The Runic Alchemist

It wasn't big, barely 4–5 kilometers in diameter. It had an open green field with a few trees here and there and a few small rivers. Damian landed on the grassland. There was no difference in gravity or anything. It was exactly same as it was inside the dorm room, it smelled good here though, and the slow breeze was nice too. It was just not real—the rules of physics would not allow such a thing to exist, but it was his astral world. Science was not very strong here.

Weirdly enough, there was another computer right in the middle of the grass field after he walked around for a while. It just grew out of the ground right in front of him. If he told the thing to anyone, they would laugh at him.

Damian just smiled and took the seat. It was nice to come out of that cramped room. This environment was much nicer. The computer booted up, showing Damian his next job upgrades:

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The Spellwright Monarch

The Runebound Monarch

–

He had to choose his job options. The Runebound Monarch was a pretty good option, but Damian knew the maximum benefits he could only gain from The Spellwright Monarch option. All his knowledge was utilized best by it—compared to it, Runebound was something very simple and barely challenged his mind. Maybe that was a more powerful option, but Damian's mind was made up, so he clicked on The Spellwright Monarch.

This time, three more options showed up:

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The Grand Spellwright (Mini Damian mid-air, rapidly carving glowing runic symbols into floating fireballs, water whips, and wind blades all around him)

The Runegolem Marshal (Mini Damian standing proudly atop a marching army of rune-covered golems—tiny ones like ants, towering ones like giants—all glowing with runic circles.)

The Arcanometal Transmuter (Mini Damian holding a raw iron chunk in one hand, which glows and reshapes into radiant different metal, surrounded by levitating ore fragments and shimmering alloy veins)

–

The upgrade to the Spellwright job—it looked like he could even use runes on his spells now if he chose it. Not much of an upgrade—water or fire and stuff can't really carry spells that well. He had tried dirt land with The Spellwright job and even that didn't work out as it was supposed to. The job helped in other ways, though, and he was happy with his choice. He didn't want an upgrade, though.

The Runegolem Marshal seemed like a job that would make him proficient in making golems and commanding them as an army. Cool and pretty useful if he was a king or something, but he could already somewhat do it. He could control hundreds of golems at once if he wanted, but the main weakness of doing so was also pretty obvious. He himself would be the same as he was right now. Just slightly physically stronger. If the enemy closed in, he was done for.

The Arcanometal Transmuter was actually quite an interesting one, if it did what he was thinking. If he could use the skill to conjure metal similar or even weaker than iron, it would be pretty damn worth it. He could already inscribe runic circles on any surface, and with this skill, it would be a perfect match. His resources problem would finally be over.

Damian remembered the feeling when he had upgraded from paper and parchment to iron and steel—the feeling was quite similar right now, if once and for all he could have unlimited metal to inscribe his spells on.

The system knew what he needed before he even thought about it—it made his life quite difficult, but Damian wouldn't trade his system for any other at any cost. Nodding with his newfound love for the system, Damian selected the third job as his main transcendent job—The Arcanometal Transmuter.

A blinding white door materialized beside Damian out of nowhere. He got up from the seat and entered inside with his head held high. If he succeeded in this trial, he would become a transcendent. Other than the solid increase in his strength—it could also possibly give him another chance to evolve and make his soul whole again.

He did not miss doing enchantments as much, but it had its uses. Also, the removal of 20% suppression of his stats along with the transcendent strength would indeed feel quite powerful.

The blinding light disappeared, and Damian fell out of the sky—it wasn't high, but still a couple stories up. Damian landed into a vast wasteland—cracked earth, dry air, not a single trace of man or animal. Just endless dirt, rock, and sand. He had a feeling that this was not going to be pleasant.

Right beside him, a giant rock pillar landed, surprising Damian quite a bit. The style of giving instruction changed at each rank up, weirdly enough.

On the big rock pillar the English words were carved out:

'Show me how you create worth where none exists.'

Why did they have to be so cryptic about this? Just as he read the words, a timer was placed atop the pillar and started going off back from 1000. It was not changing—what were the thousand? Hours? Days?

Damian ignored the reddish stone pillar and looked around. There was nothing. Just distant rock hills and vast yellow and red wasteland. Not even cactuses were there. There was literally nothing at all. What was he to do here?

What could he create of value in a place like this? The system was literally referring to itself as 'me' now. Weird as it was, Damian was more concerned about the thought that maybe he really had to succeed in doing what the job's name suggested. He needed to do transmutation somehow to succeed and create a runic item using that material or metal that he could find or convert. Just like how he had learned to inscribe spells on any surface possible—this must be something similar.

At least last time he was in a forest and had food. This time, he wouldn't even be able to make his liquid mana.