The Runic Alchemist

Damian observed the temple for some days – the cave he had made his home was situated near it. His third-ranker eyes were powerful enough to give him a good enough view. He had already provided Lucian, Maelor, and Sam with waygate tools and extra mana cubes. Other than Lucian, the two wouldn’t use that for much; they had all decided to lay low and let Lucian do her thing.

Sam would occasionally fly up to him with good food and alcohol when he got bored of the city. Maelor too sometimes came to visit when he was alone in his room. Lucian was an even more frequent visitor—she informed him on what she was planning to do and how it was going, once in a while staying for a night before returning back.

After a month, Lucian had almost finished her preparations. Damian offered to make her a powerful weapon if she wanted—but she refused. All three of them had already expressed their intent of not getting involved much, and Lucian respected that. Their presence here was somewhat unnatural—the trial did not give them any roles to play, so they didn’t mess with the trial either.

Though once, when Sam and Maelor had come to visit him, they did discuss what to do if it looked like Lucian wouldn’t be able to do it. It was decided they would not let her be killed and end the trial in failure—if it came to that, they would wipe the army clean and make it a success forcefully.

Damian had been prepared for weeks now, but he had not decided to raid the temple yet. He had not told the others he was going to do this. There was one last thing he had to do before he did this. Damian summoned his soulbound spear, and in seconds a red-tipped pitch-black spear materialized in his hands. The spell he had inscribed in it when he and Sam were fighting against the demon lord in his Astral Plane was still there. The spell’s effect was aura shaping into a thin paper-like slice and forcefully launching it at high speed. Damian used his liquid mana and inscribed another spell beside it.

A spatial storage spell.

It was meaningless to steal if he could not take that thing outside of this fake trial world. The spear was a thin one though, and it already had two spells in it—sometimes it did feel like the spear was resisting his mana when he overloaded it with that. Many times he felt like it would break and had stopped using it—exchanging it with another weapon. So Damian made a small runic circle and kept it to minimum load. A small runic circle appeared on the long side of the spear—Damian made two just in case.

The space inside one of these was only big enough for some large chest that could hold a longsword. It would do. He was not planning to rob the whole city blind. He only needed that White Gold. It only existed here. He didn’t want to turn it into sacrium, but there were many rare metals that Damian could not get his hands on—no matter what he did. With these, he could make those with his skill and see what reactions those unknown metals had when mana was involved.

With these done, Damian jumped down from his high mountain cliff in the dark of night. It was late night, and the whole city had fallen asleep. He flew without making any sound, straight towards the high, beautifully carved structure of the big temple. The stones used in making it were pure white. It was indeed an impressive work of art.

Damian landed at the white circular top, the innermost place in the temple. Even in broad daylight, no one was allowed to enter other than a few high-ranking priests. Right now, two bulky-looking apprentice priests were guarding the entrance. He could sense only one person being inside.

Damian controlled his two black chains wrapped around his two hands, heating the endpoints to the limit with his dark fire. The metal was so hot it melted the white stone easily enough to make a small yet deep hole. Then Damian simply used his powerful hands to break the last bit of stone and let his fingers slide in, then he held the whole thinned stone of the dug hole and pulled it up. Only a little dirt and a few pieces barely fell down; it didn’t make much noise. At least not enough to get the attention of the one priest busy in praying while sitting on his legs in a half-kneeling position.

With a clear sight—Damian simply used a wormhole and entered inside. The priest finally sensed something was wrong with fluctuations in mana and looked up—Damian was faster though. In a second he reached near the guy and knocked him unconscious with a single hand chop.

He knew the range of these second-rankers’ mana sense—he purposefully had only 30% of his mana pool full. Sam too always had just that much—it was better to keep mana pool low than to try hard and hide one’s mana. Aura they could do nothing about. But strangely, this city didn’t have a single pugilist or esper. The army outside also didn’t have a single pugilist or esper. In this country or world, they did not exist. There were only Mages, Spellswords, and Rune Shapers.

Finally, Damian could see in full what the hidden treasure of the god’s temple was. Other than a few priests, no one was even allowed to step inside—not even the royalty.

It was.. very different from what he had imagined for a whole month. There was no stone statue or any significant human thing worth worshipping inside at all. The room was empty except the fancy carpet the priest was kneeling on. Damian produced a light orb to get a better look. The walls of the room and the ceiling were the purest white stones Damian had ever seen. It reminded him of that white space they were trapped in for months. It did not glow like that place though, and there was now a hole in one part of the ceiling.

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