Return of the Runebound Professor - Chapter 735 (Patreon)

Noah observed Biya for several long seconds as her now-vacant eyes stared sightlessly into the air before her. Her lips were parted slightly and saliva dripped down the side of her chin. There wasn’t a single thought or emotion within the woman.

The only thing Biya could still comprehend was the Line. Thousands upon thousands of compressed years were flying through her mind in a blur. As it turned out, establishing a direct mental connection to someone left your mind pretty open to a mental attack.

It’s too bad she’s never going to get a chance to learn her lesson.

“What did you do to her?” Exal breathed, horror gripping his features. “She’s not even physically here. What manner of soul attack can do this?”

Noah didn’t even bother glancing back in the other man’s direction. There was absolutely nothing that Exal could do to him here. There were already too many thoughts and distractions buzzing within his head.

He might have felt a spark of pity for Biya if he had any left to feel. Unfortunately for her, he didn’t. The noble families had made their stance all too clear. All he was doing now was playing by their rules.

Noah extended a hand toward Biya.

Then he drew on Sunder. Power thrummed through his soul as Crumbling Apocalypse shuddered. It pushed back against the immense Master Rune. Magic poured through Noah’s body in a tidal wave as anger pulsed in his mind to the rhythmic beat of a war drum heart.

Never before had he managed to drink this deeply from Sunder. The difference between what a few Rank 5 runes could resist and what his Rank 6 — even as poorly as it was combined — could handle was astronomical.

Jet black ink cut through his veins. Droplets of concentrated power beaded on Noah’s skin like sweat. They rose into the air to gather before him, melding together to form into the thick hilt of a weapon.

Noah’s eyes widened as recognition cut through him.

It was a spear.

The very same spear that he’d managed to manifest for a brief instant when he used Sunder to the limits of his abilities — and the same spear that Decras wielded in the vision that the Master Rune had given him when he’d first touched it.

Flowing runes ran down its surface, incomprehensible within the pitch black obsidian that made up the weapon. Its point was so sharp that it seemed to cut through the very molecules in the air around its tip.

Noah reached out. He hesitated for a moment, then grabbed the weapon by its hilt. A jolt of electricity raced down his arms and into his body. Deep within it, there was something… more. Noah wasn’t sure if he would have called it intelligence so much as desire.

The weapon wanted to be used. It had been waiting for this. He drew in a sharp breath, then narrowed his eyes. His grip tightened around the spear.

Then he drove it into Biya’s chest.

Noah’s strike carried him a step farther than he’d expected. There wasn’t so much as an ounce of resistance as the tip of the spear met the woman’s skin. It sliced clean into her as if she wasn’t even there.

A flicker of confusion twisted through Noah.

What? Can I not cut her soul while we’re in a Mindspace? That doesn’t make sense. I’ve done this before. I don’t see why it wouldn’t—

Noah pulled the spear back. It passed through her again, just as easily as it had the first time. There just wasn’t any resistance at all. He went to examine the spear, but his eyes went wide before he could.

Red seeped into Biya’s clothes around where the spear had touched her.

Holy shit.

It wasn’t that the weapon hadn’t cut her. The spear was just so sharp that it hadn’t felt any difference between slicing through the air and slicing through her.

A black line flashed down through the Herron Family head.

And then, without ceremony, she peeled apart like a split banana. She didn’t even get the liberty of registering her death. Her eyes were still distant, her mind lost deep within the endless twists of the Line.

A ringing crack echoed through the shared mindspace.

Before the halves of her body had even hit the ground, four runes rose into the air. Each one of them was a Rank 6.

“What?” Exal whispered from behind Noah.

I’d almost forgotten he was still there.

Noah swept his hand through the air, gathering the runes and pulling them into his own soul. It was… easier than he’d have expected. He didn’t even have to think about drawing them. They simply seemed to absorb into his being without so much as an ounce of effort on his part.

And just like that, Biya was dead. The great head of the second strongest noble family in the empire, felled within a single blow — and Noah barely even cared.

Exal took a step back. A stone crunched as it ground across the cobbled street beneath his heel.

“Impossible,” the Torrin family head whispered. “Runes dissipate with the soul upon death. How can such a magic exist?”  

Noah turned back to him as the spear dissipated from his hands. Even with his new rune, he couldn’t keep Sunder active for long. Especially not at this level of power.

“Leave the mindspace,” Noah said flatly. “We’re done here.”

Exal swallowed. His gaze flicked from Noah to Biya’s fallen body.

Then the mindspace collapsed.

***

Noah found himself standing back in his body within Exal’s safe room. A faint headache throbbed at the back of his head, muted out by the thrumming power of his newly made Rank 6 Crumbling Apocalypse Rune.

It would need to be split apart sooner rather than later. The combination was far from perfect, much less flawless. But, even still, the sheer difference between a Rank 6 and a Rank 5 was incredible.

Even more so in the physical world than in a mindspace, Noah’s senses were under an endless assault of information. In many ways, it reminded him of when he’d finally managed to understand his soul properly. He could feel so much. A Rank 5 domain was incomparable to that of a Rank 6.

Where he could once only pick up general forms, Noah now saw in glowing detail. Every inch of Exal’s soul might as well have been screaming out to him. He could feel the magic twisting within the man — and the imbuements covering every square inch of the room around him.

If he’d had time, or if his Rank 6 had been made a little better, Noah might have even been able to tell exactly what the imbuements did. Knowledge wasn’t just easier to acquire within this new domain. It made more sense.   

The only way he could describe it was as if his soul had only been reading a textbook before. Reaching Rank 6 had pulled it free of its shackles and given it the chance to interact with the world and get hands-on experience.

I wonder how many years in the workforce my soul would need to get a minimum wage job. Maybe I should send it back to school for a master’s degree.

Noah squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. His thoughts were drifting all over the place. The moment he got distracted, they were racing off like a tiny dog freed of its leash. He didn’t know if it was caused by soul damage or the huge jump in magical power that had been jumping all the way up to Rank 6 — all he knew was that the longer he spent like this, the hazier everything got.

Noah pinched the bridge of his nose and forced himself to focus. Exal was only just waking up from the mindspace. The magic within him swirled, but the man wasn’t stupid enough to try and call for it again. He knew what would happen if he did — and he still thought there was a way out of this.

A hot streak of anger cut through Noah’s thoughts.

He wasn’t done with Exal yet. If there was one thing that would keep him on track, it was making sure he finished everything he’d come here to do before he returned to Arbitage.

“I did what you wanted,” Exal said through a groan, pressing a hand to his temple. “Damned Plains. What have you done to my head? What did you do to Biya?”

“It’s not my fault your soul is so small that squeezing myself into the connection was enough to damage something,” Noah said dispassionately. He drew on Crumbling Apocalypse, letting the river of power stored within the rune race through his body to gather in his fingertips.

Exal’s jaw clenched. “You’ve got what you wanted, Spider. We have no more business.”

“Is that what you thought?” Noah tilted his head to the side. He adjusted his grip on the power coiling through him. There was magic that he didn’t properly understand within the combination. Power that was largely foreign to him. It would need a boost to work properly. “When did I ever say that this was the extent of what I wanted, Exal?”

“What more do you need from me?” Exal asked. “If you kill me, the entirety of the Torrin House will be your enemy. The Herrons will already come for you. Can you really handle a second house as well? Your students will never breathe another free breath again. You aren’t a god. Even you can’t protect them from everything. They — and you — will spend the rest of their days hounded to the ends of the Empire.”

“Do you really think you’re in position to lay out threats?” Noah asked. His violin materialized in his hands, the obsidian wood seeming to absorb the light within the room. The runes within its surface shimmered, and Exal’s face paled.

“It wasn’t a threat. It was just a fact,” the family head said.

Noah grunted. “Don’t move.”

He pulled the bow across the strings of the violin, letting his power flow into it as he started to play. This was too difficult of an endeavor for him to pull off without a Formation backing him up.

Exal listened on, frozen in place, as a song filled the room. Power gathered in the air around Noah as he built the Formation. It was rather dangerous to try and create a new Formation with a newly formed rune that he didn’t fully understand — but blowing himself up wasn’t exactly on the top of his worry list at the moment.

Fortunately, this Formation wasn’t trying to do anything fancy. It was one of the most basic ones he’d ever needed. There was only one aspect it had to provide for him.

Power.

“What is this?” Exal breathed as Noah’s playing slowed to a halt and the final notes coiled through the room. “What are you doing?”

“Making a statement,” Noah replied.

He placed a single finger on the other man’s head.

The other man’s lips parted.

A black line split him from head to toe. The surprise and fear never even got a chance to leave his features.

Exal split apart, dead well before he hit the ground. Even as three runes spiraled out from within his body, Noah rapped Grim on the cover.

“Take them,” Noah said dispassionately. “I don’t want all this extra shit in my soul. There’s already too much trash rattling around in it.”

Tongues of paper shot out over his back. They plucked the runes from the air and dragged them back into the grimoire’s pages in an instant.

Noah pressed a hand to his head and leaned against the wall. A wave of dizziness washed over him. He still wasn’t if it was from the soul damage or the huge growth spurts he’d been putting his soul through. He’d find out when the —

A faint buzz tickled the back of his head. Somehow, he’d found himself sitting against the wall. His Formation still hung in the air like the sword of Damocles, waiting to be activated. Its simplicity, paired with the enormously increased reserves he had to work with now, had let it last far longer than anything he’d made before.

The buzz intensified. He blinked.

It was the Transport Cannon.

An hour had passed. Noah shook his head and pushed away from the wall, squinting as he tried to bring his thoughts back to the present. He pushed himself to his feet as the buzzing sensation grew stronger still.

With a single thought, he drew on Sunder one last time. He brushed a finger through the power hanging in the Formation, slicing it apart and ruining the closed circuit.

There was a shrill shriek as all the magic stored within it suddenly found an escape.

The Transport Cannon activated. Noah’s body transformed into a streak of light — and an instant later, the Formation shattered.

A deafening explosion tore through the room in his wake. It caught the imbuements lining the walls, detonating them as well as the runes preserving their power were destroyed. The walls shattered. Underground passages crumbled.

And, as Noah vanished through the sky above Blancwood, the Torrin Main Branch’s mansion collapsed into the growing sinkhole beneath it.