Spiritual Ascension Online (SAO AU - SI Quartet) - Chapter 8

Launch Day Part 8

Marie's next stop was still on the Quai des Orfèvres, if on the other side of the street from the river. A stocky building which looked almost carved from a singular block of stone and dropped between other, more typical buildings. Full of dwarves as well, although with the occasional elf mingled among the crowd of artisans absolutely stuffing the main floor.

"OI, PLAITLING!" A thunderous voice already carrying an undercurrent of complaint bellowed over the crowd. None of the runesmiths seemed to so much as twitch from their work. "THAT LOCUST BETTER KEEP ITS MOUTH STUCK TO YOUR WAZZOCK NECK OR ANCESTORS AS MY WITNESSES, YOU'LL ACHIEVE FLIGHT RIGHT AFTER IT, GOT IT?"

The source of the voice was an old dwarf overseeing the floor with an ambient expression of residual bemusement with the world around him, his snow white beard braided and carefully wrapped around his waist. Two dark, coal-like eyes glowered down at her and promised to follow up on the threat.

There was only one valid answer, wasn’t there? "YES, ELDER! I AM HERE FOR THE RUNESMITHING LESSONS, ELDER!"

"NIMROS, LEND THE PLAITLING YOUR STATION." The old runesmith bellowed at one of his apprentices in the corner of the sprawling workshop, a dark elf man with the brown skin usually seen on the race's women, with a pathetic stubble of facial hair. He just shrugged and slid to the side, allowing Marie access as his master moved over with great nimbleness.

"That bug better not drip any blood on your runework." Master Runesmith grunted as he grabbed a spare metal plate and the tools lying at the station. Angboda just waved her limb at him, finger-scythe whirling very close to Marie's face as the imp demonstrated its outrage at the idea she would waste food. The old dwarf ignored her and, merely checking Marie was paying attention, went through the motion carving a symbol into the plate. "Here. Rune of Stone. I want to see just how much clumsiness I've to work with. Other runes, my other apprentices can help you with, I'm a busy dwarf, but Ancestors be damned if I leave teaching the most important one to an apprentice."

Stepping back, he crossed arms across his broad chest. "And make sure you're feeding mana to the rune as you are carving." He added, shooting Nimros a withering glare that the dark elf returned with a cheerful grin.

"Yes, elder." Rockefeller replied even as she focused on her work. She had already gotten a grip of how tools and crafting worked at the base level in SAO. She had also gotten used to Angboda's weight while working those same tools. The main thing here would be the addition of mana, so she made sure to take a moment to ensure she had a handle on it and could maintain a proper infusion on her tools before she got to work.

Steady focus, steady hands, steady mana. 

It was all the best parts of drawing and lab work, slowly and meticulously beating the pattern into the metal, each impact of her hammer on her chisel embedding the same measure of mana into the symbol.

The master runesmith stood by her side the entire time, hewing and grunting and grumbling but otherwise still as stone, while the dark elf whose station Marie took over, amused himself by humming a tune whose rhythm matched the strikes of the hammer and the chisel against the plate. Tutorial stuff.

[Rune of Stone: The most basic of the runes the dwarven Runesmiths use, it is also synonymous with 'Dwarf' in the eyes of many. Traditionally, it is the very first rune a prospective Runesmith will ever learn.]

[Rune of Stone (Armour): Armour inscribed with this Rune offers +25% or +5 Physical Resistance (rounded up) and END bonus, whichever is higher] 

"Barely acceptable. would be embarrassed to actually sell the damn thing to anyone. Bet if you didn't have that leech sucking at you, it would be better." The older dwarf eventually decided. "Now, let's see how it actually holds in function."

The man took out a hammer of his own from his belt and struck against the plate once, deforming it with contemptuous ease.

"Well, it works, at the very least." He grunted. "Let's see how you handle other basic runes. And you, you elgi wazzock, no distractions this time." He added whirling around to wag his finger at Nimros.

The dark elf just continued smiling. "But Master Ragnar, how else is she supposed to memorise the proper strike rhythm?"

"By listening to her teacher at work, like a decent dwarf!" Master Ragnar shook his head, grabbing a spare knife. "Next, Rune of Fire, the first of elemental runes, plaitling. Those can be slapped on anything and their effect will differ. But, considering that axe you're lugging around, the traditional use will do for demonstration. Weapons can be more finicky to rune too, so that's another lesson."

With that, the master runesmith began the slow, careful work of securing the knife before carefully carving the rune at the base of the blade. Then, he followed with two more elemental runes to demonstrate further differences. "Poor thing won't hold anything more, so here's your lesson board. Take one of the spare knives, I'm not letting you rune up your axe until I'm certain you won't bok it up."

Rockefeller kept the thoughts of what she could do with the Rune of Stone to herself as she did as ordered, not needing to be told twice to replicate the securing setup.

After that it was more slow, steady work. If more careful because it was a difficult balance to properly mark the blade. Too little and the rune wouldn't take, too much and she would weaken the blade.

...Wait.

"Fire, Lightning, Wind." She read her handiwork, brow furrowed in thought as something clicked in her brain. "Doesn't this spell out 'plasma'?"

"I wouldn't activate that if I were you." Nimros the Apprentice piped from where he was standing, Master Ragnar was observing them with a cloudy expression but seemed willing to let one of his students take charge. "You are a novice, right? You put the runes correctly, but there is a bit of subtlety to stringing combos together that pure instruction just can't demonstrate. I mean, you can use it. Once" The dark elf added dryly.

"Not in the workshop if the impatient wazzock wants to learn from experience." Ragnar grumbled.

[Obtained: Runic Knife of Plasma (Unstable)]

[4 Physical Damage, when activated, adds 2 4 6 Superheated Elemental Damage. On activation, the weapon explodes after first attack, dealing full damage to all beings in radius, the weapon is then lost.]

[Enchantment Property - Unstable: Magic dealing with adding properties to items/bodies in a permanent manner can be applied incorrectly. For Runesmithing, the most common form this Flaw will take is to make the item Unstable. Unstable items have a chance to become destroyed upon the activation of runes inscribed upon them. This permanently scraps the item but also creates a unique damaging effect in a radius around the item.]

[Rule of Three add-ons - While it is the most common wisdom that a regular runesmith, no matter how talented or experienced, cannot put more than three Runes upon the same item, and only one Master Rune, a less shared corollary is that novice Runesmiths are further limited in how many Runes they can inscribe safely before their lack of experience with weaving magic makes their work dangerous to use. This is typically the reason why Runesmithing is a craft of decades of learning minimum in most cases, even if recent advances following the Arcano War allowed enterprising short lived Runesmiths to make some headways in shortening the time considerably.]

[As your Runesmithing rank raises, you will be able to inscribe more Runes on equipment without also applying Unstable property to them. At an F-rank, the maximum number of Runes you can safely add is 1.]

"How much of a delay is usually there between activation and explosion? To know if this can work as a grenade or is only good as a hail mary." Rockefeller asked as she carefully unlatched the knife. Punching what was basically a melta bomb into someone's guts could be cool, but she rather wanted to know if she could borrow the Soviet murderbot playbook entirely on this one.

She also very pointedly didn't ask how much she'd get yelled at if she started making more of these. Plasma was useful for anything short of leaving Angboda something to eat and it wasn't like NPCs could do more than maybe lower her faction rep and lock away some shops and services at the most. Annoying, but only in that she may need to ask another player a favour.

"Not long." Nimros the Apprentice admitted. "Once it strikes something, at the very least. Not many people have the money or, more importantly, guts to order faulty runework."

"Bah!" Vragni grumbled. "Show'er the rest of basic Runes, Nimros. I'll be back once she is done to check on'em!" With that, the master craftsman turned around and stomped off.

"He likes you." The dark elf chuckled. "Else he wouldn't give us this thin veneer of deniability over what you likely have in mind." He added, nodding at Angboda still latched onto Marie's shoulder. Sighing, he continued. "Master Ragnar is like that, you must understand. He likes to see himself as a very conservative and traditionalist man, and in comparison to his self proclaimed rival near the southern coast, he might be. Honestly, it's hard for me to tell, and I've been studying under him for a couple decades now." The dark elf smiled thinly. Even while talking he motioned for Marie to observe his well practised motions as he showed her the way to carve the next rune. "But for an actual traditionalist, he is as much of a maverick, if in different ways."

"Maybe 'cause I got right to the point?" Marie wondered aloud, abstaining from rolling her shoulders on account of being busy carving the next rune. Water this time, creating a layer of hoarfrost. She wondered how many Elemental Runes were available for beginners like her. "But yeah, I'm hoping I can use runesmithing to be a better daemonologist."

"Mhm. Demons and using blood of sentients for runes are big, controversial topics among the dwarves." Nimros explained even as he guides Marie through the carving. "I am given to understand that in the past, only some crazy evil cultists living on the fringe of your society used blood. Something to do with how blood of a sentient can be used to carve a rune into flesh, how it can bind even an unwilling being to an object."

He took his eyes off of their shared work to give Marie a thin, grim smile which the shadows of his little corner did a decent job of making an eerie sight. "I'll freely admit it is why I sought a runesmith willing to teach me. The topic is... fascinating, especially with what we've learned of demons during the Arcano War."

With a gesture, he stopped Marie from further work and pulled a piece of leather to the station and began carving a rune into it. Instead of channelling his mana, the dark elf cut himself and let his blood, charged with his mana, flow to fill the rune in.

"Here's how you do it. Blood binds the effects to the smith." He murmured as he carved a new rune, three sharp lines forming a semblance of a crescent, with fine nail-lines slashing at it at ninety degrees angles, pointing towards the inside of the rune. "I call this one a Rune of Binding. Does little on its own, merely creates a channel between you and the... target. Primarily benefits you, but it might be because I used only my blood whenever I experimented, there might be differences if you mix blood from multiple sources." He admitted easily. "Daemonologists, I have heard, have another source of power beyond mana and blood, so if you use that for your runesmithing, do swing by to share your findings as a payment, hmmm?"

[Quest: Blood of Runes, Runes of Blood]

[Runesmith apprentice Nimros Arkensek has asked you to delve deeper into the mysteries of powering runecraft via alternate means and share discoveries with him. As a gesture of good faith, he pays in advance with what he himself already learned of Dhar.]

[Rewards: ???]

[Learned Rune of Binding - Allows the creation of a channel between runesmith and their creation. When fuelled with blood instead of mana, the Rune of Binding can be carved into the flesh to create a permanent link between the runesmith and the recipient or, as fundamental portion of the combo, to  inanimate material to bind the being whose blood was used to the item in question.]

[Dwarven Runesmithing tradition frowns heavily upon the use of the blood of sentient beings as fundamental means of carving and fuelling their runes, owing to millennia of bitter internal strife and the conflict with daemons. Slow as the race is to change, even with revelations of the Arcano War a great many would object to delving into that which has been seen as the highest heresy for so long.]

[Elemental Runes - While normally Runes need to be developed for a specific area of purpose and then modified to work with carving them onto forms the original wasn't intended to, Elemental Runes can be considered a beginner's lesson in that mechanic, requiring no modification to bestow a different thematic effect dependant on what they were carved into.]

[The effects of the Elemental Runes discovered: Elemental Damage added (weapon), Elemental Resistance added/increased (armour).]

"Huh, wonder if I can use demon blood to rig some stuff to summon them automatically... ah, so that's how daemon engines and weapons and whatnot work. Use this rune to summon them into the item." Rockefeller muttered, snapping her fingers as realisation hit her. God, but she would fall in love with SAO if things really worked like that and there were further avenues to it from other Skills. 'Like a TTRPG campaign brought to life' indeed. "And yeah, sure, I don't mind trading notes at some point. I'd say something about proper use, but we both know that Master Ragnar would turn your skull concave over it before I even heard of it."

"Oh, Master Ragnar will be seeing my research anyway." Nimros confided in a conspiratorial whisper. "See, if a non-dwarf does it, it doesn't count as fouling the sanctity of runesmithing and, conversely, if a dwarf learns this from a non-dwarf, as long as they didn't learn from the demon, it's all fine and good. To him. Part of why he has so many apprentices at any one time." He explained the peculiarities of the elder runesmith.

"Wily old man." Rockefeller chuckled, shaking her head softly, “Hey, Angboda, where will you be wanting the Rune of Binding? Side of your neck?" Marie asked idly, already planning to mix in the Gluttony Sin she got for the Quest into the rune alongside her blood. That should lead to something interesting.

There was a quiet pop as Angboda forced herself to separate from Marie's neck. The imp scratched against her with her mantis scythe with care, the blade pressing against the skin of the cheek but not drawing blood. "Forehead is traditional." The demon eventually murmured petulantly. 

“Not quite what I asked, but I'll just tease your wants out of you later." Rockefeller chuckled as she finished the last of her opened can of healthcola. Hopefully the devs made the Lust imp social AI robust enough to have a good bit of flirting banter. 

And, equally hopefully, Angboda would ease down with the constant suck once she was bound and had some monsters to eat. It was nice enough to feel what amounted to a gentle hickey at her neck and a warm body clinging like this, but she'd like to have someone with whom to chat, y'know?

"Alright, back to work! Else Master Vragni will grumble at us thrice as long!" Marie called, picking her tools back up. Hmm, what would work best for boosting the exoskeleton?