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Chapter 64 - Runes
🕑 Added 2024-06-26 22:23:53 +0000 UTC"The system is a great many things but it is always practical. It has requirements that must be met to keep its assistance. Like with leveling, it will end its help in that regard if certain requirements aren't met."
"The system is there to help, but it does not do it for free. Everything has a cost associated with it that must be paid. It isn't always about power either, sometimes luck is all that is required."
"Scholars and Researchers come up with different names for the reason but it is known to most as 'Proving your worth'. You must prove you are worthy of the help the system applies to you."
The recording kept going on about what certain civilizations called it but I tuned that part out. I didn't care what other people called it, proving worth was simple enough to understand.
After the wave, and after healing from the acid burns covering my body, people spent their points on information about what was going to happen when we got back to Earth. Why the recording started like that, I didn't know.
"And that brings us to the point at hand. Integrated planets must also prove they are worthy of the system's assistance. After the Failed Integration, the system prevents any outside force from interfering with new planets. It doesn't allow anything to affect new planets until the system removes its protection. Not even the most powerful of gods can interfere."
"After you are returned to your planet, there will be tests to see if the system should keep its protection over your planet or if it should release you into the multiverse and to the whims of fate. Every rank has an average time that it is completed in and the system's tests will stick to that schedule."
"The tests can be anything and some aren't as obvious as others. Sometimes just having a person at a certain rank is enough to pass, others, a foe must be defeated or challenge overcome."
"The length of protection changes depending on what the citizens of the planet achieve. If a planet has no one that strives for more and everyone is content to just survive, the protection barely lasts a decade. If the planet has powerhouses that climb the ranks swiftly, the protection could last centuries. It all depends on the circumstances."
The recording went on about different things that didn't matter to me, but one of the things it said stuck out.
"Please note, there are no tests for E Rank, simply surviving the planet is enough to pass."
It didn't go into much detail after that but it gave enough information to go off of. After the recording ended everyone speculated on what that meant. The planet was going through large changes and surviving was going to be difficult.
We all knew the planet was going to be difficult to survive on but passing a test simply by surviving seemed to indicate it being harder than we thought.
Being thrown from the top of the food chain after so long of dominating the planet was a change that none of us were looking forward to. Having to reclaim the planet and rebuild civilization was going to be harder than we anticipated. That was on top of fighting others. Countries wouldn't be a thing anymore and powerful people were going to rush to claim as much as they could.
It did help to know that we weren't going to be invaded by aliens looking to take over. It would be unfair if we were left to fight off an invasion so soon after getting the system while they had it the whole time.
Surviving the tutorial came first, but I couldn't help but think about afterward when we were returned to Earth. Would I be able to carve out a place for myself?
How would I compare to everyone else who was going through the same thing as me? I knew that I was strong, but that was just compared to the rest of my family. I didn't even know if I was the strongest in my tutorial.
We didn't have a lot of time to scour the map for information on everyone else and had to rely on people we met to inform us of most things. There could be someone out there higher level than me with a law of their own. I didn't know enough to see where I placed on the scale of power.
It also made me think about what I was going to do when we got back. Everything would be in ruins and humanity would have to rebuild. We knew that settlement pylons were needed to claim areas and turn them into cities, but little else.
I assumed that everyone would fight over territory and try to claim as much land as possible. I felt bad for the people in big cities like New York and Los Angeles. There was going to be a lot of fighting in those areas. It would be even worse in population-dense countries like India and China.
It made me think about what I planned for the future. Did I want to build a city? I wanted to keep my family safe and it seemed like founding a city would help in that regard.
I had no plans of taking over the world or anything, that was absurd, but carving out a little piece for myself didn't sound too bad. Maybe up north somewhere where it was quiet and I wouldn't be surrounded by fighting.
We knew that it was beneficial to be in a place where your affinity was abundant and the north was closer than going south. The only other place I could think of with a lot of ice mana was the mountains.
I liked the north better though. Maybe up in Minnesota or up into Canada somewhere. It would let me live in relative peace without being surrounded by other cities. Kind of like where our pylon was now, we were out of the way with no one above us.
It was selfish to place it where my affinity was prominent and not the rest of my family's affinity but if I was going to place it, why would I do it anywhere else? If they wanted to they could go somewhere else.
The pounding of Vinny's hammer brought me out of my fantasies. It was my day off from escorting duty and I was in the forge. My goal was to evolve my profession before the next wave.
I leveled twice from the previous wave with the spiders and the disparity between my class and profession was only getting bigger. I was now Level 32 in my class and 23 in my profession. Only two levels to go before F-rank.
Managing to carve a rune of durability for the first time gave me a large chunk of experience.
It happened right before the wave and I didn't get much time to celebrate my accomplishment before getting bathed in acid. The piece I was successful on was a crappy sword that I made quickly just for practice.
Asking Vinny to keep supplying my obsession made me feel bad, it took up a lot of his time. He was already ahead of me and well into the F-rank for his profession and his time was needed elsewhere. He went with a straight upgrade to his current job and took Apprentice Blacksmith.
He was making both armor and weapons and didn't want to specialize yet. He was a lot better than me at blacksmithing, but he also spent a lot more time doing it.
I focused more on fighting and didn't have the same amount of time to spend in the forge. He spent a lot of his points on more tools and better metals. His side of the forge looked a lot more professional than mine.
We shared when I needed something he had but most of my time was spent engraving. I wanted to push my class toward enchanting and it seemed like the way to do it. If I gained most of my experience from engraving runes then it should open up the path toward Runesmith.
After my successful engraving, I tested the weapon against a normal one. It was a night and day difference. Both weapons were still in the Crude tier, but the runic one was almost 50% stronger.
It was mostly to do with how poorly they were made. They were rush jobs to give me something to practice on and a properly forged sword would be different.
That was what I was doing now. I made the best sword I could and I spent hours engraving it. I didn't want to mess up so I was being extremely careful. My engraving tool was glowing from the mana as I brought it along the metal.
Engraving didn't remove a lot of metal from the sword, just enough to leave thin lines on the metal. It would draw out the magical properties of the metal and enhance its innate durability... or something like that. I wasn't sure.
I knew how to engrave and what the rune looked like, but not what it did exactly. It didn't take mana to work but it had to get its fuel from somewhere.
I did test it and found out that the runes deteriorated from use. After banging the previous sword against a few things and fighting with it, the runes had places where they needed to be fixed.
It wasn't the best work and I could tell that my engraving was shitty, but it was a start. The fact that it was considered an actual rune was all that mattered.
Using [Identify] on my latest sword returned this
[Steel Sword of Durability(Least) - Common]
The fact that it was in the Common tier was surprising. It was a decent forge job combined with a shitty engraving job. I thought for sure it would be in the Crude tier but it wasn't.
The sword I was currently engraving was the best I could forge. It started as [Steel Sword - Crude]. It was on the higher end of Crude, I could tell, and it was only a bit away from Common.
With an engraving, it would firmly be in the Common tier. We still didn't know enough to tell how it ranked compared to others. Whether it would be low Common or middle common, we didn't know.
With the amount of practice I had and the repetition of doing this before, I worked through the rune. I drew on the lines that I needed to follow before I started to make it easier.
My tool worked its way through the metal with ease. Making sure my high strength didn't ruin it was the hard part.
I put my free points into Wisdom to increase the amount of mana I had and that let me take fewer breaks while engraving. In the beginning, when I went too slow, I would run out of mana before I finished.
It was hard to get back into the flow of things after stopping and would most likely end in failure. Having a bigger mana pool made it easier.
That wasn't the sole reason I put my points into Wisdom though, it was a lucky bonus. I did it so I had more mana to use during battle. I didn't have the regeneration that the mages had nor the firepower that they had with their skills.
I needed the capacity to keep my skills going during a prolonged fight and an increased capacity would do that.
It also let me finish the rune without taking a break.
I finished up the last line and pulled my tool away while holding my breath. I knew that the engraving worked, I just didn't know what [Identify] would say.
[Steel Sword of Durability(Least) - Common]
My [Identify] wasn't what I was worried about. I knew that it was going to say that. It was Vinny's that I was holding my breath for. He had better skills in this regard and had [Blacksmith's Eyes]. His skill got more information from weapons than the normal [Identify].
"Vinny!" I called out to the man across from me. He was covered in sweat from the heat and wore a matching thick apron that I had. He had the blonde hair most of my family had and it was matted down in sweat.
"Did you do it?" He asked with a slightly hopeful expression.
This wasn't the first try on a good sword and he saw how many I went through.
"Damn right, I did!" I answered. My excitement about finishing made me overlook the amount of failures before this one.
"Come on, use it! What does it say?" I was a tiny bit impatient.
He picked up my sword and I saw his eyes glow subtly. He took a minute to respond and I knew he was doing it on purpose, it didn't take that long to get an answer.
"The sword itself is High Crude," he said nothing that I didn't know, "And the Rune is Intermediate grade."
As soon as he said that I cheered. I couldn't get out of the low-grade runes that I kept carving. Runes were weird in grading. They had the rarity of the rune itself, like Least, Lesser, Common, Great, Greater. That was the grade of the rune itself.
Then there was the grade of how it was enchanted. Low, Intermediate, High, Peak. If a Least rune was engraved poorly it was considered a Low Grade Least Rune.
Which was both confusing and a mouthful. Basically, the grade was how good the enchanter was and my rune was Intermediate grade. Which meant it was a step above Low.
It wasn't a lot but I was proud of it.
The system agreed and the experience rolled in.
Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Skills Available
I could now evolve my profession.
Comments
Baconwargod
Yeah it feels like we are focusing a bit too much on the abstract musings of the MC. Wish we were shown this stuff rather than told it.
Mattias Rydahl
Tftc. Also what a cliffhanger 😱 Love the fact that the MC isn't automatically the best at his profession (unlike in other LitRPG stories) since he has to focus on fighting. Makes the fictional world seem more real. In the last couple of chapters, there's been strangely little dialogue/character interaction though. I miss his younger cousin who called him... What was his nickname again? And even his pestering sister seems absent? Though, considering the circumstances, I guess people aren't in the mood to chit-chat. Edit: I re-read the last chapters. Apart from a single utterance in chapter 62 (where the MC warns Austin about the acid), there hasn't really been any dialogue since chapter 59 (not counting the brief interaction between the MC and Vinny in this chapter of course). Naturally, since the story is picking up in pace, the somber mood means less talking, but with all of the focus on world-building, the story is temporarily becoming a bit stale (in my admittedly unqualified opinion). Still great and I binge-read all of it, mind you. But I can't say I'm not missing the wonderful family members who were fleshed out in the beginning of the story.
