The Runic Alchemist

"What did you do with that damned Landbreaker?" After a few seconds of silence, the Demon Lord asked.

"I asked first." Damian knew how to be petty better than anyone.

He thought the Demon Lord would hesitate revealing his secret, but the guy didn't even blink as he said, "I do not control people. My esper power gives me only one ability — the ability to enter other people's Astral Plains. You see, everyone is afraid of life, they are weak and easy. Still, it's easier to take control if the target is lower rank. No one that I once took control of has ever managed to break out of it. But then you came.. and took three of mine. How does that happen?"

Ah. Was it possible this was the question eating him away and why he had started this brief conversation in the middle of a battle he knew he was going to lose?

It would indeed bug him, if Damian was an esper with a singular, above-prime esper-level power and after thousands of years of terror someone managed to break out of the trap quite easily. It wasn't Damian's power that had saved them though — actually, Damian had no idea what had saved them. He knew him being an anomaly with a different soul and different body was a part of what had saved them, saved him. He was not going to explain that to this genocidal maniac though.

"You are not the only one blessed by a higher power," Damian simply said, looking into his red slanted eyes.

Whoever that spatial element spellmaster-level mage was, that person was the reason why Damian was even alive. Knowingly or unknowingly, he had given him a second chance.

The Demon Lord glared at Damian for quite a time. Then he turned into formless dark energy and slithered away from them. They did not chase after him. The Demon Lord was confused, he stopped multiple times to look back, but none of them moved from their place. They let him go.

Damian knew what was going on in the Demon Lord's mind. He probably still thought himself as immortal. He might have hidden some pigmen in a very safe location on this planet so no one could reach them or even harm them — his backup bodies to switch into when everything was gone.

As long as this world remained, indeed the Demon Lord was an immortal being.

It could be said it was a good thing the Demon Lord was dragged into this world before he fully unleashed this fucked up ability of controlling so many people at once. The Demon Lord had never been fully revived in their world. The Landbreaker had made an ultimate sacrifice to seal the guy in the dungeon with him before his mind was completely under the Demon Lord's control.

The hundreds of years of absence of the Demon Lord from their world was the proof he had no spare bodies in their world. It could not be as easy as the guy had described — or as fast as he was able to do after increasing his power for a century in this world. Without Landbreaker's body, the Demon Lord wouldn't even have been able to defeat any third-rankers after entering their Astral Plains. Only a fourth-ranker could modify the Astral Plain as he or she wanted.

Damian was finally done with the generators.

The canals of the 10 km big runic circle carving were filled around 50 meters deep with liquid mana. Only 2% raw materials for the liquid mana had remained in his sacrium storages. Damian stored back all the mana generators, new and old.

He removed the barrier since most of the black pigmen had backed away. Even if they hadn't — it wouldn't have mattered much.

"How much mana is that even?" Sam asked, peeking down the canal.

"Around three hundred million liters.. I think." Damian replied.

"All for one spell.." Maelor muttered.

"A world-destroying spell." Lucian added.

"I will activate it now.."

Everyone nodded. Damian had kept a small partition in the outer circle — so the liquid mana wouldn't make a full circle. That would automatically activate the spell — he could technically take control of the runic spell once it activated and made the giant runic circle in air, but that would take a lot of mana and focus — he wasn't even sure if he could even do it at all. This was too powerful a spell.

Damian broke the few meters thin dirt wall and let the circle of the spell be completed. Then, quickly flying near the others, Damian held Lucian. Sam was already in air with Maelor. They flew higher and higher as the sheer force and intensity of mana made it painful for them to even stay here. After reaching some eight or so kilometers high, they stopped and looked down.

The land was literally on fire. The liquid mana activating and powering the spell had scorched the land so badly it had started becoming lava. The enormous runic circle was still forming in the air above the drawn runic circle. The liquid mana was unleashing all its power into the runic circle — just that alone had left the land unrecognizable. The bigger the spell, the more time it took for it to power up fully. This one took around 3 minutes to finally launch.

The enormous 20 km wide laser beam going straight down the crust of the planet was blinding to look upon. The land moved up and down like an earthquake the deeper it went. The deeper it would go, the more and more damage to the land it would do — till finally reaching the core and leaving damage that would start a chain reaction of disastrous proportions. All volcanoes will go off at full power, the ocean will have the biggest tsunami ever, the tectonic plates will break — end of all life. This planet will become uninhabitable for any creature present on it at any corner of the world.

It was too powerful a thing to look at straight — Damian opened a wormhole to the lava zone in a second. Their last visit of this world before they went back to Earth.