The Runic Alchemist

Four years after The Broken Greed War..

Underground secret lab, beneath the Divine Tree, Eldoris.

"Okay, Relas... You do it, I'll go hide," Damian said, smiling encouragingly at his assistant.

"That does not make me feel good at all..." Relas muttered, taking the giant parchment that had been custom-made by stitching together several smaller pieces crafted by Eldoris artisans.

After years of extensive study, memorization, and a little help from the ordinary runic knowledge books acquired from the Royal Library, Damian had finally cracked the code—or at least found a small backdoor hack. Creating entirely new spells from scratch was still far beyond his reach, but by combining unique sections of existing spells with common runic elements, he could craft some interesting combinations.

The result? Using the wormhole spell's ability to open a portal ten meters away and combining it with a simple air blade spell, he could now conjure the blade ten meters from himself. He had already been able to achieve a similar effect by pushing the runic circle with mana threads, but this method saved a third of his mana and was five times faster. Not to mention battle ready.

Basic spells that functioned as projectiles, like waterblades, fireballs, and stone bullets, worked exceptionally well with this approach. However, spells requiring sustained power did not fare as effectively. They only produced as much output as the mana stored in the parchment allowed before the wormhole section activated, cutting off the mana supply.

This was his fifth attempt at such a spell. This time, he combined the wormhole function with an exploding arrow effect, using a network of red and black mana pathways inscribed with support runes. The parchment contained two elemental mana absorption sections, theoretically allowing it to make any inanimate object near the enemy into a living landmine from afar, just waiting to be triggered.

The beauty of using parchment and mana ink was that he didn't need to manually adjust the elemental ratio; the surrounding environment's mana did it automatically. Better yet, it achieved perfect balance—far more precisely than any human could manage—eliminating the hassle of training for every new spell. Alas, in basic runes common in this world's mages and runesmiths, they had no simple way of using environment's mana in their every spell.

"Maximus, I don't think Relas will survive this," Tessa remarked, showing a rare, fleeting concern for her colleague. Damian's second assistant was, admittedly, a bit heartless.

"I've got a stack of job applications. We'll replace him," Damian replied with a thumbs-up and a cheerful grin. Enjoy new stories from empire

"Hey!

" protested Relas, but they both ignored him.

"Good. Maybe this time we'll get a better mage," Tessa nodded.

"Hey!"

Relas sighed and reluctantly approached the setup. All he had to do was throw something at the wooden target, which the parchment spell was designed to make explode. Still, he kept his distance. After carefully placing the parchment on the floor, he bolted, conjuring an earth wall to shield himself.

Damian, standing safely away with Tessa, focused on the runic circle and activated it, his notepad in hand. Relas, peeking from behind his wall, prepared to throw a stone bullet. But then—

'BOOOOOMMMM!'

"Fuck," Damian cursed as a massive explosion rocked the underground lab. Smoke billowed everywhere, obscuring the room except for Tessa, who stood beside him.

"Mother Astraea, I confess, for I have sinned.." she muttered, skipping over confirming, mourning and going straight to absolution.

"Relas... You alive?" Damian called out, his voice echoing through the smoky chamber.

He could already sense his mana signature and had seen a split second of multiple earth walls being erected in just a nick of time, their dirt-yellow runic circles glowing faintly.

"I HATE THIS JOB!" came the furious reply.

"Ah, he lives," Tessa remarked. Was that a hint of disappointment in her tone? Damian wasn't sure. Just how had her parents raised this kid..?

---

Another Failure…

Damian noted everything that had happened and closed his journal back on the surface or more like to the top floor where the old research facility was, they needed to let the underground lab, be cleared. This project was more of a fun side thing for him, with the help of his two assistants who had been with him from the very beginning.

Incidents like these were part of the reason they had built an entirely new lab for him underground, beneath the Divine Tree. The other reason was the hefty sum of profits his work generated for the royalty.

After somewhat deciphering the runes that made up the runic circles, along with the alphabets and numbers, Damian had become intrigued by golems.

The way he had created his first proper golem with iron was something he couldn't replicate anymore. He could no longer use his invisible box spell, and ironically, no fucking one else knew the spell either. With no one knowing it, he couldn't even use his

'The Lord's Respect

' or mana threads. He still didn't understand why the hell he had been banned from using it.

To get similar results, Damian tried a closed stone box, in which he placed his golem spell parchment and activated it. It worked. A humanoid stone golem was created.

But it wasn't perfect. The golem wasn't made of condensed atoms like the iron one he had created; instead, it grew bigger and bigger as long as the mana in the parchment lasted, forming a basic, stable body.

Controlling it was easier than the steel golem, which Damian attributed to the less dense mass. But, as expected, it was weaker too.

With somewhat of a success, there was still dirt mixed in the joints and golem structure making it even more weak, Damian then tried using an iron box and a much larger parchment—one that was a sewn-together version of high-quality regular parchments.

The head of researchers Erdan had once told him that he was using 67% of their entire budget—this was after the budget had been increased because of him. But it was more of a joke; the old man was always the first to work when Damian brought forward a new theory.

The result, however, was the same—if not worse. Iron required more mana, and the dirt, which was the easiest to attract, jammed the golem's parts as iron covered the top. Instead of condensing and growing stronger, it just got bigger and bigger.

Damian then tried the experiment underwater, but the outcome was the same. He even created a water shield around the parchment and a pile of pure iron, but it still didn't work. It turned out that solid water still allowed mana to flow in and out, unlike his invisible wall, which was a unique spell.

But not all was lost. Damian discovered several new things about the golem spell during all this. The most important discovery was the shape. It was difficult to notice because it was written differently than the normal ID section, but there was a small section in the golem's runic circle, in addition to the usual ID of the spell's user, that indicated the shape of the golem being created.

By default, it was set to the user's own ID, which meant that the golem, no matter the material, would always resemble the user's body type. Damian remembered that his steel golem had looked like a faceless doll, but it still resembled his body—though it was his adult body, not the one he had at the time. Perhaps it had been aged by the large amount of Vidalia's mana he had used to create it.

To confirm his theory, Damian used the IDs of various animals and monsters, managing to create miniature to large-scale replicas of almost all of them. He also discovered that he could leave that section of the golem runic structure out entirely, which activated another function that allowed him to use his will to shape the golem. There was no limit to this; he could pick up a pile of iron and mold it into a huge block—though it was mixed with dirt and many rust particles that wore off, not perfectly of course. If used properly, it was a handy trick for repurposing iron or any metal, though it depended on how the spell interacted with certain metals, as it refused to recognize some at all.

Damian had full access to the royal library—well, almost full access, as some books were royal family-only. To change things up in his daily routine, he once read everything he could find on enchantments. It wasn't bad—there were many cool effects in enchantments, similar to runic spells—but the main difference lay in the source of their power. According to the books, enchantment chanting described the process as gathering mana from the environment and using it with the user's will, with a little something extra that was vaguely described as a piece of the soul… or some kind of spirit. It all seemed odd and unclear, though Damian could attest that there was not a single drop of mana from humans or the environment in enchanted tools. So yeah.. What the hell was that all about..?

The only explanation or information in the books he had read that made some sense was that the piece of the soul must always return to the user at the end of the enchantment. As a result, there were no known enchantments that lasted longer than a fixed period of time. However, there were enchanted tools, and the most widely accepted theory was that the soul piece in these tools belonged to a dead pathfinder.

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