The Runesmith

Time continued to tick as Roland gathered all the books about warfare that he could find in the city. He had even made a trip to the black market and the auction house to see if there was something interesting to be gotten there. To no surprise, the only worthwhile material was at Arthur’s mansion and with his help, he was able to acquire all the basics and some more intricate books. There was a lot to go through and not everything was correct, even though something was made into a book it didn’t mean that no mistakes were made during its creation.

When going through all this knowledge he started recalling some strategies from the scriptures he unearthed in the old Arden estate library. It wasn’t that he had forgotten it all, he just needed a little jolt to help him gain it back. Even with the stress resistance skill it wasn’t that easy to recall what people before him went through. Now he felt slightly more confident in tackling the trial again.

“It’s taking a while, it has already been more than a week…”

While sitting at his research table he looked at the crystal in his hand. Even though he was ready to give it another try it wasn’t activating. This didn’t bode well for him as the longer the first reset period was the harder it would become to retake the test again. To his knowledge doubling the time between tries was what usually happened but there were exceptions. It was possible for it to triple or perhaps even quadruple. This had already taken more than a week, nine days to be precise.

“Hm… I can feel something, wouldn’t this make it ten days on the clock?”

Roland finally noticed that the crystal was resonating with his touch. He had stayed up to late at night as this was the exact same hour that he had come back from the trial space. This meant that it took precisely two hundred and forty hours for the reset to occur.

“So if it doubles for the next one, I’ll have to wait for twenty days? If it triples for forty and then…”

His mind was filled with a long time frame, a setback that he didn’t want to imagine. It was possible that it could even take one or two months for his third try or perhaps even longer. He wouldn’t really know unless he tried but it was clear that if he failed for the third time, the timeframe would start to become troubling and at that point, it wouldn’t be strange to pick the lesser option that was the High-Lord class.

This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, most people that attempted tier 3 class changes failed on the first attempt. They failed even with the easier classes so Roland's first failure could be excused by his inexperience. Time was a resource that he had painfully learned in the current trial. If it continued for too long and he was unable to clear this hurdle it would have been better to lower the difficulty.

“I’d have to take into account that the High-Lord class could have an entirely different trial and that I might also fail it at first…”

Roland wasn’t sure what the cut-off point would be but he needed to calculate everything. If the reset period started to turn into multiple months it would get incredibly dangerous. Even though he wasn’t focusing on it for now, there was something in the air. Arthur didn’t say anything but it was obvious that there was something happening in the background. It wouldn’t be strange if he didn’t have more than a month to perform this change if he wanted to safeguard this home that he built for himself.

“I just won’t fail again…”

He was not really a stranger to failure, it actually happened on almost a daily basis. His craftsmanship was still not the best and he was still deficient in some segments of his craft. The situation he was in now was practically due to multiple deficiencies, one of the main ones being his propensity to run away when things started going wrong. It was a miracle that he was able to keep himself from leaving this place already. Without becoming used to the people around and growing some tighter bonds he would have probably left a long time ago.

In his right hand, he had the crystal that would let him back into the trial area. In his left hand, he had a large mug filled with some leftover tea that he had just drunk. On the side, it had his name on it, and while the mug didn’t look all too great it had a lot more sentimental value to Roland. It had been given to him by Elodia as he had continued to use her set whenever she started hanging around his house. Now it was a part of their history that he was unwilling to throw away.

“Let’s go, I’ve learned all that I can.”

It was time to go back to it, all the books about leading troops that he could find were read and all the skills that were useful continued to be leveled up. Perhaps it would have been better to wait a few months and do more research but the foreboding feeling didn’t go away. Roland felt that if he failed this trial again that there would be terrible repercussions. His vision quickly faded and he appeared back in the old apartment complex, without waiting he made his way up to activate the trial that he had failed.

“It’s still there.”

He dreaded the moment of opening up the PC as there was a chance that the class could have vanished. While he didn’t have anything to base his fears on, when he saw the Runesmith Overlord class there, he let out a sigh of relief. In this fake space, Roland had a bit more time to think everything over as time worked differently. It took a few moments for him to gather the courage but soon enough he found himself in a familiar storage area like before.

‘Will it be the same?’

From the information that he had gathered, usually, the trials remained quite similar after failing them once. Some were identical while others changed a few things around. After going up through a similar set of stairs he realized that he was in the former type.

“My Lord!”

‘It’s close to the previous one but the layout is slightly off…’

The pupped Aid looked the same as he remembered him. Luckily his memories of the beginning part of this test were still vivid in his mind. He could recall all that he did and also his decision of going with the defensive strategy. The fort was quite similar to the old one but there were some minor differences. The wooden log walls appeared to be wider on one side than what he remembered. There was also a change in the topography of the region with the forest area changing with the mountain region where he found the iron mine and built the quarry.

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

“Yes yes, the Kindlings are coming.”

“Kindlings? No my lord!”

“Oh? Not the Kindlings, what is our enemy called this time around?”

“It’s the dreaded Lumberlings!”

“...”

While the name of his opponents changed the scenario was playing out the same. He had the exact same time left before they would be arriving and this time this group would be coming from a different location. His faction retained its Timberling naming sense but it seemed that the map was procedurally generated by this trial system, just like in some strategy games.

Roland theorized that this was done so that the person taking the trial wouldn’t be able to keep to the old strategies if they retained some information from their previous test. The name Lumberlings sounded familiar and it was a faction that he encountered later in his previous attempt. After hearing their name uttered by the Aid some of the past flashed in his mind.

Before the Aid could continue talking Roland quickly ran into the fort throne room where he couldn’t be followed. The console on the big wooden chair was still there and he could quickly select the production of the stable along with scout units. Perhaps he had lost the previous trial but it didn’t mean that he had been mistaken about every tactic. Getting together more information about the area around his fort was paramount to his victory.

Then there was his small army of fifty men. This was probably the most mismanaged part of his previous tactic. He wasn’t sure what he had done with them but he had some flashes of having a lot of archers. Considering that he was going for a defensive bastion, ranged weaponry would have been the way to go. Together with the magic turrets, it would have been quite a difficult formation to break. He was at least sure that he managed to hold out all the way until one faction conquered all the others.

This was the crux of his failure and needed to be taken into consideration. First of all, he could not let his men remain stationary in this fort, the moment the scouting unit was made they needed to be ready to move. At the start of this trial existed many smaller settlements with their own population and fortifications. They needed to be conquered by him in some way to not allow them to fall into the hands of the enemies.

Sooner or later one of his enemies would tip the scale and become undefeatable by the other NPCs. There were ways for tackling this issue, the basic one would be to just meet them in battle out on the field. If he managed to defeat their armies, then it would be over. However, the biggest issue with that plan was leaving himself up to being invaded by others. In his previous attempt, he overused all his defensive strategy knowledge and had been defeated. If he put everything into the offense this time around, failure would probably be right around the corner.

‘Everything needs a balance, I need to capture new settlements, make them into my own and protect them so they can generate more resources. I just need to find a good balance between the two…’

This was the key to his victory, equilibrium. His first mission which would be identical to the trial from beforehand was a good example. He had used up a week's time just to walk all over the weak troops of the Kindlings. There was no need for him to make all those explosive traps or that many runic arrow tips. There was so much more he could have done with that time instead and this was his current objective, winning the first defensive battle with minimal effort and with a lesser engagement of his troops.

Now that the time came, he needed to make his first big decision. His soldiers needed their weapons and certain ones were better than others. In this world where people could be divided by classes a person obviously went for the weapon they had skills in. Giving spears to swordsmen would do them no good but was a swordsman even a good class in a war setting? In Roland’s opinion, there were a few types of soldiers that excelled in this type of setting and they were ones proficient in using polearms.

There were several types of pole weapons, like a poleaxe or the more famous halberd. However, in the current state of his army, he decided to go for something that was cheaper to manufacture as it could be hammered out of just one piece of metal. His weapon of choice for his soldiers would be the guisarme or a billhook which were similar to each other.

It was possible to evolve his soldiers into Polearm users that covered a plethora of these weapons that varied in shapes and sizes. It was possible to go with a specialized class like a Guisarmier or Halberdier but they would become locked into these roles. These would be better suited for his commander units that would level up faster than the others.

‘Polearms are better than swords in an open field and are easy to make, greatswords aren’t bad either though so I can equip a few swordsmen with those. After gaining enough resources I can switch the bills into poleaxes or what was that thing's name… oh right, Bec de corbin, think they don’t call it like this here though.’

“Transporting them through the field won’t be hard either… when I get enough resources I can start making shields and bows too…”

While a lot of names aligned with the one back at his home, some didn’t pass over. The Bec de corbin was also a polearm but could also work as a war hammer on one side. It could pierce through things like a spear, had a spike in the back and a hammer in the front, a true multi-purpose weapon that could go very well with his polearm regiment. It even came equipped with a disc guard that was quite good for defensive purposes.

A polearm like a poleaxe was still designed to work along armor and against armor. In the beginning stages perhaps going with something like a spear would have been better as they were even easier to manufacture. Considering that he needed to plan for the future it was better to invest in something that would elevate his soldiers in future fights. Considering later on it would become harder and harder to level the army, it was better to start out now while his enemies were still weak.

The store and the blacksmith only offered very basic designs of the spear. This meant that Roland would have to use his time in fashioning the new weapon type by himself. Previously he would have thrown the notion of making new weapons away quickly. Instead, he would create more mines or exploding arrows for the coming siege. This time around, he decided to focus on preparing some better weapons for the future.

His soldiers could gain skills and levels in two ways, one was training at the barracks and the other going into battle. The former was the faster option but it also carried a risk with it. The moment a unit died it would never be recovered and he would need to train a new soldier just like in real life. This was however when this shifted into a slightly more game-like system. If he met some conditions he could train better soldiers to suit the new weapons, this was also one of the reasons he was going to make a billhook and other pole weapons.

‘This I at least remember, after a while I should be able to train soldiers from level fifty and they will be able to use weapons that had been previously made. This trial really just sees the soldiers as another resource and I guess to win this thing, I might have to do the same.’

A General couldn’t fear losing his forces and luckily for Roland, his people looked like wooden puppets. Perhaps if he had to send actual people to die for him, he would not be able to make the hard decisions. Luckily in this kind of setting where the people were replaced by wooden men, he would not get any nightmares even if they got slaughtered by his enemies.

Thus time continued to fly as he got to work. The scout was used to examine the surrounding lands around the wooden fort. As before the quarry was established along with all the other basic buildings. The time that he had previously spent on making all the exploding arrows was minimized as he intended to deal with the attack in a different way. Most of the resources were instead pushed into equipping forty of his soldiers. These were sent to the nearest settlement that was easy pickings.

Roland had realized that the first ‘tutorial’ siege was nothing more than a distraction. There was no need to over-prepare for it. Wasting time on making all those explosive arrows and mining the entire area could have been avoided. Making good use of the army he had was paramount and would help him achieve victory. He was the focus of the enemy invaders and together with ten archers, he was enough to defend against this cannon fodder army.

‘Hm… those Lumberlings had a slightly different shade but the composition of their forces is about the same, good…’

“My Lord, please reconsider!”

“It’s fine, I’m more than enough to take them on, this will actually be quite educational, I have not faced so many enemies at once before, just have the archers pick off the stragglers and leave the main gate to me.”

“But my lord…”

The wooden aid was almost crying as Roland grabbed a shield and something that looked like a reinforced club. This was his current plan, with the difference in the levels of his opponents there was no reason not to just battle them by himself. Even though it was two hundred against one he was much stronger than his enemies and besides his physical stats, there was also runic magic involved.

‘I hope those guys will be enough to capture that settlement while I deal with these training dummies, it all starts now…’