《Flesh runes》 Prologue A man in red robes sits on a large ornate throne clearly meant to intimidate, he snarls at the people kneeling in front of him, they are not too close of course he does not want to breathe in their bad air. They were peasants who had come again probably to ask for more money, of course he didn¡¯t let them release their dirty breath in his glorious chambers a butler would speak for them. The distinguished looking butler pulled out a written copy of what they were requesting and cleared his voice. ¡°General the peasants have requested that you march a small company east to defend their lands from the approaching Raiders¡± The man on the throne sniffed. ¡°I¡¯ve needed a break hmmmm make the preparations at once, we leave at dawn¡± The man left the room excited for the slaughter ahead of him. --- A knight captain of the red robed man frowned at his section of the battle field, there were many more raiders than the strategists predicted and his lords lack of strategy was not helping. His small company of knights and conscripted soldiers were cut off from the main force and retreating up the side of the gorge they tried to ambush the raiders in. The muddy slope was difficult to navigate and even though they had the high ground they were losing men faster than they could get away. The knight captain decided to push towards the enemy to try and give his men some breathing room, he lunged thrusting his longsword straight into the chest of an unsuspecting raider. Helping the soldier he just saved up he parried a blade, caught it in his crossguard and slid along it to drive the blade into another raiders heart, he would have to act aggressively as possible to buy enough time for his men to escape. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. Raiders were cleaved into pieces left and right as the knight captain activated his only mana skill, the blade glowed an angry red and the knight captain kept pushing. Only a few more seconds to get most of his men over the edge of the gorge. Suddenly his wild swing was blocked by a raider with a glowing sword of his own, the raider smiled with a bloodthirsty grin and the knight captain let out a stream of curses. They were almost equal in skill ¡®this is impossible¡¯ he thought ¡®raiders don¡¯t have men of this caliber¡¯, before he could finish considering the strangely skilled raider he saw something out of the corner of his eye. It was a glowing charged arrow in an archers bow, his eyes widened and then everything went dark. --- Three knights carried their superior officer as fast as they could away from the battlefield, they were rapidly arguing about their next course of action. ¡°We have no choice, we have to take him to the welded church¡± ¡°No, there must be an alternative¡± ¡°There are no other healers in the area¡± ¡°We can¡¯t take him there, their god is insane¡± ¡°If he doesn¡¯t like you when you get healed by his priests he replaces your soul with someone else''s¡± ¡°You don¡¯t understand, either we take him there and risk it or he dies¡± Simultaneously they all look down at their renowned knight captain, his face is pale and despite the bandages he is losing blood quickly from a hole torn into his chest and a gash on his arm. They all sigh, they know what they have to do. --- The welded church had buildings as fractured as their god, as if put together out of failed projects of apprentice blacksmiths. The whole building gave off an uncomfortable air that suffocated the knights as they rushed in, they were received quickly and the priests accepted them into the healing chambers. A crystal was set directly above the patients table and it glowed as it slowly charged up, they all chanted in unison their lopsided half-melted crowns glinted in the charging holy light, As soon as the beam touched the knight captain''s chest he started screaming and when his knights tried to get him out from under the beam they were swiftly disposed of. One of the priests smiled cupping his hands in prayer. ¡°It has been so long since our lord has welded a new soul into a body¡± he giggled ¡°I¡¯m so excited¡± 1.1. Setting up the pieces Charleston anthem, died. He was asphyxiated by carbon monoxide fumes coming from is newly installed second hand cooktop. Charles cursed his inept friend who installed it, he knew they couldn¡¯t be trusted. Charles was sitting in an upscale waiting room and had been for the past while, he assumed he was waiting to be processed into the afterlife or something like that. Charles was now bored he had discovered the only fun thing on his chair hours ago (a small inscription that read Don¡¯t panic) and didn¡¯t really want to disturb the other depressed looking people waiting with him. For the tenth time this minute he shifted in his seat and hoped he¡¯d be processed soon. At some point he must have fallen asleep, most of the other people that had been waiting before him were now gone, he looked around briefly and prepared himself to go back to the sweet abyss of sleep. When a brief message appeared before him, he took a moment to process that before reading it, it read ¡®you will be processed shortly prepare for transport¡¯. Charles wasn¡¯t freaked out, he had experienced similar floating text bits when he first tried vr and figured heaven had the technology to make it happen in real life. The next time he blinked his eyes he was in a high class looking office sitting across from a minimalist desk, behind the desk sat a normal looking man in a suit framed by a sunset coming from massive windows behind him. He cleared his throat and opened a simple looking file with an ornate logo on the cover. ¡°Charleston anthem, right¡± Charles nodded. ¡°Sweet, so unfortunately you were an atheist and had no particular attachment to any gods during your childhood so you don¡¯t have any particular afterlife to go to.¡± A quiet cloud of existential dread settled over Charles. ¡°Usually we just send you back and erase your memories, but!¡± he said raising a finger ¡°we have a new process just for atheists¡± The man looked particularly excited now ¡°You get to choose some gifts and we send you to another world¡± He smiled proudly.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Charles raised an eyebrow. ¡°Like a shity lite novel¡± he asked. The man pouted a bit. ¡°Sort of, it¡¯s like your own isekai¡± Charles settled back in his chair and considered it, it could be terrible as he could be sent to a shitty world covered in lava or something but it also sounded fun, charles had always liked exploring as a kid and as an adult. ¡°What kind of gifts can I choose¡± The man waved his hand in the shape of a rainbow ¡°anything the possibilities are endless¡± ¡°Can I¡­¡± ¡°Wait, wait, wait¡± the man interrupted him turning to his computer and opening a form before looking back at charles. ¡°Can I have some magic¡± The man smiled scarily ¡°you¡¯ll have to be more specific¡± ¡°Runes I guess¡± The man waved his hand prompting him for more. ¡°On my body¡± Charles grew less and less certain with each comment but the man¡¯s smile only grew. ¡°That¡¯s one charles you get two more¡± ¡°Can I have really powerful control over my magic¡± Charles didn¡¯t really want to put anything in his body that he didn¡¯t have control over. ¡°That¡¯s two one more¡± ¡°A um.. Giant inventory¡± The man¡¯s smile turned back to normal ¡°great i''ll send you to another waiting area while I sort out your transport have fun¡± Charles blinked and found himself in a small apartment sitting at a coffee table across from a woman in casual clothing. The apartment was sparsely decorated and appeared to be of a minimalist design, the colour pallet was mostly greys with a bit of green giving it a nature theme. The woman leaned across the table and shook his hand ¡°Hi, charles right, my name is Wanda and i''m here to give you a tour of your apartment today, you''ll probably be staying here a few days before they decide what planet to send you to¡± Charles nodded and the woman proceed with the tour. The apartment was quite magical, not in the sense that it looked magical no in fact it looked quite normal. The apartment was quite magical because all of the cupboards worked the same you just say what you want and when you open it up it will be there along with a few other recommended products. Other than that the apartment was pretty normal apart from the lack of T.V. Wanda left a few moments later telling him to call out her name if he needed some help, as soon as she left Charles ran over to the couch and took a nap. He did have to stay here for a couple days after all and being awake for all of it would be boring even though Wanda assured him he didn¡¯t have to sleep here. Charles didn¡¯t dream. 1.2. Masks are made It was Charles¡¯ third day in the apartment and he was beginning to get bored, he had tried to sleep through the first day but was unable to so instead he picked up his old hobby of making masks. Now shortly after finishing his 22nd mask he was incredibly bored, he probably should have wasted more time by sleeping. Charles let out a massive groan and started looking at his masks, some were epoxy some were wood and a very small portion of them were metal. Then suddenly Charles remembered his gifts, maybe he could play with the to pass the time. He sat down and started looking for his mana, it was a little tough because he didn¡¯t even know what he was looking for but his absurd magic control pulled him through. He felt warm energy collected in a ball inside of his head right next to an organ he recognised as the center of his magic control. Smiling he tried a classic first test for magic forming a ball above his palm, his mana flowed easily through his body but the moment he pushed it out of his skin it fell out of his control and he couldn¡¯t get it back. ¡°What the hell?¡± When he asked that question a little number one appeared floating above his wrist, it reminded him a little of a notification system in vr and so he flicked his wrist to try and open any menu that the notification belonged to. A small transparent screen opened up on his wrist, the page it was open too was titled Gifts, it was a list of his gifts a little more fleshed out than the versions he gave to the man. Judging from the list, it appeared that for every three gifts that you receive you get a negative. In exchange for his peak mortal magic control, the ability to turn anything he draws into a rune as long as he puts meaning into it and his inventory that was almost infinite, he is completely unable to control mana outside of his body if it¡¯s not going into a rune. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. A little sad Charles moved on, his inventory was easy to access and almost infinite just as advertised, Charles took a break from assessing his own abilities to stock his inventory with everything he could think of before learning that anything he hadn''t processed whille there would not be taken with him through the inventory. Charles cursed, stupid magic screen at least let him dream, the only thing he would be able to take was all the shitty masks he made. Charles had an idea, he could turn anything into a rune by adding his mana and meaning so he could turn his masks into runes. He picked up one of his masks, it was carved out of wood and looked like a woman crying, channeling his mana he found that as long as he focused on making the rune it was just as easy to control as inside his body, just as advertised. He imbued it with memories of all of the funerals he had been to, his grandparents, his best friends mother, any memory of group sadness went in the mix. He kept channeling the magic and circling it inside of the mask even as he started crying the memories seemingly fresher than before. The mask shined lightly and settled leaving the carved tear on the cheek of the mask shining blue, a little notification appeared on his wrist and Charles went to check it. The menu told him he had crafted a mask of the grieving family, a magical mask that when worn caused all who saw it to be hit with extreme sadness, temporarily disabling them. Charles smilled if one of his shit masks could become this powerful imagine what he could do if he crafted a mask from the get go intending to make a rune. Before Charles could get to it there was a sound of a door opening, rushing Charles shoved all 22 of his masks into his inventory, and prayed that whoever was coming was coming to send him to his new home. Wanda came through the doorway and beckoned him over. ¡°Your planet has been chosen and a suitable vessel obtained, come right this way and you¡¯ll be sent right there. Just a little tip though, magic on the planet strengthens by repeatedly emptying your capacity even though you can¡¯t control it outside your body I recommend shooting it out to increase your power ¡± Charles smiled and immediately leapt into the white void excited to finally get out of the apartment. 1.3. Babys first runes Charles awoke in a weird metal room, the walls were all irregular like a low poly modern art piece, Charles groaned it reminded him of his art high school. Directly above him was a crystal set into the irregular surface of the ceiling. Charles groaned again and rolled off of the hard surface he was lying on, from the temperature it was probably a metal of some kind, the floor was just as hard and cold and he regreted his choice of trying to get up. Getting up from the the floor he stumbled over to the only door in the room, it was locked surprisingly, he didn¡¯t think anyone would lock the door to an infirmary but he could be assuming wrong. The irregular wall of the room was just reflective enough for Charles to make out his new body, he was in full plate armour so Charles guessed he was a soldier of some kind. He was pretty muscular which he was happy about but his face left a lot to be desired, in short he looked like an asshole, someone who was constantly judging you. Charles messed around with facial expressions trying to look more approachable but they all looked creepy and unnatural, he only looked approachable when he gave of a light smille all other times he looked like a prick. He sat back down on the metal bed thing and thought about what to do next, he couldn¡¯t really predict what would come through that door so he decided his best bet would be to set up some way of magically attacking any enemies that came through. First up though he wanted to get Wanda¡¯s recommendation out of the way. She had said that to increase his magic capacity he needed to repeatedly empty it, but he didn¡¯t want to just waste it by venting it out so he decided to try out an idea. It would be a magic circulatory system pumped by a heart like rune, the whole thing would constantly empty his capacity by circulating it throughout his body but it would also make it easier to set up runes all over him. In the end though the system wasn¡¯t enough so he tried to also implement his second strategy, in novels magic users would sometimes put mana in their muscles to strengthen themselves so what if he stored mana in them strengthening them at the same time. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Charles started with his hand spinning the mana around the muscles before pushing it into them focusing on reinforcing them, it worked quite well the storage capacity wasn¡¯t a lot but his muscles visibly strengthened even considering his already muscular body. Charles smilled, shed his armour by instinct and quickly got to work strengthening all the muscles in his body eventually he also got to his bones. Finally his tank was empty and he watched as it imperceptibly started filling again, he had no idea when he would be full but he decided to move on to methods of magical attack. The were only a few methods of magical attack he could think of, the one he could probably implement right now was a sort of magical flamethrower, it would work just like a normal flamethrower just both the pilot and the fuel would be magic based. He would put a pilot rune (just a little circle infused with memories of fire) right on the surface of his skin, then using a cone shaped rune he could propel his mana through the fire rune lighting it up and creating a blast of super hot fire. When he turned the pilot on it glowed agrily on the surface of his skin which was mildly impressive, the flames were not until he created a rune to circulate some oxygen in with the fuel causing the flames to get a lot more impressive giving off a blue light and gaining quite a bit of range too. The magic flamethrower was not a crazy consumer of his mana but when he tried to add a modifier to the flame with another rune it started to guzle up his mana very quickly, Charles guessed that that enhancement would have to wait until he grew stronger. His second idea for magical attack was even simpler a magical covering of concentrated force that would appear over anything he was holding. The appear over anything he was holding was the fun part as it meant he could go into battle using even a fish as a weapon, the runes required were actually quite simple. He based them off of fun little sci-fi looking graphics, there were sensors and deployment runes on the tips of his fingers and a central ¡®processing¡¯ rune in his arms. The sensors would send out a wave of mana from their position and then bring the wave back reading the surrounding like a magical radar, then the data would to the processing rune which would send instructions to the deployment runes to deploy the field of force mana. The whole thing was the most complicated rune system he had made so far and after weaving the processing rune together he was pretty tired mentally. Three complicated rune systems in a day before getting tired was not bad he decided. Charles decided to take a short rest before trying to break down the door. 1.4. Practically tossed out After resting for only a few seconds memories from the previous owner of his new body started to show up in his head, they were all cloudy except for the rare scene but it was enough to understand who this body used to be and what skills it still possessed in it¡¯s muscle memory. At first as the early childhood memories of one Orson malcin started to show up Charles felt bad he had never been a good person in his life but he also had never done something explicitly Immoral. Orson¡¯s adolescent memory quickly shut down his rising guilt, Orson had joined the local military at a young age and soon started abusing people weaker than him when he was caught by his superiors and disciplined he turned his sadistic tendencies to people outside the force. As Orson grew up he got worse and worse going from insults to beatings and more recently to torture, but that didn¡¯t stop him from moving up in the military as most people in this lords military were the same. When Orson finally got replaced by Charles after he was defeated in a battle with the raiders he was actually an officer in his lords military. Even though Orson¡¯s torture and combat skills and would be useful to Charles he was disgusted and made a very important vow to himself, in this life he would strive to become a better person. After making his vow Charles got up and rolled his shoulders before donning his armour from Orson¡¯s memories he could tell that this armour was quite strong and would protect hs more vulnerable areas. The full plate armour was quite heavy and the visor on his helmet obscured his vision a bit but with his strength he could move around easily. Charles began assessing his bodies strength and comparing it to Orson¡¯s from there he could get a rough idea of where he stood on the ranking. Going through some light exercises he could tell he was only slightly stronger than Orson was using that he could guess that as he was now he would just be considered a good fighter. Only people in the army and adventurers would be as strong as he is, at his current strength he could probably fight and win against two normal soldiers. Charles sighed, he was nowhere near isekai protagonist levels of overpowered strength. Several minutes later while considering ways to improve the efficiency of his strength increase magic, a young priest came in.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°It¡¯s a pleasure to meet you welded soul¡± ¡°Welded Soul?¡± Charles said momentarily surprised by the sound of the cold voice coming out of his mouth. ¡°A soul welded into a new body by our god, I assume you have processed the memories of the previous soul in that body.¡± ¡°Yeah, so um¡­ what happens now¡± ¡°Well now we just give you some advice, equipment and contacts then we let you out into the world. Now would you like to come with me I have lots of fun stuff for you¡± ¡°Ok¡± Charles followed the priest into what he assumed was a back area common room of the church. Laid out on a table was a full set of armor, a selection of half- decent looking weapons, a couple official looking papers and a bunch of assorted travel gear. The priest gestured to the provided armour. ¡°You should change your armour to this one, in addition to being easier to clean and hide due to an experimental finish that removes the shine it also belongs to no distinct style, after all I recommend hiding the fact that you are an officer of the morecian army¡± ¡°Why is that a problem¡± Charles asked. ¡°Well, not even considering the crimes your body got up too the morecian army is famous for their corruption and cruelty, do you really want to be associated with them¡± ¡°Not particularly, no¡± ¡°Good, now go change in one of those rooms and i''ll give you the rest of this stuff¡± Charles quickly changed out his armour and placed the morecian set in his inventory. The rest of the items were fairly simple, he choose a greatsword and dagger already deciding to use them mostly for intimidation purposes rather than fighting. The documents were a couple of forms that would get him membership to the mercenary guild (similar to the adventurers guild in novels and shows) and recommendations to good craftsmen, the survival gear was fairly simple it consisted of a bedroll, a magic stove, a canteen and some rations. Before he even knew it Carles was being shooed out into the world by the priest as he gave one last piece of advice. ¡°Head for the city of Thame, there is lots of work for mercenaries there and make sure to hide your face.¡± With that Charles was shoved unprepared onto the path to Thame. 1.5. On the road What the hell was that, Charles thought as he walked along the edge of the stone lined road. He had always been a very go with the flow type person in conversations but he really should have said something back there, that was a weird interaction and Charles did not like one bit of it. Charles sighed, at least he got a destination even though he had no idea how to get there. Charles looked quite menacing, as he walked along the road his body kept an instinctive march and he carried himself like a soldier, the finish put on the armour to prevent it¡¯s shine also softened irregularities in the metal¡¯s looks making his outline darker and hazy. Even though his armour was imposing his great sword was even more so, normal greatswords back on earth were around as tall as their wielders, they had long handles and were very thin to make them possible to wield at all. Charles¡¯ greatsword was made for someone of enhanced strength. It was taller than he was and thicker than a normal greatsword, it hadn¡¯t achieved buster sword levels of impracticality thanks to the thin and wide blade but it would not look out of place in an anime. The blade had a stone wash making it look well worn and chipped, the handle looked practical without unnecessary flourishes. All in all Charles looked scary as fuck, not someone the average merchant wanted to run into on the road. Charles sighed, the greatsword was heavy and he was forced to carry it with two hands and balanced over his shoulder, he would probably have to take a break soon to rest a bit. While he was walking he discovered a problem with his current suit of armour, his carefully created runes would not even be able to go through his gauntlets, Charles cursed and decided to work on his runes to take his mind off of the annoying weight of the blade. His solution was a simple one, he created runes on his armour that designated small spots where the magic would be channeled through the armour leaving it unaffected, it was like a magical porthole on the side of a ship. Charles was so distracted by the rune making he nearly missed a stereotypical bandit encounter right in front of him. A small group of guys in leather armour had downed a tree onto the road which stopped a small caravan of three carriages from passing through, a couple arrows were embedded in the carriages and the guards of the caravan looked like they were readying themselves for a fight. One strange thing Charles noticed was a lack of helmets, neither the guards or the bandits were wearing helmets, geez Charles thought do they think their in an anime or something even a weakling could kill them with their head exposed like that. Charles decided to intimidate the bandits into backing down, he didn¡¯t want them to take the caravan, and a fight sounded to tiring plus Charles was already sleepy, he had not yet escaped the grips of laziness that had held him tight in his last life.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! Charles approached the aggressive groups and coughed lightly to get their attention, the cough echoed out of his helmet creating a deep metallic sound. ¡°Is there a problem here¡± Charles asked. A bandit that looked a little better put together than the others stared at him for a few seconds and looked him up and down. This must be how attractive women feel, Charles thought as everyone¡¯s head whipped around to look at him. The Bandit who charles assumed was the leader spoke up first ¡°Ah, no dear sir we were just¡­¡± A younger more aggressive bandit interrupted him¡°This here¡¯s a toll station leave all your valuables with us and we might let you pass¡± The bandit leader looked like he had just swallowed a lemon and the caravan guards gave him looks of sympathy. Charles looked like an experienced combatant at first glance, he was not someone that the average weak bandits would want to take on. He sighed and prepared his greatsword, Charles¡¯s mind was already fighting with his body, he didn¡¯t exactly want to kill some bandit but his body was itching to put some blood on his new sword. The Bandit leader caught the quiet sigh and got ready to run, there was no way he was going to sacrifice his life to save a dumb newbie who couldn¡¯t recognise a capable looking mercenary. Charles prepared himself for a fight, strangely Orson¡¯s body seemed very comfortable with the greatsword, figures Orson would train in a weapon that was more useful for intimidation for anyone not obnoxiously strong. The sword charted a massive arc as he went for and overhead slash at the idiotic bandit, first he would do a control slash then test his force runes, finally he would test the flamethrower before taking the rest out with normal cuts. The idiotic bandit tried to block the blade coming at him but didn¡¯t bother using his off hand to support the blade a mistake that would cost him. Charles¡¯ sword hit the tip off the bandit''s blade pushing it out of the way and continuing it¡¯s path down into his shoulder, the blade ripped through the bandits flesh and almost made it through the bones before losing it¡¯s force. Charles didn¡¯t wait before going it for a second slash not even flinching a he pulled the blade out and was splashed with blood, this time he activated the force construct rune causing it to light up slightly with a blue glow. He targeted the Bandit¡¯s blade as the bandit tried his best to pull up into a guard again, the blade cut through the Bandit¡¯s one with only a small amount of resistance a kept going right through the bandit¡¯s head and deep into his chest even though he was cutting through the bone of the spine. Charles was splattered with blood again as he pulled his sword back onto his shoulder, Orson¡¯s body was fine with the blood but Charles¡¯s mind was not quite ready for it and he felt dirty inside. The armour covered up Charles obvious disgust with himself and as far as anyone else could see it looked like he was just surprised the bandit had been so weak. 1.6. Renewed vows Charles walked slowly alongside the caravan guards, after he had taken out the arrogant bandit Charles had lightly torched the remaining bandits as thy ran away. On autopilot Charles¡¯ body helped the caravan guards bury the fallen bandits bodies far from the road and accepted an offer to travel with the caravan towards Thame. Even after walking for quite a while Charles was still listless and felt like his brain had been filled with lead, he was disappointed, not even a day after coming to a new world and making a vow to do better he was already brutally killing bandits on the road. What happened to his commitment to do better it seemed like had definitely taken a step backwards. In an effort to distract him from those depressing thoughts he started thinking about something else which ended up no less depressing. What was he going to do with his future, a question that filled him with stress all throughout high school, here he was following the directions of some crazy backcountry hermit priest, become a mercenary when he was so shaken from killing a single man who was he kidding. The more he thought about it the more clear it became that his options were very limited, he needed money and there were not many skills that he could market. Other than killing people he only had mask making and runes but even then starting a store in a foreign country with no backing was not something he could realistically do, he would still have to do many other jobs to raise enough money to start the store in the first place. If he wanted to make it in this new world Charles was going to have to work for a period of time as a mercenary. He honestly didn¡¯t have much of an idea of what he would do if he became a mercenary, on earth they were just soldiers for hire that worked for any country that could pay their fee. Charles didn¡¯t know if he was ready to make a career out of hopping from one battlefield to the next. It took until the caravan stopped for the night for Charles to open up enough to talk to the other people on the caravan they talked around the campfire as they ate allowing charles to learn a bit about them. The caravan was from a smaller city in the countryside named Lofton this caravan traveled out from Lofton to Thame and back again every two months to make sure their city had access to all sorts of services like mail. It was run by a Rich merchant named Briant who was using this journey to teach his daughter Anne the craft, they were accompanied by four townsfolk, Old man June a young couple and their son. They were protected by a team of five experienced guardsmen who travelled this route all the time with the caravan.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Charles immediately forgot most of these details as he was not completely free from his melancholy yet but he tried his best to show his friendly side to the caravan members. They noticed he was a bit quiet but they didn¡¯t think too much about it. The caravan members went to bed early as there was not much to do on the road while the guards established who would do watch first. Charles looked up and stared at the sky and the beautiful night stars began appearing, they were some of the most beautiful stars he had seen and they reminded him of pictures of stars in the desert. Before the magic could wear off and return him to his depressing thoughts he heard a cough from Old man June who had snuck up on him while he was staring at the sky. ¡°A beeautiful naught innit¡± Chuckling a little at the old man¡¯s accent Charles replied, ¡°Yeah it is, much more pretty than where I¡¯m from¡± ¡°Don¡¯t nauw where youve came from but answer me this, earlier this day thayt was yer first time killing someun wasn¡¯t it.¡± ¡°Yeah¡± ¡°New it dint I, its rare that someun whoos as skilled as you to have never killed someun else boot I can tell you think that yer a bad person or someing cause of it. Well, yer not you saved our lil operation her and if naut that you at least saved a fiew guards.¡± Charles smilled, at least the old man was trying to make him feel better. ¡°Thanks Old man June¡± ¡°Nay proublum¡± The old man left a little after, and Charles was immersed in his thoughts, he had taken a step back today but he could work to make Orson¡¯s attitude about killing work for him. Just because he had killed someone today did not mean his path forwards was closed off, in the future he was probably going to have to kill more people and he knew that he would have to make a choice in the moment and stick with it. He would learn from each opportunity and improve because that it what it meant to be human. Now, what the Fuck was he going to do with his future. 1.7. Missing food On the second day of travelling with the caravan Charles decided to work on his runes again, if he could cut through people easily with his simple skill than other people probably could too. In order to be safe Charles needed a defensive skill to protect himself from their attacks, after all he was probably going into more combat in the future. He decided to use similar runes to the force construct rune, it would scan him to detect if he was wearing any armour then deploy his mana in a reinforcement rune. If he was wearing no armour it would reinforce his skin, less protective but helpful nonetheless. In addition to reinforcing what¡¯s already there when struck in would redirect the force hopefully deflecting the weapon and forcing the welder to overextend. The rune was a simple remake of the force construct rune but it still took quite a bit of energy and time to make. After finishing Charles needed a break so he decided to go and talk to a few of the other caravan members. The farmers were mostly simple people although Old man June seemed to know more than he let on, Maxime and Lester (the young couple) were responsible for finding out what everyone in the city needed from Thame and they went with the caravan to get it. Their son Larson was an ambitious young man who wanted to grow up to become adventurer, he explained to Charles what adventurers and mercenaries were in this world. ¡°mercenaries pretty much just do all sorts of assorted tasks for the people, but adventurers are sponsored by rich noble, a single adventurer can change the tide of and entire conflict.¡± He said. Larson went on to gush about all of the popular adventurers, to sum it up mercenaries were the adventurers from earth''s fiction getting quests to kill goblins and such, while adventurers were like celebrities and powerful warriors that could represent an entire kingdom. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Charles had a much better time talking to the merchant''s daughter Anne, she was well educated and seemed to idolise him a bit. Charles talked to her for the next few days about assorted topics, it gave his a pretty clear picture of the country. This country called Grantham was currently trapped in a war and was being constantly raided from another side, Orson had memories of fighting people wearing random clothing and wielding weapons with no cohesive theme. It seemed like because of this the kingdom was in trouble and was forced to move all funding to the army and guard, the economy looked like it was heading into a depression and the kingdom''s allies were being shifty. Charles was basically trapped in a volatile country that was on the verge of collapse, heaped on top of that the king was becoming more and more cruel with his methods starting to randomly detain people in the major cities he saw as problematic. Charles added leave the country to his list of objectives, Charles huffed the stakes were shaping up fast and Charles was not excited to see what would happen next. On the seventh day with the caravan a new problem arose, things were disappearing in the night, mostly food products. This slowly escalated more and more things were going missing, Charles started trying to place alarm runes around the camo when they were heading off to bed but they were always broken when he woke up. The food stores were getting dangerously low so Charles decided to stay awake all night with alarm runes and runes designed to go off when the alarm runes were disabled. Charles kept completely still and pretended to be asleep while he waited, late in the night the moon lit up and interloper on the clearing they were set up in. A person wearing a crude camo walked out of the tree line and easily disarmed his double rune alarm. Charles cursed, in order to do that they had to be skilled in magic, he had no idea what the application of magic was like in this world they would be able to surprise him easily. Charles decided to make the first move, while they were rummaging around with the food Charles lit up his sword and dashed forward with a wild swing. The camo clad person summoned a tiny magic shield and deflected the sword before running as fast as they could to the forest. Charles fired his Flamethrower and manage to severely injure them before they made it to the forest disappearing into the darkness. Charles cursed, someone out there wanted this caravan out of here and if their saboteur was almost as strong as he was then they could probably wipe the floor with him. Charles informed Briant of the danger in the morning and went straight to work on improving his runes. 1.8. Preparation Briant had decided that they would continue on saying that he wasn¡¯t afraid of a little opposition, but from what Anne had explained to him about the quality of mercenaries this was more than a little resistance. Though Anne had not been able to explain to him what magic here was like as she had limited exposure to it herself she knew it was an indicator of skill. Soldiers magic, which apart from Charles¡¯ flamethrower most of his runes looked like, was more common but even that was restricted to at the least high level officers and very capable mercenary. Scholars magic on the other hand which Anne had only ever heard about was even less common being completely restricted to nobles. Even the crude camo they had worn was expensive outside of very specific areas. The enemy that wanted this caravan gone was powerful if not physically then economically and Charles needed to be ready to fight anything that they had. So, he had been working ever since he discovered that they existed. He had developed two runes one for detecting enemies and another that would be his long range method of attack. At the moment Charles was a mainly close range fighter with limited ability to detect an ambush, so Charles started looking for ways to fix these problems. The detection was easy, he created an eye rune on the forehead of his helmet then created path¡¯s to chanel the information to a second rune near the eye holes on his helmet which would project the information as visible light into his eye. The rune worked okay it was designed to let him see farther and heat signatures and such, it did it¡¯s job but the range wasn¡¯t the best being barely longer then where he could normally see, at least he could see heat signatures lighting silhouettes up even when they were hiding. The Attack rune was much harder. He started with the inspiration of a crossbow or slingshot, the idea would be that it would generate a rope of pure force and use it to fire a projectile of some kind. He first developed some anchor runes filling them with stability and placing them on another rotating rune for aiming. The runes for generating the rope was more difficult and but he managed to develop a solution. The rune to generate force rope similarly to the field for defence and offence were to energy intensive to use, so he made several small runes dedicated to creating sturdy force threads and an additional rune to weave them into a strong and much less expensive rope. There were two ammo types he developed for the crossbow rune to fire, one was a two tired slim arrow, the front was filled with whatever he wanted to damage his foe while the back was filled with concentrated force mana. It got its initial speed from the crossbow but when it hit it¡¯s target the back releases all of it¡¯s force causing the front of arrow to pick up speed and pierce through the first and a second target. The second ammo type was a thicker barbed arrow, it was filled with heavily compressed force mana concentrated on the tip and had barbes on the front to prevent it from coming out of the target and barbes on the back to prevent it from going through, once it was inside the target the whole thing exploded as the force mana on the inside was released. Both the slim arrow and the explosive arrow were very effective so Charles considered the crossbow rune a success and placed them on his shoulders with an aiming system connected directly to his brain.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. Charles sat at the front of the caravan scouting for ambushes and realised he was neglecting his advantages, the menus and the masks, he hadn¡¯t checked any of the menus since he got here and the masks had been sitting around in his inventory along with the travel gear. When he checked the menus there really wasn¡¯t anything interesting or new, but the masks had a lot of potential. With a little bit of expirimentation into velcro runes he managed to find a way to attach masks to his armour that counted as equipping them. Rune masks were an advantage that he needed to capitalise on, but they were different from the standard runes he made. The masks required emotion and memories while the effects they had were more passive like the only mask he had enchanted so far the mask of the grieving family. First Charles started with the basic masks stuff like combat buff or stealth buff, a quick rune on a epoxy demon mask gave him a solid combat buff. The menu read mask of the combat driven demon when worn it greatly increase his strength the longer he spent in combat and the buff would last until he took the mask off. At first the buff barely increased his strength but two minutes into a fight he would be at double strength until he took it off. For the stealth mask he choose a mask that looked like a cyclops with its eye shut. When he put a rune on it the menu read, mask of the cursed cyclops when worn people are unable to perceive you at first they just don¡¯t perceive you when you get closer their body forces them to be unable to perceive you (covering their ears, turning their head) and the last stage they start mutilating their bodies to prevent them from seeing you (they gouge their eyes out). As long as Charles kept in stealth it seemed like a pretty good stealth buff. Charles was confident in his runes and his new masks so he equipped the demon mask, activated the detection rune and prepared for a fight at any moment.