The Runic Alchemist

It was a giant, hollow steel pillar. Damian had expected such a spell to be inscribed in a big runic device—but this was his style of big. It was old, not made by the Runefather. Even older than that, Voidshaper told him. A group of second-rank runesmiths and scholars had made it.

After enveloping the whole charred, broken, and bent steel pillar—inscribed with runes—in his hundreds of mana threads, there were still some remnants of the spell present inside.

How could Damian describe it.. It was like something that didn't fully make sense to him either. There was a place on the square piece of pillar that was only a mana node circle connected with lines of mana nodes inside—making a shape like a pizza—but there was nothing in those spaces. No mana nodes or anything.

The pillar was not one single spell. Most of the pieces that had survived, when Damian analyzed them, had the same structure as the one he already sensed. Only a few were a little different, containing spells like emitting light mixed with mana and something more that was missing.

When Voidshaper finally took out a weird, old cathode ray tube-like monitor—made of reddish-pink material with added gold here and there—only then did Damian understand what was going on. The monitor had no internal components at all. It was just shaped like one of those fancy futuristic versions of the older monitors, but at its core, the thing was a true dungeon relic.

Dungeon relics were different from normal runic devices. They didn't always make sense. Sometimes they worked like technology, other times like enchantment, and most of the time like a runic device. But once in a while—if the dungeon was based on some weird civilization that had incorporated its own technology with runes and spells—the dungeon would reward challengers with dungeon relics that worked on technology no one could figure out.

When activated, it showed one's status. The only difference was, the status that showed up was not in real time. It was a copy of the status from the exact time one activated it. There were spells in it—a green and gold runic circle that emitted light and mana threads—similar to all the spells inscribed in the different pieces of the steel pillar which were welded together.

Once the status window appeared, floating above the monitor-shaped relic, one could touch the screen and manipulate it in whatever way one wanted to. They could change whole sections of the status or even add more sections to it. Only text, though—there was no option to add anything else.

Voidshaper showed Damian a status of some guy named Keranoir Feuros. According to Voidshaper, there was an option to erase this status and add another, but the Highswords never did that, to honor whoever this guy was. They assumed he was someone important to the relic, since records suggested that ever since the Highswords had acquired the relic, this status was already recorded into it. The dungeon itself had probably done it.

The way Damian could understand its working: the light emitting from the relic was some kind of signal, which—if someone attached his own mana thread to while activating a status tool—would make the status tool a receiver of some kind. The status shown for each individual was their own, but any new things added into this relic's screen would be copied in the exact format it was typed in.

The light signal coming out of the relic had limited range. The steel pillars were kind of amplifiers. The spell was simple but of a genius-level original design. It was exactly what the relic needed to extend its reach all over the island. They had to stack the spell over 200 times in the whole giant steel pillar before they achieved that, though.

Damian tried to envelope the relic with his mana threads completely, but other than the spell that emitted the signal, he couldn't find any recognizable thing at all. There was mana inside, and some form of enchantment too—but there was more. A technology similar to the status tools everyone had, the source of which was also lost to time.

There was plenty he could do with this one-way connection. But Damian hoped to have something similar to electromagnetic waves—something that he could develop further over time and shape like modern-day satellites and internet connections.

If there were two such relics.. That would change the whole game.

Of course! Why didn't he think of it before? One phone was useless—there had to be two for a proper conversation to take place.

"What dungeon did you guys find it in?" Damian asked Voidshaper.

"I.. wasn't here when it was built. Maybe the commander knows," the guy replied, looking at the broken and tattered steel pillar with sad eyes.

"The pillar's not that important—it's the dungeon relic that's irreplaceable," Damian said to him.

Voidshaper's eyes regained their spark as he looked at Damian.

He just smiled. "Just give me enough steel and you'll have the connection back again."

"I will go right now!" Voidshaper said, but before he could fly away, storing his dungeon relic, he paused and turned around. "Is this a deal of some kind? What can we do for you?"

"You let me take a look—that's enough," Damian dismissed it.

They flew out of there, Voidshaper heading into the city for the steel, while Damian landed next to Land-breaker.

"What dungeon did you guys find that relic in?" he asked.

"Don't know—it was one of the guys whose family gave it to us for research. From Dawnstar, the southern part."

"Do you know how many dungeons are in southern Dawnstar?" Damian made a face at him.

"It was over four centuries ago—I don't even remember the guy's face," the Land-breaker said.

"Anything about the dungeon called ManaForge Xylon?"

Damian had used the analysis spell on the relic. The source of it was the dungeon of ManaForge Xylon.

The Land-breaker replied, "Xylon.. That's something I've heard before. Uhm.. not sure, but one of the old houses called Xel'Tharien in past Dawnstar had a dangerous runic weapon we retrieved, I think, that had Xylon in it. That dungeon was there for years, but only House Xel'Tharien's few people had managed to truly get relics from it. After they were gone, their past and methods of dungeon diving were also lost with them. People tried to enter their dungeon and retrieve these weapons, but no one ever found them.

I remember it now because I had visited it myself at that time. It only had 25 levels. And nothing one did in it really rewarded a relic. With time, everyone slowly lost interest. I had no idea our relic was from that place."

Damian nodded. "Good enough. That'll do. House Xel'Tharien's dungeon."

"No, their dungeon was called something Xel'Tharien—I entered it, I know. It seems related, though. Maybe visiting it might reveal something."

Voidshaper returned, and Damian quickly arranged the pieces as the Highsword researchers had welded them together and inscribed all the chain spells. Voidshaper powered it with his mana and placed the dungeon relic in the center of the steel pillar after activating it.

The badges came online. They were just slightly enchanted status tools. Voidshaper and Land-breaker thanked him. It was no big deal, so he just dismissed it as a small favor already repaid.

He now had the new amplifier spell, and there were ways Damian could use it beyond just boosting the relic's signal. He would have to visit this Dawnstar southern family estate and see if he could get another such dungeon relic from there. It was now part of the new Empire though. The Dragon Emperor owed him one—not that Damian would stop just because the guy said so. There were ways he could reach there without anyone ever knowing about it.

Damian flew up and soon used a waygate to reach near Jacob. The golem friend of his was busy making steel tools in his labs. It was the start of his training—the guy was doing much better than Damian himself had done when he held the hammer for the first time. Jacob's big hands were the problem though—he had to fix that soon.

Well, the waygate point project he should probably put aside for now. He wanted the fast communication system installed in Sanctuary first. Only then could he launch his dungeon for the general public. Fast communications were the most important thing in preventing anything dangerous. With dungeons connecting the whole continent, there were hundreds of things that could go wrong. The real question was: how prepared was he to tackle them?

Fast communications would solve half that issue, along with having a sort of identity registration system. He couldn't rush this—he had to be careful. Well, there were many things he needed to do, so he was not in any lack of work.

Guess it was time he reconstructed the governing system of the whole of Sanctuary. With soldiers freely entering dungeons through the waygate, it was important to have trusted people in all those key positions—people on whom he could somewhat rely.