Currently in the gates of the capital of Bernes.

In a line of many merchants with their carriage and farmers, was a particular carriage.

"What do you mean we have to wait to enter the capital!? Do you know who you are talking to!?" A man with a buttle uniform told to the soldier guard.

"Sir, we are strictly pointed out to follow the protocol. Please cooperate." The soldier said with an annoyed tone as if he had done that many times.

`Dammit, another one of those proud full fools. I hope whoever orders us to do this for a whole month will fall to this death. The soldier cursed internally.

And he wasnt the only one.

A month ago, completely out of the blue they were ordered to inspect everyone passing through and though with no exception allowed. And at first, they didnt think much though since thats what their job was.

Until a soldier got bribed to let someone in...

When the new supervisor got a notice of that, the soldier was imprisoned for disobeying the kingdom's laws.

The soldier that was taken away had a look of shock on this face until the last moment. The same was for the other soldier guards too.

After all, it was like the untold rule among the guards that bribes were acceptable. Except for a few exceptions, it was whoever could pay could enter. Even among the few commoners who were simple farmers or the like had to pay, when they didnt have to.

Not much, but still a small hole for a small wallet.

And for the soldiers who bathed in dirty money every single day on work to suddenly got their daily additional` income cut off by the new protocol.

They werent pleased about it.

But they could only grind their teeth and do their actual work.

Which leads them to hear the complaints of almost everyone passing through the gate.

"Sir, we will just make a quick inspection and nothing else. Please cooperate and let us take a quick look."

"You! How dare disrespect the house of-" The butter was visible furious ready to punch this guy to death at any moment.

"Merrick, what's going on outside?" Coming out of the carriage was a man wearing a robe with an iron chest plate that protected this chest neck parts.

Holding a staff with a huge crystal in this hand with those sharp eyes looked towards the soldier and this little cause trouble.

"Why have we halted?" The man asked towards the guard soldier.

As he was about to repeat the same he said to the butler, he finally noticed the crest on the carriage and the mage cloths.

'Shit! A noble!'

Although he didn't recognize the crest on the carriage. The staff alone from that mage looked more expensive than he would make this whole life.

'He must be the spell caster from the family.'

"Sir, we apologize for the inconvenience, but we will have to inspect before we allow you to enter."

"You!"

"Merrick, it's fine." Turning towards the nervous soldier he replied.

"I, Darius Darcy will allow you to search under the condition to inform us the reason behind this inspection."

"Sir, although we arent allowed to tell you the details of it. The most that I can say is that we are searching for someone. Saying any more would bring me problems so please understand Sir Darcy." The soldier bowed at 90 degrees while this college started the inspection.

"Sigh...for the capital to tighten the security in the gates the situation should be serious..." Darius messaged these temples.

"And here I thought I could take my mind by visiting my sons place. But now I have to worry for criminals walking loose."

"Sir, you the inspections are done, you are allowed to enter"

Entering the carriage, they entered the city.

***

"Tch, after so long they are still at it."

Danzel said with annoyances.

Wearing this cloak, he stood near the gate entrance where he came from.

He was quite in a bad mood currently.

Today morning in this hideout where he has done this usually study and carving runes the last patch of equipment he heard Gerak calling him out. At first, I was annoyed since he interrupted my study towards the Veren runes.

Letting him in he told me he told about a new deal that he was going to. He told me that the month that we worked together making runed weapons no stop, it was the time to final sell our stonk. Since the past accident, we were now more careful about where to sell our weapons.

After all the auction was a big no-go place now.

But that wasnt important right now.

Reading between the lines of the dwarf, I now realized that a month had passed since I killed those assassins. The idea of spending my whole time in a place did somewhat made me uncounterable, but I didnt regret it.

Except for the few times that I have gone out to check on the gates, the rest of it I spend in my hideout. Except for the weapons that Gerak bought me, the rest of my time was trying to figure out the Veren rune and understanding magic better.

With some of the imprinted knowledge about runes and the pattern of the Veren rune I thought I could simply brute force it and find the correct mana input.

The process was similar to opening a safe without knowing the code.

Sadly that didnt work out as I wanted.

Hours if not days of constant work resulted in the end in multiple failures. The worst part of it was that I couldnt remove the failed rune of the weapon, which resulted in getting jelled by Gerak for my lack of care for this work.

In which he wasnt completely wrong.

He simply didnt care about making the dwarf work more. I even suggest buying some cheap daggers for me to practice on, but this so-called dwarfs pride wouldnt let him do so.

Which in my opinion was a stupid of a reason to have.

Nonetheless, this resulted in running out of stuff to carve runes. And with nothing better to do in here, I decided to grab the [Mana Arms] scroll and give it a read for fun sake.

Although it was just to kill my boredom at the time. I quickly realized that I could understand the content and make some sense out of it.

This should be obvious since I acquired the [Mana Arms].

Something so simple made me think " What if I were to learn a spell without the use of XP."

On that day I couldn't get this thought out of my mind and was eager to test my theory out.

Alas, finding magic scrolls isn't easy.

Though I had Gerak look one for me in the auction or the black market.

No magic scrolls to be found.

The reason for that was most likely of the recently what I like to refer to as a lockdown.

It wasn't like no one could leave the city or anything of that sort.

But leaving or entering without an inspection was impossible.

For that very reason, most people who were smuggling and trafficking illegal products were the most that suffered from this.

As whoever the fault was for such a thing to happend should drop dead.

although many wished for it to happens.

I was already dead.

Or rather I am undead.

Getting out of the point though, with the black market suffering, the chance of another scroll appearing any time soon was according to Gerak almost to zero.

With nothing else to do, he decided to observe the gate for today since he had nothing else good going for.

Looking now in the present, he saw a carriage of higher quality being halted by the guards.

Recognizing that it must be a carriage of a noble being stopped, he realized that getting out of here legally would be risky.

"If they even have to stop a noble for an inspection, then I might as well give up to run off for now."

'I should probably go back to the hideout'

Leaving the area of the gate entrance.

Danzel entered this house and quickly used the key to open this secret hideout.

Lieng down to this bed, he opened this status in front of him and still couldn't believe how much XP he had acquired yet again.

"With so much XP in my hand, I might finally upgrade the long yet not forgotten...

Class levels!"

Upgrading guardian would most likely increase my attributes more than my subclass since it evolved once.

But on the other hand, this could be my chance to evolve my Runesmith classes and hopefully unlock some new neat stuff.

Each of those options had its pros and cons.

And the question now was with which one I should start from.

Following an hour of silence inside side the room.

I came with my decision.

" I guess I should start by that....