The Runic Alchemist

Chapter 843: Possibilities and Elite Units

It was a known fact that their timeline had seen subtle changes. Specially after Grace and Alex returned and spread their stories with the world. Einar and Evrin had already made the same claims but with the others arrival it was confirmed that they had somehow traveled through time using the Highsword dungeon.

After Einar and Evrin had made their stories public, there had been several attempt in people entering the Highsword dungeon to travel through time. But as one might guess all had failed. It wasn’t the simple fact of entering the dungeon that was the cause for this unnatural phenomenon.

They were punished for breaking the dungeon laws. And even that Damian highly doubted that the Sun God he had faced in the dungeon purposefully sent him and others to his real homeland. Whether the guy knew Damian would be the end of their civilization but also savior of its last members of the species, was a question that often came to his mind.

Because the punishment for breaking dungeon laws had to be more strict than that.

Of course what they had gone through wasn’t easy by any standards. But now that he thought about it all from an outside perspective, the challenges he faced were something very custom designed according to the skill set he had and received while facing the imminent threat of the demon lord.

Without his liquid mana and waygates they wouldn’t be alive right now or could have ever returned back. Bringing so many pigmen along with them.

But then again, the sun god from the dungeons might just be terrified of the demon lord’s weird esper ability and just wanted to get rid of him, together with them, as fast as possible through that red wave. It sent the threat to the dungeon itself away but also spared their lives.

A visit to the Highsword dungeon was a must. That sun god had to answer some questions.

“Low level dungeons are the only ones we can successfully seal. Attempt to do it for a dungeon bigger than 35 levels and it fails. There had been successful attempts in the past but its rare and the deciding factor is unknown to us.” Ilvanya shared.

“It must take more spells than that holding device of yours can handle,” The queen of Faerunia commented. She and Hellstorm had not left the platform from start to end.

“It’s more than that,” Damian commented.

“The method is incomplete or a lesser version. But if our ancestors knew a method to seal higher level dungeons they would have been wise not to share that information with anyone. Countries fighting against each other might have sealed majority of dungeons on mainland. Who know maybe they did so. Compared to the area of the mainland and the dungeon numbers available, its indeed less than the same ocean region.”

“You have no faith in people, do you?” The emperor asked mockingly.

“He has always been like that. I think he was dropped on his head as a kid.” Sam added from the side. His hands crossed on his chest while head nodding along, as if his words made the most sense.

The emperor even checked Damian’s full head squinting.

Damian ignored their antics and turned back towards the gathered members.

“Prepare to go back. I want a report from each of you, describing the whole thing from your point of view. Credit for the observation will be taken seriously, so don’t worry about that.”

Damian used the mana tanks of the platform itself to power a large waygate spell that brought the whole platform and all people above it, back to the sanctuary academy campus.

With all the members of the high research board, Damian returned to sanctum. They held a meeting discussing the next steps for the research center focus. Till the end however there was no good singular goal so they ended up focusing their efforts on just deciphering dungeons civilization languages and gathering more information through the local challengers and their own armies.

They had created an elite volunteer unit combining soldiers and knights from all five regions including Highsword members to test out new dungeons that still needed to be explored for the first time. Sam and sanctum army as a joint effort together with island of demons were already doing that but this would make their jobs slightly easier.

It was still demons who checked the entry possibilities and initial floors of every dungeons. But the elite force was needed to go further and explore the dungeons fully, reaching the end, defeating the boss and collecting the core. It was highly dangerous job and was only volunteer based. As an incentive, sanctum had decided to give 60% of dungeon loot to all these elite teams risking their lives.

They still had the right to take anything too dangerous but compared to the general public they were allowed to keep much more valuable items. However, every dungeon relic was recorded in the sanctum database, tying the weapon or runic tool to its rightful owner. Anytime they sold it or gave it to anyone had to be recorded in the database.

Not for just the elite teams but even for the common people entering the dungeons every day. It was only for the truly dangerous items. Anyone who failed to register the item was punished accordingly. People who claimed their items were stolen or lost to avoid the transfer data being recorded by the sanctum found their items getting stolen for real by the sanctum agents. Then they were arrested for lying to the authority.

After the board members returned to their own countries Damian and the rest of the sanctum heads got busy in their own work. Till evening, when Damian was working on his flying ships and suddenly sensed a change in mana signature coming from higher floors.

Damian put down everything he was doing and flew out of his air shield window using a wormhole and went to the top of the sanctum where the tower was placed. Along with all the Highsword members and Asher who were going through their faith breaking rituals.

The mana wasn’t related to those people however. It was a new one.

When Damian landed outside the sealed room Sam was already present there. His floor was closer to the top. The others were also making their way up.

“It’s him,” Sam said, not looking at Damian. His eyes were focused on the sealed door of the room.

“The third prisoner that we got along side uncle and that beastwoman.”