Damian woke up back in his room with a gasp, surrounded by parchment scrolls and ink jar, it was as if he never left. Everything seemed like a dream and yet a glowing red object was hovering in front of him that proved that everything he went through was real.
"The lord of Hell-hound's spear?"
Despite it clearly being fiery red hot, Damian stretched his hand to take it and realized that his body was completely healed or maybe it was never injured to begin with, since everything happened in his mind. The spear felt completely normal, just like any other metallic object – not hot at all. But it was surprisingly heavy and yet it felt perfect in his hands.
"So did I simply die or was my answer right? Guess I will never know."
Damian grabbed his status tool and thought about his status. The glowing blue transparent screen was visible the very next second.
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Name: Damian Sunblade Lv.26
Rank: Lord
Affinity: Water, Space-time
Mana: 2456/2700 STR: 32
DEF: 31
INT: 78
AGI: 32
DEX: 31
CHA: 19
LUC: 3
Job: The Runic Chemist Lord Lv.1
Blessings: Godless [No system detected available stat points: 100]
Skills: [Beginner Tree Climbing Lv.2] [Being of Truth Lv.1] [Expert Scholar Lv.1] [Expert Swordsman Lv.1] [The Runic Lord Lv.1] [Runic Inscription Lv.1] [Arcane Synthesis Lv.1]
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"Lord rank? Shouldn't I be Light-walker rank? What's going on here? Am I a monster or something? And free stat points? No, normally system already assigns a light-walker his stats according to his choice of job and class and for a first job it rarely exceeds 40 extra stats. I always thought rare jobs would get extra 10 or 20 stats but a whopping 60? The difference between average class and prestigious one is abysmal. So since I'm godless I have to allocate my stats manually? Cool."
"Before that let's see what my new job is like.."
[The Runic Chemist Lord: You are The Rightful lord of The Runic Chemistry.
(Runic Inscription : Expertise in inscribing runes onto objects, enhancing their properties or imbuing them with magical abilities.)
(Arcane Synthesis: Fusion of mystical energies with chemical compounds to create powerful spells or enchanted items.)]
"This job doesn't have a skill for battle but looks good nonetheless. This Runic Inscription seems simple enough but I will have to test this Arcane Synthesis to figure out what it actually does. My other relevant skills have also upgraded."
[Being of Truth: The being of truth is the one, who embraces the truth.
(Effect: The Eyes of Truth and The World Shaper Hands)]
[The Runic Lord: Runes are a prestigious heritage, treat it with respect.
(Effect: Rune Authority, Lord's Respect)]
Damian would have to understand his skills in detail, for now there were too many unknown skills in his status. He did know the effects of Expert Scholar and Expert Swordsman: former boosts INT 10% and later boosts STR & AGI 5%. Damian could already feel the slight increase in his senses and strength, he would have to spend some time adjusting to this. For now he just wanted to sleep, he may have looked perfectly fine on the outside but the days long mental burden was too much for his young body.
The entire week was given for preparing to leave this villa for a long time, so Damian had no other distraction. He spent a whole day testing and experimenting with his various skills and tried to get a hang on what his advantages and disadvantages were.
Now that he had access to mana in his body he could fully use spells. Chanting was bothersome though, so instead he used his much familiar runes. Of course drawing a full rune on air with his hands was also just as slow as chanting and not to mentioned he would look completely stupid to anyone watching, but he could increase his speed with practice plus the skill effect (world shaper hands) he could erase and reshape the portion of a rune. And he had to say it was a big help in practice.
Normally it was supposed to be impossible to draw runes on empty air but with the help of the eyes of truth he could see every single particle of mana flowing through his hands and leaving a residue on air. With the world shaper and runic inscription he could easily draw working magic circles with his bare hands. However it was not all good, in this method of using runes the source of power was set as default his own mana. Even when he drew the variable runes for using atmosphere's mana as source, it would always automatically reset Damian as source of mana. And his mana was limited.
The Hell-hound's spear was surprisingly a very useful thing for his current situation. It was a mana conductive weapon, which meant that instead of using his hands and give a big opening to his opponents like an idiot he could use the spear to draw the runes. It was a godly weapon for not looking like a fool on battlefield.
At the end of his experiments that's all he could figure out. Drawing with spear will take a lot of practice of course, and he also needed to collect magic circles for various spells so he would have to chant them at least once. Damian still didn't know what Lord's Respect or Arcane Synthesis exactly did. Arcane Synthesis was most likely something that could aid him in his research but The Lord's Respect was a mystery. At first he thought it was something like an aura skill but even after activating he couldn't feel any effect, it did use up his mana though so it clearly did something.
Now was the time for the big decision. Where should he use his stat points? With his limited knowledge of battle it was clear that he was a pseudo mage with all his rune casting, however if he increased his strength he could also prove to be a formidable swordsman with enough practice. Increase in his INT would vastly increase his mana pool and the better senses would also help in his research but he also needed to be able to fight. And without strength his small frame would never be able to contend against average humans or monsters.
At last Damian decided to play both sides and keep his options open. Even with 30 extra stats in STR he would rival any average light-walker on his first job. So having 35 STR and 35 INT will definitely make him almost unrivalled among people his level. Just to maintain balance he also increased DEF and DEX 5 points each. And kept the remaining 20 untouched until he figured out which path to take. As he increased in level the boost in STR and AGI would be visible, so he was not worried about it.
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Name: Damian Sunblade Lv.26
Rank: Lord
Affinity: Water, Space-time
Mana: 567/4235
STR: 67
DEF: 36
INT: 113
AGI: 32
DEX: 36
CHA: 19
LUC: 3
Job: The Runic Chemist Lord Lv.1
Blessings: Godless [No system detected available stat points: 20]
Skills: [Beginner Tree Climbing Lv.2] [Being of Truth Lv.1] [Expert Scholar Lv.1] [Expert Swordsman Lv.1] [The Runic Lord Lv.1] [Runic Inscription Lv.1] [Arcane Synthesis Lv.1]
=========
After a week's time the day had finally come. Damian stood near the carriage that was specially prepared for him and Thomas while the lady Lucian had her own. It was going to be a long trip so the attention to comfort was necessary. If everything went alright they would reach Drakmor in 18 to 20 days.
More than 25 soldiers and 5 maids were accompanying us, the sheer scale of our cohort was more than double compared to when we usually went monster hunting. It was also necessary since the path was filled with all kinds of monsters and bandits; and that is if no rival noble considers this a good chance and attacks us.
The baron had personally come to see us off. He said some words to his daughter while only looked at Damian once and at last nodded at Thomas. Taking that as a sign they all climbed the carriage and the long journey started.