The Runic Alchemist-Chapter 702: The Alliance & The Demons

Tristan was a special guest in the Empire. The Eldoris people used him as a target to travel to the border of the Dawnstar and Empire. For Faerunians, after receiving the message, their representatives would arrive through a skill of Sea Snake. Vidalia had informed Damian that Sea Snake could make semi-alive water creatures that anyone could ride—they even flew in the air. It wasn’t something they used often, suggesting a limited number of uses for this skill available to the King of Faerunia.

The message of their arrival today had already reached the border of the Dawnstar, currently under the rule of the Dragon Emperor. The Empire’s important people were always present at the border. The Dragon Emperor himself was mostly stationed at the border city, but once in a while, when he wasn’t there, a representative was sent by them too—if the subject of the meeting was important enough.

Sanctuary was not officially part of the alliance, but many of their people had played a major role in the war against the demons; Grace and 70% of their second-rankers, with some 3000 men, had just returned from the Dawnstar’s border after two years of duty. They were still considered part of Eldoris, though, since they traveled and fought together with them most of the time and had much less manpower to offer compared to the three major kingdoms. Two transcendents from each kingdom remained at the border of the Dawnstar.

The occupied Empire land—now called the Kingdom of Malveria—was filled with demons and barely had any humans in it. It had seven powerful transcendents, each more ancient than the other. The eighth one was their Demon King, somehow able to control a resurrected chaos dragon. It was safe to assume the guy was an esper. Einar, Vidalia, the Emperor—all had fought against the guy over the years, along with many transcendents, but none had managed to gain the upper hand.

If they used more transcendents from each kingdom, maybe there would be a chance, but Faerunia refused to give them their third transcendent, and so did Eldoris. They knew what Faerunia wanted to do with the Empire being busy with the demons. If they had fewer fighters compared to Faerunia, Sea Snake would not miss such a chance. The guy was always moving around his third-rankers like chess pieces—making them work for him, gaining more land and manpower at every possible chance, while not doing anything himself.

Damian passed through the waygate with Vidalia and her mother, Ilvanya, and appeared near Tristan. He was in a stone keep, built more for protection than beauty. At the border of Dawnstar—they were at some height, maybe second or third-story building height. The room had a narrow window without any wooden shutters. As Tristan started bowing and welcoming Vidalia and Ilvanya, Damian walked near it—the outside, as he knew, was large desert land. But it wasn’t so empty anymore. At a distance of some 20 kilometers, Damian could see dark buildings built entirely of weird, glass-like dark material. How strong could that be?

In the building, Damian could sense a few mana signatures that were very distinct from humans. The demons had more dark, light, and chaos attributes in them than there should be for the seven elements to maintain a balance. The affinity to two elements for a human showed as only 5% more of those affinity-related elements in a human’s body compared to the rest. But for the demons, the dark and light elements were increased to some 30–40%. The rest were there, but not enough to even be used in normal spells.

Just a 5% increase gave humans an edge in those elements, resulting in mastery of said elements. For demons, that should be even easier—for dark, chaos, and light attributes. It was like even a first-ranker child of theirs had more mastery in dark, chaos, and light elements than peak-level second-rankers and even transcendents with their non-affinity elements.

Physically, from what glimpses Damian could see, they were not that different. Horns were common, skin color was the same as humans but slightly darker in shade, their ears had an odd triangular shape, and some of them had dark, bright red nails. The rest had pure white nails.

The only common thing he had with them were his horns, but even those— the demons had black horns like Reize, with some of them having a white tip, unlike his, which were reversed—pure white with a black tip. ƒrēenovelkiss.com

Damian could also sense some three transcendents other than the ones present in the room—and first- and second-rankers at regular intervals on both his right and left. There were trenches and walls, and some structures of earth, stone, and even that black material of the demons. It was indeed a border that was active with battle from both sides.

There was no separating barrier like a wall or anything, but—the border stretching all the way into the distance was in the same shape as outside the stone building Damian was in. Foot soldiers from both sides could not get close without being seen and obliterated to pieces with spells and runic tools.

"Maximus? Is that really you?" Tristan asked, breaking Damian’s train of thought.

He turned around and smiled at the old mage. The guy had indeed aged—despite being a peak-level second-ranker, the decade of hardship could clearly be seen on the guy’s face.

"Lord Tristan, you got old," he said with a smile.

The old mage laughed like a long-lost uncle of his, with a, "And you have touched the sky! How could you grow so much in a decade?"

Damian smiled, shaking the guy’s hand—not correcting him that for them, it had been just a year. Soon, one of the three third-rankers present nearby arrived in their room, greeting Vidalia and Ilvanya with respect. It was a muscular middle-aged guy with a bald head—the guy Damian knew very well: Bonecrusher. The old pugilist looked much less intimidating than Damian remembered him being.

Their eyes met, and Bonecrusher nodded in acknowledgement—Damian also mirrored his actions.

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