'That insignia...'
A black tree with white leaves on a green background, surrounded by two red circles with various runes in between them.
'The symbol of the Imperial army.'
Reed looked at the flag, before turning his gaze towards the vessel that carried it.
'A flying galleon.' He let out a huff of amusement. 'Such an old design. But I wonder what those sails are for, can't be for catching the wind.'
Reed had a fairly good guess for the reason of their presence.
He approached the dungeon to find that the area surrounding the entrance had been cleared by soldiers, a few people who appeared to be higher ranked sat under a tent, discussing something, the adventurers watching from afar.
He approached them and tapped one of them on the shoulder.
"Hm?" The woman looked at him. "What?"
"What's going on?" Reed asked, gesturing to the soldiers standing guard.
"Apparently someone found the core, so they're here to look for it, but it's a tier 4 dungeon, and they don't have any good tier 4 here."
"I see. Thank you." He nodded to the woman, turned, and left.
On his way back to the city, Reed thought about what he had seen.
'They seem a little late, even if they came all the way from the Easard port. Unless there were bigger problems, or this isn't that important.'
He clicked his tongue.
'Just a tier 4 dungeon after all, no important resources here, and I know that they have better resources for training.'
He paused and looked back.
'Or the boat is just that slow.'
...
For the past few days, Reed had been cutting down his time in the library and had instead walked about the city, visiting shops, talking to the people, both the locals and the travelers, asking them things considered common in the world under the guise of writing a few different books.
He steadily learned terms and got familiar with local traditions and customs. He also acquired a few items that would be of use in the near future.
"Thank you for your time." He said, closing his book and getting up from the table he was just sitting on.
"Here, a token of my appreciation." He pulled out a small ornate wooden box from his bag and held it out.
"Thanks." An elderly man with a few scars on his face took the box and looked it over. "What is it?"
"Do you see the flower? Press it. Now pull the topmost petal out out."
"Ooooh." The man looked at the opening box with interest.
There was a gold coin inside.
"Thank you." The man turned around to thank Reed, but he was already out of the restaurant.
'That's enough for now. Time to catch up on history.'
He walked to the library.
Picking a book that he hadn't finished, he continued from where he last left off.
'The battle at Eagle-hold, that's done. Wildfire is done as well, ah!'
As he finished reading through the records of recent wars, a thought struck him.
'It has been 31 years since the last major one, and going by the frequency of these... There should be another within 5 years time.'
He concluded this based on the frequency of previous wars.
'Thankfully, I'm in the northern area.'
As the wars usually raged between the human kingdoms to the south-east, the elven kingdom to the south-west, and the Central Empire, Reed was safe if a war suddenly broke out.
When it was time to leave, Reed placed the book back and took a glance at the book about runes.
'Next, it's your turn.'
He smiled.
The next few days, Reed did in-depth experiments with his item creation skill, while also learning about runes, when a thought suddenly struck him.
'What if I made a material rune?'
Runes couldn't be drawn with just any material, they needed to be drawn using mana-conducting liquids, like blood, or special inks and paints. But, these items were all quite expensive, so he hadn't actually made any runes so far.
However, solids could be carved into the shape of a rune and they would work fine, as long as the material could support it. This would also save him a lot of money.
To start off, he first had to pick a material.
'Wood is too weak, and won't work well with fire and lightning. Rock won't work with lightning. Metal it is.'
Standing in his training field next to a bucket of water made from rock, Reed held his palm directly above the water.
A blue light emerged from it forming the two pieces of metal that Reed envisioned, one shaped like the outline of a flame, and the other made of various lines.
Once they were made, Reed picked them up with iron pliers.
'Here we go.'
He input mana into the metal runes and concentrated.
There was no change from the outside, but Reed could feel the mana inside them get excited, he lowered the pieces of metal into the water, and the water that touched them immediately vaporized.
"Jackpot." He murmured.
Reed had confirmed one of his theories.
In the book about runes, there was little about why they worked the way they did, except for a few lines about the 'Spirit's eyes' and the 'Mortal vision.'
With a little bit of thinking, he thought that it might be referring to a person's intent, much like magic, where intent an imagination was key to learning magic quickly.
This had been proven just now, when Reed had used a flame symbol as a rune, and it had worked the same as the other 'rune'.
A few more experiments later, Reed had figured out a few rules.
He needed a symbol that was related to what he wanted the rune to do, he suspected it was related to his knowledge, as he couldn't use a snowflake symbol for a flame rune, but he could use the same cube symbol for the 'Ice', 'Harden', and 'Shield' runes.
Now with easy access to runes, he continued his experiments, using different rune combinations with various weapons to maximize their combat capability.