The Runic Alchemist

Finishing his meal and getting to know the two guards a bit better, Damian left the dining room and returned to the room filled with all the goodies. He couldn't wait to get started.

First things first, Damian grabbed one half stack of parchments and spent the entire day drawing the basic runic spells that he could use in battle—tried and tested spells like the large [Mana Pulling Spell], the [Modified Air Blade], and replacements for all his wormhole scrolls. He also created five of each useful individual spell that might prove advantageous depending on the situation.

For Moondancer specifically, he crafted 15 [Fire Pillar] spells, providing him some form of attack and defense against her shadowy abilities. Fire was the only thing that worked well against her—or maybe it was light? He would have to ask the elf commander about her and the Treadripper later to prepare the best defense against them. Three third-rankers and then him...

He felt like a low-level player in an end-game dungeon, just trying his best to survive.

Of course, most of these spells weren't single-parchment spells, so he spent time sewing several together before drawing. The guards, Paul and Kyle, watched him with curious eyes as he scurried about the large room, moving from one task to the next.

Damian also drew five of the very risky [Divine Seeker Vines] spell, which he had stolen from the commander of the Eldoris army. However, it had yet to be tested, and he wasn't sure if it would prove to be a reward or just another curse. It wasn't like he could easily find a person to test it on.

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The spell was also incredibly dangerous, as it drained the victim's mana and forced them to reveal information. It was too powerful, and Damian wasn't even sure it would work, despite joining ten parchments together. But he had to try. If it didn't work, he could always repurpose the parchments by drawing another spell on the back.

He may have tons of materials right now but he was not one to forget what real world values really were.. He had lived his whole life as a kid in orphanage, in pursuit of money and stable life... All his studying and hardwork was for just that..

It was another thing that he liked the mysteries of the science and wanted to know more about the world around him, the natural laws, the impossible that was made not just possible but comically simple once you figure it out of, course. Till then it was just annoying...

As he finished drawing the last of his ten-in-one parchments, the door creaked open slightly, and a green-haired head poked in, scanning the room until it found Damian on the ground, his hands and clothes stained with black ink. The guards, standing just out of her line of sight, noticed her and called out to her.

'Dinner time already? But I'm not hung—' Damian's stomach grumbled loudly. 'Wait, maybe I am a little...'

Finishing up the last of his basic runic arsenal—which would have cost him hundreds of gold coins and months of effort to earn them under normal circumstances—Damian felt satisfied. Who said pay-to-win didn't work? He had yet to meet this 'Young master'...

Pleased with his progress and feeling prepared enough to jump into any battle, even half-asleep, Damian joined the maids and staff for dinner. The two guards accompanied him once again. The whole table was filled with staff members, eating in silence or engaged in light chatter among friends.

Instead of heading to bed, even though his body and mind needed rest, Damian returned to the room with his precious materials. The essential work was done, and now the experiments could begin.

There were several goals he wanted to achieve: modifying a healing spell, perfecting the invisible box slab shield, experimenting with some older ideas he couldn't execute before due to a lack of materials, and creating replicas or modifications of new spells he had recently encountered. If time allowed, he also wanted to experiment more with mana and chemistry principles.

He still had some empty bottles, and the project he had started in the army camp remained unfinished. His goal was to make mana ink thicker while preserving its magical properties, then use it to form a runic structure without base material. He was still in the early stages of the problem though—finding a suitable agent to solidify mana while maintaining its mana particles value.

Of course, with no idea how much time he had, he knew he couldn't accomplish everything. Still, he hoped to complete at least one or two objectives. Even if the Ashenvale reached the wall in two days the battle will last much more longer than that.

For the healing spell modification, he needed live subjects. He wasn't reckless enough to experiment on himself—burning his hands didn't count. So, he set that idea aside for now. He picked up one parchment and created an average human-sized invisible box. Then he prepared two more parchments for wormhole spells.

The issue was that while he could modify the size and increase the invisible box's width, he couldn't decrease it beyond a certain point, which was the smallest box he made daily to block the link between him and the elf commander. Even after using a modified runic circle that should have compressed the width enough to bring the two long sides together, the spell refused to activate.

The black glowing circle appeared when he used his Eye of Truth, indicating that the spell had executed—but for some reason, there was no final result.

The solution, he realized, might actually be simple. He just had to figure out how to apply it. The problem, he guessed (though he wasn't certain), was that the invisible box couldn't flatten further due to the air trapped inside. If he could remove the air... But first, Damian needed to confirm his theory.

So Damian placed the invisible box runic circle on the floor in front of him and poured his mana inside to activate it.