Return of the Runebound Professor - Chapter 738 (Patreon)

“Godhood?” Noah asked, stunned. “What are you talking about? I couldn’t have been much more than an average Rank 6 who fell down a flight of stairs as a child. There’s no way I was anywhere anything that could ever even so much as resemble godhood.”

Grim let out a raspy laugh. His long legs bore him past Noah to one of Biya’s runes. The abomination ran a finger across its surface, sending shimmering sparks dancing through the air like faint fireworks.

“Godhood is not about the strength of one’s runes,” Grim said. “Though you can’t gather sufficient escape velocity, so to speak, unless you have runes powerful enough to fuel the transformation to godhood. There are stages to such things. You had simply been begun one of them.”

“First, that barely answers anything. Second, it’s really weird when you use earth terminology. Seriously. How much of that shit do you have? And how? And third — how do you know Sievan… or any of this stuff, for that matter? You were a book in the Linwick Estate’s crappy fake archives. I can buy the idea that you’re some kind of monster that got sealed away because you snacked on too many runes. But you know way too much to just be a monster.”

“You already know what I am,” Grim said. “My existence is a conglamoration. Countless lives crushed and bound and forced together into a single consciousness. Absorbing knowledge is considerably easier than lives — and you have fed me a great deal.”

“And the shit about Sievan?” Noah asked. “What, did some of the bits within you meet Sievan at some point?”

“Yes,” Grim replied simply. “Some manner of them did. There are other ways to know the happenings of the Damned Plains. I have witnessed existences in this universe that reside neither on the Plains nor the mortal realm. Some of them were, as those on this plane would call them, gods.”

“You’ve seen gods?” Noah asked, his eyes going wide.

“So have you,” Grim pointed out. “Two of them.”

That was a fair point. Noah rubbed at the bridge of his nose. Grim tapped the rune before him pointedly. He didn’t say anything, but the message was clear enough. Noah nodded to Grim. Normally, he’d have to intentionally imbue the runes in his soul to remove them.

But Grim was literally a manifestation of the power of his grimoire. The abomination could just pluck them free of his soul and the result would be exactly the same. There was no need for him to waste time trying to draw each Rank 6 Rune properly and leave them rotting his mind for any longer than they had to.

Grim wasted no time in setting about plucking the first rune free. He let a slender finger rest upon its shimmering surface. Faint lines lit beneath his pitch-black skin as a pattern formed within the twisting coils that swirled within him.

The rune drew itself into being within Grim. Power flowed from Noah, and he made no move to stop it. Within moments, his connection to the rune severed as it was fully imbued into Grim’s pages.

A pang of pain drove into Noah. He grimaced but managed to avoid stumbling over himself as a crack split through his already-damaged Mindspace to send white light spilling out through the darkness.

The Rank 6 Runes weren’t going to come out easily. They had too much weight. Even though he hadn’t bothered trying to do anything with them, all the growth his soul had gone through by drawing the runes in was going to cause some damage as it receded.

“So what did you mean by the first stage of godhood?” Noah asked, half just to keep himself distracted from the throbbing pain coursing through his entire being.

“I don’t have as much information as I suspect you would like,” Grim said. “All I know is that it resembles memories that I have of witnessing other gods begin to ascend. The process starts with the creation of a rune that goes beyond its normal limits. One that draws in energy from more than just the sum of its parts, but the very concept which it represents.”

“You’re saying I managed that?” Noah asked.

“The confusion in your actions makes the suspicion grounded,” Grim replied. He moved to the next of the runes that Noah had taken from Biya and begun to harvest it. “It was not mere confusion, was it? You were lucid. Your actions were simply random. Or, in other words…”

“Chaotic,” Noah muttered. “You’re saying I was somehow creating — what, some kind of god-level Rune?”

Grim let out another raspy laugh. “Of course not. A Rank 6 could not possibly form any kind of rune that could lay claim to godhood. But it was following a similar path to a god’s rune. I suspect there are a number of things that would be required for a rune to transcend its boundaries. If all of them are filled, then you become a god. You were likely about to accomplish one of them. And if that happened, the damage to your soul when the rune was split back apart would be astronomical.”

That sent a grimace shooting across Noah’s features. He didn’t need Grim to spell it out for him. If he really had somehow managed to make Crumbling Apocalypse more powerful than he’d meant to, then it would have buried itself deeper into his soul. Taking it out would have been excruciating at best.

“What do you think the requirements are?” Noah asked. “I can’t really think of anything special I did with that combination. It was just a bunch of stuff tossed together. The one caveat is many of the runes were flawless. But that can’t be it. Many of them weren’t even flawless.”

“I’d imagine a fair amount of it comes from your intent,” Grim said. He moved on to the next of Biya’s runes. His head turned so his sightless eyes could stare back at Noah. “You made the rune. Not me. I don’t know what requirements there are… so the only person who can really answer your question is yourself. Was there really nothing different with its creation?”

Noah’s brow furrowed as he dug through his memories. He’d made the Rank 6 the same way he’d made pretty much every other rune he’d combined. If anything, it was just sloppy. There hadn’t been a particularly strong intent. He’d had a general idea of what he wanted and had just smashed everything together like a child making dolls kiss.  

Maybe it wasn’t the method of creation? Could it have been something else entirely that caused this to happen?

It has to have something to do with Chaos. I can’t deny that Grim seems to be onto something. My mind was literally getting changed. It’s almost like…

Noah paled. “Oh, shit.”

Grim tilted his head to the side. “I can’t read your thoughts. What is it?”

“When runes are sufficiently powerful, is it possible that they develop a will?” Noah asked. “Sunder has one. There are times I’ve felt like it wanted me to use it. And then there’s Yoru as well. Moonlit Prophecy was completely aware.”

“I… don’t know,” Grim said slowly. “That is something I have little information on. I dislike that. But I do not see why it would not be possible. Many things are possible with sufficient strength. I see the similarities you have drawn. You believe your rune was trying to control you?”

“No,” Noah said, becoming more certain of his words the more he spoke. “It wasn’t that it was intentionally trying to control me. I think my soul wasn’t strong enough to resist the rune. It was influencing me just with its presence alone. It has to have something to do with Chaos. Did I somehow accidentally make too much of it by smacking stuff together randomly?”

“It seems doubtful that a primal force of the universe could be harnessed by the same strategy that an impatient child would utilize.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Noah asked.

Grim shrugged. He finished removing the last of the Rank from Noah and drawing them into himself. Almost instantly, Noah felt his soul begin to shrink once again. The amount of pressure within it had decreased dramatically.

I’ll let it shrink a bit more, then use the Fragment of Renewal to patch it up.

“No,” Grim admitted. “I do not know how it was created, but I agree that it seems likely the rune was creating some manner of manifestation of will.”

A thought struck Noah and he frowned. “Wait. Does that mean I killed something intelligent?”

“We have no confirmation that it ever came into being in the first place. I wouldn’t be too concerned,” Grim said with a wave of his hand. “Perhaps you should ask Og the next time you meet him. It seems he was more versed in Chaos than most.”

“So I should,” Noah said, his eyes narrowing. “Either way, I’ll have another chance to test. I don’t plan to waste time sitting around at Rank 5 for much longer. I’m going to take a proper at ascending to Rank 6 soon. And… speaking of Og, I still need to be stronger. I can’t just pump myself up with other people’s runes to brute force my way into a sub-par Rank 6 every time. But forcing my runes into a combination was surprisingly enlightening. I think I’ve got a few ideas, and my soul is in shambles anyway. Might as well tweak a few things and see if I can get the newer Rank 5s I got fixed up to suit me.”

“Eager to return to Rank 6?” Grim asked in amusement.

“Quite,” Noah said, but his tone was dead serious. “I don’t know how long we’ve got until everything in the kingdom goes to hell, but that time is coming. Soon. And when it does, I want to be strong enough to make sure every single person relying on me makes it out of this shitshow.”