The Runic Alchemist

They all immediately stepped outside the wooden hall as Damian took out his runic forge. Opening two mana containers, he swiftly crafted a steel cube imbued with a waygate spell—one that only he could use. Well.. technically, he and Elias. But Elias wouldn't be able to generate enough mana to activate it.

Damian supplied the mana and activated the cube, the runic circle started forming. Alex connected his mana thread, focusing as he recalled memories of his father, his mana being used for the target locking. For a few seconds, they concentrated, but after those some seconds turned to some minutes, it became clear that it wasn't working. They tried again and again, yet the spell refused to take effect. At last, Damian stopped him from wasting more mana and tiring himself out.

"Are they..?" Alex mumbled hopelessly, when Damian held his shoulder, stopping him.

"No, they're fine. I'm sure of it. It's us who are the problem," Damian replied. Then seeing everyone's worried expressions, he added, "There could be many reasons why the spell isn't working. Let's take a moment to breathe—we'll figure something out soon. Worst case, we find another dungeon in this world and see if we can use the waygate from there. Sooner or later, we'll make it back home."

Sam nodded first, then Maelor, Alex, Lucian, and the other Highswords followed suit. The fact that they had even escaped their previous predicament was already a miracle. They would just need one more miracle to bring them back home. At the very least, they could afford to take a day to rest—no matter how uncertain their future remained.

There was.. One more place Damian could go. Gathering his things, he took to the sky, flying straight toward the highest platform above the stone shrine. Landing atop it, he stared at the waygate cube for a moment before storing it away. Instead, he used his own mana liquid to open another waygate—one targeting his true home: Earth.

Once again, he used Sister Hadley's memories, and this time.. it worked.

Yet Damian did not enter. After a few seconds, he canceled the spell, watching as the blue shimmering waygate shattered into a thousand light particles. He had his reasons. Besides not wanting to take people there, there were.. other concerns.

He thought about his current planet, where Vidalia and the others were. Earth already had a massive time difference from there even without factoring in the waygate's own travel distortions. If this pigmen planet's dungeon was located within his current planet, it meant the two planets, pigmen planet and his current one where the dungeon was, weren't far apart—perhaps in the same star cluster, if not the same solar system.

The dungeons had to be from nearby magical planets to the one he had reincarnated.

If he traveled to Earth from here, the time difference could be extreme. Spending just a day or two there might translate to decades back in his current world. That uncertainty was unsettling. But if no other options worked, this might be their only choice.

He may have told the others, but traveling through dungeons didn't seem possible. Damian had a suspicion—dungeons didn't actually send them to real locations. Instead, they were echoes of long-lost civilizations, just like the one they had recently been thrown out of.

Yet the fact that the waygate to Sister Hadley had opened successfully meant that the timeline between his current planet and this pigmen planet was almost the same. So why didn't the waygate to anyone on his planet work? Was there some kind of restriction?

That was possible. What had the dungeon's warning said?

The prince relayed it: 'Use of unauthorized method detected, contrasting with natural dungeon proceedings. All challengers are banned. No shortcuts are allowed.'

"Yeah.." Damian mused. "But was it a dungeon ban.. or a ban from returning to our entire world?"

'You have to return to your world. The Demon Lord will come looking for you here sooner or later,' the prince warned.

"I know.."

Damian shook his head. Before making any major decisions, he needed to be prepared. His potions and runic scrolls were useful against ordinary foes, but against a damn Fourth Ranker that wouldn't work. He needed better gear. His hands itched to test out his new skills.

First, he opened a waygate near Sam and let him know he'd be busy for a while. Then, taking the Dreamlight, Damian and Toph—who was feeling much better after receiving some of Damian's mana—flew toward the enormous stone shrine. Up here, no one would disturb them.

As he prepared to ascend, he spotted Reize leaving the ship. Their eyes met, but neither spoke. Damian didn't hold a grudge against her—he understood her reasons—but now that their relationship was severed, he simply didn't know how to interact with her. At least the others, including Elias and Lumi, were talking to her normally.

Inside Dreamlight's armory, Damian had stored many runic tools—most notably, massive spatial storage cubes he had created while attempting to make a space large enough to store Dreamlight itself. Within those cubes were countless broken steel and iron weapons, along with various metal tools. Some contained high-quality ingots and pure steel, while others held base materials for mana liquid and potion-making.

Wait a second.. Potions..

How had he forgotten? If the monsters and animals he had derived his potions mimicking from his world were dead or had never existed yet, his potions shouldn't have worked either. But he had already used them! The Skybound Fall potion—the Wing Sprouting Potion—had worked. And it was derived from a monster that was in Eldoris the last time he checked..

That meant Vidalia and others were still alive. The timeline was still current.

So why were they banned from returning to their world?

It had to be that damned pigman sun god.

Damian clenched his fists. That piece of shit could've warned them before activating the waygate for Land Breaker. Instead, he had waited—allowing them to trigger the dungeon ban, as if he had wanted this outcome all along.