Lux scratched his head, how was he supposed to get a Rune?
He couldn't find any more coal skeletons and was pretty stuck in leveling up. He wondered if he was strong enough to go to that stone tower he saw before when he woke up.
After debating for a while with himself he decided to go to the tower and inspect it if he saw any danger he was out of there but if there wasn't any he would go in. After gathering his stuff, he headed out of the village and followed the river stream back up to where he had previously woken up.
He already saw the giant stone tower ominously standing in the forest, Lux took a deep breath and walked towards the stone tower.
He once again felt a feeling of uneasiness and felt a dark presence lurking by, he shrugged it off as a fluke and carried on.
There were some guards patrolling the tower wearing chainmail and equipped with steel greatswords. Lux frowned, he wasn't ready for this at all and was ready to turn around when he heard the sound of a crow.
It wasn't any regular sound either, it sounded like it was crying. Lux immediately ran to the sound of where the crow was and found it helplessly crying for help in a puddle of water. Lux thought this was a good opportunity to kill it but wondered if it was okay to eat its meat.
There was a large metal arrow sticking out of its back, Lux realized that the archers on top of the tower shot it down while it was passing, making Lux more cautious of how close he should be to enter the premises of the stone tower. Lux wanted to inspect the arrow and reached to pull it out but suddenly fire exploded in front of him.
Lux was sent back in shock and retracted his hand before the fire could reach him. It was the crow, it started shooting fire from its mouth like a dragon. Lux was scared the guards would go inspect the smoke the crow was creating and ended its life with a slash to the throat which he should have done from the beginning.
"I have to be more cautious when getting near monsters, even if they're injured" Lux checked his stats to see if he needed to eat the creature.
" I reached level nine from killing that crow!?" Lux shouted in shock.
If that creature was strong enough to almost burn his hand off then that steel arrow was definitely powerful. Lux pulled it from the corpse of the crow and put it into his inventory.
"Reinforced Steel arrow? If I make a crossbow from this then maybe I can shoot it and one-shot a level 10 creature!" Lux thought to himself.
The only problem is that Lux didn't know how to make one, he wondered if he could find a crafting recipe in the wild to craft one but for now, he had no use for the arrow. But still, Lux was satisfied with the results of going to the tower and headed back to the village.
Lux walked down the river stream but noticed something in the distance, it was a little swamp but in the middle of it was a black ring the size of a tree.
Feeling greedy, Lux cautiously went there to inspect the area. There seemed to be no monsters around so Lux walked up to the ring. It was a black structure with little bumps all over it, it was very strange. Next to it was a wooden crate, Lux broke it open and found some items inside it.
There were a couple of bags of marbles and a leather bracelet, Lux thought this was very random but didn't hesitate to put it all into his inventory. He inspected the bracelet and felt like his arm was about to fall to the ground. It was as heavy as a tree trunk.
"Ow! What the heck is this thing made of?" Lux put it back into his inventory and read the name of the bracelet.
"Dragon Skin Soul Band?" Lux read in his mind.
Lux guessed that this band wasn't suited for his level and he needed to be a higher level to use it properly.
"Man, why am I finding such high-level items? I need to level up faster to use these items" Lux said to himself.
He had almost reached level 10 but wasn't even close to knowing what a Rune did, usually in video games for casting magic spells but it had a very diverse meaning in the wide universe of games.
Lux figured that when he gets his hands on one, he will get a special ability that had to do with that rune but still had no idea where to get his hands on one. Lux headed back to the village and set up base in one of the villagers' houses where they paid no attention to him at all as if he were invisible to them.
Lux was exhausted from all the fighting and leveling up and went to sleep for the first time in God's Mercy. Lux woke up the next day and decided to start getting his level to 10 by killing some sand golems that inhabited the shoreline.
He realized his strength had been raised considerably since killing the golems took less effort and he wasn't getting injured as often. He kept fighting the golems for a while until he reached level 10 in his stats.
He then realized that the Runes tab was unlocked, he clicked on it and saw that he had already acquired one as it sat there in one of the 6 by 1 inventory slots. He clicked on it but it did nothing, he was able to drag it around though.
The rune itself was a peach color that matched the color of the sand on the beach and had two horizontal squiggles with a dot in the middle of them. It was called Dissolve.
He wondered if he could drag it onto other items and dragged it onto his machete. The machete changed colors and had a rustic texture to it.
Lux pulled it out and saw it implemented an ability onto the weapon.
It read:
25% more durable and has the ability to teleport itself from 20 meters to a designated hand.
"What?" Lux was confused at the ability it had on it.
Lux focused hard on one hand and then to the other and the sword dissolved into sand and transported itself to the other hand, recreating itself right after.
"This ability is useless!" Lux was disappointed in the ability he had gotten for his sword but now had an understanding of what rune was to this world.
"It's like an enhancement for equipment," Lux said to himself.
Lux thought for a second and then had a great idea to do with his newfound rune ability. He flung his machete and then used the Dissolve and it quickly teleported back to his hand.
"Haha, this could be sort of useful" Lux thought of all the possible things it would be useful for if he had not put it onto his sword. He could have put it on the arrow he got to have infinite projectiles as he could keep shooting although 20 meters wasn't much it was more than enough to kill the guards in front of the stone tower.
Lux pulled his hair in frustration.