The Runic Alchemist

Damian wanted to drop kick the smug face of the smiling annoying brat, since he brought his face so close to Damian. For a second Damian had an illusion of seeing blue lightning in the kid's eyes but it went away as quickly as it came. So instead of kicking him Damian paid the five silvers.

He knew it was most likely way overpriced but the space-time runes were intriguing and the duo was clearly fishing for money so they could run away from whoever it was chasing them as fast as possible.

Damian did not really care about them but seeing the genuine fear and their scared body language Damian did not bother negotiating. The duo may be annoying but they did not look like bad people, at least that's what his gut told him. And trusting his instincts had become second nature to him since he was lost in the forest with Lucian.

Finally reaching the Ravensong the next day.

Ravensong which had just one straight street in the middle of the village. All shops were lined next to each other with their washed up boards and even worse buildings.

Damian walked from one end to another and found out that there were exactly two inns, two general stores, two blacksmith's shops and one suspicious looking establishment where flowery smell and weird sounds were coming non stop from – Damian decided to stay away from that last one. And so he entered the tavern or inn whatever one might call it that was farthest to the flowery building.

It looked like a building straight out of the old western movies as if someone was just going to come out of it with cowboy hat and challange him to a gun fight. Entering it, Damian ordered a lunch after sitting down on a excessively noisy chair.

While eating Damian noticed various fellows that were drinking in the middle of the day looking miserable; non of which cared about Damian after glancing at him once on his entrance.

Before getting a room Damian asked the tavern lady who was serving him for the place where passenger wagons were parked and walked in that direction. He found one wagon out of three parked there going to Faerunia. They were scheduled for first light tomorrow morning. Damian confirmed his seat and walked back to the inn and booked a room.

Buying some more papers from the general store Damian worked for an hour or two making the runic circles on them of the new spells that he learned.

Finishing his work and storing it inside his spatial tool, Damian got comfortable in his excuse of a bed and started examining the runic water watch that he bought from the annoying kid, Sam was his name now that he remembered.

It was pretty simple work but the black runic magic circle that were responsible for the invisible box was the main prize of this item. It was not a commonly known spell, that Damian knew from his limited knowledge of spells through Baron's library. The empire was famous for making all kinds of innovative life necessary runic items but Damian never really found anything conclusive written about it.

If he could understand this spell and edit it for his use, it could really prove one hell of an addition in his arsenal of spells.

Damian was a chemistry student but just like any other science student he was also interested in various machinery and using scientific principals to innovate something that would change people's life forever.

For now science of this runes and magic circles was way out of his league but with enough time and observations he was confident that he could unravel at least some reasons behind this phenomena. Until then using the runic circles to make his own unique runic tools was his dream.

For a second job maybe he can get an enchanter or a runesmith for embedding his runic circles into the solid metal and making something reusable instead of these one time use papers.

Studying and redrawing the invisible walls spell runic circle again and again, Damian at least understood how it worked. But making changes was still too much work. The only variable that he was successfully able to change was the size of the square as a whole and it cost him more than half of his huge manapool. Needless to say it was a complete failure.

He just needed one individual invisible wall that he could change attributes of, but just like everything else he would have to give it a lot of time studying before he could successfully pull it off.

With half his mana and tiredness from sleepless nights in wagon mixed with headaches that came with understanding the runes and keeping the [Eyes of truth] active for long time Damian got extremely sleepy and just closed his eyes on the uncomfortable bed and slept a dreamless sleep.

When he woke up again, the room was dark and the moon light was trickling down from the various holes on the roof and the partially opened window.

Lazing around on his weird bed for a while, Damian finally got up and went downstairs to wash his face and relieve himself, he was also hungry again.

The tavern looked pretty busy. People were sitting all around, Damian found one seat that was near the bar so he settled there instead of joining unknown strangers. Luckily no one said anything while he ordered food from the bar table, and he was served a dish made of supposed 'Mountain goat' meat. Damian had yet to see any goat around though.

Trusting in the serving lady's words for the sake of his stomach, Damian ate the meat and it tasted good. So Damian continued munching on it while being alert of the unkind gazes on his back.

As he was chewing and looking around the room Damian almost cursed seeing the father and son duo sitting across the room on a table. The boy even smiled at him and waved his hand wildly as if he was Damian's long lost friend. Some noticed the weird exchange and ignored it, others were too drunk to notice anything at all.

'Why the hell are they even here? When someone is after you, does one even stop for a drink in a tavern..!?'

Damian tried his best to ignore them and eat his dinner, the crowd with their drunken stupor helped him in that. However as he was midway through his dinner, suddenly the whole tavern became silent as a graveyard.

All people looking at the tavern entrance, Damian also turned back and saw a group of men all standing in the entrance; wearing white shirts with a weapon of their choice attached to their waists or resting on their shoulders. With just one look Damian knew that the trouble had just walked in.

The group eyed all the people in the tavern, Damian was glad to see their eyes not stopping on him for even a second. But he did notice all of them looking at one table in particular, Damian knew who it was way before they confirmed it. The father and son duo looked pale as ghosts, their movements stopped in midway as sweat dripped down their brows.

'What did they expect? That they would just magically go away? Why didn't the dumbasses run?'

Despite their intimidating stares the group did not immediately go towards their target, instead they glared at the two men sitting around the round table in the middle of the room till they stood up and left without even saying a word in protest. Guess, being a village at the border of two kingdoms makes one more prone to recognize danger.

Only after the six men were seated themselves around the table did the life returned to the whole tavern, until then it looked like everyone were holding their breaths.

Damian glanced at the duo and found them looking down on their feet's while trying their best not to get noticed, but it was too late. The group of unaffiliated men were just playing with their prey now. The scarred forehead man ordered food and alcohol for everyone who seemed to be the leader of these pack of giants, in the skin of humans.

The rest of the people might have just been scared off by their mean appearance but only Damian could feel the oppressive aura that surrounded the round table, specially their leader – his aura alone could rival other five of his group combined.

This was second time for Damian to get overwhelmed by sheer gap between the levels. Only Thomas had managed to do that to him after receiving his first job. And that guy looked even more powerful than the monstrous Thomas who fought and killed three enlightened on his own.

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