Fate Alchemist - A Regression Academy LitRPG

The mimic whirled around, mana-suspended bones shifting and turning, and pounced, but Wulf was ready. He dodged again, concentrating on where he stood, where the mimic was going, and just how far he needed to move to escape its clutches.

Its clawed wingtips swiped through the empty air, and its bones clicked with a frustrated rhythm. Wulf punched it in the side again, hitting it much more lightly, but striking twice. The impacts took longer for the mimic to recover from.

He repeated the process a few times until he was certain that his repeated strikes were what did it. It didn't repair as quickly from a bunch of tiny but fast strikes.

The question was: how could Irmond or the others help?

On the last set of impacts, Wraith's stone fists cleaved away an outer shell of whirling bone matter. With each impact, it became easier to strip away the mimic's outer layer, and more importantly, it revealed the hollow center.

"Do you see that?" Irmond called. "There's something inside it!"

"Mimics always have a heavy core," Kalee replied. "We can't see it from here, but that should be what you're seeing."

"Heavy but fragile," Wulf added. "It should be an orb of swirling red light and mana?"

"I see it!" Irmond called, excitement in its voice.

"Whereabouts is it?" Wulf asked. "High or low in the mimic's body?"

"It's around the mimic's chest area!" Irmond replied. "Watch out!"

Wulf spun away from the mimic's clawed arm. Spun. Then, he sprang to the side. The stone behemoth thudded along the ground and skidded, but it stayed upright. He dug his knees and hands into the ground, dragging them through the bricks and creating a spray of stone and rock debris.

Then, he jumped to his full height. Wraith may have been a massive statue, but it was lighter than all the other Oroniths Wulf had piloted, and it lifted up through the air. As he fell, he struck the mimic with enough force to send a shockwave rolling through the cavern. It listed to the side, and he followed up with a set of light punches to its upper chest, cleaving away its outer coating.

"Irmond, hit its core!" Wulf shouted.

Normally, Wulf would've reached in and grabbed it. It would've been a more guaranteed kill. But if they wanted Irmond to get stronger, they had to let him do some of the work. An arrow to the core would still destroy it—especially a ranger's arrow, enhanced by a Skill.

Irmond fired the shot into the crevice without hesitation. With a boom, the mimic staggered back, folding its wings over its chest. Wulf only caught a glimpse of the core, but it was enough to see it leaking crimson mana everywhere.

Then the mimic exploded. It sent shards of bone flying across the entire room. Wulf ducked, turning away to protect Seith, Irmond, and Athllas from the blast. The shards pattered harmlessly off Wraith's outer shell.

Once the dust settled, Wulf rose up to his full height. He assessed his surroundings, then checked himself over. His core was almost half empty of mana, which, given how long he'd been fighting and how much he'd been doing, was respectable. But if they wanted to keep at this for a week, he'd have to pace himself.

Using the communications construct, he said, "I think we've gotten far enough away, taken enough turns, that the Academy won't find us too easily. And we still need to sleep and rest. We should camp here for…what remains of the night."

It was hard to tell what or how long the night lasted for, especially in the tunnels of a dungeon, but considering how late it had been when they entered the dungeon in the first place, they needed to rest.

Maybe once they all reached Silver, they could start making do with less sleep, but they had to deal with the realities of being a low-tier Ascendant.

"Here?" Seith asked.

"No better place," Kalee said.

"Once you've cleared a room," Wulf explained, "it takes a few weeks before the dungeon regenerates it. It's safe. Let's make a camp. We'll put someone on watch, of course."

A half-hour later, they'd deactivated the Wraith, and climbed down to the ground. The floor of the dungeon was even more unusual from the ground, and the texture of the bricks themselves was what always got Wulf. The smoothness, almost like they were made of glass instead of stone, but they were entirely opaque and gray.

It wasn't cold, but they still made a campfire using dried vines. It felt like the right thing to do, plus it helped heat their rations. In the days before their expedition, they'd gathered supplies from the dining hall, saving parts of their meals and gathering extra helpings from other students, so they'd have a little bit to live on down here. They'd have to ration it well, but they could make it last.

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Once they'd gotten settled, and once they'd arranged a row of old breakfast sausages over their fire to reheat, Wulf said, "Everyone, check your status. See how we're doing after the mimic."

"I'm a High-Coal now," Irmond said. "No new Marks."

"Gained some more mana, too," Kalee replied. "Nothing much, but I also didn't spend much."

"How is your supply of consumable constructs?" Seith asked her.

"I've rationed it out," Kalee said. She patted her arm. "I've got two Bronze-tier ones on my arm for emergencies, if I need a strong Skill, and I've got a bunch stored with the rations. They're weaker, but they'll be enough to power a basic spell Skill."

"How long were you guys planning this?" Athllas asked. He was perching high up on a bone shard, a little ways away from them.

"Three days," Seith replied. "I, uh, didn't get much from the bone mimic, by the way."

"Not yet," Wulf said. "Check the bone shards. Can you use them for anything?"

"Maybe a simple mana conducting device," she said. "It'd be an intermediary, though. I get more mana when something has an immediate use."

"Kalee could use them, right?"

Kalee nodded. "I could use them in combat, and it might count as something you did. Or, it'll give you a chunk of the reward for slaying a monster."

"That could work," Seith said. "What kinds of constructs do you usually use?"

"Nothing with moving parts anymore, nothing that requires any fuel or skills for the Field to mark it as complete," she said. "Technically, I don't have any Skills to help with artificing, and my aspect is force. Basically, like you were saying. Conducting constructs, mana-locks, mana storage devices."

As they spoke, Wulf marched over to the nearest shard of bone. It was nearly as tall as he was, and when he assessed it with the Field, it said:

Mimic-Bone (Low-Iron Quality)

The bone of a bone-mimic. As a fertilizer, it leeches mana into the ground, improving the grade of the plants that grow in it. It will not dissolve.

Wulf couldn't use it directly in a potion, not like the widowlob's venom, but he could use it on his grasses. He pulled his scissors off his back and began scraping the outer layer of the bone into his haversack. It shaved off in a powder, and a non-Ascendant probably wouldn't have had enough strength to scrape it in the first place.

Wulf himself had to eventually use [Slither] to get enough, in a timely fashion. Once he'd filled the front pocket, he tapped the tip of his scissors to it and drew out the chaos first. He hadn't filled them with essences yet, and he could always use more chaos. The bones had lots of chaos, and surprisingly, were almost entirely a chaotic substance. He'd have to check his transmutation charts to see if he could make mimic-bone, but he drew as much chaos as he could muster.

The bone had only half dissolved by the time he'd filled his scissors with chaos. Some of it turned into primal material, but some also transmuted to a darker intermediary substance that he couldn't name, but was more like wood.

Then, he began taking the order from it as well. He didn't fill his scissors entirely, and there was some order left in the core of the bone, but he couldn't reach it. He moved onto a different shard until he'd filled up on order, too.

"Who are you people?" Athllas asked. "We have a Mage who consumes constructs to cast spells, whatever Wulf is doing with those scissors, but that's certainly not a traditional Pilot skill, a Telgrad who happens to be an Artificer when the rest of her family are Pilots, and…and a Ranger."

"Oh, so I'm not special?" Irmond asked, glancing up at the prince.

"No."

"Oh…"

"I need to know: why is Dr. Arnau helping you?" Prince Athllas demanded. This time, he didn't rephrase it more politely.

"We're…in trouble with her old boyfriend?" Kalee said. "And she wants a bit of revenge, too?"

"Yeah, that was what I gathered," Wulf confirmed.

Prince Athllas jumped down from the shard of bone and marched toward them. "I should like to know why you are trying to get in with the Lions, then."

Wulf sighed. Athllas was going to find out sooner than later, and he wasn't going to be able to keep it a secret forever. Besides, trying to become friends with a boy who was about to lose his father just for political connections didn't sit right, and was only going to cause more drama when it inevitably unravelled. He didn't want that.

"Athllas, I need to tell you something," Wulf said. He tucked his scissors up into their sheath, then turned toward the prince. He wasn't going to tell everything, but just enough. "We're trying to stop the demon invasions. Things are going to get much worse, and we need to fight harder. But no one else believes us. We were hoping to get your help. That's why we needed the Lions."

Kalee stared at him, as did Irmond and Seith.

"I'm sorry for the deception, but we needed to get to know someone with real political power," Wulf continued. "Someone who could change something. We're just a ragtag crew of lowborn, or close to it, from Istalis."

"My father is the king, not me. He's the one with power, not me. I can't accomplish anything," Athllas said. "I can't change anything, or do anything on my own. You're putting your faith in the wrong guy."

That wasn't the response Wulf had been expecting. "I…haven't put my faith in anyone yet. But I had to be honest with you. It didn't feel right otherwise."

Athllas took a long breath. "I understand. Thank you for your honesty. To tell the truth, no one else would've had the courage, and I can't even find it in myself to be angry. I'm just not that guy. My father's the brave one."

"You have time," Wulf said. He didn't want to give away that he knew when the king was going to die. "And we'll help you if you need it. Maybe our meeting wasn't very organic, but if you're here with us, you better get something for it, right?"

"Right," Athllas said.

"You'll get used to this. I promise. But for now, let's just have a fire, then catch some sleep while we still can."