The Runesmith

‘Haven’t been here in a while…’

Roland was wearing the more compact version of his armor without the helmet part. Even then he kept his face somewhat covered with the robe that he draped over his body. After so many years of hiding from pesky family members, it was hard to change his ways. It didn’t feel right if he was not covered head to toe with armor or back at his home.

Before he was the adventurer’s guild that needed to give him the gold ranker test. For it he would need to leave the city and rendezvous with someone from an affiliated guild. That someone would be the judge that after the task was over decided if he was worthy of the gold rank.

Now, this was somewhat a troublesome part of the whole deal. While from the outside it might have looked professional for another higher rank adventurer to tag along to keep a newbie in line, sometimes it went astray. Some of the chaperones were less than stellar in their morals, sometimes the newbie ended up forking up some of their gold just so they could pass the test.

Would he have luck with his test checkers or would he have to bribe them? Roland was someone with a lot of money but that was also known by the guild. If the person grading him was to fail him for not paying up he would be sidelined for half a year. The half-year was not the problem though but losing valuable time on repeating the rank-up tests was.

Elodia did say that she would try to talk Solana into giving him a lighter test. Also, there was the issue with his status screen becoming open to prying eyes which could be avoided with her help. This was not something the union could get involved in either so he should have been feeling more at ease. Yet for one reason or another, he was not looking forward to leaving this city. His home and everything he owned were here.

‘There is always something that doesn’t go according to plan…’

The incident with the ant mine came to his mind. Thus he would like to avoid any tasks that involved entering areas that hadn’t been explored. Ones that involved mysterious disappearances were also similar. Most of the time the reason was some kind of powerful monster that had evolved and left its habitat. Without knowing what he was getting himself into it would be hard to prepare the countermeasures.

‘But I guess that’s the adventure part in the name of this profession.’

After letting out a sigh he descended into the tavern-like adventurer’s guild. On the inside, he was hit by the smell of alcohol and sweat. After the city population had started to settle, so did the adventurer guild become more structured. They had increased the count of their receptionists after a certain overachiever had left them dry to make up for the loss of manpower.

Roland scanned the room with his eyes and homed in on the elven lady that knew him. Elodia apparently had taken some time out of her day to speak about the issue. With her help, he hoped to receive a mission that wouldn’t involve scouting out cemeteries and running into abominations. Without a proper priest, such a task would be difficult even for him.“Well, if it isn’t our famous runesmith! Haven’t seen you in a while.”

After waiting for fifteen minutes he was finally able to arrive at Solana’s desk. He had arrived in this city some years ago and this elven maiden had already been living here. Even though it had been a while, she didn’t look like she aged a day.

Just like in the books of fiction in his old world, elves tended to live for longer than humans. This didn’t reach the level of thousands of years but at a base, they could live three times as much as a human. This was without accounting for magical ways of prolonging life that could be used by any species.

Even Roland would probably live longer than a regular human thanks to his higher level and vitality stat that kept increasing. If he wanted to boost his longevity even further he could buy various elixirs that had diminishing returns. But for now, he needed to focus on the present, if he made it to thirty was still up to debate as in this world of uncertainty every day could be his last.

“Good day, Solana. I think Elodia has spoken to you about the thing…”

“Straight to the point, you’re no fun what does that girl see in you, well besides that handsome face that is.”

Solana chuckled while winking towards Roland. In the past perhaps a sensual look from a beauty like this would make him get nervous but at this point in his life, he didn’t really care. His face was devoid of any reaction which caused the elven lady to pout slightly.

“Fine, you are lucky that I owe Elodia a favor, I have prepared the paperwork you just need to sign it.”

While the woman seemed slightly dejected by his emotionless face, he just wanted to get on with it. What he received were three pieces of paper that were very similar. There was a difference though, each one had a different task written down on it.

“This is the form for the gold rank test but why are there three?”

“The girl is looking out for you, she even helped me pick up some commissions from the board.”

“She did?”

“Yes, she narrowed it down to three that shouldn’t take too long, now choose one and that’ll be it. You should appreciate my effort in all of this and give me a present for all that hard work.!”

“...Did all that hard work involved copying Elodia’s handwriting too?”

“Haha, did you notice~”

Roland rolled his eyes as he quickly noticed that this perfectly filled-out paperwork was done by Elodia. Probably she failed to convince this lazy sun elf to just help her out. He could imagine her going through the chaotic notice board, listing down the best commissions, and handing everything over to Solana that just needed to sign off on it.

‘Did she do it after or before working in the shop?’

He could not pinpoint the exact time when she could have done it. While he did not ask her to go to this extent, there was a warm fuzzy feeling in his heart that she cared this much to get this done. After coming back from this small expedition he was already thinking about perhaps buying her a new dress.

‘Let’s see…’

Dungeon exploration city of Flord

…A new dungeon has appeared in the southernmost region of the island. We are looking for adventurers from the silver grade and up to lead an expedition into the dungeon…

Escort the merchant caravan to the city of Reeka.

…A medium-sized merchant caravan consisting of ten carriages will be leaving towards the island’s western region…

Explore the dig site in the easternmost region.

…A party of adventurers along with the mining team has gone missing and if possible bring them back alive…

He read through the snippets explaining all of the tasks and he didn’t really like any of them. First was the dungeon exploration which brought him down south. The city of Albrook was in the northern region which would make traveling there hard. Then there was the issue of dungeon exploration that he was worried about.

It was another new dungeon similar to the one here. The extent of the monster's strength was unknown, also the type of the dungeon wasn’t mentioned either. It could be a giant maze filled with traps or a lush rainforest with a large open area. Yet it was a somewhat basic request, just go to the dungeon, fight some monsters and come back.

Then there was the dig site exploration that reminded him about his younger days. This was a no-brainer as he would not go towards an ominous area like that. Already an adventurer party was probably dead and they wanted to throw more bodies at the issue.

The speediest one would be the bodyguard routine. Instead of going to deadly areas they just needed to protect some merchants. While their points were filled with monsters that they needed to pass, there should be enough of them to get through it. There would be no surprises as it was an already mapped out area and a trade route used by others.

While the decision to take depended on him, he would not be able to pick the person that would be shadowing behind him. All of these started out at other locations to which he would need to travel out of his own pocket.

Realistically he had only two choices. Either he agrees to get locked away down in another new dungeon with god knows what type of enemies, or he becomes a bodyguard for some rich people. While both had their share of danger at least the escort mission gave him the option to escape easier. Leaving a new dungeon when assaulted was a lot harder than escaping from a bandit attack with more people around.

“Hey?”

“Huh?”

“Have you made a decision, we don’t have all day, those commissions also have to be fulfilled soon, the caravan one, in particular, is in two days. They arrived a few days ago and will be leaving soon. If you decide to take it your guard will meet you at the next stop, from there you will be graded on your performance. If you want to hear my opinion, you should probably go with that one. Those merchants have deep pockets and no trouble hiring gold adventurers~”

Solana was right, this was probably the easiest one from them all. While he would need to sleep outside and be on guard duty, with his current set of skills traveling wouldn’t be hard. Thanks to them hiring gold rank adventurers to be on the safe side, it made the test easier as there probably wouldn’t be that many monsters to defeat.

Yet, from time to time some bandits did try their blades, there was a lot of money involved and people were greedy. Now if he denied all of the propositions he might have to take the penalty. Solana would get in a lot of trouble with the guild if she didn’t file the correct paperwork.

From what he knew, the notice of someone taking the gold rank test had already gone through. So that they wouldn’t get people constantly refusing certain missions they prepared a little system.

First, the person went to the guild to announce that they would try to register for the test. One of the clerks in a higher position would then sign off on the name of the adventurer taking the test. Sometimes this person would even force certain tasks if they wanted but like with his case this was left up to the receptionist.

Now his name was already written down in the books. If he didn’t take the test and attempted his luck a few weeks later, the clerk would have his name noted. With the date being there he would be denied another try and need to wait till the half-year penalty was over. The only way to go around it would be to ask the guild master or the person responsible for it.

‘Maybe Elodia or Solana could convince that person to erase me from the books but I shouldn’t ask for more than this…’

There was also something that he noticed, his class was listed on this piece of paper. Just as they agreed on the lord part of this Runesmith class had been erased from the paperwork. It seemed that with enough backing a person could evade a lot of busywork if this came to bite him in the behind was still up to debate but even if his real class was revealed he was slowly coming to terms with that not being a serious issue anymore.

After contemplating it for a few minutes he agreed on the caravan escort mission. While this made him think back to the time when he met up with the moon elves his luck had increased since then. Perhaps a bandit attack was possible but he was somewhat confident in his own fighting capabilities.

With his spell-firing arsenal, a lot of fights could be won but if things got too tough, he could always just make a run for it. He would be abandoning the quest but it would be better to take the penalty for it as adventuring wasn’t his main profession in the first place. It was just something that needed to be taken care of sooner or later.

“Think we are out of time, come back tomorrow after you make your decision!”

Roland glanced behind him as he noticed that a line started to form behind him. Just like Solana said he was being indecisive too much. After nodding he stepped to the side and let the grumpy-looking adventurer behind him tend to his business.

‘I only have two days left.”

While normally this would not be enough time for someone like him to make a decision, he had prepared beforehand. Elodia had explained to him that some missions could have a fast expiration date so before she went ahead with talking to Solana he took care of everything concerning his leave.

His spider drones would patrol the inside yard while the improved magical turrets focused their magical points on any potential invaders. Bernir and Elodia had the master key that was attuned to their mana signature. Even if someone tried holding it, the turrets would fire at them.

There was also no way of anyone knowing about their existence as they were created from regular accessories. When he returned home it was time for a strategic meeting with both his assistant.

“Bernir, I’ll leave everything up to you are you sure you can handle it?”

“Boss, you should stop worrying so much, who in their right mind would rob the runesmith that is working for the city lord? And did you forget about our little deal with the thieves guild?”

“Yes I know, that’s the only reason why I’m willing to leave but you never know if some idiot will use this chance to rob the runesmith’s house while he is gone.”

“Well, that’s true.”

What Roland feared was not the locals but the random riff-raff that could gain some courage after drinking too much. There was already one incident when he visited the dungeon but luckily Bernir was able to take care of it. News of him leaving would spread sooner or later which could bring harm to the people staying here.

“But you can leave things to me, I’m just itching to use those rune-rifles on something that can move…”

Bernir cackled oddly while looking at the runic rifle that could produce various magical effects. It was something that would allow bridging the gap between combat and non-combat classes. With the battery pack that could be quickly replaced it was a weapon that was well suited for defensive battles.

With all the defenses set up, he was somewhat at ease. Agni would be staying and the spider drones would patrol the area. His job was to protect a caravan which entailed constantly moving around, this would mean that he could not take the mule golem with him.

This didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be taking at least one spider drone with himself. There were porters that could carry his luggage. While he didn’t trust them that much, they should not run away with his goods. The golems were mostly akin to portable spell turrets which could come in handy during a battle in the open. Without places to hide any bandits would find it hard to go against homing magic arrows coming their way.

‘I should start packing and give my reply tomorrow…’

After clearing things up with Bernir and Elodia that would be staying, he needed to check his armor. Everything needed to fit into his backpack-sized spatial bag as he could not yet implement the spatial runes that he was working the kinks out. It was time to finally stretch his legs again and give adventuring another try. If luck was on his side, this would turn into a quick journey with some camping but if not…