The Runic Alchemist-Chapter 427: Emotions & Spells

Elias’s face immediately brightened, tears streaming down his cheeks. The boy genuinely cared for his house. Even though Damian wanted nothing to do with his biological parents, he could do a favor or two for his little sibling—especially when the favor wasn’t such a big deal for him.

He was probably the only one who could enter this dungeon being godless. Once inside, if he could find some ID—likely some nice tree—he could create a waygate connecting this world to it. Assuming he could modify the waygate spell by then and the dungeon environment was as ideal as described, he could use it for himself as well. With the ID known, he wouldn’t even need to return here to enter it.

In the same way, he could gain free access to the Highsword dungeon as well.

But the biggest problem with this method was the distance between the worlds. How long would a one-way journey take? If the time was reasonable, he could use this method to acquire all kinds of materials and monsters without anyone even knowing.

There was also the question of whether the dungeon would accept it as a valid entry or not, but only experiments could reveal that truth.

Similarly to Elias, his father and older sibling were staring at him, pure shock on their faces. They couldn’t believe what they had just heard.

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Seeing their growing hope, Damian added, "It’s just a possibility, not a done deal. The experiment could fail too."

That broke them out of their stupor.

"You say that for everything, and then you make it work!" Elias said, smiling widely.

His father, stunned by the relationship between his youngest two children, stammered, "You… you would do that for us?"

"It’s not a favor," Damian clarified. "I’ll use the dungeon for my own purposes too—if I can enter it from anywhere."

This time, Evrin and Einar widened their eyes, realizing the true significance of what he had just said. If he succeeded, after entering any dungeon in this world, he could access it from anywhere—never needing to go through the entrance again. With his strength, he could force his way into 70% of the dungeons controlled by various lords across the five kingdoms, either through brute force or politics.

In short, he would never run out of dungeon resources.

"Thank you…" his older sibling said, his voice thick with emotion, eyes cast downward. "Thank you so much. After Welmar… I never thought you would…"

Was Welmar the name of his other older sibling? It could be.

With that, Damian walked straight out of the rundown palace and headed for Dreamlight. He, along with Evrin and Einar, exited first and neared their airship. Meanwhile, Elias was showered with advice and warnings from his family—told to work hard, study, not to worry, and so on.

Just as Damian reached the stairs, with Toph already teleporting ahead of him, someone called out his name.

"Damian…"

He stopped.

It was the woman’s voice—his birth mother.

His father and the two boys were a short distance behind. Evrin and Einar had already gone up.

He did not turn around or respond. He just stood there—frozen in silence.

She didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t call out again. Instead, she walked up to him and hugged him from behind.

"I’m so glad you’re still alive…" she whispered, sobbing.

Damian felt like he was choking. He couldn’t even understand what he was feeling anymore. This woman was nothing to him, and yet… Yet… why did it feel so much like home?

"Why?" he finally managed to say. "Why did you do it? For money? Because you were ashamed of my intelligence?"

A heavy silence hung in the wind and then,

"You were dead." Her voice came, barely a whisper. "It was the only way…"

"What?" Damian asked, confusion and unexplained anger rising inside him.

She didn’t say anything more.

Her family had reached them now. She wiped her tears and smiled brightly for them.

Damian turned around, his expression complicated, and asked again, "What did you just say?"

"Nothing," she replied, as if she were a completely different woman from the one sobbing just moments ago.

His father and siblings looked at him in confusion, as if asking, What are you talking about?

Damian felt the futility of the conversation. He turned away and climbed back up.

Was she saying it was the only way for a dumb kid like him to survive? But why say he was dead? Technically, he was… but it didn’t feel like she was talking about his injury.

He was much calmer now. The emotions of his teenage body had overwhelmed him for a second, but he no longer cared about why they had sold him. Nothing they said would change the fact that they had done it. He wasn’t looking for apologies—he wouldn’t have even thought about them if he hadn’t come here.

There were too many things to take care of. Wasting time dwelling on useless emotions was not productive.

After bidding farewell to Elias, they set off back to Lockwood. As before, Damian opened the waygate after flying for a few minutes. The Dawnstar lords were already prepared to deliver their grim news and request to their king.

Damian wasn’t sure what state Vidalia would be in, so he decided to open a small, normal-sized waygate first. He would locate her, explain their purpose, and then bring the others.

In the garden of Goldilocks, he used mana liquid from mana containers to draw the spell. Evrin squinted at him, as if reprimanding him. The spell required a strong connection to the target. The fact that the waygate worked proved that he and Vidalia shared a far more complex relationship than she had realized. Her intense admiration for her aunt was so peculiar that Damian couldn’t help but question her sexuality.

Damian kept Sam and Maelor nearby to prevent anyone else from crossing. Only Damian, Evrin, and Einar would go through. With two mana containers, he could keep the spell stable for a while, but he still gave Einar two extra to hold for their return. The conversation wouldn’t be short by any means.

Fortunately, the moment they stepped through the swirling waygate, Vidalia was already standing in front of them.

Well, if anyone could sense a mana anomaly so close to her, it was The Spellmaster.

She eyed Damian for a second, as if annoyed, then smiled brightly at her niece and gently hugged her.

Why the vast difference in treatment?

"Aunt! It’s been so long!" Evrin said, snuggling against her armored body.

"It is nice to see you, Eve," she replied. Then, glancing at Einar and Damian, she added, "Though this was quite a surprise…"

Damian and Einar just awkwardly smiled. For Einar, Vidalia was the greatest role model of her life—she worshipped the woman. The few months she had spent with her in Eldoris Castle had only made her admiration grow.

The place around them resembled a small castle. The waygate had sent them directly into the middle of a massive hall. It was empty for now, but in the hallway outside, he could sense that many soldiers were standing ready. It seemed the familiar waygate had put Vidalia on alert about who might come through and she emptied the room.

Letting the aunt and niece enjoy their reunion, Damian closed the waygate and activated the flying spell he carried with mana threads. He flew out through the massive open window, landing atop the building. From above, the town looked well-fortified, surrounded by thick stone walls. The wooden houses and stone buildings showed no signs of war—people were going about their business unhurriedly.

However, large numbers of armored soldiers roamed the town and patrolled the walls, keeping watch.

Based on what he had heard, Vidalia controlled more than half of Ashenvale—stretching from the western edge of The Dreaded Lands to roughly 200 kilometers from Edgeheaven, the island slightly off Ashenvale’s center. Dawnstar, on the other hand, had expanded from the eastern corner, moving inward through a patchwork of territories held by independent lords, criminal syndicates, merchants, and mercenary factions.

Separating Vidalia’s domain from the Dawnstar king’s territory was the vast Mother Lake. A treacherous mountain range lay beside it, passable only for those daring enough to risk the brutal cold, as The Dreaded Lands extended that far. While there were routes through the region connecting Dawnstar and Eldoris, they were perilous.

However, Dawnstar’s objective wasn’t to wage war on Eldoris—it was after Ashenvale’s resources. Both sides could launch a decisive battle at any time. Each had enough ships to transport armies across the lake, yet neither acted. Instead, they played a political game, pressuring Ashenvale’s lords to join their side.

After some quiet observation, Vidalia flew up to join him.

"You could have used that spell at any time in the past four years… couldn’t you? You learned it the moment you first saw it," she said, her voice steady and emotionless—as always.

"And you people have a spell that erases the very existence of things," Damian replied. "Just because I know something doesn’t mean I’ll reveal it."

"She showed you that spell!?" Vidalia asked, genuinely surprised.

"It was the key to completing my potion research. You wouldn’t have had such an easy time here if she hadn’t." Damian sighed. "She did make me sign a mana contract preventing me from using it outside my potion experiments, though, so it’s mostly useless."

Vidalia’s expression softened slightly. "Chaos is not an element you want to mess with."

"Yes, I know. I have plenty of other things to work on," Damian replied. "Actually, that’s why I’m here."

"Not to do a favor for the Dawnstar lords?" she asked, already sounding fed up. "You can try, but I doubt they know their king well enough to pull this off. If they can get him out of Ashenvale, I have no problem."

"Your peace-loving queen wants all of Ashenvale, too?" Damian asked coldly.

"The land is in chaos. People need stability," she said, staring into his eyes.

From the hill, the hundreds of people going about their lives in the town below certainly looked more stable than those near Highsword Island. Still, what Vidalia wanted and what her country wanted were two very different things.

Damian sighed, pushing thoughts of war aside.

"Teach me how to create spells," he said abruptly.

"Huh? What?" she asked, confused.

"Original spells—the chants, the structure. How is a completely new spell created?" he clarified.

"Don’t you already know that?"

He shook his head. "I can only copy and modify. I can’t teach others my spells. But if I knew how to create spells in the traditional way, others could use them."

That caught her attention.

"You want to do the opposite…" she mused. "Instead of turning chants into runic-embedded tools, you want a way for your runic spells to become actual chants?"

Damian squinted at her. "Why are you so sure your way is the ’real’ way?"

"Is that how you ask a master to teach you? Not a very good student," she said with disdain.

Damian smiled and looked away, his gaze drifting back to the town, its architecture unlike any he had seen before in the four kingdoms. Vidalia showed her rare smile as well, beside him, then asked,

"Why should I teach you? You’ll just use it to become an even bigger threat."

"How many original spells have you created?"

"Twenty-something," she answered.

"I could learn all of them in a week and create ten variations for each one you show me," Damian revealed.

Her eyes widened slightly, though she said nothing.

"If you teach me, with all the details and experience you have, I’ll give you a lifetime of free modifications to any of your spells. Using the same method you teach me for chants, I’ll alter your spells however you want and give you the revised incantations."

"Enough," she interrupted, gripping his shoulder. "I agree. It’s a deal."

Damian turned back, pleased to see genuine excitement in her beautiful face for the first time. It made him smile, too.

Elves really were a cheat code for stunning beauty.