The Runesmith

“What’s going on here?”

“Sir. Robert, please behave yourself, we didn’t come here to cause a ruckus!”

Silvio arrived at the scene to pull Armand away from the confrontation. Lobelia needed to have Roland point out that her bodyguard was close to fighting one of his party members before she reacted.

It was a bit strange to see two people that he disliked almost get into a fight while he had to break it up. If the situation was somewhat different he would just grab a bag of popcorn and let the two have at it. His money would be on Armand though, his level was higher and he also had more experience. He didn’t see Robert being able to tank the heavy fisting.

Regretfully they could not offend the nobles. They were outnumbered almost one to four and the noble's side also had a tier 3 High Knight with them. Armand would be in a heap of trouble and they as well by association.

“If Lady Lucille wishes it…”

Robert frowned a bit more than usual but he moved his hand away from the sword hilt the moment the blue-haired girl entered the frame. It was clear to Roland that there was something between these two young adults. The way his older brother looked at the girl was a dead giveaway. After observing Lucille’s body language he was also sure that she appreciated Robert’s company.

“I’ll have to apologize for one of my party members, how can we help?”

Silvio moved in front of Armand who spit down on the ground while moving away. Korgak was observing the whole scene from the side but he looked saddened by the fact that a fight didn’t break out. With nothing to do, he was also itching to do battle.

“Ah excuse me, I was a bit rude. Let me introduce myself first, I am Lady Lucille De Vere.”

The girl curtsied before Silvio who just looked baffled by the gesture. He lowered his head a bit and nodded while not being sure how to react to a noble lady.

“Ah, I’m Silvio… just Silvio…”

In this kingdom, something like a family name was mostly given to people of noble descent or to merchants that liked to put their businesses under their family name. Commoners on the other hand would only be given a name. If they had enough money or achieved greatness they would be allowed to pick a name for themselves or have someone in a high position gift them one.

“This is Sir Robert Arden.”

She pointed to her bodyguard that looked quite grumpy. His eyes met with Silvio's and he found himself twitching slightly. Roland noticed it while observing from the side. It was clear to him that his brother realized that this adventurer was a tier 3 class holder.

“Sir Robert? Good day to you.”

“Yes… likewise.”

“Then how can we help you? The contract stated that we shouldn’t get involved much after we descend to this area of the dungeon.”

“Ah yes, let me explain.”

Lucille gave a recount of what happened in their encampment and how one of the runic tents was damaged during a monster attack.

“Apparently the gentleman there is a Runesmith, we’d like to borrow his services.”

Soon everyone turned over to Roland who heard the whole conversation. The party here had seen the monster attack from afar but it wasn’t up to them to react to small pests like that.

“Want to borrow Wayland? I don’t see a problem with that, just return him in one piece after you are done.”

Silvio laughed and soon removed him from the conversation. His main purpose here was to warn people about monsters above a certain level. Unless one at the tier 3 level appeared or a swarm of tier 2 monsters attacked, he and the party wouldn’t have much to do.

Roland wanted to give his party leader a smack to the face as he wasn’t even given an option to refuse. Finally, the others started removing themselves from this spot and Roland was left alone with the strange girl and his older brother. He now stood before the two while silence fell upon them, he was the one to break it as he introduced himself.

“It’s Wayland.”

“Ah, a pleasure Sir Wayland.”

“I’m not a knight, just call me Wayland.”

He replied in a somewhat monotone voice. It didn’t seem that his brother had realized that he was his younger brother. From what he could tell he looked somewhat annoyed, probably from the way Roland was talking.

Due to being a person from the modern world he wasn’t that used to showing proper decorum. Then he had spent quite a bit at a noble's house but no one really cared to give him any ethics classes. Things like that would be brought up at the mage or knight academy that he would have been forced to attend if he didn’t run away.

“Ah yes, so you want me to repair some of the tents?”

“Yes, do you think you could take a look?”

“Yes, sure.”

Roland nodded as he knew that refusing now would not be something he could do. Even though he didn’t want to involve himself with the nobles nor with his brother, he had to. He was obligated due to the contract that he had signed.

‘Let me get this over with… why is that girl looking at me like that...’

“Ah… should we go?”

After his reply, there was a moment of silence. He noticed that this blue-haired girl stopped and just continued looking at him. Soon he realized that she wasn’t really looking at him but at his runic armor instead. She did say something about runes and was quite focused on his hammer before the two idiots started bickering.

“Yes, of course, excuse me it’s just your armor… it's so fascinating… did you really make it yourself?”

“Mhm.”

After another awkward moment, they finally moved towards the knight camp. The girl took up space to the right of Roland while Robert was to his left. He could see that his brother wasn’t amused and he was even holding his hand on his sword. Trust was certainly something that he didn’t have here, one wrong word or move and he might have to defend himself.

“And that hammer of yours… I’m sure that it was one of these runes… wait a moment Sir Wayland.”

Lucille stopped for a moment while putting her hand into a pouch on the side of her robe. After some digging, she pulled out a thick book that had some runic symbols on it. The girl started flipping pages through it and finally opened up on a section that had one of the runes that he placed on his hammer.

“Here it's the common mana proficiency rune.”

Roland stopped in his tracks and looked at the content of this book. In it was indeed the rune that he used or at least a variation of it. He was well informed in many runes and with a glance, he could see some flaws in the runic structure. Something like this didn’t even require his debugging skill as he had gone through so many runic structures that picking out flaws had become easy.

This wasn’t the interesting part about this diagram, that was the book in question. It looked quite thick and even had a small magical academy crest at the side.

“Yes that’s a similar rune… but it has some flaws.”

He replied while focusing on the parchment. Due to having had to mostly teach himself about runes he was astonished to finally see a proper book about runes. It had descriptions of common runes. The most he could hope of buying himself would be a book with lesser runes. The ones at the higher grades were hidden away by dwarven craftsmen that only allowed people from their circle to go through them.

“Flaws? It’s an intermediate rune model, you can tell just by looking? How magnificent!”

The girl’s eyes went wider while looking between the rune on the book’s page and the armored man before her. Roland on the other hand felt goosebumps all over his neck. He could tell that his dear brother was glaring at him.

“Which parts have flaws if I may ask, Sir Wayland?”

It seemed that Lucille was keeping up with the Sir part even though she knew that he was a common adventurer. The mage types did sometimes look at a person that was more knowledgeable than them as someone above them. This girl seemed to be interested in runes and this was something that he knew well.

“Ah sure, may I?”

Roland looked to Robert to measure his reaction but his dear brother continued to glare. It looked like he wanted him to do what this lady asked him. Thus he asked to be handed this book of runes, doing it also out of curiosity.

“Here you go, Sir Wayland.”

He thought that the girl would not relinquish such a costly book that would go for many gold coins on the auction easily. However, she instantly put it into his hand when he asked her about it.

“Here, this runic pathway is out of alignment and this strengthening component needs to be moved a millimeter to the left…”

He mentioned some easy flaws that he had spotted which only made the girl’s eyes sparkle even more.

“Fascinating, wait a moment Sir Wayland!”

The girl quickly put her hand into her spatial bag and pulled out another book. She quickly flipped through the pages.

“Indeed! This would remove the small mana blockage and increase the spell output by about 6%! And you could tell just by a glance!”

The girl started going berserk in front of him while showing him another diagram, this time of the same rune but of a higher grading. The diagram also had some explanations to the side it seemed that it was clarifying the flaws it had.

“Ah sure… I am a Runesmith…”

Roland wasn’t really sure why this young woman was acting this way. These were still only common grade runes, all Runesmiths should be able to work on them.

“Not just any Runesmith could do something like this, Sir Wayland must be a master at his craft!”

“Uhh… thank you?”

It was unclear to him how he compared to the other Runesmith but by this girl's reaction, it seemed that he did something rare. Maybe it was a lot harder to spot mistakes in the schematics as he did for the common Runesmith?

“Is that the tent…”

To get the girl’s attention somewhere else he pointed to a damaged tent that had a hole in the salamander leather. It looked like the monster somehow charged into it before being killed by the knights. There was still some fresh blood on it to prove his point.

The other knights were also looking at him now. The cooling inside of his armor had to go into overdrive to keep him from sweating. He had hoped to never go into this camp filled with nobles. Saying the least while lowering his intonation was the most he could do.

“Ah, the tent? Can you look at this rune before that…”

“Lady Lucille, I think we should let the adventurer do his job…”

Robert finally spoke up after remaining silent for the past few minutes. It didn’t seem that Roland’s cover had been broken.

“Ah… yes you are right Sir Robert…”

“Please proceed.”

Robert moved to the side and Roland moved over to the damaged tents. These models were exactly the same premade ones that he saw the schematics for. The two ones that were at his party’s camp had been slightly improved upon. He had risen the rune quality to the highest

‘Let me fix this fast and get out of here… Do I get paid extra for this?’

Roland thought to himself while moving over to the damaged tent. After investigating he noticed that some of the scaffolding was bent and out of shape. The leather wasn’t that ripped which was good as it needed to keep the heat at bay.

It didn’t seem like the other people would be helping him much so he needed to pull the leather to the side. It was bloodied a bit but nothing that wouldn’t come out if it was washed thoroughly.

The side of this tent was hit by the monster, there was a clear dent in it along with some scratches in a few other places. This tent was made from a lesser alloy that included deep steel-like properties.

It was similar to aluminum and made it much lighter but also less resistant than deep steel. It was a softer alloy that was good at holding runic spells, which it was made for. Roland couldn’t see any embedded mana stones anywhere which meant that it was made with the manufacturing technique that he was working towards.

‘Good, at least I won’t need to play with mana stones.’

First came the bending of everything into shape, even though this was a softer alloy Roland did activate his runes to give him more strength. With a better grip and added stats, he started bending the pipes back into shape.

His evolved Runesmith Lord’s eyes allowed him to spot all the broken runic structures without having to go through them one by one. This was one of the features of this skill besides looking into the deeper sections of the runes to reveal their code.

The rest of it was similar to the previous tent that he worked on. With the help of the runic wands, he heated up the broken parts till they were nice and red. He then started tapping them with his hammer while getting the runic structures into the correct shape.

Luckily for him, there weren’t that many broken parts and none of the rods snapped. If that was the case he would need to weld them into place. The problem with welding was that he didn’t have the same alloy to melt onto the damaged parts. Thus he would need to put ethereal pathways into the components instead.

After about thirty minutes of working, he gave the tent a go with his own mana. The scaffolding started glowing blue and the small podest on the ground started releasing cold air.

It was a success, the only thing that remained was to connect this to a mana fluid container that also had the proper runes on it. This container was placed in the middle of the tent on a small plate in the middle. This plate was connected to the rest of the tent and used the container with the mana fluid as fuel.

“There, it's fixed. You just need to place the leather over the tent…”

When he turned around he saw a rather excited blue-haired woman. Robert was next to her, sweating a bit. He thought that the two would just go away and resume whatever they were doing but instead, they stayed to watch him work.

“Sir. Wayland, you must teach me about the runes! That red glow… is that some sort of strengthening spell? Does that armor have a cooling effect? You seem to be fine in this heat even when wearing thick armor!”

For some reason the girl was relentless. He wasn’t sure what this was about, she was clearly a frost mage and not a Runesmith. Without the proper skills, she wouldn’t be able to craft any runes or affect them in any way.

‘Is there some kind of Rune Mage class? Does she want to get it? Never heard of it though..’

“Excuse me…Lady Lucille but this wasn’t what I was hired for…”

He was interested in the books that the woman had but he also didn’t want to remain in this encampment. Now that he was done with the repairs he just wanted to return to his party. Without him around he also feared that they might screw up the second tent again, leaving it Armand’s sausage hands was not something he wanted to do.

“Hired? Do you require some payment? I can pay! Is this enough!”

“Huh?”

The lady quickly moved her hand into her bag once more and pulled out a satchel with coins. Roland opened up this satchel and if his helmet was exposed they would see his eyes bulging. It was filled with large and small gold coins, he would need to work at least for a few months to get this kind of cash himself.

“Uh…So what exactly did you want to know about runes…”