The Runesmith

“Finally…”

Roland gave out a sigh of relief while also putting down the pencil in his hand. When looking around his office area he could see parchments and papers everywhere. He had spent the last two weeks scribbling down tier 3 schematics without really knowing what he was doing. Greater runes that were produced by tier 3 runesmiths were still above him, the only thing he was capable of was correcting already existing patterns.

A problem arose after just a few days as he had gone through the entirety of the material that he was given by the professor. To alleviate this problem he started assembling more golems while also trying to construct brand new tier 3 schematics without really working out the language yet. It felt like he was back to ten years ago when he was stuck in a small room discovering tier 1 runes.

Back then he also needed to section off the runic components into larger parts and assemble them together to get something that worked. Luckily he had already worked on such designs before so even the faulty schematics added some ammunition to his research. Finally, his relentlessness paid off and the level-up message appeared before him, he was now level hundred seventy-five.

While glancing over the new numbers he recalled getting a new skill. His eyes were already almost ready to close as all adrenalin was draining from his system. At this point in time, he hadn’t slept in five days and the backlash from drinking potions was starting to affect his body. His mind was willing but his body wasn’t as his vision became blurry and the only thing that he was capable of doing was to drag his tired body to his bed to finally pass out in his clothes.

“Huh? I guess I must have passed out… what time is it?”

When he achieved his level up it was about five in the morning and the sun was still down. Now the moon was high up which was an indication that it was close to midnight. When he put things together, he must have been out for close to twenty hours. When looking at this world’s system windows it was always strange for him that it didn’t have a clock anywhere. It seemed it wouldn't be hard to have a tab somewhere to show him the month and hour.

This he could only attribute to time being a more arbitrary number as well as the months having different names in different cultures. Even here there was no month of January or December and the year was divided into thirteen months instead of twelve like in his old world. However, this was no time to think about the time he needed to get his act together.

“What’s this?”

As he was about to look over the new skill he received he spotted a piece of paper on the side. The handwriting was quite nice and telling of the person who left this small letter behind.

‘I left some food behind in the ice box.’

A smile crept onto his face as his stomach started rumbling. Quickly he decided to go to the kitchen while almost tripping over Agni that had decided to sleep beside his bed. After letting him out of the house he was back at the kitchen table and eating a prepared meal. The moment of rest and silence was quite refreshing and also gave him time to finally go over his new skill.

‘Rapid Machine Reassembly? It’s probably different than the rune-mending skill.’

The description was short but it gave him an idea about what he was working with. It wouldn’t be hard to test it out, thus with a piece of bread in his mouth he headed down into his workshop that he was intending to go to anyway. There he picked up a hammer along with a golem that he had assembled during the level rush.

Previously he would not dare to damage pricy equipment like this but now he had gotten the hang of assembling these. His mana reserves and skills allowed him to breeze through the runecrafting process as well. With that in mind the large hammer connected with the metallic body and produced a nasty dent. The blows started raining down on his creation until at least a few legs were broken. Some were hanging off on a piece of metal while others were cleanly broken off at the joints.

“This should do it.”

Before him was a destroyed golem that would normally sell for a large number of golden coins. Now it was nothing more than a mangled mess of parts and even the runic traces to its runic brain had been cut off. It was the perfect test for this new skill that would probably come in handy if it did what he thought it was doing.

“Oh… it's taking quite a bit, but this isn’t bad.”

Roland had a lot of mending skills already but they were all focused on repairing runes that had been overloaded or deteriorated. This skill on the other hand seemed to work on a wider scale as it was able to restore this destroyed golem. What he only needed to do was activate the skill and point at the golem with his hand. A circle appeared around the object in question before it started to be mended.

The process was rather quick, he could see in real time as the dents he just created to be leveled out. The broken joints were assembling themselves back into place and even the legs that were broken were on the move. It slowly slid back into the socket it was pulled out from and by magical means, it seemed as if time was reversed.

‘Is it actually rewinding the damage caused to the material or does it work in some other way?’

At first, it did look like time was winding back but when thinking about the spots he first destroyed the sequence wasn’t in order. One thing was clear, this skill was quite the mana hog as after a good night's rest he was back to having a hundred percent of his energy. Now it had almost been halved and went below it when finally the drone had been restored.

“Hm…? That was fast, maybe because it's a complicated piece of equipment?”

Usually, skills took a bit of time to level up but this one went up after the first attempt. There were always some hidden bonuses to leveling and this was probably the case here as well. The Runic Engineer class was still a tier 2 class that started out at level fifty. Though in this case, it was impossible to get this one without previously gaining the runesmith class.

Nevertheless, a person at level fifty would not have enough mana to actually use this skill on something like this spider golem. Perhaps the world’s system took this into account and rewarded him with a lot of experience for this fact. This actually informed him that it wouldn’t take that long to level up this skill.

Having the skill level up by only this one attempt indicated the difficulty for the future, the only real roadblock would be the staggering mana requirement. This could be alleviated by mana potions but as it stood now he didn’t really want to get near those anymore. After his recent leveling drive, he had been drinking more potions than he did water. If he didn’t get the recent rest he would probably not have enough energy to activate this skill at its full capacity.

‘I can decide if it's worth leveling up this skill after I see the classes’

The most important fact was that his Runic Eye of Truth skill had reached level nine. It was probably the most important skill that he had and perhaps would help him unlock the tier 3 version of his Runesmith Lord class. This was what he was going for, a prestigious version of this class. The stat multiplier it gave him put him in a league above regular people and if he could achieve the same for tier 3 then he would be set for life.

‘The regular multiplier is three, perhaps I could get a four-time multiplier this time around…’

This was his main wish but he wouldn’t really know if it was possible until he received his new class. The world only gave him hints in the class names or in the tiny sprites on the PC screen he could see. This would be a decision that he couldn’t go back on. A tier 3 class went up to one hundred levels and couldn’t be changed until a person gained fifty levels in it.

Leveling past this point would become even harder than before and would either require risking his life or spending time working on runic equipment for more than ten hours each day. A blunder here would set him back for years and would severely impact his future prospect. However he still had some time to think things over, there was no rush when it came to money but for some reason, he had a bad premonition.

Things were progressing fast and with the arrival of various other players in the city his standing was shaky. While Arthur Valerian’s name offered him a semblance of protection it wouldn’t protect him from his siblings. Now that the word of the B rank dungeon was out, they would certainly start making moves. He was one of his people and would be an easy target to send a message.

‘That one brother is the closest so he might try something first…’

Roland had done his homework on the other brothers before and was sure that they would at least try to make Arthur part of their retainers. He didn’t actually care which brother became the next Duke nor was he interested in gaining more prestige or money. If there was a peaceful resolution to their fight then he would urge Arthur to take it. He could only hope that the young man would know his place and made a deal instead of trying to fight.

‘Well… I’ll worry about that when the time arrives, I can only get this out of the way and prepare as much as I can.’

Before anything happened spies and scouts would probably be sent to prod for all possibilities. Then some time would be wasted trying to make some kind of deal. Perhaps Arthur already had the plan to be taken under the wing of one of his brothers and this was just something to make himself worthy of their help.

‘They still are brothers, maybe their relations aren’t all that bad.’

The face of his own ‘older’ brother popped into his head. While their relationship when they were younger was bumpy they had managed to squash it. Now he could even contact his brother from time to time and have him fill him in on his father’s whereabouts. Due to some tensions at the borders, he was usually forced to be stationed there, and this was perhaps part of the reason that he wasn’t found yet. Though at this point Roland was convinced that he was nothing more than an afterthought in his family's mind.

“Hm, it functions but some of the parts weren’t fully restored.”

The spider drone was ordered to perform a few movements. It could move and operate at about eighty percent capacity. The dents that looked to be smoothed out weren’t quite as smooth as previously. There were some cracks here and there which indicated that the skill needed more levels. After performing a few more tests he came to another conclusion, he could not activate this skill on multiple targets at once.

‘This would be a lot more useful if it had a wider range but it did increase after the level up.’

In his mind, he could see this skill being quite handy in a pinch. The scenario he was thinking about involved multiple battle golems. When one went down he could just restore them without even having to be involved in the battle. With this skill involved, he could see a change to his battle repertoire that could change him into a one-man army. That is if he could ever get the mana usage down. As it stood now, he would pass out after restoring two tier 2 spider drones.

“I guess this is it.”

Finally, after the testing of the new skill was done he decided to give the ascension ritual a go. The previous ones he had stored for this occasion had been destroyed during the Lich incident so he had to go get some new ones from the church. Luckily they had a few lying around that he could procure but he also needed to pay a little extra.

With the crystal in his hand, he decided to sit down near his workbench. There was no need to go up into his office or check up on Agni. Even when he spent months in the previous trial only a few seconds passed in the real world. Thus finally after all these years, the journey he set on was coming to an end. He had left on a mission to join the upper echelons of power and with this step, he would finally have his foot past the door.

There he was again, in his old apartment. At the time he was looking in the mirror that was in his old toilet. Even some of the dust was there that he was either too tired or too lazy to clean up in his previous life. After looking at his face he was having a hard time remembering the one that he used to wear. While his intelligence rating should have given him impeccable memory, for some reason he was slowly forgetting his previous life and the people he left behind.

“It would be funny if this is all some kind of dream and I’ll just eventually wake up from a coma after being hit by that truck… but anyway…”

He slapped his face with both his hands and the pain was very real. This strange place lowered his stats as he felt more like a regular human here than a superhuman runesmith in the real world. Soon enough he was sitting at the screen and going over the sprites and possible classes. To no surprise of his, there were actually more options than the last time he came here. Twenty-five levels ago when he hit level hundred fifty he glanced over all the options and now there was a lot more to go through.

“Let’s see… Master Runic Engineer, that one is new… and what is this one, Runic Machinist?”

A strange class appeared on his screen which was closely related to the Master Runic Engineer. While the Engineer one was easy to decipher, this one was a bit more unique. He noticed that the 2D sprite was holding something that looked like a handgun in one hand while a wrench in the other. Perhaps blasting all those tier 3 monsters with ranged weaponry was some kind of way of unlocking this class as he had never heard of it before.

“Interesting…”

Judging by the name he expected it to be something that helped construct machineries like golems or flying ships. On the other hand, the gun on the sprite indicated that it would get some perks with ranged weaponry. Perhaps it would give his cannons, even the one he mounted on his armor’s shoulder, more perks. It could increase their damage and perhaps even allow him to auto-aim with them through the use of skills. There existed ones that archers used that allowed their projectiles to always hit a target.

“Where is the runesmith tree, it should be somewhere there.”

While the class was intriguing it wasn’t really something that he was interested in at the moment. Maybe it would be a good secondary choice in the future if he decided to focus on the power of cannon fire. Next in line were the runesmith variants, Advanced Runesmith, followed by Master Runesmith, and then something that he was looking for.

“Master Runesmith High-Lord huh?”

There it was, an advanced version of the Runesmith Lord class, a High-Lord variant. It was probably what he was looking for and almost had him clicking the sprite instantly. However, he managed to stop himself as there was something else there. A class on the same side of the tree but one that was slightly ahead of the High-Lord one.

“Huh, what is this one… Runesmith Overlord?”