The Runesmith

Days went by and Roland continued to practice his craft. He created regular tools most of the day which he then melted down for crafting materials. They were far too crude to sell and any responsible blacksmith made his or her own tools.

With the help of his temporary assistant, he didn’t need to go to restaurants every day. She would cook and clean and he would help her out by crafting arrow shafts. With this, his smithing masteries were increasing at a steady pace. This only left his level that was increasing at a snail's pace.

‘Even runecrafting doesn’t give me that much experience…’

Roland gave out a sigh while hammering another one of his creations. He was making a door handle for his new workshop as the old one had fallen off. He could have just repaired it but he would be given fewer points.

He was just adding the finishing touches by bending each side of the handle on the horn of his anvil. After it was finished he just needed to attach the new iron handle via nails to the wooden door. The door didn’t have a lock, just a simple latch that he could use to close it from one side.

His Basic Forging and Basic Smithing Mastery were at level 4. They were leveling up fast if you compared it to his blacksmiths level that was only 3 after all this time. The books weren’t joking around when they said that taking a third tier 1 class would be a headache. If he continued like this he would max out all of his basic crafting skills before he even reached level 10 with his runic blacksmith class.

This was something that he expected would happen sooner or later. It felt like a big waste of time though. He would be stuck with skills that couldn’t be upgraded even if he continued working hard. It might have been even better to level up other skills that he ignored after that happened, like his stealth, running or weapon proficiencies. With the added Blacksmith strength and endurance he would be able to handle some heavier weapons.

Before that happened though there was one thing he wanted to do. That was to draw as many rune schematics as humanly possible. He had bought all of the runic scrolls that were in the city already. There weren’t that many of them, to begin with as most runesmiths would rather hammer red hot iron than hold a quill in a dark room.

This left him with not much to work with. Only some basic elemental spells like the arrow series. There were also some situational ones like the lesser shadow veil and the life detection spell.

He needed to get more armor and weapon-related spells like the impact rune or detonation rune he received. The problem was that even the cheapest piece of armor cost at least a few small gold coins. He didn’t have enough gold to go around and buy enchanted armor to level up.

One option was to buy an enchanted sword with a popular rune. Learn how to craft it himself thanks to his debugging skill. Then order some swords and add the rune to it. This would probably be one of the better options and he could ask the gnome manager to sell his items without people knowing that it was him.

The only downside was that runecrafting still sucked him dry of mana, he probably wouldn’t be able to make that many weapons. Also he would need to stop making his scrolls due to not having any mana left after.

There was something he could do before that, something that in theory would allow him to get rune schematics free of charge. The problem with that was, that it was probably illegal and if he got caught he might go to jail. Getting caught was improbable, mostly due to the nature of the task he would be performing.

‘I should give it a try… I need to test it out in the field…’

Roland rubbed his chin before hammering the door handle into place. The one he made even looked better than the old one which showed him that he was really improving his craft. His assistant was out on adventures for a few days so he had some free time to do some tests.

The next day came around and Roland left his workshop. He couldn’t test his new idea in one of Exeor shops as the stores weren’t in the business of selling magic swords. They mostly sold materials, scrolls, and alchemy products.

He needed to find himself a shop that had a relation with an actual runesmith. These were weapon shops and armor shops and they looked very similar to the ones a person could find in games.

After some walking, he was now in front of one. It was one of the bigger shops in the city and there were already some adventurers inside looking over the items. The person that owned this was a runesmith that took the weapon smith path.

Getting a runesmith class was quite hard and he already knew this. Most of them would specialize in only one of the fields, either armors or weapons. The effort they would need to put to level up both would be astronomical. Still, some people like that existed and they were the true grandmasters of the craft.

The shop was named ‘Balmyr’s Weapons’ and it had a sword and ax symbol by the entrance. He was wearing his usual robe and covered most of his face as he didn’t want to be spotted.

The part of the store the regular customers were allowed to walk on was on the first floor. On this floor, you had various weapons of the regular variety. They were mostly made of steel or iron and you could even pick them up and examine them.

The second floor wasn’t accessible for just everyone. You had to be a silver grade adventurer or have some connections. On that floor, the more pricey enchanted weapons that were from the common grade and above were placed. Due to how much they cost they were well protected and you had to jump through some hoops to even examine them.

He wasn’t here for those though, no. He walked over to where some of the rune enchanted items were, the ones with lesser runes. There were a lot of them around behind glass cases, a person just needed to call over one of the clerks to examine it or to purchase it. He on the other hand just wanted to examine them through the glass.

He moved closer to one of those display cases. He saw some steel swords there, all of them were looking better than what he was able to produce.

‘Steel Axe of lesser sharpness…’

‘Steel Dagger of lesser sharpness…’

He started looking through them, most of them had the sharpness enchantment on it as it was one of the more popular ones. He needed to find an item with a rune that he didn’t yet know and it didn’t take him long to find one.

‘Steel longsword of lesser scorching...there we go...’

Roland murmured to himself. That was one rune that he wasn’t familiar with just yet. From his knowledge, he knew that this enchantment would imbue the weapon with flames. The flames wouldn’t harm the weapon or the user. The magical fire would add a bit more damage to a person’s attack but it wasn’t all that great as some people might think.

He moved in closer as now was the time to carry out his dubious plan. He moved over to the glass case and was lucky enough that no one was close by. He carried out his plan by sticking his face as close to the glass as possible and then staring at the sword.

Yes, he just came here to stare at the weapons. His debugging skill was activated and he could see the runic spell structure of the lesser scorching rune.

He wouldn’t be sketching a diagram here though, no. He was using one of his traits, mainly the Knowledge Retention one that he was blessed with. His memory wasn’t perfect but he figured to give this a try.

He already knew the runic structures after scribing so many schematics and spell scrolls. He didn’t even need to remember all of the magical pathways. The most important thing where the separate components. He already knew the ones that were used for fire and flames. This lesser scorching rune had similar elements as the fire spells he was used to scribing.

He remained there for ten minutes just staring at the sword. Some of the workers gave him side glances as they didn’t know what this person was doing. He had his head squished into the glass and was intently looking at one of the swords.

Roland finally pulled his face away and quickly ran out of the store. This left the clerks even more surprised, the sword was there so there was no stealing involved. The youth ran back to his workshop with haste and grabbed his paper and pencil. He quickly started drawing everything down. Within fifteen minutes he had all of the components on the paper and only the traces remained. With the help of the drawing skill, he didn’t even need a ruler to draw a straight line so he finished up everything within half an hour.

He gained some experience for creating the schematic. It wasn’t of the highest rating as he had made some mistakes here and there but it was a working lesser scorching rune. With his debugging skill, he could easily increase it to the highest grade.

Roland sat down while looking at the paper he just drew the schematic on and chuckled. He had just managed to ‘borrow’ a yet unknown rune diagram for himself. He saved himself some small gold coins thanks to this and it didn’t seem that anyone noticed.

He wanted to run back to that store and do it again. He knew that if he went through with that someone could notice. He now had a way to get some free rune schematics but he couldn’t overdo it. He was scared that someone would notice him using an unknown skill and if he went to jail they would have ways to identify it.

‘Yeah, no need to be hasty…’

Roland thought to himself. He was still stuck in this city for some years, he could slowly go to the weapon and armor shops and ‘examine’ the wares. If he did it once or twice a week no one should be any wiser.

He couldn’t do it again now so he decided to move forward with one of his experiments. He would try making a bronze age sword.

He would be using some premade items that he had bought previously. One of them was the mold box that went together with special sand that would go into it. The other thing he needed was a wooden replica of the sword he would be molding. Luckily he had done this strenuous task previously.

He had gotten himself a piece of wood that was more or less a thicker plank. He first drew the shape of the sword on it. Roland went for a leaf-shaped sword design that would be on the shorter side. After drawing the shape on the wood he had cut it into the rough shape then filed it down to perfection.

Now he just had to insert the sand into the mold along with the wooden sword replica. So he did and luckily it left a nice sword imprint. He now needed to carve out a channel for the bronze to go in that was at the handle part.

This wasn’t the first time he was doing this as he had some practice with the paddle magic wands. This would take a lot more time though as after the casting there would be a lot of grinding and polishing left to do.

The mold that was in a wooden holder and had some latches on it to close it together. He also hammered in some nails to keep it tightly shut. The smelter was already running hot and the bronze was already in it. He wasn’t doing his own mix of adding tin to copper as he just got some working materials from another store.

After everything was nicely melted he took out the melting crucible with the heated metal and began pouring it into the small opening of the mold. Smoke started coming out but luckily he didn’t see anything spilling outside. The top of the wooden mold began catching on fire after it was filled up but that wasn’t a problem.

The casting process was now over and after the mold had cooled off it was time to open it. The latches and nails were removed and the inside was revealed. A very rough looking piece of bronze covered in some sand was seen by him. After cleaning it up from the sand the dreaded grinding process would begin. This would probably take him over a day to finish.

Roland continued, his grinding stone and sandpaper were used. Luckily there was sandpaper in this world otherwise this would take even longer. It was impossible to polish the blade without any blemishes as the casting process in the mold just wasn’t good enough.

On the next day, he managed to get done with polishing and it was time to attach a wooden handle. He used the base wooden sword replica to draw out a handle on two smaller blocks of wood. He then used some tools to shave it down to size, attaching it to the sword would be done with rivets.

He looked at the shiny sword, he had polished the surface and he could very vaguely see his reflection in it. There were some scratches of the surface of the blade shaft from the sandpaper and grindstone left behind. If he wanted to get a highest rating he would probably need to have a blade with no blemishes.

This was enough, it was nice and sharp and was now ready for the runecrafting process. He grabbed a better steel hammer from the side. He still needed to get himself one that was at least made from dark steel in the future. There were even special ones with enchantments that boosted a smiths mana control. Though they cost an arm and a leg as other runesmiths were unwilling to hand over good crafting tools to the competition.

He pushed his magical energy into the hammer handle. It traveled upwards into the head and then went towards the face. It started glowing in blue light and crackled slightly the moment he delivered a blow to his bronze sword.

The sound of gentle hammering resounded through the workshop and his work continued. He needed to take a couple of breaks and even meditated to get back his mana. Even with this, he wasn’t able to inscribe the lesser scorch rune in one day. The whole runecrafting process took him a whole three days to finish and he was left with a working product.

Roland looked at his new creation, this was a lot harder to make than one of the previous paddles. This was also his first working weapon, though making it bronze probably meant that it wouldn’t last for too long.

He examined his reflection in the blade and then moved it up into the air before exclaiming…

“Flame on!”

He then injected mana through the wooden hilt, with the ethereal pathways skill in place this was finally a possibility. The runes in the blade shone and he could vaguely see the runic pathways lighting up as the magic structure was activated. A flame sword was thus created which made Roland grin slightly.

He was finally able to make a working weapon, even though it wasn’t that usable it was a proof of concept. He laughed out loud while forgetting himself and waving the fire sword around as a kid would when playing with a toy. His momentary outburst of happiness was interrupted the moment someone called out to him from the back.

“Hey, are you really just a regular blacksmith…”

He turned around and saw Helci standing there and looking at his runic sword. She was out on adventures so he didn’t bother hiding his runecrafting. He also was so focused on it that he didn’t notice the girl’s return.

“How long were you standing there…”

“Oh, about an hour, you seemed busy so I didn’t want to bother you…”

She smiled while looking at the taller youth that still had a flaming sword in his hand.

“But I locked the door…”

He looked to the door and it was still closed.

“Oh, yeah. It was locked so I climbed through the opened window, climbing is nothing for a scout!”

Helci grinned as if she did well. She had climbed through the second floor window that he left open for some ventilation. It was still day so he also didn’t leave any traps for thieves behind.

“That’s not the important thing, how did you do that!”

Helci pointed at the glowing sword that Roland finally turned off. Her eyes were sparkling as if she was a kid in a candy store. Now he needed to explain himself to his own assistant and hope that she wouldn't spread this information around. He already was starting to get a headache.