Chapter 23: Runes

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

“I have all the materials you need. Although I had been collecting them for many years, it is only recently that I’ve found the perfect fire magical gems and ice magical gems.” Master Bentham said. Meanwhile, he opened a box that contained all the things that he had just mentioned.

“Is this it?”

Within those materials, some somethings looked very familiar to Abel. It was three red gems and three blue gems. He took the six gems out of the box and inspected them carefully. They were the ones he sold at Harvest City earlier.

“These are the fire magical gems and ice magical gems I was talking about. It was so hard to find such perfect ones like these, but luckily I had found these in Harvest City.” Looking at how excited master Bentham was, Abel wondered if the price of these gems were much higher than the price he had sold them for. If he mistakenly sold magical gems as normal gems, what would be the actual value of magical gems?... but Abel decided not to ask. He did want to regret his decision even further.

“Your task in the future will be sketching out those runes, make sure the angle, force, and the thickness of the strokes are the same.” Master Bentham repeatedly emphasized as he took out a brush from a box.

“Is this an ink brush?” Abel was shocked once again. Ink brushes were one of those things that Abel was all too familiar with. From the tip of the brush to the body of the brush, this brush that master Bentham was holding looked exactly like an ink brush from Abel’s original world.

Master Bentham explained as he handed the rune brush over to Abel, “Ink brush. Hmm. I like that name, but it’s called the Rune brush, boy. The body of the brush was made out of a kind of wood that is resistant to magic, which prohibits other external magical force interrupting the Runes writing process. The tip of the brush was made out of the softest handful of fur located in the very back of a wind wolf’s head. The wind property of a wind wolf allowed the brush to deliver runes ink more efficiently.”

“This rune brush is very difficult to master. There are lots of training and learning you need to do until you can draw the lines of the rune correctly. Here, give it a try.” Said Master Bentham to Abel as he took out a bottle filled with normal ink. He opened the lid and placed it on the table. Then, he took out a piece of lambskin parchment and also placed it on the table.

Abel held the rune brush by gripping it between his middle finger and the ring finger, while his thumb pressed against the body of the brush. He then proceeded to dip the brush in the ink bottle and gently whipped off the excess ink. A glanced at the runes in the book, in one take he wrote down the entire first page.

Master Bentham was stunned as he watched by the side. The master himself had been practicing to use a rune brush for more than 20 years. Yet, his position and control of the rune brush were not even as good as Abel’s first attempt. Even basic things such as grasping the amount of ink the brush needed to be dipped, had taken Master Bentham countless trial and errors. Although there was still a bit of disparity when it came to Abel’s replication of the runes. He was able to recognize when the lines should be smooth, straight or curled. These runes were no worse than the ones written by Master Bentham. As long as Abel kept on practicing, he could have surpassed his master in no time.

Master Bentham could not help but feel the waves of jealousy sprung up from within as he lamented on the god’s bias from the inside. He had never heard of a person of Abel’s age becoming a fifth-level novice knight. He had also never heard of a person who was able to forge a Sword Of Hundred skills after only a month of training. Even The Power Of Will he had so deeply desired was possessed by Abel.

Now when it came to writing runes, Abel had also excelled. His first attempt was already on par with those who dedicated decades of effort. Master Bentham could not take it anymore, he waved his hand at Abel and said. “Ok, You can go back to practice by yourself now”

As that been said, Master Bentham took Abel out of his room. He needed time alone to lament with his injured soul.

After Abel sensed that maybe Master Bentham dissatisfied. He packed up all his things and went back to his room in the castle. There was not a quiet place in the blacksmith shop for Abel to practice writing runes in peace anyway.

If Abel knew what Master Bentham is thinking, he would have told him “oh no, you are overthinking it. I only know how to use an ink brush, and this amusing thing is a rune brush.” In Abel’s previous world, he had been systematically learning how to use an ink brush since the beginning of elementary school. Even after he got a job, he did not give up on this hobby. From time to time, he would take out an ink brush and wrote down a few characters to enhance his mood.

After a week of training, Abel was able to completely master the four magical rune characters. The sizes and proportions of the strokes were perfect. However, during the process, he also realized that the fire magic rune character seemed very familiar to him.

It looked very similar to the 8#Ral rune in Diablo 2. However, there were a lot of connecting lines in this fire Magic Rune. Some were responsible for connecting to the hilt of the sword, and some were responsible for connecting the entire body of the sword. Overall the structure of the rune as a whole still very similar. The purpose of the 8# rune was +5, -30, fire damage, which was also similar to this fire magic rune.

Could it be that the rune of this world was related to the runes of the Dark World? Legend has it the Dark World’s rune system had been long lost. To create a rune system, the only way was to use an ancient Runestone to realize the power of each rune. Therefore, since the runes still existed in this world. If one had mastered more runes in the future, maybe they could also turn all the rune of Diablo 2 come into reality.

But for now, it was still too early to say. Abel had only mastered 4 runes. To establish a rune system, it required the combination of the entire 33 rune characters within Diablo.

As for the four runes Abel had mastered, after careful analysis and identification, Abel had corresponded them to the runes of Diablo 2. They were individual, the Fire Magic 8# Rune, Ice Magic 10# Rune, Electric Magic 9# Rune, and Poison Magic 7# Rune.

However, there was 1 rune system that Abel could remember from memory. If it wasn’t because this runes system was generally ranked at the top, out of the many rune systems, Abel wouldn’t even remember that it had even existed. The rune ability in this rune system was terrible in Diablo 2. It wasn’t even as good as any ordinary low-level dark gold. This rune system was called The Ancient Vow.

The Ancient Vow:

material required: 3 Kong shield

rune required: 8#+9#+7#

Ability of the final product:

General defense +50%

Ice defense +43%

Virus defense +48%

Fire defense +48%

Electricity defence +48%

historical

10 % of damage could be converted to magical power

Abel though it might be doable. Although its attributes were not that good in the game, it would be a powerful shield in reality. So Abel had decided after he had mastered all the single rune weapons, he would proceed to make this shield.

The next day, Abel returned to the blacksmith shop with the rune brush and the ink bottle. He found Master Bentham and said, “Master, I have mastered the four runes, I want to start making magic weapons today.”

By this point, Master Bentham had been shocked by Abel’s speed of mastery way too many times. He had become completely immune to It. Even if Abel were to master the rune brush a few more days faster, he wouldn’t be any more surprised.

Master Bentham took out a sword of a hundred skills that had Abel forged a while ago. This was because the Knight of Marshall had stipulated long ago that Abel have the right to possess all the weapons he forged himself. Since Abel would one day inherit the castle, he should be able to use the iron as resources as well.

Upon completing these swords of hundred skills, Abel would often carelessly leave them in this operation room, which was assigned by Master Bentham as Abel’s private room. If an ordinary person had entered this room, they would go insane. The floor was scattered with more sword of hundred skills than all the weapons store combined in Harvest City. There were only 3 masters with the ability as high as Master Bentham, supplying their weapons to the weapons stores in Harvest, and Master Bentham could only forge 1 sword of hundred skills in a month at most. Therefore, the limitations of masters can be clearly seen. To progress from forging 80 skills to a hundred skills weapon, if one did not possess The Power of Will, the only way was to rely on experience and a large number of mental calculations. Masters would normally start from 80 skills, and slowly forge 1 or 2 more skills on to the weapons each day.

Only a blacksmith who possessed The Power of Will such as Abel could forge a weapon from 80 to 100 skills in one take.

However, these days, master Bentham no longer needed to send his weapons to another weapon store to sell. This was because, in exchange for Joshua, Lord Joel had given The Knight of Marshall a weapon store, located in the most prosperous part of the Harvest City. While as for the five captured servants, they had also been generously sent back.

That weapon shop, which was worth more than tens of thousands of gold coins, was now bringing more than 500 gold coins per month to Harry Castle.