The Runic Alchemist

The blinding white energy ball between his hands reached the limit of its charge—the lightning bolts coming out of it periodically did not look stable enough for Sam to give it any more power. Shadecaster had realized his dark shield was not attacked this time and lowered it a bit to see what was going on, though not before backing away a little using his flying black monster.

Sam let him go and aimed with his hands in the guy’s direction—before Shadecaster could get out of the twenty-meter distance, Sam launched the white energy ball. Sam did not stay to see the result—just in case, he used his sword’s wormhole and came out hundreds of meters away from Shadecaster. The second he emerged from the wormhole, a giant, loud, blinding explosion sent powerful shockwaves through the air.

The pure destruction was out of this world. Sam had never seen anything so bright before—it almost looked beautiful, but that was just a front—the damage left behind, thousands of flying monsters falling to the ground injured, and hundreds that were too close had left behind nothing but ashes. Sam searched for Shadecaster and found him falling down—about to crash into his dark army, the shiny black thing wrapped around him in a protective sphere.

This was his chance.

Sam did not waste another second thinking and ran through the air like a blur of light—maybe opening a wormhole might be faster for others, but Sam knew his own speed would be faster than all that calculation and mana control for himself. Shadecaster crashed directly into the ice wall Damian had created, hidden inside the big black sphere—Sam had no idea if the guy was injured by his attack or not.

That skill was quite useful. Seeing Damian spit that ridiculously powerful beam of flames, Sam had to admit he was slightly jealous. But now even he had a skill that would not lose out in pure damage.

Before Sam reached near Shadecaster, he noticed the dark sphere turning into smoke after it broke through the ice wall and landed among the black pigmen. The wave of monsters rushed in like starved animals without any care for the Shadecaster and his shiny dark sphere that had dissolved completely into air by now. When Sam landed at the crater where Shadecaster had crashed—making the crater even bigger while electrocuting thousands of black ones in a circle around him—there was no sign of Shadecaster anywhere.

Sam dealt with the few dumb or brave black ones that came at him to die and flew back up. Did the guy get away? Fucking again?

Before Sam had a chance to go back to the stone shrine or look around for Shadecaster—an enormous wave of darkness rose out of thousands of black pigmen trying to break the ice wall. The wave reached the nearest legendary-ranked one that was at some distance from the ice wall and got absorbed inside the giant dark body. Sam had a very bad feeling about this.

The enormous figure of the monster suddenly changed its skin color from a lighter shade of black to a dark, abyssal pitch black, growing meters bigger with its muscles getting bigger and bigger. The pair of black eyes came alive with two big smoky red slits of terrifying glare. A giant dark sword materialized in its hand with another wave of dark smoke rising from the monsters around it.

The monsters that were sucked out of this darkness all turned back to their original red and blue skin—Sam’s eyes widened seeing this, but he had no time to think about its implications. The legendary monster raised his sword hand up and threw the giant sword with tremendous force behind it—along with five dense spheres of ugly-looking brown energy. Sam had seen those before—it made anything it landed on rotten and lifeless. The spheres landed with loud sounds onto the ice wall at multiple places—resulting in giant explosions and crumbling of the hastily made ice wall.

While the giant sword was cutting through the air with a disgusting sound at high speed—still, it was not as fast as Sam himself. Sam had no idea how he would stop such a massive weapon; still, he charged through the air. In a heartbeat, he reached between the giant dark sword and its target—the stone shrine. Sam hastily grabbed his sword, but there was no time for complex calculations of wormhole size—he couldn’t supply enough mana through his body alone either—not without additional mana threads at least, a lot of them.

So he did the only thing he knew he could do here.

Sam poured all his mana into his sword and summoned the biggest bolt of lightning possible through the sword—squarely landing on himself, rejuvenating his full body with power beyond any third ranker could handle—instantly doubling or even tripling his physical stats’ worth of raw power. Sam grabbed his pure white sacrum sword horizontally in both hands and stood ready for the impact.

The enormous pitch-black sword and the small white sword collided—resulting in a massive shockwave. The force of the attack alone sent Sam back hundreds of meters, leaving less than thirty meters between him blocking the gigantic dark sword and the stone shrine filled with pigmen warriors holding their breath behind his back.

It was too powerful, and even after he managed to block it, the force had not diminished—as if the sword had a mind of its own. It kept pushing Sam back, but finally, having some time, Sam charged his sword using the same skill as before: Overload Pulse.

The full force of the pulse sent the dark sword back—breaking its power and even obliterating one-fourth of the darkness the sword was made of. Sam was about to open a wormhole to send the forced-back sword away from the shrine when suddenly dark abyssal smoke arose from the sword, and in a moment, the whole body of the giant legendary monster was constructed from the darkness trailing from the sword.

Sam’s mind was numb from getting shock after shock—he could do nothing but just watch as the enormous fist of the Demon Lord broke the fourth step of the giant stone shrine—making a huge gaping hole in it.