The Runic Alchemist

Chapter 922: The Gold Crown

67 km from the South-West Sanctuary Border, the small town of Coresaw, Maelor.

Hhhmnnnnn….

BOOM!

Another one landed and blasted hundreds into unrecognizable pieces of raw flesh. Red blood mist painted the very air bloody. The smell of burnt flesh and gunpowder made him question his very purpose on this battlefield of hell.

“Run! Run! Run!”

Shouted people all around him, Maelor’s own voice included.

Run, what else can a man do against a goddamn burning, exploding, never-ending, destructive machine? The Empire’s soldiers were trained to defend the abomination till their very last breath, as long as they had that, anyone below Enlightened rank was just a living target dummy. The more the better!

And yet..

Maelor produced the solid golden shield with his Armor of God

skill and jumped high; dozens of exploding arrows and firestick attacks landed on the shield. The cracking sound was not pleasing to his ears at all.

Maelor reached halfway through the stone wall and plunged thin, sharp blades inside. Then, using that, he jumped again, creating another shield while throwing multiple aura blades towards the nearby second rankers until he finally landed on the giant, ugly machine that had disintegrated hundreds of his people a minute ago.

Maelor wasted not a second in covering his flesh in full shields as he launched the spell he had been holding for several minutes now. A large quantity of rustic black liquid materialized from thin air and landed on the thick skin of the half-metal, half-monster thing and bore a straight hole through it.

The infernal scream it released as the liquid chaos burned everything was both highly disturbing and very pleasing at the same time.

But it lasted only a few seconds before a massive wave of water enveloped the thing in its entirety, even pushing Maelor away with his shields. He made some sharp cuts in the water and exited from one side, running towards another such monstrous machine.

They would lose.

Maelor knew it. He knew it from the very first day, and he still followed behind that fool of a brother. The change in the man was like earth and sky. The always joking, never taking anything seriously, drunkard joke of a brother was right now being followed by thousands of men as they all charged headfirst against the man called Lord Landshark.

Half man, half fish. But in truth, the man was more beast than man.

They lost people every time, but won village after village these past couple of days, and had finally reached the town, Coresaw. A second ranker lord, stone walls, and 35 level dungeon as the seat of power. It wasn’t much, but if they had it, they could have survived to fight another day. People of Dawnstar would have a reason to join them other than blind faith.

However, all those hopes were shattered to pieces when the large gates opened, and the traitor transcendent revealed himself.

Maelor destroyed another ugly machine and jumped down before the tattered army. That’s what he was assigned to do: destroy all ugly machines so they can fight without getting blasted in seconds.

“To me! For Dawnstar!”

He raised his sword high and rounded up all those who were still standing now that all the machines were dealt with and charged towards the battlefield where Landshark was fighting their entire army alone.

If dying today was his fate, might as well be done with it.

He had tried and tried, but this crazy lot, the survivors of the Crimson Dawn war and their families, were chasing something more than revenge at this point. Maelor could not fight with his father and grandfather, the regret of which he will never get over, but he would be damned if he let his only brother fight and die alone!

“HAHAHHA.. HAHAHAAA..”

Landshark laughed loudly as arcs after arcs of aura blades landed on him, combined with hundreds of fireballs, light, wind, and even dark element attacks. But it was all.. useless.

The thick skin of LandShark did not even get scratched once!

People behind Maelor slowed down slightly, watching the nightmarish scene before them. Landshark turned into a massive dark gray shark and dissolved under the solid land like it was water. Then, after a long, stressful second, two massive jaws came out of the land and swallowed hundreds of men alive.

Even the veteran lords froze on the spot, hearing the earth-shaking laughter that had just become more monstrous and louder after the transformation.

Men clad in armor threw weapons aside and started running in all directions, but Landshark was not done with them yet. The sharp, spiked back of the giant shark launched high in the air and turned meters-long mini sharks that ripped apart anything and everything that was in their way.

These things also used the land like water.

A swarm of it also headed towards Maelor’s group. Few had already run away screaming; the rest also finally had enough. It was over, Maelor thought. This was it.

But piercing the chaos, a loud voice resounded in the battlefield,

“For Justice! For Dawnstar! Come, you coward beast! Better is the squire who died in the Crimson field than your pathetic, honorless husk of greed!”

Maelor, frozen on the battlefield, saw his brother on horseback, his sword raised high, going against the sea of people. The New Dawn, charged to the limit, was blinding to the eyes.

His eyes blinked just once, and the attack was launched. Hundreds of deep red, sharp, angular lines pushed the air aside with vengeance and targeted the jumping sharks and their massive parent.

The deep red patterns were sharper than paper and boiling. Everything it touched was burned through, catching fire in seconds. Half the mini sharks died in less than a second, but the moment the red lines neared the massive shark, a dozen mini-sharks launched out of the ground and ripped Leon’s horse and flesh together.

The men running only spared a glance at Leon Goldflame’s torn visage before continuing their escape.

New Dawn, the sword of kings, bloodied now, fell down on the solid land with a clang that was submerged in the chaos of a thousand footsteps and screams. Yet, the clang of the sword rang the loudest in Leon’s ears, suppressing all other sounds.

The sword was widowed once again. There was no king of Dawnstar left to wield it. By right, it belonged to him, but to get it, Maelor needed to go charging head-on, just like his brother did.

’But I am not him.. Never was.’

Bravery was often a quality that came more easily to a fool. He was too fucked up in the head to follow his heart single-mindedly.

’If it was Damian.. Sam.. Einar.. Lucian..’

They all would have done it. No doubt about it. They would have pushed the overwhelming odds aside and somehow even won this ridiculous match of a transcendent against the Enlightened.

Maelor hated himself. He hated every ounce of himself because the first thought that came to his mind, witnessing his brother’s death, was not sadness, pity, anger, or revenge. It was..

’Why bother? I will die.. just like him.’

In his peripheral vision, Maelor could see a mini shark closing fast in his direction. But he did not move. At the very last second, he glanced at the grotesque thing, the hideous, sharp teeth were awfully close and yet took forever to arrive.

But instead of him getting mauled by the teeth, the shark recived a devastating white bolt of lightning and disintegrated in a millisecond. Followed right after was a rain of crimson liquid flames that trapped the massive Landshark inside by turning into pillars of a high-temperature metal cage. Then, hundreds of blinding pure white lightning bolts disintegrated all flying and attacking mini sharks in less than a minute.

The screams had finally subsided as people realized they would not become animal food today. The chaos stopped as some stopped to look back.

Einar Larven and Samuel Stormcaller, the first and third keepers of Sanctuary, stood on either side of Lord Landshark.

They came. Damian said he won’t save them, no matter what happened. And that was the right thing to do. Because of this, the conflict between Empire and Sanctuary will get even worse.

Why do that? Why risk everything for some mindless fools who knew nothing better?

“..Why?”

Maelor murmured.

Even at a good distance, Sam seemed to hear his word and looked back at him, that same goofy smile on his face that Maelor had seen thousands of times before.

“Oh.. I am the keeper now, you know? So changed some policies..” He replied.

With that, Sam turned back and stomped strongly on the land below. A burst of pure energy slammed into the ground, cracking it in places. With a dome of dirt, a shiny, reflective object flew high up and was caught by the third keeper of Sanctuary.

The sword of kings was widowed no more. She had found another to serve.