The Runic Alchemist

He did not immediately rush towards the dark mana signature. Damian landed atop a high snow-covered mountain, letting Lucian go. She had just ascended—she needed time to adjust. Sam and Maelor walked towards him as he created a wooden table and chairs to sit on. The view was breathtaking—literally. It was a really high mountain; if they were mundane, breathing would be difficult.

Lucian checked her status for a few minutes, then did simple movement exercises to get used to her increased physical strength, and then she also took a seat.

"What are we waiting for? You sensed him, right?" Sam asked.

The him in question was the Demon Lord—they all knew that.

"I won't fight him," Damian replied.

The confusion and disbelief on the three of their faces was apparent. Whenever they had talked about this moment in his cave, he had always been adamant about one thing—taking care of the Demon Lord at any cost. The man was too dangerous to be left alone.

Damian continued, "The only way he dies is if I kill everyone present in this world."

They finally understood what he was trying to say. Still, their eyes widened in realization of what he truly meant.

"How will you do that?" Lucian asked, as always remaining deathly calm.

"By destroying this whole world."

"You can do that?" Maelor asked, his voice all weird.

"I think so. It's my first time killing a planet."

"Planet?" Sam asked.

"That's what we call different worlds."

"Your people knew about other worlds? How? Your people don't even have dungeons.." Maelor questioned.

"We believed it to be possible.. My people even landed on our moon and the nearest inhabited planet."

"All without magic?" Lucian asked in wonder.

"All without magic," he confirmed, a strange feeling of pride filling his heart.

"Let's be done with it then so we can go back home," Maelor said, and everyone nodded.

Damian stood up. The others followed his lead, but he gestured for them to remain seated.

"I will be back in a second.."

"You need time to prepare?" Lucian asked.

"No," he answered. "There are other beings in this world.."

Damian opened a waygate to the red demon. The four alive children of the sun god—out of five—should at least have a warning before he ended their world.

"It will take only a minute," Damian said to them and flew inside the waygate, closing it behind him.

He was in a lava zone. The red demon was, needless to say, not so amused seeing him. Damian extended his mana sense even though he could already sense three of them. He ignored the red demon's vengeful dialogues and just erected a barrier as the guy kept bombarding him with spells. It didn't even manage to put a crack in the barrier.

In seconds, he found the fourth guy—that lava guy was deep inside the lava lake. His essence was scattered, which was why Damian couldn't sense him before.

Damian removed the barrier and withstood the bombardment without a single injury, raising his aura slowly until the red demon realized something was seriously wrong and stopped. Damian simply grabbed the guy's head, moving at a blinding speed, and flew straight towards the giant ape's mana signature. The ape didn't even put up a fight before him, sensing the beyond-dangerous level of mana and aura eminently from Damian's body. Damian grabbed one of his fingers with his other hand and took both of them flying towards the lava guy.

He let the two go, and they landed beside the lava lake. The lava guy sensed him and his companions and gathered himself, walking out of the lava.

"What do you want, Demon?" asked the lava guy in his unnatural voice.

However, before saying a word, Damian waited for a few seconds. Soon, a loud sound of something falling out of the sky came from above them. In the next second, the legendary dragon landed a little distance from the four of them, making a giant crater in the magma-covered land. His burning ember eyes were fixed on Damian—the fury unmistakable.

Now Damian said loudly, "There is a darkness spreading in this world. I'm sure you guys have seen it already. I can't kill it, so I am going to destroy this world altogether. I do not want to kill you all. There is a place I can send you all. Will you go?"

"Do you seriously think we will believe your words? You bastard killed our father!" the giant ape shouted, flaring his nostrils.

The red demon and the lava guy both stared at Damian with fury and vengeance in their eyes. Clearly, they were not going anywhere.

"The sun god was already dying. If he didn't want to go, I would have never been able to even touch the guy.." Damian looked at the furious dragon. "You know that."

"We don't want to hear your lies," the red demon spat out.

Damian looked at Sulthar. The piercing gaze remained the same without any change. He sighed. "I will come back when the end is closer. Think about it till then.. There is no meaning in death like this. This is not what your father would have wanted for you."

With that, Damian opened the waygate back to Lucian and walked in. They were still seated; only Lucian was walking around—still feeling her newfound strength. Damian looked towards the Demon Lord's mana signature direction and exhaled, his white breath visible in such a cold place.

"Let's go."

Damian created a wormhole in the same direction, and they all jumped in. Damian kept connecting wormhole after wormhole, crossing tens of kilometers in seconds—technically, they were just falling. In ten minutes, they had reached the broken city built by the last natives of this world. They were gone now. The world was only filled with mindless black pigmen.

It looked like quite a lot of time had gone by since the battle that took place here. They had been to so many places, Damian had no idea what timeline they were in now. The mindless black pigmen running around like wild animals looked up, sensing their presence. They had eaten everything—all animals, even some trees. There were huge holes in the snow-covered ground, a lot of ice missing. They must have eaten that too.

Damian created the thickest barrier he ever had, covering all four of them. Then they flew above the ruins of the lost city, standing on a square air-step platform.

The black pigmen—those that could fly—started attacking without any results. Damian paid them no mind and simply raised his hands. He pulled out as many mana generators as he could, especially the old version ones that could not be moved. Several giant tanks started filling up with his liquid mana.

Yes, this plan should work.

A pair of giant black mana hands materialized in the air—the size of the massive stone shrine beside them. A hundred mana threads powered each hand continuously. He controlled the hands with precision and buried two fingers into the snowy land. A deep, over-700-meter hole was made in a second. Then he started moving the hands—

Drawing the biggest runic circle of his life.

Soon, a black portal appeared in front of them, and the Demon Lord, in his giant form, stepped out of it. Damian didn't spare a look in his direction and kept drawing the runic circle on the face of this world, while over thirty mana generators were busy generating constant liquid mana. Damian had given Sam and the others steel waygate cubes connected to a tree under the mountain where they had been resting earlier. Their job was to transport each filled mana tank there and keep an empty one ready.

Maelor alone could do the job though—now that the Demon Lord was here. Sam and Lucian, with their original swords and armor, jumped down to face him. It wasn't necessary for Damian to do this right here, in front of the guy, but he wanted to let the guy see his doom being written right in front of his own eyes. Sam and Lucian could stop him from ruining the giant runic circle. Damian himself had plenty of spells ready to do just that.

He had already drawn 30% of it—only five more minutes and this should all be done.

When the runic circle was drawn to a full 50%—the outer shell was ready, now he just had to put the specific spell sections inside—at this time, Damian told Maelor to pour as much liquid mana from the tanks as he could. Damian also funneled all the generated liquid mana directly into the massive carving he had made on the land beneath them.

Lucian and Sam were giving the Demon Lord a run for his money. Now that both of them were Transcendents, Sam was quite used to his new powers, and Lucian had found the best place to try out all her new abilities. It was so one-sided, Damian didn't even have to use his extra spells.