True to his word, Noah only hunted for a few hours. He used his flying sword to locate one of the populated cave systems and waded through it, tearing through everything in his path with Natural Disaster and Crumbling Space before Sundering their souls.

His grimoire ate well. It snagged runes from the air with streamers of paper, devouring them as quickly as Noah could kill their former owners. It was so easy that it almost scared Noah. The monsters in this area of the Wastes weren’t particularly powerful.

The strongest ones were only Rank 3, and just barely at that. He ripped through their defenses before they even had a chance to realize what was happening and the runes were plucked from the air with terrifying speed.

If anyone had lived to tell the tale, the other demons probably wouldn’t have believed them. Noah would have felt a little bad about it if any of the demons he’d been fighting were fully intelligent, but the only ones rushing him like mindless savages were — well, exactly that. They’d fallen completely into their runes and had no proper semblance of intelligence left.

Once his hours were just about up and Noah was satisfied, he turned and headed out of the cave. He’d gotten somewhere around a hundred runes for his troubles, and that wasn’t counting all the ones that had dissipated because they hadn’t had a chance to grab them. The runes were a mixture of Rank 2 and 3s, with a smattering of Rank 1s.

Most of them were Demon Runes, but there were more than a few sand, stone, and other desert-themed ones in the mix. None would be immediately useful to Noah. He didn’t have any plans to make another stone-related rune, but every single rune had multiple purposes. He could always break them for energy if he really needed it, and the more runes he had, the more demons he could yank up to Rank 3.

There was always the chance he could sell them as well, but nothing he’d just gotten felt like it would be interesting enough to sell. Not on its own, at least. A small smile crossed Noah’s face as he stood at the edge of the caves and looked into the night blanketing the Damned Plains.

He put his hand on the top of his grimoire, and he could have sworn it cooed in response. A shudder of approval ran down the spine of the book and into his hand.

That’s not creepy… but the grimoire is so much more than just a rune storage. I’m willing to put up with a little weirdness as long as it doesn’t keep showing random people pornography.

“You liked that, didn’t you?” Noah asked in a voice akin to one he’d use if he were talking to a small dog. “Want more?”

The grimoire shuddered again. It was definitely starting to get more expressive. A lot more expressive, given the interaction it had with Bird.

Is it getting smarter from eating all the runes? Or did it just lack energy before since nobody had fed it in a long time? I really hope this thing wasn’t locked in the Linwick Estate’s catacombs for some reason other than its need to eat runes.

“Why don’t you help me out a bit?” Noah asked, pushing his concerns to the side. He wasn’t about to stop using the grimoire. It was too useful. He swung the huge book off his back and thunked it down on the orange sand before him. “Redistribute some energy for me into the seven best-made Sand Runes. Rank 2 ones, please. Then prepare them for me, along with a badly made Rank 3. Try to make the Rank 3 another sand-based rune so the energy conversion isn’t too bad.”

A few seconds ticked by. Noah had just started to wonder if the grimoire had completely ignored his request when it swung itself open.

Seven Rank 2 Sand runes of various names hummed on its page, all full. They were joined by an eighth Rank 3 Cracked Sandy Gust Rune. None of them were fantastic, but the grimoire had followed his request perfectly.

Noah smiled. “Thank you. Hold on for a moment. This won’t take long.”

He put his hand on the page and closed his eyes. He drew every single one of the runes into his soul in a flash, barely even taking more than a few seconds to draw each of them. He’d done this step so many times now that it was practically second nature.

In rapid succession, he shattered each of the Rank 2 runes. He filtered out the badly made Rank 1s, breaking the Rank 3 apart to use for energy and components, and rebuilt each and every one of them.

He used the Rank 2 Gust Runes that had already been in Sandy Gust — which were decent, but not perfect — and recombined all the components. And, as Noah looked upon the new rune floating before him, he started to chuckle.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Sandy Gale — Rank 3

He’d made a near-perfect rune in less than a minute. It could have been perfect if he’d wanted it to be, but that would have been a bit too much for his current goals. Something like this would already be incredibly valuable to the average demon. Going farther had a risk of overplaying his hand.

And I’ve got no need to do that when a Rank 3 like this should be the strongest rune most demons have ever seen. This is a good way to show off without tipping anyone off to my true strength, and I can always make a stronger one if nobody is impressed.

Noah took the newly made Rune from his mind and imbued it right back into his grimoire. He had no need for anything less than a flawless rune floating around in his soul, much less one that wasn’t even perfect.

The grimoire shuddered again. Noah’s eyes narrowed and he prodded it in the cover. “Don’t eat that. Don’t eat any runes I don’t have duplicates of either. I’m trying to build a collection here. Feel free to snack on the extras as long as you leave me with the majority of them. If you do, we can keep getting you fed. Sound good?”

Paper twitched in response and the grimoire closed itself. That was probably as close to an agreement as he was going to get, so Noah slung the book back over his shoulder and stepped onto his flying sword. He grabbed two Ettercaps he’d managed to avoid completely brutalizing and tucked one under each arm.

Night still ruled over the Damned Plains as he took to the skies and shot back in the direction of Treadon. He could still see the massive walking city in the distance. The turtle hadn’t quite managed to finish taking the step it had started the previous day.

As tempting as it was to just fly right into the city and skip over the entry line, Noah wasn’t really trying to draw the attention of whatever fighting force protected the city. Not yet, at least.

He landed behind a dune and sheathed the flying sword, striding up to the city by foot. Noah chose a different entrance than the one he’d taken the previous time and strode up to the guards, dumping the pair of demons at their feet.

“This all?” one asked.

Before Noah could even say anything, the other guard tapped the first one on the shin with the butt of his halberd.

“Hold on,” the second guard muttered. “Human figure. No horns and wearing storm wrappings when it’s clear out.”

“And?” the first guard asked, a confused furrow creasing his gray-skinned face as he glanced back at his compatriot. “How does that matter? Two weak demons is barely enough—”

“He meets the descriptions of Spider.”

“Who?”

The second guard muttered a curse under his breath. “I’ll tell you later. Just get out of the way. This one isn’t someone we want to bother.”

After a second of hesitation, the first demon shrugged and took a confused step back, gesturing for Noah to continue onto the lift. Noah was grateful he didn’t even have to bother concealing his smile as he passed them. His face wrappings already did that for him.

It looks like word is spreading pretty fast. Perfect.

The other demons already waiting on the platform watched Noah uneasily, making space for him and looking anywhere but in his direction. He didn’t know if they were scared of him or if they’d just overheard the guards. It was all the same in the end. The more people knew about Spider, the more likely the next part of his plan would work.

It wasn’t long before the platform shuddered. The huge chains holding it up rattled away as it lifted into the air and toward the city far above. When it arrived, Noah joined the crowd of demons in dispersing into the city.

They all quickly broke away from him, and he slipped into the alleyways to avoid parading straight through the center of Treadon. He was pretty sure he was stronger than the majority of the demons in the city — he highly doubted Rank 5 and 6 Demons were just strolling around everywhere — but there was no need to draw attention right now.

He made his way through the city and back over to the gang’s market square where Moxie and Lee were. Even though it was the middle of the night, Treadon was as awake as if it were day.

Demons walked through the streets and ducked past alleyways. The majority of them seemed to have no trouble navigating in the dark, but a number of demons carried around lanterns to light their way.

I suppose there’s going to be a lot more diversity in ability with demons given how much runes change their physical bodies. Interesting. Never really thought about that.

Noah made it to the square a short while later. It wasn’t on fire or otherwise destroyed, which was good news. It seemed that Moxie and Lee had better luck with not blowing things up than he did.

He slipped into his tent and was pleased to find that Moxie was still there, sitting on a chair of vines and drumming her fingers on her knees. She glanced at Noah as he came back and blinked in surprise.

“Oh! You’re back?”

“I did say it would just be a few hours.”

“Yeah, but I fully expected something to go wrong or you to kill yourself,” Moxie admitted. She rose from her chair. “How’d it go?”

“Perfectly. Got a bunch of runes and fed the book. What about you? Manage to get in contact with the guy we’re looking for?”

“Not me, and not the demon that sent his assassins here,” Moxie said with a shake of her head. “But we got a lead. Vrith was scanning the camp on Aylin’s orders, and she found someone that looked suspicious. Lee smelled the same thing — not sure how she did that, but I’ve learned not to ask questions. We did a little questioning and it turns out he’s a scout for a Rank 5 Demon. One with a little bit of political influence.”

“It was only a matter of time before people started snooping.” A smile pulled across Noah’s lips. “Bring me to him? I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to give me an introduction to his boss.”