The Runic Alchemist

Damian kept the flames burning all around him with his spear. Sam and Lucian jumped from one monster to another, cutting and kicking—desperately trying to keep the monsters from getting any closer to Damian. Despite the flames the monsters did not care for their own survival and just jumped in, burning, dying while still trying to attack.

In the end, when fewer than a five hundred pigmen were left to leave, the Demon Lord once again extracted dark energy from a large number of his army monsters and launched over twenty decay energy spheres—large ones this time. The Demon Lord’s giant figure also became a bit smaller after he launched this attack. Damian was in no condition to care for such things, though.

The energy spheres wouldn’t give him even a second before landing one after another on his shield—it was time to bail.

“Leave!” Damian shouted loudly.

Finishing the monsters they were facing and finding the next opening, all three of them launched their own wormholes and jumped straight into them. The last few pigmen understood the urgency and ran with their lives on the line, jumping meters before reaching the waygate. Damian did not sense any of his friends there, which he was thankful for. Even the Dreamlight flying above the ice wall, fighting with everyone, had left midway through.

The shield shattered under the pressure of so many energy spheres, and a massive explosion took place right behind the shield where the two waygates were.

Under the weight of the massive explosion, followed by a crumbling ice wall, the whole battlefield shook. Snow started falling from all the high hills—it had already started after each loud attack landing on the shield, releasing vibrations and thunderous noise. Even though many black pigmen were buried under the falling snow, their simple, unhurried charge never stopped.

The Demon Lord was truly focused on destroying the last pigmen city on this planet. Or maybe it was just to put pressure on Damian so he would try again and again to save them—with his life on the line.

Damian came out high above the ice wall and even above the Demon Lord; he had escaped straight upward. He sensed Sam nearby too—but Lucian.. Damian looked in the direction of her mana signature and felt like he had suddenly swallowed poison.

He could sense her from within one of the closed dark fists of the Demon Lord. She was inside.

Damian immediately opened a waygate connecting to her with the little liquid mana his eighth mana cube had created. But it opened right above the fist—ten meters up. Damian didn’t care, though, and flew inside—instantly pulling out a giant condensed steel sword that had an independent light-structure spell.

Damian powered it with as much mana as he could spare, creating a giant golden sword using the steel sword as a base. It was sharper than any blade. He swung it hard with as much power as he could muster and severed the hand of the Demon Lord. When it turned to black smoke and returned to the Demon Lord, Damian quickly opened a wormhole for Lucian to fall through. The other end of the wormhole led to Sam, who caught her—she was unconscious but still breathing.

He saved her—but he had to pay a heavy price for it.

All five other giant arms of the Dark Lord attacked Damian just as he came out of the waygate. He cut one, but the rest were ready. His sword was knocked away by the black blade of the Lord of Darkness, and another hand grabbed him tightly inside. Damian’s mana cubes stopped functioning, stuck inside the black void that was the hand of the Demon Lord. Damian himself could neither move nor speak. It was like being trapped inside a giant slime-like body of liquid. The darkness was heavy—nothing like the smoke he had seen before.

Damian could not sense his floating liquid mana anywhere near him, but he had refilled his mana pool earlier. If he had been any other Transcendent—or maybe even a Fourth Ranker—this would probably have been the end of him.

This was the method the Lord of Darkness used to fill his enemies’ bodies with his own dark Esper soul energy—gaining control of both their flesh and mind. A stronger presence required stronger dark energy. The black power the Demon Lord had accumulated was so immense he could not even keep all of it in himself without losing control, and had to store it inside the living puppets. The Demon Lord had enough of this dark energy now to bring even a god-level being to its knees.

The precondition of using this skill, however, was to have a mana-exhausted opponent. Aura or any external runic tools were ineffective in the veil of darkness the Dark Lord had cast. Most people did not have a skill strong enough to break free—spells could not be used.

Damian, however, was not a simple opponent.

A blinding red-and-white, white-hot beam of energy shot out of the darkness enveloping Damian’s figure—instantly blasting a way out of the suffocating dark mass. Hellfire was not a skill any living human could wield.

Damian flew straight behind his own hellfire, which launched from near his face. The tunnel seemed quite big—Damian thought his skill would end before the tunnel, but fortunately, it did not. When Damian finally came out on the other end, he understood why the tunnel had been so large.

He had been caught by one hand of the Demon Lord—but after that, sensing something had gone wrong, the Lord of Darkness left everything and started holding that one hand with another, then another. All five massive hands were trying to contain one small being—and yet Damian flew out without much effort.

The Lord of Darkness was called “Demon Lord” by the dark followers and all the people who had witnessed his power.

But he was no true demon.

There was only one true demon on this battlefield.

And his name was Damian Sunblade.

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