Chapter 86: Optimisation

Kaius charged into the room, confronting the full presence of the flayed horror for the first time. A full head taller than him, the skinless giant groaned in fury as it smashed aside tables laden with glassware with ease.

Racing forwards, Kaius kept the tip of his sword trained on the abomination. One arm rose as it reached him. Danger flared in his mind, prompting him to move. Kaius twisted, a side step taking him out of the path of the horror’s rapidly approaching fist.

**Ding! Danger Sense has reached level 3!**

His returning slash cut deep into the exposed flesh of its arm, scouring its bone. Clear fluid and blood welled up from the wound as the abomination squealed. Refusing to give up his initiative. Kaius reached out with his off hand.

Golden light spilled out from underneath his gloves as shard after shard of crystallised arcane energy shot towards the monster. Drifting his hands upwards, his spells punched deep into the horror’s flesh, leaving weeping holes in its chest and head.

The wounds melted like putty, flesh flowing to restore wet muscle to fullness. Kaius frowned at the lack of damage his spells did. Normally, the small crystal dart was perfect to punch through armour and damage critical organs.

Not so against the horror. With no discernable weak points and unnaturally fast regeneration, the small holes he had left in its body sealed themselves in seconds. The abomination was barely even slowed, gurgling as it lashed out for him once more.

Kaius weaved around the strikes, punishing its attempts with a flurry of heavy slashes that cut deep into its exterior.

**Ding! Dodge has reached level 2!**

Porkchop joined the battle, ethereal blades erupting from his claws as he carved into the abominations flank.

The depths-born flailed, wailing arms shattering the wood and glass furnishings of the laboratory as it attempted to pin them down. It might have been strong, and they had yet to leave something even remotely resembling a disabling wound, but it was slow. Too slow to catch them.

Porkchop plunged his claws into the creature's ribs, prompting it to retaliate with a heavy hammerfisted swing. Kaius stepped in, sweeping his sword up high overhead. He chopped.

Enchanted steel backed by enhanced strength cleaved through the muscle on its forearm, continuing clean through its bones.

The monster wailed. Treacle-like blood flowed from the wound, resisting gravity as it started to bud on the end of its severed limb. It was regrowing fast, muscle and bone weaving itself by the second. The horror whipped its other fist towards him.

He stepped forwards, sword rising to meet the wild swing with another heavy overhand, cleaving through the flesh and bone. The leaking limb hit the ground with a splat. Kaius smiled as Porkchop didn’t waste the opening, rearing up onto his hind legs to rake his enhanced claws down the creatures back.

Even with its prodigious regeneration, the horror was all but useless without its arms. Kaius hacked at the creature's legs, the thick limb taking a full three chops to get through the trunks of muscle and bone that supported its weight. It squealed, more thickened vital fluid budding on its latest stump as it pitched forwards.

Kaius lunged to the side, narrowly avoiding getting flattened by the horror. Now prone, they descended on it with a fury. Porkchop dug deep furrows into the creature's chest as Kaius moved up to its head, decapitating it with a clean strike.

**Ding! Dodge has reached level 3!**

Like he had suspected, the wound was not a fatal one, another regenerative bud sealing its neck. The loss of its mind made the creature go wild, writhing on the floor like a maggot dropped in acid. Kaius moved, hacking at quickly healing stumps to stop the creature from regaining its footing.

The moment its health ran out was obvious. Whatever mechanism kept its vital fluid contained to the growing buds on its stumps failed, thick blood falling to the ground with a splash. A moment later it fell limp.

**Ding! level 17 Flayed Horror slain**

His chest heaving with the exertion of combat, Kaius stared down at the body of their slain foe. The way it had persisted after he had removed its head had been…unnerving. Even the undead had the grace to die when you took care of the head, at least the ones they had fought so far.

Thankfully, despite the unique quirks of fighting flesh horrors, it had been a relatively easy battle.

“Good warmup, eh?” He said, giving Porkchop an easy smile.

Porkchop scowled at him.“A gross one you mean. Why do they have to be sticky?”

Kaius shrugged. “It is what it is. Just need to focus on removing bits from them, you had the right idea when you started digging chunks out instead of just scratching it.”

Porkchop wasn’t the only one who would have to adapt their fighting style for the fleshy creatures they would find in this biome, his spells had been useless. A few ideas immediately jumped to mind, both of which would only require a few modifications to the shaping portion of his runic hymn.

Looking around the laboratory, Kaius spotted a few reading desks nestled in amongst the bookshelves that lined the wall of the mezzanine above. A curving staircase was nestled in the far corner of the room that led up to the landing, out of view of the door they had originally peaked through.

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“Shall we head up there?” Kaius asked, pointing to the stairs. “I want to do a little work on my spells before we push further in, these darts practically tickled that horror.”

“Sure,”Porkchop agreed.“I did notice that. What are you thinking?”

Kaius started to walk towards the stairs, away from the growing pool of blood and unknown fluids that leaked from their slain foe. “I had two ideas. The obvious one is to keep it relatively similar, but change the spell shaping so that it is more of a blade than a bolt. Problem with that is that the increased size could cost a lot more mana.”

“Otherwise, I could take a crack at condensing the dart further. It would make the mana containment unstable due to the density, a little fiddling with the control runes and I should be able to make it go ‘pop’ a moment after it hits something.” Kaius said, miming an explosion with his hands as he made his way up the staircase.

“Explosions.”Porkchop said quickly, his mind obviously made up.

“That's what I was thinking,” Kaius said with a grin. “It’s a little more complicated, but it’s definitely the more fun option. Plus, it shouldn’t take any more mana so I could still get a full twelve or so.”

Though, if he planned on switching out the spell he was using, he would have to burn the rest of his charges ofArcane Dart. Reaching the landing that held the library, Kaius leant over the railing and reached for his glyph as he aimed his casting hand at the slain body of the flayed horror.

Golden light spilled from his skin as lines of runic hymns dissolved into embers as azure darts slammed into the cold flesh of the monster. The spell punched clean through the body to impact the stone below with a crack, sending spouts of fluid and flesh flying free with every impact.

Hearing Porkchop snort behind him at his gratuitous display, Kaius turned to poke his tongue at his friend.

“I’m going to park up here for a bit, see if I can workshop this spell.” Kaius said, pulling out a chair from the closest reading desk that lay between two fully laden bookshelves.

Porkchop groaned.“Guess I'll just wait then.”

“Oh hush,” Kaius said with a roll of his eyes. “I won't be long, we’d be waiting for myManato regenerate anyway.” Slinging off his pack and taking a seat, Kaius fetched his notepad from his bag.

Intheory, adjusting his spell was simple. All it should require is a condensing of the current spellform, and some additional timed triggers to rupture the mana containment a moment after impact. In practice he had far less knowledge than he would like ofHigh Lothianto be designing a runic hymn with so many components.

Starting by drafting his current iteration of his spell, Kaius first modified it by doing a simple shaping modification to reduce the size of the bolt, while keeping its overall mana allocation the same.

After a few minutes of careful scribing, he sat back to appreciate his work. Itlookedright, butRunic Lexiconnudged him, directing his attention to certain sections of his shaping array. With a start he realised that he needed to bolster the sections of the hymn that contained the mana of the spell. While his end goal was a needle that exploded inside the bodies of his enemies, if he left his containment runes as they were his spell was liable to disintegrate under its own pressure within a second of his casting.

That wouldn't do, not at all.

Bolstering the stability of his spell, Kaius added a new section to the working that would detect the arcane needle impacting with a surface. A few minutes of drafting, and Kaius worked out the specifics of using a timing link between the impact sensing array and the containment runes. Only for hisRunic Masteryskill to nudge at his attention a moment later, drawing his attention to a section of the spell hymn where his additions had broken High Lothian syntax. He grumbled at the basic error, pouring over his work as he drew out a new copy on the adjacent page.

After four revisions he stared at his completed work with satisfaction. It had taken some finangling, it seemed like every time he corrected an error in his work some other section of the formation would be affected subtly by the change. Still, despite the frustrating exercise heshouldbe done.

Hopefully, if he had done his job right, a few fractions of a second after his spell hit something it should invert the function of his containment runes. Mana held under pressure would be encouraged to expand, rather than hold its current form.

With how much mana he was holding constrained in a needlelike arcane construct, it should lead to a rather violent dissolution of the spell. Ideally, the delay would make it so the explosive expansion of energy would happeninsidehis target.

Taking a deep breath, Kaius dropped his pen and double checked his working. He spotted nothing wrong with his logic or his planning. The only thing left was live testing. Thankfully, his drafting had taken long enough that hisManahad fully regenerated.

Retrieving his inscription stylus from his pack, Kaius set the implement on the reading desk and went through the annoying process of unbuckling his scale and plate vambrace. Once his arm was free, Kaius let the armour fall to the ground with a clatter as he scooped up his stylus.

Channelling mana into the implement, Kaius grit his teeth as he set the biting point against his skin and began to inscribe. The sting of morphing flesh and bound mana might have become familiar to him at this point, but it was still a burden that Kaius had to manage as he devoted his focus to imprinting lines of angular runes with exacting clarity.

His hand stayed steady despite the distracting pain. It would all be so mucheasierif he didn’t have to inscribe each and every spell. If he did get offered a class there was a pretty good chance he would get offeredsomesort of way to hasten the process of reinscribing. Even then, it was clear to see that no pillar of magic was without its shortcomings. Glyph binding might have offered him unparalleled flexibility and ease of use, but it traded off seconds of channelling time for minutes and hours of focused inscription.

Not that he would complain, of course. It was stillmagic, and slinging spells while he cut his way through enemies was a rush that he doubted would ever grow old.

His brow furrowed in focus, Kaius finished inscribing the final rune of the hymn. He grinned at the swirling characters that curled around his hand and wrist, connecting to one of the inked spikes of his glyph.

Now he just had to test it.