The Runesmith

“My liege, you have finally arrived! Thank the gods, you are our only hope!”

Roland was still processing the thing that he was seeing. He had found himself in some kind of wooden fort. He came out on a slightly elevated spot and was surrounded by a wooden wall. From here he could see down towards a bailey. It seemed he was in some kind of old Fort on top of a motte. It was an outdated design even in this world and would usually be used only in some villages that didn’t have enough money to create stone walls.

This was not the only problem as the strange three puppets that were coming his way were a lot more eye-catching. First of all the one that was shouting was dressed in a nice tunic and actually had a whole wooden face. The mouth could only move up and down like on ventriloquist puppets but its eyes and eyebrows were shifting around as well.

Then there were two larger ones behind it that were wearing old decrepit armor. In their hands, they were holding wooden spears with iron tips, just like the ones he found in the room he appeared in. Besides that, the lack of any moving facial features was apparent. All they had was a drawn-in face that made it look very uncanny. Quite similar to a nutcracker wooden doll that Roland was familiar with. When using his identification skill on the puppets he was actually able to gain some information about them.

Name:

Wooden Soldier L 35

Classes

Wooden Warrior L 25

Wooden Soldier L 10

Name:

Wooden Lord’s Aid L 25

Classes

Lord’s Aid L 25

This was sort of strange, as these puppets were clearly not real people. Instead of getting their levels and classes, he should have gotten the materials they were made from. These should be more similar to golems which didn’t possess any classes when made by him. Monster golems on the other hand were identified with levels for some reason. This didn’t mean that all constructs made by craftsmen weren’t assigned levels.

It was possible to create a golem with a level assigned to it, similar to a monster construct. Roland didn’t know the process behind this and was hoping to learn it when getting through this tier 3. This was the moment craftsmen were rumored to be able to create these more advanced variants that were accepted by this world’s leveling system.

He theorized that it had probably something to do with the golem core and how it was created. Perhaps he needed to make his own from scratch without using monster cores that he erased. It could also require more intricate artificial intelligence to be made as the monster versions tended to be a bit more advanced than the spider drones that could only carry out simple tasks.

“My Lord, there is no time to waste, we must prepare!”

“Prepare? Prepare for what exactly?”

After seeing the puppets coming his way and identifying their levels he started relaxing. At this point in time, a slap from him would turn them into splinters, there was no danger in interacting with them. The moment they arrived at his side the two wooden soldiers went down to their knees while the Lord’s Aid just gave him a bow. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that they were part of the new trial and this aid here would probably explain everything to him.

‘I heard that tier 3 trials could be quite complicated and sometimes take place at huge locations, this is probably similar…’

Before attempting this tier 3 trial he had read up on other high-tier trials like this one. There were many rumors and hearsays but the more information he gained the better of an idea he could form. Most of the time these tests wouldn’t be that complex, for instance, a Shieldmaster class would need to fend off monsters while protecting something inside their trial space. Most of the time they seemed to have to defend a passage but sometimes it became more detailed.

A Guardian was a tier 3 class that required a person to possess similar classes to that of a Shieldmaster but also have a Knight Class. One recorded trial had the future Guardian protect a group of NPCs that acted like people. It was recorded that they repeated a few sentences and reacted to some prompts and orders. The person needed to protect this group through a dangerous path that went through a dark forest, then a narrow bridge at a chasm, then through a mountain range, and finally arrive at a safe spot at the end.

It wasn’t said that the whole illusory world was real, perhaps straying from the path would take them to an invisible wall just like in the fake apartment complex his trials started at. Other records were similar, one particular assassination class had its test taker sneak around a whole small city and a castle. They needed to sneak into the sleeping chambers of the city lord and perform an assassination while evading the guards. It was possible to create various scenarios in these places and pit people against intelligent beings and not only mindless enraged monsters.

Even when it came to crafting classes, he had read up on tournaments inside the trial grounds. They were placed against NPC competition that they could even sabotage if they were able to get away with it. It gave people a lot of wiggle room to be creative in passing and underhanded methods were allowed. There were no morals in these fake words, if a person could achieve victory they would pass.

‘If these worlds can create human-like NPCs with intelligence… why do I get wooden puppets?’

Roland wasn’t sure why the wooden people had appeared again. The one that was the Lord’s Aid was a lot more animated and thanks to the moving eyebrows it was easy to understand what emotions he was going through. Perhaps his own understanding of the human mind was so rudimentary that the trial that was rumored to be a reflection of his own being had trouble creating real people?

Nevertheless, this was not time to think about his own disinterest in understanding others, he needed to get some information about this place. It was clear that he needed to prepare for something and this wooden puppet would need to fill him in on the details.

“My Lord, did you already forget? The enemy stronghold has declared war on us, we need to fortify our fortress to defend our people!”

“Defend our fortress, huh?”

Roland almost made a snarky remark about the claim that this was a fortress after not seeing much more than two meters of wooden walls. This place didn’t look great and these wooden soldiers were certainly not strong. It seemed that he would need to defend this area from these attackers. He needed more information that probably this Lord’s Aid puppet was here to give him.

“Tell me, who is attacking us, how many soldiers do they have, how many soldiers does our… ‘Fortress’ have, don’t leave out any details about their equipment either, tell me everything you know.”

“As you wish My Lord! Do you wish to have the soldiers gather for an inspection?”

“Gather? Yes, have them assembled and ready for battle.”

“You heard the Lord, carry out the order!”

One of the wooden soldiers saluted by hitting his chest with his fist on the spot where a human’s heart would be before storming away. Roland wanted to actually see his whole army together if he was to command it. It was better to investigate their weapons and gear to then come up with some kind of plan. The scenario seemed to be pushing toward a defensive battle but this didn’t mean that it would end at it nor if only one wave of enemies would arrive.

Thanks to his noble heritage and not much to do in his younger life, he went through various books related to strategy. He was the sole lord of this place so it would make it easier to command the troops. There were ways of defending a castle or a fortress that he was knowledgeable about. First, he needed to learn about the topography of this location. If this fortress was built into a mountain it would have made defending it a lot easier for him.

‘This isn’t that good… there are multiple places that we can get attacked from…’

The wooden puppet stuck close to him while he went around the whole compound. Everything looked like this place was stuck in the iron era of metallurgy. All that they had to work with was pig-iron which was used for tools and regular iron they outfitted their army with. Though Roland wasn’t sure if he could call the wooden puppets he had an army yet.

This area had no real natural fortifications, the only thing keeping the invaders out would be the waist-deep moat and the two-meter or so wall that was made from logs that were tied together with some low-quality rope. If he gave it a punch with his current stats he would probably be able to make a hole in the wood or just directly push it down with one hard charge.

There was a lot of wiggle room in this place as it was quite spacious. Many empty plots of land stood everywhere as if waiting to be built. For the time being there was a handful of buildings that he had access to. First off there was a town center that as the name implied was placed in the middle of this city fort. Inside there was even a wooden villager that was just mindlessly standing around without doing anything interesting.

There was something that looked like a market but only a single wooden merchant was there peddling some wares. When looking at the laid-out items he spotted some crafting materials and even better weaponry. After approaching the merchant a system prompt appeared before him, similar to the one that he was used to but with actual options that he could interact with.

“Aid… how much money do we have?”

“A hundred coins My Lord.”

“I see… can I purchase the items from this merchant?”

“Certainly My Lord, I’m sure you’ll make the right decision when investing our limited funds!”

It seemed that he had entered some type of strategy game this time around. He could see an icon of a sack filled with gold in the upper right screen when interacting with this merchant. There were items like longswords made from steel and iron here and he could buy them in bulk. However, there were also crafting materials that when put together ended up being cheaper than buying a fully made weapon.

“Let's go to the Blacksmith.”

Besides the Town Center and the Market, there were the Barracks where all the soldiers were stationed. It was the only military building in this place that he would be visiting at the end to check up on his soldiers. Before that he wanted to look through the building that was closest to his specialty, smithing.

‘There is one blacksmith here but do they expect me to automate everything?’

Roland was a bit confused by the setting of this whole trial. It was as if the Overlord part of the class was taking over the scenario here and left the Runesmith in a ditch. Normally he expected to be at least crafting some of the weapons but after checking some things he finally found his answer.

‘I see… so that’s how it is.’

The smithy had its own window where he could just tell the Blacksmith to create weapons and armor. However, this Wooden Blacksmith was more like a factory robot. It only took an existing item designed and produced a copy of it. After fiddling around with the settings he managed to discover that he could design his own weapons and armor.

‘So… I can either automate this by buying steel weapons and resources from the merchant or create better weaponry myself. I bet everything I buy at the merchant will be of inferior quality to what I can make or it will cost a lot more to manufacture a store-bought sword…’

The world ranked its items from lowest to highest, it even gave runes their own ranking from lesser to legendary. He was still a runesmith and it didn’t seem that this assistant blacksmith was capable of inscribing runes either. From his perspective, there were two ways he could go about this to achieve victory. Either he made all of it himself or he automated part of the process while spending his time on other things instead.

‘I guess this is the hard part, how should I spend the limited time I have here…’

It seemed that he would have to inscribe runes on any of the swords by himself before his army could use it. He could also do the same with the weapons but it was clear that it was better to let the wooden blacksmith perform this task instead. It could copy a design he produced and with his current smithing skills he should be able to at least produce a high-quality sword from the materials that he could obtain.

‘I won’t be able to make anything more than steel weapons, would it be possible to equip those wooden soldiers with runic wands?’

This reminded him of the first smithy that he was using after achieving his Runic Blacksmith class all those years ago. It wouldn’t be hard to use the tools here but before he got to work he needed to take care of other things. The trial was forcing him on multiple fronts and he would need to find out the best ratio for it. One was being the city lord here and taking a similar position to Arthur.

Then he would need to craft the best possible weapons and armor for his troops if he had enough time. Finally, when the time to defend these walls came he would probably also need to join the battle. The wooden soldiers that he saw were quite low leveled and weak. It wouldn’t be strange if they got instantly massacred by whatever attacked them.

“So this is it?”

“Yes, the finest soldiers that the Wooden Stronghold can offer, please give them your orders my liege!”

He finally arrived at the barracks. Behind it, there was a large training ground where he could see some of the wooden soldiers training against dummies made of straw. It didn’t look that great, there were fifty wooden soldiers on the field with only one of them over the level of fifty.

Name:

Wooden Soldier Captain L 55

Classes

Wooden Warrior L 25

Wooden Soldier L 25

Wooden Soldier Captain L5

Roland was also greeted by another window that presented him with the levels for his soldiers. There was no need to even use his identification skill when going through this transparent console. The soldiers varied in levels and experience, some of them didn’t even go through their second tier 1 class. When scrolling through the various panels he also noticed that he could assign them training.

‘So I can choose their evolutionary path?’

To his surprise, there was one Wooden Warrior at level twenty-five that had a plus sign next to its name. After clicking on it he was given an option to upgrade it into a Wooden Soldier. This wasn’t all as there were other options some were grayed out, one of them was a Wooden Sword Soldier, and another was a Spear Soldier that probably specialized in those weapon types.

‘Wait, there was a training window there… I can actually assign them a training regiment…’

Without asking for help from the Aid he managed to figure out what was going on here. All the wooden soldiers had their own skills and even talents. There was a sub-window that would show him their aptitude for certain weapons. At the moment he could only see three variables, swords, spears, and bows. Where the three things he was given and their aptitude were shown in letters.

‘So F is probably the worst and if it goes up it gets better, probably similar to dungeon ranks, perhaps A or S is the best aptitude. I was never that good at strategy games…’

It became clear to him that this would not be an easy task. He was not someone that worked that well with others and now he would have to become a commander of a fort. It was up to him to decide on the path his soldiers needed to take and also give them the best equipment for the job. What would be the best ratio of spearmen to bowmen? He wasn’t sure but he would need to decide before the enemy attackers got here.

‘I still need to check out that wooden fort I came from, I think there was something like a lord’s chamber, perhaps there is something to tie all of these things together, if I have to walk between all of these areas on foot it will take forever to get things done.’

Roland decided to postpone upgrading the one Wooden Warrior to another class, he needed more information about this system. Before leaving he assigned training regiments to each soldier depending on the aptitude for each weapon. Time was of the essence and he hadn’t even fully explored this place yet. Becoming an Overlord seemed like it would force him out of his comfort zone but at this point in his life, he was used to it.