There were thousands of runic circles, and not all were functioning; actually, none were functioning. But Damian still etched them on the surface of the metals by somehow joining the pathways and at least having one tiny functioning spell inside.
Usually, a failed runic spell would never be inscribed in the metal. But if there was one full runic spell section with complete paths and full circles inside the mess of a giant, complicated runic circle, it would work. The faulty runic pathways won’t work into anything useful, but they will still be inscribed in the metal, and the surface will show the full, complicated runic circle.
Imagine a large, complicated electrical circuit board with wires, switches, capacitors, and many devices connected. Most of those devices are broken or disconnected internally, so electricity cannot complete a loop through them.
However, somewhere within that mess is one full, correctly connected loop that includes a light bulb. Electricity doesn’t care how many dead ends or broken paths exist—it only needs one complete circuit (closed loop) to flow. As long as that one loop exists, the bulb will light up, even though the rest of the circuit is useless or chaotic.
This was the method Damian usually used to encrypt his more dangerous spells, so others wouldn’t be able to simply copy them and use them someday.
Damian didn’t even bother to store the Blazur alloy chunks back in his spatial storage. He didn’t have enough mana. He wasn’t carrying any liquid mana tanks today. Damian simply threw the chunks of Blazur alloy inscribed with runic circles towards Sam, Vidalia, and Voidshaper. They stored them in their own spatial storage tools; none had the storage capacity needed, other than Sam and Vidalia with their sacrium bracelets.
After some fifteen minutes, everything finally ended, and Damian could breathe better. There was no lasting damage; his natural recovery was more than enough to bring him back to normal minutes after the mana threads attached to his body lowered from a thousand. Orıginal content can be found at novel·fiɾe·net
Wiping his face, dripping with blood and sweat, everyone who could fly placed themselves around him. At last Vidalia asked,
"What did you do that was so... rough?"
Damian took a deep breath, his lips curling up into a short smile.
"I think I tried to copy a Legendary grade spell."
The absolute shock on everyone’s faces was very appropriate indeed. Most spells that even transcendents could perform fell into High and Grand grades. Very rarely, a powerful individual like Land-breaker and Sea Snake could step into the Supreme grade of spell-crafting. And it was always a massive scale of spell; a lot needed to be prepared to successfully execute it.
Legendary grade spell? That was just part of the myths and stories.
To be honest, Damian was not even fully sure the spell he had just seen was even Legendary grade. There was a grade above that. Something people did not even think of in their dreams.
But he didn’t have enough data to judge the grade of the spell. It wasn’t his first time seeing the highly complicated level of spell. Damian had no idea what that purple element even was. Today, it felt oddly alive compared to the seven mana elements he knew.
Now that his senses had evolved with a rank up, the purple element felt vastly different compared to what he had sensed before. The purple element mana felt close to what people usually have in their core. Warm, highly reactive, infinite shaping possibilities, and immensely powerful.
Usually, when people chanted spells, the mana quality deteriorated, starting from the very pull from the core to the veins and then outside. The conversion of mana’s full potential power compared to the power in spells was near 70 to 75%. The third rankers and talented second rankers could close that gap to 85%. Even Land-breaker and Sea Snake, Damian had noticed, could only bring out near 90% efficiency.
This was one of the main reasons for his generated liquid mana being of lower quality compared to the real mana of a pathfinder that came from a person’s own core.
"Did you.. succeed?" The emperor asked.
"I have no idea. Most likely not. There are things about the spell that are impossible to replicate. Seems like it can only be learned, not copied." Damian replied.
A collective relief seemed to spread to all faces around him. He didn’t even realize they were so tense. What did they think? He would suddenly learn a Legendary-grade spell and throw it at them? That was so mean.
Damian flew towards the flying platform where the members of the research center were discussing the matter of the dungeon sealing ritual amongst themselves. The others followed behind.
"Other than the fact that the dungeon somehow got each monster that crawled out of it and made some disturbance to the environment, what else did we notice?" Damian asked the group as a whole.
The point of the entire exercise was to pick up things people might have missed earlier. They would all write their own reports in detail, but Damian wanted to see in brief if there was something he had missed.
"The monsters we caught are unaffected," Sam commented.
"It considers that an earned property of the challenger." Damian guessed.
"It messed up with the recorder and I missed quite a lot of it," Mindseer added.
"Yes, the platform was also hard to control." One of the researchers commented.
Similar details of medium and low-level runic devices malfunctioning were shared by people one by one.
"Closing the dungeon removes all traces of the dungeon. I am curious whether it does that for all its past and present." Said Lady Alwen Redmantle, adventurous noblewoman from Eldoris, who braved abandoned ruins alone, shared her painted illustrations of monsters and dungeon greenery with the world.
All past and present? Wait a second. Just like many around him, Damian’s mind connected the dots in seconds.
Could sealing the Highsword dungeon fix all their timeline problems?