The Runic Alchemist-Chapter 699: The Trinity of Wrath (500 Words Added)

[A while ago, on the border of Sanctuary and Dawnstar (occupied by Faerunians) land. Sam’s POV.]

The Burned Knight slammed into the land, creating spiderweb cracks — if the man was burned before, now he was truly scorched beyond recognition. The spark that had fucked up his face before had returned with the energy of a boiling sun itself.

He was dead now. Sam had pushed a whole lightning bolt through his chest.

So many had died because of them — what had this one done to deserve mercy? Sam did not like killing people, he never had. The war he had fought for the Eldoris had left a lifetime of blood on his hands. But this one needed to be done.

The Burned Knight couldn’t fly, which made things easier. Still, Sam had to give the guy credit for lasting minutes in front of him. He had indeed looked down upon how tanky a third-ranker’s physique really was. But the guy didn’t have crazy, disgusting abilities like the Demon Lord — compared to fighting that unreasonable bastard, this was nothing.

Einar, Lucian, and others had roughed up the other Faerunian transcendent and the whole army. The transcendent man in runic steel armor was now in the cuffs Damian had provided them. The fifteen-thousand-strong army was only barely nine thousand now. Not a single one had run away — the nine thousand survived because Lucian, Souldealer, and Einar had stopped attacking and ordered their armies to stop.

Now a transcendent and nine thousand Faerunians were their prisoners.

***

[Currunt time, Damian’s POV.]

The land was truly a battlefield. The grassland had become a muddy mess, big craters and fallen trees all around — the deep scorch marks and ice here and there promised the show was something the Faerunian soldiers would not forget soon.

Damian confirmed the outcome and opened a large waygate connecting to a tree directly outside the Sanctuary city walls. The thousands of prisoners were being transported as Damian, with Toph in hand and Jacob flying beside him, landed near Sam — the others were with the transcendent prisoner, Sam alone was standing at a little distance from the dead body of the Burned Knight.

Sam looked up, nodding at him. Then continued the staring contest with the unmoving contestant.

"Having second thoughts?" Damian asked.

Sam shook his head. "No."

None said anything for a few seconds, then Sam said, "It was.. so easy. He was a transcendent for a decade and a seasoned warrior for years before that. How could it be so easy to kill such a man? With this sword.. I fear my own power."

"You being able to feel such things is the very proof that you are still human," Damian said, placing a hand on his shoulder. "I always thought the Primordials of old were the strongest civilization this world ever had. The only reason they are gone has to be their own increasing power. This world can’t handle so many people of great power with the system it currently has."

Sam breathed in, then looked to the side, his eyes distant. "Are you saying we rule them all? That we can do better?"

Damian shook his head. "No. We need to show others we can do better — much better, in fact. So much that people from all countries would want to be part of us. We show them one man above all does not work.

It’s a huge responsibility and a duty — a capable group of people can help each other and share the burden. A lone monarch will always crumble beneath it, if not today, then tomorrow. We do not conquer — we guide them to a better path. Hopefully a long-lasting one."

Sam smiled. "You’re always right about this stuff — I hope this one becomes the best example of that."

"So do I," he replied with a smile.

Damian did not take the corpse of the Burned Knight. Instead, he buried him underground with earth spells. Then used his skill Dust to Iron to transmute huge amounts of dirt into iron and in midair transformed it into high-quality condensed steel. Slowly, Damian shaped a mold out of custom air-shield spells and poured in the molten steel — only a few meters thick layer though, the interior was honeycombed with crisscrossing wooden support beams.

In minutes, a statue had come to life.

It was the three swordsmen: Sam, Lucian, and Einar. Sam in the middle, both hands placed on the sword handle held before him, touching the ground. His face looked down where the Burned Knight was buried, with hints of anger on his face. Lucian beside him had the sword in the same position, but her face looked toward the right — a calm face that hid a storm beneath — the direction of the ocean, past which was northern Dawnstar and Faerunia. Then Einar also had the same position, but her face looked to the left with sharp, alert eyes — mainland Dawnstar and the Empire behind it, which were both one now.

In the end, Damian also added a small steel-carved name for the creation: The Trinity of Wrath.

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Most of the soldiers had already gone through the large waygate, but the ones remaining — along with Souldealer, the Dawnstar lords, and the three people whose faces the statue bore — were all frozen in their tracks. Watching the giant seventy-something-meter-high statue come to life in less than ten minutes.

Damian nodded with satisfaction. That should be sign enough for any more people of other countries at the border who wanted to come this way. Damian wanted to build a proper border too, but for today, they had done enough. There were many tomorrows for them to work.

With Toph trumpeting happily in his arms and Jacob taking his big golem steps one after another, Damian walked toward the open waygate. Ignoring all the people still frozen — not able to remove their eyes from the pure steel statue; unlike anything this continent had.

The four third-rankers, along with Prince Leon and Maelor, joined his slow walk. There was a teenage beauty with golden hair and big blue eyes beside Maelor. Clad in leather armor, a sword on her waist. His sister, perhaps.

"Why did you do that?" asked Lucian.

Damian smiled. Her tone was one of complaining, and with a face like an angry cat — that had to be the highlight of his day. Her face in the statue he had made showed emotions more than she usually did — for her stoic persona, that was unacceptable.

"Just a little something to remember this day," he replied.

--

They walked through the waygate—keeping a few men behind to clean up. Damian had enough IDs that they could come and go to the border at any time. The thousands of prisoners were led through the Sanctuary city streets to the keep situated in the middle of the city. There was quite an open space beside the modest stone keep. Damian used inferior variants of the mana-draining and gravity-enhancing steel handcuffs for the Faerunian second-ranker officers. The first-rankers and mundanes were no trouble with his special gravity-enhancing steel plates installed in the floor of the new giant wooden prison he built beside the stone keep. It was just a temporary thing—Damian wanted to redesign the whole thing if he was to live the rest of his days here.

The other transcendent from Faerunia was placed in the cell beside Hellstorm and Lily of Ruin—the guy had been showing quite some bravery until he saw the best fighter of his land in giant handcuffs, unmoving.

Evrin returned in the late afternoon. She confirmed the meeting tomorrow between the three representatives of the three remaining kingdoms of this continent. The three kingdoms had a way to contact each other in times of emergency—Evrin had told a few of them. That’s what the elf queen had used to send messages to the alliance leaders: the Sanctuary, under the new Keeper called Runebreaker, wanted to aid the fight against the demons, and Mindseer representing the Highsword would be with him too.

Both the Dragon Emperor and the Sea Snake had received the message, as well as the alliance army at the edge of the Empire’s borders.

The rest of the day Damian spent with the officials of Sanctuary—Einar, Evrin, and all the important people running the Sanctuary from the ground up since the very beginning. He had asked them to inform him on everything useful, and the discussion on one thing led to another, and then another, until they were still talking and the sun was replaced by the moon in the sky.

When Damian mentioned the idea of placing waygates for public use and opening dungeons for the civilians and army alike—they were all surprised. But one by one, they started muttering about the effect such a thing could have on their Sanctuary-governed land. And in moments, the discussion shifted directly from if that should be done to how much profit and talent Sanctuary could gain from such an idea.

Damian kept the idea of centralizing all power and redesigning the full government system of the Sanctuary to himself. They were too drastic a change, and he had to do that only after he had proven himself to be a capable leader.

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