawed away at the base of his belly as he went about his work. The groups had been growing larger. This hadn’t been the first time a boggart had awakened—it was only a matter of time until they were too slow to suppress a call for help.

Eventually, it would turn into a pitched assault.

Ianmus was waiting for them.

“Good job, gruesome as it may be.” Ianmus whispered at a barely audible volume. “I got a level.”

Kaius nodded. They’d been hoping for that. There was little in the way that Ianmus could aid them in their culling of the sleeping boggarts. While they’d taken the effort to confirm that Ianmus could kill the boggarts with a single Sunbeam manipulated to invisible light, they needed to keep his mana topped off for the real dangers.

Instead, the mage had been keeping their Sundrenched Strength constantly active—giving him contribution in the eyes of the system, and making their jobs all the easier.

…

Kaius chewed through a mouthful of jerky. Well salted and expertly smoked, it was a far cry from the crude fixings he’d had to eat in his initial stint in the Depths.

With the extensive nature of the cave, and the slow crawling pace they’d had to take, they’d already been pushing through the warren for a long while. Enough time for their hunger to make itself known.

While they could have pushed through, Ianmus had raised one point. Despite their enhanced constitutions, none of them were immune to the mundane realities of life, including the gurgling of a hungry belly.

The mage was proven correct less than a minute later. Kaius’s had growled right as they were about to sweep a room—a quiet noise, but enough for his heart to feel like the hand of death had set its grip upon him.

They’d pulled back into explored territories, taking a few minutes to restore their reserves—and hopefully avoid blowing their cover for something as silly as a little hunger.

Eating in silence gave him plenty of space to think. Killing the boggarts was not what he expected, but it wasn’t their casual slaughter that occupied his mind—it was their classes.

They seemed strangely similar to the system of the higher races, as well as that of monsters. Other creatures—beasts especially—were often physically changed by the system's bestowals.

A wolf was always a wolf—but its physical form, bloodlines, and potential would change drastically based on its racial type. A common wolf might have a handful of available Common bloodlines—maybe an Uncommon if they were exceptional. They’d also struggle to ever reach the end of the first tier—limited by the realities of their growth.

On the other hand, a direwolf would be larger, stronger, and have a better selection of bloodlines—if still just as limited. They’d also be able to grow to a higher level—though all of those differences were still minor, a direwolf wasn't anything too special.

Of course, beasts could improve their racial type—though Kaius didn’t understand the specifics very well, other than it being related to birth, dare and deed, mana levels, consumption of things rich in magical energy, or some combination of all four. He made a mental note to ask Porkchop at some point—if anyone was likely to be an expert, it would have to be the Dens.

If they were truly exceptional, they could even fully evolve their race. Even the greatest of wolves would hit a wall at some point, and it took a rare specimen to make the leap to something that would allow advancement—a flame-aspected bloodline might have a chance at evolving to become a hellhound, or something similar.

Greater beasts were different. They had no real cap on their growth, and as far as he knew they couldn’t advance their race—and evolving it was impossibly difficult. As Porkchop had told him so long ago, he would likely always be a greater meles.

Yet there were also similarities. While their bloodlines had the same nigh infinite variation of a higher race’s class, it was still intimately tied to their race. Porkchop had told him that as far as the Dens were aware, other greater beasts they knew of had notably different bents and inclinations to their bloodlines.

Those bloodlines were also still tied to their form—Kaius only needed to look at his brother's new jade claws, green coat, and size to see that.

The boggarts—lower races in general, from what he remembered of goblins, ogres, and trolls—seemed similar in a way.

Clearly, based on the existence of hobs and bugbears, there seemed to be some link between their racial type and their classes. Ianmus had said as much.

On the other hand, there was far less racial variation than a beast, and their class seemed to have no impact on their forms. Sure, the ones that had classes that sounded front-line focused tended to be bigger and taller, but that was just as easy to say about people.

They also lacked the wide variations of classes that were seen in the higher races and greater beasts.

A Common man of the soil’s class would tend towards having a simplistic name, but there was still a great amount of variation. They could be a Harvester, Skilled Farmer, Fruit Cultivator, Cattle Herder and hundreds more. As the class got rarer, the more specific or grandiose the name, and the less likely you were to see someone else with a duplicate without specific training towards a goal class—though that was common across everything.

The boggarts? He kept seeing similar classes, over and over again. Like they were simple beasts. They’d killed only one bugbear, but its class had stood alone. Kaius would bet a full gold that they’d start seeing it again as they killed more of the larger brutes.

It was strange—what separated them? Was it just their monstrous ways? Their inability to use the common tongue or written language? Where did the system draw the line?

Were all lower races so malevolent? He only had four examples to work off, and they were equal in their barbarous ways.

Kaius swallowed his mouthful of salted meat, taking their waterskin from Ianmus’s offered hand after he raised it questioningly towards him.

For all he knew, it was a punishment directly from the system. A lowering of the cruelest and harshest of thinking beings—a way to give the races capable of more than slaughter and war a fighting chance.

He sincerely hoped that it was not the case. It all being down to a little bad luck with particularly grotesque specimens would be nicer—a world with a whole category for the evil and stupid was a little grim.

Kaius sighed quietly, drinking deep from their supplies of water.

It was likely that others would know more—he wasn’t exactly the most academic person, what with his background and all. Even if he did have a broad knowledge thanks to his father’s teachings, he often found himself lacking details and specifics.

In the end, all that mattered was that he could expect two things. Predictable capabilities, and the bugbears to be stronger than their lesser relatives.

He shook his head, rising to his feet before he offered Ianmus a hand up. They’d taken enough time to rest—their culling waited.