The Runesmith
chapter-197

There was a limit of how many passive class buffs he could select, with the Runesmith Lord one and the new one he needed to make a decision. After some consideration, he decided to go with his first mage class. It gave him a big boost to mana and mana regen while the Runic Blacksmith went for stamina. There was a lot of overlap between the Runic Blacksmith the Runesmith Lord and his new Runic Engineer class when skills were considered.

The passive buffs that this class was giving him made it seem that it was focused on work. The stamina increase and regeneration along with all the passives would allow him to work for longer without getting tired.

His mana reserves didn’t get much of a boost after attaining this class, mostly due to the Runic Blacksmith mana increase not being there anymore. But with how large his mana pool already was he wasn’t all that worried. Then he also got a decrease in using runes which would probably still offer him more uses from them in the long run.

After going through the list of new abilities of his new job he did want to give out a sigh. All of these skills would allow him to work more and get tired less. His initial goal was to work less not more but this system was just pelting him with abilities tailored to just that, working more.

The stamina increase wouldn’t only help him swing a heavy hammer for longer, it would also aid his dungeon runs greatly. The heavy armors that he wore did drain his stamina during battles and the increasing heat only added to it. Still, it was mostly a manufacturing class so there would probably not be many skills that would directly aid him during battles.

‘Will the increase in stamina help me with this?’

Roland’s status screen flickered away while he looked to his hand. A small leather satchel was there with one of the simplest spatial enchantments that he owned. The item he was holding was something that he once found in the dungeon. It probably belonged to a new adventurer that either died or ran away from monsters.

The enchantment on it was quite faint, there wouldn’t be space for many items but it was still better than bringing a backpack to a fight. Now the big question on his mind was, could he copy the spatial enchantment with his Runic Eye of Truth.

He placed the small leather satchel down on the workbench while standing in the mostly empty room. His head was already starting to hurt after the memories of the previous activations of this skill flooded it. The experience that he went through was truly uncomfortable and even after all of them the skill didn’t level up once.

Thus he could do two things now. Either he waited for this new skill to go through a couple of levels while he examined simple runes or go through with it now. The first choice was the more logical one as the success increased and the strain on his body would probably be reduced.

Yet, for someone that didn’t know what the next day could bring this might not be an option. Even though he might have gotten the stress resistance skill this didn’t mean that Roland didn’t worry about his future. Now even more after he was slowly getting attached to other people around him.

If he was able to create a spatial rune then his work would be taken to another level. There would be so many new possibilities, perhaps he wouldn’t even need to use the bulky golem on his mining attempts. Instead he could inscribe a rune onto his armor that could house some of his creations.

This was quite a lofty goal as even the large spatial bags that he owned had their limits. Their size limit was mostly to about four to five square meters. Which was enough for cut up monster parts, ores and his golems.

How difficult to recreate one bag would be he could only speculate, then he would need to worry about the implementation. These magical bags didn’t seem to need any mana to work but this didn’t mean that the runic variant wouldn’t.

While normally a person became more restrained this didn’t apply that much to Roland. After going through many experiments he was willing to put his body through pain to achieve his goals. It would be the same now as he didn’t want to wait months or years for this skill to level up.

To prepare himself for this test he decided to bring along some of the leftover healing and mana potions. These were now slowly running out as he had been having to douse his face with them to make the pain go away. The pain numbing ones were the first one that he used while hoping that he could get through this.

Resilience was his newest skill but he wasn’t sure how it worked. It didn’t seem that it would lower his pain threshold but instead let him recover faster from difficult situations. But he wasn’t sure if willpower would help him with the pain but it might help him keep a cool head to note down the runic structure.

Next to the satchel that he was going to examine was a stack of blank sheets of paper. Instead of a pen he would be using a pencil as he wasn’t sure if he could keep his hand steady so the ink would not spill over.

While he was confident in his memorization skills he wasn’t sure what he was in for. This could be a new runic spell structure that was altogether different from the ones he had witnessed. The plan was to peek at it for a few seconds and then quickly deactivate the eye skill, then he would just need to scribble down what he had seen and continue.

‘Well then, here goes nothing.’

Roland nodded to himself before placing the satchel on the workbench. There was nothing else around it besides one of the clear paper sheets and his pencil. After sitting down on a stool he steeled his resolve before activating the Runic Eye of Truth.

“Ugh…”

One of his eyes started glowing to indicate that he was using this special ability. It took about a second but soon he started noticing glowing blue runes appearing on the spatial bag that he was looking at. This as before was followed by a throbbing pain to his eye but he powered through it.

Seconds started passing and while holding his breath he continued to look at the runes before him. The structure was truly unique, it didn’t seem to resemble any elemental spell that he had seen before nor any of the illusion ones either. It looked like a totally different field of study, spatial magic.

This field of magic was already wide spread through this kingdom yet it was a lot more difficult to get into than elemental magic. It required the mage to alter the space around them and the most prominent form of this field was spatial storage.

His only contact from the magical academy would not explain much even when he asked. After more time had passed Roland started speculating that either the Professor was stingy or he didn’t know as much as he would let him believe. Now after witnessing the runic structure before him he understood that perhaps he was right in not offering him an answer.

“...”

Within a few seconds, he was already sweating bullets and forced to halt his attempt. His hands continued to work though, every runic structure was noted down along with any speculations on how it might work. Yet there was quite a bit to decipher from this, the skill was somehow translating the enchantment into runic but didn’t explain anything. Already he was seeing shapes that he had never seen before. Both at the circuitry and the software level of his knowledge.

After the peak, Roland had to lean against the workbench while taking a few minutes to rest. His head was hurting as always but it was not a level that he could not continue. He wasn’t sure if it was due to the Resilience skill but he found the pain going away somewhat sooner than before. Thus after feeling better the noting down continued until a certain point where his hand started to shake.

Finally, after the third activation, he seemed to have reached his limit. A lone droplet of blood dribbled down onto the white paper that he was writing on. It was clear that if he continued past this point he risked injuring himself greatly. Yet there was a small reward that followed after this punishing act.

The moment the skill was added to his repertoire he started feeling better. With his abnormally high stats and the tier 2 multiplier, the pain resistance skill was boosted.

“Pain resistance huh?... I need to be careful with that…”

Roland grabbed a healing potion from the side along with a mana potion. While the skill seemed good it was a double-edged sword. Pain was just a mechanism through which the body showed a being where it was injured. It alerted of the presence of the problem that could potentially cause harm and without it, a person would be unable to tell before it was too late.

If his body became numb to any form of pain then he could let injuries fester. He could become unaware of an injury that he might have suffered. But it also would help him push through pain in dangerous situations thus he would need to be careful to not endanger his own body.

‘Would be nice if I could use those priest spells…’

While resting his eyes he thought back to the time he saw Sister Kassia use her healing miracles. The healing potions were somewhat inferior to the divine magic a priest could perform. They were slower working and their potency was also lower at a base level.

Buying high grade elixirs would shorten the gap but those were hard to come by in a place like this. This was why bringing a cleric for prolonged dungeon runs was always a must. While the potions would run out the healer could recharge their mana with time and offer aid for a longer period of time.

“I should probably stop for now…”

Roland mumbled while looking at the notes that he made. Even though he could only glance a couple of times he had managed to draw up partial schematics of some of the new runes. For now, he had focused on the elements that he didn’t know, then later he would be able to perform some tests.

Yet he wasn’t sure if he should be performing tests on spatial magic quite yet. What if he created a miniature black hole or got his limbs sucked into the warped space that these spatial spells created. This was a dangerous field of magic that had already caused some old Archmages to vanish from the face of the world.

While he wanted to continue, his body was feeling sluggish again. For the time being, he didn’t receive another debuff but if he continued past this point he felt that it would appear again.

Thus he decided to postpone his spatial rune research. There were other pressing matters that he needed to attend to, one of them was the golem that he promised to construct for the lord. It would be his re-entrance into the world of auction houses and a chance for his brand to be released into the world once more.

But before that, he also had another skill that needed testing, the Runic Restructuring skill. Thus he grabbed the notes that he had made and headed towards the main workshop area. There he rummaged through the shelves to find an old gauntlet made from regular steel. It was an old product that didn’t have much worth now but he could use it to test this new skill.

This gauntlet had an old rune that could produce a mana bolt from the palm area. With it, he headed towards the testing area where all of the previous ranged tests took place. Even before arriving there, he could hear sounds of spells being discharged.

“Oh hey boss, finished with your tinkering?”

It was Bernir and in his hand, he had the runic rifle. While the two girls didn’t take the gun training too seriously his assistant did. He always took some time from his day to shoot up the training dummies. Regretfully he wasn’t gaining any marksman related skills even due to firing this weapon daily.

“Somewhat, I just want to test something, don’t mind me.”

Roland just nodded at Bernir while entering as he didn’t want to bother him in his training. The old metal glove that he was wearing didn’t go unnoticed but he wasn’t barraged with any questions as his assistant knew that he was busy.

While Bernir was shooting up the place Roland tested out if his old creation still worked. After taking aim at a free wooden target he released a bolt of condensed mana. With his current stats, the weapon was enhanced and delivered a devastating hit to the poor wooden dummy.

It didn’t go unnoticed by him that the regular steel that this glove was lined with was deteriorating fast, even more, when he increased the output. But he was not here to congratulate himself on his improvements, it was time to test his new skill.

Runic Restructuring was activated. It was a strange feeling but he needed to somewhat focus on the runic structure of the mana bolt spell. For his first try, he decided to go with something easy, shifting the mana bolt spell to something similar which would be a mana arrow.

While looking down at the glove he witnessed the skill activating. The runes started glowing in a blue light while altering themselves before his eyes. The mana drain on him wasn’t that big all things considered and after about five seconds the spell had restructured itself into the new one.

He held out his hand before the target again and activated it again. This time around instead of the bolt of mana an arrow shot out. But after one shot he noticed the drop in power along with one in quality. From the highest, it went down to high along with burning through some of the material it was inscribed on.

The testing continued for a bit longer as he continued to alter between other mana styled spells. Soon enough the runic structures started deteriorating into the lowest grades and finally into something that could not be used anymore. The old glove had gone past a point where a quick skill could mend it back into its old form.

‘It’s just at the first level so I expected this much, perhaps if I combined it with the Rune Mending skill it would last through more punishment. It's not that I can't change the rune structure myself but this skill allows me to do it with little to no focus it's also much faster this way...’

While Roland deliberated on the validity of using this skill in combat Bernir had completed his aiming routine. He had walked over to where his boss was standing and mumbling to himself. Soon Roland felt a tap on his shoulder that caused him to lose his train of thought.

“Hey boss, not sure if it's the right time but I’ve finished with those golem parts that you wanted.”

“Oh? Good job.”

“Yeah, they are in the first workshop.”

It seemed that Bernir had managed to get through his durasteel smelter practice, now it was up to Roland to combine the parts into a golem that he wouldn’t feel embarrassed about.