The Runic Alchemist

They stayed in the inn until late evening. Then, finding a good enough inn, Damian and Sam decided to rest a little in separate rooms. Physically, they were fine, but mentally they had been exhausted. One after another, so many things had happened, and they didn’t even have a chance to think about the full extent of the consequences of their actions.

Still, it was a better outcome—somewhat—than the worst possible scenario. Many pigmen had died, but most had either left to Earth or entered the dungeon. The king and Rurik, with their families—two transcendent pigmen—had accompanied the group made up mostly of weaker pigmen into the Highsword Dungeon. With them were Sariel, Amy, Alex, and Grace.

Heather, with another pigman group, had gone to Earth, where Toph, Evante, and Karl were. Damian had sensed Reize, Elias, Lumi, and Mindseer along with Dreamlight enter this waygate. The Highswords and Asher, still in their energy spheres, were also carried to Earth.

The pigmen world was now under the Demon Lord’s control—except for the few individuals that lived in the lava zone. Even if Sulthar and the others fought against the damned Demon Lord, they wouldn’t win. Damian had thought about giving them a warning, but before he could act on it, he was already in this mess.

The Demon Lord was not dead yet.

Damian’s piercing eyes stared at the ceiling, covered in complete darkness, in the inn’s room.

The second he could leave this place, that one thing had to change. He would not stop until the Dark Lord was dead and buried.

It was around midnight. Sam walked out of his room and arrived near Damian’s door. Before he could knock, Damian opened the door and let him in. Damian had told him to come. He could sense Maelor and Lucian in the castle situated in the middle of the city. Near Maelor, he could sense two mana signatures. His room was guarded. But Maelor was alone inside. And only an hour had gone by since Lucian, too, had finally moved away from the others and was alone in one part of the castle.

Without exchanging a word with Sam, he opened a waygate connecting to Lucian in her room. Damian could sense the nearby surroundings—she was indeed alone in a room. They walked inside.

Lucian was in simple black trousers and a short white top with only a few buttons. It was like a shirt but made more feminine. The room she had was quite an impressive one. Damian opened another waygate to Maelor and kept it open until Maelor was through. All four had gathered again after spending a whole day in this new city.

Damian had two mana cubes in his hands—he handed them to the two, along with one spatial storage tool made into bracers each. It had the steel containers they were used to using and the straps to keep them attached to their waists. Lucian and Maelor took it and started using the mana cubes without asking any questions. He had already given one to Sam, and he himself had one too.

“What happened?” Sam asked.

Maelor squinted at him, as if recalling some troublesome memories, then said, “That damned princess and her people kept pestering me all day about their kingdom’s history and this and that. They made me meet some injured soldiers, and all day kept showing how much money and resources they had that they could share with someone who could help them. In the evening, they even held a welcoming event and many geezers kept introducing their daughters to me. One geezer even offered his four daughters at once! Four!”

“Lucky you,” Damian said with not a single expression on his face.

“L.. You piece of—” Maelor started, but Lucian interrupted in a second.

“The battle. That’s the trial. The king already tried fighting them once a year ago and lost 20,000 men. The princess and the king are trying to negotiate, but the tribe leaders are not having any of it. Each tribe has sent just their extra men—they can stay outside for another year or two without any problem.”

“So, you have to win the fight with the limited men?” Sam asked.

“No,” she replied. “The king won’t let me use the men. I think the trial requires me to face all of them alone.”

Maelor’s eyes widened in surprise, but Sam and Damian just simply nodded. That made sense. Impossible was always the first word that came to mind whenever a transcendent trial revealed the task. Damian had to learn to transform dirt into iron. And he was technically a support class focused on crafting. She was a Spellblade—fighting a hundred thousand creatures alone was exactly the kind of thing that would be asked of them. Sam seemed to have shared a similar experience.

“Can you?” Sam asked.

Lucian met eyes with all of them, then looked out of the window she was standing beside, her mana cube in her palm, as she answered, “With this.. Mana abuse is my only concern.”

“It has to be efficient,” Sam replied. “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Use tricks, make use of terrain—anything to make it easier.”

Lucian nodded. Then she looked toward him.

Damian hesitated before saying it, but it had to be said after all that he had seen and learned in a day. “There are many ways to win a war.”

Lucian furrowed her brows as she said softly, “Any chance of parley is wholly refused by them. The tribes were preparing to do this for a long time.”

“What is the reason behind all this? They never replied straight to me..” Maelor asked.

“The tribes are all minorities in the country,” Lucian answered. “The majority are humans. But something happened to the weather, and the winter that usually lasted for a few months is still going—after three years. The capital city had food stored—they sent it to every region as needed, but there was never enough to go around. Some stole, some bribed, some just waited and it never came.. Every region has a different story.”

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