The Runic Alchemist

[Desert region of the unknown planet, Astral plane, Damian POV.]

The weird orange tree landed beside Damian, free from the metallic dinosaur's jaw, shaking the whole land around him. The dinosaur was staring straight at him, its beady black, polished stone eyes locked onto him. It towered over fifteen meters—not quite emperor rank, but likely around King rank. Damian had no time to play with it. His mana was limited; he had to handle this efficiently. Before making a move, Damian scanned his surroundings with keen eyes and soon spotted the folded piece of paper lodged under a stone at the edge of the silver river.

The dinosaur roared behind him, sending a deep vibration through his chest. Damian quickly turned around pocketing the paper and summoned his spear. As if triggered by the black-red spear powered by his pitch-dark aura, the dinosaur lunged at him, its sharp, shiny teeth snapping dangerously close to his face. He rolled out of range at the last second, narrowly dodging the attack.
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The dinosaur was displeased—its prey was acting like a bug. Why wouldn't it just fall into its nice, shiny mouth willingly?

Damian unleashed scorching flames from the dark spear, but as expected, they barely fazed the creature. The metal only melted slightly, revealing that it was indeed a whole-ass creature made entirely of metal—no machinery, no inner workings—just solid, living metal. How in the world did metal creatures even exist? Curiosity would have to wait. He charged his spear further with aura and flicked its tip with a few fast, precise motions, sending seven small arcs of aura slashes toward the beast. This time, it worked.

The dinosaur winced in agony as the black arcs carved into its short arms and thick metal neck, leaving deep, jagged imprints. Damian had hoped for a deeper cut, but the metal was tougher than he'd anticipated. The best weapon against it would be.. its own weight.

He leapt around, dodging its snapping jaws and crushing charges while drawing a runic circle for a mud spell beneath its feet. The moment he activated it, the dinosaur sank halfway into the thick sludge. Damian added his spear flames to the mix, hardening the soil and burying the creature alive. To make sure it wouldn't crawl out, he formed a sphere of water around its head—testing if the metal nostrils actually served for breathing. It did. The dinosaur thrashed violently, short of breath, and soon suffocated.

Damian broke off one of its arms and tried coating it with mana to test how the metal would bear runic inscriptions. It was better than iron but not quite on par with steel. If only he had access to his spatial storage tools, he'd take some samples back with him, could he make new ones? Would it even stay with him after the trial? For future purposes, he walked to the nearest orange tree and memorized its ID—just in case he could use the waygate to reach this place again. That was if this place even existed outside the Astral Plane.

With that done, he returned to the river and focused on the task at hand. Unfolding the paper, he furrowed his brows. It read: Inscribe a piece of flowing river with a working spell and keep it active for 30 seconds. Must be done directly to the river without touching the river.

Imbuing a running liquid metal river? Who in the hell came up with this crap?

Damian tried the same method he'd used on the four walls—filling the structure with mana nodes and building a circuit for the runic spell. But this time, the metal wouldn't stay still for even a second. He had to constantly chase the same little patch of liquid metal he'd started working on, following it down the riverbank before it accelerated and plunged into the massive metalfall. This had to be another lesson in runic array imbuement—something about understanding the flow of mana in motion.

Of course, he wasn't left in peace to figure it out. Every few minutes, some random metallic creature would challenge him. He dealt with them or ran to different spots, trying to continue. Eventually, he climbed the tallest tree using his wormhole spell to think in peace.

The simple method wouldn't work. The method of holding a single mana node connected to the node circuit to himself wouldn't work either—the river moved too fast for that to have any lasting effect. What other method could there be? At least this time there was no time limit, and his mana was being replenished by the environment. Even the strange orange trees had bizarre fruits hanging from them—proof that the trial expected challengers to stay here for a long time.

But Damian didn't want to stay. Without his liquid mana reserves or his usual protective spells, he felt like an earth-being stripped of its natural defenses.

Hours turned into days, and days into weeks. He tried every possible trick under the moon, but nothing worked. Once again, he sat atop the tallest tree near the riverbank, staring at the silver flow while metal corpses littered the ground below him. Suddenly as a random thought he stopped thinking about the runesmithing techniques entirely and returned to the very basics of spells.

Vidalia had once revealed that spells were just one's intention joined with appropriate words—logic that only made sense to them. It wrote some kind of commands into the air to form a runic circle he always sees. Without touch.. activating.. Could he make an original spell that shortened the imbuement process? A way to achieve most of the intended spell's effect with sheer will and barely any input from him?

But he wasn't like others. He couldn't create new spells that easily. Should he abandon the trial and spend as much time as necessary mastering the creation of original spells by breaking down every piece of his runic circles here? Time didn't matter here—this chance might never come again in his life. He didn't know much about others' ascension trial process but a trial without any time limit had to be a pretty rare one..