The Runic Alchemist

It was working. Not that Sam had any doubts. But his predictions were true as well; the thousands of soldiers of the Empire army who were idling before waiting for the barrier to break had started fighting against his Warbeasts outside the barrier.

The many first-ranker spellswords, pugilists, and mages attacked the giant metal androids under the order of their captains. Now, however, the bio tanks and monster-riding red priests’ targets were split into multiple locations instead of just the barrier. Still, half were focused on it, but it was better than before; the wall could handle it.

‘As long as we keep these powerful individuals away from it and restrain their powerful attacks.’

The warbeasts needed only simple instructions from Sam; the rest they handled on their own. Unlike him, Damian could control such strange metal golems with detailed precision. The giant humanoid golems Damian kept with him could even craft runic tools and wield weapons like real humans.

These androids Damian made were quite intelligent. They could not speak or learn things like humans and Jacob could, but they were unique animals of their own kind. When not being controlled through orders or directly, each did things as they liked. Some slept, some ran around exploring, and some social ones had even established a sort of relationship with mana beasts and other humans.

Sam sent a giant metal dire wolf, a giant metal falcon, and a metal tiger to counter FeralKing’s real giant-wolf transformation. A massive metal War Elephant, a bull, and a stag ran rampant amid the bio-tank formations. A giant metal spider hunted the men placed above the barrier dome. Two dragon twins, releasing a freezing ice breath and a stream of liquid chaos element, froze and melted multiple fire-breathing emperor-rank monsters being controlled by the red priests.

A giant metal Basilisk spitting poison targeted Lily of Ruin, A Minotaur that had an axe for a hand hunted Landshark.

The last one, A giant metallic golem, stood between the barrier and its attackers, where the barrier had become very thin under the combined attacks of the enemies.

Twelve warbeasts lived in Sanctuary, not including the androids created for keeping an eye on the recording network. Usually, they were spread all over the regions of Sanctuary for peacekeeping. Some cities had started calling the android warbeast by names after they stood in defence of the cities for so long without making any trouble for the civilians.

The barrier before tower 23 finally had some room to recover. Sam, Vidalia, Silverspell, and Grimblade were sending attack after attack on the portal priest and the red dragon, occasionally targeting the monster-riding priests and bio-tanks.

Sam used a chain of wormholes, along with his superfast speed, to keep up with the portal priest, lightning after lightning striking the enemy formation, and each time the priest escaped in the very last second. Vidalia’s exceptionally timed aura arcs, purple vines, massive air blades, and falling meteors took hundreds of lives, but not of the one she was targeting. Silverspell’s water Hydra and light element tentacles failed to grasp the portal man as well.

The portal man and the emperor were now targeting the barrier outside Tower 22. Sam pushed the giant golem to move to the new target place and had it open a giant, thick golden shield, and in a circle around the massive golem, gravity multiplies several times. The enemy’s efforts failed again, and the bio tanks were ordered to change targets again.

Sam and his companions were not succeeding in pinning down the extremely fast and quick spellcasting portal priest, but the enemy was not succeeding in breaking the barrier either. If it were simply an exchange of mana, they had tons of it.

Chasing the red-robed man, Sam noticed something out of his peripheral vision. He spared a quick glance and noticed the red dragon was missing. He could sense the emperor zooming past flying monsters at incredible speed, making hard turns, but he kept following behind the portal priest. Vidalia and Silverspell changed their targets to the emperor, sensing something odd was going on, just as Sam did.

The distance between Sam and his attacking companions closed rapidly, and so did the portal priest’s and the Emperor’s.

‘They are trying to meet for whatever reason. I can’t let that happen!’

Sam activated the God Control feature of his sacrium crown and sent zolts of electricity high above. The dark clouds reacted and swirled menacingly above him. In the next moment, a huge pillar of raw electricity descended from the heavens and slammed into Sam’s bright, illuminating flesh.

But instead of channeling all that raw electricity inside his flesh, which was way out of his capabilities even as a transcendent, Sam used his crown to shape the pillar of electricity into thousands of big swords and sent all of them flying towards the portal priest and the emperor, effectively separating them while dealing serious damage to all things that came in between.

A second before he launched his attack, Sam heard a very faint glass-breaking sound that was very unique in the chaos of battle, then right after that, a strange wave of mana spread in the enemy ranks. Since it showed no visible change in the battle, Sam ignored it.

He could summon an ungodly amount of lightning from the skies with the help of the crown and even separate that massive amount of energy into his desired shape and speed of attack using a combination of the sacrium crown and the sword New Dawn’s abilities.

Over the years, he had practiced relentlessly to reach the very limit of his abilities. And every time he thought if only he could push the limits to do this or that with his powers, Damian was always there to create runic tools to achieve a similar feat.

“Vearon is charging the trident for a major attack. The barrier might not hold.” The central informed.

“Confirmed.” The Verita Unit confirmed the information.

The others will have to take care of it. Sam and all others were busy here. The Meridian Keystone was completely evacuated. Einar and others, with part of their army, were the only ones there. The enemy probably did not know that, or maybe did not care. Their targets were the transcendents, not just the land of Sanctuary.

The emperor used a unique tool to coat himself in a red barrier. The dozens of lightning swords hitting the barrier cracked it from multiple places. The Emperor managed to parry most of the swords with his gold sword coated in a deep red aura. But as a result, he was pushed far away from tower 22.

The portal priest, on the other hand, pulled out dual swords from somewhere and pushed aside all lightning swords that tried to reach him. Sam’s lightning swords were inhumanly fast, but the red priest’s movements were even faster. His hands looked like a blur, even to his transcendent eyes, when he twarted the many glowing blue lightning swords aside.

But it wasn’t all for nothing. When Sam started exploding some of his swords before reaching the priest, the guy finally experienced a million plus volts of electric current running through his flesh. It left him slightly sluggish; he could not push aside many swords afterward and was hit multiple times.

Sam’s main target was the priest. Over 300 swords were thrown in his direction. At the end of it all, the man was bleeding from his left shoulder and breathing hard. But still, he could fly fast enough to dodge lasers and other attacks aimed at him. For a while now, the man had not used his portal spell.

Maybe he finally decided it was too mana-costly and gave up on attacking directly. But something didn’t feel right. The emperor also pulled back. That weird sound he had heard before..

Sam glanced at the source of it as his ears had registered, and he found only dead bodies of priests and armored Empire men. Who knew where it had come from?

A dozen massive fiery birds and multiple water dragons were chasing after the emperor and the red priest. Vidalia and Silverspell continually supported him with their spells, all the while fighting others trying to break the barrier with their spells and operating big runic machines from the towers.

The barrier was as strong as ever. The android golem covered the thin, damaged parts of the barrier long enough with his gigantic shield to buy enough time for the barrier to recover. The golem sustained the most amount of damage out of all warbeasts, facing the most powerful individuals in the enemy ranks and even the monsters and bio tank attacks head-on.

It was a wonder the thing was still standing and moving around despite several melted parts on its metal body.

Sam had enough energy to attack again, and he was just preparing for that when a blob of purple oozed out of the flying portal priest. It happened so ridiculously fast that even Sam himself realized it only after it was too late.

A disgusting, oily snake head emerged from the purple energy portal, opening its large mouth and blasting a pure cyan, almost white, intense ray of heated energy that crashed onto the golden barrier and slowly pierced through its thick surface.