The Runesmith

“So, is this supposed to be the lord’s throne room or something?”

Roland spoke to himself while entering the shoddy-looking fort. It was on a motte which was a mound formed to house it. The elevation wasn’t that high up and the wooden walls consisted of the same sharpened logs tied together by rope. These fortifications wouldn’t really stop anyone, perhaps people below level twenty-five would have to scamper around him but besides that, it would go down quickly.

It was not much of a fort as there weren’t any watchtowers outside and only one building directly in the middle. The size of this building was comparable to a small house but there was a lot of space around it. This wide open space gave him the impression that it was supposed to be filled out by something and the answers he found on the inside.

The inside of this almost hut was primarily empty. A long brown carpet made out of some sort of animal hide led up to a large chair which was probably supposed to be his throne room. The position of the throne was slightly elevated and on the sides there were several windows that let some sunlight in. Besides the large chair, there were also some torches that could probably be lit when the space needed to be used during the night.

When entering this place he had the Lord’s Aid puppet trailing behind him but the moment he entered this area the automaton stopped in place. It didn’t seem that it wasn’t able to enter the area by itself but waited to be allowed inside instead. It seemed that the wooden people really saw him as their leader and would follow some rules concerning this role play here.

Roland decided to go around this place and after reaching the throne his gaze landed on it. The thing was made all out of wood and lacked any type of soft cushioning for his behind. Perhaps he would need to use it for something later but for now, he discovered a door to the side. When going through it he was taken to what looked to be the Lord’s bed chamber. A large bed with a mattress filled with something was there for his use. To the side, he also spotted a chair at a desk with some parchments and notebooks.

“Nothing to actually read, just empty pages to write things in… how long do they expect me to be in this trial?”

There was a quill along with some ink that he was very familiar with. It was just like the first one that he used when he went through his runic mana scribe faze. When looking at this place he had a premonition that it could take a few months before he gets out. The pages here were probably to take notes and maybe to plan things out for the future. His first task was to defend this place which he needed to prepare for.

“The fifty soldiers I have wouldn’t pose much of a threat to the current me, the enemies are supposed to arrive in around a week's time, what should I do in the meantime? Is there anything in here that I can use?”

Roland had hoped to at least find a map of the area somewhere in here but it wasn’t there. Perhaps he would need to draw it up himself while exploring the areas around the castle. As it stood he had some time to allocate to everything. The soldiers had their orders to train up as he had gone to the barracks but he had yet to decide on the resource allocation.

‘I just wanted to be a shop owner…’

This whole trial was making him want to cancel and go pick up the Master Runesmith pathway. While he was fine fighting monsters and crafting gear, leading troops wasn’t something he was familiar with. When going down into dungeons he was also a solo adventurer with only Agni being his only companion. When joining other groups he was never really part of them and never cared about working as a team player. Now he needed to somehow lead these puppets to victory.

‘Well, these automatons might be more like golems than people so it will make things a lot easier, they also don’t seem to question me in any way.’

While contemplating his next step and gathering more information he finally decided to sit down on the throne made for him. It would be quite tiresome to go around this place on foot as it wasn’t that small. Luckily to his surprise when he sat down another system panel popped out before him.

‘Wait… this looks similar to one of those games…’

Roland came from the modern world and had gone through all sorts of types of games. Role-playing games and strategy games were some of the ones that he enjoyed. The interface before him was quite low on the graphical spectrum but it was similar to some of the strategy games that he played.

In the upper right corner, he could see the same gold icon that he witnessed when interacting with the merchant. To the right side of the icon was the number corresponding to his current gold level. When he tried tapping on the gold to get more information he saw the letter one with a plus sign next to it.

‘Huh… could this be how much gold I gain per day… or per hour?’

Everything started making more sense as this whole trial was shaping up to be some sort of game. The plus one gold was probably how much of it he would gain per cycle but he would only know after some time passed. At the moment he had exactly a hundred gold but it wasn’t the only resource that was there. After going through various other screens filled with pixel art he found that there was a lot more to this thing than met the eye.

‘It is a Runesmith-related trial so it’s normal for it to have all those various materials.’

The screen gave him a very intricate list of materials which were also separated by quality. There were metals like iron, bronze, and mythril. Some of them came in ingot form while others in raw ore form. They had quantity numbers assigned to them but as it stood now he only had simple metals at his disposal.

‘There is an actual map… but most of it is covered by dark fog… this is really just like a strategy game map. Does this mean I have to send a scout out to look for other resources?’

It didn’t take him that long to grasp the situation here and the controls were easy to understand. The trials were said to be created to suit the people taking them and also adapt to their life experiences. In his previous life, Roland spent countless hours playing games that shaped this test that could create a whole world within itself. Probably if a denizen of this world took the same trial the parameters would change to suit their understanding of things around them.

He wasn’t quite sure if this was a blessing or a curse just yet. Thanks to this system within a system it was possible for him to automate a lot of things and quickly order his troops around. However, if the trial wanted to remain fair it would need to turn up the difficulty of it all. It wouldn’t be strange if the added information would cause the opponents to become stronger, either by the size of their troops increasing or their tactics becoming more intricate.

“Okay… first I need to send someone out to scout for more resources, this small encampment is generating one gold but everything costs at least one gold…”

This throne room allowed some conveniences as he didn’t need to directly go to the barracks to assign the training regiment to the soldiers. The one Wooden Warrior that he didn’t give a new class was also there, now that he was here he began thinking about the future. All of the lower-level soldiers had numbers attached to them that corresponded to their levels but also how much they leveled up from training.

Roland needed to wait for a day until he calculated all the numbers but perhaps before the enemies arrived in a week's time he could advance every one of his wooden men to another class. When thinking of this and the mapping problem he realized that he could assign a Wooden Scout class. Each of the classes had a small description to go along with it which made the choice a lot easier.

‘It’s even showing me some of its stats and also the weapons it can use.’

The scout was a light unit and couldn’t wear heavy armor. It was good at handling short swords, daggers, and bows. It also got a skill in horse riding which would allow it to scout out the areas around his fort a lot faster. It was not much of a question, he needed at least one scouting unit to see what was around him. After clicking the option he was given a loading screen that slowly started to fill up.

‘At this rate, it seems that it will take a day to upgrade a unit to the second tier 1 class, it wouldn’t be strange if it took longer when going to tier 2.’

“Aid, come here.”

“Yes, My Lord! How could I be of service!”

“Tell me about our enemies, where is their headquarters located and where will they be coming from, do you have any information about their numbers, don’t leave anything out!”

“Yes, My Lord. The Kindlings will arrive here in a week! They hail from the northern stronghold…”

“Wait, they are called the Kindlings?”

”Yes, My Lord, truly a despicable name, isn't it?”

“Despicable… uh, how are our people called?”

“Why, we are the great Timberlings!”

‘What is it with these names, why is it all about wood?’

Roland started wondering if he had some kind of fascination with wood in the past that could have brought this type of setting. Maybe after seeing Bernir perform some nice carpentry he wanted to become one himself but was already locked into the Runesmith class?

“Ah yes, continue…”

The wooden aid started speaking and giving him some basic information about the whole situation. While there he also was able to look through available structures that he could build, one of them was a stable that would allow him to give his scout a mount. It didn’t cost that much and more information about the location was something that he needed to gain as fast as possible.

If this worked like a strategy game then there were probably all sorts of resources scattered across the region he was in. Usually, in those games, a person would begin close to some kind of resource-generating mine but he didn’t have anything like that here. If there were some iron ore mines close he could start producing steel and have better weapons to meet his enemies.

However, if this was doable in a week was questionable but it would only take a day for the stables to be built. The same was the case for some other buildings like the mill and lumber camp, they all only took one day to assemble. This was one of the decisions he needed to make. Was it better to quickly expand the range of his base camp or bunker himself up and wait for his enemies to come?

Time was also a resource and this was a sort of game. Even wasting one day could be disastrous; it could snowball into him not being able to gain enough resources in time for another problem that arose. Roland was also not sure if this was only a defensive trial, there were far too many red flags pointing to another option.

‘An Overlord seems like someone that wouldn’t shy away from battle or conquering others.’

This throne allowed him to monitor his entire base of operations. With it, he could probably also manage other territories that he conquered. It wouldn’t be strange that he had some wiggle room in this scenario. There was always more than one way of getting through these. He might be able to create a massive bastion that couldn’t be captured by anything here or spread out his armies to conquer the other denizens of this world before they become an obstacle.

‘I need to know what my footing is before attempting to blitz everyone around me. I don’t even know who my enemies are, maybe diplomacy is also an option?.’

Roland gave out a sigh while thinking about this troublesome test he was in. There were just too many factors for him to account for. This was probably why this class was a prestigious one, he would really need to work for it this time. When thinking back to his old Runemsith Lord class, the test then felt quite trivial. Here he would probably have to strain both his brain and muscles.

After being filled in on the situation around him he began drawing up a plan. The notebooks came in handy as he wrote in the most important parts like the enemy ‘kingdoms’. In this case, it seemed that they weren’t much bigger than the little city fort that he found himself in but even having an idea where they were coming from made things easier.

While his scout unit and stables that cost twenty-five gold units were being assembled he decided to visit the city blacksmith. It was clear to him that his troops needed better weapons and better armor. There was no use for the city lord to run around outside to endanger his life while scouting for things, instead he would spend his time here while using the limited troops he was given.

For a skilled craftsman like him, it was child's play to assemble an iron sword of the highest rank. It was the same thing for the iron spears and iron arrows which he decided to augment with some runes. While a weapon made from iron was abysmal for holding runic charges and would actually melt the weapon after a few uses, they were fine on arrows. When the tip connected with something it would just explode and didn’t need to do much more than that.

It was quite a busy day for him, besides all the crafting he began exploring the surroundings. There were a lot of empty spots to place buildings in and he took some time to draw up a plan of the whole wooden fortress that looked more like a village surrounded by wooden logs. Roland needed to decide on the structure placement as his current funds allowed him to start generating some resources.

First of all, it looked like he needed to build a mill and a farm to produce crops. With farms up there he would be given some villagers that would actually generate more gold and the surplus of the produce they generated could be sold for profit or maybe even traded for something else.

After going through all the various panels Roland figured out the gameplay loop this place had. First of all, he needed to generate resources that could be used for various things which culminated in upgrading the Town Center and his fort. The first upgrade required a set number of lumber and stones that he could gain by creating buildings like a quarry and lumber mill.

There was a large forest right next to his fort which would make it easy to generate lumber and a good location was soon discovered by his scout not far from the forest. The nearby mountain area had a lot of stone and also iron ore that could be mined. Creating a mining camp would take care of both of those resources but there was another loop to create workers.

First, he needed to create some residential buildings for people to live in. Then he needed to assign jobs to them and also have enough food to keep them fed through their working days. Luckily the croplands that were created by the farms produced wheat and then bread with the help of the mills rather quickly. All the components were there but the trial world took some liberties with how things worked to hasten some of the activities that didn’t seem to matter as much.

Soon he had something that looked like an actual proper town as the week winded down. However, this was only the beginning as the people from the opposing faction finally appeared the way they looked was a bit surprising but after getting used to his own citizens that were made of wood, the sight of wooden men with burning heads didn’t move him anymore.

“My Lord, the enemies are here, we must defend the fort!”

A horn sounded to signal the appearance of an enemy faction that was dead set on taking over their lands and taking all of their resources.