The Runic Alchemist

She gave him a 'humphh' as reply to his arrogant remarks and put more effort into controlling the golem. She made it walk straight, focused on controlling the minute movements of its fingers, had it jump, and tried to maintain balance upon landing. It wasn't perfect, but Damian had to give it to her—she was indeed a master mage.

Her control over five threads, while not flawless, was still impressive, especially without mana sense.

No wonder they called her Broken Branch. Her talents were at a genius level.

After about ten minutes of struggling with the golem, she began to feel the strain on her focus, realized just how inefficient it would be to control it alongside her spells. Glaring at him with a hard-to-read expression, she finally relinquished control and handed the authority of the spell back to him.

With a smile, Damian attached seven threads once more and demonstrated flawless control—running, moving its hands and fingers perfectly, jumping, and landing with a grace that was mesmerizing to watch. She observed all of it with wide eyes, filled with emotions difficult to interpret, as he played with his new golem.

The Iron Golem could be controlled in two ways. One method was through mental commands sent via mana threads; the other was to synchronize the threads with his own body movements. In this second method, Damian didn't need to think too much about what the golem was doing or how to balance its center of gravity. His subconscious mind and muscle memory took care of everything.

It was as if the electrical signals his brain sent to his limbs and back were copied through the mana threads and translated into the golem's actions. This meant that the spell wasn't simply animating an iron doll—it was designed to interpret and execute human thoughts and movements perfectly.

'Who the hell came up with such a genius idea?' Damian thought.

"Enough. Let's go back," she said after a while, seeing that Damian had become engrossed in testing out his new golem.

"Ah, sure." Damian ordered the golem to walk over to him. Once it did, he severed the mana thread connection and stored the golem in his spatial storage. The Iron Golem was large, but his spatial storage, a high-grade one he had received from Thomas, had plenty of room.

"There's no way an orphan boy would have a spatial storage worth hundreds of gold coins," she remarked as he approached her.

Damian's expression softened. He glanced at her before looking out at the vast, empty white landscape surrounding them. "It belonged to a friend..."

She must have noticed the change in his demeanor because she didn't press further. Instead, she began chanting the flying spell for the two of them. Damian conjured an invisible box large enough to shield their heads, acting like a windshield to protect them from the wind and allowing them to hear each other. The box moved in sync with them, maintaining its position as they flew through the air.

It was to block the wind and being able to talk with each other.

"Can I get custom weapons for my golem?" Damian asked. He couldn't rely on its fists alone, and normal weapons were too weak for its iron hands.

"Your golem? Did you forget what we talked about earlier?" she retorted, not even sparing a glance at the spell that made flying so much easier on their eyes.

"Alright, 'your' golem. Now, can I get those weapons?" Damian relented.

"Sure, but they should also be imbued with runes along with golem's body. That's where the real power lies." Was he imagining things, or did she actually sound excited talking about golems and runes? She was definitely not being honest with herself...

The entire way back, she advised him on what runes 'her' golem needed and how it could benefit from them. Damian only wanted weapons, but if he could learn how runesmiths embedded spells into the veins of metal, that was an undeniable bonus. Still, her sudden enthusiasm for the golem was completely out of character, it was actually funny to him.

When they landed at the entrance of her wooden building, they walked up to the third floor together. Her two Queen's Guard companions were waiting for her and immediately took their positions behind her. She walked to her room while Damian made his way to the storage and research room he had been granted access to. Before parting, she told him she would send someone to guide him through the smithies.

His two guards, Kyle and Paul, joined him shortly afterward, greeting him with nothing more than a nod. Once inside the room, out of the prying eyes of the nobles, Damian summoned his new companion—the Iron Golem—giving his guards quite the scare. But they quickly understood what it was, and soon they were justifiably awestruck by its glory and splendor.

The iron was so clean and polished that it reflected light. After all, the spell had reconstructed scraps into pure iron. Even if the most skilled blacksmiths and runesmiths worked together, they couldn't achieve the same quality in creating a golem. If this spell worked the same for other materials, it could have incredible applications in alchemy.

Just imagining an army of such golems, covered in runes, sent a shiver down Damian's spine. Fortunately, no one else knew how to create them. Vidalia had seen the process, but she didn't have the closed environment Damian had with his invisible box. Plus, she couldn't scale up a regular golem-summoning spell the way he had.

Damian had specifically modified the spell to increase its intensity and the size of its effect. Even among powerful mages, few could harness its full potential. Vidalia, a third-rank mage specializing in mana control and an elf with centuries of practice, could only manage 5-6 mana threads at once, and even that strained her mind. Finding someone else like her was next to impossible.

Damian, with his seven mana threads, once again took control of the golem's powerful iron body. All the practice he had put into mana expulsion spells, and the precision with which he drew spells through his World Shaper hands, had made him a master of mana control like none other.

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