The Runic Alchemist

Behind the south-west runic wall, Zeriel.

For a moment, they were all huddled near the campfire, making plans for the coming battle. Miura, Drona, Ian, and Loyd. But then, abruptly, her mind clouded, and she lost all control of her own body.

It was horrifying.

She could see everything. Feel everything. But could not do anything to stop herself as her spells and runic tools attacked people around her with mad zeal. Most defended themselves while alerting others, but not all. Blood was everywhere, explosions, fire, flesh burning, people dying.

The horror lasted only a few minutes, and halfway through, she was captured and bound by the sanctuary’s mundane units, clad in heavy runic frames. But it was enough time for Zer to witness the worst of humanity. The worst of the power she held within her.

From the loud runic recievers, the lord Keeper’s orders of climbing the wall repeated as their enemies continued attacking the wall.

But Zer was out of it. The mundane units let her free with other pathfinders. Drona and Miura came running to find her. Loyd joined her from somewhere as well, but Zer herself noticed nothing around her. Loyd was cursing beside her and telling Sariel and Miura how Ian died amidst the chaos.

“Zer!? Zer? Are you okay? Do you want me to take you back?” Drona noticed her distraught condition and shook her from the shoulders. Miura and Loyd came beside her in an instant.

“I..” her voice broke, “I killed someone..” She managed to speak.

Thousands of laser blasts and explosions mixed with loud crashes, animal roars, and human cries were constantly assaulting her ears.

It was her own idea to join the war. Of course, not just her own, but she was one of the first to say it out loud.

The Lords of Iglacious ought to save their Iglascious, she had said. Drona, Miura, and she herself let their parents believe they had escaped to Farpoint, but in truth, they returned and joined Ian and Loyd to fight in the Keeper’s army.

“It wasn’t you! It’s the gods!” Drona shouted in her face; the chaos of people rushing towards the wall made it hard to hear each other.

“It’s over!” Miura shouted. “That gas did something and made us free!”

The Gods. They had her killed.. her own people. Powerful fifth rankers, they said. Weren’t powerful people supposed to look out for the weak ones? Like Void King did? Like Iglascious did?

What kind of mad with power man thinks it’s fine to kill people who look up to him, worship him?

Sun God! That was her patron God!

‘The bastard!’

“I will ask Mother to open a waygate for us,”

Drona said and started fiddling with his receiver as Loyd kept the others away. The marching forces lacked the cohesion of the official sanctuary army. Many were trained by Sanctuary, but not the majority that had gathered to fight.

“No!” Zeriel shouted and stood up with her friends’ help. The anger in her was beyond her control now. “We fight!” She declared.

Her friends exchanged glances and nodded together. In sync, four Vakyr Frame MK6 activated. Zer tightened the two runic bracers Sanctum had given them. Bracers and armours for pathfinders, long sticks with a trigger to the mundanes who didn’t know how to operate the Runic Skeleton G7 armour.

Together, they left the ground and headed straight for the wall, the tower 27, from where people were blasting their enemies nonstop.

———

The Broken Bay, Meridian Keystone, Asher.

The bigger army was on land, facing the giant wall. But the fleet of Faerunians was not small either.

Standing on the sandy shore with a gathered army, Asher stared at the massive barrier. Sesha and Einar, the big one, were sent along with him to face the Faerunian king Vearon Seablaze by the third keeper of Sanctuary. That Damian had done some ridiculously large-scale work on the Ashenvale islands since he last laid eyes on them.

Joining islands, building massive walls, and an armada of flying warships. He had missed so much. It was all worth it in the end for the power he commanded as a transcendent. Even the wrath of the gods was welcomed as long as he held this power.

But not the lives of millions of innocents.

Asher had seen the glimpses of Damian’s dream city back in the academy. If, because of him, the kingdom and Sunblade family perished, Damian will find him even from the depths of hell and kill him ten times over. Not like he could run forever from the gods.

If it came to worst, the keeper had shared promises of having an escape plan or two. But seeing the enemy forces, as long as the gods did not interfere directly, Asher was confident in his companions.

Five hundred ships.

The pretty lady on a funny little moving screen claimed the armada to contain. There were 20,000 on foot and 200 airships on their side. The other hundred ships were on the other battlefield, along with a much larger force.

The Island was a fortress itself. The only side for the army to land was in the Broken Bay passage, where they stood with their armies and ships.

They held the advantage.

The barrier was a wonder of all kinds to Asher. It did not just protect from the outside but made all spells collapse on themselves in a range of half a kilometer on both sides. And the thing that made Asher raise his metal eyebrows was the invisible inner layer placed before the mana chaos zone that cancelled the spells.

This invisible barrier layer was fully transparent in all aspects. People and objects went right through it, but mana did not. It worked both as a chaotic mana zone shield and a weirdest space-time spell Asher had seen that absorbed and transported all their spells and threw them outside the thick golden barrier onto their enemies.

The advantage they held was indeed not small. The Faerunians and Vearon himself were trying desperately to break the barrier or get through using wormhole-like spells, but nothing succeeded.

On the other hand, Asher and his army could attack without restraint on the sitting ducks that were five hundred ships.

———

On the Runic Wall, Tower 22, Silverspell.

It was ridiculous.

The hundreds-of-kilometers-long single runic megastructure. And they called it just a runic wall. Silverspell conjured dozens of giant water spheres and slammed them on the ugly, black-scaled, fire-spitting monsters. All the while, he continued to operate a giant metal runic cannon the size of a battering ram, blasting off red armoured knights, hacking the barrier with their aura-clad attacks.

Dozens of fast metal ships flew above them, sending a flurry of attacks on the aerial enemy units, trying to break the barrier from above.

The brat, Damian, had done wonders for this country’s defenses. The runic weapons of thousands of soldiers were being charged right as they fired. The air itself held the mana.

‘How the hell did he manage that without creating a mana chaos zone everywhere?’

A thin layer of some unknown spell was even eating all the attacks and sending them outside the barrier without damaging the barrier itself somehow. And the strangest thing, it was only one-sided! That broke the very fundamentals of space-time travel spells that dictated wormholes can never be one-sided, no matter what.

Some distance ahead, near tower 23, several of his transcendent companions were targeting the reason they were in this mess. The red priest who can open portals.