Chapter 48 – Thinking back and new discoveries.

The sound of distant barking broke the silence of the night. It was faintly noticeable between the howling wind that rattled the uneven windows in Roland’s room. The light from his candle flickered as it danced around.

The young man was lying down on his bed. Roland was holding both his hands behind his head and looking at the ceiling. He was spacing out while thinking about the future. He had already spent almost ten years in this foreign world and he still felt like he didn’t belong here.

He thought back to the day that he had arrived. He was confused and scared, the people in his so-called new home were cold and distant. The original Roland was a five-year-old child and didn’t know much about the world. His old memories had already faded into obscurity and he wasn’t sure why his siblings were so distant. The only reason he could find was his mother that was still a mystery to this day.

There were no photos or paintings of her left in the mansion. The child that was once Roland couldn’t recall her face either. Apparently, she had died giving birth to him but if that was the truth or not was unknown. His status was showing that he was 100% human so he didn’t think she would turn out to be a demon lord like in some fantasy tales that he read in his free time.

Then there were his three brothers. He didn’t really interact with the other two that were of noble birth and the youngest hated his guts. The reason was also a mystery but probably it was due to this whole noble lineage nonsense. That brother’s mother was also a commoner, a daughter of a merchant to be precise.

He remembered a few instances where that brother of his lashed out at him. Luckily, most of the time there were people around and no fights broke out. It would be really unfortunate if he got beat up by a child only a few years older than his new body. Roland also kept to himself and avoided confrontations from happening by hiding in some secluded spots to train his skills.

He wasn’t sure what his brothers were up to now. Did they finish the knight academy and were now back at the Arden Estate? Were his sisters getting married off to some nobles to gain more prestige and power? Maybe they were lucky enough to nab themselves someone that they actually liked.

Normally a youth that had a warrior class and was from a noble line would go to the knight academy to train. Just as the name implied it was a school for young nobles. The curriculum of such an academy varied. It wasn’t just physical and combat training, a knight had to know how to read and present themselves.

They would study things like etiquette, languages from other countries, history, and even accounting. A lot of went into a knight and they had to train in particular skills to unlock the more noble versions of their classes.

If you wanted to achieve a knight class first you needed a tier 1 Squire class. Depending on the choices of other tier 1 classes you could rank up to a tier 2 knight eventually.

For instance, if you were lucky enough to have a mana warrior class and a Squire class, you could then quickly switch to a tier 2 Mana Knight. Then depending on your elemental affinity, you could specialize into something like a Flame Knight. There were various combinations to this class as well as the others.

His mind drifted away from his family and he recalled another person that was at him during that five-year stop. It was his maid Martha that was more or less his mother figure. He had certain emotions towards that woman but he mostly considered that to be due to the leftover feelings from his host’s body.

She was someone who at least cared but if she would be willing to drop her cushy job back at the Arden estate and come here to help him out? He was living in a warehouse that would probably be quite chilly if he wasn’t a blacksmith who used a lot of hot metal.

There was also the problem of contacting her. Sending her a letter was one option but it could very well be intercepted by someone from the noble house. He didn’t know who hired the first assassin that went after him. There was nothing stopping that person from hiring more if they knew where he lived.

Roland shook his head as he tried not to think about his old family anymore. That was something that he had left behind a long time ago. He was now more or less self-sufficient and part of the working class. His runic swords were being sold to the adventurers already and he was earning a hefty sum for someone his age.

This was still not nearly enough to start his own business though. He would probably have to go to a different town where he could set up a shop. A town where the prices for real estate were a lot lower than here. The taxes also depended on the nobles that ruled the lands. He looked over some potential new places but he was still on the fence.

It would probably be a lot easier to live his life here. He would probably get a new workshop after ranking up to tier 2. Maybe even some tier 1 blacksmiths as helpers and they would be all hired through the company he was working for. Still, he would be only part of a bigger machine, just a larger cog in it but still not his own man. Even though it was slightly troublesome, he still had dreams of starting his own workshop.

He rolled to one side of his bed and then to the other before finally getting up. For some reason, he couldn’t sleep. He activated the life detection magical device that he had made and couldn’t see any enemies nearby.

His life had gotten quite mundane after the last incident, he spent most of it working at his workshop. There were no more assassination attempts on his life for quite some time now. The gnome was holding up his part of the contract and he was well protected.

Roland grabbed a stack of papers from the side and started looking through them. He was doing his own research in hopes of discovering a new skill.

The people in this world were very reliant on their skills. It was thus very hard to come by any type of research materials that weren’t just skill books. Those just gave a person the knowledge instantly without really giving them time to contemplate over it.

It was as if a person was learning to ride a horse without having mastered walking. Riding a horse was the superior type of travel but if you got off your horse you couldn’t go anywhere. Thus it was hard for a person to research other similar skills as they lacked the basic knowledge to do so.

This was why Roland was now re-educating himself. He was far too reliant on his debugging skill for his runes. Without it, he would probably not be able to improve a lesser rune by himself. At least not before he started his own research. Now he was able to see some of the patterns and even understand them on a surface level.

There was a certain crafting technique he wanted to learn, the one that would boost his items to another level. It was the one that melded mana stones into the runic structure and powered them.

There were two main ways that this technique worked. One was by somehow combining the sizzling hot metal with the mana stone during the smelting process. The runesmith would create a special mana alloy that would retain more ambient mana in itself. These special alloys would then allow a runesmith to make weapons with lower requirements for mana.

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