The Runesmith

"Damn idiots...”

Roland looked at one of the thieves that ambushed him as he was getting back home. He was holding his unmoving body in one hand while his legs were dangling around. Agni appeared next to his master with a somewhat bloody mouth that was slowly burning up due to his flaming bite.

It was a total wipe for this band of thieves with one exception. The lookout that he saw on his radar made the smart choice of running away instead of aiding his companions. While he could probably catch up to him, there was no reason for it.

He wasn’t some bloodthirsty bandit like the ones that attacked him here. The person might have been aware of his identity but that was probably a good thing. There would be no repercussions for him, slaying these people would be seen as just in this world.

The person could not make a proper report to the thieves’ guild either. If he did, then the truth that they attacked a black market member would come to light. This was akin to suicide in those circles, the man had two options.

Either leave this region or stay while hoping that the black merchant that they attacked didn’t know he even existed. Roland had already spent some time in the criminal underbelly but he never really ventured past the black market dealings.

His biggest informant Lobelia has been moving up through the ranks over the past three years.If he brought up this issue with her, there would be a possibility of getting to the bottom of who these people were. There was also the fact that not all of them were dead.

“I won’t kill you but I don’t have to save you either…”

Roland received some experience after blasting the unsuspecting robbers with a couple of spells. Some with more vitality than the others were just knocked out, one of the people was missing a limb. The fight didn’t take long as magical attacks that didn’t require incantations were hard to counter without a proper mage in the party.

This was still the lower area of the dungeon. If the monsters didn’t get to the survivors, then there was a chance that they could live. The chances were slim but a returning party of adventurers could spot them and give them a hand.

With how much stronger Roland was than they were, it didn’t sit well with him to finish them off after they were all disabled. He felt that he was being somewhat soft for feeling this way but the old moral compass that he had taken from his old world was still with him. Killing people during a fight was one thing, finishing them off after they didn’t pose a threat was another.

‘Their chances of survival are low.’

Roland called over the mule golem that was on standby during the whole predicament. The spider golems weren’t needed for low leveled adventurers so they were left inside of the spatial bag.

As he walked away, he recalled some of his previous close calls. While trying to avoid any type of confrontations he managed to get himself into hot water every time. Even this attack was proof of his bad luck.

If he came out a few hours later the bandits would probably not be there. But not like he did anything to avoid them, the radar clearly showed him that they were there and he decided to confront them while knowing well that they were below his level.

‘At least that helped me to level up…’

The boss monster that he faced was above his own level but even it didn’t push him through the threshold. Only now after slaying a few bandit adventurers was he able to reach the 117th level, with his Runesmith Lord class now being at 42 he only needed to level up eight times.

Only then would he make the jump to the next class. As it stood he was already able to change his classes at this point in time. The requirement was to only get twenty-five levels in any given class.

If he really wanted to, he could get three different classes to level 25 before he got to the 150th which opened up tier 3 classes. The current class that he had was much too good for him not to max out. Even now he received some valuable skills from just gaining levels in it, ones that helped him out in runecrafting.

“Common boy, let’s go home.”

“Grrrrr….Woof!”

Agni barked at Roland while previously growling at one of the survivors of the battle. Roland didn’t expect to find any tough opponents while going up, so he would leave the fighting up to Agni while he gave him some ranged support. While they were slogging through the dungeon levels he decided to bring up his system screen and look through some of the skills that he had gained through these three years.

His most precious skill had seen a big boost since he started working at the tier 3 schematics that the kitty professor had given him.

He was not really sure what would become of this skill if it ever reached the 9th level, was there some kind of higher form of it? The black card that he could not examine was also still on his mind. Would he now be able to scan it when his skill reached level 7 or would he need to further increase it?

Circuitry on the other hand seemed to level up faster than his debugging skill. It clearly was profiting from all the runes that he created through the years but seemed to be stuck on the 9th level for half a year now.

‘Maybe I need to be tier 3 for it to turn to the higher tier skill?’

Roland could only base this theory on the basic skills that he was stuck on when he was just a tier 1 class holder. There was also a possibility of him needing some kind of special class to further his skills, one related to actual circuits. It could very well forever be stuck at this level without ever turning into a higher tier skill.

His tinkerer skill that he brought over from his previous world on the other hand managed to go past the threshold. It became an expert skill that increased his dexterity bonus by ten instead of five.

High Analyze was the improved version of the Analyze skill that was normally the limit for tier 2 classes. But thanks to Roland’s various scholastic titles and his high intelligence stat he was able to learn a better form of this skill. Thanks to it he was now able to tell levels of every creature that was at tier 2, this also included seeing the classes of people.

This skill was quite useful but it was not without drawbacks. There were various ways of fooling this skill to give the user false information. Just as he was wearing the trinket that he received from his old gnome boss, so could other people.

Basic Rune Mending, Basic Rune Overload, Runic Cleansing the skills that he got at the beginning of his tier 2 journey were all at level 8. With each subsequent level, they became better and he was sure that he would be able to max them all out before reaching level 50 in his Runesmith Lord class.

Then there were some new skills that he had learned along the way. Some came via experimentation while others were given to him by just leveling up.

This was one of the skills that he received through leveling up. It was quite a useful skill as it allowed him to instantly create a copy of a rune that he had previously created.

He was now able to charge up his smithing hammer with mana. When the skill activated the hammer would infuse the piece of metal with the rune that he wished to copy. It was a peculiar sight to see as the runic traces slowly pushed themselves onto the item even after he was done with the implementation of this skill.

This skill only allowed him to produce lesser runes but this was a big-time saver already. The mana usage was about the same as when he did the runecrafting manually but the speed was far above it.

The grade of the rune was always somewhat worse than what he could do by himself. But the more he leveled up his skill the better it became. When it maxed out at 9 he would probably be able to copy any lesser rune and make it a highest rated one. The time saved on lower level gear that this gave him was immense.

It seemed like he was gaining a lot of time-saving skills. This one gave the possibility of gaining a better version of a rune. It was a gamble which could also result in the rune degrading or even the item breaking. The chance of it working was heightened depending if he was able to personally make a higher version of the rune already.

Due to his debugging skill, it made upgrading runes a lot less consistent. The only real reason to use it would be to save some time or in tandem with some other skills. One of those skills was Rune Overload and Rune Mending.

It was possible to overload a runic component to make it produce a heightened spell effect. Then when it broke down, he could mend it back together and quickly use the upgrading skill to get it back to its original state, all this during the heat of battle was possible but at a large cost to his own mana. If he ever found a use for this combination was debatable but it was still there on the table.

This was one of the more troublesome skills that he received. While it might have sounded similar to the upgrading skill or even the overload skill it was different. If it was successful it would add a whole ‘Empowered’ prefix to any fully created runic item.

It would boost the runes capabilities even over what the highest rank gave it. After going through a few tests he discovered that the boost was about 5% when he started out. With each level he gained in this skill, the percentage would go up.

Probably at the end, it would be something between 15%-20% of what the original rune would be capable of. The effect also was lessened on common grade runes when he compared it to the lesser variants.

Besides these new crafting-related skills he also managed to level up his past skills like Rune Mastery and Runecraft to level 7 and his mana regulation-related skills were also gaining traction slowly.

His progress had slowed down quite a bit as even when he was close to maxing out his Runesmith Lord class level. The classes were clearly made with the intention of the person having enough time to level up the skills before they reached the 50th level in their given class. He still trailed a bit behind in skills as he had used the tier 3 schematics to level up quicker than he was intended to. His Runesmith Lord’s Eyes eyes were also coming along nicely.

Now, what interested him the most was what kind of skill he would get when he achieved his 50th level. A rare ability was almost always assured when one maxed out a tier 2 class which made most people stick to two classes at this level.

“We are almost there.”

Roland looked at this mapping device while looking at a certain hidden door. He was now at one of his shortcuts that had not yet been discovered by anyone else but him. Only when he saw that there were no people walking around did he decide to walk out.

His week-long expedition into the mines was now over as he walked through the corridors on the third level of the dungeon. Some new adventurers quickly moved to the side when they saw him strutting through with the large golem behind him.

Though most of them were just frightened by the large Mystical Ruby Wolf in the front, a monster that they would not be able to handle. Agni when seeing this just snorted while holding his head up high.

“You’re really enjoying yourself aren’t you…”

Agni just replied with an energetic howl which caused the nearby adventurers to flee. He wasn’t sure if they were scared of the wolf or the large shiny runic knight that was walking behind it but they really knew how to bolt it.

After more time passed Roland was finally walking towards his own house. The path taking him there was somewhat more spacious as he together with Bernir had cleared some trees.

Now with a store there, he needed there to be enough space for a carriage to get through. There were some big spenders that came around to see some of the magical wares, so it was something that had to be done with profits in mind.

The fight with the bandits had been late in the night but as he just continued walking he ended up back home somewhere in the morning. It was just in time to see his girlfriend sweeping outside along with a bored guard that was not of the green skin variety.

“Woof!”

“Agni?”

Elodia called out the moment she heard a certain wolf howling towards her. The moment she did, a red blur appeared out of nowhere, she never stood a chance.

“Hey… g-get off me...s-stop licking my face!”

She started squirming on the ground while being totally overpowered by the large ruby wolf. Roland just smiled while taking off his helmet as he approached the scene. It seemed that tamed beasts showed favor to people their master liked. Thus Agni was always fine around people like Bernir or Elodia that he had bonded with through the years.

“Wayland, h-help!”

After giving Agni some time to slobber Elodia’s face he finally decided to grab him by the collar and yank him back. Roland was strong enough to hold his wolf by one hand and as he did he could only chuckle at Agni’s derpy panting expression.

“That’s enough, go play around but don’t scare the customers.”

While he still employed a guard for the store Agni was also responsible for defending everything that was inside. He would normally spend his days close to Elodia as a guard dog while Roland continued his experiments down in his workshop.

“Are you all right?”

“Do I look alright to you?”

Elodia showed a scowl when looking up to Roland that evaded her angry gaze. It was clear that Agni’s slobber was still stuck to her face, she clearly needed to get that washed out.

“Oh, you look more than alright to me...”

On the other hand, even though Elodia seemed angered this was the best opportunity to do his duty as a boyfriend and tease her. The moment the compliment was given Elodia’s face turned a bit rosier.

After some help, she was back to her feet. Before they spoke more she gave him that look that she always gave him when he returned from his dungeon runs.

“I’m fine, also this blood doesn’t belong to me…”

He turned his face to the side as he didn’t really want to come clean about clearing out some rogue adventurers in the dungeon. Luckily Elodia wasn’t someone that asked too many questions.

“I have to commend you for returning on time for once, you should get cleaned up… oh you probably don’t know this but there has been a big change.”

Roland perked up at the last part.

“Big change?”

“Yes, our city has gained enough recognition to attract a proper noble to govern it, isn’t that great?”

“A proper noble?”

Roland almost tripped over his own legs while approaching Elodia when nobles were mentioned. He clearly had an opinion about anything related to nobles but not all of them were the same. Before he could make the decision if he was in any danger, he needed to gather more information…