The Runic Alchemist - Chapter 754: The Dungeon with Rare Metal
Chapter 754: The Dungeon with Rare Metal
“Lord Keeper,” Celestine called him.
Damian looked up. He wasn’t alone—the other four also stopped reading their reports and paid attention.
The middle-aged widow continued, “I have something that could be used as a source of metal.”
“Read it,” Damian said from his desk.
“..Dungeon Varekh-Thul, Level 17 – Dungeon diving team leader, Cael.
When our party breached the collapsed corridor near the sunken vaults, we weren’t expecting to find anything intact—but what we saw didn’t look like it had broken. It looked like it had been killed.
There, half-buried in obsidian dust and fractured floor plating, lay a massive metallic construct, easily a hundred meters long. Serrated spines ran down its back, and the entire shape suggested a segmented design—part weapon, part machine, part creature..”
“Good,” Damian stopped her. “You guys continue looking for things and taking notes—I will be back soon.”
Damian retrieved the dungeon list from his spatial storage, found the ID of the monster, and opened a waygate to this dungeon. The second he came out, Damian could already sense the human supervisor above the wooden room. Damian met the guy, giving him a shock of a lifetime, informed him that he was entering the dungeon, and used the runic system to go underwater. He had already read the description, so he just entered inside.
It was a 35-level dungeon called Varekh-Thul; a desolate shell of a once-great subterranean civilization, now reduced to scattered ruins and eroded walls.
Emaciated, eyeless monsters skittered through the ruins, chewing stone and bone alike, slipping from cracks too small for them. Others burned with cold element mana, their touch giving flesh a serious ice-burn. Higher still drift executioners of broken magic and warped geometry. And deepest of all dwelled beings shaped like forgotten royalty, cloaked in rusted grandeur, who spoke no words—but just attacked relentlessly.
When Damian reached the corridor near the sunken vaults mentioned in the report, one-shotting every boss monster that came in the way—he found the mechanical beast.
It was shaped like a giant mechanical lizard, but it had strong, organic, brownish legs and head. The back was kind of like a battering ram with a solid cylinder shape. The metal used in the whole suite, or machine, or whatever it was, had a slight light blue tint to it.
It was the weirdest mix of metal, magic, and engineering—and made no sense to Damian. He was not that knowledgeable in machines, but there was not a single principle or reasoning behind the pieces he could understand. One good thing—it did not have inscribed spells in it. The best Damian could guess was that it was used for high mana conductivity or some kind of storage.
Damian broke a small palm-sized piece of it and enveloped it in his mana threads. It was good. Not Sacrium-level good, or even that giant sword of the Highsword Dungeon level of good, but still better than steel by 30% or more. He could already assess it, but still, Damian inscribed a quick light laser spell and activated it.
It lasted for a good 10–12 minutes before Damian noticed the first cracks appearing. That was better than he had expected. The size of the laser was bigger than a tree trunk—the continued use was like an abuse to the metal and the best way to see how good it was. This will do. Damian wanted to first see how iron, steel, and other metals reacted with it. Even this pure metal would do too, but if he could enhance it more, that was just better. Damian enveloped the whole semi-mechanical beast in hundreds of thick and thin mana threads—the beast was only 40% of the mass and the rest was full metal. Not a single piece of metal was different or mixed—all had just this one singular metal.
Damian put the whole thing in his Sacrium storage and exited the dungeon, returning back to Jacob in his runic lab. The time was already 7 in the evening. Usually, the Sanctum officials left at 8 to have dinner and then separate, some staying in the stone keep, some going back to their homes.
But he collected all the notes the five assistants had made and let them go home for the day. He did tell them it was a one-time thing and usually they would stay till eight. Damian himself spent the hour reading, then had lunch with his friends. After which, Damian started the awaited experiments of mix-mashing the metals with the new element.
By the time he had found an alloy that enhanced the mana holding capacity of the new metal, someone knocked on the door. Damian opened the runic door of the chemistry lab and found Lucian waiting. She did not look amused at all.
“What are you doing?” she asked in her flat voice.
“Just a little something—I found a metal I could use for structures, I was checking if I could improve it more,” Damian said with sparkling eyes. “Are you going to sleep?”
“I slept. It’s morning already!”
“What!?”
Damian looked out of the air shield, and it was indeed bright daylight there. The lab was illuminated throughout the night, so he didn’t realize when dawn came.
“I am going back to the dungeon—your breakfast is waiting for you at your place,” Lucian said with more coldness than she usually showed. Did she wait for him?
“I’m sorry—I couldn’t keep track of time,” Damian said with a cheeky smile.
“Hm, a window would help, wouldn’t it?” Lucian said and then turned around, walking away.
Damian sighed and then smiled. That was quite a cute face she had made. Had never seen her annoyed before.
Before Damian could get back into his lab, the lift Lucian was waiting on came up carrying five people.
’Fucking hell.. It’s already eight?’
“Lord Keeper, something we can assist with?” Valen asked.
Damian was holding a sample of the new metal, with his clothes smelling of chemicals and stained in places.
“No, go continue your thing. I will join you later,” Damian said, then he remembered what he had discovered and added, “Valen, go ask Einar or her attendants how many full 10-member second-ranker parties with added 2–3 first-rankers can we make? And tell her to keep half the army going in the dungeon on standby.
Celestine and Seraphina, you two make a detailed report on this dungeon Varekh-Thul, don’t write it all prettily, I want speed—just cram all the main points for dungeon diving teams to take care of. Then give Waren the raw report, he will make it pretty, copy it, and give Einar to distribute. Who’s turn is it to attend the meeting today?”
Hester spoke up, “It’s me, Lord Keeper.”
“You should meet Lord Goldilocks and others, prepare for the meeting. Learn what they say and do. You just have to observe for today,” Damian said.
Hester looked nervous but she still nodded and walked away with Valen. The rest headed for his office. Damian himself took a shower, in a washroom he had built in the chemistry lab. Changed his clothes, did his breakfast, and flew down to find Evrin.
He found her on the sixth floor of the Sanctum writing something while several papers and books were opened near her. Must be taking note of expenses or something.
The sixth floor was not used much, so Damian had separated it into six equal parts to serve as temporary offices/rooms for the six heads of the Sanctuary. The outer hallway had the air shield windows. Damian used a wormhole to come in through that and knocked on Evrin’s office door.
After a very lengthy 20-minute discussion, Damian had convinced her to spend a lot of their reserves to buy a huge amount of silver. Damian promised nice profits from the infrastructure they were going to build using that. She finally had enough reserves to be a little relaxed about the expenses and now they had only enough to last for the year.
Damian went back up and checked on the report the two noble ladies were cooking up—it was good enough. He gave a green light for it to be finely written and distributed to all the capable teams going into the dungeon he had been to yesterday.
Damian wanted a maximum number of people to enter it daily without losing anyone and reach level 17 to get this mechanical lizard for him. If no one died in the party, their dungeon plain wouldn’t be fixed, and every time they entered the dungeon it would refresh for them. He would have an unlimited supply of this new light blue metal.
Damian told Seraphina and Celestine to continue on with their work like Agatha and Valen. Damian himself quickly opened a waygate to the same random island he and Lucian had spent the night once and took out the giant mechanical lizard.
His aim was to find the best way to separate this metal from the beast and boil it to remove impurities and then collect it back in ingot form, changing its shape so it would be easier to store and work with.
