The Runic Alchemist
Chapter 657 - 657: The Dark War 52

He tried using his mana cubes here, even though he could not sense any mana in the surroundings, and as expected, it did not work. They would have to rely on their old method of using mana stones as sources for a bit longer.

The question was.. did the Demon Lord know they would end up here eventually? The guy did leave them alone once Damian started to wake up from the memory trap. He had to know what all these white boxes in his own Astral Plain were.

As a third ranker, Damian could access his own Astral Plain anytime he wanted. He had only found it out when he was doing meditation to gain better control over his own mana and strength. It wasn't hard, but it did need one to focus and seek this supernatural thing inside their own mind—he could stay there for half an hour, after which he had to leave. Otherwise, he was forced out of it, and then he couldn't access the place for half a day. He had no time to ask other third rankers if they could also do it or not, but he assumed they did. Leaving was simple: he just had to close his eyes and stop trying so hard to focus.

Damian had already tried doing that here—it did not work. He was afraid the worst-case scenario was true for them—they were in the Demon Lord's Astral Plain in their real bodies. It was supposed to be an impossible thing. But somehow, they were here.

The huge black castle was even more enormous from nearby than they had assumed. It was still some kilometers away—they were flying close to the grey surface now. Suddenly, the enormous black castle seemed to lose a piece of itself. The darkness was moving towards them.

"It's him," Sam said.

"It has to be," Lucian agreed too.

Damian slowed down a little. The darkness did not. It seemed like an enormous shadow moving on land like a giant ugly bug. Creepy beyond words.

This was a complicated case now. Damian only had half his mana pool, the mana containers on his waist only held enough liquid mana to refill his mana pool a couple of times. The Demon Lord, on the other hand, could go in and out of his Astral Plain freely. He decided not to think about what would happen if he died herel—all possible answers were not good to hear at all.

"You all go ahead. Find the thing he uses to ascend, then use the waygate to come for me," Damian said simply.

"You don't have enough mana to face him alone!" Lucian objected.

"He won't face the bastard alone," Sam said, with an unreadable expression on his face.

Damian looked at him. He was not going to take "no" for an answer. Damian nodded. He would welcome any help he could get. His fighting style relied heavily on mana—lots of mana.

He just needed to buy time, not aim to kill him this time. The slippery bastard had a million lives.

The distance closed—the castle was barely one and a half kilometers from them now. Damian left Lucian and Maelor on the surface, and the two of them moved on. The giant darkness too shrank with each meter forward until it was finally in the form of a grey-skinned, red-eyed man—it could be better described as a monster. The dark smoke was constantly coming out of his pitch-dark giant horns and was also pooled around his legs like a cloak made of darkness.

Damian landed on the surface, his dark spear with a pointy red end materializing in his right hand. Sam did not activate his full lightning energy mode as he always did—he removed the sword from the scabbard attached to his waist and held it with both hands in front of him. Not in any stance, but just resting near his feet.

"There is no escape from here.." said the man made of darkness in a deep voice that could only belong to a monster.

"Who wants to escape?" Damian retorted. "Sam, you wanna escape?"

"Not at all. I like it here—they have a nice ambience," replied Sam, as the barren grey land rested for kilometers in utter silence.

"You have lost. I admire the spirit of you two runts—you managed to ascend to Transcendence, but it ends here. I don't even want you for my collection anymore.." said the Demon Lord.

A giant dark sword materialized in the seven-foot-tall Demon Lord's hand.

"For you, only eternal darkness awaits.."

The Demon Lord lunged forward—Damian and Sam were ready. The giant black sword came down on their heads with tremendous force. Damian pushed his spear forward, augmenting himself with the full power of his Sacrium Aura armor. The sword stopped inches above Damian's head—next came a wave of darkness trying to envelop all three of them.

But Sam took a step forward and channeled powerful lightning in his white sword—conjuring a blinding radiance that seemed to attack the darkness and destroy it with all its force. But the wave of darkness was enormous, and Sam's lightning was limited. It surrounded them from all four sides. Only the bubble of lightning Sam kept powered kept the three of them from drowning in the darkness.

Damian lined five massive laser spells in four directions around them and the fifth one directly aimed at the face of the Demon Lord. The Demon Lord started to build a shield of darkness as he launched them, but Damian channeled the full aura of his into the dark spear—the red-tipped spear flared with dark fire.

His dark fire, however, was very different from the abyssal darkness of the Demon Lord. His was dark, and yet it seemed to hold a light inside it. It glowed with radiance despite its destructive nature.

The spear pierced through the dark shield and headed straight for the Demon Lord's head, but the second it made contact with its grey forehead—the face dissipated in a cloud of dark smoke.

'This motherfu..'

Damian immediately pulled the spear back and powered the rune etched on his right leg to open a wormhole right beneath his feet—then, pulling Sam with him, Damian came out hundreds of meters above them. The second they teleported, the darkness beneath transformed into an enormous dark energy-filled sphere and exploded with powerful waves and loud sound.

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