The first thing Steelweaver did after being released was to cast a simple fire spell. It worked flawlessly. Even more impressive, the man did it without chanting or using any runic tool.
His strength level remained at the peak level, second ranker though. Damian thought the chains were suppressing his strength, but that wasn’t true. They simply had restricted its use, and that was for both physical and mana use.
Damian had never seen a spell that could restrain a person’s physical strength. But in the maze of the ever-changing pri runic spell, finding that one particular section was a job that required weeks of study.
He did have the copy of the spell that he had made earlier; this spell had fewer changes and patterns than the dungeon sealing spell, so Damian had hoped to decipher it one day after studying it. He was about to get to it after the higher priority tasks piling up on his to-do list ended.
But before that, Steelweaver woke up, and this was the result.
"Did sothing go wrong? There is no difference I am sensing." Sam said after closing all valves of the mana tank and coming closer.
Steelweaver looked at him, then shook his head.
"It’s not my real form. That’s been killed. My existence now entirely depends on my singular believer." The god of steel golem replied.
"So as long as your believer exists, you can’t be killed?" Damian asked.
"Once a pathfinder ascends beyond celestial rank and enters the ancient rank, their astral plane is immortalized. We can travel between the astral plane and the physical world in our living form. When killed, the echo of our form lives on in the astral plane. Then only when true believers arrive and their combined strength reaches a high level can we leave the astral plane as an echo." Steelweaver answered.
"But it can never reach the strength of your real physical form?" Sam asked.
"Yes, that’s the trade-off for being immortal."
"What do you an by a believer?" Damian asked.
It was a very ambiguous term. The religious folks and their literature never truly explained what it ant other than having a blessing from a specific god. Damian did not have any blessings, and it was all but confird that he was the one and only believer of this primordial god of tal golems.
Steelweaver turned towards him with conflicted expressions on his face.
"I am incredibly thankful for all that you have done for , and I will do my best to repay what I owe. But that information is not sothing I can relay easily. It’s a matter of higher beings. Knowledge only has value when one earns it on their own and is worthy of it."
Damian already had an idea as to what being a true believer ant, but he nodded anyway. It was indeed true that having more knowledge than necessary would make a man obsessed with what he didn’t have yet. It was one of the primary reasons why talking about ascension trials and sharing status details with lower-rank individuals was considered sothing of a taboo in this world.
Damian cleared his throat. His eyes focused on the old, white-bearded face of Steelweaver.
"I am the Runebreaker. Second Keeper of the Sanctuary, the highest authority of the nation. We are currently in the middle of an ocean, hundreds of kiloters away from the mainland. Steelweaver, I will need a direct promise from you that you will obey all rules of the Sanctuary before we take you back with us. Otherwise, this is the place where we will leave you."
"It’s a stupid thing to promise sothing like that without fully knowing the rules, but fine. I don’t have any other choices here anyway. Nothing I will do will harm you or your people. I give you my word on it." Steelweaver lowered his head slightly.
Despite introducing himself as a god, the man was acting as anything but. Damian liked that aspect of him at least. As the pign sun god had said, it was simply a title and not so approval from the divine. Of course, not everyone would think like that.
"Let’s go then," Damian muttered and opened a waygate back to Einar.
Damian could sense all of them together. They were indeed waiting for any update. Even Lucian and Torvin were present, the others must have filled them in.
The three of them stepped inside the waygate and once again arrived in Sanctum. The free Steelweaver was eyed by all gathered individuals; the lack of chains was hard to miss. Unsurprisingly, it was his own office they were in.
’Why does everyone treat this place like free real estate?’ Damian lanted.
"You succeeded?" Souldealer asked.
"Yes," Sam replied before Damian could. "It was a very tiring job."
"Why were you tired?" Evrin asked, squinting at Sam.
"It’s a long story. A story only for grown-ups." Sam replied, acting all haughty.
Ever since they had learned how young the other elves considered Evrin, the jokes were never-ending. Her mother and other mbers of the family believed Evrin had chosen a partner too soon. Also, elves’ numbers were dwindling, so Evrin’s female companion was not as appreciated by her family as a male companion might have been.
Evrin was about to reply sothing not so nice when Einar held her shoulder. There were more important matters at hand than her wife’s fragile age complex.
"A lost species from primordial age?" Lucian murmured from the side.
Steelweaver’s sharp ears heard her.
"None are left?" The break in his voice was heartbreaking.
"I am sorry, but no. The mainland has no dwarves anymore." Lucian apologized for being the bringer of bad news.
Sam petted the wide dwarf’s shoulder while guiding him to sit on the couch. Everyone took note of Sam’s changed attitude towards the last mber of the dwarf race. And the man was barely a husk of a dwarf, not a real one. The real ones were all dead.
After a few seconds of silence, Damian moved towards the door while saying,
"Sam, tell them everything. I will be back soon."
Closing the door behind him, Damian opened a waygate connecting straight to Mindseer. His luck that she was near Land-breaker and Voidshaper, he wouldn’t have to look for them. The three leaders of Highswords were seated around the table inside one of the repaired rooms of Obsidian Bastion.
"Can’t you use the waygates installed for communication at least once?" Mindseer complained, but Damian ignored her.
Damian caught Land-breaker’s eyes and said with a voice full of enthusiasm,
"Hey,"
"Runebreaker," Land-breaker replied.
"Do you guys wanna et a god?" Damian asked.
"What!?"
Five minutes later, the three leaders of Highswords were seated inside his office. Sam was repeating so parts to give them context while they stared at the god of steel golems, who was a jacked-up grandpa dwarf.
"You still didn’t answer where he ca from," Land-breaker asked Damian once Sam ended his short tale.
"Is that a mundane human? How is he standing? Oh, that’s an interesting tool you got there." Damian heard Steelweaver murmur from the side and ignored him as others answered the questions of the curious dwarf.
"Information from the shadow organization. They were holding so of our people hostage in a dungeon; this being was with them."
"Where is the chain with those glowing purple runes?" Land-breaker asked.
It wasn’t his first ti eting him. But back then, they both assud the man to be so monster or a weird-looking human.
"I broke them. To free him." Damian said, when Land-breaker glared at him, he simply smiled innocently.
"And you didn’t think it wise enough to inform or others before doing that? What if it was all a deception and he truly was so ancient sealed evil?" Land-breaker asked with a serious face.
"I won’t go into the details, but there are things in my status that confirm the man’s claims of being a god," Damian replied. "I wouldn’t have done it; I wasn’t sure."
"Can you sign a mana contract stating that?" Land-breaker’s face was full of doubt.
"Maybe.. No?" Damian wasn’t sure.
He should have learned his lesson not to free sealed people by now. But at tis, his instincts and curiosity guided his actions more than logic. As a leader of a nation, he should have more control over himself, but he was still barely a man in his 30s. If he counted all the years he had lived, both here and on earth.
Even younger than the youngest elf before him.
Evrin eyed him as if she could magically sense that he was thinking sothing weird about her. Damian coughed twice to gather the attention of everyone.
"Steelweaver, I know you said there were so things better not said. But as you can assu, this ti is centuries in the future from the age of primordials. To be honest, other than their nas and little tidbits from the broken ruins they left behind, we have no idea who they ever were. Will you tell us your story?"
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