The Runesmith

“It’s a Lich core? The drop rate on these things was supposed to be super rare…”

Roland looked at an uneven-looking dark green crystal. This was a core of a monster very similar to the ones that golems came equipped with. The biggest difference was the shape which instead of being circular looked like a misshapen chunk of ore. Even though this wasn’t a game the chances of a Lich-type monster having one that didn’t disintegrate after death was very low.

“Could this be because it was a rare variant?”

Before defeating this monster he couldn’t identify what type of Lich. After defeating a monster a forced prompt would be played out with its name. This one was a rare Purgatory Lich which made sense considering it used green flames. At least in this world there was a conception of an afterlife and purgatory also existed. People's souls would apparently be cleansed in the green purgation flames.

These souls would then be reborn as something new, at least that was the theory behind it that people got from conversing with the many deities that existed. There were different versions of the afterlife which included variants of hell, heaven, and limbo. Some were very similar to the ones from his past life where war gods allowed their best warriors to remain at their side.

When Solaria was concerned she was a bit more similar to the main religion that he remembered. Sinners would be cast into the eternal flames of the sun which was very similar to the usual depictions of hell. Then people that stayed true to the divine lady's teachings would be rewarded with an eternal life of bliss. Similar to the other there was a stage in-between these two extremes.

Roland didn’t want to imagine having to be burned by green flames during the process of purgation by an angry-looking skeleton like this. His whole existence here made him believe that there was something more to these gods that met the eye. But he was more inclined to believe that the deities that people worshiped here weren’t true gods, just beings of immense power.

They were restricted in many ways that didn’t make sense for a true god to have. In his mind, there had to be something above these fake gods that was pulling the strings there but he was not sure if that was the thing that made him take the form of a five-year-old noble or if it was one of the lesser gods instead. Nevertheless, this was not the time to have an identity crisis again he needed to get out of here and check on his home.

“Woof!”

“Are you okay Agni?... your nose is bleeding…”

During the scuffle against the Lich Agni had grabbed onto one of its limbs. The monster wouldn’t let up and the wolf was slammed against the wall a couple of times without letting go. His injuries were luckily mild in comparison to Roland’s own broken hands which just got worse after he tackled the monster to the ground and started pounding away.

“You’ll be fine it seems, me on the other hand…”

Roland felt like a deflated balloon, his legs weren’t listening to him. His stamina and mana had been drained in a last-ditch effort for survival. Agni as his tamed beast could be easily identified and his HP was slowly going up. He suffered some damage but his monster physiology allowed him to regenerate to a lesser extent. Humans like Roland on the other hand needed more help from healing spells and potions to equal things out.

“The empyrean crystal shattered huh?”

With a trembling left hand, he dug into the satchel that miraculously survived the whole ordeal. His map wasn’t showing any of the skeleton army closing in on him which meant that the spell that kept them operational was no more. Thanks to this he could finally remove his gauntlets and look at those mangled-up hands of his.

“I guess my piano-playing carrier is over.”

Roland wanted to laugh at his bad joke but the pain kind of forced him to frown. While his left hand was covered in bruises it didn’t look as bad as the right one. Some of the finger bones had pierced through the flesh and others were placed at an odd angle. After taking a small breather he decided to go for it. Following a crunch, his grunting voice echoed through the escape corridor as he aligned his fingers into the correct position.

Quickly after he poured some healing potions over his right hand that continued to inflict mind-numbing pain. Right at the same moment, he noticed another prompt pointing to his Pain Resistance skill leveling up. Thanks to it everything became a bit more manageable and he was finally able to move his sore body. He had gained a few levels through this encounter and one of his titles had been changed as well which drew his attention.

‘Slaughterer huh? Did it count in the reanimated creatures?’

The Slaughterer variant of the monster title could only be achieved after killing quite a few of the same monster types. He needed a lot more time to gain that one when it came to goblins but he skipped a few steps with this infernal skeleton type. The Lich was part of the same family, just a rare variant and it could summon lesser variants of the tier 2 variety that must have counted towards this title. His level had also gone up but not enough to allow him to attempt the full class change that he wanted.

The Lich was a monster at the level of hundred seventy-six but Roland had already crossed the level hundred sixty threshold. Due to the difference in levels, he was only able to gain a few levels for killing a monster that was this much above him. However, all was not lost as through his contract he would have access to the secret dungeon spot.

His Vitality stat had previously been able to pass through the two-hundred-point mark and his strength wasn't far behind. He wasn't sure about which resistances the Vigour passive increased, his best bet would be things like recovering from poisoning and injuries. The Might passive on the other hand sounded like it would just help him lug heavy things around without increasing his punching power that much.

‘Nine more left, but this wasn’t all, I’m sure I saw the prompt for a new skill in there.’

He had passed level forty with his current Runic Engineer class and received a new skill. His fingers were still a bit wobbly but his curiosity was too strong to leave this for later.

‘Salvage ability?’

This reminded him of some RPG games that he played in the past. There was a chance of gaining back the materials used for crafting from used-up items. However, mostly those skills existed to circumvent things like smelters and disassembly. This was a far more real-world than a game, he could usually just smelt down metals and take out the parts that he could use for later, it didn’t require a special skill.

‘I’ll need to test it out later.’

Roland believed that there had to be some use for such a skill but without proper testing, he couldn’t grade its worth. Luckily there was a pile of destroyed turrets and golems that he could try using this skill on. The skeletons mana burned holes into the metal plating or turned them into melted works of art. Normally the only thing he would be able to do with those would be to melt them down, perhaps with this salvage skill, he could regain something more.

‘A title, a skill, and some levels… would be nice if I could regain all of my health points after leveling up like in those games.’

After glancing at what his status screen was showing him it was time to check out the spoils. The first one was the strange monster core or nucleus that some scholarly types like to call them. This thing was similar to a golem core but was a lot more complex as it belonged to an undead monster with actual intelligence.

‘Could the Lich’s mind be in it?’

Roland pondered, the golem cores contained an Ai program that allowed it to function. This he could actually translate into runes and in theory recreate a working core if he wanted. He never attempted such a feat before as there were far too many holes in his knowledge. The only thing he did was slowly implement some runic codes into his own golems through tweaking. Through trial and error, he was able to somewhat develop his own operating system for the spider drones but most of it was still copied from the original golem core.

‘Would I be able to copy it? This thing feels strangely familiar…’

For some reason, this monster's core had a mana signature similar to his own. He could only explain it by the monster studying his mana pattern to an extent that it started changing itself into something else. Something like this would actually be very beneficial to his research as the whole thing would be attuned to him. Powering it would become easier when it was already used to his energy.

Roland stared at the murky green core for a second before getting the bright idea of inserting some of his own mana into it. To his surprise, the almost dark green color brightened up to something that looked like a shiny emerald. A strange invasive energy flowed through his fingers which prompted him to drop the core to the ground with fright. It was as if something tried to consume his mana as if it desired more of it.

‘This thing might be dangerous…’

The image of a golem trying to absorb all of his mana and leaving a shriveled-up corpse popped into his mind. This strange Lich had it out for Roland and perhaps some of those animalistic urges of trying to be one with his mana remained in this monster's core. If he decided to put this thing into a golem it could actually go berserk just like its predecessor did.

Even with that danger in mind, he picked up the damaged core from the ground before Agni could devour it. Perhaps it was too soon to play around with it now but after reaching tier 3 he might be able to figure this thing out. The monster mind contained in this thing was attuned to his mana and would be easy to work with. It would save him years of trying to configure anything coming from a thing like this.

‘No reason not to study it, if I can emulate the mana attunement all of my gear will require less mana to run.’

With that thought in mind, this item made it into his satchel and so did the monster's skeletal remains that Agni was already drooling over. The bones lost a lot of their properties without the monster core powering them up with mana. They were quite special as a base material as they would get stronger with mana infusion. Considering that this whole monster liked his energy it could be used for quite a bit of things.

“Sorry Agni, I’ll be keeping these…”

“Wooo…”

“But you can have the black ones…”

“Woof!”

Agni barked while wiggling his tail at the black bone that was left over from Lich’s leg. He had earned some rewards and this black monster bone still belonged to a tier 3 creature. With the femur in Agni’s muzzle, the two finally decided to return to the destination that they came from.

“Hope they won’t try to take this, by law the spoils belong to the victor, at least when monsters are considered.”

Roland knew that he didn’t have much time before he received visitors. All of the skeletons would stop functioning after their leader was gone. Arthur and the adventurers in the city were probably already on their way here to see what had happened. Perhaps they didn’t believe that he was the one that defeated the monster but instead another tier 3 class holder had appeared to finish this deed.

Those people were all fine and dandy, the adventurers were not what he was worried about. His home had his fair share of attempted break-ins during its conception. The biggest one was during the incident with the nobles when Bernir was left alone to defend it. Since then thieves usually took their distance but sometimes new faces appeared around the city. The rich runesmith’s home did sound appealing and the distance from the city made it an appealing target.

Thus he threaded on forward toward what was left over from his workshop. Seeing his work go up in flames wasn’t something that he wanted to see but relaxing now wasn’t an option. Perhaps he was overthinking it but it was better to be safe now than sorry later. With the potions soaking into his skin, his HP started going up and the exposed bones started being covered up by tissue.

It was an interesting sight to behold but at this time he could only think about how much faster a healing spell would work. Both his hands were further injured during the fight and he was now back to square one when it came to recovery. His right gauntlet needed to be replaced as he had fused a hammer to it as he wasn’t fully able to grip it with those broken fingers.

After pushing through the pain he arrived at the partially destroyed underground workshop. Luckily all the magical items he was working with needed mana infusion to work so a cascade of explosions was not probable. This didn’t mean that he wouldn’t need to give this place a rework. Both his main work area, the entrance, and the training range were destroyed.

‘Well, at least the generator room wasn’t affected and the smelter is still in working order… but I’ll need to make a new forge…’

The destruction was widespread but some of the underground chambers were safe. The room he used for training his runic eye skill for instance was fully operational. He could shove everything that was operational there for now while cleaning up the rest. The ceiling was luckily still holding but after seeing some rubble falling he decided to use some earth magic.

His foot started glowing in a brownish color which quickly spread through the main workshop area. Soon thick earth pillars started rising up from the ground and they connected to the ceiling to keep it from collapsing. With the same method, he reinforced all the potential danger zones, when the cleanup was finished he would remove them.

‘The mana particles in the air have cleared up…’

Thanks to the battle being over he could again spread out his scanners to look for potential enemies. Luck was not on his side as he saw dots representing people approaching him. By the path, they were taking it didn’t seem that they were coming from the city.

“I guess the Thieves Guild is taking me lightly.”

Roland was feeling woozy but he had some time to recover. After gulping down another mana potion he would be able to exert some of his power. His map filled with dots didn’t give him a full assessment of the levels these people had but it gave him a range. The danger reading didn’t go into anything critical, it mostly looked like a small group of tier 2 class holders around level one hundred which at this point he was not afraid to combat.

“Agni, this might be your time to shine.”

“Woof!”

Agni’s snout which had been previously bleeding had been doused with some healing potions as well. The state he was in was a lot better than what his master was in and these enemies that were sneaking outside should not be able to contend with this evolved Dire Ruby Wolf.

“Let’s go greet our visitors Agni, stay in the front and I’ll support you from the back.”

The damaged gauntlet was tossed to the side and was replaced by a lesser variant that he tossed into the failure bin. It was mostly there to protect his right hand from further injuries as he could not really hold anything with it. It was time to greet the visitors that had decided to come here, if they wanted to loot his home after he almost died, then they would pay the price.