The Runesmith

“Will this be enough?”

A beat-up looking Roland was standing close to the edge of the workshop. It was still there but soon it would slide down below the arena ground once more. The whole area was filled with monster remains that came from three of the four large gates.

He looked at the newest type that was a hell hound. These creatures were quite nimble and hard to fight off. The resistance to fire was increased even more which made the grease fire trap that he made mostly ineffective.

His body was all scratched up due to the fight with the monster hounds. He had no cloth armor to put under his armored gear. Only ordinary cloth that wouldn’t protect him from the tough claws and fangs of these monsters.

Roland had still managed to survive the third wave of the monsters but he was now feeling the fatigue. He couldn’t use the previous plan of setting everything ablaze or making a minefield. The hell hounds were fast runners and could smell out the buried flesh scrolls.

This last gate looked to have an even stronger creature behind it. The number of them decreased with each door but their strength also increased accordingly. Roland would rather fight more of those imps that were easy to kill with his current degree of traps. With a new unknown variant of the creature, he would need to come up with a new battle plan.

Lucky for him this world that he was in wasn’t entirely real. The workshop he was working with had a strange feature in it. If enough materials were removed they would replenish themselves. He tested it out by removing some sheets of metal that were placed in one of the provided boxes. After removing all of them another set materialized itself in the box out of nowhere. This same phenomenon happened with all the other resources, be it the metal rods or ingots.

With this slight bug in place, Roland decided on his new plan. The unprocessed sheets of metal that were meant for making thinner armor pieces were distributed around the arena. When enough of them were out there he utilized the stock rods that were also there. The ones that were used were the thinner ones that could be used as wires. Soon a spider web-like pattern composed of metallic rods appeared through the whole arena.

For some reason, the hourglass was giving him more time for this last big door. Roland could try getting through this task in a less troublesome way. Creating a good set of armor and some weapons weren’t out of the question in this time frame he was given. He had chosen a different approach this time around mostly due to the fact of not being a pure fighter.

With the help of a special rune wand that could discharge heat and flames, he began connecting the metallic parts together. He didn’t need them to stick together that well, just enough for the runic traces to go through them. Quite a grueling process of welding and hammering took place as the work continued. The main runes of this ‘trap’ were placed on the larger pieces of sheet metal while the rods used as a means of transferring mana.

Roland had never tried connecting this many runes together in one runic structure. He knew that there were risks involved and that he would be instantly drained of most of his mana after one activation. The decision was already made though, he would take care of the last part of the test with one big bang. The biggest problem would arise if the monsters coming out were resistant to the magic he would be producing.

Time continued to pass him by as he worked. The more he hammered the more he started to doubt if this would even work. Roland was afraid that the thing that he was making would just blow up instead of working. That or he would either lose all of his mana instantly and pass out or it just wouldn’t turn on.

After a lot of painstaking work, he was somehow done. There were no breaks in this trial whatsoever and he had been here for several days with no sleep. For some reason, he wasn’t feeling that fatigued but the constant thinking was slowly getting to him.

He placed himself in the center of this spiderweb-like trap that he made. It would have to do as the hourglass was seconds away from being emptied. The whole thing he made was covered in sand. This was done by him to not make it too obvious for the monsters. He also hoped that the monster dogs would ignore the metal parts as there was no flesh involved.

‘I guess this is it…’

Roland glanced over his creations that could very well blow up in his face. The area was still filled with his mines and the grease fire tactic would be used as well. He heard a clicking sound and the workshop part slowly descended below the arena. The clawing of the monsters against the gate walls intensified with their movement.

These demonic monsters were greeted by the usual fire treatment. These fiends didn’t learn from their previous blunders as they just charged towards his general direction the moment they were out of their locked room.

Some of them fell to the flames while he stood away from the danger. He had his tower shield with him to block any incoming projectile attacks like the spikes from the demons from the second gate.

The doors were opening at about the same time which was fine for him as he needed the monster to enter the area of the trap together. Hounds that looked like they came out of hell started howling as they were finally free from their confines. Roland on the other hand looked at the sturdiest fourth gate which had the surprise last monster type.

There it was, about two meters of height and quite muscular. Its skin was crimson and disfigured, it looked like the being had been burned badly. The face had small beady black eyes with which he felt like the creature was looking at him.

The most characteristic thing about this monster was its chains. It had many of those wrapped around its whole body. To its arms, a set of chains with hooks and other pointy objects was attached. They were thick and the creature was dragging it on the ground while slowly making a trail in the arena’s sand.

Roland blocked a few incoming spikes while trying not to get distracted by the new enemy. There was only one of those chained demons but it was a tier 2 creature above the 50th level. This was a tier 2 class change trial, normally monsters above level 50 wouldn’t appear as enemies. When they did they would be that exact same level.

This trial was a bit different and Roland already knew that. The sheer number of these monsters already was out of the ordinary. From what he knew, even the warrior class trials weren’t this enemy intensive. Apparently most of the time they would only fight one enemy at the tier 2 level to prove themselves.

Depending on the rarity of the class, the difficulty increased. He didn’t think that a level 50 warrior would survive past the spiked fiends but he had to go beyond that and face off against something well past the beginning levels of tier 2.

“GUOHH….”

He snapped back into reality and tried to focus on the battle. The monsters exploded here and there while walking through some of the mine runes. He spent the most time preparing this metallic construction so this time around some of the Imps and Spiked Devil’s would actually get through.

‘Not yet…’

It was a waiting game, the more of the monsters went into this trap the better it would be for him. The biggest problem with that was the varying degrees of speed that all of these creatures possessed. The two first types of monsters were about the same when it came to that but the hell hounds were much faster. The new demon that was dragging the chains was the slowest yet. It was just slowly lumbering towards him without a care in the world.

This didn’t bode well for Roland as he just wanted to activate his Frankenstein of a trap before any of the monsters could reach him. In a few moments, he could hear the loud howls and gritting of teeth. One of the Hellhounds was upon him and he needed to defend himself.

Thus a war of attrition began. While the tier 2 chain slinging monster took its sweet time, Roland was continually attacked by the infernal dogs. He was someone that actually liked dogs but here he was forced to cave their heads in with his mace. When he delivered a smashing blow to one of the creature’s faces, its teeth flew in all directions. This didn’t keep from another one from biting his leg, its teeth infused with magical fire.

The greaves that he fashioned beforehand managed to somehow protect his leg. With a quick smack of a mace to the monster dog’s side, it was flung away into the distance. While being busy with defending himself from the more agile monsters a spike coming from another one made its way through a gap in his armor.

He winced in pain while putting up his shield and defending himself from any other incoming projectiles. The only thing he could do now was to move back, circling around the trap area he made while biding his time.

But there was a small problem, the more he circled around the more he found himself getting surrounded. Soon the spiked devils and even the imps were moving in for the kill. He was now mostly just pushing them back with his shield while not being able to use his mace. If he did a large swing he worried that one of the many monsters would deliver a killing blow.

‘Now or never!’

Finally, the largest of the monsters had gotten in range, this prompted Roland to bolt back to the spot where the control rune was. He found himself tossing his shield away while inserting the shaft of his mace into a hell hound’s mouth before finally placing his hand on it.

The control rune was engraved on a thick piece of metal. From it, many various rods of steel were sticking out while hidden under a thin layer of dirt. After placing his palm on this rune he injected his mana into it, the moment he did he felt like his head would explode. It was as if someone was pushing a giant nail through his ear, right towards his brain.

‘Argh…’

A flash of electricity ran through the entire runic trap that he created as everything lit up like a Christmas tree. After working for a year with generators and electricity he had learned a thing or two about those runes.

This trap produced a massive electrical shock that was discharged into the monsters. All of them got hit while Roland curled up in a small area where the lesser lightning runes that he made wouldn’t jolt him into the afterlife. He didn’t come out unscathed as the drain on his mana was immense. This was clearly shown by a bloody nose along with more blood coming out of his ears.

The whole place went silent, all of the monsters laid dead on the ground after receiving the massive shock. Roland wasn’t in a much better state though, he started wincing while trying to push himself off the ground. He felt terrible but he was alive.

‘My head… did I get them all?’

After a moment of silence, he got his answer in the form of rattling chains. He moved his head up and his eyes started to focus on the menacing sound. There it was, the tier 2 monster. It was still alive, inching towards him while the chains shook about. Its skin looked even more charged than before and it was even smoking.

“Fuck…”

Roland felt sick, due to using this jerry-rigged trap his mana had dropped below 5%. It was a miracle that he was even conscious. This demon or devil wouldn’t give him much time to get back to his feet though. It just slowly tricked towards him with slow large strides.

It took him a moment to find the mace that he inserted into a monster's mouth along with his shield. With weak shaky steps, he moved towards it and managed to get to them before this monster got to him. Roland pumped himself up, the monster couldn’t be at full health either. It received the hit from the trap but it was at the outer part of it. Because of this it probably received less of a shock than the rest of the monsters that were now dead.

This came to light in the coming exchange that these two remaining warriors had. The monster gave out a deep groaning roar before swinging its hand toward Roland. He defended himself with his shield that buckled under the pressure. Those chains rattled around as the Chain Devil attempted another strike.

The monster was quite sluggish and its hits were quite easy to read. The hits were quite real though, as each time those massive chained fists descended onto Roland’s shield he felt his bones rattling. His hand that was holding onto the shield had gone numb a long time ago.

But this was the last enemy, and if he failed now, he would need to do the whole thing again. He gathered all of his strength that he had left and took another blow to the shield. It received another dent but somehow remained intact. This time around he didn’t let the monster take its time to wind up again, no instead he swung his mace towards its knee.

He injected the remaining mana that he had into this mace and delivered a crushing blow with all of his strength. This part of the leg didn’t have any chains wrapped around it, he heard a nice cracking sound of the creature’s bone. Soon it lost its footing and tumbled forward allowing Roland the chance that he was aiming for.

The shield was tossed to the side as he grasped the mace with both his hands. With a long overhead strike, he brought down the spiked ball on the back of the creature’s head. He started hitting it, over and over again. His maddened shouts filled the silent arena and echoed throughout it.

“Die, Die…. DIE!”

The creature’s head that had a somewhat humanoid shape soon turned into a caved-in mess of flesh and bone. The spiked ball that was on the mace shattered into many chunks of metal while Roland continued. Even after that, he continued to hit it with what was left of the mace’s shaft only after some time he managed to snap out of his rage filled stupor.

“Uhh…”

He groaned while falling to the side into some monster remains. The only thing he was capable of doing now was panting and wheezing. The only thing that kept him awake were the sounds of the large arena gates closing themselves back again. He dreaded the thought that this might not have been the end to this trial, if another monster showed up now then he would need to give up.But instead of that, something else happened. The walls started to shift again and the closed gates through which the monsters were coming out from started moving below ground. Though it weren’t the gates that were moving, it was the ceiling.

Roland rolled over onto his back and could see the top of the arena opening. From it a flight of stairs descended along with the ceiling. Soon the rumble ceased, and he was left with a way up, it seemed that this might have not been the end of this trial quite yet.

“What now…”

Before he could ask himself if he would need to fight another monster when he climbed those stairs he felt a strange feeling wash over his whole body. The injuries that he had sustained were being healed and the cloudiness over his mind was being washed away.

In a matter of seconds, he was fine, a full recovery was achieved. He hopped up to his feet and also noticed that the monster bodies had long vanished along with any signs of combat. What remained were the stairs up, he was even back to wearing the generic clothes that he had before fashioning himself better armor.

Roland narrowed his eyes at the flight of stairs. There was nothing here anymore even after moving around those stairs and what remained of this arena. The only thing he could do was to move up, if there was some kind of bonus boss there was something that he feared.

So he climbed and to his surprise the area that he found himself wasn’t fit for battle. No, it was a library. There he saw one large desk with some books on it and a magic candle lighting the way. After making sure that there weren't any hidden enemies around he moved forward, his hand went to the first book he could find.

“Hm...Secrets of Rune Smithing?”

After flipping through the pages of this book and picking out another one he figured out what this was.

“I guess this is the part that I receive my Runesmith Lord skills…”

Roland looked at the pile of books here, there were quite a lot of them and it looked like they would offer him more than just skills. There were designs for certain runes, theories that couldn’t be bought at auction houses. With this he might be able to clear up the deficiencies in his knowledge, it was time to read.

"Is this going to be a written exam?"