It wasn’t that difficult to get through the people hanging around the Runewriters’ this time, because at least a few of the people there recognized her from the previous day and assumed that she was with a guild already.

That didn’t apply to all of them, of course, and she still had to dodge around a few of the more persistent annoyances, but it was a very short part of an otherwise pleasant walk.

Trading in the credit for the Manifested Force rune was less pleasant, especially with the dirty look that the NPC shot her when she requested it, but the rune was provided and she had the scroll before even before settling in.

Ten to thirty minutes, then, to create whatever it was she decided on.

It was tempting… extremely tempting, to just give him a manifested force defensive option and call it day, but that wasn’t the best plan here. Not only would it create a number of questions she didn’t want to be answering, it would also mean that, when combined with all the other runes she had, she’d be telling him that someone of a higher level was supporting her.

Long-term, she’d probably end up telling him anyways, but it wasn’t necessarily the best idea to give away more information than she had to early on.

Something less complicated, then. Or at least, something that didn’t use anything rarer than a yellow.

After a moment of thought, she had her answer– though she also needed more information from Don.

‘You don’t have any gloves yet, right? Do you know your size?

‘don’t have gloves. Men’s large, no changes’

‘thanks’

Ordering that, she threw the new rune into her inventory, taking out {Control: Charging} and [Bind].

Bind was fairly simple, at least. It was designed like a spiral flattened out to two dimensions, with a line running through it top to bottom. The number of coils she added would control the amount of bindings, while the relative thickness of the center line would control the strength.

She didn’t want to reveal that she had displacement runes, yet, so he’d need to settle for being fairly close to whatever he was trying to use it on, but that was both the point and not a huge investment.

{Control: Charging} was more involved, but only slightly.

A flat baseline, with at least two perpendicular lines of different sizes on the ends of it, and another, angled line that connected the tops. The smaller line’s relative size to the large one controlled the initial investment of mana required to start the main rune charging, also controlling the period of any additional lines.

Adding more lines connecting the base to the angled ‘top’ would multiply the base period by however many there were total minus one, but also applied a below-one multiplier to the total required. If the initial line was a fifth the size of the larger line, for example, the period would be five seconds. Adding another line would increase the charging time to ten seconds, but would also mean that only ninety percent of the actual cost of the rune would be deducted in total.

The math got complicated, but the reality was simple enough, and luckily, basically unexploitable. Taking much longer to charge, and starting at a lower number, would reduce the cost enormously in exchange, while starting at a high number wouldn’t appreciably reduce the cost, unless there were enough extra lines to bring it back into relative parity with just starting at a lower number to begin with. Starting at a very low number with a lot of additional lines would reduce the cost to almost nothing– in exchange for taking much longer than was useful to start up, being difficult to effectively create at handheld scales, and lacking the ability to respond to changing circumstance.

A good balance, she felt, was starting at a quarter, with two additional lines. About fifteen percent cheaper, while taking twelve seconds to activate.

It wouldn’t be the most useful thing once they were past the basic enemies, but that was fine.

[Bind], on the palm, six loops and a slightly thickened central line, supported by that {Control: Charging} and {Material: Stone}.

Not terribly complicated, overall, but the testing she needed to do still managed to take up the time needed for Don to finish his levelling.

‘Meet me at the runewriters’, I’ve got something.’

‘that was quick’

‘It was simple.’

Waiting there, Deyana was, while not particularly anxious, excited to head out, and to give Don the glove. While in the testing process, she’d used it on a mannequin twice, she still found it somewhat difficult to prevent her curiosity from insisting she try it on herself.

For one, it wasn’t a particularly good idea and was absolutely unnecessary, probably ending up with her needing help to get out. For another, it would probably be pretty awkward to explain herself to anyone who did show up.

Still, it was tempting, if only just to figure out how difficult exactly it would be to get out.

Luckily he got there before her confusion overcame her common sense, though only just.

“So what have you got for me?”

“A binding glove, with a time delay on it. Uses stone, so it’s semi-permanent too.”

“In half an hour?” Don asked, raising an eyebrow. “I would have expected that from someone who has a design ready, but as something new?”

“It’s three runes,” Alex said, waving it off. “I did need to keep it simple.”

“True, I expected you to fail.”

“Ouch.”

“I wasn’t gonna say it…”

“I’m wounded. Take me out to the levelling fields so I can heal it by killing bits and bytes.”

Don rolled his eyes. “Disastrous. I’m not sure how I can continue.”

Deyana smiled slightly. “It’s fine. I was thinking of heading out to beetlemen, if you’ve got the punch for it.”

Don appeared to consider that for a few moments. “It’s not ideal, but I think so. The bow’s just speed and durability on the arrows with a copy I can use every once in a while, so it should work.”

Beetlemen weren’t exactly the most on-level enemies, the ones in this area ending up between level thirty-five and fifty-five. Luckily, a big part of their level designation was their powerful defenses, which both her own and Don’s weaponry were particularly well-suited to handling. That armor was weaker on their front sides, and they primarily used slings as ranged weaponry with spears for shorter ranges, which she had enough experience with to deal with even if it was one of the more powerful combinations.

Slings in particular were always fairly threatening on their own, and that was before taking into account the fact that sling bullets, of the primary varieties, were excellent media for enchantment.

Better than arrows, at the very least. It was made up for in the ease of use in bows and guns, as well as the typically less practically applicable runes on the sling itself, somewhat, but when it came to top-of-the-line damage on enchanted ranged weaponry, slings outpaced the others significantly until the practicality of size (because strength could be enhanced) came into play.

Beetlemen used almost exclusively physical speed and continuous weight, so that wasn’t likely to be a huge problem for her, and their wind-up time should let Don get out of the way, as well.

At the very least, it was a lot less deadly than high-level goblins’ delayed inertia-boosting. Until she’d seen it happen, due to a shield that she considered over-designed but that many guilds had at the time believed to be top-of-the-line, she wouldn’t have believed that an egg-sized rock could blow someone’s arm off.

She knew better now.

In any case, as she and Don headed out, they fell into small-talk that she wasn’t really keeping track of. The only new information was confirmation that he was college-age as well, though probably slightly older than her, and some of his opinions on the larger guilds around.

It was a bit weird, hearing things as impersonally as he seemed to think of them. He also repeated a lot of her criticisms of many of them, which was nice. Not as much venom in the explanations as she would have put there, but then he probably hadn’t been dealing with them for over a year, and especially not personally.

When they reached the area, she sent off a message telling Geria where they were, not really expecting a response.

‘Got it. I’ll be nearby, hunting CRats’

Deyana smiled slightly. Courier Rat hunting was beneath Geria’s dignity, a bit, but it was also something that could be easily excused if one didn’t know her actual level and would provide a reason to be nearly anywhere.

Courier rats were essentially just difficult-to-find, easy to kill monsters with ludicrously valuable drops, so it was one of the more common ways for players approaching the higher levels to get the money to upgrade.

It was a bit of a waste once you had the ability to get them, and, if she were being honest, even before (you could make almost as much by farming pre-portal enemies in the less traveled, high level areas without sacrificing your experience gain entirely), but it was also a fairly common sight.

“So are you going to pick one off or am I going to guess at their levels?” Don said from behind her, making her jump.

“I’ll pick one off at first, pull it over to you to test the glove. Do you have anything that spikes at a later level or are you pretty much at your breakpoints? Also, I’m setting XP division to shared instead of contribution now that we’re the same level.”

Don nodded. “Fair enough. I don’t really have anything until rune spec, cause you didn’t make an arrow for bound to do anything for me.”

As he made that comment, Deyana felt like her brain short-circuited for a moment.

She’d taken it as a challenge, but really, just making him the arrow would have given him a field scaling.

“Son of a bitch, I’m sorry. Didn’t think about that. I can fix that for you in my next crafting session.”

“Don’t worry about it too much. We both know that it matters more later.”

Deyana nodded before heading out into the area.

The trick was to move between likely aggro ranges while she was searching for a good target. The trick was made more difficult by the sometimes-unpredictable turns and non-visual awareness, but with the bits and pieces of wall around, as though maliciously scattered by some giant toddler, she was able to narrow down the problem areas enough to sneak up on a group of two.

One of them had a sling, the other holding a spear, which made the decision for her.

Activating her boots so that she could step slightly above the ground, to avoid any sound giving her away, she took the three long steps to bring her into the range of the slinger, swinging her sword and activating it to cut into the shell.

The weirdly buzzy screech told her that it hadn’t been enough to kill the monster, but that wasn’t out of her expectations.

The spear-wielder reacted quickly, jabbing out directly towards her, and the hit was slowed to a stop only a foot from Deyana as her mana plunged momentarily.

The one she’d hit was already scrabbling back, throwing a stone into the cradle and starting the spinning process, but she had a ranged tool now.

Activating the arm was a bit more than a thought, but only just.

A spike shot out, crossing the distance between her and the beetleman before it could move out of the way and cracking into the shell. It wasn’t quite down, thought, and that might have been an issue if Don hadn’t taken advantage of her being the distraction to reposition and fire an arrow directly into the chink of armor around the neck.

The second arrow wasn’t quite as accurate, but it still did enough that it decided that Deyana could wait as a threat.

The diagonal charging motion it went into, a consequence of the way its armor was shaped, let her slip behind it before it was even fully out of the way.

After it had been interrupted, the slinger had had to restart on building momentum, giving her well more than enough time to charge forward again, stabbing into its shell and finally taking it down.

She turned back to the one harassing Don, running forward to draw its attention back to herself. It didn’t really look like he was likely to be hit any time soon, but moving too far out of the way might draw another into the fight and the point of this first one had been to set up for Don to test the glove anyways.

Deyana funneled a bit of mana into her own glove, then, guessing at the ranges, tossed it somewhat between herself and the beetleman.

The guess was good– or, at the very least, not bad. It got caught in the blast, slowing down slightly, and Don was able to gain a bit of extra distance as Deyana stepped forward again.

Unlike last time, she wasn’t going to be able to depend on the element of surprise, and she could only take one or two more of those straight-on hits.

Turning off the armor was probably not the safest decision, but when she dodged the first strike, it confirmed what she’d thought.

There was a ton of weight behind it, right at the end, but as a whole the spear wasn’t moving all that fast. When it came around again, this time in a stab aimed for her hip, she moved to knock it to the side with her sword while also stepping out of the way.

That turned out to be a good decision, because when she hit it there was almost no change in the momentum, the spear much heavier than it should have been.

The weight fell down to normal at the end of the thrust, the pulling to the side assisted by her own push. While she could have slashed in and gotten a somewhat safe hit, she instead stepped in and kicked the beetleman in the chest, causing it to stumble and fall onto its back.

A quick strike at the arm still on the spear took it off at the inhuman elbow joint, disarming it to make it safe for Don to step back in and tap it on the shoulder.

From his hand, bands of yellow-green light shot out, wrapping around the beetleman’s limbs and pulling them tight to its body before solidifying into stone.

“Takes a while.” Don commented.

“If something’s getting to you…”

“Fair enough. Though I’m not sure how useful it’ll be on these particular enemies.”

“Sorry about that, again. I probably should have come up with that first…”

“No problem. Finish him off for me?”

Deyana obliged, stabbing though the beetleman’s head with her sword.

Combat Ended!

+25,278 Experience, +2528 Credits

Level Up! x2

HP: 64 (+4)

Mana: 135 (+10)

Stamina: 32 (+2)

Deyana shook her head, a small smile on her face. “Wish we’d figured that speed levelling out when we were crawling up the first time. Though we definitely have better gear on us right now than we did at all back then.”