The Runic Alchemist

They exited with the same feeling they had when they entered. Damian noticed immediately that it was already mid-afternoon. They had probably spent around 13 or 14 hours inside. He was relieved to see that there was no significant time difference between the two locations, another clue that suggested they were somehow connected.

Outside, a couple of soldiers were waiting and approached as soon as they noticed him. No one else was around. Did his soldiers survive? He had told them not to go past the first level, but who knew what they had actually done inside..

"Captain Maximus, Captain Royce has asked for your assistance at the river entrance, sir."

Damian nodded and walked with them back to his camp. He was glad to see that nearly all of the first rankers had returned, busy cleaning themselves. Some were down by the river in the distance. Of course, no one had enough mana to stay out there long without a healer or proper planning.

"You guys stay here. I'll be back," Damian said before leaving with the two soldiers. Although he was dirty here and there, it wasn't nearly as bad as the others—he knew how to avoid mud using his vines and earth element.

When Damian reached the mountain cave entrance, he saw the river cutting through it, flowing relentlessly. A wooden structure covered about one-third of the river's top as it flowed out of the cave, but most of it was open. Over a hundred monster corpses lay scattered along the banks. Beastmen, captains, and numerous soldiers were positioned on both sides of the river, weapons drawn.

Royce stood with old man Shin and several other mages, engaged in a heated debate about how to cover the river.

"Maximus! You're back. We need your wood style," Royce said, relieved to see him.

"Covering the river won't work; we've tried that. We need to cover the top while leaving a gap for water to flow beneath. We just have to be prepared for monsters that come from underneath," old man Shin explained to the gathered mages.

It made sense. They couldn't just block the water, and their flimsy wood style wouldn't last a day against the pressure. Damian listened quietly as they discussed reinforcing the wood structure with sturdy earth pillars in the middle of the river, giving them a way to trap the monsters.

"What do we do if there are too many monsters and they block the water, causing pressure that breaks everything?" one of the mage captains asked.

"We'll have to clear out the monsters we kill every few hours. This is the best plan unless someone has a better idea," Royce said, looking around.

"How about we make the entrance to the cave deeper, like a small waterfall? Then we could set up open wooden boxes with impaling spikes to kill the monsters as they fall in. We can connect the boxes with vines to remove them when they're full. The boxes don't need to be solid—cross strips of wood that let the water pass would be better," the old fox suggested.

"Why didn't you do this earlier, if you had such a good idea?" Damian asked, as everyone pondered the plan.

"We didn't have a wood-type mage before. Building it with regular wood or digging in such a fast-flowing river wasn't feasible," old man Shin explained, looking at Damian.

It was a solid idea, and with no better alternatives, they began working on it. Royce, Damian, and another mage captain—who was clearly a beginner in wood style—used wood style to construct the boxes underwater and above to just extend them down later. Meanwhile, other mages and spellswords blasted the riverbed, deepening it and reinforcing it with earth walls to level it.

They successfully created a small waterfall and levelled the rest of the river to control the flow, which wasn't too difficult given the mountain's height behind them.

Royce was particularly famous for his unique wood style. Wood style was an amalgamation of water, earth and fire. His unique style, which used light instead of fire in some of his spells, made his creations sturdier, more mana-efficient, and of better quality. Although Damian had seen success with his own wood style using this method, he refrained from showing off here.

He didn't want rumors spreading about him matching "The Golden Mage" in skill, especially since he was already considered an anomaly for mastering wood style as a first ranker. Most first rankers could barely make a small roof.

Yovan had lectured him on how unusual he was, even giving him bribes to learn his "secret." Damian had to spin elaborate lies about ancient spells to dodge those questions, and Yovan was starting to catch on.

By evening, they finished the build. Damian took a much-needed bath and ate with his unit. The others, now clean and rested, were preparing to dive back into the dungeon - clearly greedy for more levels, they could feel themselves getting stronger with each level up, though they waited a few more hours to fully replenish their mana.

Damian asked Kazak and the old fox if they had animal skins to make parchment, but they just usually sold them to the lord and peddlers. They did, however, have plenty of monster skins and parts from the creatures that had attacked the valley through the river. Damian gave the materials to his soldiers and Royce to dry in fire before doing anything else.

They had also accumulated many mana stones since the war began, though Damian was still unsure how to use them. He had tried attaching his runic circles to the stones, but they wouldn't register as a mana source. Even with mana threads, the signature didn't match. The mana stones were different from what his body produced as mana. Only a runesmith would know how to properly use them.

Damian could experiment - find a way, but wasting time on that without any guarantee with the constant threat of attack didn't seem wise.