The Runic Alchemist

The Thorn of Ending. The Black Storm. The Death Wind. The Great Silence.

The destroyer of nature.

Ruinweaver’s Doomshard spell was known by many names throughout the years. It wasn’t of this world, that I can say for sure. No mana, no aura could create such a devastating anomaly.

The second Ruinweaver activated the spell, Harmon grabbed me and flew away from the Ruin Lord as fast as possible. I was shaken. In one second, everything had turned upside down. I beat him. I won. And yet.. it was the scion of chaos who was having the last laugh.

And now I lost everything?

My eyes could not believe the reality before me. Ruinweaver had unleashed an abyssal black orb of condensed power—the first target of which was Ruinweaver himself. My eyes bulged as I witnessed the powerful fourth-ranker’s body unravel and fall into a small handful of ash.

The small black orb was gaining volume every second as if devouring the air itself to further its growth. Without Ruinweaver to hold it, the orb had fallen to the ground and was erasing land every living second—getting bigger and bigger with time.

Then it was the sacrium staff Ruinweaver was using that came in contact with the black growing devourer; my own sacrium hammer turned to ash as if made of sand.

The sacred metal, the most powerful of fourth rankers, could not break; it disintegrated in a moment.

Dirt, stone, my steel golems, my dwaven brethren.. nothing survived when the growing abomination touched them. No protective or offensive spells of even the most powerful runic tools survived after facing the doom.

It was the eraser of existence that Ruinweaver had unleashed on the land. Not a natural force, but something even demons in hell couldn’t imagine in their worst nightmares.

The speed at which it was growing, even the best of our flying spells would fall short in escaping its range. Hell.. if it kept going whole of mainland would be reduced to nothingness in days.

In just moments, it was already a kilometer-wide, blinding half sphere. The other half was below ground, feeding it more substance. The bigger it was, the faster its growth.

Hundreds of my brethren turned to ash right before my eyes. Dwarves that had come to witness the fight between the gods despite our warnings. My main army was fifty kilometers away from the battlefield. At best, ten minutes, and we all would have been turned to ash.

In seconds, my mind calculated all that, coming to one simple conclusion.

Today is the day we will all die.

But just at that moment, two titanic golden pillars full of divine mana split the heavens and fell on the land. Surrounding the giant black sphere from opposite directions.

The presence of the goddess of light, Astrea.

The sphere did not stop growing, but it did slow down a little.

Its growth was not pushing even the golden pillars back along with itself.

Before our eyes, two massive pillars landed around the black, growing sphere; these were solid, black, metallic ones.

The presence of Stone Father, Branthur.

Still, the sphere did not stop.

Four more pillars landed one after another, two abyssal dark and two bright fiery red.

The Sun God and God of Chaos.

The sphere finally stopped growing. But it was still moving; only now downwards. Every minute, it gobbled up meters of land and gained more and more power. For now, it was contained from the sides, but that wouldn’t be enough if it kept devouring land.

The spiritual form of each god materialized from the thin air and landed before the pillars of their making. None had a pleasing expression on their faces.

“What singularity has your damned scion created, Maelkrath?”

Heard a voice, Harmon and I. Only the two of us, fourth rankers, after straining our ears, could listen to it.

The voice originated from a tall, bearded, fiery red human spirit form of the Sun God.

“It’s not my fault this time. I told the bastard to stop it, but he wouldn’t listen. Before I could find a subtle way to put an end to it, bloody Branthur’s dwarves went and killed the man’s wife!”

Replied the rustic gray male elf spirit of Chaos God.

“Stop it, you two! Aurelion, use your damn white flames! This thing just keeps growing. Branthur, you know what you have to do.”

Another elf spirit, a female, the one bright golden in color and brimming with natural soothing divine mana, said with a strict tone. The Goddess of light, Astraea.

“Try your flames, Aurelion. The divine fire should be able to counter this mixture of chaos, darkness, and whatnot.”The bearded ancient dwarf, Stone Father Branthur’s familiar voice added.

“I sense light inside..” Astraea murmured.

“So do I, Fire as well.” Sun God, Aurelion said.

“Just do it!” God of Chaos, Maelkrath said impatiently.

The night sky was illuminated with bright righteous white fire; it was more like thick liquid mana than fire, but the intensity it exuded was enough to make even us fourth rankers fear for our survival.

Thankfully, the Stone Father had not forgotten about us, and a thick barrier surrounded both Harmon and me. Protecting us from the terrifying heat.

The molten lava-like white fire poured inside the eight-sided closed structure that was reaching high in the sky above. And was probably extending deep inside the land as well.

But as if the dark abyssal sphere had no end inside, like the spatial spells, the white molten fire just kept disappearing inside without a stop.

“I don’t think it’s working,” Maelkrath said with a smirk on his face.

“Remove that disgusting smirk from your face! Your brain-dead, insane scion might have truly erased this kingdom of dark followers. You will just be a memory then, like Lugh.”

Stone Father Branthur said with a suppressed anger. The mention of a merchant god’s name forced Maelkrath to make a face at Stone Father.

I was so shocked by the constant, unbelievable events happening that I didn’t even think about the only missing God, excluding the Sea God. The Lord of Ocean must have been injured in his fight against the Beast God.

The Gods.. they truly worked together. For some reason, I had always assumed the Gods to be at each other’s throats constantly, just like their scions, but that wasn’t the case. Then I remembered how all the things Stone God had personally suggested for Bouldor were always about peace and advancement, not spreading his name far and wide through schemes and violence.

I decided to send Kelmira and Harmon away from the safety of home, and then I was angry at the Stone Father for not helping her and avenging her. All this time, I believed I was one of the oldest of my generation, but what I had done was nothing more than a tantrum a child throws before a parent.

How could I, or any of us, barely the visitors of this land, question the wisdom of the masters of this world?

But it was too late for forgiveness. Too late for choices. Now, only consequences remained.

As they say, burden chooses wisdom the way storms choose tall mountains. It was the Stone-Father who suffered for my mistakes.

No method that the group of gods tried came even close to stopping the ever-growing sphere of ruin. Chaos god, Goddess of light, and Stone-father were the three most concerned about the growing problem.

The first land that will be destroyed will be Ashkara, the home of chaos and dark believers. Next was Eldoris beside it. But before all that, we, the thousands of most powerful Bouldor warriors, will turn to dust.

The dark singularity of Doomshard was going deeper and deeper inside the earth–the domain of the Stone God. Only he had absolute control over it. But the all-decaying, unnatural spell was erasing everything that came close to it. Every spell, every element, even space-time spells, were erased from existence.

Only the pillars of these gods could hold it. The absolute proof of their divinity. It wasn’t a spell or skill, but part of their divine nature.

The only way they could hope to stop this thing is by containing it in pure kilometers-thick divine energy. That way, it would stop growing and hopefully eat up its own energy to stay active, slowly withering away with time.

No god was willing to sacrifice themselves. I was baffled by hearing the utterly childish arguments the most ancient of beings were having before me. The elf goddess wasn’t willing to destroy her physical form for her followers. Neither was the God of Chaos willing to sacrifice for his people.

The point of having followers was to gain additional strength and eternal life; destroying their strongest physical form for saving them defeated the whole purpose.

But ending the world meant no immortality.

In the end, it was Storm Father who took up the responsibility. Earth was his domain. His skills inside it would give him additional strength to contain the spell. And he was one of the two most responsible for this abomination of unprepared creation. The God of Chaos was fine with ending the world if the other choice was to sacrifice himself.

Hearing the gods’ conversation that day revealed so many of their secrets that my mind could not handle it properly at the time. Just from that little information, one could decipher what the gods were all about. There was a reason they never showed themselves before their people.

From afar, they were all-powerful and mysterious deities. But in reality, they were simply people. Flawed, greedy, selfish, monstrous people. A true god could not be killed. But if people knew not everything was in their control, the notion of invincibility they worked so hard to maintain would break.

After centuries of contemplating, I believe it was something we were never meant to hear.

That barrier Stone-Father put up to shield me and Harmon was, in truth, supposed to be an attack that killed us, clearing the field for the gods to do their thing in peace.

Stone-father shielded us, let us hear the truth about the gods, and made the greatest of sacrifices to save us. And by the end, knowing full well what the other gods would do in his absence, gave us something the generations of scions had begged for to their patron gods and had never received—the permission to become a true god ourselves.