The Runesmith

“It really isn’t reacting…”

Roland mumbled to himself while looking through the hole in the wall that he made. On the other end, he could see a flaming skull looking his way. Soon this skeletal monster turned away as if it couldn’t see the human looking at it and then vanished back behind the corner.

He remained in place while looking at the shadows in the distance. This was not the only monster wandering this place. Other various sounds were heard from this direction and he even saw another skeletal enemy that was considered much more troublesome than even a Champion.

While a Skeleton Champion was a tough foe the magic counterparts were a lot more troublesome. They could summon many lower leveled skeletons without end to help them in their fight. Then while their small battalion of skeletons kept their enemies busy they would sling damaging spells from safety.

‘That one didn’t react either, now I’m sure…’

The undead type monsters were considered mostly just magically animated corpses that saw the world differently. They were quite sensitive to life and magical energy. If something like a lich couldn’t see him when he was standing there then there was only one explanation of what this was.

‘An entrance to another separate dungeon.’

This was a rarely seen phenomenon when two separate dungeons that had their own cores collided with each other. During his studies, Roland came across a book that described a few instances where this happened.

This supported the theory that the dungeons were divided into zones through which the monsters inside couldn’t pass through. Just like in this situation where the monster ignored the human on the other side even when being stared at directly.

The missing corridor on his minimap could be explained by the two dungeons interacting with each other. He theorized that the two sub-spaces collided with each other and might have been causing his detection devices to be erroneous.

What the monster here saw wasn’t the hole in the wall, it was just a wall. The skeleton and the Lich could not see past the border of their own dungeon. Unless Roland moved through the hole they would not react. He thought about throwing a rock at the monster for another test but gave up as he didn't want to push his luck too much.

The small opening that he made would also mend itself back after some time. The dungeons seemed to have some pre-programmed venues and would repair the broken-down walls with time. This was why mining them was such a lucrative business. The tough part was just finding a room like this where the treasures were exposed.

“I’m not sure if I’m the luckiest man alive or the unluckiest one…”

Roland gave out a sigh while moving away from the dungeon entrance that he discovered. His drones were back at work and drilling into the ground as even with this discovery, he still intended to stick to the old plan. There were too many variables for him to just enter the new dungeon, plus the two monsters that he saw in there were far more dangerous than the lone boss that he faced before.

While he could profit immensely from this discovery, it could ruin him if the wrong people found out about this place. The room filled with precious metals was already a massive risk but now he found a doorway into a higher-ranked dungeon.

If he decided to sell this information to the adventurer’s guild or the thieves guild he could probably earn a small mountain of gold. The earnings of the guild would increase dramatically through the tier 3 monsters and treasures that were probably within that dungeon.

That would probably be the smartest thing to do, as withholding information like this was considered against the law. The commoners didn’t have permission to enter the dungeons before the adventure guild officially opened them up. Most of the time, the first dungeon clears would bring in higher rewards and some costly treasures would never be seen again.

Thousands of golden coins and high-quality materials were on the line here. If someone discovered that he was in possession of such information they would do anything to make him cough it up.

Even though he knew the danger, Roland thought that he should withhold this discovery for now. What he would gain for the information didn’t outweigh what he could profit from this in the long run. He was looking at a gold mine of experience, one that he was the only one aware of.

He knew that if he went to the adventurer guild they would take over this place. No one would be able to go inside without the proper papers, this including him. At this point in time, he was still only a silver rank adventurer as he never bothered to go through with his gold rank test.

This one wasn’t as easy as the little battle with Armand. To pass it he would need to go to the guild again, first, they would re-evaluate his levels with another measuring device. It would be impossible for him to use his old tactic of hiding his class as he did before.

The gold adventurers dipped into the elites which made the tests more precise. He would need to at least reveal that he had the Runesmith Lord class during the examination. Then if he passed the guild would send him out into another guild to pass the test.

This was a somewhat strange tradition of sending adventurers to other cities on long journeys. They would be given some standard gold rank quests to fulfill along with a time limit. Most of the time a worker from the guild would be assigned to the party and travel with them like a shadow. He would remain hidden during their tests and grade their performance from a distance.

This role was mostly given to other adventurers that were over the golden rank or retired ones that worked at the guild. Some magical items were given to these testers to keep them from harm.

These guild members would not be held accountable if the person taking the test died. Their job was to watch from afar and grade their performance. If they got themselves into trouble that they could not handle, then it was their fault.

He was a busy man, there was no time to go on long journeys to other cities. At least not while his business was expanding at a fast rate. Adventuring was just a means to an end for him to get his shop running. His true skills remained in crafting and runes.

That didn’t mean that he wasn’t interested in a deep down this rabbit hole here. His levels have been stagnating lately, the only good experience that he received was from monsters over his level like the boss he faced or by making complicated tier 3 rune schematics.

After creating a runic spider drone like this he would gain a lot but it was only for the first one. When creating copies or ones that only had small changes his experience would decrease dramatically. This was also the reason why craftsmen initially leveled up fast but with the years they started to stagnate if they didn’t innovate.

“This was unexpected, what should I do now…”

Roland looked at Agni, who was somewhat interested in the hole in the wall. After going through a few things through his head he decided to perform a little test before covering up the hole.

Without having good means to go against the monsters inside, it was better to return home and come up with a plan of action first. The resources that he was gathering would allow him to increase his power. He would also need to research the best ways of combating undead beings like a Lich, without the use of divine spells that priests used.

They were a troublesome bunch as they didn’t feel any pain and had unlimited stamina. A normal monster would still react or back away when sustaining some damage. These bony adversaries on the other hand would chase after their opponent even if they had to hop on one leg.

Normally they could be burned to ash by magic but he was facing the volcanic undead. Without a tier 3 freeze spell, he feared that he wouldn’t be able to put them on ice as easily as their tier 2 counterparts.

With that in mind, he decided to see if he could map out the area behind the hole. For this small expedition, he would need to sacrifice one of his spider drones. After signaling one of them to come over he went down to remove a couple of the attachments.

The drone would not need the drill or the net that he used for the boss chamber. It was best to take out what he could use later as he didn’t expect for his creation to come back. Instead, he inserted a backup mapping device that still looked like an iron ball into the drone. After connecting it to the main runic program he hoped to boost the drone's sensors.

“Okay drone number 3, initiate manual override.”

The drone’s golem eye gave out a weak signal before its many spider legs moved into the default standing position. In this manual mode he could pilot his golem-like a remote-controlled toy car.

He had actually gone ahead and created a little game-like controller. It was almost identical to the ones that he used back in his modern world. He had done it mostly out of curiosity but also as a product that he might be able to sell to nobles. They would probably fork up a large sum of gold for toys and he reckoned that controlling a golem with a controller was more interesting than giving it voiced orders.

After fiddling with the golem cores and getting more knowledge about the golemic eyes he was also able to produce a crude image. The resolution was quite low but he was able to get a somewhat low-res depiction of what the golem was looking at. With more time he expected to refine this technology to align more with the modern time high definition cameras.

There was also the main issue of him not being able to view the image in real-time. He was able to receive the signal but it took a while for his runic system to render the scene. Then he also needed to use a special device that was sitting back at his home to view it. With his current armor, he could at most bring up the holographic map that showed him the basic shapes.

Now it was time to check the insides of the other dungeon out. The droid was placed by him directly inside of this hole only after he was sure that there weren’t any monsters around. Only then did he step away and implement his controller.

The droid sprung to life and moved forward slowly. Its legs had special runes that allowed it to attract itself to the ground it was walking on. Thus he decided to cling to the ceiling for now.

‘The map is working now.’

As the small golem wandered through the threshold of the other dungeon the mapping feature was restored and he could see further in. There he saw many long corridors that went on for a bit and something that looked like a larger area. The range of his map was somewhat limited but it was enough to show him the general layout.

‘Isn’t the super dungeon a maze type with many levels?’

From what Roland knew, that main dungeon on this large island was considered a maze. It was composed of many corridors that varied in size. While it was mostly a volcanic dungeon there were large areas that were different from the rest. Wide-open ones like in this Albrook dungeon and some even reported large bodies of water that were deep underground.

Albrook wasn’t the only city that had a lesser dungeon like the one he was in. But considering that there weren’t any other dungeons in the vicinity the most logical explanation was that this was the super dungeon. In some reports that he read, the researchers stated that the super dungeon could very well have already spread through the whole island they were living in.

Finding this opening could confirm some of the claims as Albrook was somewhat far away from the main large volcano in the middle of these lands. It was still not that close to the sea which could mean that the super dungeon still had some place to grow.

‘Looks good but without the feed from the main golem eye I won’t really know what is in there…’

The minimap didn’t really say much as the whole place looked like one of the dungeon levels above. What lay waiting on the inside was unknown; he could only order the droid to move closer to that larger room. Soon it disappeared behind the corner to where the Skeleton Champion wandered towards.

His luck was good that day as he didn’t see any red dots on the map. Without being given a clear image of what he was doing he could only look at lines of code that the golem was giving him.

There was information about what it was seeing there but it would be extremely hard to use it to formulate a good tactic. He started feeling like a certain hero from a movie that he watched that spent some time looking at green code. It wasn’t as easy as they made it out to be as he could barely decipher if something was in the way of the droid he was staring at.

The small golems journey continued as Roland increased the pace by dropping down to the ground. With no enemies on the map, it seemed like the better choice than wandering on the ceiling and bumping into stalactites.

But then as he was about to go around the last corner a red dot flashed for a moment on the screen. The signal went dead almost instantly as that dot appeared and it was clear that the golem went down in one shot.

‘Shit, what was that?’

Roland clicked his tongue as the golem was just about to walk into the large chamber. He wanted to at least see what was in there. Instead, his creation was destroyed by some unknown entity inside that could have been any of the undead creatures that he saw previously.

There was also a surprisingly loud sound following the destruction of the spider droid. It didn’t sound like anything that he was familiar with but probably belonged to some kind of strange monster. Without any reason to keep this hole open, he decided to plug it up for now. The wall would mend itself back to its original state but he still didn’t want to see tier 3 monsters wandering on the other side.

Roland soon got back to work, with the loss of one droid he would be able to get as many materials but that didn’t bother him in the least. There was enough here to last him for a while, when he returned a new plan would unfold. One that would allow him to level up a lot faster than someone should be able to.

There were monsters that were a whole tier above him. Managing to kill one of them would allow him to gain a massive amount of experience. With them being stuck in another dungeon his escape route was assured. He could just waltz in, throw a few spells and quickly duck back into this cave if something went wrong.

This was something that he intended to use to further his strength even more. Before that he needed to improve his gear so that he was actually able to damage a tier 3 foe. Thus he increased his pace, his heart rate shot up and he felt something that wasn’t usually there, a pinch of excitement.