Chapter 116 – Runic Groupie

“What’s going on here?”

“Sir. Robert, please behave yourself, we didn’t come here to cause a ruckus!”

Silvio arrived at the scene to pull Armand away from the confrontation. Lobelia needed to have Roland point out that her bodyguard was close to fighting one of his party members before she reacted.

It was a bit strange to see two people that he disliked almost get into a fight while he had to break it up. If the situation was somewhat different he would just grab a bag of popcorn and let the two have at it. His money would be on Armand though, his level was higher and he also had more experience. He didn’t see Robert being able to tank the heavy fisting.

Regretfully they could not offend the nobles. They were outnumbered almost one to four and the noble’s side also had a tier 3 High Knight with them. Armand would be in a heap of trouble and they as well by association.

“If Lady Lucille wishes it…”

Robert frowned a bit more than usual but he moved his hand away from the sword hilt the moment the blue-haired girl entered the frame. It was clear to Roland that there was something between these two young adults. The way his older brother looked at the girl was a dead giveaway. After observing Lucille’s body language he was also sure that she appreciated Robert’s company.

“I’ll have to apologize for one of my party members, how can we help?”

Silvio moved in front of Armand who spit down on the ground while moving away. Korgak was observing the whole scene from the side but he looked saddened by the fact that a fight didn’t break out. With nothing to do, he was also itching to do battle.

“Ah excuse me, I was a bit rude. Let me introduce myself first, I am Lady Lucille De Vere.”

The girl curtsied before Silvio who just looked baffled by the gesture. He lowered his head a bit and nodded while not being sure how to react to a noble lady.

“Ah, I’m Silvio… just Silvio…”

In this kingdom, something like a family name was mostly given to people of noble descent or to merchants that liked to put their businesses under their family name. Commoners on the other hand would only be given a name. If they had enough money or achieved greatness they would be allowed to pick a name for themselves or have someone in a high position gift them one.

“This is Sir Robert Arden.”

She pointed to her bodyguard that looked quite grumpy. His eyes met with Silvio’s and he found himself twitching slightly. Roland noticed it while observing from the side. It was clear to him that his brother realized that this adventurer was a tier 3 class holder.

“Sir Robert? Good day to you.”

“Yes… likewise.”

“Then how can we help you? The contract stated that we shouldn’t get involved much after we descend to this area of the dungeon.”

“Ah yes, let me explain.”

Lucille gave a recount of what happened in their encampment and how one of the runic tents was damaged during a monster attack.

“Apparently the gentleman there is a Runesmith, we’d like to borrow his services.”

Soon everyone turned over to Roland who heard the whole conversation. The party here had seen the monster attack from afar but it wasn’t up to them to react to small pests like that.

“Want to borrow Wayland? I don’t see a problem with that, just return him in one piece after you are done.”

Silvio laughed and soon removed him from the conversation. His main purpose here was to warn people about monsters above a certain level. Unless one at the tier 3 level appeared or a swarm of tier 2 monsters attacked, he and the party wouldn’t have much to do.

Roland wanted to give his party leader a smack to the face as he wasn’t even given an option to refuse. Finally, the others started removing themselves from this spot and Roland was left alone with the strange girl and his older brother. He now stood before the two while silence fell upon them, he was the one to break it as he introduced himself.

“It’s Wayland.”

“Ah, a pleasure Sir Wayland.”

“I’m not a knight, just call me Wayland.”

He replied in a somewhat monotone voice. It didn’t seem that his brother had realized that he was his younger brother. From what he could tell he looked somewhat annoyed, probably from the way Roland was talking.

Due to being a person from the modern world he wasn’t that used to showing proper decorum. Then he had spent quite a bit at a noble’s house but no one really cared to give him any ethics classes. Things like that would be brought up at the mage or knight academy that he would have been forced to attend if he didn’t run away.

“Ah yes, so you want me to repair some of the tents?”

“Yes, do you think you could take a look?”

“Yes, sure.”

Roland nodded as he knew that refusing now would not be something he could do. Even though he didn’t want to involve himself with the nobles nor with his brother, he had to. He was obligated due to the contract that he had signed.

‘Let me get this over with… why is that girl looking at me like that…’

“Ah… should we go?”

After his reply, there was a moment of silence. He noticed that this blue-haired girl stopped and just continued looking at him. Soon he realized that she wasn’t really looking at him but at his runic armor instead. She did say something about runes and was quite focused on his hammer before the two idiots started bickering.

“Yes, of course, excuse me it’s just your armor… it’s so fascinating… did you really make it yourself?”

“Mhm.”

After another awkward moment, they finally moved towards the knight camp. The girl took up space to the right of Roland while Robert was to his left. He could see that his brother wasn’t amused and he was even holding his hand on his sword. Trust was certainly something that he didn’t have here, one wrong word or move and he might have to defend himself.

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“And that hammer of yours… I’m sure that it was one of these runes… wait a moment Sir Wayland.”

Lucille stopped for a moment while putting her hand into a pouch on the side of her robe. After some digging, she pulled out a thick book that had some runic symbols on it. The girl started flipping pages through it and finally opened up on a section that had one of the runes that he placed on his hammer.

“Here it’s the common mana proficiency rune.”

Roland stopped in his tracks and looked at the content of this book. In it was indeed the rune that he used or at least a variation of it. He was well informed in many runes and with a glance, he could see some flaws in the runic structure. Something like this didn’t even require his debugging skill as he had gone through so many runic structures that picking out flaws had become easy.

This wasn’t the interesting part about this diagram, that was the book in question. It looked quite thick and even had a small magical academy crest at the side.

“Yes that’s a similar rune… but it has some flaws.”

He replied while focusing on the parchment. Due to having had to mostly teach himself about runes he was astonished to finally see a proper book about runes. It had descriptions of common runes. The most he could hope of buying himself would be a book with lesser runes. The ones at the higher grades were hidden away by dwarven craftsmen that only allowed people from their circle to go through them.

“Flaws? It’s an intermediate rune model, you can tell just by looking? How magnificent!”

The girl’s eyes went wider while looking between the rune on the book’s page and the armored man before her. Roland on the other hand felt goosebumps all over his neck. He could tell that his dear brother was glaring at him.