The Runesmith

Chapter 663: Hidden Way.

Roland stopped ten meters from the entrance and crouched. From a distance, it had looked like a decorative ruin, something carved out of a giant boulder or perhaps just a massive rock formation. Up close, however, it looked different.

“More than a ruin. This looks like some kind of temple or place of worship.”

Once he passed the massive draconic skeleton of a creature that seemed far too large to exist, he entered a vast chamber. He had expected nothing but uneven terrain and scattered rocks. Instead he found columns, murals, and even torches that came to life the moment he stepped inside.

“Stay behind me, Agni. There could be traps nearby.”

Even the ground before the ruin had been laid with smooth stones, but inside the craftsmanship became far more intricate. The floor consisted of hexagonal plates that locked together with almost mechanical precision. Each one bore faint engravings that glowed dimly beneath Roland’s feet.

“Faint magical energy. They aren’t just decorations.”

Roland knelt and brushed dust from one of the plates. The engraving beneath it resembled a spiral made of tiny characters from a language he did not recognize. That was not a problem. After scanning it with his armor, he quickly constructed a magical solution.

“A language pattern. Is this some kind of riddle, or just a waste of time?”

Roland had a good memory, but the many languages of this world were not something he had studied. There had never been much reason to. With magic, direct translation was always possible. Each floor tile carried a letter from a different alphabet, and in places like this it often formed some kind of puzzle. Solving it could lead to a hidden reward so he continued to investigate.

“I don’t remember anyone at the guild mentioning riddles. And if there was one, wouldn’t someone have solved it already?”

This place had existed for hundreds of years. Other mages had come here before him, and even if the mana signature was weak, at least one of them should have been able to decipher it just as he had.

“Perhaps they found the words but couldn’t figure out how to connect them.”

He considered the problem as he studied the murals. They depicted enormous dragons coiling through the sky above kneeling figures. The people carved into the stone wore elaborate robes and armor that did not resemble anything used in the current era. Their helms were shaped like elongated dragon skulls, and many carried spears or staffs tipped with dragon horns and bones.

Some of the images were ceremonial. Groups of priests stood around large circular platforms and offered glowing orbs toward a descending dragon. In other scenes, warriors fought strange creatures that resembled warped drakes with multiple heads or broken wings.

“Some kind of dragon worshippers… or dragon servants?”

Roland still was not sure what the true nature of dungeons was. Sometimes places like this appeared, ones that felt as if they had been built by a different civilization and had endured through the ages. Yet all of it existed inside a dungeon, something that was supposedly created by the dungeon itself.

There were, as always, many theories about this. Some believed that dungeons had been made by an ancient, advanced civilization or by the gods themselves. It would not be strange if an old civilization had programmed things into the dungeons, or if the gods had done something similar. However, Roland preferred one of the other theories. In it, a dungeon drew inspiration from real ruins buried deep underground.

Dungeons grew over time, expanding beneath the earth. Within them, various temples and ruins of old tribes and other cultures became buried. As the dungeon absorbed these places, it used their remains to shape its own trapped temples and structures. Over time it came to resemble them, or at least that was the theory.

One mural caught Roland’s attention more than the others. It showed a massive dragon lying motionless while dozens of robed figures surrounded it. They were not attacking it. Instead, they carved runes to hold it in check. Strange pillars stood around the body, and from each pillar a line of light stretched toward the dragon’s skull.

“Looks like some kind of sealing magic… this might be the clue…”

This last mural was the most detailed of them all and the centerpiece of the chamber. If the answer to this puzzle was anywhere, it was most likely within these murals. Even so, he decided to move forward first, heading toward the main entrance of the temple.

“Was I wrong? Did they just decide to come faster for another reason?”

When he reached the door, a giant slab of stone was waiting for him and it refused to budge. After knocking on it several times, he realized that even drilling through it would probably take days. The walls were drenched in mana, similar to the reinforced culling tunnels that had been nearly impossible to drill through. Back then, he had needed the dwarven miners to help him but now he found himself alone.

“Now what?”

“Worf?”

Agni simply sat down on his hind legs while Roland activated a skill he had not used much lately, Debugging. The world shifted around him, and soon, many more runes appeared than he could perceive with his normal senses.

“This skill feels like a cheat…”

Luck was on his side again. Hidden runic structures revealed themselves, ones that probably no mage or runesmith below level three hundred could fully grasp. The concealment spell was at the peak of tier three magic and required a specialist to create.

“If people knew this about dungeons, they would probably start sending rune mages to uncover things like this.”

Thanks to the world looking down on the runemage class and runesmiths being more concerned with crafting, this had not been discovered. For a moment, he wondered if this effect was unique to the dungeons of Dragnis Island or if he would find the same hidden rune magic in others. It was possible that something was affecting these dungeons, causing them to insert hidden walls locked behind runes.

“Now then… if all of this is right, something should happen if I arrange the panels in the correct order.”

After examining the hidden runes on the walls, the ground, and the pillars, the solution to the puzzle became clear. The suppression spell detected on the mural needed to be reversed, and for that the ground panels had to be relocated. The answer lay within the concealed runes. Without them, the magical mechanism beneath the floor could not be moved.

“So this is probably why no one succeeded. Even if they decode the language, they will fail if they try to forcefully arrange these plates.”

The entire structure was a giant sliding puzzle with several dummy sections that needed to be sorted out first. Fortunately, someone like him could predict several moves ahead, so it did not take long.

He stretched out his hand, and the runes on his armor began to glow as he started. The stone tiles lit up with energy and slid according to his will. At first, the plates responded slowly. A faint grinding echoed through the chamber as the first hexagonal tile shifted to the left. Dust that had built up for years rose into the air and formed a small cloud as everything began to move.

“Woof!”

“I know, it’s going to get dusty. Just turn your big nose away.”

“Worf!”

Agni seemed offended that Roland had called his canine nose big. He trotted back as the entire ruin began to shift. The mechanism beneath the floor was loud and rough, as if it had never been activated before.

Each hexagonal plate glowed briefly before gliding across hidden channels beneath the stone. Some rotated slightly while others slid sideways into empty slots that appeared as the puzzle rearranged itself.

“I always liked sliding puzzles. Haven’t solved one in a while…”

Because of his increased wisdom and intelligence, regular puzzles were no longer much of a challenge for Roland. This one was different. There were limits to how the hexagons could rotate and where they could slide. Some were even locked together in larger clusters, which made placement more difficult. After about thirty minutes, everything finally clicked into place.

“There we go.”

This was quite the challenge. He not only had to place everything in the correct order but also maintain a steady flow of mana. Even if someone like Arion had been here, he probably would not have been able to sustain his magical power long enough to solve the entire puzzle, at least not as quickly as Roland did.

“Agni, stay close. Something is moving.”

Once the puzzle was complete, the murals on the walls began to shine brightly, and the entire ruin started to shake. Roland glanced at the nearby entrance, expecting it to open, but to his surprise, the vibrations were not coming from there. Instead, they came from the wall where the main mural was carved.

“So… this doesn’t open the regular entrance, but something else?”

The glowing lines across the mural intensified until the entire wall shone like molten gold. The pillars depicted in the carving began to radiate actual streams of mana that extended outward from the stone. Then a burst of energy shot forward, striking the pillars in the entrance chamber where he stood.

*CRACK*

The sound of moving stone reached his ears as the floor began to shift again. Roland and Agni quickly backed away as the ground beneath their feet started to tremble and sink. Everything around them moved before their eyes.

“Is that… a staircase?”

Roland stepped back as the ground continued to descend. What had once been a flat mosaic floor split into two halves that slid apart with a loud groan. Between them, a spiraling staircase revealed itself, descending into darkness far below the temple.

A cold wind rushed upward from the opening. It carried the scent of stale air, the feeling of a place that had not seen living creatures in a long time, along with something else. Death.

“These readings… necrotic energies?”

There was not much of it, but he could tell that death mana was radiating from the stairway below. To his knowledge, these ruins were not filled with undead creatures. Instead, they housed lesser dragons and a few smaller humanoid variants that resembled lizardmen. This staircase led to a newly revealed section, somewhere no one had ventured before.

“This might be dangerous…”

“Grrr.”

Even Agni seemed on edge after the entrance appeared. The descent was clearly dangerous, but there was much to gain. Areas that had never been cleared often held unique rewards, something that could aid him in his future endeavors.

‘There are always risks involved…’

Roland had always been overly cautious. His instincts told him to move slowly, send in a few golems and sensors first, examine the situation, and only then consider entering himself. The problem was time. The adventurers he had delayed were already on the move. They had dealt with the drakes and were close to leaving the plains. If he hesitated any longer, the risk would only grow. He had no desire to confront that group once they arrived at the ruin, especially since they would likely be furious.

“Agni, change forms. We’ll need your divine mana for this one.”

“Awoo!”

Agni’s body began to shift. The blue gems on his fur transformed into flames, and even his radiant form looked different now. The fire that surrounded him burned a bright azure. Roland, meanwhile, activated his spatial runes. Several spider golems appeared, improved models built from a mithril alloy. They would serve as the vanguard during the exploration.

Before moving on, he took out his hammer and struck each golem a few solid times. The runic symbols across their bodies shifted as he repurposed their elemental mana into divine structures. It was something he usually kept hidden from the eyes of others but could modify them quickly when he needed.

“Stay there for now, Agni. Let the golems lead the way first.”

The two spider golems clicked their legs against the stone and moved forward first. Their bodies were low to the ground, each one about the size of a large dog. Six segmented limbs ended in specialized grippers. On their backs rested two rune cannons, ready to fire the moment they detected monsters below. Golden runic circuits pulsed across their armored shells as Roland’s modifications settled into place.

A faint halo of divine energy shimmered around them. Normally, they operated on elemental mana or basic magical energy, but Roland had altered their internal arrays. If anything undead lurked below, divine energy would disrupt it far more effectively than lightning or fire.The golems descended the first few steps but nothing happened.

Roland waited while his creations continued downward. Even though they could move at a human’s pace, it still took them nearly ten minutes to reach the bottom of the stairs. No traps were triggered or darts flew out. The steps did not collapse, and no magical backlash appeared. The path seemed safe, and the golems soon formed a perimeter around the entrance chamber.

“It’s a large empty chamber with one tunnel leading forward. Let’s go, Agni.”

“Woof!”

With that concern resolved, Roland began descending as well. Four more golems accompanied him. Two moved at the front while two guarded the rear. Roland and Agni stayed in the middle.

A few minutes later, the first sign of trouble appeared. The stairs began to rumble, and the mechanism above them started to shift.

“Damn. Run, Agni. It’s starting to close!”

The ground above them was not the only thing that was closing. The stairs beneath their feet had also begun to retract. The grinding of ancient stone echoed through the narrow shaft as the staircase collapsed piece by piece, as if it had already served its purpose and no longer needed to exist.

Roland’s boots slammed against the steps as he accelerated. The spider golems ahead of him immediately increased their pace, their metallic legs clattering rapidly against the stone. Behind him, the upper section of the staircase folded inward while cracking and disintegrating from age. Then, without warning, everything began to give way.

“Awoo!”

“It’s okay, I’ve got you, Agni. Just stop squirming. Did you forget that you can create platforms for yourself?”

The stairs crumbled beneath them before they could reach the bottom, but they were fine. Roland formed a sphere of mana around himself and Agni, lifting the wolf above his head. The two of them floated in the air where the spiral staircase had once been. Now it looked like a deep well that led straight down. The golems clung to the sides, protected by thin veils of mana, and soon all of them began descending.

The chamber below slowly came into view as Roland guided the floating sphere downward. Agni stopped fidgeting, though the fur on his belly slipped into Roland’s visor and partially blocked his view. Little by little, they drifted down while Roland relied on the cameras of his golems to see. At last, they reached the bottom, where his other two constructs were waiting.

“I hope you don’t get any bigger after the next evolution…”

“Worf!”

“No, your weight has definitely gone up.”

Roland answered as if he understood what his wolf companion was trying to say. Now that they had reached the chamber, the flames surrounding Agni illuminated the room clearly. Just like the entrance above, the walls were covered in drawings and carvings that depicted scenes of draconic worship.

‘This looks like a true ruin.’

Whatever was carved into the walls was difficult to make out. It looked as though at least five hundred years had passed since anyone had come here. Cobwebs covered nearly every surface. Crumbled furniture and barely recognizable structures stood scattered around the chamber, remnants of what had once been altars.

The air smelled of dust and something faintly metallic. Worse still, Roland could sense stronger traces of undead energy down here. It seemed they were not alone after all. From the only exit he could see through his golems, something was approaching.

“Agni, get ready. Something is coming. Aim for that passage.”

“Awoo!”

Most people would have panicked after falling into a pit like this, but Roland was different. If necessary, he could simply float back up or even drill through the sealed entrance above. There was no reason to fear. There was always a way for him to retreat if things became too dangerous.

For now, his task was simple. Defeat whatever was coming for them, then find out what secrets were hidden in this newly discovered part of the dungeon.