The Runesmith

“That should do it…”

Roland stood back while looking at his tamed beast. Agni was in the process of brutalizing a volcanic salamander. At level 49 he was already able to handle these monsters that were a tier above him, with a little help from his master that applied some chilling spells.

There were a few ways to gain the system in this world. Most of the experience went to the person that did the most damage thus it made last hitting practically dead enemies give low amounts of experience points.

The only option to power level others would be applying debuffs instead. These debuffs would count for less and could disable the enemies which was happening now. The monsters that required high temperatures to operate were very easy to disable with a simple chilling spell.

He could see some of the old evolution options still being there like the volcanic wolf and even the gemstone wolf. From the description, it seemed that the gemstone variant was quite big, if it was the size of a smaller horse it might have been mountable.

The Mystical Ruby variant was also there but Roland saw a small problem. While all the other options looked the same, the one that he wanted was grayed out. There was one explanation for this, some of the requirements have not been met.

“Well boy, I think you’ll have to work on your skills before we can evolve you further…”

Agni gained most of his levels thanks to sharing experience with his master. Due to this, he leveled up a lot faster than the other monsters. This meant that his skills naturally lagged behind as he could only progress with them when they were used.

“Woof…”

Agni gave out a weak woof this time around, it seemed that he knew what the problem was. The main skill that he gained from munching on mana stones had not reached the 9th level yet. His skills that controlled mana were not quite there yet as well, he would probably need to level them all up before this option became available.

“You can have some more mana stones back home but you’re not getting that big mana stone!”

Ever since returning from the last expedition, Agni has been eyeing the large mana stone he got from the dinosaur-looking monster. It was quite big for a tier 2 monster that had already evolved once.

He was saving it for something else, it would be melted down into aether alloys that would then be used for his own armor. With the quality of that mana stone, he was sure that he would be able to get a better grading on the metal.

“Before we go home, we still need to take care of one more thing, let's go.”

The man and ruby wolf party went on their ways towards the deeper areas of the large open lower floor. There was one monster in particular that he wanted to hunt as he required parts of it for his next project.

After about thirty minutes of walking, he came into a section that the noble party evaded before. There he saw one, it was big and it looked dangerous.

It was a golem that was about four meters tall which made it twice Roland’s size. The ruby golem that he faced before was even bigger than this one so he wasn’t worrying as much.

This monster had a brownish orb sticking out from its left rocky shoulder. It was hard to notice as it was barely exposed but Roland had come just for it.

It was the golem’s core that spawned at random places inside of these golems. They were hard to spot which brought troubles to adventurers that tried to fight it. If this golem core was destroyed so would be the monster that had it.

He needed this item for his own golem as it was much easier to use a monster golem’s core than to fashion one instead. It was also a lot cheaper for him to grab one down in the dungeon than to buy one from the market.

Roland was already quite strong so he decided to gather his resources while also getting Agni to level fifty. Some might say that he was being a penny pincher as he could afford a golem core while just crafting. He could only nod to that accusation as if he had a way to save money that wasn’t too hard he would use it.

“Ok Agni, wait here. You might have leveled up but your teeth won’t do much damage on a golem.”

Agni whined a bit but stayed behind like his master ordered him to. With slow steps he approached the monster, the runic symbols on his gauntlets glowing blue as he got ready to cast a spell.

The monster finally noticed the human opponent approaching and started to sluggishly attack. Roland didn’t panic as he opened up his palms, a blue orb of chilling energy formed in front of them.

Before the monster could get into striking position Roland activated his runic spell. While pointing the orb of blue light in the golem’s direction a burst of cold was discharged. The monster took a direct hit but continued to lumber towards its enemy.

Each step it took caused the bedrock below to crumble. Each time a thumping sound was heard and it was not stopping. Finally, it was standing in front of the human that was attacking it. The golem moved its lumbering hand up but as it attempted to move it down to squash the smaller enemy it found itself unable to.

“That should do it…”

The golem stood still as it was frozen in place by Roland’s magic. For someone like him, that could switch magic attributes for every occasion fighting monsters like this was quite easy.

“Now then!”

On his back, he had a large sledgehammer that he brought over for just the occasion. With one powerful swing to the golem’s leg, he brought it down to the ground. With a couple of more, its legs and arms were all shattered at the joints as he rendered the creature immobile.

The golems were hard enemies to beat for low level adventurers. They were resistant to bladed weapons and even heavy blunt ones had trouble-causing much damage. For Roland that boasted overwhelmingly higher stats and buffing effects, this was not a tough enemy.

After the monster was disabled Roland brought out a chisel and hammer from his spatial bag. These golem cores were quite brittle so he could not risk landing blows at the shoulder area. They were quite resistant to magical effects which made them perfect for runecrafting.

“There we go, you can come over now Agni.”

Agni wiggled his tail while approaching the frozen golem. Once the core was removed this monster became nothing more than rocks. Even then Roland had to shake his head at his wolf that started desecrating the dead pile of rocks as if it could fight back.

“Let’s get a few more and return home, my headache is gone too.”

After spending most of the day down in the dungeon Roland returned home. Just as before he used the shortcuts in the dungeon to quickly make his way up. This was still something that he did not report to the guild.

He feared that they would task him with mapping out the entire dungeon and searching for all the hidden chambers. This was something that he intended to do on his own later. The probability of another runesmith going down and spotting these hidden rooms was quite low so he wasn’t worried.

It was already getting late but there was this itch that he just needed to scratch. With everything ready, he descended into his workshop and into the mostly empty room that was reserved for just this type of work.

He placed five orbs of various sizes and colors on his workbench. All of them belonged to golems that he faced down in the dungeon and would be used for his experiments.

‘It’s not good that they don’t all have the same dimensions, which might alter the results.’

Roland gave out a sigh after holding two of the golem cores in each hand. One that came from a l 51 golem was much smaller than the other that came from one that was ten levels above it. The larger the core the more punishment it could handle but it was also harder to runecraft on.

For the time being, he decided to start with the smallest one and work himself up. He hoped that he could start building a working prototype by the time he got to the fifth one. Otherwise, he would need to descend into the dungeon yet again.

There were many types of golems in this world. Ones made from rocks, ones made from metal, ones made from flesh and even ones made from pure energy. The one that his class was focused on would be the metal one.

There were various ways a person could get a golem to do their biddings. The most rudimentary way would be to just use a preexisting spell. Such golems could be summoned by the Summoner type classes and supposedly these summons came from some kind of different dimension.

They were practically the same type of being as the golem monster that he took care of today. Even though they were easy to come by they could not remain in this world for too long.

They burned up the caster's mana and the longer they remained the more they would require. Supposedly there were ways of extending their stay. Some included contracts that would make a golem-like this a casters familiar than other ways that remained a mystery to Roland as he lacked the book smarts.

If someone wanted a more permanent golem, they needed to work for it. Making one was the other option and it also came in many ways. Even magicians could produce a golem by gathering the right materials and casting the right spell. As long as the golem had a core and a power source it would be operational.

The ones magical smiths like him made came in various shapes and sizes. The golem core was the brain of this construct. It would need to be ingrained with the correct operating system. This was where he would inject the runic system that he studied from the miniature toy golem.

Before the system could be implanted he needed to fashion a body for its shell. Depending on the shape of the golem the golem core would need to be altered. Due to this reason, Roland decided to make his first golem to be similar to the toy that he studied.

The small golem that he had was a bipedal one, two legs, and two arms. The operating system came with a few pre-existing features that he was afraid to touch at the moment. Only after having a working prototype would he be able to see what his alterations did to the way it behaved.

After glancing at his notes and the schematics on the wall he could not wait. He grasped the golem core and started to concentrate. His mana traveled to his fingertips and started to slowly insert itself into the golem’s core.

The core started trembling as if it was resisting. The material he was working with would not be able to resist his regular rune smithing blows so he was forced to do it by hand. The core still had some data left from the monster it came from. First, he needed to delete all of this data before inserting his own.

It was similar to formatting a hard drive from an old operating system before putting on a new one. Even if there was space to fit another operating system it was ill-advised. It would only take up space and could very well corrupt the parts that the runesmith was working on.

Then finally with a resounding burst, the golem core shattered into many tiny pieces. Roland was quick to close his eyes and turn his face, the crystal-like substance that the core was made from shattered against the walls of this room and even collided with the other cores that were on the workbench.

“I guess that was too much mana…”

Five cores turned to four, then he was down to three as another one exploded. By the second attempt, he had put on safety goggles so that he could see when the core became unstable.

‘I might need better quality cores…’

As with everything in this world the cores were also ranked by grades. This tier 2 golem core was still on the lower end, thus they were more delicate to work with than higher quality cores.

Some were so resistant to mana that they would never break, while others like tier 1 cores were almost impossible to work with as they shattered with the smallest amount of magic.

Finally, on the third core he managed to erase the chaotic monster program. It was not runic in nature so it looked like a bunch of chicken scratch to him.

The original monster brain that was ingrained into this core would probably be a good way to study it but he had no idea how to decipher this language. The monsters in the dungeon were able to form some degree of battle strategies.

It would be quite a simple process if he could just translate everything into runic form. Then he would have something akin to a summoned monster. That is if he could get it to recognize him as its master. Otherwise, he would be just making a machine that would murder him instantly.

“Ugh… this is harder than I expected…”

The fourth golem core shattered when he was about halfway through his rune inserting process. Now left with only one remaining core he was troubled. Should he go for it or should he wait till his skills leveled up before attempting more?

Roland glanced at his status screen and could see that he was still lacking in a few places. His mana controlling skills were not maxed out and his rune-related skills weren’t either.

The progress with them had almost stopped; he could now see why people had troubles advancing towards tier 3 classes. Even now at his first tier 2 class, he was having troubles and he still needed to get another one before he could attempt another advancement.

‘Maybe it was stupid of me to try this so late into the night…’

He gave out a sigh and placed the last golem core down. It seemed that he was overzealous in his first attempt, maybe if he got a good night's rest he could try it once more.

‘There is also that thing tomorrow…’

Roland went to bed while dreading the next day as then came the time for his appointment. When he was eating his breakfast he started hearing a sound, it was coming from his bedroom.

‘I should have more time? Why is Lucille calling me already?’

The communication crystal was already beckoning him over. It was the day that he was supposed to talk with that Professor person. He feared that he would make a bad impression on the man or that he would be called an idiot by someone more experienced in the runes.

Even though he didn’t like asking for help, he could tell that he would make a lot more progress if he had someone to bounce his ideas off of. Thus with a bit of resistance, he finally answered the call. There he saw an unfamiliar face, a face that he did not expect that would belong to someone called the Professor.

“Ah, there you are, the fabled country bumpkin Runesmith.”

He could vaguely see Lucille standing in the back and waving. She had a strange apologetic expression on her face.

What he saw was quite the sight as instead of a person he was looking at a black cat. It looked to be a regular old cat, the most characteristic thing about it was the monocle covering its left eye.

‘Well...this is certainly unexpected…’