The Runic Alchemist - Chapter 847: The Prime Spell
Chapter 847: The Prime Spell
“What is a prime spell?” Damian asked, his curiosity piqued.
“Something only a blood harvester can use,” Steelweaver replied.
“And what is that?” Sam asked.
“A unique spell crafting skill that few earn. Spell creations made by using a large quantity of fresh, mana-potent blood. The quality and power of the spell depend on the individual or monster’s blood used.” Steelweaver answered.
“You mean like having an ability to control someone else’s mana?” Damian asked. Sam’s amused face had changed to a serious one after hearing something so fucked up.
“No, it doesn’t work like that. It’s more like using the mana residing in one’s blood after killing him, a skill that somehow keeps the blood flowing till all the mana of the body is spent. It was not something anyone could do; only highly skilled and powerful individuals could unlock the skill through ascension. The runesmiths who could do that were even more rare.”
“You killed people for spells?” Sam said, disgusted by the described image.
“Hold your horses, brat!” Steelweaver said, “We Dwarves only used monster blood for prime spells. Such forbidden things were never part of our nation!”
“But others did use it?” Damian inquired.
Steelweaver calmed down a little. His rough beard scratched at his own skin when he turned his heavy head towards Damian.
“Whenever someone messes around with forbidden spells, only suffering, death, and destruction follow. Too many have lost their lives because of it. But, yes. No matter how much anyone tries, some never learn.
Intelligent sentient species like us have more complex mana-producing biology. Specifically, Pathfinder mana is the most powerful when used for prime spells.”
All three of them remained quiet for a moment. None found any words worthy enough to break the silence. At last, Sam, the most vocal of the three, reminded them of their main purpose in coming here.
“So.. How are we going to do it?”
Damian stared at the glowing purple runes etched on the dark black metal chains binding Steelweaver. The big purple runic circle was ignored by him for the moment. The constantly changing runic sections in that were messing with his head anyway.
“Does the mainland have any fourth rankers in whatever this age is?” Steelweaver asked.
“Give me a minute,”
Damian muttered as he extended hundreds of mana threads enveloping the whole surface of the runic chain. Some ultra-thin mana threads even entered deep within the black chain.
The strange metal was indeed unique. Unlike Sacrium, every molecule of which worked like a micro spatial storage in itself, this was like an intense, raging river of energy-filled molecules, rushing from one direction to another at terrifying speed. However, despite the speed and the constant movement, the mana nodes of the spell remained perfectly in harmony.
The reason for it, Damian realized after a moment of observation, was the warm, powerful, pure mana that connected the mana nodes and completed the spell. But it wasn’t in any simple structure that he was familiar with. The mana nodes seemed to shrink into tiny particles and then, with the flow of high magical energy molecules touching them, they grew back to their normal size.
It continued in a never-ending loop. One part shrinks and the rest maintains the structure till the shrunken part regains its original shape, then it is another collection of nodes’ turn to shrink.
The nodes were using the river of magical energy to grow after shrinking. The shrinking part also excluded energy, adding into the circular ranging river’s flow. The river’s magical energy, however was not as potent and stable as the one binding all the nodes together.
Damian realized the flowing energy river was none other than the environment mana, just slightly refined somehow.
Still, however, Damian did not understand how this flow of energy could just continue forever. Every time a node shrank and regrew, it soaked up some of the river’s energy. That happening with millions of nodes at every second of the living moment should have emptied the flowing river energy.
There was no section on using the environment’s mana in the purple runic circle. Damian had observed the runic circle for a while now, so much so that he ever memorized the pattern in which the glowing runes were changing and glowing.
Does this prime spell that can only be made using a person’s blood through a super rare skill contain.. parts of a person or monster core?
That was the only way this auto-replenish environment mana energy loop could be explained.
Suddenly, the wave of energy originating from the river of magical power pushed all his mana threads out of the black metal chains. The energy even pushed him and Sam a step back, exploding out of the chains.
It dissipated in the air after that, though. The Dwarf god was not affected at all. The grizzled old man was even smirking a little.
“It’s far too stable,” Damian murmured at last.
Steelweaver and Sam raise eyebrows at his comment.
Damian continued, “The mana nodes are held with too powerful an internal force. No wonder my skill can’t gain control over it, no matter what.”
Usually, he could subtly manipulate any spell chanted or in runic tools. So breaking the slight node structure or the balance of mana was as easy as raising a finger. But this spell, this runic tool, was not just a spell or a tool. It felt like a living, raging monster.
He was still technically at the rank of an emperor-level being. Monster spells or people spells used by individuals having a higher or equal rank than the emperor rank were still something he could not control. Only weaker ones.
And this spell was far too high a rank than even those.
He rarely used his skill to break runic tool spells, though. It was always his knowledge of the node structure inside a runic device. For spells chanted by others, his skill was decent enough, but for runic tools, breaking mana nodes was a much easier and simpler method. Effective as well.
But the most important thing, messing with nodes was the method he used to break apart even higher-level spells used in a runic device. After sensing the whole structure for nearly a minute, finding and locating the weakest part of the whole spell structure had become a second nature to him by now.
He could, with the right spell, break even this so-called prime spell.
