“Crystal”

Recasting stone armor on all of them and topping them all off on [Enhance], Noah then mentally clicked on yes. They then cautiously stepped closer to the ritual site. Of course, the shamans already knew they were there, as they killed all the guards without caring for the noise but, it still didn’t hurt to be cautious.

When they got closer to the mini-Stonehenge, they heard a click. Mark looked down at his foot and couldn’t help but see a strange etching on the ground that suddenly started glowing.

“That’s a….” Before Talal could finish what he was going to say, the etching on the ground exploded into beautiful flashes of lightning that stunned them all stiff. The shamans noticed this and all but one turned to them. Flashes of lightning started to form in front of them as they all raised their staffs at the same time. They all aimed at Mark and all together shouted a word that the trio didn’t understand. They only knew that it wasn’t anything good for them.

Mark’s hair stood on end as a foreboding feeling came upon him. He looked up at the sky and saw a massive thundercloud coalescing above him. “That’s just craptastic.” He looked at his list of skills and all his buffs were active except one. “[Bark Skin]” he looked up at the sky again and closed his eyes, accepting that he might die any second. Out of nowhere, he felt his feet being enveloped by something, and it was rising along his body fast. In the span of a few seconds, stone enveloped him and he realized that it must be one of Noah's spells.

“Don’t die you little shit!” Noah shouted at him.

Mark smiled and took a deep breath as Noah’s spell encased him in stone.

Then, as if the cloud above Mark reached critical mass, a colossal snake-shaped lightning bolt formed, bared its fangs and descended upon Mark. The stone mound making up his make shift stone shield got blown to smithereens.

CLAP

BOOM

Noah and Talal’s ears bled as they grimaced from the pain of their eardrums bursting. They could only watch on as Mark bore the full brunt of the lightning strike.

Then, as the dust settled and the stun gripping them faded, Noah and Talal rushed to Mark’s charred, collapsing body. Noah brought out a healing potion and gently poured it down Mark’s throat. He noticed that Mark’s chest was rising and falling and breathed a sigh of relief. “Good, he’s breathing, at least.” He then looked at Talal and said. “Can you distract them while I nurse our healer back to health?”

Talal turned his attention to the gnomes and squinted. “Shouldn’t be a problem.” He said before shadows enveloped him and he shot off in their direction.

With the gnomes in Talal’s capable hands, Noah focused on pouring the health potion into Mark’s open mouth, whose charred skin was starting to peel off bit by bit, making way for new skin to take its place. As the first potion was emptied, Noah pulled out another and began the process again. “Fuck, we only have three potions. Hope it’s enough for Mark to wake up and heal himself.”

With all three bottles now emptied, Noah waited. For three whole minutes, nothing happened and he panicked, he shook Mark, when that didn’t work, Noah went with his last resort…

SLAP

“Wha?! Huh?!” Mark woke up understandably confused at being slapped and immediately looked around.

“Rise and shine, sleepyhead!” Noah said as he was preparing for another slap.

“STOP! I’m awake!” Mark exclaimed with an aggrieved expression on his face.

“I just wanted to make sure. Hehe. Now, hurry up and heal yourself. Talal needs us to finish the job.”

“Okay, give me a couple mana potions and I’ll be good to go in a few casts”

Noah obliged and gave him three while ingesting one himself. He’d spent a lot of mana making so much stone in casting the now [Stone Tomb] spell. Next, he cast his fragmentation grenade spell and pumped half of his total mana into it then devoured another mana potion to recoup his losses. He turned in the direction of the gnomes and saw that Talal was flitting about, cutting them apart, though he was careful not to cripple them as they needed them to go inside a pit.

He looked at his cousin whose skin was now reddish as if he had just came from a bout of sun bathing and asked. “You good?”

Mark stood up, his eyes gleaming with rage, and replied. “Yup, let’s kill those fuckers.”

He then shot off first to help Talal distract the gnomes while Noah got to work on the pit where they’d blow them up to kingdom come. With the massive bomb floating behind him, Noah decided on a center point where he would pack the dirt off to the sides while keeping a thin layer as a lid so that the hole wouldn’t be obvious. He then shouted at Mark and Talal that it was ready while he opened up a hole in the middle and threw in the bomb.

Mark and Talal, to the confusion of the gnomes, turned tail and ran. But, instead of following them, the five gnomes just went back and started to chant again as they continued the ritual.

“Crap, this isn’t going to work” Mark said.

Noah then had an idea. He put most of his remaining mana into his [Mana Bomb] spell and floated it to Talal. “Put this in the middle of where they are and run. This is probably enough to stun them for a while. That’ll be your window to carry them to the pit. As they are now, they are too far apart and we can’t guarantee that they’ll all die at the same time.”

“Consider it done.” Talal disappeared, leaving only shadows in his wake as he rushed to the gnome shamans. A few seconds later, he reappeared beside Noah.

“Detonate.”

THUD

The gnomes suddenly went stiff and abruptly stopped their chanting as the mana bomb did its job to interfere with their mana and stun them. Mark and Talal hurriedly carried the gnomes and dropped them down the pit.

“Now, just so we’re sure they’ll die.” Noah then converted the pit’s sides and the lid into stone. They then put a considerable distance between them and the stone coffin. “I love this part most of all.” Noah struck a pose and snapped his fingers. “EXPLOSION!”

BOOOOOOM

The lid of the stone coffin couldn’t hold the explosion and was blown high into the air followed by flames and shrapnel flying so far above them that it would take a few seconds for gravity to pull them back down.

Talal slowly clapped as the dungeon finished and a ten second timer appeared in their visions. “That was quite the explosion! It was a good idea to bring you two with me.” He then looked at Mark and said. “Though that was too close a call for you, Mark, and since it was my idea to come here, I owe you guys another favor.”

Noah’s burgeoning anger deflated somewhat at Talal’s speech and was replaced by curiosity. "You were about to say something before we..." Noah's sentence was cut short as the timer hit zero, forcefully teleporting them out of the dungeon.

Noah opened his eyes to see that day had already turned into night. He cleared his throat and looked at Talal. “As I was saying, you were about to say something before we got stunned. Do you know what that etching on the ground was?”

“Yes, that was a rune. Although I’m no expert, we can all probably guess that it was some kind of lightning mine rune.”

“Runes huh. Crazy how much web novels and other media got right.” Mark remarked.

“Ah, that may be because the first people to make them popular were probably like me.” Talal replied.

Noah’s eyes lit up at the mention of runes. “Can you teach me? Or do you know anyone who’s an expert on runes?” He said as he looked expectantly at Talal.

“Unfortunately, the only rune experts I know are all far away, even farther now after the Earth expanded. Though it is a bit pricy, I can buy you a book about runes from the store as a way of returning the favor.” Talal hissed as he saw the price in the store. It was a whopping fifty medium-grade mana stones. “That’s most of what I have.” He thought as he bought it anyway and after a few seconds, a space distortion materialized in front of him and the book popped out.

He walked over to Noah and gave the book to him. “I changed my mind. I’ll consider this an investment and not count it as the favor I owe you two. It’s always useful to have a rune mage around, and according to my race’s records, it was always humans that excelled in rune magic. I hope for your success.”

“YES! You’re not going to regret this! I’ll do my best to learn this and make you the best runic nest possible!” Noah exclaimed as he held the book tight to his chest.

Talal put his hands on Noah’s shoulders as he looked like he was about to jump up and down. “Calm down, haha, that book only covers the basics and it cost most of my savings so I can’t buy you the next volumes immediately.”

“No worries, since this benefits all of us, we can all chip in to buy the next volumes. Right?” Mark chimed in, his voice calm but also excited. “Runic toilet let’s go!” He thought.

“For sure! Now, let’s go back to the apartment building so I can start flipping through this thing’s pages.” Noah looked at his map and immediately started heading in the direction of their base.

“Yeah, I want to lie down on my bed. Almost dying, tired me out.” Mark sighed in relief as he ran to catch up with his cousin.

“You guys forgetting something?” Talal said as he transformed back into his original form.

“Ah.”

“Ah.”

Lily was playing with the piglets when she heard a loud beating of wings. She looked around the sky but struggled to see much of anything as the moon’s light wasn’t enough to light up everything. Then, the beating of wings got closer and closer and she panicked. She ran inside the room where mama Emeri was resting and hugged her. She prayed that whatever was getting closer would just ignore them and go away. “Please, please, please just go away.” She thought as she heard footsteps and looked over at the door to see her big sister Aurora walking closer.

“Don’t worry Lily. It’s just Talal and your big brothers coming back from their dungeon delve.” Aurora said in her best imitation of a motherly voice.

Lily perked up at the mention of her big brothers and immediately stood up, grabbed Aurora’s hand and pulled her towards the door. “They’re back! Let’s go greet them, hurry!”

Aurora had a warm smile on her face as she let herself be pulled along. They went outside and waited for the trio to land but became confused when they heard only one thing aside from the beating of wings.

“AHHHHHHH!”