The Runic Alchemist

Chapter 919: The Grand Exploration Project

Early Spring, Year 519, New Age. 20 Days After The Wedding.

After a month of training and non-stop building, Damian and his members of the Exploration crew were ready to take off. In the name of the ceremony, they only did a few speeches and the obligatory launch of the new flying ships.

10 kilometers from Sanctuary City, near the outskirts of a village called Koaru, 30 brand new flying ships called Razor Axiom class stood in all their metal glory.

Since now there were more than one type of flying ships, Damian separated them into official class categories. The old public transport ones that were shaped like flying saucers, which favored comfort and safety. They could take more than 2500 people if they weren’t carrying a heavy load. They were named Paragon Helix class. 80 km/hr top speed.

All of which were blue with white numbers.

The new versions of faster and more aerodynamic ships Damian made for exploration were called the Razor Axiom class. They were built for a crew of three hundred people and could carry a thousand people at once. Top speed 400 km/hr.

These, Damian had painted white with strips on the long side of a single color. Red for dungeon diving crew, Green for exploration data gathering crew, Blue for general troops, Orange for technical and receiver network installation crew. Each captain and the officers of the assigned ships were allowed to vote and select a name for their ship that they wanted to get painted on the side of their ships.

Of course, they needed to be approved by Damian first. He rarely rejected them thought. Most had chosen good names. The serial numbers were the official identification of the ship.

Its body was long and flat, shaped like a wide blade, with a sharp front and straight, slanted sides. The top was smooth and level, while the bottom angled inward, giving it a sleek, flying-wing look. There were no round curves—only straight lines and sharp corners. A low, angular control block rose near the rear, blending into the hull instead of standing out.

It used multiple methods for flying. Which included weight reduction, mechanical wind blades powered by liquid mana, wind generation, and rotation runic spell machines. And large blazur metal runic engines that were set to operate at limited speed so as not get too hot and break apart. Even with that, the blazur-sacrium alloy plates needed to be regularly changed, and maintenance was important for the engine to work efficiently.

And the seven fastest runic jets were called the Apex Vector class. Top speed 1300 km/hr. Two pilots. The runic jets had a special silver color matching the sacrium, which was used to make their engine.

Helix, Axiom, and Apex in short.

There was one special version as well, but he kept the name the same as its predecessor. The Dreamlight class. Only two such ships were built by Damian.

It was built like Axiom but had multiple runic engines, a complex cooling system, and several comfort and support spells that made traveling inside a luxury experience. The interior was very different from normal Axiom-class ships. It was his own personal ship. The name was Last Shadow, painted pitch black with Damian’s personal white logo of hammer and sword crossing before an angular shield, and all of it fitted inside a runic circle.

It represented his position as a member of the sanctum high table.

The same other copy of the ship he had given to Sanctum for their official use. All countries had special methods of royal travel; the Sanctuary deserved one as well. Only Sam and the other Sanctum heads could activate that ship. This one was called Bright Mercy. Painted pure white with gold lines. The Sanctum logo of a knight holding a sword was painted on the side.

As for the crew, 3000 soldiers from Eldoris, 1500 from Empire, and 1000 from Faerunia, with 5000 army soldiers from Sanctuary, made 10,500 soldiers. After that, Damian had recruited ten thousand more from the common civilians for various roles and hired ten thousand Shadowborn as well.

A fleet of 31 ships and 30,000 people in total.

Nearly 9000 of which were pathfinders of various ranks. The Shadowborn civilians were near first-ranker level strong; their pathfinders did not get a big boost in the stats like humans, just various skills. Shadowborns were given their separate ships and were mainly tasked to follow behind Damian inside dungeons and grind as much as they could before moving on to the next profitable dungeon.

He needed to pay over 200,000 gold coins per month for these jobs; dungeons were his only source of income.

A while back, Sanctuary had switched to local currency; otherwise, dealing in that much gold and silver would become problematic.

A resource common in several high-end fire element-related dungeons was a light dark colored layered obsidian. It was only found deep in high-level dungeons and was common across multiple dungeons, and most importantly, it was tough enough to craft weapons despite being a good mana conductor. Using ultra-high-pressure water, they could shape it into any desired form.

Making a coin was easy enough. Then Damian had made a sacrium runic tool that held a custom spell inside. The structure of the spell was a mixture of a high-intensity mini glowing orb section, an environment mana-powered section, and a unique frequency sound-creating section. The sound was inaudible to humans and monsters alike, but Damian had built a wave-reciver spell that could detect the sound when it was nearby.

So they had a unique currency and a way to detect if it was real or not. The high-intensity glowing orb illuminated the obsidian from within, which was another thing impossible to do without Damian’s surface spell inscribing skill. And the environment could power it forever. Obsidian was tough, so it would last for centuries under such minuscule mana strain.

And no runesmith Damian had met till now, other than probably a third ranker like Runefather who could inscribe spells on Obsidian. It was nearly impossible to make a mana node structure inside Obsidian as a second-ranker or first-ranker runesmith.

So the Sanctuary introduced its own coins. Green coins replaced the value of a one copper coin, Blue for silver coins, and red for gold coins. They added a few extra coin values as well, a pure white coin that was worth equal to a hundred gold coins. A purple one was even a thousand gold coins. A light pink for 50 copper coins and orange for 20 silver coins.

The army was paid in this new currency, the sanctum shop operated on this currency as well, and slowly it was spreading throughout Sanctuary. The information spread through the audio channel of receivers actually helped a lot in spreading the news and awareness.

The transition period was going to be tough, but it had been stable for half a year now. The growing Sactuary economy, which was due to becoming a trading hub, was put to full use. The mainland had nothing greater than gold as curruncy so their new coins were quite a talk throughout the mainland.

People didn’t have to secure a large bag of coins now. For mundanes, without spatial storage, that was the biggest plus point.

The opening ceremony finally ended. They only restated what their goal was, and in short, what their plan of travel was, ending with a good luck speech from Sam and other sanctum heads.

The training of the gathered troops had been intense for a full month. Damian would have liked to train them in discipline more, but he didn’t have enough time. This should be enough for now.

All thirty ships were boarded with their captains and all the crew members. The six Apex pilots had already launched into the air. Their first goal was to check out the circular ocean for 3500 kilometers. Malveria was 2500 km away from the mainland and they had to check out this region close to home perfectly. So, to make detailed maps before proceeding forward.

The twelve pilots out of the 30 top candidates were the ones given the position of Lead Explorer. Reize was one of them. She and Damian had taught how to fly to all 30 candidates. They were ready to go at any second.

The training didn’t consist just of flying the runic jets. The candidates Damian had chosen had the best physique, with good runic knowledge, high IQ, and the best attitudes and reasons for joining and going on this journey.

These people needed to be tested like that; the responsibility on their shoulders was high.

They were the best of the pathfinder and mundanes. Some of the familiar faces were Ryoden Nightblade (First Rank in Sanctum Tournament), Valery Crowbar (Second Rank in Sanctum Tournament), Austen Colt (A mundane soldier known as the ’Bandit Hunter’ who was promoted to knight by Einar, former House of Lords member), and Warren (The bald knight formerly serving Lord Silas, Esper).

Once they revealed what the top of the top chosen candidates of the recruitment camp would become, people from all walks of life had left everything to join.

The Seven Voidwings Commander’s title spread so fast that everyone thought Damian was recruiting his personal guards. He had to clarify the duties multiple times, and still, some remained till the very end and completed the training to become a Voidwing Commander.

A title people randomly selected who knows from where. But it was so popular that they had to make it official.