The Runic Alchemist

"Why? Why did you do that?"

Damian heard Lucian behind him, instead of looking back he spoke while observing the big rock in dim light to find the place from where he usually climbed the rock.

"What did I do?"

"You should have defended yourself, Don't you have any pride?"

She said coming out in the clearing where Damian had finally found the place to climb but stopped himself for the uncomfortable chat.

"Pride of what? Being able to marry you?"

She raised her eyebrows at that as if he failed to answer the simple question and said something dumb.

"Pride of your name! What else? Aren't you a noble?"

"Huh? Am I a noble? Last time I checked I was a prisoner.."

Lucian's eyes opened wide at that. She opened her mouth to reply in anger but seemed to lack the words.

"Go back my Lady, it's not safe for you to be here."

Lucian glared towards Damian who was busy climbing his rock. She wanted to refute Damian's words but no matter how many times she repeated them in her head she couldn't find any disrespect or lie in them.

At last Lucian gritted her teeth and turned around. Ever since the black haired boy came here, he had never said or acted in any way that was disrespectful to her or her house yet she didn't know why but he was the source of her anger that she could not explain with any logic.

Finally alone with his thoughts Damian sighed in relief.

"That was a close one!"

In this barbaric world where nobles could kill a person just for slight disrespect and get away with a slap on the wrist, It was just too dangerous to be around them.

Though maybe he was overreacting since he had noble blood in his veins and the Goldilocks would never let their investment in Damian go down the drain yet relying on others was never his style. Damian believed in being prepared for everything that could go wrong instead of just reacting to the situation.

After two months Damian had already acquired the [Scholar] & [Beginner Swordsman] and both leveled up too Lv.2 for Beginner Swordsman and Lv.3 for Scholar.

Scholar was necessary for a mage class while Swordsman was a Spellsword's basic skill. The efforts were also simple yet necessary. Scholar gave 5% extra INT, while Beginner Swordsman gave 3% boost in both STR & AGI. It might not be much right now but after leveling up and ascending it would be substantial increase in stats. Though for Damian, 5% in INT was already showing an effect.

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Name: Damian Sunblade Lv.3

Rank: Mundane

Affinity: Water, Space-time

STR: 8

DEF: 8

INT: 50

AGI: 8

DEX: 8

CHA: 19

LUC: 3

Blessings: Godless

Skills: [Beginner Tree Climbing Lv.2] [Truthseeker Lv.2] [Scholar Lv.3] [Beginner Swordsman Lv.2]

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After reading all kind of crap Damian now also knew about the advantages of Blessings. There was no one in this world that was recorded to be without one, so everyone here takes it for granted. Sun God's blessing was the most common but there were others as well - as the Sea God, Goddess of Nature Astraea, God of Chaos and there was also one for the Commerce named Lugh.

The thing that made Damian's heart ache was the effect of blessings which were 2X Growth in levels, which were fixed for all gods and after that was a boost in certain stats or affinity related to each god. Being without Blessing he will most likely level up slower than others.

"Just perfect!"

The night sky was much clearer here Damian noticed, weird how it's been two months and he just noticed it now.

The next morning was given to them for resting. However, Damian went to the Library after waking up at 9. Three hours of extra sleep was all the rest he needed.

After reading till afternoon he finished the book he was reading recently about Classes and jobs. So for a change of mind, he started to look around for a book that was more unique in topic. After circling the entire Library twice he finally settled on two, one was Emperor Yong Sheng Long and the history of magical tools another was Runes - The God's language.

Damian opened the book about Runes and he was immediately greeted with the weird symbol or character that took on the whole page. The heading was in common language though and it read - The fire rune. Then there were 10 pages just explaining various uses and history of discovery related to the fire rune. The uses section was certainly interesting.

According to it, there were 10 common and most used Runes that were the basis of all magical tools that were in use today and fire was the most popular of them all.

A Runesmith imbues runes into high-quality metal, using the user's mana to create various effects, such as a flaming edge or a vibrating edge, which grants the weapon deadly power.

However even more interesting were the Enchanters who used these runes on various papers and parchments which generated even more amazing effects than Rune-smithing.

It used the mana from the surroundings instead of the user but the big limitation in it was the ink or material that could be used to draw the rune, it needed to be in liquid form yet contain enough magic to last till the end when a huge amount of mana from atmosphere converges into it and transforms into whatever effect it's supposed to perform.

"Interesting stuff indeed! Does the enchantments somehow act as a temporary mana stone big enough to attract the mana particles of the atmosphere?"

If it really was as Damian guessed then it breaks all the known laws of physics that Damian could think of. Damian went back to the first page where the fire rune had taken a full page and tried to make sense of whatever this rune was, there was no symmetry or known syllabus of any language that he knew that could even slightly resemble the jumbled mess.

If this was just one syllabus of God's language then they indeed loved to make things complicated for no reason.

Damian finally just gave up on making any sense of the weird drawing and was just going to look at other runes when on instinct or just random chance he felt like activating his useless skill effect (The Truthseeker's eyes). Just as he activated the skill, he jumped in surprise and dropped the old book.

For a second he saw some numbers hovering on top of the book but it disappeared as soon as he dropped the book.

"Hell! It works! It's useful for at least something!"

Damian picked up the book once again and sat at the corner of the table and placed the book on the old table. He opened the fire rune page once again and there it was some hovering numbers and alphabets? Yes, It was indeed alphabets connected with each other on a web of brightly lit red circle with many pathways and sections.

"The numbers and this shape. It's like an equation of some sort."

If these numbers represent some kind of value about the rune and alphabets are the parameters, is it some kind of pre-made formula that would generate a set amount of fire?

Just to understand it better and find the similarities Damian looked at all ten runes one by one in great detail while the skill was active the whole time. Suddenly he realized that his head was getting heavier and heavier at the front and after some 10 minutes it started hurting like hell. Damian immediately closed his eyes and he felt the pain to stop increasing.

But the pain that was already there remained as it is.

Damian closed his eyes and just remained lying down on the table, trying to relax and ignoring the splitting headache as much as possible and failing miserably. After some half an hour of agony he finally felt enough relief to open his eyes again. His eyes were full of water that flowed down his chubby cheeks.

Yet his lips were curled up in a big smile.

"I did it. I understand what one of the alphabet represents..!"

'Ding'

[The Runic Serf Lv.1 Acquired.]