Chapter 78 – Tier 2 trial part 1

‘Runesmith Lord’

Roland stopped while looking at the moving pixel art that only had three frames of movement. It looked like a more armored variation of the Runesmith Class, it was clearly some kind of evolved version and it was available to him.

‘Didn’t I read something about this…’

When he was back in the Arden estate he went through the library several times. With no internet or games, there wasn’t really much to do in this world. As an adult, he was past his childhood days so he didn’t waste time on kid games like tag. The only thing left for him was training and reading books.

He recalled that one of these books had a passage about some ‘hidden’ special classes. One of them was the mana related classes like ‘Mana Warrior’. They were quite easy to get with a corresponding aptitude for mana. Past those were the prestige classes like Runic Scribe or Runic Blacksmith that he had gotten along the way.

Then there were ones that were even rarer. The way that this class appeared on this screen here showed him that it was one of those. He had no way of knowing how good this class was though, it could be worse than a Runic Armorsmith or Weaponsmith for crafting purposes. It could not bring much to the table for him who already had one cheat skill in the form of debugging.

But there it was, what looked to be another rare class option that he didn’t think would be there. He was hoping to get a class that mixed combat and crafting in some way, could this one be it?

Roland looked over the other class choices, there was another one that he originally hoped to get. It was the Runic Battlesmith class, it was there with the basic variant as well. After leveling up his basic weapon proficiencies and gaining a lot of experience by fighting monsters this was also unlocked. Now it didn’t seem like the obvious choice anymore, there was a new contender.

This left him with five choices: Advances Runic Mana Scribe, Runic Armorsmith, Runic Weaponsmith, Runic Battlesmith, and finally Runesmith Lord. He didn’t even take the original Runesmith class into consideration as it wouldn’t really give him anything new. There were no mage type classes available to him and depending on his tier 2 class he might be able to level up some of the basic skills past the threshold with a different class.

‘Will this Runesmith Lord let me advance my scribing skills past the basic ones? I feel like the ‘Lord’ part implies something…’

He hovered with the mouse cursor over this class but also looked at the Runic Battlesmith one. After some deliberation, he decided to go with the ‘Lord’ variant. This world had a thing about putting noble titles above all other things, so it might have been the same with these classes.

‘I can always fail the class change trial on purpose if it seems lackluster…’

With the infusion of money, he could just go buy another class change crystal. It was normal for some people to look into the trials and judge if the class was a fit for them. The trials more or less showed what the class would be about. The crafting classes required a person to fashion items of various kinds while the battle classes required you to combat. What would this one force him to do?

Maybe he would need to craft a full set of runic armor along with a weapon? That would actually not be a bad thing as he would get some free experience and knowledge with the trial.

‘Here goes nothing…’

He nodded and clicked on the icon, the PC did its thing and the VR headset popped out. It looked slightly different though, like a more advanced model. Roland looked over it before placing it on top of his head. He wasn’t sure if it was because of the tier 2 trial but that might have been the case.

Roland hadn’t been here for some years, the last time was his Blacksmithing class change. He had to get used to the flash of white light as he got transported into the trial next trial room. The first one was a smaller library where he just needed to scribe down a simple glowing rune. Then there was a smith’s workshop where he had to produce a magical ladle. Both those classes made him produce something and that is why he was confused about the trial area that was produced this time around.

He looked around and noticed that he was in some kind of large arena. It was similar to a roman coliseum that he saw in some movies. There were differences though, for one thing, there was no place of an audience anywhere, just walls.

This arena was circular in shape, the ground was covered in plain sand. There were a couple of eye-catching things here. For one there were four large gates on each side, two were made from wood while the other two from metal. The walls were quite high and stretched up to the ceiling for a good hundred meters. The area inside was about the size of a football field. There were many torches on the arched walls that lit up the place quite nicely.

There was another thing that was out of place. A lone column stood close to the center of this arena. After looking around Roland couldn’t spot anything that was similar to the other two trials. There were no instructions, no books that he could read, nothing that indicated what this trial would be.

The only tip was this place, being an arena it indicated that this would be a combat-related task. If that was true then there was another problem. He didn’t have any weapons, what he was wearing was just a random tunic. He had leather boots along with pants but he couldn’t spot any weapons anywhere, was he supposed to fight here with his bare hands? Was this Runesmith Lord class some kind of grappling profession?

‘That doesn’t make sense… there is something on that column.”

He spotted something red sticking out from that misplaced column. After walking over he recognized it as a large red button. This thing looked quite out of place, it was bright red and placed on a rocky pillar.

It had a certain magnetic feeling to it. The more he looked at it the more he felt like pressing it.

‘If I press this the trial will probably begin…’

He walked back for now, before pressing that red button he took some time in examining this whole arena from top to bottom. He looked over every gate, even pressed his ear to it to see if he could hear something. But they all had a similar feeling to the apartment building, he couldn’t really touch it and the texture that looked like wood felt off.

The rest of the arena was similar, he started running into invisible walls, and climbing the ones that were going up was also impossible. Soon he returned to the big red button, feeling like he just wasted ten minutes on nothing.

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With a slight sigh, he moved his finger on the button. It was pushed in easily and it took a moment to see a reaction. The entire space he was standing in started to rumble. The pillar with the button began to sink into the ground while another platform directly in the middle of the arena appeared.

Roland stepped back and watched. The ground started shifting, it looked like the earth in the middle of this arena parted to the sides. There appeared a large hole, before he could go over to see if there was something down there a platform started to rise up. On it were several items that he was very familiar with.

“Huh? Is that blacksmithing equipment?”

He called out in surprise as he saw a large working forge along with blacksmithing tools show up before him. On this moving platform, he could see a forge, smelter, workbench, anvil, and all the other things that he always used for crafting.

The rumbling continued, apparently this wasn’t quite over. The noise this time around was coming from the ceiling above. He looked up to see another hole opening there, then a familiar object appeared. It was a giant version of the hourglass that he had seen in the two previous trials he took. This one was quite large, the sand was dropping slowly which indicated that he would have some time before the timer ran out. The big question was, what was it for?