B3? Chapter 269: Grand Larcency, Finale

Kaius was utterly prepared for everything to go to shit.

They’d backed up a full third of the way down the hall—as far as Ianmus was confident in still being able to make the shot—to create some distance just in case. Porkchop had taken front and centre, his armour summoned, and his body braced to cover the much more fragile members of their party.

Watching Ianmus channel, all Kaius could do was gnaw the inside of his cheek. His part was done, and now he had to sit and watch as their mage did his thing.

He hated not being able to take part in the final execution of his plan, not when so much was riding on their ability to get access to some real gear.

Gnawing at his lip, Kaius tasted iron as Ianmus focused on his target with an intensity that could have melted steel. At the very least, the man was treating his task with the weight it deserved.

It did little to quell the roil in his stomach. He was sure that he identified the right bits to disable the inscription. That didn’t mean he was a master of runework, not in the same way as the vault’s creator—especially not since he lost his enhanced ability with Vhaxanish.

He could have just barely scratched the surface—fallen into false leads that the runewright had laid for this exact purpose.

Slowly, Ianmus raised his arm, gesturing towards the vault.

Heart thumping in his chest, Kaius held himself back from listening to the anxieties that screamed at him to abort their attempt—that he’d made some mistake in his evaluation of the formation. They were in too deep now. There was no backing out.

Besides, he knew that it was unlikely the runewright had gone to such lengths—such work would have been expensive. Maybe if this was the vault of a Dukedom bank, or the homebase of a powerhouse, they would have gone through the cost and effort. Not for this though. Even if this ‘Old Yon’ was clearly rich and resourceful, there was a certain level of renown you needed to even be able to procure a runewright of that skill in the first place.

Mana pulsed deep within the circular sigil that Ianmus had formed above his hand, the wavering and hazy geometry crystallising into clean lines for the barest of moments as eight thin beams snapped into existence.

Each one roared with the might of the sun—and was only visible thanks to his mana sight, and felt in the substantial heat that warmed Kaius’s face. Ianmus had used his higher energy light—perhaps to assist in melting the stone.

They varied in thickness. Some were as wide as a finger, while others looked closer to overly long needles. They sunk into wood, stone, and steel with pinpoint precision—orange glowing in the dark as the materials charred and began to melt.

A few seconds later, the beams guttered out and the eight dim glowing points began to cool as Kaius’s blood rushed louder in his ears.

“Well? Did it work?” Porkchop asked, ears pricking up as he tilted his head at the door.

“Wait a moment…” Kaius replied, fists clenched tight.

A subtle buzz filled the air a moment later as the lines of script that Ianmus had disrupted started to smoulder, and then burn.

The whine heightened in pitch, light blooming as it spread across the entire formation like wildfire—an arcane maelstrom that ate at the delicate network of runes from the inside out. Multicoloured motes drifted free from the glowing runes—similar to the burnt waste that emanated from Kaius’s own glyphs every time he cast a spell, but at a volume so dense it almost looked like arcane snow.

Then, almost as soon as it started, the light winked out—leaving a quiet door with the scorched remnants of runic magic burnt into its face.

Kaius’s breath caught in his throat. “Wait.” he said, watching the door like a hawk, unsure if they’d succeeded.

Nothing happened. No magic glowed to his Truesight and, other than the rumble above and their own breaths, the hall was utterly silent.

The door stood still and silent. Inert.

As far as he could tell, they’d done it. The vault was now just a mundane door, with a mundane—if tough—lock.

“Porkchop, break us through!” Kaius yelled as he jogged forward.

“With pleasure,” Porkchop replied with an eager chuff.

Digging his claws into the stone floor below, Porkchop lurched into a full sprint. Right before he was about to hit the door, Kaius watched his brother drop his shoulder—a pauldron backed by tonnes of muscle and stone ramming straight into the thick bar of alchemical steel that sat across the door’s centre.

The vault all but exploded. Stone shattered as the momentum of Porkchop’s charge ripped the bolt, bar and hinges straight out of their housings with a bang. A faint flash of light gleamed from what Kaius assumed was a remnant charge in the vault’s inscriptions as steel screamed and twisted around his brother’s bulk.

Released from its bindings, the door shot inwards like a loosed bolt, a cacophonous crunch sounding as it smacked into a wall just a couple of strides later. Twisted and broken, the door still lay half in its arch.

The vault proper was just as small as they’d been told.

Kaius arrived with the rest of the team close on his heels right as Porkchop was pushing himself to his feet, stone and shattered wood sliding free from his back.

“Ready to get some loot?” he grinned, feeling the chill of his brother’s armour as he slapped him on his back.

“Why do you think I ran so fast?” Porkchop chortled as he hooked his claws into the broken door and yanked it into the hallway. “Now hurry up! I’d grab it all myself, but I don’t have thumbs, or my ghosthand artefact”

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Fizzing with excitement, Kaius all but jumped towards the open door.

“Are they always like this?” he caught Kenva whispering from behind him.

Ianmus sighed. “You get used to it. They’re serious when they need to be.”

They joined him a moment later, and they peered into the newly opened space. It was a featureless box—now littered with dust and rubble—that had a single, large, nook on the left hand wall. Kept clear from the door’s violent collision, its contents had been left untouched

“My bag! And our tent” Porkchop cried, looming on his hind legs as held onto the doorframe and craned his neck into the room.

A familiar satchel lay alongside a tightly packed tent on the plinth of stone, covered in dust. Despite the obvious joy his brother felt at recovering some of his most prized belongings, Kaius paid them no mind.

Instead he stood frozen, staring at four rings that lay on a purple silk cushion, their exteriors engraved with the inscrutable runes of the system.

He knew what they likely were. He still struggled to believe it, even with the evidence staring him straight in the face.

The tugging on his soul, the one that bound him directly to A Father’s Gift? It pointed directly to one of the rings. If that wasn’t enough, they all shimmered with the faintest purples and blacks of Dimension and Space attuned mana.