The Runic Alchemist

Sam shook off the unnecessary thoughts—he had to stay alert. He could not let the person coming to get him close the waygate—he had to use the waygate to instantly go back. Sam charged his body with the little lightning that was still stored in it, standing a meter from the blue portal. The second he saw the shadow of two figures, Sam rushed in at top speed, grabbing the two and pulling them back inside the waygate with him.

His vision blurred, and a second later he came out on the other side. This place, too, was full of light. Sam was breathing hard, and the two other figures beside him were also breathing hard. When Sam’s eyes finally adjusted to the bright light—

“Fuck! No! No! NO! THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!”

Sam screamed, cursing Shadecaster and the Demon Lord from the bottom of his heart until his voice was hoarse and he was out of breath.

He was right next to the dark cocoon once again. And this time, even his friends were stuck with him. Maelor and Lucian grabbed Sam from either side—shocked and shaken by the sudden outburst of endless curses.

“Hey, hey! Calm down. We’re here. It’s going to be alright,” Maelor said.

“Take a breath,” Lucian said from his other side.

Sam could not speak a single word. He just turned his face from one side to another, looking at the two saviors of his whom he had doomed for life—Maelor and Lucian. Fucking hell. His face must’ve been a miserable one, because whatever the two saw when he looked into their eyes made them frightened and shaken to their core.

Finally, they looked around to see where exactly they were. Sam fell down on his knees. His eyes glistened with a slight wetness. They were too heavy—fuck, what he wouldn’t give for a few minutes of sleep..

“Where are we, Sam?” Lucian asked.

The voice jolted Sam awake. That was dangerous—he had almost closed his eyes. He looked up. Both Lucian and Maelor were looking down at him with worried eyes.

“I don’t know. That bastard brought me here—”

Sam pointed at the dark cocoon beside them and told them from the beginning to the end what had happened to him. When they heard how his liquid mana and even lightning had lessened from being full to almost empty, and how he hadn’t even felt the time passing, the shift in their emotions from worried to absolute despair was exactly what Sam had gone through—though of course, theirs was much faster compared to the days he had gone through after realizing it.

They sat together in silence for some half an hour. Lucian tried to open the waygates with her sword and even the Sacrum bracelet, and failed the same as him. They both had two full liquid mana containers—at least that was good. They stared at the dark cocoon, their minds racing, thinking about any possible solutions—while Sam just blanked out his mind, barely even focusing on the dark cocoon anymore. The help he had been waiting for so desperately had arrived—and was stuck right beside him.

What now?

“We have to go in,” Maelor said.

Sam raised his eyebrow, turning his head to the side.

“Trust me, outside we at least have our consciousness. The darkness absorbs the mana from the body at a much faster rate. I was out cold in seconds,” Lucian interjected.

Sam would’ve called the two another illusion sent by Shadecaster or the Demon Lord if Lucian had agreed to the insane suggestion.

“If Sam is right—we can’t survive in this place for more than a few days. That thing is absorbing our mana even from here. Can you feel it?”

Maelor asked, and Lucian nodded. Her face was empty as usual, but Sam could see some signs of worry after knowing her for such a long time. Shadecaster or the Demon Lord might know their faces, but making them act true to their personalities could not be possible—they were real. They had to be.

Sam’s mana sense, even after becoming a third ranker, was nothing compared to a real spell-user Spellsword. He knew his mana was being used up, but he credited it to his physical need—a person’s mana was always naturally leaking. He was never good at controlling it. After just becoming a third ranker, the mana pool had increased—and so did the leakage—which was what he had assumed. Seems like that was not the case.

“At this rate, my 16,000 mana will be gone in six to eight hours. Unlike Sam, as a third ranker with high defenses, our mana is being absorbed at a considerably faster rate,” Maelor continued.

“The two containers full can provide near 340,000 to 370,000 mana, Damian had said. It will be pushing it if I say we can make it till ten days. The time difference in this place compared to the Pigmen world is big—according to Sam’s notebook records, it’s safe to say some six to seven months here is barely 30 to 40 minutes outside. I am sure after dealing with the Demon Lord, Damian will come to save us. But even if he takes ten minutes..”

Sam finished it for him. “We won’t last for that long. It will be around a month or more.”

Losing all mana from one’s body made a person sleepy and exhausted—it wasn’t fatal in most cases. The problem was.. it wasn’t fatal because their bodies regenerated enough mana to keep them alive in seconds. Here, there wasn’t even a speck of mana in the air. Without mana, what would happen to them? Sam was sure there were books written about it, but he had never read any.

Lucian met eyes with the two beside her and then looked back at the dark cocoon.

“Aren’t we making a hasty decision? What’s to say we’ll even find the Shadecaster in there?”

Sam swallowed hard. He hated to even think about it—but, “Waiting won’t give us any chance at survival before our mana runs out.. I’m the proof. At least one of us should go inside.”

Sam had decided. Enough waiting—he would have to save himself or die fighting that coward minion of the Demon Lord.

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