Chapter 79 – Tier 2 trial part 2

Sparks flew with every strike of his hammer. The echoes of those hits spread through the large sealed of arena space. With one last bash of his smithing tool, Roland was finished. The runic structure was complete and he examined it before putting it to the side.

What he was working on looked to be a simple piece of steel. It wasn’t much to look at, its shape was uneven and more thought was put into the handle than the rest of it. This was the last wand that Roland was able to produce. When he looked up he could see the last grains of sand finally falling, soon the time would be up and the next stage of this test would start.

He whipped the sweat of his brown while sitting down. He began gathering mana from the surroundings. There wasn’t much time left but he would use it to recover at least a bit of his mana. The whole runecrafting process made him take a hit to his mana reserves that were at about 50%.

‘This will have to do…’

Roland thought while meditating in a lotus position. He could feel the abundant mana in this strange virtual space entering his body. The concentration was much higher than what he was used to in the real world. With it being this plentiful he could hope to regain his mana pool past the 70% mark in a few minutes.

He was limited in what he could make in this short amount of time. The mace was to his side, it looked crude but it would have to do. He wedged the casted spiky head part on the shaft for a tight fit. There was even a spare for the head part in one of the molds that he didn’t open yet. The runic structure he went with was the strengthening rune, he feared that this weapon would break easily if he just left it like this.

The next item was for defense, a tower shield with a handle made from leather on the other side. He used some strength to bend it slightly for it not to be just a flat sheet of metal. It could barely pass off for a shield. The part where his hand went into wasn’t reinforced too well. He riveted in another piece of steel to add to the thickness on the inside but that was it. There was a mana shield rune inscribed on it as well.

The rest of his time was spent on creating disposable wands. Those didn’t take much time to make as he only needed to make them large enough to hold the runic structure. He placed common grade attack spells on them while he used the lesser versions on his shield and mace. The wands were disposable but he needed the mace and shield to last a bit more.

He had also created a simple knife. It was also made by hammering a piece of steel into the correct shape, then sharpened to get a workable edge. He couldn’t really call it a weapon much but it would have to do as a last line of defense. He went with the sharpness rune, if he needed to cut a throat it would do.

Soon the sand ran out and Roland could feel the arena rumbling once more. He was sitting in the middle of the workshop part so he felt it moving violently. The whole thing was moving down into the hole that it came from. He quickly grabbed all the gear and started tossing it down from the platform.

Luckily for him, the whole hole that the platform was going down suffered from the invisible wall syndrome. Even if he wanted to go down he wasn’t able to as it started pushing him out along with the items that he made. He was left in the arena with no workshop to speak of, he grabbed his mace and shield and placed the wands on his belt. He had made it with some leather and just tied it around his waist. There wasn’t really enough time to make a belt buckle.

While he was working the scratching on one of those wooden gates got increasingly louder. Now that the timer had run out the noise was at an all-time high. He looked to the door that the noise was coming from and first just prepared a regular spell.

“Source of all magic, heed my call…”

He used his voice to say the incantation, a bolt of energy appeared at the tip of his finger that he pointed towards the wooden gate that was now opening. He could see a couple of clawed hands coming out of there, the monsters in there were quite eager to show themselves.

“Mana Bolt!”

Soon one of them couldn’t wait and shoved its head through the narrow opening while the gate was still going up. This part of its body promptly exploded into chunks of meat and black blood. This wasn’t quite over as Roland used the slow opening gate to his advantage. He was already at the other side of the arena so before any of these enemies got to him he would be able to snipe some of them down.

“Mana Bolt…”

“GUOHh…..”

A high-pitched scream was heard after another monster fell but this would be the last easy target that he got to slay. Soon the monsters revealed their ugly faces and lanky bodies. They were small fiends with leathery bat wings, a barbed tail, and sharp, twisted horns right above their eyes. Their size was about the same as a goblin’s and the wings were small, not really meant for flight. This variant had rather pale skin, almost making them look white.

Pale Imp [ L 30 ]

It was the creature called Imp. This was one of the monsters that was linked to the evil demon monsters. They all would start out as those small evil-looking creatures but with time they could transform into giant muscular beings that liked nothing more than to cause pain and suffering.

There were quite some of them in that room, all of them quickly spotted the spell swinging man. Without any rhyme or reason, they charged forward, with them now being aware of his presence landing a hit on them with his mana bolt spell and slow casting time was hard.

Soon they were upon him, he clutched his mace hard and delivered a swift blow to one of the monster’s heads. His weapon produced a dim blue glow as he activated the runic structure. One hit and another of the monsters was down on the ground. They were comparatively low-level monsters to him so he was managing.

His footwork had improved after spending a year down in the dungeons. There were actually warrior skills that could be learned but regretfully he didn’t have a class that could get any of them. With some perseverance he improved still, it might not have had the backing of any special skills but his combat sense did improve tremendously.

Roland was sure to move, the arena was large enough for him to use his long legs. Even with his low agility, he could run faster than these monsters. The trick was to not fight them all at once, it was easier to fight one on one twenty times than one large battle against twenty opponents at once.

Stolen novel; please report.

The monsters ran after him but they found it troublesome to get near. When they got in range they suffered a bash from the mace or a spell to the face. These small critters weren’t a match for Roland even when outnumbering him by a large number, as time passed there weren’t many of them left.

It was clear that these monsters weren’t very intelligent. There were no tactics, just rage-filled charges, mostly with their heads out while trying to aim for a bite. No experience points were getting gained from the kills but soon he had managed to slay the last one.

He activated some of the wands with the lesser mana arrow and mana bolt spells while running away. Due to how easy it was to tell where the monsters would go next, each spell was a sure hit kill. With time the last monster’s head exploded and its pale leathery corpse was down on the ground in a pool of black blood.