Master Of None

The metal plate that had been placed on the table was scrap. Completely useless in any other terms. It appeared that the wandering blacksmith had found scrap metal and melted it together. The result was a hammered flat piece of metal with varying degrees of toughness. It would be absolute garbage if it was for armor or anything else. However, it was ideal for practicing rune carving.

Carving runes on different materials was easier or harder depending on what they were. Soft tin would be the best but the rune would cause damage to it the longer it was there. A single fire rune would cause it to heat and melt making whatever the item was, unusable. If it was something tougher and more resilient, the carving was harder but more runes could be added. 

There was also the perk of being able to see how the scrap materials reacted to runes. Walker had zero experience when it came to runes and he didn’t have any knowledge or innate feeling for how a metal would hold up to them. The wandering blacksmith had made sure that more various parts of scrap metal were in the plate than would have been from the basic scrap metal. Once upon a time, his own mentor had done the very same thing to him. 

Walker looked at the table and found that there were multiple tools placed here and there. From what was written in the aged journal the wandering blacksmith gave him, he needed to find the tools that fit what he was doing best. The fire runes did not need to be extremely detailed and would be fine with thicker tools. Same with the earth elemental runes. The water and wind runes were the ones that required the smaller fine tools. 

The wind and water patterns to the runes were very fine and swirled in different ways than the fire and the earth did. This presented a challenge since copying the runes would be harder. The shape had to be more exact than he was used to creating. Walker had little to no experience drawing, carving, or even shaping without using his high earth sculpting skill. He was out of his depth. 

”It says that I should channel my mana through the tools and it will create the runes. If I don’t use mana in the runes then they are just pictures. That must be the same for the patterns sewn in to fabrics.” Walker spoke out loud and prompted a small smile on the wandering blacksmith’s face. 

”These are very simple. There were very complicated runes on some scrolls and books that we looked at before you got here. They are the draconic runes, but I don’t understand what they did at all.” It was unfortunate that Onyx didn’t understand them. It was something that really annoyed him since he had been working hard to be able to properly read and understand things since he was born. The thirst for knowledge he had was too great and when he found something he didn’t understand it was constantly on his mind. 

Walker was curious as well and the wandering blacksmith paused for a moment unsure if he should share. Walker was just learning the basic runes and knowing the more advanced runes too early could ruin an item or equipment. ”So they are the body strengthening runes. The dragonkin and dragons royal armors use those to make their scales stronger and bring in certain manas faster. I didn’t think elemental runes could be changed and made to do those things.” 

The wandering blacksmith had decided to give up since he trusted that Walker would not rush his learning. The draconic runes were the product of years upon years of experimentation. One such scroll detailed seventy years to figure out how to make a wind condensing rune for a helm instead of a large piece of armor. 

”That sounds like it would be very hard to make. If they are more complicated than that I don’t think I will be able to use them for some time. I doubt that I will even have the time to sit down and get a feel for these anytime soon. I need to practice this so my hands gain a muscle memory for how much pressure and flow to use. Not to mention fine mana control since I seem to be using large amounts of mana more often.” 

The analysis was simple and made sense which was very appropriate for how Walker thought and what the wandering blacksmith thought. Since he had already decided to focus on these elemental symbols he looked at the very simple star shaped light elemental rune. It was overlapped pointed stars and had a simple patter that Walker could make using one of the medium carving needles. 

When he picked up the needle he felt that his mana was easily pulling in to the tool and that he would have to focus much harder to be sure that it was going to be controlled. If he used too much he would carve out a bigger piece of the metal and create a weak point which could spell the end for an adventurer in battle. Too little and the rune wouldn’t work well. 

The reason the light elemental rune was useful were the myriad of effect it could have. Simply, it could attract light elemental mana and glow in a dark environment. It could counter some of the decaying effects from darkness elemental mana or even poisons and purify it. Finally, there was a minor healing aura it could produce. It all came down to how it was carved. This rune though, was the basic light elemental mana gathering rune. It was the simplest format and the first that anyone learning runes would have to memorize and be able to use perfectly because it was the base for all light elemental rune formations. 

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