The Runic Alchemist

Chapter 777: The Booming Bussiness and Flying Ships

The launch of his Sanctum shop was like a storm in the forest; it shook all the roots of the country. Damian had launched it in all eight major cities, so the amount of orders they had received was in wild quantity. And that was all for just one day.

Damian had already paid the runesmith for one order and had even ordered more after seeing his products flying off the shelf. In his Sanctum shops, however, great quantities could not be bought by an individual; only 10 per person were available. For wholesale, they had to contact the Sanctum.

Seeing his booming business, the Sanctum had already received dozens of pre-orders from the big merchants, all asking for more and more. Seeing the contracted runesmiths’ workshops working non-stop to cover the demand and getting paid in big coins, the few runesmiths who rarely received big numbers were also starting to contact the Sanctum to sign contracts.

Damian did not refuse anyone, but unlike the first batch of runesmiths who had trusted in him and the Sanctum, he did not offer the 60-40% partnership. The new contracts had a 70-30% partnership. Even for only 30% profit, the runesmiths could make killer earnings. It indeed irked many that the partnership had changed, but Damian did not hide the fact at all—actually, he even had the talk show and the digital shop display the small announcement very clearly and unmistakably.

He did not say anything about the future, but it was clear what Damian meant by it. The runesmiths still on the fence could see that late joining would not be as profitable as before. The runesmiths who were part of the guild were the most anxious. They were hoping Damian would meet with the guild master and offer another deal or something. But Damian’s actions made it clear: in his eyes, all craftsmen—guild-affiliated or not—were the same.

It even bolstered his standing as a runesmith among the more individual runesmiths who had always had problems with the guild’s monopoly over large contracts and price control.

The most anxious thing about the change in partnership was actually not the numbers, but the fact that Damian had given an open invitation to foreign runesmiths, and in a roundabout way, told the merchants and individual sellers to go to the trade town and secure deals with the runesmiths in exchange for more wholesale discounts from Damian.

He even offered exclusive runesmiths, prioritizing each merchant who would bring them in to make a contract with the Sanctum. More than the discount, that was the long-term deal no clever merchant could miss out on. He had spread all this info both through the talk show and the official Sanctum shop that people could view on their receivers.

The Sanctum newspaper had even interviewed some top merchants and asked for their opinions on the Sanctum shop’s future, and all that had been posted on the receiver for the past few days, hyping up the opening. The effect? Even larger than Damian had expected.

Just his receivers alone had sold in hundred-thousand-plus units, and there were pre-orders for over two to three hundred thousand more. The inquiry on the Sanctum shop by the people showed Damian something he had not thought of before—the foreigners were very interested in the receivers, and they kept asking if it would still work in Faerunia, Eldoris, and the Empire. For now, Damian told the truth: it wouldn’t work except for a few border towns in the Empire and Eldoris.

But he also started thinking about possible expansion in the future. Leaving Faerunia aside, it would be easy to do that for the Empire and Eldoris. Though there was also the fact that he could use this as Sanctum’s uniqueness and not expand. The shop and his information reach would spread to the whole of the mainland if he did this, though. Well, it was a topic of debate for the Sanctum heads.

Mostly, the Sanctum shop, merchants, and customers were handled by the employees and a little committee Damian had built, with Evrin in charge. He only got informed if anything major happened. Evrin could also manage the inventory and orders as she saw fit. Damian had even told her to do market research and observe what people needed so they could make and sell that—to both make money and make people’s lives easier.

The most popular of the items, needless to say, were his potions. Unlike runic tools that needed liquid mana refills and were a bit high-cost, Damian’s potions were like super-level enhancement products with no side effects at all. They all focused on everyday mundane human work instead of fighting or other occasional use. It made life easier at a relatively cheap cost.

And these were only the first starting batch. Damian had hundreds of monsters and mana beasts yet to research the mimicry spell on. In time, this potion list would just grow and grow until there was something for each individual.

For now, Damian had only gone for the general public items, but he also had major plans to improve the farming methods. He wanted to make tools and potions that would make farming a very lucrative field for young men and all civilians. Right now, they imported more than half the food from Eldoris and the Empire, but in time, Damian wanted at least to have enough crop-growing capacity to feed the whole of Sanctum without any problem.

Not everything, but just staple food would be enough too. He could use his growth spell to artificially boost the yield, but without properly studying what that did to the land, that would be reckless. Also, he wanted the farmers to be independent and not rely on external help—even without his, the country of Sanctuary should be able to function and prosper.

With time on his hands, Damian had started terraforming the second biggest island of the Sanctum. There were still months before Damian wanted the international trade to start here, but seeing the craze, he might speed things along. That wasn’t the only thing he was working on, though—Damian had also started to put a design on paper for the latest and greatest flying ships.

He needed them to be in the air and piloted by trusted people who could go look for more land on this planet. Damian himself wanted to journey across the whole planet and see with his own eyes what the entire geography looked like. Maybe there was another human settlement or another species living somewhere they had no idea about at all.

It was very necessary to have a map of the whole world—along with new land that Demons needed to live on.

First, he thought of prioritizing the wall-building project, but that needed a lot of metal and would take too long to finish. Plus, building a flying jet that could fit only a handful of people and fly at top speed was much more fun.

Only one he was going to make would fit over a thousand people, but the rest Damian wanted to shape like stealth-type, superfast jets. Damian had plans to even use hyperspeed travel, mirroring his own wormhole-spamming method for emergencies. It would have waygates in-built and would feature all top-of-the-line enhancements—comfort, much better control, and even some form of autopilot.

It was a very elite level of runic machine. And he needed to fine-tune the design and each spell and component to reach maximum speed. Damian had ideas of building small versions of his steel suits that the pilots could use to explore dangerous, unfamiliar regions. With all the technology he was using, the people he chose for this mission had to be the very best and finest—whom he could trust with all his heart.

Damian wanted to build 7 flying jets to fly in seven different directions and travel the unknown. While the eighth, luxury-class, massive flying ship he was building was going to be the official Sanctum mode of transport—for fancy ceremonious events and long-distance traveling. This one, Damian wanted to make very self-sustaining; even if it stayed in the air for months and months, it wouldn’t have to come down to land at all.

Damian had played around with ideas of creating an airtight vessel. If only he could learn some runic spell to create oxygen itself from mana—that would become a game-changer for space travel. He could even use the moon and nearby outer space objects to build revolutionary machines.

It had the potential to accelerate their collective human civilization’s progress and capabilities at light speed.

Before going into space, though, Damian wanted to study the dungeons of this planet in detail. He had already started inviting known and unknown scholars and researchers to Sanctuary City, where he wanted to gather a team of like-minded people and finally make progress in the field of these fantastical dungeon systems.

The data he had collected from over hundreds of dungeons needed to be studied by keen and curious eyes to see the hidden meaning normal people would often overlook. He couldn’t share the details of the dungeons with just anyone, though, so this team of researchers had to be made of people he could trust for a long time.