Runeblade-Chapter 218B2 : Looting and Leaving, pt. 1

Kaius carefully picked his way between the chunks of boggling strewn across the cavern—the remnants of Ro’s earlier devastation of a full two thirds of the plague. While he didn’t hold overmuch respect for their dead, nor was it possible to completely avoid getting his boots coated in all varieties of unmentionable, feeling his weight pulp flesh beneath his boot was still disgusting.

So he did his best, relying on supernatural dexterity and strength to hop between islands of clean stone as he made his way to the slain warchief’s and shaman’s tents.

“Show off.” Porkchop muttered.

Kaius snorted. Neither of his teammates had the luxury of avoiding the muck. Porkchop was simply too large to avoid it all, and Ianmus suffered from a simple lack of physical ability.

Shooting his brother an easy grin, he made a final leap—a good fifteen strides—to the patch of relatively unblemished stone that surrounded the structures.

He spun—throwing his hands in the air. “Ta-da!”

Ankle deep in viscera, neither of his companions found his humour particularly gripping—his show only earning him a doubled glare as they stomped over to him.

With Ro having been confirmed as the source of the missing bogglings, much of the tense anxiety that had weighed upon them had fled. Unfortunately, the dissatisfaction at their showing remained. An acrid bitterness that percolated in his stomach, doing its best to taint everything else they had to be proud of.

For there were things they had done well—he knew that, and acknowledging their victories was just as important as learning from their defeat.

Ianmus had founded his Aspect Mentis, they’d survived a siege they were thoroughly unprepared for, and they’d gained skill and class levels galore.

That said, the revelation that Ro had been watching them the whole time—that they’d specifically been sent on a mission that was poorly suited to them, on the assumption they would approach it with inadequate thought and preparation—was a little difficult to swallow.

Especially because the woman had left within minutes of their conversation even starting. Kaius wanted to pick her brains, to get her opinion on where they should direct their efforts. Now he’d have to wait until they got to Deadacre—something that was imposing in its own right.

No doubt Rieker would have his own things to say, and Kaius would sooner believe that trees walked than think the guildmaster wouldn’t have a few…remedial lessons waiting for them at their return.

Porkchop and Ianmus arrived, breaching the tide of death to join him on dry land. They shook their feet—a vain attempt to dislodge the worst of the drippings.

“I still can’t believe one woman did all of this,” Ianmus said, eyes scanning the strewn bodies of the horde with a furrowed brow that revealed the devastation had left him impressed—and intimidated. “She has to be in the second tier, right?”

Kaius nodded. It was the only explanation that made sense. The way she’d been all but undetectable to their every senses—including his Truesight, which specialised in revealing the hidden—and the ease with which she had cut through hundreds of monsters left very little other explanation.

Let alone the woman’s speed—there'd been no flash of mana, but when she’d left them it felt like she’d just dissolved into wind. One moment she’d been standing there, the next Ro was just…gone.

“She feels strong,” Porkchop agreed. “She tore these creatures apart—no one with claws that sharp stays a simple Uncommon or Rare.”

Porkchop’s statement got Kaius thinking—assuming she was tier two, was it likely she had an Unusual class? He decided to ask Ianmus, who had taken to cutting a section of hide from one of the nearby tents in an attempt to clean up his boots.

Ianmus looked up, letting out a low hum as he thought it over.

“Most people are pretty cagey about it—Tier two’s are rare in the central lands, especially those close to the Frontier. No one wants to accidentally let it slip to their enemies—political and physical—that they’re at a stat disadvantage afterall. However, I'd say it's likely. Uncommon is the bare minimum for Delvers, and with the kind of dedicated effort it takes to reach the second tier I would be surprised if anyone was less than Rare.” Ianmus finally replied, discarding his scrap hide—now soaked in blood.

Kaius tilted his head, not entirely sure if he agreed. Sure, most people either died or burnt out of adventuring work long before they evolved their class—but everything he’d seen in the Guild had screamed a shocking lack of ambition.

In his mind, the fact that most people fought things lower in level than themselves would reduce their chances. Sure, it wouldn’t be everyone—but there had to be some people who were diligent and overcautious, building up their levels over decades instead of months and years.

Surely not all of them would just…give up, right? With all the benefits that came from rising through the tiers—the life extension, increased stats, and skill evolutions—people wouldn’t just stop trying, it would be absurd.

Yet he couldn’t see any other explanation for the notable lack of people higher than the first tier—and the prevalence of exceptionalism amongst those who made it.

It made no sense. It was just experience, if people hungered for it, it was in reach. He couldn’t see how fighting lower level monsters could be so soul destroying that people would just give up.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Admittedly, it was probably so boring and slow that he was getting restless just thinking about that particular path to power.

Kaius shook his head, driving the matter from his mind. They’d made their way through the thickest piles of bodies in the hopes of investigating for valuables—if there were any, they were bound to be near the plague leader’s tents.

“I’ll check the shaman’s tent—who knows what sort of noxious things it might have been brewing in the past.” Kaius suggested. If there was anything dangerous, he was the least likely to be affected with his broad spanning resistances.

“Good idea, plus you have a nose for reagents—I'll check out the rear of the cavern. That stone the boggling were using has me curious, if there’s a vein of it we might be able to claim a finders fee. It’s pretty normal for valuable seams that are worth extracting.” Ianmus replied, nodding his head to the shadowed wall beyond the tents.

At the very least, there was evidence of more mining back there—though it could have just as easily been the plague making another expansion.

“That’s a little cheeky, don’t you think? Wouldn’t Ro have the claim since she cleared the cavern?” Porkchop asked, surprise—but not disapproval—seeping through his mental words.

Ianmus had the decency to look bashful, shooting them a half smile. “Of course—though I will admit that her sudden flight indicates she considers her salvage forfeit.”

“Hah—we can hope. I guess that leaves the Warchief’s den, then. I’ll yell if there’s anything that needs thumbs.” Porkchop said, plodding towards the largest tent to their right.

Sharing a silent nod with Ianmus, he left the mage to do his own investigations, and walked towards the only slightly smaller tent about fifty strides across the cavern.

It was a grisly thing—impressive in scale for its crude construction. A chest high circular wall made of a crudely stitched mishmash of different hides stretched across a wooden frame served as the base to the structure, while a low conical top of similar make was fastened to a central pillar.

The pillar itself was particularly macabre—two dozen different skulls were mounted on strange effergies of bone. A profane offering or beseechment of whatever dark gods the spiritual leader of the plague had paid his allegiance to.

Pushing aside the flap that held the tent closed, Kaius quickly found the iron-laden air of the cavern outside washed away with the sharp bite of alchemy.

Most of it was old—a stale torrent of bitter hatred sinking its way into his nostrils, its older black works long since losing the potency that would have differentiated the scent of magic.

Honestly, for what he had seen of the general barbarity of the bogglings, he was almost impressed by the creature’s setup.

Almost.

A low sleeping pit had been gouged into the stone at the far end of the tent, roughly layered with grease streaked furs. Other than that single sign of habitation, everything else in the space seemed to have been devoted to crude imitations of alchemy and runes.

Drying herbs, reagents, and poultices hung from the wooden framing of the tent's root, with more in the final stages of preservation lining rickety wooden shelves that dotted the tent haphazardly.

At the centre, right where a cooking pit would have normally been, several cauldrons had been set over a currently unlit fire. The pots were cast iron—no doubt stolen from whatever unfortunate souls the plague had set their eyes upon.

With the residue of past experiments and so many mundane reagents filling the air, it was hard for Kaius to work his way through what he was looking for.

He was no Alchemist, and even his Toolkit was a poor substitute for a class with a full complement of synergistic skills. He’d hoped that he could rely on nothing but his nose to draw him to any choice pickings, but it seemed such a thing would not be the case.

Sighing at the work ahead of him, Kaius started to pick his way through the belongings of the dead shaman—taking care not to touch anything lest he run afoul of some affliction or curse.

….

Much like he had expected, most of the lead shaman’s stash of reagents were little more than mana infused mundane herbs. Something a skilled practitioner could use in a pinch, but nothing actually worth collecting.

There had been a shelf of open bowls filled with a shocking number of noxious ointments and tonics of a dubious nature, though Kaius was as inclined to touch them and he was to try to bite a bull’s backside. Just the thought of messing around with boggling ‘tonics’ set his stomach roiling.

That said, he’d also been pleasantly surprised.

Despite the careful search taking enough time that both Ianmus and Porkchop had called in to make sure he wasn’t lying on the floor and foaming at the mouth, it had actually proven fruitful.

The shaman had somehow managed to collect three reagents that were potent enough for the system to give them a rarity—one of which was even a Rare, a sliver of milky crystal glowing with an internal green light. An affinity condensate—though one of the lowest grade. A shame, considering that that limited its uses considerably. If it was twice the size, Kaius had no doubt they’d be able to get a clean thousand gold, considering how hard they were to find.

He’d almost missed it, hidden as it was underneath a pile of lesser herbs on a shelf tucked in a back corner of the tent.

Kaius looked at his haul, having laid them out on a thin bench to give them a closer look. Other than the crystal, there’d been a mushroom that reeked of fire and ash once he’d gotten close enough, and a small waterskin filled with some sort of amber treacle substance—tree sap, from the system's description.

He pulled up their descriptions, wanting to take a final look—finding even one would have been a pleasant surprise, but all three would likely bring in enough coin to rival one of their lesser missions that they’d completed on the journey over.

Wasting Ash Toadstool:

Uncommon - Tier I

Affinity - Fire, Ash, Toxin

Beware the ruin heralded by ash.

A magically potent fungus, brimming with the caustic remnants of flame.

Reagent

….

Least Nature Condensate

Rare - Tier I

Affinity - Nature

A spring breeze, preserved in amber.

Through miracle or a conflux of coincidence, this smallest drop of purified Nature affinity has crystallised

Reagent

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….

Hungering Hemlock Sap:

Common - Tier I

Affinity - Nature, Poison

Sometimes even the most mundane of beings can become more than their birth.

The extract of a Hemlock that has long steeped in potential of mana.

Reagent