The Runesmith

Roland slowly left the room in which the monster massacre happened. He didn’t want to hang around other adventurers for too long if there was no business relationship between the two parties.

He was slightly ticked off as the group of youngsters had ruined his grinding spot. This was the 7th level of the labyrinth, it was getting close to the boss room that was on the 10th. One day while adventuring he found a little secret room, all thanks to his debugging skill and mana sense.

It was directly above that trap room where the Lesser Troglodytes waited. Those monsters would spawn in a hidden chamber. There was a secret tunnel that connected to it from the 6th floor above, all behind a hidden opening in one of the tunnels.

The monsters would be confined in a small room and wait for someone to come into that large chamber. When The trap was sprung they would be allowed to exit. When they followed a narrow corridor they would appear right above the 7th floor's trap chamber. Thus the trap would be sprung and the people below would have to face off against these monsters.

This wasn’t the important part, he used the fact that the monsters were trapped in a small chamber for himself. For someone who could make runic bombs and grenades, this was a great spot to quickly level up. He had used it several times by tossing in such explosives or using spells that had a wide area of effect.

To his surprise when he arrived today the room was already empty. The trap was activated which wasn’t something that normally happened here. The labyrinth was already mapped out by the guild and anyone who bought a map would know this trap. It was easily avoidable, only parties that wanted to farm the Lesser Troglodytes would bother entering this room.

The monsters looked similar to lizardmen, had high physical resistance and strength. Most adventurers would rather fight smaller groups of monsters. This trap was far too dangerous so most people avoided it. The monsters weren’t very resistant to magic though, which made them perfect for Roland's grinding initiative.

Roland moved through the narrow corridors to see who activated the trap. To his surprise it was a bunch of low level adventurers, they were all around the 35th level. The Lesser Troglodytes were also close to that but they outnumbered the intruders five to one.

He knew that the young adventurers would be killed if he didn’t react. The monsters didn’t pose a threat to him at this point even in a wide-open area. He decided to use up some of the runic charges of the armor he had inscribed and so now he was here.

There were two good things that came out of this predicament. One was the mana stones that he had still managed to procure for his crafting. Then there was still the experience that he managed to gain. After glancing at the status screen he now knew what it was time for a big change.

Debugger L 6, Circuitry L 7, Tinkerer L 8, Identify L 9, Basic Mana Shaping L 9, Basic Mana Regulation L 9, Mana Sense L 9, Basic Rune Mastery L 9, Basic Rune Scribing L 9, Basic Smithing Mastery L 9, Basic Runecraft L 9, Runic Blacksmith’s Eyes L 9, Blacksmith’s Heat Sense L 9, Basic Rune Compression L 9, Ethereal Pathways L 9, Basic Mana Reinforcement L9, One-handed Swordsmanship L 9, Heavy Armor Proficiency L9, Shield Proficiency L9, Blunt Weapon Proficiency L9, Hand to hand combat L 3, Spearmanship L2….

Roland was finally at the maximum level, it was time for that class change that he was working towards all this time. He had managed to level up some of the combat skills as well but not all.

He stuck to using swords and maces but there just wasn’t enough time to take care of the rest. He would need months maybe even years to increase his spearmanship or ax-wielding proficiencies. Roland wasn’t really aiming to be a master of all weapons, two were more than enough for him.

He used some fast grinding methods to level up faster. Even though the monsters were low leveled there were a lot of them. There was a boost to experience if you killed more than one monster in a short amount of time. It wasn’t much but at this point, his experience gaining had slowed down to a crawl.

Roland had now lived in this city for over a year. Only now did he achieve the 25th level of his runic blacksmith profession. He had thought that this dungeon would be a gold mine of experience but that wasn’t entirely true. But he had limited himself by not venturing past the 10th level of this dungeon.

Past it was the volcanic area of this dungeon where only tier 2 monsters appeared. He wasn’t a true tier 2 class, he would rather be safe than sorry. While going solo he was still able to gain some experience towards his weapon skills and armor proficiencies. He had maxed out a few and with his level now hitting 75 he was finally ready to give his next class change a try.

With this, he decided to make a b-line for the exit. After going through this labyrinth repeatedly for a year he knew it like the back of his hand. With the help of his high intelligence stat, remembering these corridors wasn’t that hard. At this point in time, he didn’t even need to look at the map that much.

There were some secret spots that weren’t charted down, just like the secret room with the Lesser Troglodytes there were some shortcuts between levels. Luckily for him thanks to his skills he was able to spot them. From time to time he came across runic traces in the walls, through them finding the secret chambers was easy.

With a quick mana infusion, these secret rooms would open up. Some of them were just stairs going up while others were hidden areas with respawnable treasures. This place was still quite low leveled so he never did find anything costly but some of the treasures could be sold off. Being a blacksmith he could inscribe runes into armor and weapons, then resell them on the market for an inflated price.

After poking a certain spot with his finger a path opened up. It was just a corridor with winding stairs going up. Roland entered and moved up through it after a couple of minutes he was out on the 3rd level. From this point, he would need to travel through the dungeon normally.

Roland looked around this place a couple of times. There were still many adventurers here but not as many as before. The foolhardy ones had been weeded out in the first year of the dungeon's opening. Now not many of them ventured into the lower levels or past the 10th one that was for silver adventurers and up.

In time he was walking up the rocky stairs that led to the exit of this dungeon. On the outside things had changed as well, for one thing, there were guards in front of the entrance. They would check everyone's adventurer's cards before letting them venture forth. This was all due to a certain foolhardy farmer’s demise after entering the dungeon.

That person didn’t make it far before being devoured by one of the monsters. Some other adventurers found his body getting nibbled on by a salamander. The rumors were that he was unwilling to accept his farmer class and wanted to become an adventurer.

Further away was a large store, the person that had been here selling magic potions at the entrance had expanded. It was true that the ones that came first were the ones that profited the most. Roland didn’t see the young girl or the old man combo, they could now hire other people to do that work for them while they sat back at the store.

Some of the people that attempted the same line of work weren’t that lucky. He heard rumors of some of the merchants getting robbed and their potion selling business going under.

Roland was now far enough from the dungeon. He went behind a tree and removed most of the red armor that he was wearing and placed it back into one of his spatial bags. This one was much larger than regular ones and was worn by him on his back.

He stuffed it behind his armor plate which made it a bit uncomfortable to carry around but he needed it to be wide enough. This was due to what was hidden inside. He reached inside and started pulling, soon a wheel appeared followed by the rest of a peculiar transportation device.

It had two round wheels that had something similar to rubber on them. To the side of the back, wheel was a chain that connected below the sitting area. This was a bicycle that Roland had made. It didn’t look anything like the modern variant that he was used to seeing in his old life.

The seat that he sat on was quite long and connected to the handlebar directly. There were no pedals for him to move his feet around either. This thing was powered by mana directly, he just made a rest for his feet a bit to the front.

He sat down on it and after injecting some mana he was up and running. Roland used the main road that was somewhat paved to the dungeon at this point. The people that he passed gave him some strange looks but he was used to it by now. He was known by them as the strange craftsman that lived out of the city. At least as his disciple as most people didn’t want to believe that someone at sixteen could be a runic craftsman.

The trip to the dungeon would take him more than half an hour on foot but with this new bike, he made it back under ten minutes. His house had been changed a couple of times since he arrived but the most eye-catching thing was the large log wall that also had a barbed wire part at the top.

He had been visited by nosy ‘people’ a couple of times but with some contingencies in place they found themselves incapacitated. Some did slip it past the magical traps but just as he had planned they didn’t find his main workshop. The only things that he lost were iron and steel tools that could be easily replaced.

Everything was walled and fenced up, even the log cabin where he kept his regular furnace and tools. That place was mostly what the thieves set their eyes on so it was easily defendable with some shock runes plastered on the ground or walls.

He didn’t care much about his ‘garage’ as where the magic happened was downstairs. That was also where he was heading now. Roland needed to prepare for his next class change, this would be best done behind closed doors where no one would bother him. There was a chance of him passing out as the last time. He would rather do this while being in a safe space that was behind illusionary runes.

The inside of his home looked decent enough. Everything was cleaned up during the renovations and all the wooden panels were painted over. He even got himself a couple of cheap rugs to make it a bit cozier, though without a vacuum cleaner he had to do it the old fashioned way during the weekly cleaning drive.

He was still living alone, with the trust issues he had built up throughout the years it was hard to create new relationships. The people in the adventurer’s guild knew him as that guy that wears crimson heavy armor. It was a premade armor set that wasn’t that rare around the city. The only thing that he customized was the color along with the helmet.

There were runes in each part, it took some time to get the hang of it but it worked similar to a magic book. He just needed to focus on the body part to cast a spell, some pieces had more than one runic structure to add to his repertoire. This armor still suffered from the same drawbacks as all his old gear. It wore down quite fast, he needed to repair it constantly but it was good enough to last him through a prolonged dungeon run.

His new gear didn’t help during discussions with others though. Roland was never the one to start the conversation and there was no purpose in teaming up with anyone in this dungeon as long as he was careful. He had managed for this long without many problems and now was the time to take a step forward.

‘Okay, what do I need?’

He locked the door behind him and was also sure to activate a defensive runic structure close to the door handle. There was a sign outside to knock and wait. If anyone grabbed the handle first they would be tasered. It wasn’t quite that late but the sun was already setting, he didn’t expect any visitors so it would be on them if something happened.

It was time to go downstairs or over to a small closet that only had some rags in it. At least that's what it looked like to others. With a couple of strategic presses of this illusion magic lock, a path down was revealed. There was also a lock on the door for an added safety measure. Behind it were the stairs down along with another door, this one very sturdy looking and made from thick slabs of metal.

He needed to really give these a push to get them open. He was planning on making them even heavier after getting that status boost from getting a tier 2 class. On the inside was his workshop, he had used some earth magic to make it wider and deeper. This he had to do by himself but with some basic building knowledge, he knew where to place all the supportive columns. If the place collapsed on him during his work he would be having a bad time.

On the inside were all the usual things like a workbench with all his old tools. There was a forge sticking out from the wall, it connected to the chimney of his house. But there were special runes that filtered the smoke out as well. This way even if he was working down below it wouldn’t be smoking excessively.

In a side room behind closed doors was his crowning invention. A runic engine, after bumbling about for half a year he had finally managed to get a working model. This one was a steam model that worked by heating up water and converting it to mechanical force by steam. This was all done to produce electricity that then was stored in a special magic generator.

His assumption of gaining mana out of electricity had born fruit. He was now able to produce renewable energy on a smaller scale. This engine worked similar to the ones used in trains. The heating was done by small heating runes instead of fuel though. The boiled water would produce steam and pressure. It would push a cylinder back and forth to generate mechanical force. This mechanical force was then used in an electric generator that he fashioned from a magnet and copper coils.

The produced energy from this was then transferred by some wires into the special battery unit that he had made. He based it on the rune design and materials that he saw in that music box. The produced energy was higher than what it took to keep the heated runes running.

Thus he had made something close to a perpetual motion machine. It wasn’t quite that as the strain on the materials existed plus the runes and components had to be replaced periodically. He had it in a smaller room behind closed doors due to the loud noise that it made. It wasn’t perfect but thanks to it he was able to create his power tools and also power some other magical devices around his house. With time he hoped to improve on the design but for now, it just worked.

Improving it wasn’t on the agenda for today. He had a tier 2 class quest to finish, he was already dreading the thought of what it could entail this time. The first one was easy enough, just scribing one small runic spell. The other one was harder as he had to make a ladle without any proper blacksmith knowledge to speak of. This time he expected a crafting-related test as well but there also could be something more.

He brought out the class change crystal to start it. A Solaria church had been built here recently so now he could just go buy those there. He hoped that he would be able to pass the test on the first try but if not he could just get more crystals. He was making some money with his adventuring and there wasn’t a shortage of those crystals yet.

“Here goes nothing.”

Roland looked over his stats before sitting down in a chair. He had the crystal in his hand and a bucket was to the side. He hoped that he wouldn’t need to use it but it was better to have it on standby. The test wouldn’t let him take anything from the outside, the only thing he needed to worry about was not getting any visitors while being here.

Soon he activated the crystal and was back at his old apartment building. He didn’t look around at all this time around and just went to the recreation of his old apartment room. The PC was quickly activated, the list of classes he could choose from had increased as well. This was mostly due to now having some tier 2 classes to pick from.

“Weaponsmith… Armorsmith… the runic variations are there too…”

He started going through them one by one. The classes that were above tier 1 were in a separate section and easy to spot. There weren’t that many compared to the lower tier ones which had probably increased due to him gaining more combat-related skills.

“No mage related tier 2 classes as expected… there is a tier 2 scribe class… also an advanced runic mana scribe…”

Scrolls had been a good way of earning money for him and added to his combat repertoire. The biggest drawback of that class was the meager stat gains.

“Runesmith huh… it is there…”

The fabled class was there, it felt less special after he had attained the Runic Blacksmith one already. He knew that it wouldn’t add much besides letting his skills reach higher than the basic tier.

“Huh, what is this class?...”

There was a peculiar class showing up on the screen. It was placed further away from the other ones and looked like it was above them in that way. The sprite looked similar to a runesmith but it was a heavily armored version. It held a runic hammer in one hand while in the other one was a sword which made him think it was some kind of combination class.

“Runesmith Lord? So these types of classes weren’t just rumors...”