The Runesmith

“This is supposed to be the safer path?”

A certain half-elven girl kicked a small rock down into a deep chasm. She leaned over to look down but even after some time passed she couldn’t hear the stone hitting anything.

“Just don’t fall down…”

Silvio replied while looking out into the distance. Roland was also there looking at this mapping device, this time around there weren’t any monsters here. The path looked clear but the fall down below would probably be a death sentence.

‘The path looks clear…’

Roland didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in this place. They journeyed half a day to the west and finally, the large lava lake ended. The molten rocks at the end were pouring into a large chasm that at one side had a long winding path through it. They only needed to cross it to get to the other side and that would be it.

On the way here they had to battle through quite a bit of tier 2 monsters, their levels mostly between fifty and sixty. Even he managed to level up and finally reached the 80th level. Thanks to the book of runes he had managed to use his old cheat to gain levels faster. Even with that, his progress had slowed down, if he wanted to hasten it he would actually need to fight monsters closer to his own level.

He took a glance at his status screen and now was convinced that it was the right choice to get this class. He mostly gained 2 points in each stat with agility lagging slightly behind the others.

Roland had a choice to make, the tier 2 class change requirements were a bit different as he could push this class all the way up to level 50 instead of 25. Yet, he could switch to another class after 25 levels were gained in it. This left him with the option of getting more classes on the way to tier 3.

The minimum level limit of a tier 3 class was 150, which left him with 25 levels of another class after he was done with the Runesmith Lord class. He felt like going to the very end with this class would be the best option. It could be a requirement for acquiring a similar strong job for his tier 3 life.

This was something to think about but not something he needed to worry about much yet. His progress would slow down exponentially now. Unless he battled through hordes of high level tier 2 monsters or gained massive amounts of runic diagrams to copy over, he would remain a tier 2 class holder for many years to come.

“I hope the noble ladies don’t slip and fall, I bet those knights would blame us for it.”

Armand chuckled with his arms crossed over one another. He was looking behind them at the group of nobles that he had no respect for. Even now they were slowly moving here, their sluggish pace had now become annoying to him as well.

‘If this continues, we will be stuck here for over a month…’

Roland gave out a sigh while remembering the plan of the expedition. After going through this passage they would arrive at another wider area. There they would make camp for another week and the knights would sharpen their blades on larger monsters.

The secondary encampment would last for a longer period of time than the first one. That one would be closer to nests of monsters and beasts, which would be the main test for these young nobles and knights.

Their group on the other hand would be quite bored and just on constant guard duty. Silvio as the best monster detector would have to stay awake for prolonged amounts of time.

“At least, it’s easy on us, we don’t need to rush much.”

Lobelia commented while leaning back against the rocky walls. This area of the dungeon was quite spacious, the place could even be mistaken for a smaller mountain range that went mostly downward.

“They caught up with us, let us move on.”

Roland nodded and they started walking. The path was wide enough to allow two people to walk side by side. Even with that everyone decided to keep to the walls, if someone slipped and fell it would be over for them.

From what Roland knew some adventurers did try to climb down from here. there were even some attachments that had some thick ropes on them. This never bore fruit as the party abandoned the descent. The further down they got the windier it became, this was no summer breeze as the heated air didn’t allow anyone to get past a certain point.

They walked and walked, then walked some more. The path stretched for a lot longer than most expected. They were still underground but this dungeon seemed like it was a world of its own.

Roland started wondering about how these dungeons were created. Did this thing expand for many years below ground and finally connect to the outside a year ago. Maybe it was just created by the dungeon core in a burst of magic energy that filled out this large cavern that was here before.

Some smart people even theorized that dungeons were just portals into another world that somehow existed on this plane of existence. This would somehow explain why the living monsters could never leave the dungeon unless their bodies died.

“What is this…”

Silvio suddenly jumped forward and increased his pace. The rest of the party didn’t comment and just followed after the experienced adventurer.

“What the hell?”

Armand grumbled after seeing something that would just stall this expedition even further.

“Blocked?”

When Roland finally arrived he could see the path blocked by rocks. It seemed that part of this underground mountain range had slid down and was blocking the path. This made Roland think back to the barricade those bandits built that one time. Luckily there was no place for a bandit ambush as the path they were on connected directly to the ceiling above them.

“Why did you stop?”

They were moving slowly with everyone else behind them. The knights caught up to them quite fast and Percival had moved to the forefront to see what the problem was.

“There must have been a landslide, it's blocking the path.”

There wasn’t much space here but both the Knight commander and the mages came over to take a peek.

“Lord Percival, let me. With my earth magic I’ll move these rocks in a matter of moments!”

The blond girl looked pumped up, she was the earth specialist here and would finally have a moment to shine.

“Wait, if you use magic the path under us could give up…”

Silvio interjected rather quickly. It was a good idea which would probably hasten their progress. It was also very risky as the earth mage was limited in creating earth out of thin air. Certain spells could create earth like bullets but they required a lot of mana.

In this situation the girl would be shifting the existing earth to push the rocks out of the way. This could affect the foundation of this pathway which in effect could cause them to fall down to their doom.

“Yes, Adventurer is right Lady Charlene, it could cause another rockslide.”

Lucille the frost mage backed up Silvio’s proposition. The old man nodded his head as a thank you to the young lady while the blond fummed a bit in dissapointment.

“Very well, we will move the rocks out by hand then…”

“Huh… why are you looking at me?”

Armand was leaning up against the wall while Silvio and Percival looked at him.

“Armand, there isn’t enough space for the knights to go through, Korgak will help you.”

Korgak and Armand had the highest physical stats from the whole party here, the knights didn’t compare to them either. There was just enough space for the two and they could just throw the boulders down into the chasm below.

“Ah here take this.”

Silvio handed Armand a pickaxe that they had brought along the trip. The porter that was with them had a large variety of tools including shovels. They were bought for just this sort of occasion.

“I’m getting paid extra for this, don’t you forget it”

Armand looked dejected at the fact that he would need to do this sort of work. Korgak on the other hand didn’t seem to care as he started to pick up the rocks with his bare hands and toss them down into the hole below. He even started smiling at the large boulders that he threw.

“This is going to take a while…”

“Yes…”

Roland answered while both him, Lobelia and the nun went back to give the two muscle men space. He was still holding onto the large magical rod which continued to exude cold energy. One person in particular saw this magical item that he previously didn’t show off that much to her.

“Sir Wayland, what type of ice magic is that?”

“Ah… This is …”

He had talked with this girl about runes for some days now but this didn’t mean that he wanted to disclose all of his secrets. This rod was a spell structure that he himself created and also had its own operating system that no one besides him or a runic mage would be able to activate correctly.

“It’s just an altered chilling rune with a couple of other modifications…”

Where the blue-haired frost mage was, there was always Robert. Even when he was on guard duty Roland could see his brother glancing at where this young woman was. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together, there was clearly something going in between these two. By how the girl sometimes looked to Robert it also seemed mutual.

This was not really something that he cared about. The love life of his brother or any other person didn’t matter one bit. The problem was that he was getting paid by this woman and also given runic research that he could not easily turn down.

Due to this, he found it hard to be around her. Robert was constantly looking over his shoulder and was highly overprotective. Roland on the other hand acted suspiciously and never took his helmet down. He explained it by telling the two that he had a breathing condition and could not remove the helmet due to it.

The lie seemed to have worked but he feared that his brother would somehow find things out. He needed to get that research though and as fast as he could.

“We are almost through…”

Armand whipped the sweat from his eyebrow while tossing a large boulder to the side. Thanks to his enhanced stats he didn’t really feel that tired and even the larger boulders weren’t that much of a problem. Soon the other side could be seen and the path ahead of them looked clear.

But then as everyone was chatting away, used to the lack of monsters Silvio felt something. The tier 3 adventurer’s detection skills kicked in as he could feel something moving.

“Wait… hurry up, we need to leave!”

He rushed over to Percival to tell him something while Roland started at the adverse reaction. It seemed that they were in trouble but there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary here. There were no screaming monsters or any movement for now. Thus to be sure he took out his own detection device to see if there were any enemies around.

After the initial look, he didn’t see any red dots anywhere. Silvio continued to explain that they needed to hurry up though which he took very seriously.

“Agni, stay close to me…”

“Woof!”

The ruby wolf raised his nose up into the air while sniffing but even he didn’t see a problem anywhere, which caused him to just look at Roland with a vacant expression. It didn’t seem that his canine companion could detect any danger yet.

Then out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a red dot, then another one appeared followed by many more. The dots just started increasing till there were hard to count.

“What is this… but this is coming from…”

He looked to the large rocky wall that connected to the ceiling above. The red dots were coming from this wall, were there monsters behind it? Could this wall be hollow?

‘No…it must be those… we need to move..’

The path wasn’t fully opened up but they needed to move forward. There was a little problem here, the group of nobles was not listening to Silvio’s warnings. This blunder would cost them as finally, a rumbling sound came from within these very walls.

“What is that…”

If it was only Roland’s party then they would have been fine but with so many knights behind them, it would be troublesome. Roland moved his hand into his pouch and took out some card-sized scrolls and quickly ran towards the half-cleared path.

“Huh, what are you doing?”

Armand asked while being shoved to the side by Roland.

“We don’t have time, get back, I’m going to blow it away.”

“What? Are you crazy?”

Armand protested but Silvio somehow appeared right between the two men.

“Do as he says, we need to get off this passage.”

Armand pulled away and nodded, he looked behind him and could see that the nobles were a bit in disarray. Percival did not give the order of blowing it up but not like they had to listen to the knight commander if their life was at stake.

“Get behind me, everyone.”

Roland shouted while also taking out the large kite shield that he wore on his back. It was covered in runes and on the inside was a vast array of mana stones. After placing the runic explosives that were just plain old runic scrolls he jumped back and raised his shield.

He injected mana into the structure and the shield lit up. A barrier made of blue energy pushed itself out from this shield and covered most of the area in front of Roland while the people behind him covered up. Before Percival could shout the runic scrolls detonated causing a flash of fire.

“What are you doing!”

Percival shouted while covering himself up with his own shield. After the smoke had cleared a passage wide enough for at least one person was blown through and the road ahead was open.

The knight commander was not happy about getting ignored. He was about to give a piece of mind to this party of adventurers that were ignoring his orders. Before he could do that a strange rattling sound was heard by him, which caused his gaze to wander towards the chasm below.

“What is that…”

A strange worm-like creature was spotted by him and the other knights. It just appeared out of the wall and flew down into the chasm while gnashing its teeth. Soon enough more of these strange creatures started to appear and they were burrowing through the walls.

“Volcanic Worms, we must flee, they can tunnel through hard rocks…”

These monsters started to appear from below them but soon enough one appeared out of the wall beside one of the knights. The creature had no eyes and wasn’t that large, no one here would have a problem killing one of these creatures but that wasn’t the problem.

There were just too many of them, it looked like an avalanche. Most of them appeared right below them while others from above. Many of these volcanic worms just fell down into the chasm but others made their way towards the party of people below. The moment they spotted other living beings they attacked.

The knights had never seen something like this before, so they started to panic. Percival shouted out orders and somehow managed to get them in line. They all pushed towards the opening with the adventurer party moving first.

On the other side, Silvio and Lobelia gave the knights range support. Roland also joined in by sending arrows made from ice towards the monsters. This didn’t even put a dent in their numbers and they continued to burst through the rocky wall.

Luck was not something Roland was known for and this time around it would prove his weakness once again. He wouldn’t be the only one though as at a certain point the large volcanic worms burst through the nearby rock.

Lucille the frost mage was the unlucky person hit by this pile of creatures which sent her tumbling down the chasm. Robert quickly followed suit, his attempt of saving the young woman was ineffective as he fell down right after.

Before he knew it, Roland was also feeling gravity pulling him down as a massive pile of rocks and monsters connected with him from the side.

‘Why always me…’

That was what he thought before falling down the cliff along with his tamed beast that for some reason decided to jump right after him.