(Second Book Complete!) Runeblade: A Delving & Skill Merging LitRPG

B5 Chapter 558: Retrieving Some Books, pt. 1

Kaius crouched down in front of the pressure plate, looking over it with a keen eye. It was a damned nasty thing. The spike that had taken Kenva in the shoulder would have punched right through her brainstem if she hadn’t reacted quickly enough.

Even for him, with Greater Regeneration and Tempered by Dissonance that would have been lights out. Maybe if it just punched through the back of his head and he got lucky — but the brain steam? Lethal.

Of course, he was tall enough it would have hit him in the upper parts of his spine. Whoever had set the trap had been devious about its placement. The drain grate entered the wider stormway via a tight shaft that scrapped his shoulders — without avoiding the pressure plate entirely, there was no real way to dodge it. Only an uncommonly short person would slide under the spike, and anyone else would die. Or be paralysed and slowly bleed out as their health burnt out trying to reconnect their spine.

Funnily enough, it was also a surprisingly good aide for teasing out the differences between Seargent’s Insight and Moment of Flow.

Nominally, they both helped him anticipate danger, but it was really quite different in practice. Insight had grown from his Toolkit, a knowledge and survival skill. It screamed that the hole in the wall and trapped flagstone were awfully suspicious — though he already knew that. Flow, on the other hand, was a danger sense skill. It didn’t do squat until he actually started testing the flagstone, at which point it urged him to stay low and roll back — boosting his reaction times and speed in that same instant.

Regardless, it was clear why Kenva had missed it, despite her keen senses.

“It’s entirely mechanical,” Kaius said, rising to turn to his teammate. She was buckling the straps that ran along the ribs of her cuirass. He’d already donned his own. “Though I have no doubt that whoever built it is Skilled. It’s pushing back against Insight, but there are no enchantments.”

Kenva scowled, rubbing her shoulder. It had long since healed in the thirty minutes it had taken to track down her whistle, but he suspected the motion was more out of embarrassment than anything else.

Clearly, being evaded by a Steel bothered her, but he didn’t think it was so strange. This part of the city was a warren, the rogue had been solidly on her home turf, and she’d had a seemingly endless bag of tricks.

The only thing he found strange was that the woman hadn’t used anything overly lethal. A precaution, perhaps. There were a wealth of second tiers in this city, and even a few thirds. He doubted they’d move for a little smoke and light — but if the rogue had started using toxins and afflictions that killed civilians indiscriminately? There would have been repercussions. Even Skilled, a Steel who drew the ire of a Platinum wouldn’t live long.

More the shame the rogue had been enough of a fool to piss them off. They weren’t leaving without those journals. They were their best method of finding Kanmost, and their best bargaining chip. The man was the best asset they had for finding more about potential Unterstern holdings.

“How’d you slip the guards? You mentioned it’s gone a bit wild up there,” Kenva asked.

That it had. While the city's true elites had yet to be roused, having a secured crime scene explode had certainly sent the guard into a furor. It hadn’t taken long for the entire region to be crawling with patrols. Flowers must have posted some senior men in the area too, since more than a few of them had been Steel.

Even with all of his speed — or maybe because of his speed, he’d picked up a few tails as he desperately tried to keep pace with Kenva’s pursuit. Truesight had made it relatively easy to spot Kenva when she’d taken to the sky, but even with a rough heading it had been a mad chase. The latter explosion of fire hadn’t helped things either — that had pulled every damned patrol in his direction, like a slowly closing net.

Kaius scratched the back of his head. “Had to burn another Warp. Outran my tail, then portaled through a storm grate much like this one. Hopefully we’ll be able to use them to slip past the encirclement when we’re done down here.”

“What about the others? Are they coming to join us?”

He shook his head. “I told them to head back to the Ruby Crown. Even if they could get here without getting spotted, they’re not exactly the most stealthy.”

Plus, even if this rogue had a crew staffed entirely of Silvers, he was more than confident that he and Kenva would be enough to deal with them. That said, he wanted to do this quick and quiet if they could.

“Shall we?” he asked, nodding down the tunnel when Kenva finished putting on her armour. By the time he’d arrived, Kenva had already picked up a few traces of the rogue, so they had a heading.

They set off, creeping deeper into the rat’s nest. The tunnels weren’t sewers, though there was a channel cut into the light grey flagstones through its centre that showed signs of weathering. Likely some sort of system to drain away the heavy rains that regularly hit Greenseed.

Taken from NovelBin, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

All in all, a fair sight more pleasant than their forays into Deadacre’s underworld.

The light was dim, only the infrequent grates to the outside world letting in the faded remnants of the streetlights above. With their ocular skills, it made little difference.

Kaius’s head stayed in constant motion, looking for traces of their target. He might not have been as good as Kenva, but he still had practice and a good Skill. It didn’t take him long to find one.

“There,” he said, pointing to a slight smudge in the rippling streaks of dust that lined the shallow channel in the tunnel's centre.

“We’re on the right track,” Kenva replied, nodding at the trace as they passed.

As they walked, they passed through intersections — some diving deeper into the earth, mouths of darkness untouched by the thin light that filtered through the street level grates.

Approaching another grate, they both froze as the sound of pounding feet carried down to them. From his angle, Kaius could just see the shiny black boots of a squad of guards hoofing it down an alley.

“Who do you think they were working for? The rogue and the dead one,” Kaius asked silently as they slowly pulled back, waiting for the men to pass.

“I wish I knew. Maybe one of them was working with Flowers? The rogue suggested it, and even if I don’t trust her, Flowers is trying to keep things under wraps. It would make sense to keep the guard out of it and maintain plausible deniability.”

“Why would he want the journals, though? Wouldn’t Kanmost have kept him updated on his findings?”

“Who knows. Maybe he was only interested in the final result?”

Kaius resisted the urge to grunt. Hells, maybe neither of them had been working for the lords. Kenva mentioned that the rogue let slip that there were others interested in Kanmost’s findings.

But did that mean that Flowers had done away with the Archivist, and the others were making a play for the only remaining leads to the Place of Power? Or had someone else taken the man, and Kanmost needed his journals to guide them to its location?

As much as he hated to admit it, it did seem a little less likely that the pompous prick himself was behind it all. Someone snatching away his prize in the final hour would certainly explain his emotional outburst when they’d asked after the Archivist.

“Even if Flowers isn’t behind it, he’s still clearly more interested in monopolising what Kanmost found than actually saving the man,” Kaius grumbled. “That makes him a prick in my book.”

“Here, here,” Kenva agreed. “Though I doubt I would think any differently even without this mess.”

The sound of the running guards faded, and they started to move once more.

Kaius was immensely glad that the rogue was battered and frantic enough to leave traces of her passage, and that he and Kenva were sharp enough to spot them. The drainage system was immense, and without a solid heading they would have long since gotten turned around in the endless loops of nigh identical tunnels.

As they walked, he considered the slight twist of unease he felt. Their plan tonight had been off the cuff, and they’d been working out of their element, but it was impossible to deny it had gone utterly sideways.

Sure, that wasn’t really anyone's fault — it was simple bad luck they’d chosen the exact time that others had breached the residence — but it still bothered him.

He glanced at Kenva, and her focused frown as she stalked through the shadows. He didn’t fault her for giving chase, nor did he really have any problem with the outcome. They did need those books, and she had been the only one in the position to follow.

But that shot she’d made? He wasn’t sure if she’d done it because it was the best option at the time, or because she’d been upset about a Steel managing to slip away from her. The rogue's explosive retaliation had pulled even more guards towards them. Even if the rogue hadn’t managed to slip away a second time, they would have what? Been stuck with a struggling prisoner while guards swarmed the neighbourhood? Better they’d just followed the woman quietly in his opinion.

The gods knew he’d made some poor calls in his time, so he wasn’t exactly upset — but Kenva’s choices did warrant consideration. His friend’s pride wasn’t unearned, but she’d still need to reign it in if it was messing with her judgement in the heat of the moment.

At least she hadn’t killed the woman. Even if the woman had tried to kill Kenva, hiding a body in his storage ring until they had the chance to leave the city would have been…gross.

Regardless, he hadn’t been there, and he wasn’t about to throw around judgements on a hunch. It wasn’t like she was some loose cannon who flew off the handle at the slightest provocation. Not like some lords he could think of. If he saw it happen again, he would pull her aside for a quiet word.

While he was deep in thought, Kenva started to slow.

Kaius gave her a curious look. “Something the matter?”

“The trail’s gone cold — no signs for the last hundred strides. Backtrack? Maybe she slipped out of another grate.”

He nodded. Even if she had let the moment get the best of her, it was at least understandable, and she was a damned good teammate.

They crept back the way they had come, combing the walls and floor with renewed focus. Every grate they passed, Kaius gave a solid yank — to no avail. They were all bolted solidly to the surrounding stone.

“This is the last trace,”Kenva said, crouching down beside a fragment of a black thread. Kaius had missed that one — it must have fallen from the woman’s ruined clothes as she moved.

“Hidden door, maybe?”

Whoever the woman was, the trap at the entrance suggested she — or at least her crew — had access to a skilled machinist. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that they had something of the like. Maybe a safehouse, or even simply as a way to cross between disconnected sections of tunnels to throw off pursuers.

Kenva nodded, and they set about scrutinising every handspan of their surroundings near the end of the trail.

It didn’t take them long to find something.

“Over here! This brick’s weird. My eyes kept skipping over it.”

Kaius hurried over.