A tall youth was walking towards a certain destination. He was wearing a long coat and hiding a lot of spatial bags that were hanging around his belt. He glanced around the city that he had spent years in and was getting slightly nostalgic.

This was the city where his blacksmithing career took off. He had learned all the basics here and he did it on his own. It was also where he finally learned to use and create runes. After all these years Roland was feeling like he was finally getting how they actually worked. He could even combine various schematics to create new spells.

He would now need to postpone his future research and get out of this city. It was getting too dangerous and he didn’t trust the company to protect him. If he didn’t have his debugging skills he would have died along with them.

From his point of view, Zilyana had failed miraculously by not reacting in the correct way. The manager was at fault too for not getting some enchanted devices that could block out illusion magic of that caliber.

It looked like they got lazy after years of stability, the business was booming and everyone was earning money. Then someone decided that it was time for a change by killing almost all of the council members.

The whole city was now in disarray. Almost all of the businesses lost their owners in one day. The person that caused this would probably show themselves now. Who was doing it was a mystery but they were probably doing it to get the biggest market share in the city. With the council heads gone there would be a big hole in the city's finances.

The perpetrator could be the sole survivor that hadn’t been attacked during the meeting. The gnome was proven innocent as he had almost kicked the bucket.

The next option was that it was a third party either moving in to take over or doing it for another reason. There were cult members involved in this assassination and where they were demons weren’t far off.

The man was an Abyssal Warlock, a person that made a contract with a higher being. Most of the time this would be achieved by selling their soul or by performing some kind of ritual. In this ritual, other people's lives would be used as payment.

The woman that was with him was similar. She was an abyssal class holder but closer to the rouge route. She seemed to have a screw loose which he noticed during the time that she stabbed him through the shoulder.

Roland continued walking while trying to figure out the true perpetrator. The reason for this attack seemed obvious as a lot of money was involved. He wanted to know the reason for getting almost killed, maybe the manager would have this answer.

This whole predicament reminded him about the first city he had to leave. There he also left at a moment’s notice with his only plan being a city with crafting resources. He then stumbled around with some leftover cash for half a year before finally having some luck in selling his runic scrolls at the auction house.

‘A city with an auction house is a must…’

He already knew that his scrolls would sell, be it at a regular store or an auction house. Without an establishment as that, he would probably need to sign another contract. This was something that he wanted to avoid this time around.

He didn’t think he would get a good deal without revealing his special class either. Trusting someone to keep it a secret again was something that he wasn’t willing to do.

Roland had a map with some notes. There were a couple of cities that he had researched some larger than others.

He wanted one that met some criteria. One was having an auction house where he could buy and sell items. The other thing that needed to be there was a dungeon, this was the most important requirement.

Roland realized that having personal strength was paramount in this world. He just needed to look at the two assassins. They could just enter the city, kill people, and then get away without anyone being able to stop them. This was the strength of a tier 3 elite, something that wasn’t often seen in this world he was in.

Most people that had battle classes ended their journey at tier 2. Crafting professions could go higher as it was easier to constantly produce items than to constantly fight monsters. The raw stats a crafting profession had were also lower. The lack of battle skills was another minus for said crafting classes.

With lower stats received and fewer skills, they wouldn’t even be able to defeat a tier 2 veteran. You could see this mostly by looking at Roland’s scribe class that didn’t give much besides intelligence and dexterity. The other physical stats were almost nonexistent and it hardly increased his vitality.

This was the case with most of the crafting professions besides a blacksmith. That was a class that actually required high strength and endurance to produce items. Yet someone like a leatherworker or goldsmith wouldn’t get much besides dexterity and then meager numbers in the rest.

Roland felt like he needed to increase all of his battle-related skills before his advancement into tier 2. Luckily his runic blacksmith class increased his battle-related stats. Though they looked to be stats for a stationary tank with high magic usage.

High strength, endurance, and willpower but with low agility. Roland felt like he would have to either mitigate his weakness with some enchanted gear or strengthen the things he was good at. So either increase his agility with some mana stones or focus on his defenses and magic power.

This he would decide after seeing his tier 2 class options. He knew that there were some hybrid classes out there but if he could nab one was unknown.

‘Dungeon, Auction house, relatively new city… would be nice if I could get some cheap real estate there...’

Another thing that he needed was a place to stay. He couldn’t just live in an inn again as the need for repairing and crafting new equipment would be there. His class was reliant on it and he didn’t think switching to a more battle oriented one would give him as much flexibility. He would still need to make that decision after caping out his blacksmith class.

Roland didn’t think that he would be able to research information about the land he could buy here. Not like he could pull up an internet page with the information, the most he could do was to pay an information guild that sold things like that. The info wouldn’t be fresh though and when he arrived the house could be already sold. He would probably have to risk the journey and hope for the best.

‘Maybe I should try going someplace owned by the Aristocats instead of the royalists this time around…’

Roland thought as he was close to arriving in Hightown where the manager lived.

There were two main factions in this kingdom, the aristocrats and the royalists. The former consisted of the most influential nobles of the country. The latter were part of the royal family mostly related to the king and the nobles sworn to them.

There were also many smaller factions sprinkled here and there but they didn’t possess as much power. These two factions were more or less close in power with the royal family winning out slightly.

Roland was someone from a noble house himself. He had studied the basics of how this country worked. His own house of Arden was part of the royalists. His father had recently achieved the title of baron after a successful campaign against one of the countries that his kingdom had less than stellar relationships with.

The city of Edelgard was further into the country and closer to the royalists. The owner of it wasn’t directly connected to his father but maybe the other faction ran their cities better. The noble that was responsible here certainly didn’t give a damn about his citizens.

When the first assassination attempt happened the guards were really late to arrive. He was also taken into custody without having the option of explaining himself.

‘If I take all of that into consideration there is just one place I can go to…’

He looked at the map that he was holding and looked down at the south part of the kingdom. There was a certain large island there, it was ruled by a Marquess that was part of the aristocrat faction.

That wasn’t the main reason for going there, there was a certain new dungeon that had risen recently.

Things like new dungeons appeared from time to time. No one knew exactly how they came to be but each of those lairs had a dungeon core. People theorized that if the mana density was just right a dungeon core would come to be.

This dungeon core could appear anywhere, down in a lake, buried deep underground, or even in the sky. Where the dungeon core appeared would mostly dictate how the dungeon looked and what kind of monsters appeared in it.

This peculiar one that he was willing to risk going towards appeared in a volcanic region. The spot he would be going was rich in minerals, the monsters were fire types or rocky ones.

The closest settlement to this dungeon was but a small village before this occurred. Now apparently people were flocking to it