The Runesmith

He grunted like an old man while standing up. The sun was just rising so he probably had some time before any breakfast would be served at the inn. His thoughts turning to the girls as he wondered if they managed to sell the loot of the fencer that attacked him.

In yesterday’s encounter, he was almost murdered by some musketeer wannabe. Luckily his party members had managed to save him in the nick of time. This made him consider leaving this city while he was still in one piece.

The words that the man said were still bothering him. He mentioned someone being glad if he was dead, that could have been a random sentence he construed even a taunt but could also mean that he was hired to do it. The first person that popped into his mind wasn’t his father but the 3rd sibling.

He was never liked by the 3rd son, mostly due to the fact that they both came from mistresses. He didn’t think that his brother had it in him to go through with such a thing, nor was he smart enough or had the funds.

There were also his other two siblings but he didn’t think they saw him as a threat. He was the 4th son and his mother wasn’t even a mistress of the house. He had no claim to the estate whatsoever unless all of his other brothers died or his father announced him as the heir, which would never happen. Were they afraid that he would become strong and claim their lives or something?

’That doesn’t make any sense... but I guess people have killed for less before...’

He didn’t think that it was his father, if he was angered about him staying here he would probably just send an order for him to come back. The other suspects were the two wives, they also could have it out for him. They could see him as a threat against their sons if he ever managed to stand out. He didn’t think that he was standing out too much, he wasn’t even going to that magic academy or the knight academy.

Roland then wondered if there could be another person that might want him dead but he couldn’t think of anyone else. He didn’t really interact with anyone back in the Arden estate to cause any long-lasting grudges. He had two options, stay here and wait it out, or use the chance of his ’tail’ being dead and leave.

’I got my class... I got some coin... I even have a way to quickly level up now, no reason to stay here...’

He glanced at the three new skills that he had obtained, two were for scribing. The first one was probably the one that you got if you were a common Mana Scribe but he also had a second one just for runes. He knew that if he wanted he could scribe regular spells but runic ones felt much more promising.

Roland found it odd that he received the Basic Rune Mastery skill, the books he read mentioned another one. This skill was called Runecraft and it was required to achieve the Runesmith class. You could also only achieve it after becoming a blacksmith.

If he followed the normal path, he would end up as an Enchantsmith. He needed this Runecraft skill to advance to Runesmith. The books he read before described the way to get it. You needed to inscribe a rune on any type of item and you could buy special skill books that told you how. They were probably similar to the one he got while going through his first class change.

He rubbed his chin and thought some more, this skill that the Runic Mana Scribe came prepackaged with didn’t feel like a crafting skill but more as an offensive skill. For now, he opened up his status screen to check his stats.

T1 Mage L25 [ Secondary ]

T1 Runic Mana Scribe L 3 [ Main ]

He noted that he managed to gain 2 levels from the saved over XP. He was a bit annoyed that he lost some of it due to drawing that schematic too early.

’The secondary class option is now unlocked.’

The moment you unlocked a second class you could choose one of your previously gained classes as a secondary one. With a secondary class, you were able to keep this class’ special effect. His secondary class which was now a mage gave him bonuses to mana and mana regeneration. You could only have one secondary class and you could switch them once per day, no outside items were needed to do this.

Roland took note of his meager physical stat growth with this class, his intelligence, dexterity, and willpower seemed to be going up though.

This was his second tier 1 class, this world’s system didn’t count this as separate levels. They all added to the main level, which caused people to gain those levels slower than before. Even if it seemed that he made the jump from l1 to l3 of his new class, in actuality he was going from l25 to l28 of his main level.

He knew this would happen, there was a reason why people started gaining levels slower and slower and why most of them tried not to get a third tier 1 class.

Roland was glad that he had his debugging skill, it offered him a faster way of getting through his tier 1 conundrum. He also believed that he could use this schematic making bug even after he changed his class to a blacksmith later on. This was also why he needed to get that hammer from his party member.

He gained a whopping 1000 experience points for that one schematic. He came to the conclusion that it was probably something a tier 2 class would normally be able to do. But here he was doing it as a tier-one, which meant he got more experience for doing something above his level.

Before heading out there was one more thing that he had to check. He grabbed the heavy rapier that was still on the table and he injected his mana into the weapon to trigger the rune’s effect. With that, a loud boom was heard from his room that woke up the person sleeping in the next room. He could hear someone banging on the other side to make him quiet down.

This almost made him forget to look at his MP points to check his theory.

Just as he suspected, he used up less mana to activate this weapon this time around. The Rune Mastery skill was lowering the cost of powering the runes. The decrease was meager in scope at only 1%, but what if he continued increasing this skill, could he get it up to 10%? maybe an advanced version of this skill could be gotten later which would further decrease the requirements. Could he get a class with the advanced version of it in the future was the big question?

’Hm, maybe with this skill... combat with runic weapons could be somehow manageable?’

Roland wanted to test this theory out in the future as he had no way of doing it now. He finally got out of his room to get something to eat, he wanted to meet up with the girls and discuss a couple of things. He headed to the adventurer guild and could see people were walking out to open their shops.

He became slightly nostalgic, he was already over five years in this world but this was the first place that he actually enjoyed living in. He found himself a quirky party that was quite dependable. They even rescued his behind from getting murdered in broad daylight. He spent quite the interesting half a year in this place.

He decided to change locations and wanted to do it fast. He also felt bad about breaking the party up when he left, the girls would need to find reliable backline support like him. There weren’t really many mages in this line of work at the lower levels. Most mages were put into academies that left them as tier 2 mages. They could just level up by researching more spells and not killing monsters.

This was also why Roland was able to reach l 25 of his mage class so soon. Besides killing goblins he was leveling up his spells, the more he used them the faster they leveled up. Even though he didn’t need to do it while in combat, it did hasten the leveling process.

Still, most people didn’t want their kids leveling up in dungeons so spending some years in a magic academy till they got the hang of casting was a preferred option. Though this only concerned people that could actually afford to pay for the exorbitant prices of those prestigious academies.

Roland went past the tavern that he had his first drunk stupor with his party members. It was called The Iron Flagon, the booze that was served there was all hard liquor anything below 20% was frowned upon. He recalled a couple of instances of the girls from his party getting drunk in there, the quiet wolf girl always got chatty on those occasions which made him chuckle.

He thought back to his family, he hadn’t heard a word from them during the time he was here. He also didn’t write any letters to any of them. He once considered writing some to Martha but now he was planning on going into hiding. This meant that he needed to lay low and not spread any information about his whereabouts.

He finally arrived at the adventurer guild, it was the place that he always met with the girls. He pushed the door open and was greeted by a smell of sweat, many adventurers were already shuffling back and forth inside. The people in this world woke up early as to not waste the light of day.

"Hey Roland, Good Morning~"

Roland spotted Rebecca at the usual spot waving at him. She had quite a big smile on her face as if something good had happened. This made Roland think that she might have fetched a good price for that man’s armor.

He walked towards his party, Sahildr had a coin purse in her hands and was looking at it while Reyna the wolf girl was dozing off at her seat. The girl was always bad at getting up in the morning, some drool was even dripping from her mouth as she concentrated on not hitting the table with her face.

"Good morning, you’re awfully chipper today, a good deal at the shop?"

Roland sat down on his chair that creaked. The moment he asked Rebecca waved him over, he raised his eyebrow but leaned forward, she apparently wanted to whisper her answer into his ear.

"Yeah, that guy was loaded, we found some small gold coins in his spatial bag along with some other things, Reyna already swiped some throwing daggers for herself. His gear also fetched a nice price..."

Roland nodded, apparently with the sold equipment the girls managed to get over twenty small gold coins. He already had fifteen of those in the dimensional bag beforehand, after selling his light armor, some potions, and other weapons. The girls received 5 more small gold coins.

Roland took a second to digest this information. For someone just trailing him, he was carrying a lot of cash. Was this a normal amount of gold someone at tier 2 had or was it really a payment for taking him out?

"Um, did he perhaps have any letters in his bag? Ones with a red seal for instance..."

Rebecca shook her head and shrugged.

"No, he only had the usual stuff."

Roland narrowed his eyes as this made it sound like this wasn’t the first time that these girls had done someone in.

He was hoping of finding more clues but it made sense that there were no letters. Even if the man received such a thing, he would probably burn it to get rid of the evidence. He also could have met face to face with his contractor.

His head was apparently worth more than one gold coin, which he wasn’t sure was that flattering. While he was thinking he noticed that his party leader’s eyes were sparkling.

"You sure are happy there, like money that much?"

"Damn right I do!"

She replied loudly before lowering her voice and nodding. She didn’t really want the other adventurers to know that they had some coins to spare as these were dangerous times they lived in. It wouldn’t be surprising if you got back-stabbed during a dungeon expedition and robbed by other adventurers. There were even some of those types that actually specialized in robbing others during dungeon expeditions.

"But anyway, what are we going to do now... think we should leave this city for now."

Rebecca sat down in her chair and looked at the others with a slight frown on her face. Roland kind of knew what this was about as he nodded.

"Sorry, didn’t think I’d get you involved in something like this..."

"It’s not your fault, you are different than those other nobles!"

Sahildr smacked the table that rattled with force, the drowsy Reyna fell forward and got her face smacked which finally woke her up.

"How about we take one of those guard missions to another city, we won’t have to pay the traveling costs."

Rebecca continued with her proposal while Roland replied with his own plans in mind.

"Well... I wanted to tell you something about that, I want to leave the city... but alone. I was thinking about quitting as an adventurer for now at least. But I think that you three should leave the city, I think your involvement with me might bring trouble your way."

Roland wasn’t sure what information the man had reported to the Baron or to the person that tried to kill him. The looks of the three female members from his party could be known and they could be implicated in the future. He of course didn’t want that to happen but only saw distancing himself from them as an option.

"You think we are afraid of some trouble?"

Sahildr smacked the table again while looking angrily at Roland.

"Apparently not..."

"Don’t worry about us Roland, but you seem to have already made up your mind about this."

Rebecca chimed in while looking at the close to 11-year-old Roland. The boy nodded as he wanted to leave this city and move on, he already had his class and now needed a place to train his crafting class.

"Yes I did, I’m actually not really fit to be a mage, so I’ve decided on choosing one of the crafting classes..."

The girls were surprised by this reveal, from their point of view the youth was quite talented as a mage. Even though he only knew the basic spells, they packed quite a punch. If he managed to reach a tier 2 mage he would be a force to be reckoned with.

"Eh? But you are clearly suited to be a mage."

Rebecca asked while confused.

"Okay let me explain, it’s like this..."

He made a short summary about him having some one in a million constitution and having zero elemental affinities to get him any of the basic mage classes. He then explained about runes and that he would be going for a smithing class that would somehow let him profit from his large mana pool.

"So that’s how it is..."

Reyna just kept nodding during the explanation, Rebecca did the same while Sahildr’s head started exuding smoke when he started talking about runes and how they fit into his plan.

"I got it, sounds reasonable."

Rebecca shrugged without having much to add to this explanation, not like she could convince this boy at this point. She also felt that Roland was free to choose his future.

"So, when will you be leaving?"

"Hm, I’d like to today or tomorrow, don’t really want to remain here for too long after what happened yesterday."

"I see... you probably won’t tell us where you are heading?."

Roland just nodded while frowning. It wasn’t like he didn’t trust them with keeping secrets but in this world, there were ways of getting information out of people even if they didn’t want to talk. Mostly with the help of special spells or potions that made people sing. The girls understood this, so they didn’t make much of a fuss.

"Uh, we can always meet up in the future, you never know, when you are famous adventurers I’ll be sure to make you some runic weapons."

Roland noticed that the atmosphere around the table got strange, even the wolf girl was looking sad. He didn’t think that they would be saddened this much by him leaving.

"Hm, you sure you want to make a promise like that? I want at least a greater rune in my weapon."

Said Rebecca while Sahildr replied afterward.

"I want some armor!"

"Legendary Runic daggers."

Was what Reyna mumbled under her nose while staring at Roland with anticipation.

"Uh... don’t go overboard, I don’t even know how long it will take till I can make lesser runic weapons..."

The three girls grinned at him and started listing him the types of weapons and armor they wanted him to make.

"While we are on the subject of runes...Sahildr... could you lend me that hammer for a couple of hours..."

Roland looked at the muscular girl with a glint in his eyes, he just had to get that hammer before he left.