The Runesmith

Bernir dropped down onto his butt after seeing the monster finally go down. The bloody battle was finally over and the monster had self detonated after getting its core cracked by the man wearing the crimson armor.

He thought back to how this day started. Bernir had just recently joined up with a fresh adventurer party. Not as a part of it, more as a freelancer that was doing odd jobs for them for money. There was a reason why he was here all alone and without his family.

This young man was close to 170 cm in height with red hair. He had a scruffy beard that was in the same color along with large brown eyes. His stature was a bit wide and his hands had some meat on them. He was wearing a cheap set of leather armor but most of it was just dark cloth.

Being a half-dwarf half human made his upbringing quite hard. The particular village that he grew up in didn’t take too kindly to his father marrying a human woman. Then calamity struck, the village was attacked by monsters, and he and many others were left with no parents.

The people that were against him living as a half breed there took this chance to slowly shun him. In time it was too much and he decided to try hitting it off on his own. The news of the new dungeon city getting built caused him to dream of a new beginning. There was no work in the village he was in, none of the dwarven blacksmiths or artisans were willing to hire him, so it was time to leave.

It took some time to get here, the journey wasn’t easy as he didn’t have much money. He had to perform tasks for the caravan that he joined and sometimes sleep outside with nothing but the night sky above him. After about a month the new city was on the horizon and the dream of an easy life was close to being grasped.

At least that was his initial thought but reality tended to be different than a person imagined. He wasn’t greeted with warmth but with spite as well. The smithies that he applied for didn’t take him very seriously. At most, they would let him carry the materials around but never let him continue his craft of blacksmithing. He was left with only a promise that if he did his time they might allow him to work on some horseshoes in the future.

Thus his money problems started, he was forced to perform odd jobs again. He wasn’t strong in any meaning of the term so the only thing worth the time was helping the adventurers carry their items.

This line of work wasn’t what he had in mind when he came here and it barely paid the bills. He was left with a minuscule amount of what the adventurer’s sold at the guild. His tasks were to pick apart the monster corpses and carry all the equipment that the adventurers couldn’t be bothered with.

Bernir had seen Roland wandering town from time to time. He always had peculiar unmatching armor on which made him stand out. This half-dwarf was someone that was aching to work with his hammer. The only thing he could do was watching other craftsmen create.

Then came this fateful day, the armor that Roland was wearing today was different than usual. The craftsmanship had improved and the application of runes made Bernir’s mouth water as he bumped into him when they were leaving for the dungeon.

The party he was a part of consisted mostly of steel ranked adventurers with the leader being a fresh silver rank. There were six of them and he was the seventh member. Bernir wasn’t really considered as part of the group, he was always getting ordered around left and right. Left with only scraps at the end of the day after having his hands bloody.

Besides the leader, all the others were in their high 40s in levels. After the leader finally advanced it was decided to wander below the 10th level. Bernir felt that it was too soon with only one silver rank adventurer around but he didn’t have a say in this. They told him to shut up and just hide in the back as always.

From his perspective things were actually looking good, the team was beating all the monsters quite easily. Even when they got to the 10th level the guards in front of the boss monster’s chamber weren’t all that tough to beat.

So finally the party ventured forth to battle the maze boss. They weren’t even planning to do this, to begin with. The original plan was to go fight some tier 2 monsters at the starting point a bit past the boss monster chamber. Instead, they found the passage closed and with a fresh tier 2 monster waiting for them on the inside.

They all knew that this was risky but also that it could be very lucrative. Everyone knew that after defeating this monster there would be some kind of prize waiting at the end. This 10th level monster was hard to fight as a lot of adventurers were willing to set up camp before the entrance and farm for items.

For some reason, it was open this day. Greed got the better of Bernir’s party and the rest was history. Roland arrived not long after to save his life. While his party members were trying to fight the golem he was shivering in the back while trying to distribute potions.

The monster was slow but its stamina was unending. One hit was enough to devastate anyone from this party. The party of adventurers gave it all but after their shield warrior was pounded to meat paste it was over. The rest started falling like flies going down mostly in one hit. This boss clearly out leveled their leader which was that shield warrior that fell first.

Bernir’s chest was still pounding even though it was over. The rocky bridges that connected this room to the exit were now slowly rising back up. He had looked around if anyone survived even before the explosion but everyone was dead.

He was the only survivor and was lucky enough to have gotten away with it with only some minor bruising. At this moment he was looking at the man dressed in crimson armor that had saved him. This warrior was walking over to the spot that the Ruby Golem detonated, there wasn’t really anything left besides some broken off gems.

“I might have to go back to the guild and report this…”

Bernir heard the man mumble to himself while kicking around the golem parts. Soon he turned around to face him which caused the half-dwarf to stand at attention. He didn’t think that the man was hostile after he had already saved him but there was always a small possibility that he could end up dead.

It was possible for this armored man to see him as an eyesore. Some people would get rid of all witnesses and then rob the adventurer corpses of all their belongings. Though in this situation there wasn’t much left of them.

The large detonation pushed almost everything into the lava below the boss chamber’s platform. The only thing that was worth something was Bernir’s backpack that he still had with him. It was a spatial item that was worth a lot but it wasn’t his. It was an item that was given to him by the adventurer party but they were all gone now, so it would belong to him as the only one that survived. That is if this armored warrior didn’t see a problem with that.

“Hey, you.”

“Y-yes?”

He snapped back to reality after the man in the red armor called out to him. After poking around through the monster's remains and gathering some of the materials he finally focused his attention on Bernir.

“Can you walk?”

“Ah, y-yes.”

Bernir quickly jumped up to his feet to show off that he was fine.

“Good, we’ll have to make a report to the guild so you’ll have to come along with me. The golem’s core wasn’t totally destroyed, it should be enough as proof…”

The other person in the armor started talking. It looked like he didn’t have any ulterior motives and wanted him to report to the guild about this situation. Bernir let out a sigh of relief as it looked like he would be getting out of this in the end.

“Ah… also sorry for your loss.”

The man was about to turn around but then slowly faced him again. Bernir just nodded while scratching his head.

“T-thank you, we weren’t really that close though…”

He replied while the man turned around to look at the monster's remains, he picked up some of the crumbled rubies and started looking over them. Before he pocketed them, Bernir opened up his mouth.

“You shouldn’t take that, without the golem’s core those gems will turn into regular rocks soon.”

He was in this business for some time now and had done some research. He knew that golem remains were slightly different, they might have looked like resources ready for plucking but that wasn’t entirely true.

“It will?”

“Y-yes, golems with a large core like that need mana for some of their body parts to function. If it was a regular iron golem then the ores it was made from could be reused...”

“What about these volcanic rocks then?”

“T-they could be refined into special fire resistant metal, not as good as deep iron but better than regular iron.”

The man in the crimson armor looked at the ruby that he was holding to and tossed it to the side. He then picked up one of the larger rocks that was previously a part of the golem and started to examine it. After a moment it looked like he came to some conclusion as he started pushing the rock into one of his spatial bags. Bernir looked at this and could see that the bag that he had was a bit small.

“I-i could help you with that…”

His gratitude to the man that saved him was big, he wasn’t really very invested in his old adventurer party. They never treated him like one of their own so finding a new job would be paramount. He was now looking at a powerful adventurer that was able to defeat a golem all alone. Maybe if he played his cards right he could come up big after this loss.

The man in the red armor turned around to look at Bernir again. He started looking through the entire room. There were pieces of this golem everywhere. Even though a lot of it was tossed in the lava, some raw materials still remained.

“If you want, go ahead.”

Bernir smiled before moving towards the monster's remains. He knew that maybe if he did a good job he could be hired by someone like this. This man was clearly someone that didn’t speak often but he was already treating him better than his old co-workers.

Those guys would shout at him constantly and even sometimes force him to be monster bait. Though he wasn’t so sure about this man but it didn’t seem that he had an ulterior motive.

“Thank you, sir! I’ll be sure to do a good job”

The half-dwarf replied while moving his butt in gear. In his mind, it could be possible to land himself in a better position than when he entered this dungeon. The man before him looked to be a silver rank adventurer, maybe even a gold one. If he could become his helper then he might actually start earning some real money.

“Sir?... You don’t need to call me that…”

“T-then how should I refer to you, sir?”

“Just call me Wayland…”

Bernir tried to recall where he heard that name and connected it to some rumors in town. There was supposedly some eccentric living out of the city in a farmhouse. This someone apparently didn’t really like to interact with other people.

“Will do Mr. Wayland, you can call me Bernir!”

There were even rumors that people went missing around his house from time to time. Though he didn’t really believe those as he was mostly interested in the fact that this Wayland person was supposed to be some kind of smith. This only caused him to go into high gear as he was very much interested in getting to work at a proper forge.

While Bernir was thinking about what the future had in store for him Roland was walking through the cleared-out boss chamber. The bridges that were slowly rising were almost up so he would be able to leave in a moment. There was one last thing for him to do here.

He knew that after this boss fight there should have been some kind of reward waiting for him. From what he had heard there should be a chest with an item in it. How rare and valuable the treasure would be depended on how strong the boss was.

The whole place rumbled as the bridges were finally connecting to the platform. He could even see magma dripping down from them. It would probably be better to wait a few minutes before going through them. Luckily he was smart enough to get boots that were made from fire resistant leather as well.

Then it finally happened, a small compartment opened up right in the middle of this battle stage. It looked very game-like as the item that was there was a bronze chest. There only needed to be some catchy tune and it would look like something straight out of a game.

‘The golem was a rare monster variant, the rewards should reflect this.’

Roland walked over to the middle of this chamber and waited for the chest to show up. Before opening it up he examined everything around it with the help of his skills. Analyzing and scanning it with his Runic eyes didn’t show him much.

Bronze Chest [ Intermediate ]

There were no enchantments that he could see and he couldn’t really feel any mana fluctuations either. Roland wasn’t sure about just opening it as there could be traps. There was also the possibility of this being a mimic, which was a monster that took on the form of chests. The probability was low but being the cautious type he gave it a few pokes with his sword.

“Um… want me to open it?”

Bernir called out to him from the side. Roland could see the young man’s surprised expression as if he was doing something silly. It looked like the half-dwarf didn’t see any danger in opening this chest. There was also no lock on it, a person just needed to lift it up to see the prize inside.

“It’s fine… I’ll do it myself…”

He replied while still being a bit apprehensive. He used the tip of his sword to wedge it inside before flipping the chest open. Even though it looked like it would be fine he still protected himself with his shield from any possible explosions or poisonous arrows shooting out of there.

“Huh?”

The chest was opened and there was no trap inside. There was also no weapon or armor piece in there either.

“Is that…”

Roland reached into the bronze chest and pulled out the item that was inside. Bernir that was picking up the remains from the Ruby Golem looked in with interest as well. He also was wondering what the prize for a strong boss monster like this would be.

“Is that a monster egg?”

Bernir called out from the side, Roland was holding a large egg. It was far larger than a regular chicken egg, close to what an ostrich egg would be. It was a darker shade of red with some black stripes that weren’t uniform in length or width.

Monster Egg [ ??? ]

Roland’s Analyzing skill wasn’t high enough to give him any specifics on this thing. It was clearly an egg from some kind of monster. If it was rare and would fetch him a good price on the market was unknown. He knew that there were Tamer and Summoner classes that could do things with eggs like this but he wasn’t sure if he would have a use for it.

He looked to Bernir with the egg in hand. He knew that there was a living creature in this item so placing it in a spatial bag wouldn’t really work. The half-dwarf picked up on his intention and was quick to walk over.

“Here, hold on to it for now.”The bridges that were raised were now cool enough to go through and the large doors that were previously locked were now opening. It was time to report to the guild, he could resume his silver adventurer quest later. The man that he saved was now his responsibility and he would see to it that he returned safely above ground.