The Runic Alchemist

The morning came and Damian woke up—or more like was woken up by someone beside him. Lucian's face was there, smiling, as he opened his eyes.

He too could not help but smile back. It hadn't been that long, and still... It felt like ages since he last saw her. But then the smile faded, replaced by a hard expression.

"That was a very stupid thing to do. Didn't I tell you to leave when you couldn't hold it anymore?" Damian said.

"I thought you told us to do what we felt was right?" Lucian replied with her usual blank face.

"Not at the cost of your lives!" Damian said, his face softening a little as he looked away from her.

"Is everyone okay?" she asked.

"Yes. But one of the Transcendent pigmen died. Lyska," Damian replied.

"Fuck, it was all my fault, It was too risky a plan.." Lucian said, her face showing degrees of emotion Damian had never seen her display before.

"No, it sn't," Damian said, turning towards her and pulling her close into an embrace. "The plan was good. All of you have already killed thousands, and we have Bloodedge— all the black army under his control is theirs to command through him now."

She just nodded, their hands wrapped around each other's back. Damian saw the mana blockage in her nerves had almost healed—there was still a bit left, though. They spent the morning together, got refreshed, had breakfast, and finally got to work.

They talked about what had happened on both sides while they were away, as Damian used the royal smithy to make a giant steel cube and inscribed the waygate spell, connecting it to the nearby tree at the narrow valley.

When they had gone back to the valley to get the ID, Damian saw how the pigmen unit left behind after the clean-up yesterday had built a giant pulley-operated lift to reach the top of the snow mountains to keep an eye on the other side.

Sam and the others informed him that they had sent out scouts—this time Maelor had gone with them. If anything happened, he could return to Damian using the Sacrium bracelet.

After a discussion with the pigmen king and the elders, they decided to build giant walls in all the possible locations the black army could come from. A series of small fort-like structures all around the snowy land, fitted with laser cannons and a few pigmen soldiers—both before and after the narrow valley.

With Bloodedge's army no longer a problem, they planned to expand and block all paths large groups could use, filling the rest with traps. Alex had suggested they could just use waygates to travel, so they wouldn't have to worry about their own people reaching those locations in time or returning after damaging the enemy. With direct travel, they wouldn't risk triggering their own traps either and could go all out setting them.

Damian told them he couldn't open a waygate just anywhere—it had to be near a tree. But that wasn't a big deal, since the snow-covered land had many trees scattered over a vast area.

In short, Damian spent the whole day creating over 300 waygate steel cubes, all connecting to fixed distances from the city. Many were connected to locations where the pigmen king had decided to use Bloodedge's black army to build stone forts, with several linking to the narrow valley—their main defensive line.

Sam and the others were busy strengthening the entire snow mountain range so the black army couldn't pass easily. They asked for a few solid ice spell inscribed runic tools, and Damian made them so they could make the existing ice wall thicker, stronger, and higher—also to use those tools to fill any openings the snow mountain range might have.

They even informed Damian of their plan to build high watchtowers on top of these mountains to keep an eye out for anything coming from afar. Of course, all of these towers would be fitted with the most powerful laser cannons and other massive offensive spells. Damian's work was piling up, but he agreed to make anything they wanted.

It took a couple of days, but Damian was finally finished with everything he had to create for the army. He even guided the pigmen runesmiths to craft a hand cannon that all pigmen could carry. The laser hand-cannon could only handle two to three dozen small rounds, but with its help, even a First Ranker could potentially injure an Emperor-ranked monster.

It required mana to function—but even First Rankers should be able to fire four to five shots before running out. So, it was ideal to equip at least one such weapon per group of five to six pigmen soldiers.

With the sheer number of weapons and runic tools Damian had made in just a few days, he had revolutionized their battle strategies for decades into the future—shifting from close-range swords and spears to high forts and handheld laser cannons. That was all he could do for them. It was now up to them to use it as they saw fit. He had adviced them to send few of them in a safe location and what they could do with the thousands of black pigmen they had now in their hands. Actully he learned later that Bloodedge not only had those 100,000 black monsters in his control but over 6 million of them back in his main camp.

Bloodedge confessed he could only control around a million at a time for battle commands or any complicated task, others he could either keep on standby or let them go completely free to their savage and destructive behaviour.

It was about time to prepare for his own thing now.

Damian finished his work in the royal smithy and got refreshed. It was already midnight. Lucian had gone back to the narrow wall, so Damian walked straight to his room and lay down. He had worked all day, but he didn't need any sleep—it was finally time to see what killing the Sun God had resulted in.