The Runic Alchemist - Chapter 759: Peace in Our Time 3

Chapter 759: Peace in Our Time 3

“Everyone already signed, huh? Even the old snake..” the Emperor commented.

“Yes,” Damian replied, moving away from the large window to take a seat before the Emperor.

“Let’s do it then. We can talk in peace afterwards,” the Emperor said as he called for his attendants, who checked each line of the mana contract just as the other two monarchs had done.

The Emperor took Damian to his treasury room, showing him this relic and that, with piles of gold and other rare and invaluable things. The guy constantly yapped about how good it would be for the common people of his kingdom if they did not have to cross the desert on foot. When they returned, the attendants had already done all the checks, and the Emperor—after reading the papers for a few minutes—signed them.

It was done. Now, whoever broke the peace treaty for any unjustifiable reason could expect three armies on their doorstep, waiting to claim pieces of their land after walking above their dead bodies. The Emperor was the one in the most advantageous position, but that was only if they considered the land of this continent. The Empire had the most people, but that was not fixed. The war had ended and borders were once again relatively open—people who wanted to move out would do so.

The Sanctuary was still receiving many families coming from Dawnstar lands to join their people staying permanently in the Sanctuary. With these waygates, people wouldn’t have to travel so far through dangerous lands, and all the countries would experience changes in their populations.

Damian installed the five waygates that were included in the treaty, which connected directly to Sanctuary land—both borders and the city of Sanctuary itself.

Both the Faerunians and the Emperor had asked him if he could connect one of the waygates to the other border of their own countries, but Damian rejected them. Why would he knowingly divert the incoming crowd coming to his Sanctuary? Damian had already hatched a nefarious plan: creating runic ships and selling them to his people. Building a big harbor city on his border facing the sea would receive all these people who wanted to safely travel from their country to other parts of the mainland where waygates were not connected. People would just have to reach this harbor city, and then they could go anywhere in the mainland without fear of bandits or monsters.

It was one of the business and employment ideas he had in mind for the long term. He didn’t have enough time to create anything right now, though. Once all the more important projects were done, he would have all the time in the world. Everything he was doing was so he could make things fast and snappy—so much so that people wouldn’t need him as much. His first aim was to reach that level of technology for his Sanctuary.

“Come on now, what do you want from me? I have already left myself bare open to you. What will it take for me to have a few extra waygates? You are spamming them in your Sanctuary like they are silver coins!” the Emperor said.

“You know all about my Sanctuary, huh?” Damian eyed the guy. “How many spies do you have there?”

“You can’t hide such a weird structure after building it in almost every town..”

“There is nothing I need from you, but I will still give you one waygate to cross the desert safely,” Damian said while taking a sip of the offered alcohol.

The Emperor’s face brightened immediately. Before the guy could come to give him a hug, Damian added,

“You will ignore everything I will do to develop the border between Sanctuary and Dawnstar. I won’t claim your land as mine, but I might make use of the forest to build something of a border city and other structures.”

“Are you saying you want to do whatever you want on the border? What would I do if you made a massive runic weapon to hold the whole of the Empire hostage?”

“I won’t break my own peace treaty,” Damian said. “The development of the border region will benefit both our countries. Without me making a city there to control the incoming traffic from the three kingdoms, people will be free to go wherever they want from there. Do you want random Faerunians or Eldorians entering your Empire?”

“Fine, fine. I know you are not like that. You can do what you think is right. I can’t stop you anyway,” the Emperor said, raising his hands in mock surrender.

Damian continued, “In addition, I want one-time access to all your dungeons.”

The Emperor’s eyes became sharp at that. “That is not so easy a thing to approve.”

“A waygate is also not so easy a thing to make, you know? It takes metal, my mana, my precious nap time, my undivided—”

“Still—” the Emperor cut him off. “All dungeons are too much. We can’t reveal all that we have. With your weird-ass ability to copy spells, we would be like sitting ducks against you and your people.”

“Fine,” Damian said, sighing, pretending like he was giving up something that he wouldn’t have given in front of anyone. “Give me one-time access to a few dungeons then. And I will also take all the war prisoners you have belonging to Dawnstar—I need men, and uniting families will make me look good. Along with full access to all the history books you have and have looted, non-magic.”

The Emperor stared at Damian, then looked away, his eyes indicating a race of thoughts calculating all sides of the counteroffer. At last he said,

“Five dungeons. Any five dungeons—not all high-level ones. And your war prisoners; they are wasting my food reserves anyway. And temporary library access.”

Damian could understand. The few thousands of Faerunian prisoners he had till today in the Sanctuary also ate for free and were quite a burden on their finances. Damian was quite glad to get rid of all of them today. Returning the prisoners was in the peace treaty and one of the major reasons why the Sea Snake had agreed to sign the document at all.

“Fine, I will do it. Only because I am a good guy—no other country has received even a single extra waygate! Consider this a favor,” Damian said, blowing the fact out of proportion.

Actually, he and the queen of Eldoris had already talked about possibilities of trading waygates and other runic innovations of his in exchange for Sacrium and other rare elvish relics, and full access to their ancient library. Damian wanted to have a digital copy of all the books they had on the mainland before they were destroyed through some stupid or unfortunate incident.

“Yes, yes, you are a great man and my own brother. I am willing to accept anything at this point,” the Dragon Emperor said, squinting his eyes.

Damian and the Emperor took a short journey to the edge of Dawnstar, and Damian installed another waygate connecting the old capital city of the Empire. Just this one waygate would make the Empire’s land much more useful to the Emperor. It would also give the guy direct access to the open sea and all the demon ships they had taken from the demons. They had shared them equally, yet there were places in the harbor city where the demons had started collecting metal and wood to make more ships in the few years they had held control.

The Emperor was indeed in quite a profit after Damian’s one move. But that wouldn’t affect Damian’s own plans much, so it didn’t matter.

Once he was done, Damian told the Emperor he was going to visit a dungeon now and left. The Emperor was really insisting he have lunch with his wife and children, but Damian had other things to do today. This waygate connecting Dawnstar to the old Empire was the only activated waygate out of all he had installed today. He needed to hurry and find the dungeon that Highsword had gotten the unique status-modifying relic from, to start the waygates.

Damian reached the southern Dawnstar region, resting in high stone mountains and large green meadows. Under the shadow of one of these large mountains was the town called Grungniere. The runesmiths from this town were quite famous—even Damian himself, who had spent his childhood in northern Dawnstar, had seen the weapons made by these runesmiths being sold in their markets.

There were many old runesmith families supported by the ruling house of Xel’Tharien, which was also one of the oldest runesmith families in Dawnstar. Right now, their weapons were not as much in demand with peace finally returning to the mainland, but they had produced a lot of weapons during the war, for both Dawnstar and the Empire.

The Emperor had his people enter the dungeon present beneath the seat of House Xel’Tharien but, as usual, had found nothing of use other than some ores and dungeon relics that helped in making runic tools. The dungeon played very little part in this town’s prosperity—mainly the technique of these families, older than the kings of Dawnstar itself, was the most important thing.

And so, Lord Xel’Tharien had retained his position in the Emperor’s rule without any shift.