Return of the Runebound Professor

The power flowing through Garina’s body from her runes sputtered. She was far too experienced to actually let herself get completely off guard, but for the briefest instant, even she couldn’t keep surprise from driving into her gut like a physical punch.

This couldn’t be right. Her senses were never wrong. She’d come here for a runaway Rank 7 — not the brass little demon girl that had actually managed to win an argument against her.

My prey was here. There’s no doubt about it. I feel the disturbance.

A trick, then? Someone trying to exploit a weakness to catch me off guard? I don’t know how they even would have figured this out, but anyone who thinks something like this will bring me low is about to be very sorely mistaken.

Her senses exploded outward in every direction. Garina could have been anywhere within the entirety of the baby kingdom around her should she have willed it. Her mind could stretch from one end of it to the other, so digging through one burnt up forest was nothing to her.

Nobody in this little backwater corner of the world could match Garina. Any Rank 7 that dared to try and hide in wait for an ambush, no matter how much information they’d managed to dig up about her, would be found and summarily dealt with.

Out you come, pup.

The corner of Garina’s lip twitched up in anticipation of assured victory.

Then it fell flat again.

There were traces of a Rank 7 — a disturbance centered directly on top of the Fish Demon and the group around her — but there wasn’t a single Rank 7 rune in this forest other than Garina’s.

Her eyes twitched in anger. This was impossible. She refused to accept it. Letting one Rank 7 slip out of her grasp was bad enough. But now, after preparing for so long, having it happen again was like someone spitting straight into her open mouth.

“Where are they?” Garina asked, her voice as sharp and cold as black ice.

“Who?” Fish Girl asked, glancing around.

“Don’t play games with me,” Garina snapped.

She regretted it instantly. Yelling at a weak little creature was below her, and that only made her annoyance grow even further. That was twice now that she’d been bested in words by a goblin-adjacent child, and the 2nd time, it had only taken a single word to break her.

“You know who,” Garina snarled. “I was called here. This was no mistake. I’m not a fool, girl. Whatever they paid you — whatever you think you’re going to get out of this — you won’t. Disobey me and die.”

“I think you might be hungry.”

I am hungry. I don’t even want to be here. I should be eating a sandwich with Fredrick right now, not hunting some idiot Rank 7 that thinks it would be a good idea to yank at my chain. Fuck the rules. I’m going to rip this idiot in half when I find them.

“The only people here are us,” the scruffy-looking man beside Fish Girl said. His features were narrow in suspicion. He put a hand on the massive book on his back as if he were planning to try and hit her over the head with it. “How did you get here and what do you want?”

That’s odd.

There wasn’t any fear in the man’s eyes. It wasn’t present in his posture either. A small frown formed on Garina’s lips. The longer she looked at him, the more askew something felt. Her senses had been refined over years of life, and there was something wrong about the mortal before her.

It took her nearly a second to realize what it was.

He didn’t feel like a mortal at all.

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A Rank 7 in hiding?

Her domain brushed across his.

Garina’s frown deepened. He was far from a Rank 7. This wasn’t the one she was looking for. She scanned Fish Girl to similar results. That left only the armless demon lying in the dirt at their feet. She was a Rank 6.

It’s none of them. I’d be able to feel a Rank 7 rune no matter who was hiding it if it was right next to me.

Where is this fucker? don’t give a shit about what’s going on. I just want to be done with this and go back. Every second I waste here is one I’m not getting back.

“I won’t warn you twice,” Garina said, her lips thinning. “Tell me where the Rank 7 is. Don’t think that you can play coy with me because we’ve had one amiable interaction. This is your one and only opportunity to tell me what’s going on. Pass up on it and I’ll hang you with the idiot trying to pull a fast one over an Apostle.”

“Rank 7?” the scruffy man tilted his head to the side. The corner of his lip twitched. “Why are you looking for a Rank 7? There are no Rank 7s in the kingdom. That’s common knowledge.”

There was something smug in his voice that grated Garina’s gears to no end. She was the smug one. People didn’t talk back to her. They groveled at her feet. It would have taken nothing more than a mere thought from her to grind every single one of the mortals before her to a paste with her Rune Force — and for that reason alone, she couldn’t use it.

The day I’m forced to unleash my Rune Force against a Rank 6 and a few middling lower ranks is the day I hand them the leash to my collar and die from shame.

“You seem to misunderstand the situation,” Garina said, her lips pulling back to bare her teeth. “I’m not opposed to ripping your head clean off your shoulders and shoving it so far back up your ass that it pops out your neck, boy. Last chance. Rank 7. Where are they?”

Something in the man’s gaze shifted again.

Garina’s body stiffened. Goosebumps prickled against the back of her neck.

What is this?

He seems… familiar.

“My name is Vermil,” the man said. “You should know that. We had dinner together, Garina. And if I’m being honest, I preferred the bald guy to you. As for your Rank 7 — I’m getting the feeling that the only way you’ll find one of those here is if you look in a still lake.”

“You’re lying,” Garina said flatly. “And you’re not going to enjoy what happens next.”

“Why would I lie?” Vermil tilted his head to the side. “I would never put my allies at risk for no reason. There’s no Rank 7 here. I’d swear a Rune Oath, but I think everyone with half a brain knows how worthless those are. You didn’t deny that you were a Rank 7 — so you should be able to sense another one, right?”

He’s not wrong about that… or the Rune Oaths. I’m being too clumsy. Revealing myself to a bunch of weak magelings like this is already bad enough. Seeing the Fish Girl threw me for a bad loop. Damn it.

“I don’t believe you. There was a Rank 7 here. Don’t even try to tell me there wasn’t,” Garina said, striding up to Vermil so they stood nose-to-nose. She wasn’t sure why she’d singled him out over the still-mute Rank 6, but there was something about him that pulled at the back of her mind incessantly. “Where. Did. They. Go?”

Vermil raised his eyes to meet her gaze without so much as blinking.

The goosebumps on the back of Garina’s neck intensified. A cold hand brushed over her back as her senses shifted in unease.

His eyes were wrong.

It was so subtle that she never would have even noticed were they not so close. The difference wasn’t even something a mortal could detect through anything other than sheer instinct, but reaching Rank 7 unleashed an entire new layer to the world that nobody weaker could ever hope to witness. It revealed truths that permeated the universe and laid one’s soul bare to unleash its power — and in turn, it granted sight into the souls of others.

And the soul of this mortal did not belong in his body.

It didn’t belong at all.

Deep within his eyes lurked something familiar. A heavy, oppressive aura of an immense Divine Rune, a power that she had only borne witness to on very rare occasions. Disbelief welled within her, but it was stemmed by the still-growing unease.

There was something else in the man’s gaze.

Something ancient — and something deeply wrong.

“That power… I know you.”

Vermil’s veins turned jet black in an instant. He thrust his hand forward, driving it straight into Garina’s gut. The blow didn’t even register. Her body was so reinforced with magical energy that she may as well have been struck by a fly.

But the magic within the strike was another question. Garina felt, for a flicker of an instant, that familiar sensation in Vermil’s eyes intensify by a hundredfold.

Her gaze snapped up.

A black spear plummeted down toward her like a falling star.

Garina thrust her hand upward. The spear slammed to a halt an inch away from her nose. Slowly, she turned to look at the man. She’d had her domain deactivated to make sure that she wouldn’t crush anyone on accident, but just her body alone should have been enough to stop any attacks from in this weak, backwater kingdom.

And yet Garina knew without a doubt that if the spear had hit her, it would have left the slightest of cuts upon her skin.

Her gaze lowered back to the man. Her fist tightened. The spear shattered.

“You were right under my nose this whole time. I can’t believe it. You’re the one that he’s looking for.”