The Runic Alchemist

With a guttural, earth-splitting roar, the Dragon King’s crimson aura flared back to life, snapping the thick vines like dry twigs. Charred fragments of obsidian and liquid fire flew into the air.

Sulthar’s wide back moved sharply with a powerful push. Damian tried his best to hold onto the buried sword, but the steel golem lost its balance. He quickly pulled back, trying to land on solid ground, but suddenly — like a hundred-ton train hitting him head-on — the enormous tail of the Dragon King landed straight on Damian’s chest.

It sent him tumbling back out of the crater. That shouldn’t have happened. Damian pulled his hand up to see the massive sword in his hand.. Only the handle and a quarter of the blade had remained. The rest was either melted inside Sulthar’s living nuclear-fissure-like body or had broken off as the Dragon pulled it out with his webbed claw and threw it aside — once again using the mane-attraction, blood-red aura-coating skill of his to heal himself and refill his body with mana.

“Not this time, you don’t!” Damian said, throwing the sword handle aside and landing a powerful right hook on the maw of the Dragon King. The skill, indeed, was decisively interrupted midway.

Damian smirked, but before the feeling could last, another sweep of the massive tail flew towards him and hit him right in the middle, bending the steel even though he used his other hand to protect his stomach area. His mana generators were there, filling the well of mana constantly — without that, he would be a sitting duck.

Before Damian could regain his balance after getting pushed back, Sulthar slammed his tail on the ground in front of him, and suddenly, out of the ground came giant obsidian spikes, hundreds of meters tall — straight towards him. Damian activated his flying mechanism instantly and jumped out of the way at the last second. Still, one of his feet was grazed by these obsidian spikes and bent slightly in an unnatural way.

Before even landing back, Damian pulled out two of his light cannons from each back-hand spatial storage and mounted them on his shoulders, blasting them at full power straight at Sulthar’s face. Damian also pulled out his curved sword, letting it fall to the ground and picking it up once he regained his footing.

Sulthar instinctively used his metal-plated wings to protect himself while his belly started glowing too, powering his hellfire again — not noticing the sword in front of the blinding lasers. But Damian, being cooked alive inside his steel golem — so close to the infernal Dragon that had lava coursing through his veins — just smiled.

The moment the wings came forward, Damian screamed in primal fury and aimed at the middle of the two metal wing plates connected by leathery thick skin. It was no job for an ordinary sharp weapon — even for this relatively less tough part, Damian had to use his aura blade paper-thin cutting spell at full power, leaving behind a massive cut that went from the top of Sulthar’s right wing to the very middle of it before getting blocked by some hard bone.

The Dragon roared in agony, and contracted the wings back, unleashing a powerful beam of hellfire. The two powerful beams collided in midair, sending waves of shock throughout the land, the splashes of lava and supercharged, heated air becoming vaporized seconds into contact with three massive beams of energy — two of bright light and one crimson red and white.

Even with two lasers, Damian felt like he was lacking; he was still getting pushed back. The power of this ridiculous attack from the Dragon was absurd. So to even the odds, Damian pulled his arm back and released it straight with full power, the thin and sharp sword coated in black aura about to pierce the open chest of the dragon.

It wasn’t that easy though, as the massive claw of Sulthar grabbed it midway — putting them into a struggle of raw power. Needless to say, Damian was not doing good, even after using two hands behind his sword against the Dragon’s one claw. All the while, their monstrous beams of energy were sending never-before-seen lightworks under the dark sky.

Damian was losing the contest of raw power — but physical strength was never his forte.

Under the beams of energy and simple attacks, Damian used his Mana Hands spell to grab onto Sulthar’s long neck. The Dragon could sense something was up, but was not in any position to back out, so it did the only thing it could and powered its attack even more intensely.

Damian just needed a few seconds.

Another weird pulse of energy wave came from the enormous shrine in the distance. But Damian had learned his lesson by now and quickly conjured a Wormhole spell and placed it under both their feet. It was an over-700-meter-wide circle — enough for both of them to go through.

Seconds before the pulse spreading in a circular arc could hit Damian, he activated the wormhole, and both massive figures fell down the abyssal black portal, coming out high above in midair — about a thousand meters high. While falling continuously, Damian started making the runic circle for the Gravity Reversal spell, his Mana Hand still grabbing Sulthar by the neck as they fell from a thousand meters.

The Dragon was winning the power struggle one second, but now, suddenly feeling something wrong, he tried his best to pull away and use his one good wing to fly up. Damian did not let go that easily though — throwing the sword aside, Damian literally used his giant steel hands and legs to wrap his golem body around the enormous Dragon’s body in a massive hug as they both plummeted straight down, displacing the air with vengeance of unforgiving force.

Damian could see Sulthar was beyond weirded out. They were so close they had to stop using their energy beams to avoid hurting themselves. Sulthar tried his best to pull back, but Damian just would not let the guy go before his spell was finished. The Dragon chomped with enormous strength on Damian’s golem head, bending and melting it in all sorts of unnatural ways ending in breaking the whole steel head of his.

The sheer heat from Sulthar’s body was slowly melting even the reinforced steel of Damian’s golem body. By the second, Damian’s hold was getting weaker, his steel golem was bending and breaking in all sorts of places, even through thick air shield armor.

But that was all secondary.

Damian’s eyes sparkled as he finally finished his spell and acquired the ID of the Dragon King, Sulthar.