The Runic Alchemist

And so he paid for it.

The mountain stands alone stance broke with one heavy kick from above but Damian managed to block the sword that followed the kick. Responding with overhead guard to his two handed downwards slash. Damian took whole weight of the prince and threw his on the side. The prince landed on his feet with no effort at all.

\'Okay.. I might have misjudged him. The bastard is good...\'

Not waiting for another trick Damian rushed at the boy with a simple yet effective dragon breaks the ranks. The prince received the blow with grace, metal hitting on metal making a clanking noise, pushing the mountain stands alone stance bearing prince few inches back digging his feet deeper into the ground below.

With a frown the prince slide his sword on the side of Damian\'s flat sword side, trying to reach for his shoulder or neck. Damian let go of the sword handle and closed both his fists tight, landing a serious yet controlled blow to the prince\'s metal chestplate, the sound made on contact was even louder than metal on metal, it sent him flying and tumbling backwards.

Damian did not follow through though, he just breathed out and picked up his sword, Standing still.

The prince balanced himself in the mid air and buried his sword deep in the ground below, dragging backwards alongside the buried sword till finally the momentum stopped, he was on one knee on the ground, both hands on the sword handle. Getting up the prince pulled out his sword and glared at Damian from the distance. A fist mark on his bent metal chestplate.

"What kind of shitty move was that..? Are you a damned pugilist..?"

"I\'m free styling..."

The prince of Faerunia was skilled, way better than Damian in swordsmanship maybe on par with Lucian. However Damian had more stats in STR.

"Aren\'t you sneaky mage..? Fire away your trinkets..."

That was totally uncalled for. When did he do anything sneaky..?

"Show me that slash thing and I will show you mine..."

The prince of Faerunia straightened up and breathed in. Damian alerted his mind into it\'s peak focused state.

\'Let\'s give the audience something to talk about.\'

The prince raised his sword up and started chanting his hidden sword art\'s spell. Damian\'s eyes immediately fell on back of his sword handle where a small blue runic circle was forming little by little. Damian had expected this, which was why he was only 15 meters of distance from the boy, picking up every line in the blue constructing circle.

Without thinking once Damian repeated the structure as it was forming with his world shaper hands, tuning out the whole world around him, his concentration and focus to the very peak of his limits.

Using eye of truth and practicing that mana coating spell day by day had made Damian\'s head work to the limit and be in a constant pain, so much so that he had leveled up pain resistance to lv.6 in just barely a week. This was nothing.

The prince of Faerunia stopped chanting, he finished his spell which took effect on his short sword immediately, it was now covered in ethereal blue light visible to everyone present. And that as a result started a murmuring of 100 plus voices surrounding them all at once.

Damian finished just a few seconds behind the prince and connected a mana string from his completed small runic circle to back of his sword handle. In a few seconds Damian\'s sword started glowing too, however his was pitch black as if burning on black fire.

When Damian drew the circle it was pure white, Damian\'s best guess for the explanation was that just like how the source of mana drawn differently by his hands return to default value on it\'s own, one of the section he drew in the spell was responsible for making the spell user mana affinity compatible.

He also had water as his main affinity but for some reason the space-time affinity was chosen as a default value.

The murmuring stopped suddenly replaced by a deadly silence. The prince had his mouth wide open. The only thing Damian heard was that Fabian guy mumbling.

"How is this possible... It can\'t be... Royal hidden art... No.. It can\'t be..."

\'I guess the shock was a bit too much..\'

"How do you know that spell...? Who the hell are you..?!" The prince exclaimed.

"If I say your long lost brother.. Would you believe me..?"

The prince gritted his teeth and raised his sword up, gripping it tight with two hands.

"Die! You piece of shit!!"

And with that a downwards slash the size of Damian\'s full height flew straight towards him with tremendous speed. Damian also replied in kind with one of his own horizontal double handed slash. It felt really weird but it was a good weird. The spell barely used any mana and the slash used his stamina or aura he guessed, since Damian couldn\'t feel the thing at all from it.

The clash of the blue and black in the center was too loud and flashy to even look upon, Damian had to cover his ears and close his eyes. The force of the explosion would have thrown him far off if he didn\'t bury his sword in the ground to steady himself in time.

When finally the dust and smoke settled, Damian found the prince in the same position as him. Damian thought this would make the brat question his decision but instead to his absolute sock, the prince of Faerunia stood up and charged head first towards him with his blue glowing sword, not caring about anything at all.

It was indeed a surprise but it was also an opportunity, Damian grinned from ear to ear and whispered,

"Got you, you little bastard..."

Then looking in the side at Anthony who was thrown back by the shockwaves and was trying his best to get up Damian screamed.

"ANTHONY POINT IT TOWARDS THE PRINCE..."

Anthony nervous as hell was ready from the very start of the fight. He immediately spread the big scroll and faced it towards the running prince. The giant scroll was filled with one of the biggest runic circle Damian had made.

However seeing the unexpected situation take hold in front of his eyes, the captain of the king\'s guard recognizing a runic structure, threw caution to the wind and rushed besides his nephew to protect him in the blink of an eye, the prince was almost upon Damian by now.

However just as Anthony had spread the scroll, Damian also retrieving another scroll of the same size spread it on the ground besides him from which the prince was a just few meters away. The moment the handsome knight caught up to the prince of Faerunia and stopped him, both uncle and nephew were three steps away from the big wide spread runic parchment on the ground.

And Damian had started drawing another runic circle with his hands in a hurry.

The king\'s guard and the prince stared at Damian as he moved his fingers on the air, looking stupid as hell. The handsome knight squinted his eyes at Damian and then back to the open scroll in Anthony\'s hands, trying to make the sense of the situation. Just then a purple wormhole opened besides Damian, showing the scene of 20 meter ahead where Anthony was standing with Sam.

"What in the..."

"Stop this.."

Before the two could finish their sentences, Damian activated the big scroll near his feet and jumped out of the wormhole, taking one last look at the duo.

"Farewell.."

Just as Damian jumped on the other side of the wormhole a suction of giant proportions started centering from the runic scroll besides the uncle and nephew\'s feet. The handsome knight grabbed his nephew and threw him with tremendous force towards Fabian who with a considerable effort caught him and got him up on a cyan slab that flew higher and higher in the sky.

The handsome knight himself just glared at Damian who was busy activating his another giant scroll that Anthony was holding and released his aura at full strength, his eyes glowing ominous dark blue.

All people around them suffered under the tremendous crushing pressure on their shoulders while their mana was being sucked dry by the giant blue runic circle. It was the giant version of the runic circle Damian had seen on the princess\'s back. It did not harm people, just sucked the mana from it\'s surroundings dry and made people unconscious till they recovered anymore mana.

Damian had tried experimenting it on unranked monsters and that was the result. And that\'s what repeated here too, all around knights fell down on the ground like flies. Unlike others whom had no idea what was happening Damian could feel their mana getting sucked by the giant blue runic circle.

It wouldn\'t last long though, even the premium patch of 10 plus parchments couldn\'t handle the strain of the heavy spell that this one was. It will work at most 30-40 seconds.

Before the suction force could reach him though Damian had succeded in activating the other giant scroll which was in Anthony\'s hands.

A purple wormhole showing the place in the far distance showed up on the other side, from which the outer wall was just 50 meters away.