The Runesmith

The sound of hooves clopping on the hard ground filled the area. It was followed by the sound of wooden wheels spinning on multiple carriages. There were many people talking while trotting forward along with the horses. Their destination was the town of Albrook which was just around the corner.

Roland was just one of the many people with big dreams that had come here. Adventurers, merchants, and even entertainers, all of them were trying to hit it off big here. Everyone knew that with the opening of a new unexplored dungeon fame, glory and riches were awaiting everyone.

The main earners would be the people going into that dungeon but they would also be the biggest spenders. With the influx of mana stones, precious metals, and other magical resources it was certain for this developing city to evolve. Who would be left on top and who would falter in the end was up to the future.

‘Here I am…’

He hopped out of the carriage that was still outside the city to get a closer look at it from the outside. His feet landed on the dirt road that wasn’t very fit for these carts to go through. His posterior had taken some damage from the constant traveling, Roland hoped that he wouldn’t need to do something like this for a very long time.

While walking forward he stumbled a bit as his legs had gotten slightly numb. But he was still in good spirits, he was finally here, the promised land. The first thing that he noticed was the green grass that was everywhere.

Before coming here he expected the Dragnis Island to be mostly covered by dark rocks and even smoke. When someone like him thought about volcanic lands an image of molten lava and dragons popped into their head.

That was actually true if you continued to travel further into the land and towards the supervolcano in the middle. Most of the cities or towns on this island were located closer to the shore or by larger bodies of water like lakes and rivers.

On the way here they passed one of those, there was a large freshwater lake close by. Some rivers connected to it and people could even reach other towns when traveling through them on smaller boats. They weren’t quite wide and deep enough for actual ships to traverse long distances through them. There were some shallow patches that made such things impossible to go through. This left carriages and horses as the main ways of travel.

The people that he came with were also looking at the new city. Their faces showing mixed reactions at the sight in front of them. The town of Albrook was located in a valley in the distance there were some mountains with one looking larger than the rest.

This one was the dungeon, it was quite easy to spot as a small amount of smoke was coming out from it. It looked like a regular volcano, it had apparently just burst through one of the mountains surrounding the valley not so long ago. There was an earthquake that even signaled its creation along with a burst of smoke and flames in the distance.

Why were the adventurers looking so down on their luck? The town that they had come to make it big looked somewhat rundown and outdated. They were going towards the entry gate, it was guarded by two soldiers that looked a bit out of their element.

This caravan was quite long, people were already waiting to enter the city but things had been halted. The smell was also something to quickly forget about. The dirt road that they were on was lined with horse excrement. At least that was how it looked to Roland, if it belonged to some of the other creatures that people tamed here was unknown to him.

‘Think I’ve arrived really early here, the infrastructure is still developing…’

He could tell that the new dungeon town was a bit understaffed. There were people constructing a wall around it even as they spoke. Some soldiers and people that looked like officials were also standing everywhere.

With time this place should advance further, with the dungeon here and many adventurers bringing monster corpses to sell the circulation of coins would increase. With money progress was almost guaranteed, the people that created the first shops would probably make the most money in the end.

After some time passed they were finally able to enter from the south gate. There was a small fee to pay but with his current heavy wallet, this wasn’t much of a problem. The road continued inside through what looked like to be a poor quarter. There wasn’t much to see there besides shabby wooden buildings and more horse dung on the ground.

It then continued into the trader's area; this street was a more busy one, but fairly straight. There were various food stands on each side and peddlers were trying to sell their wares to the new people that were arriving. The usual slogans that promised cheap food for a few large copper coins echoed through this street.

Through this market street, they finally reached the market square. This would be the end of the line for this caravan of people and everyone would be going their own way. Roland stopped to look around, he spotted a Tavern to the left and a stable to the right. It did indeed have other creatures in there, like large deer looking animals with four sets of eyes.

‘Should I go to the adventurer guild first, or find an administrative building and ask about purchasable land?’

The time to jumpstart his adventuring carrier had arrived again. He decided to get that done first as sometimes having an adventurer card allowed a person to get better deals. The other adventurers were already heading there so he decided to just follow them there.

While continuing he took some time to examine the architecture. Most of the buildings were made from red brick, the windows that actually had glass in them were far and in between. If he ventured further into the city closer to the mayor's house he would notice more of them appearing. The disparity in wealth and classes existed here as well.

The person governing this developing town wasn’t a noble. From what Roland knew the noble that this land belonged to lived in a larger city and rarely visited it. It was governed by one of his subordinates that wasn’t even part of the noble cast.

This was also one of the reasons that he chose this place as his next base of operations. He was tired of having to work things out with nobles. A commoner as the main manager would probably see the bigger picture and not get things like noble pride involved. They could also turn out to be a greedy ones though, so he couldn’t let his guard down.

Like he expected the adventurer’s guild was still in the process of getting renovated. It looked like they had taken over one of the larger houses and were improving it. There were many workers shuffling around on scaffolds, they were actually putting up the guild sign at this very moment.

Roland looked at this for a moment before walking into the new adventurer’s guild. On the inside, the layout was different from what he was used to. It was an indication of the hasty construction of this building. Normally the guilds were kept uniform in their design to not confuse new and old adventurers.

There were a lot of people on the inside but the building was large. There was enough space for them all but there weren’t enough tables and chairs to fit them all. The bar in the back was getting built at this moment, normally there would be large drunk men having fun back there.

‘At least the notice board is there…’

The reception area was filled up and there was already a long line. There were only two ladies working there, they both looked swapped with work. Roland was surprised that these girls looked similar to all the other receptionist ladies that he had seen in the other cities.

One was a woman with pure black hair and an updo hairstyle. She was wearing the usual square-framed glasses. She looked like your no nonsense secretary that took her job very seriously. This he could see in the way she was handling her workload, her line was moving quite fast.

The other lady was a sun elf. She had a cheerful appearance, long blond hair, and a smile that would make your day go by faster. Her line was moving slower but that was probably due to the male adventurers taking their time in flirting with this beauty.

Seeing this Roland did the only right choice and placed himself in the elven girl's line. Not because he wanted to flirt with her but because she looked like the type that would bend the rules a bit if asked nicely. If that was the truth he would soon find out, well after waiting in line for close to an hour before it was his turn.

“Good afternoon, we welcome you at our Albrook Adventurer’s Guild, how can I help you?”

Roland was a bit tired of waiting in line, he was also wearing his armor along with the helmet to hide his face. This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary as some warriors tended to keep them on. There were even others who just came wearing all sorts of strange masks or exotic items.

“I’d like to have an adventurer’s card made, my old one got lost along the way…”

It was time for him to go through with his plan of getting his new card. It could go a couple of ways but he hoped that he was lucky enough to have it go his way.

“Oh my, you lost your adventurer’s card?”

The receptionist lady shook her head while placing one of her hands on her own cheek. Her long golden locks waved side to side as she overreacted by fidgeting around.

“Would you like us to reach out to the guild you had it made?”

If he went with that option he would have to disclose his old credentials, this was something he wanted to avoid so he shook his head side to side in refusal.

“No, I would like to have a new one made. I fear that your proposal will take too long.”

He brought the guild receptionist’s attention to the long waiting line and to the fact that the guild was still getting rebuilt. If they actually went through with what the woman was proposing it could take weeks. If they wanted it to be faster they would need to activate an expensive communication device that used up a lot of mana. Roland knew this and knew that they would probably want to avoid that.

“Is that so? Good choice sir, fill out these papers then please and I will bring over the measuring device. What rank were you before losing your card?”

Roland could hear people grunting behind him as they knew that making a new card could take long. Most of them were here to complete a mission or sell some items which wouldn’t take that long. It was his turn though, they would need to wait.

“Steel rank.”

Depending on the rank other types of identification devices could be used. He would also need to pay more money to make a steel rank card from the get-go.

‘I hope this thing works…’

He was wearing a magical pendant that he received from his previous boss, the gnome manager. It had a couple of functions in hiding a person’s status, in theory, it should be enough to affect this identification device that the adventurers were using.

The woman returned with some papers that he started to fill out. He had to sign some agreements with the guild like before. They wanted to make sure that everyone signed a contract to make it clear that they weren’t responsible for anything if an adventurer died in the dungeon. It was also an agreement on the fees that are deducted from the jobs an adventurer takes.

Some people might think that the taxation of these increased with the difficulty. It was the other way around, the weaker adventurers needed to give more of their hard-earned cash. The higher rank you were the more prestige you got, such workers were cherished and the guild started to invest in them. The easiest way of doing that was dropping some of those guild fees.

This made very much sense to Roland, why would the guild invest their time into people that were untested? There were already far too many adventurers out there at lower ranks, the harder it was for them to make it to a higher rank the better. The pay for higher graded missions was a lot higher as well, so the guild didn’t lose out that much.

The blond elf brought out one of the measuring orbs like previously. There was no way of going around this, without having your status measured for strange traits and titles there would be no card. Though there were a couple of things that these people would let through and ignore.

He placed his hand on it and then watched the woman look over the statistics. He could also see them this time around and they were bugged. The things that were mostly unreadable were his name and the classes that he possessed. You could figure out his level, also that he had three tier 1 classes.

“Sir… do you have some magical items on you, or perhaps any skills that affect identification?”

The lady knew that the device the guild had could be countered by other ones or by some rare skills. If the client had an item that blocked it out then it was easy to just remove it. If he had a skill or some kind of racial trait then it would be harder. She would need to get a more robust version of this identification orb but that one could fail as well.

“Does it matter? You can clearly see my status, do you need to see my classes? I wrote my name on this form so it should be fine. Do you want to spend the rest of the day checking for it while everyone here waits?”

He moved a bit to the side while pointing to the angry-looking adventurers behind him. Everyone here wanted to get things over with just like him. The longer it would take to get his new adventurer’s card commissioned the longer the people in the line would need to wait.

There also weren't any rules in place that forbade certain class holders to become adventurers. Even when they were a thief they could join up, only when there was some kind of warrant or wanted poster hanging around would they be turned away. With nothing like that existing about him, Roland hoped to get this process done.

“Well, Mr. Wayland is it?”

The elven woman looked over the papers that he filled out. He didn’t lie about them too much but he wrote in the regular versions of his classes. Runic Mana Scribe turned into the regular version and so did his Runic Blacksmith. His mage class was also written in as he didn’t think he could hide that.

He was going to be selling his wares here one way or another. Hiding that he was a runesmith would probably be out there sooner or later. He trusted the guild to hide his stats more or less, his father never did show up on his doorstep after all these years. Which meant that getting information from them wasn’t that easy even for a noble.

The abyssal cult might pose a bigger problem but they probably didn’t know what his true class was either. They wouldn’t think that some tier 2 runesmith would be able to break through that illusion device. The more they overthought the encounter the better it was for him.

“I’d at least need to see your face.”

The woman needed to confirm if he looked like any criminal, Roland moved his helmet up to reveal his young face. The elven lady even gave him a strange smile before getting a closer look.

“Everything seems fine, we will have your card ready by tomorrow. As you can see we are slightly busy these days.”

The woman laughed a bit while covering her face. Roland just nodded while walking to the side. He got a piece of paper with which he could later redeem for his brand new card. Somehow he had managed to complete this task with a new name to himself.

He decided to go with something else than Carmine this time around. The name came to him after remembering an old myth from his old world. It fit quite nicely with his persona and the name wasn’t uncommon.

‘Okay, while they are making my card I should see if I can buy a house.’

The next and most difficult task still was before him. Getting the right home for the future was very important. He intended to stay here for a while, for this he needed the right place of operation. Something not too big yet not too small and also at a good price.