The Runic Alchemist

Chapter 850: The Talent of Next Age

[In the middle of the ocean, random island, Steelweaver’s POV.]

The boy was doing it! He really was doing it!

When Harmon had shown him this runic tool, he had promised that no runesmith was capable enough to get the better of it. And no other pathfinder under transcendent rank could do anything to break it or unlock it.

The legendary rank monster they had used for making this prime runic tool was not a simple one either. That was a really ferocious one for a legendary rank.

And still.. Years later, here was a brat, barely a transcendent, who dared to break the runic tool made by a god. What would Harmon have said if he could see this? He would be shocked to his core for sure. Steelweaver would have enjoyed that look on his old geezer face. It would have been fuel for many laughs.

But.. Harmon wasn’t here now. Neither was anyone else. He was alone.

The black chains made a noise as they strained under the furious assault of the clever runesmith before him.

At first, there was only one sacrium disk and one powerful, heat-generating spell on it. But after a few minutes of receiving the energy waves and successfully sending them away using the space-time spell, the boy added more. Now there were over a dozen sacrium disks with that intense light.

The most unusual thing, however, was the two dozen mana-hands holding the sacrium disks on top of everything; the boy was handling it like it meant nothing to him.

Steelweaver could barely see through the haze of high temperature and thousands of flying white, red, and orange sparks. It was a miracle he wasn’t being affected by it.

The boy had thought of even that and had created another chantless set of spells. How many had he done by now? Already ten to twenty were active. Chantless spells were not rare, but the higher a spell’s rank, the more effort it required to master and get to the level of using it without chanting. And even then, chantless spells needed some ancient words to keep the spells stable under heavy strain.

The boy here seemed to use something entirely else to do the chantless magic. So many high-level and above spells, and he was creating and managing all of them without a single word uttered.

Did the world really progress so far that individuals like him exist now?

His above-average runic knowledge, added with his young appearance, screamed insane talent. When was the last time he had seen a human transcendent this young? That chatty boy and others he had seen were also quite young despite being transcendents.

So much power at such a young age. How much time will they have to ascend further? Far more than normal, that’s for sure.

’KDACHHH!!!’

Steelweaver could not help but let out a smile, seeing the pieces of black chain severing from multiple places, finally releasing him from his bindings.

The boy had done what he promised. Released him in a matter of minutes.

***

[In the middle of the ocean, random island, Damian’s POV.]

It was done. It finally gave up.

The tussle against the never-ending, constant energy generation and wave-releasing spell was getting on his nerves. He thought tricking it would be easy, like fooling a program, but it wasn’t as simple. The prime spell was full of hidden features that Damian wouldn’t be able to figure out even if he studied the runic spell for years.

For a while, the slight increase in laser power strategy worked to force the spell to release an energy wave at short intervals. But after some time, the spell stopped matching his energy and started charging an intensely powerful wave, as powerful as possible with the mana available from the environment to it every second.

It was even aimed straight towards the mana node he was attacking. To trick its aim and increase the rate of laser attack, Damian had to create several more sacrium disks laden with the laser spell and attack multiple weaker mana nodes.

They were worried about spilling the mana overflowing from the canal before doing this, but once Damian connected over a dozen meter-wide mana threads, their biggest issue was having enough liquid mana in the canal.

Sam was flying around at lightning speed, while constantly cursing, to operate and manage multiple valves of the mana tank. The flow had to be perfect. Neither too less that the spells would run out of power nor too much that the liquid mana would overflow.

Without Sam, Damian wouldn’t be able to do this on the first try.

But at last, after 20 minutes of struggle, they had done it. They had broken a prime spell-powered runic tool. Damian had done the analysis spell on it when he first saw it, and it was ranked as a supreme grade.

Just the black metal alone was abnormal; Damian wasn’t sure if it was metal at all. It did not react with anything. Felt more like a ridiculously tough bone or something entirely else. The thing itself was releasing slight mana that the spell absorbed to power itself. If it could still do that after decades and possibly centuries, then that was not something ordinary at all.

Damian called out for Sam to stop. Then canceled all the unnecessary spells. His precious sacrium ingots were used up; this endeavor had a cost. The sacrium disks were showing light cracks and mana fluctuations around them. No runic tool was supposed to be abused like he had abused these disks.

In the end, each laser spell used nearly 70 liters of liquid mana to power the spell per minute. 12 such connections were using the liquid mana at once. His liquid mana tank, containing 50 thousand liters, had been emptied one-third by the end.

A steel or blazur runic tool using that much mana would have been turned to dust in seconds. Only Sacrium could handle it.

Steelweaver pushed against the dimming black chains, throwing away all his restraints. Damian turned towards the dwarf, who had a face full of astonishment and was staring at his free hands.