The Runic Alchemist

Damian knew the Demon Lord could create dark structures without being present himself, but those wouldn’t have that shiny, polished darkness that stopped all his attacks. Without that, his dark creations were pretty easy to deal with.

Finally, the Demon Lord took his giant humanoid form again, sucking dark energy from the nearby pigmen. He once again used that limited polished darkness to create a giant sword. Damian assumed it was limited by the Demon Lord’s scarce use of it. The dark lines on Shadecaster dimmed when he used this power.. so every time the Demon Lord used it, he must be using a lot of his energy too. But the guy had millions of powerbanks walking around him—still, the darkness used to make the sword was only one of a kind.

Damian stood between the wall and the Demon Lord’s giant figure, all the while keeping an eye on any packet of mana-less environment moving near him—he wouldn’t get surprised by his weird esper attacks anymore. The huge dark figure of the Demon Lord charged forward—Damian placed over 250 laser cannon spells beside him, stretching across the whole southern side, and 50 exploding light construct spells above them in the air to drop the constructs straight down without any involvement, just bombarding the whole battlefield.

He did not activate all of them though and kept only one-fourth active as the Demon Lord came charging without any care. The lasers were big, and the light constructs were numerous and packed with energy—even one-fourth of his spells bombarded the huge figure of the Demon Lord, putting holes after holes in him. The Demon Lord constantly reconstructed his body though and kept coming. Exactly at that time, Damian opened a massive wormhole beneath the guy’s feet—it was below the dark army, and the wormhole, being black in nature, was not as visible as a blue shimmering portal. The Demon Lord could still sense it though, and as before, he kept the huge figure in mid-air, supported by the main body of Land Breaker.

Damian had made enough holes in the body earlier to know where the guy was located and blasted his full-power hellfire accompanied by another one-fourth of his laser spells. The body of Land Breaker shot out of the dark huge figure’s right chest, covered in a dark shiny sphere—Damian smiled and immediately launched a chain of wormhole spells connecting to a waygate spell opened far from the Demon Lord so he wouldn’t be able to sense it. This must work!

But it didn’t.

The bastard sensed the last-second wormhole—sucked the dark energy out of all the monsters present on the southern side and created two gigantic legs with half a stomach to break his speed for a second, then used the connection to become liquid darkness again and glide in the bloodied, snow-covered city to reach the other side of the wall.

Damian launched his lasers from afar and flew behind the sliding giant worm-like thing—it was the most disgusting thing Damian had seen. It made his skin crawl. Still, Damian kept up the chase, always a step behind the slithering darkness. The whole southern side’s pigmen had reverted back to their original blue and red forms. Damian had no time to transport them, so he just ignored them—he had more important things to do.

He did notice, as he chased after the dark slithering worm, that Shadecaster and Sam closed in from the corner of the wall, their fight shifting places for some reason. The mana cloud powered by his friends was energizing all the cannons on the stone shrine, and the remaining black monsters under the ice wall had been mostly taken care of—giving all the soldiers manning the lasers atop the stone shrine steps a minute to breathe and prepare.

Damian could sense the waygate opening constantly nside the stone shrine—they were doing as he suggested and were leaving this world. Good. Hopefully, the dungeon doesn’t kick them all out or throw them across their own world’s timeline.

Damian saw the slithering form of the Demon Lord finally reaching the corner and turning onto the western side, where still hundreds of pigmen were struggling—waiting for the cannons to reach them and put an end to their miserable existence.

The Demon Lord must be thinking he had finally made it to his backup power and could reinforce his power once again—Damian smirked. He wasn’t just chasing behind the Demon Lord. He just made the guy feel like he was doing that—in reality, he was sending the Demon Lord right under the rectangle made of the four giant steel pillars he had put down on the ground earlier.

Just like the powerful barrier Damian had given the king to protect his city (Already used up to evacuate the city; liquid mana was there to last 24 hours, but concentrated massive powerful attacks could still break the barrier if not constantly mended by someone), this too was a similar version of that—only these four barriers were directly powered by 25 thick mana threads of Damian himself. He had full control over every single square inch of the thick light barrier dome.

Once the Demon Lord was inside, Damian immediately activated the four pillars, and the dome of golden pure light materialized in seconds. The Demon Lord, absorbing energy from his remaining few black pigmen on this side while calling for more flying monsters near him, suddenly froze—realizing what had just happened.

The barrier was not just on the surface; it was a whole sphere going deep underground. The Demon Lord could still control his minions, but neither could they reach him, nor could he get out. Just as the Demon Lord was busy realizing the trap he was in, Damian started blindly bombarding the remaining few hundred black pigmen with all his remaining laser spells and light construct spells.

The Demon Lord hurriedly absorbed the dark energy from the few he could before they all became a paste on the blackened snowland.

Now this was an even fight.