Runebound Reverse Tower of The Dead-Chapter 117: Switching The Roles.

The first set of legs appeared at the edge of the stairwell below, tapping twice, then pausing, like the creature was testing the space. Another pair of legs joined it. Then another. They were not rushing. They were stacking, crowding, and somehow still organized. The choke point was supposed to belong to Kael. The stalkers were making it theirs.

Kael held his arm up. This time, he pressed his feet well into the ground. He planted his stance like a worker bracing for recoil, like a man who had held tools heavier than people assumed. His boots found the cracks in the concrete and used them. His knees bent. His shoulder rolled back. His palm opened, not as a gesture, but as a barrel.

The shotgun-like feeling of his arm almost ripping out struck once again, but this time he was ready; he didn’t get thrown back, nor did he lose his balance.

The mana snapped through the runes in sequence. Anchor first, guiding it clean, cutting off the messy paths that made volatility jump. Heft second, changing the nature of the output like a hand grabbing the spell by the throat. Fire last, translating it into something that should have been a simple burning sphere, but nothing about Kael’s setup was simple anymore.

The fireball shot out like a cannonball sent from hell itself.

The ball did not drift. It did not float like a pretty spell. It drove forward with intent, fast enough to make the air shudder around it. The light it cast painted the stairwell walls orange and harsh, and for a heartbeat, Kael saw the nearest stalker properly.

It was worse than the dots suggested.

Without missing a beat, the ball of flaming fury struck right into the head of the first one, and upon contact, it wasn’t that the spider turned to flames, no, it broke it glass. Well, looked like it broke like glass. The impact shattered its outer shell, and the fireball penetrated deep into its innards, then blew up a shockwave of power.

The exoskeleton didn’t melt. It fractured. It split in ugly shards, snapping outward like a cracked helmet under a hammer. Something wet and dark burst behind it, and the blast flung pieces of it back into its own kin.

The shockwave slammed into the stairs and made dust jump from every crack. The smell hit right after, not burning hair, but something chemical, like heated metal and rotten meat mixed together.

The other spiders didn’t suffer more than the blast of their kin’s bodies against them, which made them slam into the walls, the very few walls that remained, while an unfortunate one of them was yeeted outside of the building.

The one that went out didn’t scream. It just vanished over the open edge, legs flailing in a way that looked almost cartoonish until you remembered it was real. The others scrambled to regain footing, steel feet tapping, legs crossing, bodies colliding. For the first time, the stalkers looked irritated. Not scared. Not confused. Irritated.

There was no grand fire explosion, no flaming corpses, just a blow, impact, and the creature died.

Kael hated how clinical it felt. He wanted the kind of feedback that told you a spell worked. A burning staircase. A wave of flame. A crowd of enemies turned to charcoal. Instead, he got an impact and a brittle fracture. It was effective, sure. It just didn’t feel satisfying.

After all, there was a lack of Area of Effect.

He swallowed that disappointment before it could become greed. The spell did what it needed to do, it removed one stalker and bought time. Kael forced his brain to be grateful, even as the mini-map reminded him there were still too many dots.

[You have slain an Atrax Stalker]

[You have obtained 3 Atrax Stalker limbs.]

[You have obtained 1 Atrax Stalker Venom Gland]

[You have obtained 1 Atrax Stalker Mandibles.]

[You have obtained Atrax Stalker Iron silk.]

[You have obtained 3 Soul Cores.]

The list of rewards filled Kael’s vision for a while, and as if understanding his intentions, they immediately disappeared since he was still in the middle of combat.

He barely registered the loot, not because it wasn’t good, but because survival demanded priority. Still, "Iron silk" punched through his focus for a second. Silk meant crafting. Silk meant traps. Silk meant armor if he lived long enough to use it. The tower was practically waving materials in his face like bait.

"Shit..."

The word came out quieter this time, not from surprise, but from the way his skull tightened. His vision narrowed a fraction. The world didn’t spin, but it threatened to. Mana draw always had a price. He had been getting away with it before adding the other runes because he was careful. But after the upgrade, although Anchor smoothed the worst of the chaos. Heft didn’t care about kindness. Heft demanded payment.

The realization soon hit Kael like a brick on the head.

After all, he felt the pull of mana from that attack, which basically drew a third of his remaining mana. A bit of headache began coming back again. He had no way to exactly know how much mana he had left, but he knew well how much headache he could sustain and survive. And more than this would be disastrous.

A third. That meant he could not brute-force this. Not here. Not with a dozen. He could maybe fire twice more without collapsing.

At least two more shots, three times if he was luck,y and he’ll end up paralyzed from the hedeach.

"Holy crap, that was awesome!" Peter said.

Peter’s voice cracked upward, half awe, half relief, like he’d just watched a miracle and wanted to clap for it. His face lit up for the wrong reason. Kael heard it and felt nothing but irritation. After all this wasn’t a feat that could be celebrated as it couldn’t be repeated many times. It wasn’t survival, it was merely struggle.

He kept his eyes on the stairwell, not on Peter. The remaining stalkers were already moving again, legs tapping faster now, patterns tightening, like they’d learned how his shot behaved.

"Can you open the path? The rest are coming up," Peter said as he held the axe far too tightly, his knuckles whitened.

The axe looked heavy in Peter’s arms, not because it was too large, but because Peter did not know how to hold it with confidence. He kept shifting his grip, as the weapon might slip at the worst moment. He was trying to aim at legs that moved too fast, at bodies that were too high, at mandibles that could end him with one good bite.

"Can’t do it more than a couple more times," Kael said as one of the spiders jumped toward him.

It moved like a spring snapping. No warning screech, no dramatic pause. One second it was below, the next it was airborne, legs splayed, body angled like a spear.

It was sudden, fast, and incredibly surprising to see it bound from the stairs toward Kael; he couldn’t help but react.

His shoulder dropped, his spine folded, and his legs cut through the space where his head had been. The wind of it felt wrong, like air was being sliced by metal. Kael’s heart kicked once, hard, but he kept moving.

The steel-like claws of the spider missed him by the skin of his teeth as it landed between him and Peter.

Concrete chipped where its feet hit. Tiny sparks jumped, not from magic, but from friction. The stalker was close enough now that Kael could see the texture of its shell, green and black like poison smeared over steel. Its mandibles clicked twice, tasting the air. The sound of it was like sharp scisors stalking meat. Fresh human meat.

Finding Peter to be the least threatening, the spider rose on its hind legs and was about to pounce down with its mandibles on Peter.

Peter froze for the worst possible half-second, because the thing chose him. The stalker’s body looked like a giant about to descend, legs bracing, head lowering, and the mandibles opened wider than they should have, wet and dark inside. Peter’s axe wavered. He started to raise it too late.

Kael knew and realized he didn’t have the time to position and aim with his gauntlet at the creature; Peter would be dead before he even finished standing up and taking aim.

He was still on the ground from the earlier dodge.

Even if he managed to stand up and fire, he risked hitting Peter, risked blowing the stairwell apart under them, risked wasting mana on a shot that didn’t guarantee a kill.

So, he did what any other human in his position would do.

He punched the back of the spider.

The punch was not solid, definitely not well aimed, and not with the torque of a trained body. It was a punch aimed and purposeful for one goal: to strike the creature and pull the attention away from Peter.

It should have been stupid. It should have been pain. His fist should have bounced off steel and left him with broken fingers inside a gauntlet that suddenly became a coffin for his hand.

Some would think that Kael was doing something useless, as he could easily escape with [Presence].

But Kael knew that if Peter fell, he would be all alone, and all eight eyes of every spider would be looking and searching for him. He still needed Peter alive for now, even if he were to use him as bait later.

That truth sat ugly in his chest, but it was real. Peter was noisy. Peter was another body. Peter was another set of eyes. Peter was untrustworthy.

Most importantly, Peter was another target. A predator that had to choose between two prey gave you options. A predator hunting one prey gave you certainty, and certainty killed.

Now the punch that didn’t feel like it would do much but destabilize the spider connected. And just a fraction of a second before the gauntleted arm landed on the back of the pouncing spider.

Something happened.

Something new.

Something different.

Something that would change how Kael viewed runes forever.

The gauntlet caught fire.

Not a gentle glow. Not a warm shimmer. It flared like the rune itself took offense at being used like a fist. Or maybe the complete opposite, as if the rune finally thought that it was used properly. Heat roared through the metal, but the gauntlet contained it, shaped it, forced it to behave.

A flaming fist of power and fury. A fist Anchored, Hefted, and Enflamed.

Kael felt the sequence snap into place without him thinking the words. Anchor stabilized the flow mid-motion. Heft gave the flame weight, not just in impact, but in presence, like the fire itself became a physical thing. Fire translated it into raw violence at point-blank range.

The power behind the first landed squarely onto the back of the spider, and unlike what happened when Kael swung the axe, the Heft Rune applied to the axe. This time, the Heft rune applied to the power exiting the fist.

The flames exiting the fist, the very inertia of motion itself, were modified by the Tongue of Gods.

Kael’s arm did not just hit the spider. It hit reality. The impact felt like striking a wall that cracked inward. There was a split second where the stalker’s shell resisted, where brittle structure tried to pretend it was true steel, and then the Hefted flame overwhelmed it.

Power that should by no means be in the hands of mortals came out of that gauntlet.

And it landed on the back of an unaware spider.

The result?

An immediate explosion of fragmented metal, guts, and viscera everywhere.

The stalker did not fall. It burst. Shell fragments snapped outward in a ring, wet matter following, then heat flashed through it all and seared the edges black. The floor beneath them popped in a spray of gravel and dust. Kael’s ears rang from the closeness of it, and his shoulder screamed from the recoil, but he stayed standing because he did not have permission to fall yet.

Peter had the luck of a leprechaun holding a dozen five-petal clover as the punch had struck at an angle that blasted the spider’s innards not forward where Peter was, but upward.

If it had gone forward, Peter would have worn it. Mandible chunks, venom gland sludge, whatever disgusting fluids lived inside that thing, all of it would have painted Peter in one brutal wave. And that was the gentler and less harmful part. After all, the spider’s shell was metal, and the explosion of that impact was like a flaming shrapnel grenade.

Instead, it went up, splattering the broken ceiling beams, raining down in thin drops that steamed when they hit warmer surfaces.

The ceiling got painted and decorated in steel shards, followed by guts and innards, then seared in a torrent of flames afterward.

For a heartbeat, the stairwell smelled like burnt metal and cooked rot, and Kael’s stomach lurched even as his hands stayed steady.

Peter could only stare with his mouth open as a bit of liquid fell on his body from the roof, and when he met Kael’s face, he saw the same reaction replicated there.

Kael didn’t look heroic. He looked stunned, like a man who just discovered he’d been holding a loaded gun with the safety off this whole time. His eyes flicked to his gauntlet as if it might light again by itself. Then back to the stairwell, where the remaining dots were still moving.

The punch changed everything, and Kael knew it immediately.

Because if his gauntlet could do that at point-blank range, then the stalkers weren’t just a nightmare anymore. They weren’t hunters anymore.

No...

Kael turned to the nearest Stalker.

They became prey.