The Runesmith

“What’s that?”

“Looks like some high-quality spirit, something the dwarves probably value more than we do.”

“Just place it on that side then…”

At the city lord’s estate Arthur and his maid, Mary were going through the gifts sent to them by the various people in the city. This was a known custom of the land so it was something they expected. Most of the gifts arrived a few days ago but the one that Arthur was mostly interested in was brought in the day before.

“Precious gems, valuable elixirs, and costly alcohol, I’m not sure that I like this painting too much though, at least they tried…”

Mary was organizing the gifts by their worth. Some of them were slightly in bad taste, like a large painting of Arthur’s father. The person that decided on it probably didn’t think that the father-son relationship wasn’t as bad.

Then there were some costly items, the merchants and dwarves did show off their wealth. While the bottle of alcohol might have seemed like a bad gift, it would probably fetch the largest price at the auction house. It was quite the rare delicious concoction that a lot of people would pay many gold coins for.

“I’m not sure what that person from the adventurer’s guild is thinking though.”

Mary looked down to Arthur’s hands in which he was holding a letter. This was the only thing they received from the adventurers guild. While the gifts here weren’t all that special, they were still adequate.

“They know their position, not like I can run the biggest business out of the city.”

Arthur just shrugged as the adventurers guild was somewhat at a different scale than the others. While he could use his name to bully the others, he would not be able to do the same with the adventurers guild. Their monopoly on everything dungeon-related was widespread throughout the entire kingdom.

Even the high nobles had to keep an eye out for the guild masters. But this didn’t mean that they had to bow down to the common adventurer, those were still nothing more than convenient workers to them.

“They could have at least sent a gift basket instead!”

Mary pouted while grabbing the last box, it was somewhat heavy but not for someone that was a tier 2 class holder. It was a regular wooden box that was nailed shut from the top. This was not a problem for Mary, she just slipped her slender fingers into the small gap at the top and quickly pried it open while the nails remained stuck to the wood.

“Oh my, this looks… interesting.”

The maid reached into the box while Arthur looked from the side. The interesting look that his retainer was showing didn’t come out often so he was somewhat intrigued. Soon the content was revealed to be some strange metallic contraption with six legs that looked like a spider.

“Is that a golem?”

“It does look like one my lord but I haven’t seen this type before…”

While golems were considered rare they could be spotted here and there. Most people when they heard the name, an image of a monster popped into their heads. They were usually large hulks in dungeons that were of a more humanoid shape. They had a reputation for being a tough cookie to crack, even more, if their golem core was not exposed.

“It’s not working?”

Mary placed the strange-looking contraption that was supposed to be a golem down on the ground but it didn’t move. Neither she or Arthur knew anything about runic golems, at most they saw some at the auction houses or ones in the banks used for protection.

“Wait, there is something in the box my lord!”

The maid reached into the box that was filled out with straw and pulled out a small booklet. This reminded her of the time she was at the Runic Emporium, there too were instruction manuals for some of the wares being sold. Just as she had suspected the instruction pointed to something.

“Look at this lord Arthur, we are supposed to use something called the ‘Remote control”

“Oh, interesting…”

Arthur was handed the instruction manual while Mary went digging for this remote control object. She stuck her head right in and after some searching, she found a smaller paper box inside this large wooden one. This wasn’t all as inside this paper box besides the remote she found a small cylinder with some glowing liquid.

“I don’t understand, what are we supposed to do with this lord Arthur?”

She asked while looking at the young man but instead of getting a reply, there was silence. When turning she noticed that her lord was busy reading the instruction manual with quite the sparkle in his eyes. This was not something that she expected to see, the young lord that she knew rarely showed this expression, only when around his mother did he ever drop his guard like this.

“I see now, this shouldn’t be difficult, could you hand me that box, Mary.”

Arthur quickly got to work on the contraption after going through the instruction manual. While he worked Mary was handed the small booklet. There were detailed drawings of everything that was included in this box along with the golem, the first thing that Arthur needed to do was place the container with the glowing liquid into the golem.

It was a bit strange for the noble Lord to be the one assembling this golem but he did look happy. There was a small screwdriver that he had to use, it opened up a small latch on the side into which he could stick the canister in. From the manual, he knew that in this canister there was mana fluid to power the golem. The design was quite simple and it would be just as simple to refill it with a new one.

This was the power source without which the golem could not function. After connecting this part and closing the latch most of the work was done. What was left now was to use the remote control. Arthur injected a little bit of mana into it and the moment he did he could see some small runes starting to glow.

There was a large red button at the right-most corner of this rectangular-looking item. When he pressed it, the golem was activated. The small eye that was at the front started glowing and the legs followed soon after. Mary moved to her lord's side, as this was still a golem, it could very well be some kind of trap.

“Lord Arthur, be careful, we don’t know what this golem is, it could…”

“What? Do you think someone would be stupid enough to assassinate the new lord of Albrook?”

Arthur laughed as he didn’t think that he had enough worth for anyone to go after his head. No one would gain anything but the ire of the Valerian household by causing him harm. He knew that his family would be forced to send in some powerful knights to look into this matter if he ever died. For the perpetrator, this would be a nightmare as they would chase them down for daring to soil their perfect family name.

While he was chuckling his battle maid retainer saw things differently as she placed herself between her master and the spider droid. When activated the legs pushed the body off the ground and quickly turned toward Arthur.

“Calm down Mary, the instruction said that when activated the golem would ‘interface’ with whoever was holding this remote control, it would then imprint onto their mana signature.”

Mary was somewhat confused by the explanation but Arthur was knowledgeable enough to know what this meant. This remote was something similar to a control rod, but instead of having to constantly hold it, he only needed to go through the procedure once. After that, the golem was supposed to react to some voiced commands.

This was made apparent after the golem quickly went into standby mode. Its eye that was glowing green turned blue and it curled up its legs. Now it looked like some kind of sleeping spider that was ready to pounce on someone.

“The instruction said that there were some existing ‘runic programs’ but I’m not sure what that means…”

Before Arthur could press another button from the remote Mary interrupted him instead.

“Lord Arthur, wouldn’t it be better if we did this outside… I don’t think we need to be this close to the golem…”

Arthur gave out a sigh but nodded, his lady retainer was still afraid that this magical contraption could explode or something. Even if it wasn’t made to hurt the new owner, it didn’t mean that it was safe to be around it.

Mana fluid was quite known to be volatile as it was concentrated mana in liquid form. If handled without care it could be overloaded to cause a large explosion. Thus both of them and the guards that were standing watch outside relocated to the courtyard. There the servants witnessed the strange spider droid performing some tricks.

The remote control didn’t really have that many buttons but when Arthur clicked one, the droid started dancing around. Then another one made it perform a backflip which was quite surprising for a golem. These magical creations were not known for their agility, already seeing one this small was quite surprising.

This continued for about an hour until Arthur finally realized that he wasted so much time on playing. The golem didn’t have any armaments but it did have some visually stunning spells and one that produced a gentle tune. It was clear to him that this was just a presentation given to him by this runesmith. It was as if he was telling him that this was only a simple sample of what he could make a golem do.

Arthur and Mary returned to the lord’s office for another quick discussion. After going through the gifts there was a clear winner and his name was Wayland.

“This Runesmith should be more famous if he can create such marvels of magical engineering but…”

The spider droid was to the side and not turned off. Arthur on the other hand grabbed the log of the items sold at the Valerian family auction house. Just as he had expected there were no listings with Wayland’s name as the seller.

“This Wayland could be a potential asset…”

“You think so too my lord?”

“Yes, he must clearly have a grudge against the merchants and the dwarven union but why did he decide to stay here, I don’t really understand. There must be many better cities for a craftsman of his caliber, he should be able to easily find one where they would accept a human runesmith.”

To Arthur it was a mystery, the man just showed up out of nowhere and decided to go against a huge behemoth like the dwarven union. It didn’t seem that he was purely motivated by monetary gains. Mary also informed him about the orphanage situation, which painted Wayland in a more favorable light.

“Mary.”

“Yes, Lord Arthur?”

“Could you fetch Ferdinand for me?”

“Of course my lord!”

“Oh and prepare the carriage, I’ll be making a trip to the auction house.”

Arthur made a decision, after going through all of the paperwork that he had in this mansion he was ready to make his first move. It didn’t look like he would be getting much out of the old merchants. They had rooted themselves in the city and their web of contacts was wide.

But there was one dark horse in this city that had potential. This was of course the city's runesmith, Wayland. From everyone here, the man had the most potential and his morals also seemed to be in line with Arthur’s. Thus he made a decision to reach out to him with an olive branch.

….

Back at the workshop Wayland along with his two helpers was working tirelessly. They didn’t sleep for a few days again and Bernir along with Dyana were showing clear signs of exhaustion.

“Wayland sugar, I know that this is important but I think we need to take a break…”

Dyana called out while being covered in sweat, a rather sloppy-looking Bernir was down on the ground. Roland looked back to his two exhausted assistants while also panting slightly.

Since the reveal that the orphanage had been timed to be sold he had tossed himself into a working frenzy. The spider droid that he was supposed to fix in a week he knocked out in two days, he even drew up a custom instruction manual along with a special remote to go with it.

He wasn’t sure what he was hoping for as his expectations towards the new young lord were quite low. Even if he piqued his interest with his golem, he wasn’t really sure what that would give him. Would the person force the inspector to change their mind for him? He couldn’t see the noble brat just help him for nothing and signing an unfavorable contract to save Elodia’s orphanage was the last thing he wanted to do.

“Ah yes sure, take the rest of the day off… we are already ahead of schedule, we’ll be able to assemble the new smelter with this amount…”

Roland dropped the hammer to the ground while Dyana looked at him with a troubled expression. Like before Bernir was hoisted over her shoulder and carried out of the heated-up workshop. While his fire resistance skill had leveled up it was nowhere close to reaching the other two.

The inability for him to do anything about the orphanage situation was slowly eating away at him. Unbeknownst to Elodia he had Lobelia clue him in on everything through the help of the thieves guild contacts.

Apparently, the merchant they were dealing with had been involved with Albrook even before the dungeon appeared. The house that they had received had almost no worth before the adventurer guild appeared in the city and this was the main reason Elodia managed to get it.

At the start of Albrooks' rise, everything was still dirt cheap. Thanks to this, some of the first residents were able to get in good deals. This did probably leave a bad taste in some of the seller's mouths.

The contract that was signed was one of the more basic ones. The clause about the safety issues concerning children was not really taken seriously by many people and was mostly forgotten with time. It was still in there and now offered this man a way back to getting his old house. If he was successful in his scheme, the money from which he could sell it would be more than ten times what Elodia bought it for.

But from Roland’s standpoint, this was probably not the reason for going to this length. Instead, he was playing the long game. Other merchants were seen buying up other buildings or renting them. The explosion of new adventurers was still on the rise and would certainly go on for another few years.

This dungeon was a very newbie-friendly one. Thanks to this an adventurer could spend many years here grinding on their levels before ever needing to move towards a higher-ranked dungeon, that is if they even made it that far.

‘Bastard probably wants to split it up into rooms and make some kind of dorm for the adventurers.’

Roland started walking out of the workshop to clear his head while grumbling. A good way of making money in this city was through small bedrooms for the adventurers to live in. As long as they had a bed they were fine and with a constant stream of monster parts they could afford a higher price point.

Lobelia also brought him some troubling information, at first, he thought about forking up the money for the entire orphanage building. Regretfully it didn’t seem that the merchant was willing to sell it even if the price was many times over its real value.

He would also like to evade any unlawful ways of clearing up this problem as the inspector was one of the more influential officials of the city. It didn’t seem like threatening him would do them any good or would be easy to pull off.

But it seemed that it was one of the few options that he had. It might be possible to pay the thief guild a steep sum to take care of this problem. Then the other option would be to set up a temporary shelter for the kids close to his home. The cheapest option would be to use tents that usually adventurers camped out in the wilderness.

The thought of so many brats running around his workshop was already giving him a headache. Leaving them out on the streets didn’t seem right though. He had not yet discussed this option with Elodia as he knew that she would probably not ask him for help.

He was planning on telling her his tent plan soon though. Elodia did seem in a big rut ever since this predicament started. Probably having someone that she could rely on, would ease her nerves. Before he could reveal his lackluster plan though he got an unknown visitor.

As he was taking a stroll through his yard he decided to go outside and check up on Elodia. There right as he was opening the gate he met up with a certain person. The moment he saw him he almost laid an egg as he recognized him from various events and speeches that he made in the city, it was the old city mayor.