The First Legendary Beast Master

The cleric sighed as he realized that he had just been volunteered to make reports for the Librarian and her assistants, but this was his personal weapon, so he didn't see a reason he couldn't keep it when they were done, even if it was now enhanced to a level well above his rank.

The next few dozen pages were all descriptive ones, describing techniques for using the Runes. The translation was questionable, as many of the words appeared to be Dwarven technical terms, but they were faithfully copied to the duplicate tomes.

Karl was quite certain that he was missing the majority of the depth of these descriptions, but every page brought new revelations, and the Dwarven Runes were getting easier to read with every passing page.

By noon, he was rarely needing to refer to his knowledge of Runecrafting to guess what a word meant, but he was the only one who was improving at that sort of speed.

The scribes were falling further behind his comprehension of the translations with every page, and Karl was beginning to hope that he would find a new technical section again soon, so he could make an item and let them rest before they drove him insane.

His translations were making the clerics increasingly excited about the new knowledge, and they had many ideas on how this could be used to improve the weapons that they were already making with basic runes on them.

They didn't have Runecrafters in their ranks, but some of the Runes were used in other enchanting processes, including the ones they used to make weapons for the Church.

Karl turned another page, and found that the topic had taken a hard turn somewhere, as if the author had gotten bored with the previous explanation.

[Improvised Runecrafting.

Not all Rune crafted items need to be permanent. The most obvious case of this is the spirit shamans of the various species. The Cleric types who specialize in using Runes to cast their magic and drive off troublesome evil forces.

But there are other options as well.

For example, painted on runes will work as well as carved in many cases where you are not concerned about them being damaged, though without the third dimension, the effect is far weaker.

Alternately, those with Elemental Magic, such as the Forgemasters, or the Earth Shamans, can create the Runes with their Elemental Magic, and add a more profound meaning to their spells.

An Earth Shaman might engrave the rune of destruction into a mine wall to carve away the rock between themselves and the next vein. A Forgemaster might create the runes in the ash pile of a makeshift forge to bring it up to the needed standard. Or they might place the rune in the foam of cheap tavern ale to increase the liquor content and improve the taste to a tolerable level.]

That caught the interest of everyone who read the translation. None of them had considered that was even an option. Would that be a sort of creation spell? Perhaps a transmutation? And what element did that even fall under?

Every traveller had suffered nearly inedible local beverages in the past, but the Dwarf seemed to mention it in passing, as if it should be common knowledge.

Once the pages were copied, Karl moved on, and found that the comment really had been in passing, as the examples that were drawn and described were simple single compounded runes.

The Destruction Rune for carving rock was given with four different variations, depending on what sort of blasting work you intended to do with it, while the provided heating rune for the makeshift forge was similar to the one Karl had used for the portable stove, but with modifiers for much higher intensity.

Writing the rune in the ash was brilliant, Karl decided. Normally, you worried about heat damage to the object, but ash was already burnt, and the forge wouldn't harm it. So, you could create intense heat with a seemingly unimpressive pile of ash to the point that the limiting factor was the construction of the forge itself.

Presumably, the Forgemasters would have magic for that as well. But it was the versatility of these temporary Runes that was getting the clerics all worked up.

If you could just write the effect you wanted, wouldn't you be an instant Archmage?

Karl knew that there was going to be some sort of limitation on complex runic phrases, like when he tried to compound advanced skills with [Skill Merger], but for simple effects, there was no real reason that he shouldn't be able to use Runes to activate them at his current power level if he wasn't worried about destroying the carrier.

[Oh, that is a brilliant idea. I will try it with an icicle.] Remi insisted as she heard Karl's thoughts on the matter.

[How did the testing go?]

[The warriors are tired. You should have cast a Thor barrier on them. But they will be fine soon, and the weapons are both undamaged.

We also tested the higher grade weapon with the weaker warrior, and it makes a difference, but not enough to call it a Royal Rank effect the way that our advanced skills were when we were Commanders.]

A few seconds later, Remi giggled. [The clerics look funny waving around an icicle like a wand. But the rune works. For some reason, it makes the icicle melt, even though it's not fire magic. I will have to work on that.]

Karl tried not to laugh at the words nobody else in the room could hear.

[I think that it's using up the mana from the icicle to activate the spell. How is the power output compared to their Rank?]

[Oh, you're right. It's better than expected. I made a Monarch Rank icicle for the task, and it melted, but if the extra mana is going to the spell, it makes sense.]

That also made her wonder if she could make a higher density item, with more mana, to make the item more useful to lower powered creatures.

Like a portable smashing post that would transfer some stamina to the user on impact. Brother Thor would love to have that for his trainees.