Remember the young guy Radek brought to my birthday who looked like a fancy lord out for a morning stroll?

  Turned out he wasn’t a lord.

  He wasn’t a fancy lady’s guy, either.

  “The name’s Hardel.”

  I glanced up at him with one hand shading my eyes.

  “I was told you want to learn a real craft.”

  Yeah, I was—

  Sorry, what?

  “Being a smith isn’t that pretty, kid. You sure about it?”

  Confused as anyone would be in this situation, I turned my eyes to Radek, who was obviously the one who arranged this strange meeting.

  “Don’t underestimate him. He can be a tough nut to crack if he puts his mind into something,” Radek said with a small degree of pride shining in his eyes. “You don’t have to go easy on him, though. You have the Lady’s word. Keep his bones intact, and do whatever you want with the rest of him.”

  “Can’t promise that.” Hardel glared down at me with no small amount of intensity. “Gotta admit, though, he’s seen some training. Reckon he can swing the hammer with those hands for a few times, at least.”

  “That, he could do.” Radek nodded.

  “Good. We’re getting the afternoons, then?”

  “He’s got other training to be about during nights and mornings,” Radek said.

  “You’re giving me about four or five hours... Reckon that’ll be enough. We start today.” Hardel flicked a finger down into my face, then turned around and trudged briskly off from my bedroom. Just as he was about to exit through the door, a sudden wind ruffled his hair and unearthed two pointy ears that had promptly been kept from my sight until now.

  Oh my god!

  “That guy’s an elf!?” I nearly shouted right there and then, but managed to keep my voice somewhat under control.

  “The best in the business.” Radek seemed eager to share my excitement as he slapped a hand down on my shoulders, then his face changed as he peered toward Hardel’s rather slow exit. His voice was barely audible as he continued, “Can’t believe we’re the same age. What does he use for that hair? The bastard looks like he just turned twenty.”

  I cleverly ignored those self-loathing, a touch envious remarks. Instead, I waited for him to enlighten me about this arrangement, which he thankfully did after a few painfully slow seconds.

  “I promised you that I’ll provide guidance and resources for your personal projects,” Radek said. “This will be the first and most important step. Now, you will hear in the future from many people that you can simply find a blacksmith to work for you, and these people would be wrong. Orlath didn’t wander around looking for an able blacksmith when he decided to craft a Celestial Rune. As they say, you can’t always find a blacksmith good enough to work on a World Seed on short notice. Better to do it yourself, or don’t do it at all.”

  Do they say that, really?

  Something told me that Radek was making these all up by himself.

  “World Seed?” I muttered after a beat. “As in, the seed of a world?”

  “It was just a figure of speech, but you got the gist of it,” Radek said.

  Did I?

  I wasn’t sure.

  “Don’t look so confused. It is fairly simple.” Radek sighed out a long breath. “You have to learn how to handle your materials if you’re to become a real Runemaster. My Lady’s been thinking of bringing Hardel for some time, but she wasn’t sure if you could handle it. I kindly told her that you are more than ready.”

  “What did you actually tell her?”

  “That you couldn’t get enough of your training. Was I wrong?”

  Words just eluded me when I tried to work up an answer.

  Was I a training maniac?

  No. Not really.

  Every morning, I got up and got beaten up and down by Mother. Then I meditated, worked on my internal channels, worked on forming a Core, ate mild poison for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was sure Belfray was putting all kinds of wicked things into my snacks as well.

  Then at night, I’d shut myself in the Runic Chamber and scribble on quality paper for hours. My Grade 2 Rune lines were so perfect that I actually thought becoming a real artist would be a viable option in the future.

  It was only during afternoons that I got a chance to be… somewhat relaxed. Even then, I spent my leisure time reading historical records and worldbuilding information about a giant Planar System.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Were these people aware of how much content there was in those books? That how far I was from forming a real map in my mind about the place we lived in? Like sure, I knew about Palark Kingdom and the rest of the local kingdoms, but the sheer number of Dominions in the vast space alone would give a math prodigy or a history major nightmares.

  If I weren’t an adult… I might’ve gone mad by now.

  “You’re lucky that I was about to try my hand at inscribing runes on Beatrice,” I said finally, placing a comforting hand on the sheath hanging from my belt.

  “Beatrice?” Radek raised an eyebrow at my beautiful sword. “Already giving names to our weapons, are we? I thought My Lady told you that you should treat those things as tools. Being sentimental isn’t a trait befitting of a true Knight.”

  “Go ahead and tell her for all I care,” I said with a shrug. “Not like you two don’t like talking behind my back all the time.”

  “I’ll do that.” Radek gave me one of his annoyingly wide smiles. “Meanwhile, you go and be a good apprentice. Hardel might look like a pretty guy on the outside, but that’s when he’s out suffering with the rest of us. Give him a hammer and a forge, though, you’d see a qualitative change. I’m sure you can make him proud if you give it your best. If not, I’ll always be here waiting as a shoulder to cry on.”

  “Thanks. You’re most helpful.”

  My shoulders sagged as I dragged my tired ass back to the bed. If I was to work five hours in the afternoon, I might as well get some sleep while I could.

  …..

  It was always a delicate task when it involved placing magical letters on… certain things. For humans and human-like species, magical leather would be the best option. There were materials like Cleardeer Hide that could basically seep into one’s skin and take on any color depending on the person—if handled by the right hands, that is. This way, not only could you hide the rune from any unwanted eyes, but you could also save yourself the trouble of going through a make-up session every day.

  What about protection, though?

  This was the crucial part.

  If by some chance you got a sword through the magical leather, then it could mess up the whole runic sequence. Hence why you wouldn’t catch any Runeknight or Runemage going about looking like half-assed adventurers. No, these people would be armored from head to toe with the best material available at hand.

  See the problem here?

  I couldn’t use magical leather to inscribe runes on my beautiful sword. That would be just a waste of material. Instead, I had to be more crafty about it. I had to ensure the runes would be safe no matter how hard I swung my sword or how many things I had to run through with its tip.

  To do that, there were a couple of options.

  Hardel, however, didn’t seem interested in sharing those.

  “Get the wood, and sweep the place. If a broom isn’t enough, polish the corners with your tongue. Lick them and clean them. This is your home. You’ll do right with it.”

  I watched as Hardel vanished from this claustrophobic cave of a blacksmith through the back door, leaving me alone with a clean apron and a twisted broom. That thing couldn’t sweep its own feet, let alone this ancient place. It looked like it’d been at least a century since anyone used it.

  There was a forge, I supposed, and some tools that I didn’t recognize. I wasn’t about to feel sorry for myself for not knowing anything about being a blacksmith. I could heft a hammer with my slowly growing internal energy, and that was just about it. Anything else, I’d have to learn from scratch.

  Thinking about it, though, being a self-reliant, self-sufficient Runemaster was probably the way to go. I didn’t want to handle more people than I had to in the future.

  With that, I began what appeared to be the biggest cleaning mission of both my lives. I picked up sacks of coal—or something that looked like coal—placing them neatly in the corners. For tools, I decided to pile them in a single bowl to later ask Hardel where I should put them.

  Sweeping the floor, as expected, didn’t change a damn thing. There were years’ worth of stains dotting the tiles, some of them likely rotten and others broken in places. I put the tile job somewhere back in my mind, instead settling on scraping the stubborn stains with a sponge I’d fetched from the kitchen.

  There, I came across one of the cook’s aides who did anything but cooking in the mansion. I was surprised since Mary was like Belfray’s second shadow who hardly left his side. When she saw the state I was in, with my apron blackened to perfection and my face carrying an hour’s worth of effort with pride, I swear she smiled like she’d just won the lottery.

  That smile was professionally kept short before I could say anything, and she left the place with clear water and more sponges in my hand.

  The hell was wrong with her, though? Did she actually enjoy watching me suffer in a million different ways?

  Anyway, I dragged myself back to the smith, trying not to think too much about anything.

  By the time Hardel came back, the place looked almost civilized. I was leaning on the broom like it was a cane, debating whether I should collapse or just dissolve into the floor.

  “Good,” he said, surveying the forge with a slow nod. “At least you know what order looks like. Now we can ruin it properly.”

  Perfect.

  “This place,” he said once he set down a small sack of black chunks by the hearth, then spread his arms, staring intently into my eyes. “You may be the son of the Bloody Mistress surrounded by her aides and cushioned all around by riches, but this place belongs to me. I’m the owner, the Master, the King here. Your future requires you to learn the art of working the forge. You will take everything I say seriously and memorize every word of it. Our work here will form the foundation of your craft. Any Runemaster can sell his soul and inscribe those basic runes. Only the real ones get to make their own. Do well, and you will become someone worth a coin. Slack around, and you’ll be taken as a slave to a bastard who thinks he can make some use of you.”

  He paused a beat, then demanded with a cold face, “Do you understand?”

  A shaky nod was all I could manage before we got to work.

  The rest of the day was spent lifting sacks of iron from a cart I personally carried from the yard, piling coke to be shoveled into the furnace, and cleaning up behind Master Hardel’s work. From what I could tell, we were doing this with basic principles in mind, meaning that he was teaching me everything from scratch.

  We didn’t even have those mana bulbs here. The place was like an archaic part of the mansion long forgotten by the owners. At least I got to hold a hammer, feeling its harsh, cold surface in my hands, hearing its rhythmic ringing on metal as Master Hardel had me practice with it for a while.

  My throat was raw with heat, and my ears dinned loudly, but I had to admit there was a certain peace to it. A primal peace, I thought, just like how normal men did back in the day.

  Except, nothing was normal here.

  I was nearly sure that Master Hardel’s eyes glowed from time to time with internal light whenever he glanced at me. What would follow was a poke to my soul energy—not too harsh, but almost like a probe to feel if there was anything there.

  Was he doing that for a purpose?

  If so, how?

  He might be an elf, but elves were almost always mages of sorts. I supposed he was the same, except his magic would be more focused around being a blacksmith.

  I made a mental note to ask about that in the future.

  For now, though, it was better for me to keep quiet. This was my first day as an apprentice, and if I was to make Beatrice durable enough to endure Mother’s sword, then I had no other choice but to learn everything this man had to offer.

  …….

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