THE RUNIC ALCHEMIST

Lucian looked up from the cube and asked, “What does it do?”

“Try it and see for yourself,” Damian said, amusement in his eyes.

Lucian narrowed her eyes and then used her mana to power the cube. It took over half of her entire mana pool to get it going. Over five runic circles covered the cube from its four sides—but that was for only his eyes to see.

To Lucian’s eyes, only the four palm-sized runic circles lit up with different colors. A second later, golden liquid started coming out of the other side, slowly circling the sacrium cube along with a gale of wind. Seeing it, Lucian’s eyes widened.

“Is this..?”

Damian just nodded. She quickly used a single mana thread to connect with the golden liquid and started absorbing it back into her body. Her eyes widened again as she felt the mana energize her, refreshing her depleted reserves. Then, using only the liquid mana remaining, she launched her skill—numerous large, sharp icicles shot into the empty night, traveling fast and far before arcing and falling onto the enormous stone structure.

Turning back, she said, “You made it smaller?”

“I always imagined it this way, just never had time to finish my work,” Damian replied as she handed the cube back to him.

Damian stored it in his bracer. She then made a small ice cup to gather all the golden mana liquid before it fell to the ground.

“You’re expecting a fight..” she mumbled.

“Just preparing. If the past few days have taught me anything, it’s that anything can happen.”

She just nodded, looking intently at the golden mana liquid in her hand. Damian let her be, and after ten minutes of rest, he walked back to his tools, continuing his work.

First, he used the invisible box and golem spell to craft a set of perfectly sized armor pieces for himself, entirely made out of sacrium. Then, he made a few swords but did not inscribe them with runes yet. He was only going to keep one; others could use the extras.

Then Damian decided to make just one sacrium golem and see if he would need more mana liquid or not. Making more than necessary would be troublesome.

He used the giant air-step spell to lift many sacrium ingots into the air, forming a runic circle for the golem spell and enclosing it all within an invisible box. This time, Damian also threw in a whole tank full of mana liquid inside the invisible box alongside the sacrium metal ingots. He did not want to limit the use of mana for this golem’s creation, so he connected the golem’s runic circle to the mana liquid with mana threads. The sacrium ingots were just enough for one skinny, average human-sized golem to take shape.

With everything ready, Damian activated the spell and took Lucian with him, fleeing from the site. At first, she was confused, seeing the strange metals floating in the distance, but when the golem spell activated and the massive pull of the spell was felt all around them, she understood the need to stay away.

Damian had to fly even further from their initial distance once it started. All the iron and steel tools outside were pulled straight toward the invisible box, but the box held strong, keeping everything outside while the sacrium inside, after using over 70% of the liquid mana, started to move and take shape under the golem spell.

It ended. But.. It was not a complete success. It still needed more mana liquid to fully form a golem. The end result was a small, chubby child-sized sacrium golem, standing only four feet tall—just a foot and a half taller than Toph.

Should he even use the Genica dungeon relic on this?

‘It’s not like you’re going to use it for battle.. What difference does its size make?’ The Prince replied.

It was just an experiment. Damian had much better weapons to fight with—he didn’t want to use a being that was the last of its civilization for random fighting. He supposed that even this round, chubby golem would do. After all, it was made entirely out of sacrium. Repurposing that metal would require even more liquid mana than he currently had. He could make more.. but it was a bother.

Damian and Lucian landed near the chubby, pure-white metal golem. Its face was round and plump, resembling more of a big baby than a small man.

“What is this adorable thing you’ve made? It’s the same metal..” Lucian asked, touching the golem’s big, round face.

“It’s supposed to be a golem,” Damian replied and took out the adamantite sphere containing Genica’s last member.

The second Damian powered the sphere with his mana and brought the glowing orb near the golem’s chest, the sacrium opened a hole to accept the strange core. Damian had never seen sacrium change its shape for anything before. This thing was indeed quite rare, it seemed.

For a few minutes, both Damian and Lucian stared at the golem’s blank, stone-like face, but nothing happened. Just as Damian was thinking it might take a few hours to fully activate, the golem suddenly lifted its head. Its previously blank face now had two deep black, beady eyes. It started blinking, looking at Damian and then Lucian, tilting its chubby head sideways.

Damian had to admit—this thing was quite adorable.

Suddenly, it got up on its big, round legs, taking a few steps and turning its body all around—it was inspecting itself, Damian realized. Once satisfied with its new form, the golem turned back toward Damian and, quite cutely, got down on one knee, bowing its chubby head.

Damian smiled. Lucian, beside him, couldn’t take her eyes off the cute little thing. It couldn’t talk, and Damian had no idea how intelligent it was. But once he dismissed it, the golem started following Lucian around as she gave it simple commands. They walked all around the snow-covered platform, looking both weird and amusing.

Then she started teaching it fighting stances, and surprisingly, despite its round figure, it was quite nimble on its feet. Damian was impressed—whatever this being was, it had officially joined their group today.

He decided to name it Jacob.

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