The Runic Alchemist

Chapter 926: Ten Years Later 2

House Goldflame Mansion, Trade City, Meridian Keystone, Maelor.

A warm touch of a woman’s hand exploring his chest brought him back to reality from the embrace of deep slumber.

She was so warm.

Looking at their darkish blue skin, one might not expect them to be warm like humans at all, but she was. Much warmer than a normal human, it was like hugging a comfortable campfire, just the fire was an absolutely gorgeous shadowborn beauty.

“Weren’t you called by Lucian to give a speech in the academy?”

Maelor’s eyes shot wide open.

’Fuck!’

Watching him rushing to get ready, wrapped in bedsheets, Nyxara Halek, now Nyxara Goldflame, laughed like a melody. The maids brought the breakfast to their room, bowed respectfully, and left.

Maelor ate a few things in the passing, then dressed in formal clothes and kissed his wife goodbye. Before leaving, however, he did not forget to pay a visit to one of the rooms near his. Their 3-year-old son was sleeping peacefully. He kissed him lightly, taking great care not to wake him up, or he would have to take him along to the academy.

His men had already prepared one of their personal ships. Maelor took his favourite Axiom and launched high in the air with a crew of several dozen.

Looking at the vast city from high above, Maelor could not help but reminisce about how much had changed in his life.

After the Battle of Coresaw, Maelor had given up everything. Sam was kind enough to arrange his brother’s funeral with dignity when he wallowed in self-pity. After that, he spent months drinking from morning to night. The last few remaining loyalist abondoned him after that as well and accepted their new lives in Sanctuary.

Even while busy with tons of work, it was Sam who would come to chat with him almost every day. Sam, Torwin, Lord Silas, and Baron Goldilocks would find him, no matter which tavern he was in, and would sit around him while discussing the matters of Sanctuary.

At first, it was so annoying. He expected them to lecture him like all his family members often used to do, but they didn’t. Every day, they would find him, order drinks to drink with him, and talk nonsense. In the day, Maelor hated himself, but when they came, it was different. Slowly, he started to wait for them every day.

The day they couldn’t make it, he missed them.

Then one day, Sam complained that he had no capable person to look after the Trade City that he could trust. Olivia, his sister, was currently in charge, but she didn’t have the necessary experience for it or the respect of the people she was in charge of. At the end of two hour discussion, the four men talked him into accepting the job with excuses of how good it would be for his sister, etc.

Maelor was given the charge of Virestone Reach, the place where still many Dawnstar families that had come with them from Sanctuary lived. The lords, knights, and soldiers he had fought with soon gathered around him one by one, and they truly worked together with him to make Virestone Reach a prosperous land for their people to live on under the new government and political system.

Then Sam and the other sanctum heads decided to combine the two islands and called Damian to do the job, who was already going to install a vast barrier around the islands.

It was only a region with farmers and simple workers before. It would have never reached this level of progress if the Trade City had not built here. After the success of the three small town trade at the border of Sanctuary, they launched the combined trade market on Meridian Keystone. Here, not only could people from other countries trade with Sanctuary, but they could also do it with each other using Sanctuary currency. While enjoying the security and Sanctuary trade rules.

The border towns were still used for trading, but the majority had switched to the Keystone. Maelor and his people, together with several new and old sanctum officials, had to maintain security and keep things going without any issues. The revenue in taxes they earned, despite Sanctum taking its cut, was enough for Maelor to improve the Keystone day by day into a prospering city that accepted not just humans but Shadowborn and beastmen as well.

A few years into the Exploration project, Sam and the other Sanctum heads worked to bring about the change in Shadowborn people’s treatment, which had truly resulted in a positive outcome. Maelor knew the majority of this change was because of the popular captured video footage that Damian’s runic tools had created. And also because of the man’s own suggestion to use it as an entertainment tool to motivate people, instead of using it for the army.

The change it brought was enormous. The stories people created, the use in everyday security, and the significant cultural influence these massive screens placed in major towns and city squares held was amazing. They did not just give the ability to enjoy these colorful, real-life visuals, but also to create their own and share them with the rest of the mainland.

Because of these major technological inventions, the shadowborn wished more than ever to trade with Sanctuary. They were excluded from it for the majority of the time, and it really hurt their feelings. So when the House of Lords passed the bill accepting the Shadowborn trade on the Trade City, the resistance was not as great as it would have been a few years ago.

The main reason for that was the various dungeon diving and land exploring videos of these Shadowborn warriors who fought shoulder to shoulder with humans of all three countries in Damian’s exploration project and achieved great success at no small personal cost.

After that initial popularity of the new technology, various private adventure guilds had come to existence. Powerful people wanted to become guild leaders and make a name for themselves by fighting against the strongest monsters and reaching as far as they could in dangerous public dungeons.

The Sanctum also supported this warrior profession of their people and added more and more dungeons each passing month. To the point that now Sanctuary has over 5000 small and big dungeons available for public use.