The Runic Alchemist

Damian canceled the invisible box spell and used another flying runic spell for Bloodedge—all three of them started heading back. It had been a long-ass day. Damian wanted to relax for a while—then he had to prepare for this last fight on this planet. Whether he could go back to Vidalia’s planet or not, the Demon Lord would not be alive for long.

Damian knew better than anyone, after seeing Sam’s growth and abilities, how powerful an Esper with the right ability could be. And from the description of the Demon Lord’s ability—it wouldn’t be easy at all.

Sam, as a second-ranker with his lightning spell, could face any third-ranker. The Demon Lord, on the other hand, could steal the life energy of other living beings and use it to increase his own strength and mana—that was the worst kind of opponent to give a century’s worth of time for preparation.

But he had no choice.

When Damian got to him, the guy had already destroyed cities. Damian was no match for him then, maybe he still isn’t.

Which was why he had made the giant steel golem.. That was gone now, and he had no time or resources to build another. But it was not in vain.. Damian had earned enough experience points to do multiple ascensions. He didn’t want to waste time building things now; this one, he would do the traditional way.

When they approached the giant black army, still acting like savages without any direct control, Damian stopped and looked at Bloodedge.

“Make them stop,” he said simply.

Bloodedge exchanged glances between Damian and the black army, as if calculating his chances of surviving this. After a second, he nodded.

In about a minute, the entire black army stopped moving, standing still with lifeless eyes. Bloodedge had commanded them to stop.

Damian continued their flight and reached the narrow valley. The biggest Legendary-ranked black one had already made some serious dents in his ice wall from one side, but it was still holding strong and would have continued to do so for a couple more days with such consistent damage.

They looked beyond creepy just standing there, unmoving—somehow managing to make him feel worse than when they were savagely beating each other.

Damian landed near the still-open Waygate. As he had expected, over 5000 fresh pigmen troops had already come through and were assessing the battlefield, while most of them carried the bodies of their fallen soldiers back to the city, some threw the bodies of giant black pigmen—the ones in the way—inside the three massive holes dug in the snow ground.

There were already thousands of bodies inside, and all three giant holes were burning with high-reaching flames.

Hearing the chaotic noises from beyond the ice wall stop, they had been confused and were about to scale the snow mountain to send a report back, but seeing Mindseer and Damian fly down afterwards made them relax a little.

Mindseer spoke to a few of them, and they quickly ran back after bowing toward her. She sure had made a place for herself here.

Once in a while, Damian could still hear the pigmen soldiers murmuring “Gaiz le Kasha..” here and there.

No one higher than second rank was there, neither were any of his friends. Guess they were reporting back or having a meeting or something. Mindseer looked back at Damian and asked,

“Do we bring him there?”

Damian nodded.

He had bound Bloodedge’s hands with vines, though his legs were still free to move around. Without access to his mana, the guy was barely a threat to anyone. Still, Damian asked him,

“Will you lose control if you are in the city?”

Bloodedge simply replied, “No.”

And they moved forward.

Passing through the giant Waygate and appearing in a massive army camp of sorts, Damian looked back from the waygate and saw the giant stone shrine—they were outside. Pigmen in armor and civilian clothes were going around in the near distance. The injured were laid inside the infirmary tents, being healed by traditional herbs and the potions Damian had traded with them through Highswords.

“Uhnhmm…” Someone drew his attention back to the front side of the Waygate.

A line of pigmen soldiers had formed on both edges of the Waygate. Mindseer nodded slightly at Damian, signaling him to move forward with her, which he did.

All the pigmen soldiers they passed by shouted “Gaiz le Kasha!” and bowed with respect. They were mostly soldiers with dented, black, and red bloody armor. There were also those who had not fought in the valley though; the line continued till Damian and Mindseer reached near the giant hollow stone shrine. Thousands of them.

Normally, people ran away, looked at him with suspicion, or complained when he showed his power—Damian was glad to see a variation for a change.

“What are they saying?” he asked.

“It means ‘Brightest Light’.. or ‘The Most Divine One’.. They call humans Kasha, which means divine one. They think we are sent by the divine power who built this giant stone shrine,” Mindseer answered.

Huh.. Why did that sound so familiar? Didn’t Asher say the Sunblades were descendants of the famous transcendent called The Lightbringer? What a weird coincidence..

A unit of fancy-armored pigmen guided them through the inner shrine city. The civilian pigmen had also lined the sides of the road throughout the city leading up to the big stone palace—all eager to see them and waiting for their turn to shout the weird name they had given him. Damian wanted to just fly up and reach the castle hurriedly, but Mindseer stopped him and scolded him—he wanted to say this was all a waste of time, but seeing how much it meant to her, Damian stopped and suffered through.

The road was long, and they were walking—it took some 20 minutes till finally they were at the gate of the palace.

To his surprise, even the pigmen king, pausing the meeting, had come to greet him at the gate along with his whole family. The other two Transcendants were there too—Heather and the injured Transcendant they had sent first along with Einar and Lucian.