The Runesmith

“Report!”

“Yes, Knight Commander! Most of the Orcs are dead but some of them have managed to escape. We believe that some of them might seek shelter close to the nearby villages, should we pursue them?”

“Pursue? How long will that take? We have already lost precious time…”

A fully armored knight looked at the commander before him. At this moment he was pulling out his large sword from the monster it slew. Blood ran through the blade and dribbled to the ground to only increase the puddle that was being made. A monster of large proportions that looked like an orc lay there. Its body was large, muscular, and covered in scars. The size went above what a tier 2 orc variant was capable of evolving into and it didn’t seem like the knight that fell this monster had taken much damage.

“...The scouts believe that it shouldn’t take more than two days, they believe that now that the Orcs lost their chieftain they will seek to establish their own lesser tribes…”

“Two days…”

The man was wearing glistering full-plate armor with a blue cape attached to the back. On that cape, the crest of the Valerian household was embroidered. The sword he was holding was a lot larger than a longsword, the thick blade and added weight would not be easy to handle. On his left side, there was a large oval shield that was quite thick as well. Even with all this added weight it didn’t seem that the man was out of breath or sluggish when moving or walking.

“We shall depart, we can’t waste our time on these monsters, the tier 3 is dead, let the adventurers take care of the rest.”

“Sir? Some of them fled in the direction of a village, if we don’t…”

The Knight stopped himself from talking as he felt a strange pressure fall over his body. It was as if he was sinking down into quicksand while trying to push a massive weight off his shoulders. Quickly he realized that the new Knight Commander was glaring at him. His eyes were peeking through that visor and giving him the shivers.

“...I understand Knight Commander, I will pass on this command to the other knights!”

“Don’t take too long, you have ten minutes, leave what we don’t need, Lord Theodore expects us to finish this task as soon as possible.”

“Yes, Knight Commander!”

The Knight swallowed his saliva as he felt the pressure be lifted from his body. He had been assigned to this troop not that long ago and forced by the other veterans to relay the information to them. When walking back he could even see some of them snickering as they probably knew that the Knight Commander would react in this way. The rumors of him being overbearing were true.

“Haha, newbie you should remember this moment, don’t ever call to question any of the Commander’s orders, that is if you wish for your head to remain on your shoulders.”

“Y-yes… The Knight Commander wants us to leave within ten minutes.”

“Heard that everyone? Pack up, we are leaving.”

“But Lieutenant Sir, these Orcs must have had their camp, the citizens of the duchy could still be there, shouldn’t we at least investigate?”

“You can go ahead and mention that to Knight Commander Emmerson if you want.”

The knight that was talking looked back to the man in question. At that moment he was walking back to his horse that he dismounted to take care of the tier 3 monster. It was a Red Orc High-Chieftain a leader variant of an invasive species that liked settling near war climates and volcanic regions.

During their trip to a city called Albrook, they had been unlucky and encountered them during their migration period. These monsters tended to move around a lot which made subjugating them hard. Before an adventurer party strong enough could be formed, they would move out from the area and settle somewhere else. This was something that their leader should know, the fact that attacking their camp would have been the best way of guaranteeing their demise.

“I…”

“Good, you’re still young and fresh out of the academy so it’s understandable, your head is probably filled with saving fair ladies in distress. I’ll give you some advice, you should drop that way of thinking or you’ll suffer a quick death. Now get your ass in gear, we need to leave!”

The other knights nodded and laughed while quickly getting to their own horses. They didn’t even bother with taking the mana stones from the monsters, only the one from the tier 3 one was worthwhile. The weapons that the monsters used were inferior to the ones they had, there was no reason to take them as they were not adventurers scavenging for loot. Soon all of them departed while leaving the massacred monster bodies behind. Even though they knew that this would attract some other monstrosities, this wasn’t their problem. What the Knight Commander ordered them was their priority.

…

“Hey, quit it, not while the kids are watching!”

“Ow… stop hitting me with that ladle.”

Roland rubbed his forehead which wasn’t really hurting. Instead, the metal ladle that he got hit had been dented. Elodia was holding it like a weapon as he had been sticking a bit too close while they were trying to eat. Marcie was with them and covering her eyes with her hands. Still, some wiggle room was left between those fingers to take a peek. Jorg on the other hand was holding his head down while looking at the plate filled with soup and trying to eat.

“Don’t you have some work to do?”

“Fine, I’ll leave!”

“Make me a new ladle while you are down there.”

“Hey, don’t ask a Runesmith to make a ladle.”

“Wow, the great Mr. Runesmith is too good to make a ladle now.”

The two started going back and forth with smiles on their faces before Roland made his way back to the workshop. Ever since leaving the trial, he was still getting used to actual real people around him. Only Elodia knew what he had been through which left Bernir and his wife a little bewildered when they saw how he was acting.

There was no time to explain though as even though he was enjoying his stay back home, a strange foreboding feeling was in the back of his head. For some reason, he was fearing for the worst, even though he had attained power it hasn’t fully been expressed yet. While normal battle classes could just transform almost instantly after the ascension ritual, he wasn’t quite the same.

His real strength came from preparing for every occasion and luring his enemies into traps. After gaining his Overlord class he realized that the defensive approach wasn’t always the best one. For this reason, he needed to expand his repertoire by preparing more gadgets and firstmost a better suit of armor.

There were a couple of research fields he wanted to instantly expand on. These were ones that he wasn’t able to complete when he was just a tier 2 class holder. Yet to complement his fighting style he needed a few things. One of them would be reached by spatial rune research that was moving along smoothly. A lot depended on mastering dimensional storage as he was reliant on external equipment to make his new class shine. However, before going through with that, there was one other itch that he wanted to scratch.

“That should do it…”

Roland’s hammer collided with a piece of metal. It was a thick square plate made out of deep steel. Usually, it would have needed to be hammered down into something thinner but he was now working with tier 3 runes. Without proper materials that could take the increase in magic deterioration, he needed to increase the thickness. While he had some of the better ones saved up from farming the mine, he would not use them until his grasp of his new skill was adequate.

“This reminds me of the old days…”

This item before him was similar to the rough wand designs he made in the past. They were ugly in their appearance but nevertheless worked as intended. This thing before him contained a greater rune, the first one that he actually made. Ever since coming out of the trial, he was dreaming of this moment. Even before he reached tier 3 he had contemplated what he wanted to make, and each time his thoughts were drawn towards one thing, flight.

‘When you think about tier 3 mages, the floating spell is a staple.’

He remembered the time the Lich was chasing him and Armand’s party down in the dungeon. This iconic spell was used by the monster then allowing it to gently glide down without suffering any damage. The full name of the spell was levitation and it came in three variants, lesser, normal, and greater.

What the monster used was the lesser one which allowed a caster to support around their own body weight. Even the easiest version was a greater spell and each upgrade unlocked a little bit more variation. The normal levitation spell increased the weight load further and even allowed it to be used on multiple targets. It was one of those spells that made tier 3 mages a sought-after class down in dungeons. With so many caverns and places that were inaccessible without flight or climbing, it was a game changer.

This was something that he should be capable of doing. His levitation spell would be a bit different as he actually needed to support his armor along with his body. This spell was one of those that expanded on a mage's range superiority. It gave a mage some needed space between himself and the target. Yet due to the way it drained mana quickly it couldn’t really be used for actual fighting. Otherwise, all mages would just turn to helicopters that rained down fire blasts from the sky in every war confrontation.

“Now to test it…”

Roland looked at the square piece of metal before him. While a regular person would only see a rune that resembled a fish with tiny symbols on the inside he could see a lot more. Many tiny traces went away from this rune and were integrated into the whole square block. These were the upgraded versions of Ethereal Pathways that he usually used to connect runic components on uneven materials. To him, they were like little shiny particles of light that made this cold piece of metal into quite the light show.

Finally, his first greater rune was activated and the block of metal started reacting. At first, it started shaking slightly but soon enough it started to rise up into the air. While the lesser levitation spell was the basis for this rune it was not the only thing in the structure. That spell in itself could only cancel out gravity and even work against it. Thus it would only allow something to either float up and down at slow speeds. This was not something that he was aiming for as Roland wanted to have something faster.

“The regular levitation spell is working, time to go into stage two… I hope this works.”

Before continuing with the experiment he gave the floating cube a poke with his finger. It was a strange feeling to touch something that was just floating in the air. The cube really felt like it lost all of its weight. After shoving it around with just his index finger he decided to move away and behind some metal lining.

At the moment he was in the empty room where he usually tested his Runic Eye of Truth skill. To be safe he stuck a large plate of metal into the ground and surrounded it by some earth through magical means. There was a small slit left behind through which he could examine his creation and enough thickness to protect him from danger if the test went south.

It might have seemed that he was overdoing it just for a floating cube but he had a reason for it. While the levitation rune was quite basic and something that he had already been able to research, it wasn't the same for the adjustments he made. He would not be satisfied with only recreating spells into runic versions of them, what he wanted to do was to customize all of them to fit his needs. That was his true power, modification, and tinkering with the limits.

Thus he activated the runic program that he came up with for this occasion. Now that he was a tier 3 class holder he could do everything ten times as fast. One of the reasons for that was his stat multiplier and the other was the Parallel Thinking trait that had been transformed into an advanced version. It allowed him to focus on many more things at once. When coupled with his heightened calculation capability it was as if he was working together with a team of researchers. Yet it wasn't really a skill that gave him multiple personalities or actual brains, it had its limitations.

The cube’s side started to change color, from a pale blue that represented mana to a red. Following this change, it jolted to the side at a rapid speed. A burst of magical energy that was on the red side made it fly at an increased speed. Before it collided with a wall the red glow on one side died down and appeared on the other. A point of equilibrium was reached and it was able to stop before colliding with the wall.

This was the reason that he was looking from beyond this fortified location. He wasn’t sure if the cube wouldn’t just collide with the wall when activated and then explode. Thanks to his remote control skills he was able to control the cube by giving it simple orders. The operating system that it was running was still based on golemic creations and inside the cube was a tiny core handling all of the commands. Fitting in a runic battery was also a lot simpler now, as his and it was thanks to his upgraded version of the old Rune Compression skill.

This skill worked even on tier 3 runes while the previous Runic Compression one wouldn’t. With it he was able to fit a lot of runic components into a smaller space. The skill was still only level one which meant that he would be able to fit more and more in as he advanced through his levels. Perhaps in the future, the runic batteries would be able to fit into a square cube of one centimeter.

“This went better than expected, could it be thanks to my calculation speed?”

There was an incident where his first golem exploded. This was mostly due to hasty planning and material limitations. After it, Roland was sure to run his calculations through a couple of times before actually building a prototype for anything. Thanks to the increase in brain power it was now possible for him to actually calculate all the possible failures. The floating cube before him was a testament to his new skills and a new weapon that was almost ready to be assembled.

“I should probably do something about the red glow, a capable fighter will probably be able to analyze it. Now, what should I do next…”

After grabbing the floating cube and deactivating it, he began to ponder. He could either continue assembling more prototypes for this type of weapon or begin drawing up the plans for the new armor. It would also be capable of some floating yet it wouldn’t be proper flying. What he was aiming for was an enhancement to his movement. By lowering his weight he would be able to jump quite high. This would allow him to move out of trouble without burning through all of his mana.

“Oh hey boss, are you done? Was there…another accident?”

“Berning? No, nothing broke this time around.”

“Really? That’s good to hear.”

As he was walking out of his new temporary training area he met Bernir. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the young Jorg working on some in the ground. The room he was occupying was the large chamber where they performed most of the weapon tests. At the time being it was riddled with holes and the dummies had been destroyed.

“Will you tell me what you were testing in there?”

“Oh, it was just some stuff…”

Roland didn’t want to tell him that the devastation was due to his class advancement. After getting all those various skills and body enhancement he went through some tests. The testing room's devastated look was due to using his new gained power, a power that he hoped to use to protect his home.

“If you say so, at least Jorg will have something to do, I bet his skills will be leveling fast!”

“That is true…”

Roland glanced at the half-dwarven youth patching up the place while thinking of what he had learned. Perhaps he had no new armor yet, but the class that he was using was quite ferocious even without his equipment. He could only wonder how tremendous of a leap he would take after assembling everything that he wanted…