The Runesmith

After some convincing and a lot of yanking with the help of Rebecca and Reyna they managed to peel the hammer off of Sahildr. Roland could barely hold this weapon, swinging it was out of the question.

"I just need it for my research, I won’t damage it, I promise!"

"All of you magic types say that before something goes wrong."

Apparently Sahildr was still hesitant about giving him her Warhammer for inspection. He wasn’t sure what it was about and he didn’t have enough time to hear the whole story.

"Fine, you can have it, but I’m staying in the room with you!"

Roland just shrugged as he didn’t care, this was even better as he didn’t need to carry the heavy thing all the way to his inn room. The two other girls didn’t join them, finding it too boring to watch Roland play around with runes.

"I’ll go check out if there are any worthwhile escort missions on the notice board, we can meet up at the tavern later."

Rebecca and Reyna left to go prepare for their own journey away. They had also decided to go somewhere else, this wasn’t the only town with a dungeon close to it.

The next couple of hours weren’t all that exciting. Roland had Sahildr place the hammer in his room on the floor, afraid that if he placed it on his flimsy table it would give out under the weight. He then took out a sheath of paper and got to copying. He wasn’t using his scribing skill, he just redrew the rune’s diagram with the help of the overlay that his debugging skill gave him.

He took his time as he didn’t want to mistakenly mess up this new schematic. After the first thirty minutes passed he heard a big thud behind him, it was his big muscly friend dozing off on his bed. He sniggered at her and then went back to work.

You have created the schematic for the Lesser Impact Rune [ Highest ]

Drawing skill L1 reached

You have gained 1000 experience points

He smiled slightly after hearing the system awarding him the experience points. He even managed to upgrade his drawing skill to the next level. He used to have the ’Basic Drawing skill’ but now it finally broke through. The progress of this skill had stopped at the L9 just like all the other basic ones.

Now further upgrading was possible this made him think that it was caused by him receiving the Runic Mana Scribe class. He figured that the diagrams were probably considered drawings by this leveling system. Previously he leveled this skill by sketching things, also painting was another skill altogether.

He also managed to recreate the diagram fully, earning another highest-graded rune. From what Roland knew the lesser runes were the worst ones on the market. After them came the common runes, then followed by greater runes, grand runes, and at the very top the legendary runes. The last ones were mostly only mentioned in fables and not much was known about them.

This wasn’t all as the runes went into even more subcategories. In sequence, they were: Lowest, Low, intermediate, high, and highest. A lesser rune with a ’highest’ sub-grade was comparable to a common rune with the ’lowest’ sub-grade. But this was something that Roland would figure out at a later date.

He rolled up the schematic that he just made and placed it together with the previous one he created. He now had two lesser rune schematics with no flaws.

He gave out a sight while thinking, could he scribe these runes on scrolls and sell them to people? He didn’t think the impact rune and detonation runes worked well by themselves. They only showed their true colors when attached to weapons.

The impact rune either increased the mass of the weapon it was on or used gravity, he wasn’t sure. He had asked Sahildr about her hammer, she told him that the heavy hammer part increased in weight the moment she activated the rune. She needed to time her attacks well to make use of it but when she did she could deliver devastating blows with it.

The detonation rune created a small controlled explosion on the tip of a weapon. Unless you managed to poke someone with it, it wasn’t that useful. If he scribed it onto a scroll it would only cause a small explosion while the impact rune might make the scroll just heavier.

This kind of showed him the limitations of some of the runes. The fire orb rune was the only one he could see working as a spell scroll, he only needed to get it to target enemies. Maybe if he combined it with the detonation rune he could turn it into some kind of targeted grenade spell.

"Come to think of it, I need to make a schematic for that fire orb rune too..."

While speaking out loud he heard a strange sound.

"Hrrrrrrrr"

He turned his head towards the loud noise only to see his muscle friend snoring on his bed. She was just sprawled out with her hands and legs in an ’X’ shape. He could hear her snoring loudly while scratching her belly, which made him squint his eyes.

’Oh right, she was here...’

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"Hey, I’m done, you can take your hammer now..."

The large Goliath female just snored some more and rolled onto the other side. There wasn’t an ounce of femininity in this tanky girl. Roland scratched his forehead before placing both his hands to his mouth as if he was going to shout.

"Hey, is that free wine over there? You can drink all you want, no way!"

He made sure to yell towards her direction and he almost instantly got a reaction. She raised her head up high, her eyes opening wide and drool running down her mouth.

"Free whuine!?"

She was still a bit drowsy so her words didn’t come out right but instead of wine, she saw her party member snorting at her while laughing.

"Heh, finally you’re up, you can take your hammer now."

"Huh? no wine?"

It took a few seconds for Sahildr to realize that she was made a fool off. Her eyes narrowed and she moved forward with haste, putting Roland into a headlock while rubbing his head with her knuckles.

"Why you little!"

Roland didn’t have time to react and not like he was scared. He got his scalp rubbed and he pleaded for mercy, soon enough he was free to go his hair all ruffled up. Sahildr took her hammer back and examined to see if it was working right, Roland took a glance while thinking back to moments earlier.

’Was I always this childish?’

He contemplated, he could have just woken the girl up normally but for some reason, he had the urge to plug her nose or even splash water on her face as a prank. The cogs in his brain started to turn, he had a few theories to go with. The scariest one of them all was that he was somehow he had fused his psyche together with the boy that was once the true Roland.

He thought back to the past, he did enjoy climbing those trees at the Arden Estate though he never considered the kids there to be his peers. Before he could have a mental breakdown about himself he was brought back to reality by Sahildr.

"Hey, you okay there Roland? You look kind of pale, did I rub that big melon of yours too hard?"

He momentarily tossed his identity conundrum to the back of his head while frowning at Sahildr.

"I’m fine, I bet Rebecca is waiting for us at the adventurer’s guild, we should go."

Roland still had some of his stuff in this room, he didn’t pack up just yet. He wanted to do it after having said his goodbyes with the silly trio. They might have not been around each other for that long but they have managed to form a bond. He couldn’t actually remember others being so nice to him even back in his old life.

"Yeah, yeah... I’ll be sure to escort you, now noble lord, let us depart to the adventurer’s guild~"

She did some misaligned bow and then opened the door in front of Roland. She stood there like a knight that was holding the way open for their noble lady.

"Please don’t call me that... people will think that it’s actually true."

The two finally left, Roland was going to use the train he had come to this city for his getaway. It didn’t have a direct route to Edelgard but it was a lot faster than going by horse carriage.

It took them ten or so minutes to get back, Rebecca and Reyna were already sitting at the usual table with a piece of paper in hand.

"So you two lovebirds finished?"

Rebecca called out while whistling at Roland and Sahildr, the Goliath lady looked ticked off by that remark.

"What would I do with a little brat like that? He doesn’t even have hair growing down there!"

"Oh, so you’ve seen it?"

Rebecca stuck out her tongue while Sahildr got increasingly maddened.

"Quiet down you two, the idiots in this guild will misunderstand..."

Roland responded while covering his face with a hood, the other adventurer’s in the guild just laughed from the side while also whistling.

"Hey it’s Little Goblin Slayer Emperor and his harem, they are being even more intimate than usual!"

After garnering some notoriety he had gained another title for being the only man in a mostly female party.

"We should ask the squirt emperor about some tips boys."

The older adventurers called out from the side while sniggering at the party of three teenage girls. The girls were around the age of sixteen or seventeen and the youth that was with them was believed to be twelve.

The goliath girl turned around while shaking her fist at some of the men, they in turn just laughed more while backing off not wanting to get smacked in the face. After successfully scaring off the other adventurers she sat down at the table while grumbling, her hammer leaning against her chair.

"So, you got it?"

Rebecca nodded while bringing out a piece of paper, it was a job offering for Steel and Silver ranked adventurers. It was an escort type of mission, they were going to be the bodyguards for a large caravan of merchants. This was quite a common type of job listing and was mostly safe as bandits would rarely attack such large convoys.

"Ah, one more thing Roland you have your second class now, right? You should go update your adventurer card."

Rebecca mentioned while Roland nodded. The requirements to go from Bronze to a Steel adventurer was getting a second tier 1 class and having finished some missions. Roland and his party were frequent visitors to the Dungeon and he had gone through the minimum trial period of half a year so he was now eligible for it.

"Ok, I’ll be right back, this shouldn’t take long. You three should probably discuss a couple of things."

He turned around and left, he went over to the same lady that had given him his first adventurer card.

"Hey there Miss Cellica, I’ve obtained my second class..."

He gave a quick explanation and the lady nodded. She took the same identification orb out as before to get it checked, he didn’t like that they were scanning his status but not like he could do much about it. There were enough benefits to working as an adventurer to let them got through with the examinations. The card update didn’t take that long as they just needed to change it from Bronze to Steel.

"Here you go, have a nice day."

The lady bowed slightly while showing him away, there were many other people waiting in lines and there was more work to be done.

"So, how does it feel to move up in the world?"

"It’s just a notch up from Bronze, you know well that unless you get to Silver you won’t really be taken seriously."

Roland replied to Rebecca’s remark after he returned to the table. He also noticed that there was a bag laying on the table right next to where his sitting spot was.

"Isn’t this your storage bag?"

"Aye it is, you’ll find some coin in there to get you started, think of it as a little parting gift from us. We did agree on an equal split."

He took the bag and glanced at it, he clearly wanted to take it but while reaching out he stopped his hand.

"What? Why are you hesitating, did you forget that we got that other bag from that guy? It’s twice the size of this one, you can take it!"

"Yeah just take it."

"Take"

The three called out while he nodded and grabbed the bag, he strapped it to his side while hiding it under his robe. He would peek inside of it when he was alone.

"T-thanks..."

He rubbed his neck feeling a bit uncomfortable about the generosity of his party members. He had thought that having gotten rescued by them was enough, it didn’t feel right to ask about more gold or items while splitting.

The girls smiled after seeing the youth act all shy.

"So when will you be leaving?"

They asked him.

"Probably today, I think my ride leaves for the next city tonight..."

He would be going far away, there would be a lot of stops and he would have to go to switch between different magic trains on the way to reach his destination.

"That so...

"Want us to send you off?"

"You don’t have to..."

An awkward conversation ensued while the group of four stood up and left the adventurers guild. The girls would be heading to a new city and be trying to get themselves a new 4th party member there. They were already close to maxing out their second-tier 1 class and would probably be reaching a tier 2 class in the foreseen future.

It didn’t take long for Roland to get his belongings from the inn, with the storage bag carrying around all of his items would be quite easy. Back outside the group huddled closer, Roland wasn’t really thinking about them following him all the way to the train station so this would be as far as this would go.

"So, this is it... don’t forget about us... and remember you promised to make us those weapons and armors!"

Rebecca replied happily while holding both her hands to her hips.

Sahildr delivered a smack to his back that made him almost fall as she always did.

"Yeah take care of yourself oh mighty lord."

"Take care..."

Reyna replied in a monotone voice while twiddling her thumbs.

"I will and don’t worry, I’ll probably be stuck in a blacksmith’s shop for quite some time."

The time finally came and he turned around, he wasn’t good with things like this and he wasn’t sure if he would be able to see these three oddballs in the foreseen future. He would be sure to remember them as the time spent in this city was something that he cherished. He thought that this was for the best, he didn’t want to involve the girls in his family problems.

The three girls remained in place while waving, calling out to him once in a while which made Roland wave with his hand one last time without turning around. He finally made a turn, leaving the view of the three that were watching him from afar.

"So he is gone huh?"

"Yeah..."

Sahildr asked while Rebecca replied, her eyes getting suspiciously moist.

"You’re never good with things like this, at least he didn’t have to see that ugly face of yours covered in snot."

Unbeknownst to Roland, his party members weren’t taking the separation all that well. Sahildr’s face contorted into quite the mess and tears were running down her cheeks, snot all over. She started sobbing uncontrollably which made the other two follow suit.

"Common... let us go to the tavern... stop crying you’re making the people uncomfortable!"

"Who’s crying, I’m not crying!"

Some people could see a goliath female with her head down and two other girls patting her back. They looked to be saddened while walking into the city. The reason for their distress was close to reaching the train station that would take him on a trip through the large kingdom. The journey would take at least a week as he needed to change stations multiple times. Some of them would even require him to use regular carriages.

"Well...Farewell, my friends, it was fun while it lasted."

He sat down at the train station and waited, an old part of his life was coming to an end. What waited for him next was unknown, he was nervous to a certain extent but also excited. Nervous about the unknown, excited about the possibilities of his future life that was ready to begin.