The Runesmith

‘Me and my bright ideas should have just gone to the city and waited for those damn platinum adventurers instead…’

Roland was in a world of pain as he scoured down into his underground workshop. His right hand was broken in several places while his left had multiple cracked bones. When he tried to protect Agni from a certain death he had almost been the one to kick the can. He did not expect the beam attack from an injured Lich to be this devastating. If his class was not a prestige one with an advanced multiplier he might have just lost both of his arms in the process.

Normally what he would need to do now was to either have a priest heal his wounds or douse his hands with healing potions. While wearing this heavy armor this wasn’t that easy, at most he could open his visor and try taking a sip which he was doing now. In his haste, he started splashing some of the potions he could get his hands between the joints of his armor in hopes of some of it reaching his hurting hands. Doing everything with a half-working left hand that hurt like hell was not making it easier either.

This event brought one thing to light at least. If he suffered any internal damage it was quite detrimental to have heavy armor that he couldn’t just toss to the side on him. In a sense, it became a prison of his own making, if it were his legs that were broken he would probably not have been able to get out of there in time to get some healing potions. Even though they were some of the costlier ones they would not work in an instant. He needed to make some space between the monster and himself.

“Shit…”

He cursed out at his own powerlessness, taking care of one tier 3 monster should have been something that he should have been capable of. His armor made him a lot stronger than a regular tier 2 class holder and he was over level hundred sixty, this coupled with an advanced stat multiplier should have leveled the playing fields but in the end, it didn’t. Even after the monster was weakened he still couldn’t take even one magical attack without being critically injured. The only things he could rely on were his traps and the divine crystals, one of which he was already running towards.

His steps were erratic and he was out of breath. Overloading the trap the skeleton was in and then saving Agni had taken a toll on his mind. His mana had dropped tremendously and the only reason that he didn’t pass out was thanks to his Resilience skill and pain resistance. This was only a bandaid as those skills would only allow him to power through the uncomfortable pain but wouldn’t actually heal him.

If he decided to punch the Lich with his broken hand it could turn into a stump. Even though this world had things like healing magic and potions they weren’t omnipotent. If his fingers were broken, muscles and ligaments torn, then even high-level potions would have trouble restoring the injuries to the previous state.

A craftsman’s hands were his lifeblood, if he couldn’t move his fingers in a dexterous way then creating high-quality products would be impossible. Directing mana to form runic traces was also done through the hands. Mana flowed out of a person’s fingers in a specific way and if this was disrupted it could be disastrous.

Perhaps implementing some type of self-healing protocol into his armor was in order. Roland had pondered on including small packets of healing potion in various locations within the armor. By triggering small spells through the runes these could be opened to douse the affected areas.

However, this was easier said than done, during combat such a packet would usually come undone by itself due to outside shocks and be wasted in the process. Attaching them was also a problem and would produce weak spots in the armoring.

“Fuck… it hurts, are these potions really the best I could afford?”

His mind was snapped back to reality as he pressed a button to close down the metal door to the workshop. Even pressing it with his somewhat good hand was a problem. The healing concoctions were slowly working but it would take at least fifteen minutes for him to regain feeling in his injured hands. Powering through the pain was his only option if he wanted to get out of here alive.

‘Will that thing even continue chasing?’

Roland was backing off and for a moment he stopped in his tracks. The previous explosion coupled with the Lich going berserk sent his monitoring system ballistic. Whenever a lot of mana particles from spells were in the air it produced some interference. In this case, however, he didn’t need to rely on the signal magnifiers and could use himself as the radar basis. There he could see a lone monster dot moving towards his home without being held back by the golems all too much.

‘I guess it’s really mad now, probably moved on from an enraged state to being totally berserk… but this could be what I needed.’

There was some time before the monster reached him but it seemed that it was dead set on following after him. This hate that the monster felt for him could still be used against it just like it did during the first trap. His escape tunnel was still there, this one wasn’t as long or sturdy as the one that he made leading to the dungeon but he did make some preparations there.

‘I have one chance…’

The yellow crystal in his hand was the only one that he had left. The monster already proved itself to be too much to handle for regular runic spells but holy ones were extremely effective. It was like poison to the undead and even though the Lich made it out of the entrapment it would still continue to receive some damage over time. This coupled with the berserk state could be just the thing that he needed to end all of this.

But there was also another option, just leaving everything be and getting out of here as fast as he could. What he was hoping to protect was already partially destroyed, the monster was running rampart above ground. After tearing through his defenses it would probably find the entrance here. The inside of his workshop wasn’t as well protected as well as the path leading to it.

He could just not have potential explosive hazards underground where he could be buried alive. There was an option of blowing the place up which would make following him a lot harder. Overloading some of the magical items that were here could produce a potentially deadly reaction. This could be enough to kill the already injured Lich or at least keep it from finding the escape route. This plan was probably the safest bet and while the monster was confused about his location he could make his escape.

The only thing that could thwart his escape were the unwelcome guests that started gathering above ground. While the mana particles in the air were jamming some of the mapping feed not everything had been lost. During his use of the Parallel Thinking trait, he was able to go through multiple problems at once and also watch the map like a hawk. On it he saw many small dots approaching the forest and going toward his home.

‘It must have called for backup…’

During the Lich’s near-death experience it wouldn’t be strange for it to call for help. Perhaps there was some inbuilt assistance switch into the monster when it suffered critical damage that would call back all of its minions. The black one that saved him was just closely following behind it as a backup plan but now all the rest had been called back.

This put Roland in a dangerous situation, if he went with the self-destruct option for his workshop, he would find himself exposed to the monster army. The explosion would probably give him a big enough smoke screen to sneak away from the Lich but it would certainly find him quite fast with so many eyes out there.

While the monster was not in a state to probably produce that tracking spell it used before, it didn’t need to. As long as it was close to its many minions it would be able to feel what they were feeling. Roland already had a unique mana pattern that the monster was attuned to so if he was spotted then the Lich would give chase.

For the time being, he had two exit routes. One was a shorter pathway in which he left his last surprise for the monster and then there was the tunnel to the dungeon. Heading toward the dungeon wasn’t such a great idea. It wasn’t much different than using the other exit and he would still need to blast a hole through it to escape.

Either he would blast a hole with his magic and get out of there which would still put him somewhere where the monsters could spot him. Going inside the dungeon would require him to dig a hole through the wall there. Perhaps he could hide out in one of the hidden rooms he discovered but the Lich might find him at some point with that mana sense that it possessed.

One way or the other he needed to expose himself to the skeletal army, the question was which exit put him in a better position of survival. This might have actually been the dungeon tunnel as it was a lot longer and the skeletons would first group around his home before going towards the explosion he produced. However, there was a different way for him to get out of this and it was by killing the Lich. The shorter tunnel had been prepared beforehand for this possibility but for this to work he would need to put himself in danger.

‘I’ll need that thing to come to me…’

Roland was already walking towards the shorter escape tunnel that was prepared for abandoning his workshop. It was constructed with a few charges placed at the entrance, when an assailant crossed the threshold these would explode. The person running through the tunnel would not be affected and after getting to the other side they could collapse everything to not allow anyone that survived the explosion to pursue further.

The tunnel was also dug further underground than the one leading to the dungeon. The amount of earth that would cave in wouldn’t be that easily blasted through even for something like this Lich. Even if the Lich somehow disabled the trap he could manually collapse the whole thing while going through it.

The runic structures for this to happen were already set there but he could also alter them to produce a different effect. This was his backup plan for when the monster got through the exploding workshop along with the divine trap. It was a hastily produced plan that he wasn’t really intending to use as running away was a better option. Now that there was an army of angry skeletons on the outside coming for him, perhaps he didn’t have any other choice.

It was either to face the Lich here or get massacred outside. With two tier 3 underlings of the skeletal overlord coming this way, it was a truth he needed to accept. Perhaps it would be more probable to face the injured Lich that was burning through its mana. Beings that used mana were almost defenseless without it. If it actually ran out of it, then he might be even able to take it in a head-on confrontation.

Luckily for him, monsters didn’t use things like mana potions. They usually had some passive skills that were above what a person could have for mana regeneration but those also had a limit. With this in mind, he decided to give it a try, if the leader was defeated so would the army fall and he had no chance of going against a swarm of skeletons. If he didn’t take this chance then the Lich would have enough time to recover.

Thus while going through his workshop he laid a trail of breadcrumbs for the berserk skeleton. It was in the process of melting down his reinforced metallic door and hopefully burning through a lot of its mana reserves while doing so. His hands were slowly healing up but his right one wasn’t quite there yet.

‘It went through all the golems and traps fast, it can’t have that much energy left, if I can just tire it out a bit more…’

“Agni, wait for me in the tunnel, I’ll be right there with you…”

“Woof…”

Agni didn’t want it but after Roland was forced to break his hands and the hammer he made. Without wanting to cause any more trouble he curled up his tail and walked towards the tunnel where he was supposed to have already been. At around the same time, the reinforced door into the workshop had been broken into by the maddened Lich. Before the monster was able to take another step in though strange blocky devices flew toward its face.

These were two runic batteries that Roland had thrown there to produce a more concentrated explosion. The monster buckled a bit under the pressure but it didn’t stop. This was only a distraction, right as the batteries were exploding against the monster's mana mantle a ray of light flew forward. It originated from Roland’s mana cannon which was his previous way of defeating tier 3 monsters.

Even with the mana pattern being altered it couldn’t get through the monster's defenses. Instead, the Lich charged forward while focusing a large portion of its energy on the defenses and some other on a large spear of bones that shot out from under where the mana blast was coming from. The walls started shaking and a lot of dust came down from the ceiling but somehow the whole place didn’t collapse.

The monster was at the large cannon but it couldn’t find its owner. Instead, it only saw some broken cables connected to it that were giving off mana that didn’t belong to Roland. This cannon was just placed here without its creator waiting to be skewered by sharp bones. It wasn’t that hard to prepare a targeting system to shoot at a Lich while he escaped and the massive amount of energy it had to produce to take care of the weapon was worth it.

While traveling through the underground lair of the runesmith the monster kept running into small traps. Scrolls with spells stuck on the walls, ground, and ceilings. Magical weapons pointed towards passages and entranceways leading it all the way towards the escape tunnel where Roland and Agni had run to.

It didn’t seem that the monster was convinced that it could be stopped in any way and the continuous traps only proved its point. Soon it was blasting through the hastily closed door where it even saw a part of the armored one going through. The monster in its current state was unwilling to stop anymore. If it took some time to strategize it would have probably waited for its army to arrive but at this point, it was too far gone.

But behind that passage victory didn’t await. Instead, it was another trap that this mad monster was walking in. While it was previously able to breeze through all the others it didn’t realize what kind of predicament it was getting itself into. After charging in behind the next corner it found him, the target that it was after for all these months.

“You really did follow me all the way here but I’ll have to disappoint you, I’m not the one that is going to die here.”

Roland’s left hand was holding something that was too short to be a proper weapon. Instead, it was his blacksmithing hammer that he created himself. At the moment the Lich came into view he initiated the main plan. The hammer was used on the wall to activate the runic construct that he had created. With this last hit, it finally became operational, a trick to fool the monster’s mana sense.

The moment his hammer collided with the wall all the runic traces lit up in a golden-yellow glow. It was very similar to the one the monster witnessed in the cage and it instantly flipped a switch in its brain. Instead of charging forward like a mad beast, its survival had become more important but at this point, it was too late. The second trap wasn’t as powerful but it filled out this corridor and could only be used after fulfilling many requirements. This included bringing down the monster to a weak enough level for it to still be affected by it.

“This last crystal isn’t that powerful but it should be enough…”

Even though the monster tried turning away, its knees started to wobble. The poisonous holy energy coupled with mana depletion had taken a toll on it. The mana mantle that had reformed instantly vanished and Roland could tell that this was the endpoint for the monster. There was not much time for him either nor could he use any of his runic spells in this narrow area. Instead, the hammer that he used to activate the trap flew forward and collided with the monster’s ugly skull.

Roland charged forward while trying to keep the mana around this place stable. One misstep and it would be over. He did not expect that this whole incident would end with a brawl but here he was landing a left hook on the skeleton’s ribcage. With its mana gone, it was now just a regular skeleton, the bones that it was made from were strong but the holy poisoning took its toll on them.

The cracking of bones was heard by him but the monster wasn’t the only one in pain. His own fists which had not been able to fully heal up were beginning to break. This momentary flinch that the pain produced was used by the Lich to lunge forward. Its body was about the same height as Rolands and its physical stats weren’t that far behind as it was a high-level tier 3 enemy. Luckily for the runesmith he was not actually fighting alone, before the monster could grapple or hit him with those boney fingers, something grabbed onto it.

Agni used his speed to run to the side of the wall and propelled himself to grab onto one of the monster’s limbs. The momentum was enough to not allow it to hit Roland and instead open itself up to a counter. That one hammer wasn’t the only one that he was carrying as another one was held with his already broken hand. Through magic, he had fused it tightly to allow him to clobber the monster’s head with it.

So he did, his hammer rained down on the monster while Agni continued to leverage his weight on the monster. The holy energies were quickly dying down but so was the skeletal being. With a final blow that contained a mix of force mana and runic skills, the monster was finally dropped down to its knees. The golden glow around the area vanished in an instant and before going down himself Roland heard those wonderful words.

Finally, it had been done and his body flopped against the wall while sliding down. He did his utmost not to pass out in fear of the monster’s body suddenly coming back to life. Even the prompt that he received didn’t ease his worries but while his gaze was focused on the monster’s remains he noticed something slightly shiny peeking out of the crushed skull…