The Runic Alchemist

Damian moved the hand-cranked press and began increasing the pressure slowly inside the large rectangular box made of alloy and glass mixture placed on his workbench. Reize stood by, chanting a water-ball spell in case it started a fire. Damian also had two of those ready, just in case.

However, the process went smoothly as Damian activated his cooling spells to condense the mana into liquid form, then directed it into the section where ammonia and potassium were added to the liquid mana, transforming it into negatively charged mana. For the first time in their months of experimentation, everything seemed to be working perfectly. At last, the system seemed stable.

The reaction between the ammonia and liquid mana, which normally produced potassium ions, amide ions, and hydrogen gas—often resulting in explosions or erratic behavior—proceeded without issue.
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The final stage, which usually ended in disaster when the negatively charged liquid mana was mixed with the steel rod Damian used as his aura blade, went without a hitch. Damian had to rub his eyes twice to believe that the experiment he had expected to take a week was completed in minutes, and, to his amazement, worked spectacularly.

Finally, the warm, glowing golden mana began to flow—the very same mana that his own core produced.

Damian opened a side valve and let the mana gather in his palm, but it didn't stay there. With a cold, otherworldly sensation, it seeped into his body, reaching his core, which was not yet full. This was how the liquid mana reacted after transforming into his personal version. A single glass of this liquid mana could fill nearly 4000 mana points in his system.

Damian had calculated this based on previous successful conversions, but none of the previous versions had lasted more than a few seconds before exploding. This one, however, seemed stable, and it continued producing liquid mana non-stop. The ammonia and potassium were running low, but they didn't require large quantities. After filling the storage section and another steel box with the excess mana, the system finally shut down—not with an explosion, but simply because the ammonia and potassium had run out. The raw liquid mana continued gathering, but Damian gestured, and Reize deactivated the guiding mana enchantments, halting the flow.

Damian lifted the two steel boxes filled with mana and stared at them in awe. He now had mana. Enough mana to power even the largest runic devices he had ever seen. If one glass contained 4000 mana points, this much should approximately amount to about 120,000 mana points.

"Woah! It worked... You have mana... your own mana in liters..." Reize murmured, her eyes also fixed on the swirling golden liquid in the two boxes.

Before this, they had gathered only a little more than half a glass, so they hadn't completed all possible experiments with it. First, Damian tried taking more mana than his system's mana limit allowed, but it didn't work. The flow stopped as the body rejected the excess.

He then drew a runic circle for a mana-dependent spell, like the Air Blade, but decided to step outside before filling his tiny room with sharp air blades or making a wormhole in a closed room.

Reize and Toph followed behind as Damian walked out of the academy building with the two boxes in his hands.

"Hey! Morph Vialist! Finally come out to enjoy the beauty of nature mixed with my music?" Evante, the fourth-year student with his lute surrounded by admirers, called out.

Damian waved him off and hurried past. Giving him a gesture of 'later.

The Knowledge Keeper students and others recognized him, and their curiosity grew as they noticed something unusual. By the time Damian was in an open field away from the academy building under the clear sky, a large group had gathered around them.

Damian had intended to keep it quiet, but he was so excited to test it out and thrilled with its success that he no longer cared who watched. He wasn't trying to hide it forever anyways, just wanted some time to work on it in peace. From the looks of it, the time for completion was much sooner than he'd anticipated.

Damian drew the wormhole runic spell, chanting along to maintain the illusion. He created the runic circle without making a section for the mana source, instead extending a few strands of mana threads from the circle and connecting them to one of the full mana liquid boxes. It held.

Damian could sense the mana traveling through the invisible threads, so low in quantity that it was invisible to the naked eye - it was super fast though, and not hidden from his mana sense. The mana liquid from the box was powering the wormhole spell. It was working!

Damian adjusted the wormhole's horizontal opening to shoulder height and the ending was no set distance, but set to mana dependent section. The spell would continue charging, opening the wormhole at the furthest point it could reach, even if it drained 50,000 mana points worth of mana.

Both excited and fearful, Damian wondered how far it would go. He recalled the Grand Artifact called The Soulbound Gateway that Vidalia and he had obtained from Ashenvale people—it had a total charge of 200,000 mana points and opened rifts through space, but the workings of that spell were very different from the wormhole spell.

Damian felt the mana gathering, the runic circle growing brighter and brighter. Finally, the black circle of the wormhole absorbed all of the liquid mana from the box, glowing so intensely that even without his eye skill, everyone nearby could see the faint black lines forming the runic circle. The air was thick with mana, visible to all their mana senses.

The wormhole finally opened with a deep hum that Damian could feel in his chest. The swirling purple portal appeared, but the end was nowhere to be seen. Even with Damian's enhanced abilities, he couldn't locate the exit—he squinted his eyes in vain, the sky stretched infinitely.

The students around them murmured in awe, exclaiming loudly at the power of the spell. But this was only the beginning. Damian, eager to test it further, cautiously ducked beneath the horizontal wormhole and slowly jumped up. His head popped through the other side, and the sight that greeted him was breathtaking.

He was high—far higher than he'd ever imagined. The entire island of Edgeheaven looked smaller than his palm. Trees, rivers, and even the nearby land of Ashenvale across a thin stretch of the ocean were visible, which was nearly impossible to see from Edgeheaven with naked eyes. As Damian took in the view, he felt his breath catch; the air was thin, and he felt like he was suffocating.

Instinctively, he ducked back beneath the wormhole, stepping away from the glowing portal, catching his breath.