City of Sin

Book 7, 188

King of Angels

The broodmother’s soul didn’t respond at all when Krowes shot towards it, making it obvious that it was still deep asleep. To him, this was the best result. Both souls would fuse together and he would gain control, giving him access to all of th ebroodmother’s secrets. With success in his hands, he felt a surge of excitement within him.

It was at that point that a thread of faint red energy suddenly appeared before him. Krowes immediately felt a chill, like he was facing an entire forest of swords as even more strands wove together into a big net that instantly covered him!

His soul started trembling as he realised that those threads weren’t meant to catch anything. Each one was pulsing with energy, able to deal enormous damage to a soul. He tried to retreat instinctively, but he couldn’t stop his great momentum. It could have been a hallucination at that point, but he thought he even saw an eye behind the ball of light.

Trap! He finally realised what the situation was, but by then he had crashed into the net and his soul was shattered instantly.

In the distance, Krowe’s body slowly collapsed. Roots stretched out from the ground and wrapped around him, quickly drying the corpse as they pulled him underground. He would soon be a real part of the larval forest.

The broodmother herself was still sleeping in silence, waiting for her level-up to complete or new prey to show itself.

......

A few experienced mages within Richard’s workshop had received a brand new mission at the start of the month. Loud clangs resounded from their independent workspace as they constantly struck a mould that had been made with magic, using hammers and mana to bring it into the required shape. This was the job of an alchemist, but experienced mages were erudite in various fields and many in the field of runecrafting knew alchemy as well.

One of the mages who was waving a small silver hammer muttered, “Damn it, I’ve never heard of anything requiring this much precision? What do you think it will be used for, even legendary armour doesn’t need this much attention.”

Another mage nearby had a newly-made armour piece floating in front of him, controlling liquid metal in his hands and blowing out a cloud of mist from it to form a thin and even coating. Hearing the complaints of the first, he shrugged, “The blueprint clearly said that this was a basis for a rune. Can’t you even read Norlandic anymore?”

As they were talking, the coated part was handed over to the next one in line. This was an older mage at around 40 years of age, having the same blueprint on his desk as well. He joined in on the conversation, “I’ve been learning about magic arrays for decades and even managed to craft elementary runes, but I’ve never heard of a rune that needs to be crafted on something like this. How is one supposed to join it to the user?”

“Just do your jobs!” a strict old man walked over, “If you could think of how to do something, you wouldn’t be an apprentice anymore!”

Once the man left, the middle-aged man whined softly, “You can only craft two grade 2 runes yourself, you bastard!”

After the small interlude, the mages continued with their work. Every part was coated with a thin material that allowed for magic arrays to be drawn on them. Once they created the arrays, another coating was added on top followed by more arrays. A single part was only finished with seven whole layers. The processed part would then be sent to Richard, who began work on the actual rune. Everything before was just preprocessing.

...

Seven layers of material and arrays gave Midren room for more complexity, increasing its capabilities significantly. However, the requirements on accuracy, material layering, and the arrays themselves were low enough for trained mages to take care of. This had dropped Richard’s crafting time significantly.

However, this part of the design brought a brand new direction to his mind: three-dimensional runes. He had realised he could layer multiple magic arrays on top of each other to diversify their functions, giving each rune unprecedented power. There would be a proportional increase in capacity requirement, but those nearing the epic realm far exceeded normal legends anyway. The issue for them was normally runes being too weak, not them having too little capacity.

Midren truly had inspired Richard greatly. He had memorised everything he could before starting, and progress on the first of three sets for Saint Martin was unbelievably smooth. He would finish in only a month, and the next two would take a month and a half each or even less.

With the battle edition as a standard, his understanding of the set was even better than Saint Peter’s. However, the more he uncovered about the rune, the more confused he felt. All saint runes had souls, and those souls could give one a glimpse at the original. The real Midren was wise, erudite, detailed, and powerful. He was ferocious in battle but only wished to save the world. All in all, the King of Angels was an amazing individual. Just how was one person so... perfect?

Unfortunately, that was a question he didn’t have answers for. He could only continue crafting the runes, hoping to one day find the answer himself.

......

During this time, the legendary powerhouses who’d gone out to explore the Dragon Plane returned to Dragon Valley one by one. All of them were impressed by what Richard had prepared for them; they also heard about his victory over Saunder and saw the rune knights stationed in the valley. No one else had been stupid enough to try and extort him.

The valley was currently prospering, with everyone in high spirits. The most common topic during conversation was just how much one had gained in their excursions, almost a way of competing to see who was the better adventurer. Some conflicts arose from this mentality, but the serious ones were settled outside in private battle. All legends had a general gist of each other’s powers, so they normally didn’t fight each other without good reason. If they truly wished to compete in terms of skill, they would just enter one of the battlefields of despair and kill enemy legends to gain glory.

Richard spent almost all of his time locked into his lab, rarely ever showing his face, but no one really minded. While a good chunk of them were older now, they had been the exact same when they were young and placed all of their focus on their individual talents. Besides, the more focused Richard was, the quicker he would create the next grade 5 rune; that was worth the wait in and of itself.

The benefits from the Dragon Plane were certainly the primary reason for everyone having gathered here, but for some, a close second came in terms of the opportunity to be recognised by Richard. At the very least, they hoped to be invited to his next rune conventions. Many of them didn’t have any saint runes yet, and even with 20 Richard’s rate of two a year would give them each a rune by the decade-point. Those who had barely squeezed their way into the legendary realm were hoping for those runes to give them a significant boost in power.

......

Time seemed to fly past. One day, Richard carefully placed a silver part on the armour stand holding Midren, looking over the completed rune set that looked imposing yet elegant. A bright light swept across the surface of the armour set, making it seem like it had come to life as it started radiating a majestic aura.

Sighing in fatigue and delight, he turned to his right and had to pinch himself once at the sight of two more sets nearby. Even now, he found it a little difficult to believe just how quickly he had managed to finish them all; it had only been 133 days since he had started.

With these three sets complete, he had fulfilled his promise to Saint Martin. Calculating the time, he realised only half a month would have passed in Norland; in only half a Norland month, he had reproduced three sets of the most powerful rune set the Sacred Tree Empire had.

He wasn’t even legendary yet!

However, he wasn’t in a hurry to take that last step either. He wanted him to train himself fully so he could obtain a good legendary ability; rare skills like Manacycle or Manaforge weren’t nearly as important to him right now as a powerful combat ability.

However, a flash of light seemed to go off in his mind as he thought of that, bringing him back to his fight with Saunder months ago. He already had a powerful ability!