Chương 37: The Rune Did Not Care

Meno checked the leaderboard because pain had many forms and some of them had UI buttons. [Launch Leaderboard | Global Level Rank] [Rank 1: BrineSaint — Level 43] [Rank 2: Kestrel_Crownfall — Level 41] [Rank 3: Thornwake_Stormhold — Level 40] [Rank 4: JaxxonVale — Level 40] [Rank 5: PikeNorth_Highbanner — Level 39] [Rank 6: Moonwake_Silverwake — Level 39] [Rank 7: OxideChoir — Level 38] [Rank 8: Honeygrave — Level 38] [Rank 9: VantaRush_HypeForge — Level 37] [Rank 10: GlassRook_Crownfall — Level 37] [...] [Rank 88: PrayerBeadGod — Level 29] His stomach turned hard enough that he wondered whether vomiting in Veyrath was possible. Rank eighty-eight. Level twenty-nine. Still on the board, technically, in the same way a man hanging from a window ledge was technically still inside the building. BrineSaint was already forty-three. Kestrel was forty-one. The top ten had moved like sleep was a debuff they had all cleansed.

"Do these people never sleep?" Meno muttered. The answer was obvious. They did not. Progress meant everything right now: route control, class evolutions, raid access, crafting ladders, guild contracts, hidden mechanics, sponsor segments. Sleep was what players did after someone else took the door. JaxxonVale bothered him most. Meno knew the name. Everyone did. JaxxonVale had started as a fashion model, then turned streaming into a side hustle with lighting, cheekbones, and brand deals.

He was good at games in the way famous people were good when they had coaches, editors, and enough time to look good failing. Meno had never seen him anywhere near top ten in serious ladder pushes before Veyrath. Now he was level forty, almost breathing on BrineSaint's route. Meno remembered launch. JaxxonVale rolling random for content. Big smile, chat screaming for destiny. Meno had not checked what class he got because he had been busy staring at Swing Master.

For a second, Meno almost opened JaxxonVale's stream. Maybe the class was broken. Maybe random had rolled him into something disgusting. Maybe he had found the one build in the game that turned high cheekbones into XP per second. Meno closed the leaderboard.

"No." Checking another person's miracle would not put a weapon in his hand. He walked into Westmarket's auction hall. Terminals were packed, but city collision slid bodies aside just enough for him to shoulder into a free station. He searched one-handed swords first. Nothing above Uncommon I. He searched all weapons. The market had recovered just enough to insult him more creatively. Perfect Uncommon I daggers sat around one hundred gold each. Perfect Uncommon I one-handed swords were around two hundred.

Two-handers pushed three hundred. Everything listed was perfect. Anything below perfect still could not touch the auction house. Brutal. Clean. Exactly the kind of system that sounded fair until it turned every beginner craft into vendor trash and every perfect item into a guild-priced object.

"Perfect or invisible," Meno said.

"Cool." buy dagger buy sword you have 4k market recovered?? 200g sword not bad common brain says buy craft coward Meno did not buy. An Uncommon I sword would help, but it would not solve the problem. It would be a bridge weapon. Worse, buying one meant accepting the public market as his upgrade path. Today it was two hundred. Tomorrow, Rare I might be ten thousand, assuming it existed at all. He opened his Blacksmithing Level 15 patterns and checked the Uncommon I dagger first. Smallest failure. Cheapest lesson.

The recipe sat there like a quiet threat: one Charmsteel Bar, one Infused Grip Wrap, one Infused Binding Pin, one Charm Forge Fuel, and one Uncommon I Magical Ingredient. Meno began checking prices, and each search result landed with more weight than the last. Charmsteel Bars were twenty gold. Infused Grip Wraps, five. Infused Binding Pins, five. Charm Forge Fuel, five. Then the magical ingredients loaded. Uncommon I Earth Essence was the cheapest at twenty-five gold. Ice Wisps sat at thirty-one.

Rot Phials at thirty-eight. Flame Flecks at forty-four. Lightning Essence hit sixty-five, and Gale Pearls sat at eighty like the seller had priced them while laughing. The cheapest dagger attempt was sixty gold. Sixty gold for one Uncommon I dagger, assuming he used earth essence and hit the craft perfectly. If he did, the market might pay around one hundred gold. Forty gold profit, if anyone bought it, prices held, and his hands did not betray him. Normal players could not afford this.

The answer sat right in front of him anyway. They were not supposed to. It was too early. Prices were built around guilds, whales, emergency demand, and everyone with a strategy that produced actual coin. Vendor trash paid scraps. Dungeon mobs gave materials. Gold came from quests, market flipping, early events, and selling impossible dragon toes to cowards with hidden bidder names. Guilds had quest teams. Supply teams. Players funneling every scrap into the machine. Meno had 4, 154 gold and 10 silver.

For once, that was enough to enter the casino. Then he saw the tool requirement. Uncommon I crafting required Uncommon smithing tools. He checked the tool patterns and found the next kick in the mouth. An Uncommon Smithing Hammer needed two Charmsteel Bars, one Charm Tool Fitting, and one Charm Forge Fuel. The tongs needed the same. Meno stared at the phrase Charm Tool Fittings for a few seconds before searching it. Charm Tool Fittings: fifty gold each. There were no listings for Uncommon smithing hammers or tongs.

Anyone capable of making them needed them, and anyone with extras was guild-bound or smarter than the public market. Meno did not want a spreadsheet. He wanted a sword. His brain tried to start calculating attempts, tool costs, expected failures, essence selection, resale value, profit probability, and the route to Blacksmithing 30. He crushed the impulse before it turned into a second profession. He bought two Charm Tool Fittings for one hundred gold.

Then he bought eighty Charmsteel Bars for sixteen hundred; eighty each of Infused Grip Wraps, Infused Binding Pins, and Charm Forge Fuels for twelve hundred total; and ten Uncommon I Earth Essences for two hundred fifty. The terminal updated. [Balance: 1, 004 gold, 10 silver] He had just spent 3, 150 gold. If he messed this up, he wouldn't have enough for another attempt. BIG SPEND 3150G TUTORIAL dead if this fails all in buy more Meno closed the terminal and walked back to the forge.

The blacksmith trainer looked up when Meno entered, then nodded once. Forge light caught on the man's shaved scalp, and old burn marks covered his leather apron. Meno nodded back.

"Hi." The trainer said nothing. Great conversation. Meno took his usual station, laid out the charmsteel and fittings, then equipped his starter hammer and tongs for what was probably the last time. The uncommon tools should not be hard. Same process, better materials. He started with the hammer. The crafting marks opened cleaner than combat and colder than luck.

The forge wanted the charmsteel heated in a tighter band than iron, the fittings seated before the hammer head cooled, the grip line pressed evenly, the quench timed inside a smaller window. None of it feinted. None of it lied with body language. The charmsteel held light under the surface like it had swallowed a spell and wanted to spit it back out, but the marks were still marks. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Meno moved through them like he had decided breathing was optional. Heat accepted [Perfect], fitting alignment locked [Perfect], hammer face set [Perfect], handle channel closed [Perfect], quench and temper both clean. The final polish pulled a pale line down the hammer head, and the result settled without drama. [Pattern Complete] Type: Uncommon Smithing Hammer Quality: 100% — Perfect Durability: Maximum Tool Stability: Excellent No profession XP. He crafted the tongs next.

The pattern added one annoying alignment step where both tong arms had to flex evenly against a blue pressure marker, but compared to False Wings and dungeon stealth rogues, it was a polite request. He hit it clean, finished the joint, quenched the arms, and watched the tool settle into place. [Pattern Complete] Type: Uncommon Smithing Tongs Quality: 100% — Perfect Durability: Maximum Tool Stability: Excellent Still no profession XP.

"Zero?" Meno said.

"Tools don't count?" The trainer, who had been watching from far enough away to deny interest, answered, "Tools serve the craft. They are not the craft."

"That sounds like a scam."

"Many truths do." hammer philosophy npc cooking tool fraud he paid 200g to gain wisdom Meno looked at the tool quality line instead. Tool Stability: Excellent. That mattered. Maybe poor tools capped outcomes. Maybe they widened failure drift. Maybe below standard made perfect crafts impossible. The system did not explain enough, which meant expensive testing would happen to someone. Probably him. The tools sat better in his hands. Weightier. Less crude.

The hammer's grip did not fight his palm, and the tongs closed with a precise bite instead of the starter pair's ugly pinch.

"Fine," he muttered.

"They're nice." Then he selected Uncommon I Charmsteel Dagger. The material tray filled with money. One Charmsteel Bar. One Infused Grip Wrap. One Infused Binding Pin. One Charm Forge Fuel. One Uncommon I Earth Essence. Sixty gold worth of small objects sat on the bench like a threat. Meno initiated the craft. The charm forge flame rose green-blue instead of orange, pulling thin lines of light out of the fuel.

He caught the charmsteel bar with the new tongs, placed it into the heat pocket, and held until the color band matched exactly. The system marked the heat [Perfect]. Then the craft changed. Five symbols flashed in front of him in a horizontal line. They were runes, each shaped like a hooked stroke around a center mark, similar enough that his eyes wanted to reject them as a prank. A voice whispered the words like a ghost, audible only to Meno: Ruh. Soh. Wah. Nah. Mah. Meno's stomach sank.

"Oh, it's a memory game." LMAO look like runes read them easy bro already forgot mage craft now The normal prompts continued before his irritation had anywhere to go. He fed the forge with charm fuel [Perfect], flattened the bar [Perfect], held the centerline [Perfect], then fumbled the turn by a hair and earned [Good]. That single word got under his skin. He shaped the blade blank, tapped the spine, worked the edge, and reheated the piece, but the rhythm had been disturbed.

Every step came back [Good], not failure, not disaster, just the kind of mediocre success the game punished with math. The system prompted the earth essence. Meno set the little brown-green crystal into the marked groove along the blade blank. It melted into the charmsteel like wet soil dissolving into rainwater, and the craft accepted the placement [Good]. Then a prompt flashed, unlike any symbol he had seen before. The forge wanted the correct rune. Meno's brain supplied the wrong answer with total confidence.

"Soh." [Bad] The hammer prompt hit immediately after. He struck to bind the rune, but the magic bucked under the hammer and smeared through the blade instead of sinking into it [Bad]. The same magic prompt flashed again. He said, "Wah," then struck. The magic twisted under the hammer [Bad]. Another prompt.

"Nah." Another strike. The rune skidded sideways through the metal [Bad]. By the time Nah became Mah and Mah became Ruh, each hammer blow was binding the wrong word into the wrong place, dragging the craft deeper into the ditch. NOOOOO memory diff blacksmith got hands but no brain rune fraud this is why mages read Meno finished the rest with his jaw clenched. Quench [Good], temper [Good], cool [Good], grip [Good], binding pin [Good], final edge [Good].

The physical blade was still a blade, technically, but the magic running through it looked diseased. [Pattern Complete] Type: Uncommon I Charmsteel Dagger Quality: 43% — Poor Durability: Low Earth Effect: Failed to Bind No profession XP. The dagger lay on the bench, greenish charmsteel dull and ugly, the edge warped by a failed magic line. It might have been worse than a Common III dagger. At least Common III knew what it was. Meno stared at it while chat laughed.

Then he picked up the failed dagger, turned, and walked to the trainer.

"What are the runes?" The trainer looked at the dagger first. His expression did not change, but somehow the room got more judgmental.

"Poor."

"I know. What are the runes?"

"Read."

"What book?"

"The royal library contains primers on low-order infusion phonetics."

"No." The trainer's eyes lifted to Meno's face.

"Then fail."

"It's clearly just a memory game."

"It is meaning."

"I'm not a mage."

"Metal does not care what you are." That was the sort of thing NPC trainers said before sending a player to collect twelve grief flowers from a cliff. Meno rejected the entire concept. He pulled out the Common I Starter Smithing Hammer and Starter Smithing Tongs, the old tools now replaced and useless.

"Donation." The trainer accepted them, placed them under the counter, and gave him nothing.

"Sucks," he said. The trainer nodded.

"Yes." Meno went back to the station. This memory-game nonsense was exactly why guild crafters had assistants, and this was only Uncommon I. What did Mythic crafting look like? Probably a hundred rune chains, shifting sequences, and zero margin for error. The second attempt started with strategy, which was already a bad sign. He told chat, "Feed me the runes. Correctly. I only need the name before the hammer bind." Chat agreed with the moral conviction of sewer rats finding bread.

The sequence appeared again, and the forge whispered the words like a ghost correcting him. Meno repeated it under his breath for chat.

"Nah. Ruh. Mah. Soh. Wah." The early craft went better. The heat and fuel both landed [Perfect]. The turn came back [Good], the blade blank [Perfect], the spine [Good], the edge [Perfect], and the essence placement held [Perfect]. He felt the rhythm right up until the first rune flashed. Chat split into four answers instantly. RUH NAH SOH WAH"Nah," Meno said too late. [Bad] The hammer bind followed, and the delay ruined it [Bad]. The whole attempt spiraled from there. By the third rune, chat was making it worse.

Someone spammed Mah through every symbol. Someone else posted fake phonetic guides. A user named RuneTherapist insisted the correct answer was "apologize to her." Meno finished another ruined dagger. [Pattern Complete] Type: Uncommon I Charmsteel Dagger Quality: 48% — Poor Durability: Low Earth Effect: Failed to Bind No XP. The second sixty-gold failure hit differently. The first had been his fault. The second was also his fault, because trusting chat was like using a cursed shield and acting surprised when it bit.

He looked at chat. this is why gf reject you dumb The comment sat there for maybe half a second before scrolling. It was not clever. It was not even one of the better attacks. Chat had produced worse in bulk. Wife jokes, poverty jokes, pillow tantrum edits, market clown clips, streamer math insults. This one should have slid off with the rest. It did not. Meno's vision narrowed around the forge station. He picked up the next Charmsteel Bar. Chat kept moving, but the words lost sound. Friendzone. Reject. Dumb.

His own voice in Aureliana's car, too sharp. Her grin. His stupid hope folding in on itself. The way he had known better and still gotten checked by reality like a low-level mob. The craft began. Meno repeated it once, silently. Wah. Mah. Ruh. Nah. Soh. The tongs closed around the charmsteel. The heat accepted [Perfect]. Fuel fed the forge [Perfect]. Hammer flattened the bar [Perfect], held the centerline [Perfect], turned the metal [Perfect], shaped the blank [Perfect]. His hands moved almost without him.

Anger compressed everything else out of the way until only the bar, the heat, the rune order, and the next exact input remained. The spine came clean [Perfect]. The edge came clean [Perfect]. The reheat held exactly where the color band wanted it [Perfect]. He placed the earth essence into the groove, and it sank into the charmsteel with a low green pulse [Perfect]. The first rune flashed.

"Wah." [Perfect] The rune sank into the metal. The hammer fell before hesitation could enter [Perfect].

"Mah." [Perfect] The rune took. The hammer struck [Perfect].

"Ruh." [Perfect] The rune burned into the blade. The hammer struck [Perfect].

"Nah." [Perfect] The rune settled. The hammer struck [Perfect].

"Soh." [Perfect] The final rune locked into place. The hammer came down, and the blade answered [Perfect]. Earth-green light ran through the charmsteel in a clean line, not flaring, not leaking, not fighting the metal. The edge darkened into a subtle moss-gray sheen. Meno did not stop. He quenched, tempered, cooled, wrapped the infused grip, seated the pin, and ran the blade along the grinding wheel in one smooth pass. Every mark accepted him. The system gave him the result.

[Pattern Complete] Type: Uncommon I Charmsteel Dagger Quality: 100% — Perfect Durability: Maximum Earthen Edge: Deals 20% increased damage against Lightning-aspected and Air-aspected enemies. The profession bar jumped. [Blacksmithing Level 15: 66%] Meno stood over the dagger, breathing through his nose. Then he looked at chat.

"Who said it?" The overlay tried to pretend it had not been involved. Meno scrolled back until he found the name. Of course.

"WifeLawyer," he read aloud.

"This is why girlfriend rejected you dumb." Chat instantly turned on the user, because mobs loved changing targets when blood appeared. Meno picked up the perfect dagger and held it toward the stream.

"Wrong." He turned it in the forge light. The Earthen Edge caught green along the blade.

"She didn't reject me because I'm dumb," he said, voice flat.

"She rejected me because I'm poor, emotionally defective, and say things like fifty pizza slices when buying clothes. Get the diagnosis right." For half a breath, chat did not know whether to laugh. Then it did, flooding the corner of his vision while Meno set the dagger down carefully, like sudden movement might make it stop being perfect. The perfect craft did not fix anything. It did not make Aureliana's text easier to open. It did not close the level gap.

It did not give him the Rare I sword he needed or make the dungeon boss less smug in its reset tomb. But it proved the route existed. Good was fake. Perfect paid. Meno reached for another Charmsteel Bar.

"Again."