The Runesmith

“7th level, this place looks the same like all the other levels.”

“Wasn’t that hard to get here, not long and we will reach the 10th level!”

A group of young adventurers that looked to be in their late teens were going through a dimly lit path. It was a group of four people, two males, and two females. The girls had lighter armor on them while the two men had heavier. It looked like the two were warrior types while the other were the more nimble variant.

“Don’t get overconfident Rudy, you always had a big head.”

A girl with neck length brown hair called out to a red-haired boy. He was the person that mentioned the 10th floor of the dungeon they were in. The whole party here was composed of humans with the girl that spoke out at the front. She was in the middle of kneeling down and looking at an out of place floor tile.

“Never bad to have confidence!”

The young man chuckled back while looking at the girl on the ground. He could see her moving her short sword towards the floor tile. The ground here looked like it was made from large square-shaped rocks that were just dropped into position. They weren’t very even but they were enough to let people move through them without stumbling around.

“Did you find something Keira?”

The other girl from the party called out, she had a bow in her hand and a similar short sword to her side. Before she could prod for more answers she heard a strange noise coming from the side. The moment that Keira poked the rock slab enough a couple of darts shot out from the wall. With no one walking forward the darts impacted the wall on the other side with no one getting hurt.

“Just a small trap… there are a few more of these ahead so give me a minute.”

“Take your time but we need to hurry, we only have a few hours till sundown. The trip back will probably take us an hour from this level.”

“Can’t we just go through, those things don’t look that deadly to me.”

The other male moved forward. He was the largest person here at over 190 cm of height with a more robust build. He was heavily armored, with a shield and sword combo.

“Why do we have to only have meatheads in our party…”

The girl that was disarming the trap moved up while frowning. The girl with the bow just shrugged without saying a word.

“Go ahead Miron, I’m sure the poison in those darts won’t be a problem. Hope that discount steel armor will be able to hold out.”The armored man looked at the girl named Keira and then over to the darts that were embedded in the corridor wall. They looked quite sharp and also punched through the hard wall surface cleanly. The man gave out a grunt before backing away, probably not sure if his armor could take it.

“That’s what I thought…Sansa, please watch my back.”

The girl with the bow nodded, her hair was long and obsidian. She had a more eastern look to her. She stood watch with her bow drawn while staring into the distance of the long corridor. At the end of it she could see some kind of opened gate. It looked similar to the entrance of the Albrook city dungeon. The girl knew that that type of structure indicated something, there could be monsters or treasure behind it.

It took the girl named Keira about twenty minutes to get rid of all the traps. The party of four was now standing at the end of this passage. The guys moved forward with the later, heavier armored one at the helm. He had his shield up and with his sword in hand, he was inching toward the unknown area.

“There might be monster’s inside, be careful.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Rudy complained from the side but followed closely after the main tank of the party. After venturing through the larger opening at the end of the corridor the party ended up in a wide-open area.

“Nothing in here?”

All of them entered after looking around from the entrance. The room was large and it also had a high ceiling. They could also see another opening with a gate. It looked like another there was another tunnel past this room and nothing else.

“Only one exit?”

Keira commented while looking around. There wasn’t anything in here, no monster remains or signs of other adventurers. Not like any of those would be left for anyone to see. After about half an hour any untouched body would start to vanish. This group of young adventurers knew this fact but none of them had ever witnessed it first hand.

“We should go, probably other people came through here and the monsters didn’t re-appear.”

It didn’t look like there was anything in here. Keira looked around but she didn’t seem to see anything out of the ordinary. She decided that it would be best to just move on and hurry it up.

“Might just be a dummy room, you find them from time to time. These dungeons are large, not all of the rooms have traps and monsters in them.”

“Thank you for the lesson, Professor Keira.”

Rudy replied while chuckling, the brown-haired girl stomped her foot in anger a bit but then just moved towards her party members. The two warriors moved to the front of the party again while the two girls trailed slightly behind.

“Wait…”

They were about halfway through the room before the girl noticed something.

“No… quickly, run for the tunnel!”

Keira called out while bolting towards the exit on the other side of the large room. There was a faint clicking sound, soon after the whole room started rumbling. The walls started shaking around, small openings in the walls closer to the high ceiling started to open up.

The other three adventurers were a bit surprised by their friends' reaction but they quickly ran after her. Before they could reach the exit a wall of rock slammed down, Keira was just quick enough to run into it. She started banging on it with her fists but the wall was far too sturdy to be broken. The party of four was clearly trapped in here as the opening that they came through was also sealed by a similar wall of hard stone bricks.

“We are trapped… this was a trap…”

“Hey Keira, I thought you were supposed to be good at detecting traps?”

“I don’t know… this trap is different… there was magic involved, I can’t sense magic traps yet!”

Keira and Rudy started shouting at each other while the two other party members looked around. They could see the holes opening up wider till they were about human-sized. They looked large enough for them to go through but before they could explore that possibility they heard a hissing sound coming from those large holes.

“You two stop arguing! Enemies are coming!”

The two turned around and were quick to spot what their archer friend meant by that. Out of those openings in the walls, monsters started to appear. The first thing that this party of adventurers saw were bright red eyes, eyes that were reptilian in nature.

One of the monsters dropped down to the ground, its clawed raptor-like legs caused the ground to crack. The creature that they were looking at was reptilian in nature, it’s body was coated with crimson leathery scales. It was the height of a smaller human at about 170 cm but some of its companions were slightly larger.

It had a lizard-like head along with a crown of spiky frills that extended from their foreheads to their necks. It had a mostly upright humanoid-like posture but was leaning forward slightly. Its hands were composed of four large fingers, the second one that was closer to their body was twice as long as the others. On it, they could see a large claw that was probably meant for ripping into their opponent’s flesh.

“Lesser Troglodytes!”

The monsters continued to drop out of those openings till there were about ten of them in this room. The two males from the adventurer party moved to protect their female companions. The monsters started to quickly fill up the locked area, battle was the only option left.

One of the Troglodytes that was the closest to them charged forward. The other ones behind him were quick to notice the juicy enemies as well. The monsters opened up their mouths while hissing, their sharp teeth were on display along with their drooling tongues. It was clear that those large lizards were set on devouring these four human adventurers.

Miron stepped forward with his large tower shield in hand. Before the monster could swing that giant clawed hand on him he shot towards it. The monster slammed into the thick steel shield with his head and was flung backward. Soon after it found an arrow sticking out of its eye socket as Sansa the party’s archer used her bow skills on it.

The monster convulsed on the ground but this didn’t scare off its companions that charged in, their faces filled with maddened rage. Soon the party of four found themselves surrounded, there was nowhere to run and the two warriors had to contend with two or three monsters each.

This still left some to slip past their barricade and getting dangerously close to the two girls. These two had roles of supports and specialists, Sansa was having trouble using her bow with the lizard monster so close by. Keira had to use her shortsword to defend herself but she wasn’t that good in a direct fight, her class being a thief.

Rudy managed to step in to defend his companion, before Keira got ripped to shreds by the lizard’s talons he pushed his long spear through its head. The girl was saved but this act of bravery would cost him dearly as the Troglodyte behind him used this chance to sink its teeth into the youth’s shoulder.

“Rudy!”

The girl called out in panic as she saw the monster biting her companion but she was in no position to help him. Another monster was on a collision course with her, it looked that even if they slew some of them new ones appeared out of the openings in the walls. Their whole formation was broken, it looked like this would be their last adventure.

They would end up as a nice meal for these lizard-like monsters but before they met their demise a loud sound was heard. Following it one of the monsters dropped dead in its tracks a large arrow made out of sharp ice going through its head.

“Get down”

Someone shouted out from the distance before a hail of ice arrows descended into this large open room. Each one of these magical attacks flew towards a monster, the aim was true and the Troglodytes were unable to resist this high tier magic. It only took one hit from a magical arrow to deliver a fatal blow.

This gave the four adventurers time to reorganize themselves. They huddled up together while pouring healing potions on their wounded friend. The monsters quickly changed to a new opponent that was standing on the other side of this room. From where he came was a mystery to these people but they wouldn’t complain as he was helping them.

Seven of the monsters were killed instantly but there were still more coming. A group of three of them charged at their new opponent while the four adventurers watched from afar.

The person that came to their help looked to be in a heavier set of armor, similar to the one the warrior from their party was wearing. It was in a dark red color and had some strange runic patterns inscribed into them. They couldn’t see the man’s face as his face was hidden behind a sturdy metal helmet.

It was rounded to fit a person’s skull with an attached front visor. This face-covering visor was wide with a rectangular slit for vision and had dotted cut-outs on the lower half of the face for ventilation. The visor of this helmet seemed to be filled out by something akin to dark-colored glass that was glowing from time to time.

This person had a large kite shield in one hand. The other hand wasn’t holding any weapon but there was a mace strapped to his side. The monsters continued to charge at him but he didn’t seem to care. The group of adventurers wasn’t sure why this person looked so relaxed but soon they would understand.

This armored ‘knight’ moved his hand up at the moment the monsters were only a few meters away. The gauntlet he was wearing started glowing for a moment before a discharge of ice shards was seen. The lizard-like monsters found themselves being shredded by ice magic that quickly turned them into statues. The ones that didn’t die right away were promptly finished off by a swing of that mace, one hit to the head was all that he needed.

“Is that a silver rank?... Maybe a gold?”

The group let out a sigh of relief as they saw the new adventurer overpower these monsters with ease. It was clear to them that this person was of a higher tier compared to them by how many skills and spells he was activating. Someone below tier 2 would not be able to use that many enchanted items even if they had them.

Three Lesser Troglodytes remained, they all charged at the man in the armor. The adventurer didn’t retreat, instead, he took a step forward. The metal graves along with his boot gave off a faint blue light that changed to orange the moment it touched the ground below.

This sent some kind of ripple through the earth below. Thick spikes made from hard rock then burst from the ground impaling the charging monsters. They were strong enough to pierce their hard bodies, he didn’t even need to finish them off after turning them into large pincushions.

The room that was filled with monster howls and screams of people was now quiet. All of the monsters were now dead and the openings in the walls were starting to close themselves. The large pathways through which this group of adventurers came in were also opening up. The slabs that were blocking them were sliding back up, probably to recharge before the next time the trap would be sprung.

Rudy was grasping his aching shoulder through which the Lesser Troglodyte bit through. He had received healing potions but it would take a few minutes before this injury healed itself.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine but... what are we going to do about him?“

Rudy answered while whispering the last part to Keira. They all were now looking at the person that saved them. The person was just walking without a worry in the world and sticking a dagger into the monster's bodies. It took them a moment to notice that he was taking out a mana stone each time he did that.

He was totally ignoring them, without even a side glance he was continuing to go around the monster corpses plucking out mana stones. He was strangely proficient at it, normally they would need to go through the entire body and hope for the best. Only after finishing up with the stones, they saw him going towards them. His height was close to their party tank which made him look more imposing from close up.

“Are you new here or just stupid?”

“E-excuse me?”

Keira was the one to reply, the other party members moved closer to each other. The faces of the two men from the party scrunched up but they weren’t willing to shout at the person that cleared out this trap by himself.

“Didn’t you get the labyrinth map?”

“A map? Was there something like that?”

The girl looked to her party members for answers but they just shrugged without knowing what this was about.

“That’s why noobs are…”

The man muttered under his breath before speaking up again.

“Never mind, you should go up to the 6th floor and level up before returning here, if you continue like this you will die...”

The party got a quick lecture by the person that saved them. He was clearly an adventurer that was a tier above them so they kept their mouths shut. Soon the man in the dark red armor ventured out through the door that they wanted to go through. The adventurers were left here with all the corpses, only the mana stones were missing but they could probably disassemble them for some money.

“Keira…”

“What is it Rudy?”

“...What’s a noob?”

The two looked at each other while the footsteps of the adventurer that saved them started to slowly fade away.