The Runic Alchemist

Chapter 825: The Grand Opening Celebration Week 21

Early in the day, on the fourth day of the *’Grand Opening Celebration Week’*, a match between the pugilist Basha and spellsword Aozark received more attention than it normally should have.

It was a good prelude to the award ceremony held afterward. Normally, there was nothing planned for the morning of the fourth day.

The challengers of the tournament were supposed to rest till the afternoon. Then, one by one, the parties of the winners would enter the dungeons of their choosing along with Mindseer and Conquer as much as they could in an hour while keeping the safety of the party members their top priority.

To distract the people’s minds from the abrupt end of the competition, they had released the basic info of the hundred dungeons, which, unlike others, Damian could see with his status window for some reason. Along with floor 1-10 text maps and a guide. All on the library channel. They had checked and rechecked all one hundred dungeons fully, and there was nothing too problematic in them.

They were without a doubt difficult enough for even a transcendent, but there were no chaos element focus civilizations or too destructive spells in the civilization murals. Not that they had managed to translate much of it. Their research project was just starting; they didn’t have enough time to do translations and everything.

Just translating one dungeon civilization language was hard, time-consuming work. And they had hundreds of such different dungeons.

The new research center they had opened, hopefully, would attract a lot of scholars, and with more manpower, they could achieve better results more efficiently.

Pugilist Basha dented the steel armor of Aozark, outright breaking some pieces after he caught up to him. For a while, the spellsword had maintained the comfortable distance and tried to exhaust Basha with runic tools and annoying spells. But in the end, the pure strength had achieved a victory.

The simple award ceremony ended without much suspense. Basha, the pugilist expert, received the third-place prize – a set of 35 potions, true value around 200 gold coins. Second place, Valery Crowbar, a mundane woman with excellent sword skills, received a full Blazur armor that was used by a special unit of the Sanctum army. True value around 500 gold coins.

And lastly, the knight runesmith, Ryoden Nightblade, with excellent sword skills, took the first prize. A runic mold tool for a waygate spell. Only a very peak-level second-ranker runesmith would be able to use the mold successfully. If the guy was lucky, three tries would be enough for one working inscription.

There was nothing stronger than Blazur on the mainland. Maybe some lord’s dungeon had some hidden material that wasn’t made public ever. But chances were, if something powerful was in the hands of men, it would have been revealed sooner or later. Besides, the dungeon was not accessed by only the lord and his family ruling over it.

All the knights and promising pathfinders only swore fealty if they were given permission to enter at least once a month or every few months. Someone would reveal something if there were a stronger metal that could be used by runesmiths to make powerful weapons.

Ryoden himself was a runesmith. If he were smart enough, he could train himself to the peak of the runesmith job, and only then, after a lot of practice, should he use the mold. That way, he could get more out of it. But he could also just sell it and stay safe from any potential harm coming his way.

True value of the first price.. priceless.

Direct access to the mainland and to Sanctuary would be very appealing for some parties. Especially where there was no limit as to how far one had to be to access it.

“Use it well,” Damian said to the young runesmith while shaking his hand on stage.

“I will, Sir.” The man replied immediately, bowing his head.

“I was never made a knight. I am a runesmith, you know?”

The answer left the man speechless. Damian just smiled and moved on to the next thing on the agenda.

After the winners were given their prizes, Damian gestured toward Ghislain and Mindseer, and they took it from there.

Only the top 20 people from the competition and their chosen party members would be given entry in the dungeons today. But that was just a small demonstration like thing. The main event plan wasn’t that. Still right in front of the whole coliseum full of people, Mindseer projected the screen showing Ryoden calling for his team, then selected a dungeon.

Like a true host, Ghislain asked him why they chose that dungeon and what their goal was, etc. Then Ryoden and his team headed towards the dungeon entrance area that had many sanctum officials ready to do their job. After they left, a small tutorial-like video was projected for the whole of the coliseum to see on stage.

They had pre-recorded it to give a little demonstration of the dungeon entry system to the masses. It showed the journey of armored Seraphina as she paid the two silver coins to get access to the New Dawn island waygate and entered. Then she walked past the busy streets. It was all recorded in the runic tool a day before the opening.

As the soundless video moved on the large screen, Ghislain explained Seraphina’s actions in detail. Reminding everyone about all the details that might have slipped their eyes. Mindseer stopped playing the recordings from the runic tool Damian had made whenever Ghislain focused on some specific part for a while, like paying for the waygate. Mentioning the shops selling armors, weapons, runic tools, and receivers, which were all important things to enter a dungeon.

From the end of the busy street and walking a bit further on the paved road, a large gate was placed on the left turn. The path from here went straight to the other side of the island, where another such large gate was. People could walk or use the runic carriages available. Seraphina took a carriage, paying, and showing the features of the premium runic carriage with her actions.

Ghislain gave words to her actions and explained the different features it had.

The man part of the demonstration started after Seraphina reached the end gate. From there, they showed the whole entry process. Starting from the mandatory Sanctum ID check.