The Runic Alchemist

Chapter 826: The Grand Opening Celebration Week 22

The whole half-moon-shaped area of the other side of New Dawn Island was completely sealed. Damian had installed plenty of barriers that created a perfect sphere enveloping the whole Hundred Dungeon Field.

That’s what they had ended up naming it. Hundred Dungeon Field. If it worked as intended, Damian wanted to add more dungeons, but they had decided to wait a couple of years to observe before doing anything more. Who knew opening up dungeons to people might have some cause and effect that even they had not calculated for?

It most definitely would be the case, but as long as the effect was not too problematic, it would be fine.

So, for now, Hundred Dungeons were going to be fixed for public use. The researchers would have access to all dungeons, though, with some strict rules and regulations.

The only entrance inside the barrier was the one at the end of the road. Same as waygate border towns, sanctum officials had the large receiver stations for checking the IDs of people.

Damian had not upgraded the IDs to have the small replica showing spell on them. That too was something they needed to do before long. Damian had recorded spells of the replica of all the registered individuals along with their IDs. Every registered person had to stand in a runic machine that extracted a little of their aura and created a small vial of liquid mana.

Damian just used that limited mana to power the replica spell once, and then he copied the spell to have it forever. He needed to find a way to print as well as a better medium to store all those spells other than paper. Even with using a single sheet of paper with 12 mini runic circles drawn on it, his spatial storage was full of these papers.

Finding one would take time. And he wanted to etch each runic circle on the metal sanctum ID card. Needless to say, Damian increased his own workload for no fucking reason, just to have it all nice and organized. He wouldn’t do it himself, though. Damian had to find a runic way out of this job, too.

At times, Damian wondered why he was called Runebreaker. Then he would realize the mess he had made by abusing all the runic circle spells over the years.

Mindseer activated the mana stones after mana stones projecting the screens in sequence. The ID check when entering. Then, a spatial storage check, no weapons or runic items were supposed to be kept outside the spatial storage – everything had to be inside. Taking out a weapon from the spatial storage inside the barrier was strictly against the rules; breaking which would brand a person a criminal and ban them from entering the dungeons forever. All guards had orders to seriously harm anyone who pulled out their weapons.

Then Ghislain explained the rules of the dungeon. One person could only take one spatial storage tool inside, which will be checked for items at the entrance and documented. For ease of use, people were recommended not to have too many things inside, or they would have to wait a long time.

The names of the party members and their estimated time for dungeon diving had to be registered before entering. A single person’s entry cost for one-time dungeon access, no matter which one, was two silver coins.

The entrance of the Hundred Dungeon Field was a massive Blazur and stone building, inside which all these checking and exit procedures were going to happen. It was filled with needed spells. The building had ten doors on the other side. Each door was heavily guarded by sanctum soldiers. All ten doors opened to a separate straight path made of precisely cut stones; it was like a rectangular tunnel – packed from all sides.

Each tunnel had branches at regular intervals, which led to a specific dungeon. Each of the ten doors from the entrance connected to ten dungeons placed near each other. Each of these branches in the tunnels would be guarded with second-ranker guards and a unit of pathfinder soldiers.

On entry to the Dungeon management building, every challenger will receive a small coin-sized Blazur metal token. The front of which had a label, ’Only For The Use of Sanctum Dungeon Department,’ and the back contained a runic circle that needed only a minuscule amount of mana to activate. It was a simple light orb spell, but shaped like a number.

Every person will receive one token after paying the entrance charge. It will be dungeon-specific and will have a unique hologram number. Only with these will the party gain entrance inside the specific dungeon path after turning from one of the main ten paths.

The dark dungeon entrance itself was also protected by a unit of soldiers, but all those would remain outside. Around the dungeon entrances, Damian had made solid square cage-like rooms with small air shield-packed windows. The heavy metal gate would be heavily laden with protective spells and a password lock. It was in case they had to seal the dungeon on the spot.

The door would only open after the individuals exiting placed all their weapons and runic tools inside the spatial storage. And placed those spatial storage devices in a special, small compartment that guards can move outside with a push of a button. Those will be collected, and people can get them back at the entrance after they have been thoroughly checked and documented.

Hopefully, they never would have to. But there could be nefarious individuals who might get ideas of keeping the things they earned or somehow bring dangerous monsters out from the dungeons.

There was a list of monsters that they had carefully selected and had cleared for taking out of the dungeon. If someone wanted to. While banning the dangerous ones. Mostly only the monster parts were useful, not the living monsters themselves. But sometimes even dungeons had creatures that could be tamed. Like the popular horses from the dungeon that Sam had brought Anthony out of.

Damian was curious as to what people would do if they had open access to various harmless monsters. Other than using them for transportation, what more could people do with them? It would be one of the interesting effects of dungeon access that he was curious to see.

The projecting images were constantly changing while Ghislain explained all the rules and regulations. In between, they called the top twenty contenders of the competition to have them call out their teams, asking them a few questions, and their choice of dungeon. It was like small breaks so people wouldn’t get bored. Though no matter how many projections people watched, no one seemed to grow tired at all.

The novelty aspect of this new thing was very high. Damian had thought of a few more things he could do with these projections, but Mindseer was not his to order around. After the event, she would have to leave. Though there was one partnership deal Damian was curious to talk about with her and the Highswords. Seeing the popularity of this new visual medium, taking advantage of that was a must.

On exit of the dungeon, the spatial storage devices that were collected directly from the room were delivered to another building in the barrier, where only the sanctum officials could enter. Here, with the runic tool Damian had made for checking spatial storage items, they make a list of items inside on a separate, newly installed eighth receiver channel.

This was entirely dedicated to the dungeon management.

There were multiple teams of Sanctum staff, which will be hand-chosen, trusted individuals; for more security, this first team will include only mundanes. The first team will document the items directly from the runic device that works with liquid mana, showing the item inside the spatial storage devices without accessing them.

The common named items will be ignored by the second team. Since it was the system itself that named items, they could not be messed with. However, the second team will analyze the details of the unique items present in the spatial storage tools. The analysis spell runic tool was also something that Damian had made for this.

This team will include pathfinders. They will take out the unique items, use the tool, and write down the information with their own comments, like what the shape, size, and appearance of the item was.

To make sure no one could mess with the record, this whole process will happen on paper. Since unique items shouldn’t be too many, the workload wouldn’t be too big.

The papers will be given to another team that will type everything inside the dungeon channel. The view-only channel could be accessed by the top Sanctum executives and the Sanctum Dungeon Research Center. Who could ask to take a look at the item through proper documents inside the Sanctum office.

The last team will take Sanctum’s share out of every spatial storage tool, taking out the things that could be considered dangerous. This team, too, had to post an entry in the dungeon channel regarding what they took and what remained with the challenger. This team had to be chosen very carefully to make sure nothing funny happened. A job that might require even a mana contract.

All the items that a challenger retrieved from the dungeon, 50% of those will be taken by the Sanctum. Relics and other too dangerous items will be taken completely. Simple weapons and other harmless relics and things people could keep. Of course, after Sanctum took its cut.

After a day or two, the spatial storage tools would be returned to the person with the token, with everything they could keep. Their personal items will not be touched.

And that was the dungeon system in its entirety.