The Runesmith

Two pale crescent moons shone like silvery claws in the night sky. The sky was free of clouds which let everyone see a blanket of bright stars that seemed to stretch into infinity.

A certain person was sitting in a room, the candlelight danced in a gentle wind making the person’s shadow sway. The person looked to be a man in his twenties and he was wearing an exquisite tunic. There were various precious gems sewed into it and the person was also wearing a costly looking necklace.

He wore a kind of large padded shoes of black leather, the toes were round and gored over the foot with colored material. The sleeves on his tunic were puffed and there was a kind of cap to the side with a white feather in it. On one of the man’s hands a large ring was worn with what looked to be an insignia.

It was clear from the man’s appearance that he was some kind of noble. He was busy reading a long letter and was already on the last page. The moment he finished he crumbled it up and pointed his finger at it. The parchment quickly went up in flames after a surge of fire mana assaulted it.

“The thieves guild won’t cooperate anymore, damn idiots got caught. Those peasants dare resist? I need to acquire those assets at a lower cost before it is too late...”

The man rubbed his chin while looking at the piece of paper that was going up in flames. He continued to stare at it till it finally turned into dust. The moment it did a knock was heard on the door.

“Enter.”

The man that entered was wearing a shiny suit of armor. The candlelight was bouncing off the chest plate that had some intricate designs on it. The person that was wearing the armor put his hand on his chest as a greeting. He had the same insignia on his chest piece that the man had on his ring, it was clearly a noble house emblem that they both belonged to.

“My lord, the merchant council has now become more aware of our movements. We are also unable to proceed with the plan as the guild refuses to cooperate. “

The man sitting there just nodded as the knight continued talking. He raised his hand making him stop, he already read a more thorough report from other sources so he didn’t need to listen to this.

“I know. We must alter it, pull out for now, and let them think that they were successful. Not like they can do anything even if they know that we were responsible. They have no valid proof or the rank to call for a court hearing. Commoners will always be peasants with no actual power. ”

The man stood up and went to the side. The knight remained in place, his posture straight. The nobleman slowly walked over to a large cabinet filled with various liquors. He took his time in picking out one before sitting himself back in a more comfortable chair. The man in the shiny armor remained standing without uttering a word.

He waited through the whole ordeal. The man poured himself some of that liquid into a tall glass and started to slowly sip it.

“They know their place, they won’t be foolish enough to act against me. If that guild doesn’t want to act we will just hire someone else, get in touch with... them…”

The knight’s eyebrows quivered slightly as he listened to his lord talking.

“My Lord, do you mean?”

The knight asked while being taken aback slightly.

“Yes, their methods might be brutal but they get the job done and they won’t abandon their mission like those useless thieves. I still have some time before he can return from the border, three… no two years… this city's assets have to belong to me by then.”

The man stopped himself from talking further and then looked at the knight that was just standing there. The man frowned and in a fit tossed the half-drunk glass filled with red liquor at the knight. The man didn’t doge and glass shattered all over his suit of armor.

“What are you waiting for!”

“Yes my lord, it shall be done!”

The knight did his salute and walked out of the room. After leaving he made sure to call up some maids to clean up the mess in the lord's study. He didn’t like what his young master was planning but he couldn’t go against him. He had sworn an oath and he had to carry out his knightly duties.

The two silver moons continued to brighten the sky like two crescent daggers. Soon a new day dawned bringing new events with it.

Roland had his work cut out for him, the manager was very serious about his contracts.
Its re-evaluation took some time to process. The gnome needed a good reason to invest more resources into Roland. This reason would be his third class as some of his runic items were already discovered during the burglary attempt. Roland wasn’t sure when his boss found out but it was no use hiding his increased worth anymore.

The gnome manager was happy to hear about the Runic Blacksmith variant. Due to this, he agreed to more funding and protection. He would be moved to a different location where he could train his craft in peace. The only downside of this, he needed to actually produce usable runic equipment. What came with it, was a big raise and a slight drop in the percentages he needed to pay for his items to the store.

Crafting runes wasn’t all that hard for him. Most of the problems came from the exorbitant amount of mana he burned during the crafting process. The hard part was the smithing as he was barely able to make passable smithing tools. Even something like nails were hard to produce.

He also agreed to an extension of the contract by a year. From what he calculated it would probably take him years to max out this class. He gained meager amounts of experience from making metal tools or weapons. The only thing that gave him a lot of experience was runecrafting. The number of points he gained for making runic scrolls went down after his promotion. If you wanted to level up with a specialized class you needed to focus on its skills and proficiencies. The only other way would be getting a lot of rune schematics.

Even if he got all the way up to a runesmith, it would be good to have a working smithy to continue. There was no reason for him to leave if the assassination attempts stopped. The contract stated that the company would pay a fine and Roland would be able to cancel it. This was only if harm came to him due to his involvement with Exeor’s company.

He barely got used to living in the shady warehouse and he would already be moving somewhere else. Of course, it was another unused warehouse with a similar layout but with fewer cobwebs this time around. After the new contract went through the company abandoned the repairs on the other one and outfitted his new workshop with better tools.

Roland was now sitting in his new office. It looked strangely similar to the old one, this really was just a less run-down version of the older building. He placed the two skill books that he received as compensation on his desk. After some time his runesmithing went up to level 2 but this wasn’t enough to make crafting comfortable.

He grabbed the corresponding skill book and began reading it. It was similar to the one he read during his class change quest but not quite. A person could somehow increase their skill level after reading skill books but it wasn’t by a set point. Due to this there was no reason to save it till he got his skill up to level 8. The reader would get a hidden number of experience points towards the given skill and if it was enough it would just go up.

The skill book he read while changing his class went together with a lesser fire resistance rune. This one also came together with a basic diagram, the one here would be quite useful for his current class. It came with a ‘Lesser Fortitude’ Rune. This rune would increase the user’s endurance by a flat amount up by 5 if he got it into the ‘highest’ rating.

He already knew that he couldn’t stack too many pieces of equipment like that onto one person. Armor that raised the user's stats like that came at a cost. It would temporarily lower the maximum number of mana by a set number.

For instance, if someone had 1000 points of mana and decided to use magical gloves with that fortitude enchantment. Their mana pool would be lowered by a 100 points. This meant that a person with that amount of mana could theoretically have 10 such runes on his equipment.

The same debuffs applied though. A person would start feeling a strain if their mana went below 30%. That was the usual cutoff at which the cons outweigh the pros. Of course, there were some ways to lower the mana costs, one was monster cores the other was skills. Thanks to Roland’s ‘Runic Master’ skill he could wear more runic equipment than your regular adventurer.

Due to these conditions, most runesmiths didn’t put more than one or two enchantments on a given piece of armor. You’d mostly see sets divided into; Gloves, boots, helmets, chest armor, and pants or skirts. To this, you could throw in a belt and some accessories.

This segregated the type of enchantments into two categories. First were the self-sufficient ones that didn’t require the user’s mana. Second, the less desired ones that came at the price of limiting your capabilities slightly. Even with there only being those two types there were further subcategories of them. Like ones that could be charged at special runic shops and worked for a limited time without the user powering it.

The type that cost the most was the one that could recharge themselves with the ambient mana in the air. They were also the hardest to make, from what Roland knew you somehow had to integrate a sufficiently large mana core into the item. Such a process was kept secret by the more advanced runesmiths. The only rumor he heard was that you somehow melted the mana stones into the items. How you did it he didn’t know, if he switched classes he might get such a skill for free.

After finishing the first skill book he heard the world’s system pronounce that it had leveled up. This would make things easier to craft from now on. Now came the second skill book, he grabbed it from the desk and began reading.

This one was about ‘Ethereal Pathways’ and was also a skill that runesmiths could attain. If he could nab it was still up to debate though as he was only a Runic Blacksmith and not a Runesmith.

He continued reading the skill book. The system rules this world worked on somehow aided people in gaining skills that were used by their classes. The person going through it would somehow get it as long as their attributes allowed it. There was some kind of hidden counter that if achieved would allow this.

Just as he had thought this skill would allow him to connect his runes on parts that weren’t one large piece of metal. The brigandine armor was a good example, it consisted of many metallic plates riveted to fabric. With this skill, he would only need to inscribe the rune on one of those plates and then connect them via these Ethereal traces. Those pathways existed one some kind of different wavelength and weren’t impacted by world physics that much.

There was of course a limit on how far the different pieces could be from each other. He couldn’t make a connection from a boot to a glove. The craftsman could at most get in a few centimeters otherwise the whole runic structure would become unstable.This technique also made it possible to inscribe runes on some softer materials like cloth.

It took him a couple of hours to go through this book. He had even gained a bonus point to intelligence along with the new skill. He had all the requirements to produce runic weapons and armor, the only problem was that he still sucked at making anything besides the runes.

He thought about one way to go around this issue and make a large sum of money in the process. Did he really have to be the one to craft swords or shields by himself? He could go to an armorsmith or weaponsmith and get himself a regular steel sword. He could then put his runes on it and sell it for a good amount of money.

He wasn’t sure if there were any copyright or trademark laws against things like that though. Would a weaponsmith come knocking on his door if they spotted their sword being resold with an attached rune to it? There was a way for a craftsman to identify his own weapon. He knew this as he could easily identify his own creations. Other people couldn’t see the craftsman’s name but the creator could.

‘I should probably ask the company about this, they could probably procure me items that won’t offend anyone.’

He thought to himself while grabbing a mug filled with warm black tea. If he went through Exeor network they would probably supply him something worthwhile. They owned various businesses around the city, they didn’t really have a runesmith on their payroll but that would be changing soon.

Even with this, he wouldn’t abandon his smithing class. He still needed to work on his tool masteries, he was very keen on crafting his own weapons. He knew that a person required vast amounts of resources to do this. Making a magic sword would probably bring him in a lot more money than making runic scrolls. He could only create weapons with limited charges and ones that lowered the user’s mana by a fixed amount. Still, there was a market for it and it was booming.

Roland turned to the window and looked outside, the workers were almost done with carrying everything inside. He would become busy once again. The biggest thing holding him back was his mana usage. He needed to lower the strain on himself, he needed to get some better crafting equipment. He would achieve this by getting something that increased his mana regeneration or its amount.

He had already managed to get a lesser mana regeneration magic ring from his boss. It was one of the things that he managed to insert into his contract. Even the lesser ones cost a huge number of coins so it was worth signing a one year extension just for this. With it on, he could increase his production rate by about 15%. He wanted to earn enough money to get similar products and increase his mana abilities even further.

The workers were still setting up his new workshop so he took out some magical paper and his quill. Time was off the essence and he could use it to practice his scribing strokes. It was a drag that he couldn’t level up his basic skill further due to not being a tier 2 class yet.

The more he crafted the more experience he got and the faster he could get his advanced class. What it would be in the end was still unknown to him but he hoped it would also be a unique one. So he went to work, the new workshop would soon be very busy. He would also be getting a part-time assistant, finally, he would have an employee under himself to order around.

So the next day came. His new workshop looked exactly the same as the old one, the walls were slightly more sturdy though and the catwalk would probably not give out under his weight anymore. The person that was going to help him out with some chores was supposed to be here now. They were already late which didn’t bode well.

“Hello? I’m from the guild. I’m here to work part-time...”

He heard someone call out from outside. The voice sounded familiar and high pitched which indicated that the person was probably a woman. This wasn’t much of a problem as spatial bags existed and he only needed someone to help him clean and do some odd jobs here and there.

“Yes, could you start by clean…What are you doing here?”

Roland opened the door and saw a familiar half-gnome girl standing before him. She was wearing better adventurer gear and looked less pouty.

“Roland?”

It was one of his old party members, Helci and she was apparently going to be his new assistant.