AK - The Alchemy Kingdom

Year 3, Spring, Third Month, Fourth Week.

Karl walked through the tunnel calmly inspecting the Arrays in the walls while talking to Diana about the upcoming journey. The girl, or better saying the woman (she was now 18 years old), was initially annoyed with Karl’s focus on the drawings while they talked. However, she calmed down once he didn’t fail to identify any of her conversation traps. The irritation soon transformed into curiosity, what was he checking and how could he still pay attention to her?

Karl’s reaction to her question dispersed the rest of her anger while earning a giggle from the huntress, apparently, he didn’t even notice he was checking the drawings until she pointed it out. The scene of the confused and offended Karl asking for Diana to stop laughing brought smiles to everyone around them. What both Councilors didn’t know was that the diffused focus was a consequence of Karl’s spiritual growth. Since they left Caiset, the boy’s energy pool almost doubled, and now he was diving into an area of study few could handle. All of these factors were slowly changing his spiritual energy, though he was oblivious of the change.

“Hahaha… OK, OK. I’m gonna stop… But seriously, what were you looking for?”

“Hmm… I didn’t have time to check on the tunnel’s Arrays. Of course, I know the Arrays because I designed them, but I wanted to check the disciple’s progress. Mother says they did better than we expected…”

“Yeah… I understand. Things have been progressing so fast that we sometimes lose track of what’s happening. I used to train every hunter. I knew everyone’s abilities and shortcomings, but now… I hardly know who’s in what team and what they’re doing… We grew… we’re not villagers anymore, so we need to trust them too, it’s no longer just on our shoulders…”

“You’re right… I just need to let mom handle the disciples, she has been doing a fantastic job… She’s my mother, but I never expected she would grow into the job so much… Please don’t tell her that...”

“I’m sorry, Karl… I just realized I never said it before. You know, because I didn’t tell you about grandpa and the others…”

“It’s OK D, it wasn’t just your story… In the end, everything worked it out.”

Soon, the pair arrived at a cave room where the evening meal was being served. Even before the tunnel was completed, everyone had already moved in. It was easier than moving resources and people every day, and the tunnel offered more protection against rain and wind. As for being outside and breathing the clear forest air, they would be soon doing it through the entire day.

Fortunately, even with two thousand visitors, the tunnel was far from being crowded, after all, they had 14 kilometers of the tunnel to chose from. Most didn’t notice but this facility could be considered a big village.

***

The small crowd didn’t miss any of Karl’s movements, which made the Alchemist very uncomfortable. He was used to attracting people’s attention when testing the tools, but this was by far, his most crude design and was likely to fail. As an Alchemist he didn’t mind failing dozens of times before getting it right, it was all part of the process, but although others claimed to understand this, they clearly didn’t, the fear and expectation were stamped on their faces.

First, he would need to test the effect that could control the density of wood. Karl walked to a big tree trunk resting on the ground and placed the tool over it. Before activating the Array, he positioned his hand over one of the activators to select an effect, then he powered the tool. The energy glow quickly traveled through the design until it was transferred to the trunk. It shined intensively as the wood stretched, sounds of wood bending and breaking could be heard as the color of trunk changed from dark brown to a light brown, then amber.

Over everyone’s shocked silence, Karl walked along the stretched trunk counting his steps. When he reached the end, he turned around and said:

“Approximately 30 meters, it grew 24 meters…”

Before they could recover from the shock, Karl was already repeating the test with a tree trunk three meters longer than the first one. Again, everyone was speechless, but the Alchemist didn’t stop and used the effect in another trunk.

“Hmm… The second one grew 37 meters and the third 46 meters… It’s practically growing by a factor of four… Alfeur, can you test the first sample’s resistance and flexibility?”

When Alfeur moved, the spectators finally came to their senses and started to talk about how Karl was a genius, only Johann pretended to be unsurprised. Unfortunately, they would soon start to doubt his abilities. Alfeur tested the flexibility of the trunk, slightly bending it in a few places before nodding satisfied, then he forced the trunk to check its resistance, but it barely held before breaking. A concerned look appeared on everybody’s face, as Karl predicted, they didn’t have the inventor’s pragmatism for the long process of testing and improving.

Now, Karl would test the second effect, from which he didn’t expect much, after all, he didn’t comprehend the effect enough to fully use it. He brought the two remaining samples together and pressed the tool against them after selecting another effect. The samples shined and the usual sound of wood manipulation appeared, but this time, the samples started to strangely merge. The fibers and internal structures of the trunks seemed to overlap and tangle until they become a single trunk, slightly thicker and visibly darker than before.

Now, even Karl was surprised, he expected that the trunks would break or crumble, but it actually worked. Hiding his own surprise, Karl urged Alfeur to repeat the tests.

“This… It’s much stronger and it’s still flexible…”

The man couldn’t hide his delight, he was probably considering dozens of other applications for the tool. Karl had to remind him to keep putting pressure to find the sample’s limit. In the end, the wood trunk was still fragile, but if they could repeat the merging process another three or four times, it would be stronger enough to hold weight.

Finally, it was time for the last test. All of the previous tests would help them a lot, but the last would decide if they could build the bridge. Karl asked the help of three strong crafters to raise an unmodified tree trunk and keep it still. He placed the tool on the wood and looked up to the trunk tip before powering the tool with two effects activated at the same time.

The trunk shined and started to stretch towards the sky, but soon, everybody noticed it was also bending to one side to point that it stopped stretching upwards and was forming an arch before stretching downwards. However, before the trunk could stretch all the way to the ground it stopped, forming an unfinished arch. At this point, nobody dared to be disappointed, somehow they all knew that it would only be a matter of adjustment.