Chapter 95:Rune Craft
The carriage rumbled across the gravel road, its wheels catching against loose stone and sending small jolts up through the bench beneath him, and Tyler sat inside it with his eyes fixed on his boots, deep enough in his own thoughts that the motion barely registered. He still wondered why that woman was looking for him.
He remembered Serena telling him she thought the hunter might belong to the Black Cloud Guild, though she doubted it, the woman hadn't worn the armor the guild was known for, and she'd carried no emblem, no drawing of a black cloud marking her anywhere. She'd said the woman seemed interested, specifically, in learning who had hit Gary.
Lastly, Serena had told him to stay alert, to keep watch, and to be careful of the Black Cloud Guild. Tyler's frown deepened at the thought. Days had passed since he'd beaten Gary, and in all that time no one had come to threaten him, no one except the man he'd fought in the forest.
Beyond that, though, nothing else tied back to the guild. The thought of it kept circling through his head regardless, tightening something behind his sternum each time it surfaced. He didn't know if he was supposed to stay on edge or let it go. Something in him resisted the idea that this was as serious as everyone seemed to think, like people were making a huge deal out of something that wasn't one.
Suddenly, the system panel appeared right where Tyler was staring, the words reading:
[CONGRATULATIONS, ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: I CAN KEEP GOING ll THE USER HAS REACHED 200 POINTS IN STAMINA +5 EXTRA POINTS]
*Oh, I had almost forgot about that,* Tyler thought. The panel disappeared, and another appeared quickly:
[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED. INCREASED MANA POOL. THE USER HAS REACHED 200 POINTS IN MANA +5 EXTRA POINTS]
*Another one,* Tyler thought. The panel disappeared, and another appeared just as fast, reading:
[CONGRATULATIONS ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: MR TOUGH GUY ll THE USER HAS REACHED 200 POINTS IN STAMINA +5 EXTRA POINTS]
*Those are a lot of achievements,* Tyler thought.
The panel disappeared, and Tyler let out a slow breath, straightening where he sat, his shoulders rolling back until his spine settled against the bench behind him. He looked out at the horizon, the valley rolling away from the road in an unbroken stretch of green. As soon as the thought hit him, another panel appeared in front of him:
[CONGRATULATIONS, USER HAS UNLOCKED A NEW SKILL]
*Right, I've been thinking about that. The system has a habit of giving me rewards and other things late nowadays. Is it another glitch?*
The panel disappeared, and another appeared:
[SKILL RUNE CRAFT LEVEL ONE. THE SKILL GIVES THE USER THE ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND THE ANCIENT LANGUAGE OF RUNES. THE USER IS ABLE TO USE BASIC RUNES ONTO WEAPONS, ONTO ANY OBJECTS AND LIVING BEINGS. HOWEVER, RUNES CAN ONLY BE USED ON ITEMS AND ENTITIES THAT THEY ARE COMPATIBLE WITH]
Tyler's eyes went wide. "Woah." The word left him on a fast, startled breath. *I can make runes too?* he thought. He remembered someone telling him about runes once, about an old craftsman who'd carried the same skill and had known how to encrypt them into weapons.
"This is awesome," he muttered, the words barely audible, pitched low enough that only the closeness of the carriage carried them as far as the driver's ears.
*A language,* he wondered. *So, I can now understand it? What does it mean by that? Can I... do I just have the ability to read the language? What about writing? I'm gonna need to learn more about this when I get into town. Maybe even go to other craftsmen to ask more about this.*
Tyler kept turning the skill over in his thoughts, working through how it functioned and how he might put it to use, his fingers already restless at his sides, itching to start. But at the back of his mind, tucked into some corner he couldn't quite silence, a weight pressed low in his stomach, one that hadn't shifted since morning, the Black Cloud Guild, and the fact that he'd killed a man today.
But even so, something in his chest eased at the thought of having something to occupy him today, something to keep his hands and his mind busy enough that the rest of it might quiet for a while. Maybe he could take a break from hunting for a while and just craft instead, spend the next couple of days being a true craftsman for once.
He let out a breath, another thought surfacing behind it. *I hope the system doesn't give me another quest. I hate these things. But I do have to get my rank at the base updated to C-rank. I hope won't be too surprised, I only registered as a D-rank less than a week ago.*
The carriage finally rolled into town, passing through the entrance and slowing to a stop. Tyler paid the driver his fare and swung down out of the wagon onto the cobblestones below. "Thanks," he said, lifting a hand in a wave before turning onto the main road on foot.
*I wonder when George is going to come back,* he thought. George was the only he currently knew, easy enough company that Tyler got used to him without much trouble.
But George would be back in a couple of days, he reminded himself. He was still off helping James move to another region entirely. Tyler smiled a little to himself, remembering how James had left with a look of quiet contentment on his face, and the last words of encouragement James had said to him, that he was destined for greatness.
Tyler's smile widened further. *Right,* he thought, and wove through the crowd on instinct, keeping a careful distance between himself and the people crossing his path.
He reached the shop quickly. *Time to actually start crafting,* he thought, before pushing the door open. The bell rang out above him as it swung wide, its sound fading as he pulled the door shut again behind him.
"Good afternoon, sir."
"Hi," Tyler said, waving at Kai. "I already told you, don't address me as sir. Just call me Tyler, okay?"
"Right," Kai said. A nervous laugh slipped out of him, an embarrassed smile tugging briefly at one corner of his mouth. Tyler's eyebrows lifted at the sound carrying from the back room, a hammer ramming again and again into steel, the rhythm of it steady enough to reach clear through to the front of the shop.
"So Hector's back?"
"Yeah, he came back a while ago. I told him that you passed by earlier."
"Really? What did he say?" Tyler said, already circling the counter to stand at Kai's side.
"He just asked what you needed, but since you didn't tell me, I told him I didn't know."
"Right..." Tyler said, the word dragging as it left him.
"How did hunting go?" Kai asked.
"It was pretty great," Tyler said, a small smile stretching across his face.
The words had barely left him before the memory found him, unbidden, arriving in fragments the way a reflection arrives in the pieces of a shattered mirror.
Bernardo's voice first, thin and pleading; then the flash of him turning, lunging, blade seeking Tyler's side; then Tyler's own fist connecting, the final blow, the one that had taken the man's life.
Something inside his chest dropped first, a sudden weightless lurch like a missed step on a staircase, and in the half-second after it landed, a cold, hollow pressure spread out to fill the space it had left behind, settling low in his stomach and staying there.
He held the smile in place anyway, felt it pull tight and false at the corners of his mouth, and hoped it looked like nothing more than a man remembering a good day's work.
"Oh, really?" Kai asked.
"Yeah," Tyler said, a small chuckle following it that sounded hollow even to his own ears. He scratched the back of his head. "I actually ranked up."
"You did?" Kai said, straightening where he stood, his eyebrows lifting and a grin already starting to break across his face. "What rank are you now?"
"I'm a C-rank."
"A C-rank? That's incredible," Kai said, his eyes going wide as he looked Tyler over. "You had a D-rank necklace the last time I saw you." Kai's eyes dropped to Tyler's neck, and there it was, the black D-rank pendant, still hanging exactly where it had been the last time he'd seen it.
"Yeah, well, I haven't registered yet." Kai tilted his head, a small furrow forming between his brows.
"Huh? Then how do you know you're C-rank?"
Tyler paused, his mouth opening and then closing once before he found the words. "Well, they said you can feel it, right? Once you hit C-rank, and when you keep leveling up," he said, pulling his mouth into what he hoped read as a confident grin.
"Yeah, I did hear about that," Kai said, grabbing his chin and nodding in understanding.
"Yeah, anyways, I need to have a talk with Hector."
"Sure, call me when you need anything," Kai said.
A faint smile touched Tyler's features as he turned away. He stepped toward the backroom and pressed his weight against the heavy iron door, shoving the thick metal open. The instant the seal broke, a wall of stifling, dry heat crashed into him, radiating from the open maw of the stone furnace. The air inside the room physically shimmered, thick with the sharp, metallic scent of heated iron and charcoal smoke.
The rhythmic, deafening impact of a heavy hammer striking metal assaulted his ears. Without the iron door muffling the noise, the sheer force of the strikes vibrated upward through the packed earth floor, traveling straight through the soles of Tyler's boots and resonating deep in his chest.
At the center of the stifling room, Hector rhythmically drove a massive hammer down onto the glowing, white-hot steel of a blade resting on a heavy iron anvil.
"Hey," Tyler called out, hauling the heavy iron door shut behind him, catching the heat inside.
Hector’s jaw was clamped tight, his eyes locked entirely on the glowing metal. He brought the heavy hammer down again, oblivious to the interruption.
"Hector!" Tyler shouted, projecting his voice over the ringing steel.
Mid-swing, Hector froze. The massive hammer stopped, suspended high in the air above his head. The intense focus in his expression shattered, the muscles around his eyes widening as recognition set in.
"Hey, Tyler, you've come back," he said.
"Yeah, it's been a while,"Tyler crossed his arms, his posture settling into a relaxed stance despite the oppressive heat.
Hector lowered his arm and clamped a pair of heavy iron tongs around the base of the sword. He lifted the cherry-red steel and plunged it directly into a metal bucket of water. The water instantly boiled, churning violently and sending a thick, white plume of scalding steam erupting toward the timber rafters as the intense heat leached from the blade.
Pulling the darkened steel from the bath, Hector laid it flat across the face of the anvil and left it behind. He navigated the cluttered workshop, weaving his way around a large, scarred wooden table and stepping past a haphazard stack of crates blocking the path until he closed the distance, stopping right in front of Tyler.
"A few days passed since I saw you. How've you been?"
Tyler scanned the room, his eyes brushing over the cooling blade on the anvil before settling back on Hector. "Great,"