The Runesmith

The sounds of vomiting filled a closed-off room. In it, there were many smithing tools along with scribbles of runic patterns on the walls. This was Roland’s workshop that he had hidden away in while going through his tier 2 ascension ritual. After it was over he found himself affected by the strain of going through those tests.

In the regular world, the use of a class-changing crystal was almost instantaneous. It didn’t seem like more than a few seconds had passed. Reality was different though, the moment he was out his brain was jolted with new information.

It was like every stressful emotion from all that fighting and then skill learning was condensed into one moment. This caused Roland not only to chuck up his dinner into the bucket that he had previously gotten but also to pass out.

“Ughh….”

He woke up to a characteristic stench that he recalled from some of the parties he was in his previous life. The bucket he used had spilled and the whole place was a mess. His workshop was lit up thanks to his mana generator but he wasn’t sure for how long he was out. The first thing that had to be done was to get a new change of clothes and then to clean this mess.

Roland decided to move upstairs, for now, he grasped the door and was surprised by how much lighter it felt. It was a reinforced steel door that he made to resist heavy impacts, it was also very heavy so that normal people wouldn’t be able to open it alone. This already signaled him that he had made it through into the second tier.

Before checking his new status a change of clothes was in order but then he was quick to take a peek. To his surprise, there was quite the change in his stats.

The Runesmith Lord class was now at the first level after he went through the trial. He remembered his old stat allocation and noticed that each of his stats went up by five points. This was with the exclusion of luck and charisma as those two acted on different rules.

Another interesting thing was that he was able to have two subclasses active instead of just one. His Blacksmith and Mage class passives were still working and boosting his mana and stamina reserves. Even with this, it didn’t account for the massive increase in his MP,HP, and SP that he was seeing. After going through a few other status screens he figured why this was the case.

First was his new class, it immensely increased all of his stat points like health, mana and stamina. He was also getting something similar to his rune mastery skill that lowered the mana cost for runes and rune related skills as well. So not only would he be able to cast more runic spells but the cost for runesmithing would be lowered.

The other thing was his tier 2 multiplier trait. It was also not a regular trait multiplier as normal classes had it all at a 1,5 times. This meant that he would outperform regular tier 2 class holders even with lower numbers on his side.

The points he got after reaching the first level of his Runesmith Lord class were also quite high. In previous cases something like this wasn’t the case, did this mean that he would be getting that high of a number of stat points at each level?

Roland wasn’t sure about that, from what he knew tier 2 classes did gain more of those points but not by this much. It could have just been some kind of bonus for reaching this tear, only when he reached the second level he would know for sure. There was also a change to most of his regular skills.

Identify L 9 -> Analyze L1Basic Mana Shaping L 9 -> Mana Shaping L1Basic Mana Regulation L 9 ->Mana Regulation L1 Basic Rune Mastery L 9 -> Rune Mastery L1Basic Runecraft L 9 -> Runecraft L 1Basic Runic Blacksmith’s Eyes L 9 - > Runesmith Lord’s Eyes L1…

‘Most of them turned into more advanced skills…’

All of the skills that were at the ninth level had gone through a change. Each and every one of them was now at the first level of a more advanced version. Most of them just lost the ‘basic’ prefix but some turned into other skills. Like his identify skill was now the Analyze skill, his blacksmithing eyes made a change too. After going through that library of books in the trial he knew why.

Roland removed his dirty shirt and started to fill up his tub made from iron. He did finally manage to make himself that hot tub that he dreamed about. The mess downstairs would have to wait, taking a bath was the first thing he needed to do. While at it he grasped one of his old runic wands to test one of his new and improved skills.

His eyes started glowing in a deep purple color as he looked at the runic structures. With a bit of concentration, he was somehow able to zoom in on one of the components. Then he saw it, there was some strange code in there. It reminded him of the programming language from his old college days.

“Heh…”

A smirk appeared on his face as he tossed the piece of metal to the side. In that library, the focal point was this ‘code’. In reality, it was something akin to a magic language that could be changed and turned to fit the user’s preference. During the trial he learned some basics of it, with it he would now be able to change the insides of the runic components.

In the past, he had to be creative with the placement of the ‘hardware’ but now he would be able to change the ‘software’ to produce more unique effects. He might even be able to create more ‘smart’ kind of weapons or more universal ones while being able to reduce the size of the runic components. This might reduce the strain on the metallic components and give him some room to innovate.

Besides the improvement to his 'Runic Blacksmith Eyes', he had gained another useful skill.

This skill might have seemed like it was just regular runecrafting and not much different than regular repairs that he was already able to do. But in reality, it was different, it would allow him to mend used up runes from his gear on the fly and without the use of a hammer.

The mana usage was quite high but with all his passives lowering it and his own large mana pool it would be quite handy. If any of his weapons ran out of runic charges he would be able to repair them in an instant. Thus one of his biggest weak points of running out of charges would be fixed with this one skill.

There was also another skill that he received which was heat resistance. This was a lesser form of the fire resistance skill and allowed him to somewhat cope with high temperatures. From what he knew, it would level up the longer he stayed in areas with high temperature and this skill could transform to the proper fire resistance later on. This would come in handy for the dungeon that was heating up at the lower levels.

It was time to not look at the system screens. He found himself dozing off in the hot tub that was heated by his runic generator. Now with his new skills and increased knowledge, he would have to go over the whole thing again. This was a challenge for another day as he found himself falling asleep in the tub and waking up a few hours later while almost drowning.

After a cleaning drive and sleeping, he was good to go. With this, he was now a proper member of society. In this world, before you reached the second tier you weren’t considered a respected adult. He would also be able to get a silver adventurer grade now, of course after passing a little test and paying a ‘small’ fee.

The guild was laxer on the bronze and steel adventurers but from silver, they got involved more. This was the first larger bump in the road of an adventurer. When he advanced to steel grade he didn’t really need to do much, it went up just by him continuing to kill monsters and doing missions. With the advancement to silver grade, the guild would now get involved.

‘Wonder what kind of mission they will give me…’

Roland was now down in his workshop, he was still getting used to his increased strength and agility. His stats didn’t look like they went up by much but with the two-time multiplier, he was twice as strong and fast. He was thinking about going to the guild, getting a better adventurer grade brought some advantages besides prestige. The biggest one being better prices when selling or buying items from the guild directly.

There was also another thing that he would like to do now. After being done with his advancement he needed fitting weapons and armor to go with it. His armor and weapons were made from good quality steel but that was it. It was time to move on from this and try something from the top shelf, he was going to produce his own deep steel weapon and armor.

He had procured some raw materials for this cause but there wasn’t quite enough. It was time to go back to town, the new adventurer rank could wait. It wouldn’t really lower the prices on the market for crafting materials. It would mostly aid him in selling mana stones and monster parts, or when buying items like health potions for the dungeon expeditions.

Roland grabbed his things and after locking up was on his way towards town while riding his runic bicycle. When he was close enough he just hopped off and placed it back into his spatial backpack. He needed something with an increased width to get the whole thing in. At the gate he saw some familiar faces, the guards knew him as someone that lived here so they didn’t even look at his identification anymore.

A lot of things had changed in this town, for one thing, it was now called a city and the number of people had more than doubled. The houses that were being built and renovated when he arrived the first time were now all finished. The constructions stretched out further now as new people were coming and new buildings to house them were needed.

Roland was rarely seen in this city and now with a lot of people living here, he was just someone that blended into the crowd. There wasn’t anyone that he had made a deeper connection with here. The ones that interacted with him were mostly merchants and vendors. The only thing resembling social interaction that he got here was bartering.

‘Should I check out the usual store or go to the auction house…’

A big chunk of his money came from selling mana stones or rare monster parts but the most he made was from reselling runic items. Those were either all handcrafted by him or just premade items from other craftsmen or ones he found in dungeons. Roland mostly attached a mana stone to go with it as that was an easy way to boost the item's price immensely.

What type of mana stone came with the weapon and piece of equipment was also important. Putting a stone that boosted a person’s intelligence on a heavy hammer that was meant for a warrior wouldn’t go over well.

Roland mostly went with weapons, it was easy to attach one of the mana stones to the hilt. There were also no return policies here, so he wouldn’t need to worry if he did a sloppy job. He was someone that understood how good branding brought the long term profits later on. With that in mind, his wares had a new logo that wouldn't associate him with his old scroll making days. This time around it was a blacksmith's hammer inserted into a sun. Which gave a similar feeling to the old logo but was different enough for others to not connect the two.

The fees and costs for the materials were higher than what they were at Edelgard. He could sell them at a higher price here though. With all the dungeon monsters parts selling well the adventurers had a lot of buying power. This caused everything to somewhat equal itself out and he was able to make a good living.

The brand name he was hoping to embed into the minds of his sellers wasn’t quite there yet. Due to doing a lot of adventurer work along with the creation of his mana generator, there wasn’t enough time to build other things. Even the armor that he was using for his own protection was just a high grade steel product that he bought instead of making it.

“Good day, did you bring some new enchanted items today?”

An older man called out to him, he was now at the auction house. He had been selling things on it since it opened on a semi-regular basis. Thanks to the items always having high or highest grade runes, they sold at a high price and the auction house could make quite the profit.

“Yes, today the master enchanted a couple of things…”

He took out a couple of daggers and steel swords from his spatial bag. He gave it to this man’s assistant that started placing them in an orderly fashion on the table. This old man was this auction house's appraiser, they worked similar to the workers in Edalguard. He already made a name for himself so he didn’t have to wait in line.

Even without him having to hide it, they took him for an apprentice blacksmith. No one would believe that a sixteen-year-old like him was a tier 2 Runesmith. This worked in his favor for multiple reasons and it also let him explain all the runic traps placed around his house to the masses.

“Here you go, the earnings for this month.”

Roland nodded as he was handed a hefty sack of coins. He didn’t need to look inside of it, with his mathematical skills he was able to tell how much gold and silver there was in there. It was quite the hefty sum but he was going to go buy some raw deep steel so this would probably not be enough to cover it all.

“Thank you, I’ll see you next time. Anything, in particular, I should tell my master?”

Sometimes the auction house people would give him tips on what was selling well. Daggers and swords were one of the weapons that sold the most around here. Everyone liked to be either a rogue-like agility based class or a sword-wielding warrior.

“Nothing in particular but deep iron or mithril weapons are selling well since some gold adventurers came to town.”

“We should be having some skill books related to runes, maybe the good master would be interested in that?”

He perked up at the mention of runic books. He still needed to gain some insider knowledge for smelting the magical metals that had mana stones as ingredients. It looked nice to have armor laced with shiny gems but if someone bashed them in then they would lose their effect.

There was a certain time where he tried to smelt some mana stones with small amounts of deep iron but the product didn’t pan out. He would probably need a corresponding skill or some kind of golden ratio to get this working.

After a little chat about the city market he left. The auction employee always pestered him about making better items made from rarer quality materials. Now after classing up to a tier 2 Runesmith Lord he might actually be able to create such things.

The next stop would be another large store. This one was created for all the craftsmen in the city and held all of the resources that one might want. There were even shipments of mithril that could be gotten at a really high price that was still a bit above his pay grade.

Roland was now standing outside this building, in his head he was doing some math. He needed to consider how much money it would be necessary to spend. Even if he went over his budget a bit he could probably salvage the excess material in one way or another.

While walking past the door he found himself not paying attention. Due to this, he didn’t notice a person walking out, the two bumped into each other. With these increased stats he didn’t feel much of an impact but that wasn’t the case for the person he walked into as he tumbled backward after giving out a rather silly yelp.

“Oh, sorry about that…”

He snapped out of it and looked down. He saw a youth that was about his age, maybe slightly older but it was hard to tell due to his unique facial features. From the first look the young man looked to be similar to a dwarf but after looking at his body you’d think otherwise. He was obviously larger and also slimmer than a dwarf which made him look like a mix between two races.

The other characteristic thing that he noticed was the comedically large backpack that he was wearing. It looked to be one of those enchanted ones where you could fit in many items in but there were even some tools hanging out from the many side pockets to boot.

“I’m sorry…”

The young man started apologizing while squirming on the ground. It looked like he had trouble standing up due to the weight of the backpack. Roland stood there without doing much for a moment before leaning down and grasping the young man by the shoulders and lifting him up. With his now increased strength, this was quite easy, it felt like he was lifting up a child even though his target was close to 170 cm of height.

After more apologizing, he was gone and out of the store. Roland just scratched his head and moved inside, it was time to spend quite a big sum of money on his new gear.