Fate Alchemist - A Regression Academy LitRPG

Wulf had plenty of time to fill out the worksheet that Dr. Arnau gave them all, but first, he was curious what Dr. Arnau was doing.

There was no reason to just leave all your students out in the middle of the woods, especially not when there was a chance that they could get mauled by a wild golem. Something was happening.

"Hold tight," Wulf told Seith. "I believe in you, and I'm pretty sure you know what you're doing."

"What are you—"

"I'll be back," he whispered.

Dr. Arnau had already taken off. Using her enhanced strength, she jumped up into a tree. She made it about halfway up, then pushed off the trunk and sprang away, moving quickly. Each time she pushed off, it cracked the bark slightly, and though she shot off with incredible speed and force, the enormous trees only swayed slightly.

Wulf couldn't keep up. But he tried anyway. He activated his new golem, using a High-Silver potion he'd almost finished. It had been made of Athem's smoke lilies, but he let it transmute to a regular poison potion.

His new golem, which now matched the shape of Silent Wraith, was much faster and sleeker than his old golem. At its waist, it was barely wider than his real hips, though its shoulders were wide enough to give it some extra bulk, and its legs were strong enough to let it sprint.

It thundered through the forest, kicking up a trail of fallen autumn leaves and peat. Motes of green dust floated in the air behind it, given off by the poison and his constant use of [Arm of the Alchemist].

Though Dr. Arnau was faster, she wasn't faster by much, and she left a trail of marked trees for Wulf to follow.

Her destination was a hollow, rotten giantwood log on its side. The rest of the professors who'd come today had gathered beneath it, and they stood in a circle. Or, some sat cross-legged on the wood-chip-covered ground, but they still formed a circle.

Wulf jumped up onto the top of the log, then stored his golem. The professors were all Golds and Rubies, and they'd detect a Skill being used sooner than they'd detect his footsteps. Hopefully, with so many other powerful professors close by, they wouldn't sense his presence as well.

He peered into the log through a hole in the top. The professors had already begun.

"...been gathered here because you are…the most trustworthy," Dr. Azanthius said. "To meet with the others back at the Academy would draw suspicion."

"Why do we need a secret meeting?" a professor asked. It was Dr. Hanja, their combat instructor. "What have you done, Ellus?"

Ellus Azanthius. That was his full name?

"I've done nothing, not personally." Azanthius crossed his arms. "I dispatched three teams of two Oroniths into the dungeons on a…suspicion. They were to delve to the third level. These were Low-Golds through and through—Low-Gold Oroniths, Low-Gold crews."

"Low-Golds haven't made it more than three rooms through the bottom tier of the dungeon in decades," a different professor, who Wulf didn't recognize, said.

"It was only a scouting mission," Dr. Arnau said. "Observation in rooms that other teams had already cleared out."

Azanthius began, "See, we'd let the Gellereau Family have a run to the depths only a few weeks prior to those kids going in—"

"Ah, that's how you secured the donation."

Azanthius cleared his throat. "Yes, well." He folded his fingers. "The point being that they cleared a route down to the very bottom level, and those rooms should have been open. At least ten rooms."

"We lost contact with Longhawk on the second level," Arnau said. "They found it destroyed in a hallway. Unsalvageable."

"Omtaldris and Jackal Watcher didn't get to the third level," Dr. Azanthius reported. "The rooms had already refilled, and they got…'bogged down', to put it as they did, when clearing them out. Jackal Watcher reports the same thing my students did: they thought they caught a glimpse of a fiend."

"A fiend?" exclaimed a professor. She looked older than sixty, and she sat cross-legged on the ground. "How would a fiend have gotten into the dungeon?"

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"We don't know," Azanthius said. "We suspect that it is a relic of the first demon wars which got trapped in the dungeon…and has somehow awoken."

As best Wulf knew, this hadn't happened in his last life. But plenty had changed, and so could this. He needed to use his experience not to predict events, but to help him and his crew advance quickly.

"We must cancel the delving expeditions next semester," said a different professor—Dr. McGemild. "It's too dangerous, and we cannot risk the next generation of pilots. I will not have my reputation in that department tarnished."

"No!" Dr. Hanja protested. "Experience is invaluable, and we cannot have our students getting their first taste of true Oronith combat when they see a colossal fiend for the first time. It's different when you're in a cockpit."

"I am aware, doctor," Azanthius said. "I was coming to gauge your opinions, though I know they will be divided. For one thing, we must not project weakness, and we cannot let anyone know what is wrong, or that anything is wrong."

The professors were silent. They exchanged wary glances.

"If we lost a Low-Gold crew on a scouting mission on the second level, what hope do Copper and Bronzes have?" McGemild exclaimed. "They're second-years, Ellus."

"They'll have us watching over them, and they won't leave the first level."

"Most of them don't even have an Oronith!" a different professor exclaimed. "You will lose students."

"...It is a risk we have to take. We cannot sacrifice the education of our next generation out of fear."

"It sounds like you've already made up your mind," someone grumbled.

"If I have, then it's for the best." Azanthius shook his head. "We must train our students, and if they have to learn to cope with tragedy, then so be it. They will learn. Meeting dismissed."

~ ~ ~

After that, Wulf sprinted back to the clearing where Seith and his group waited, moving as fast as he could, but taking a slightly different route so Dr. Arnau wouldn't catch up with him.

When he finally found Seith, he found her carving runes into a tree near the edge of the clearing. She'd chiselled a large symbol into the trunk higher up, which Wulf assumed was he disruption rune. Whatever the golem was sensing that made it want to guard the trees would be cut off with that tree. Now, she was tapping the base, preparing to strike the tree with a Skill that would cut it down.

They weren't responsible for bringing the trees back to the Academy. Azanthius would contract the Logging Guild to help with that. But they did have to cut the tree themselves.

"What was that?" Seith asked.

"Not much," Wulf replied. "Confirmed what I was already worried about. We'll want to be stronger before we try another dungeon run, anyway."

"That's not ominous," she grumbled.

"Yeah." Wulf shrugged. "Now, I've got a worksheet to finish."

He crept to the very edge of the clearing and laid down in a bush, then looked out into the clearing.

Wild golems, unlike a Piloted golem, still had their core spirit intact. They were essentially monsters. The spirit that became the base of an Oronith was essentially an ascended golem—it became a mountain spirit, because that was where there was enough open stone to sustain themselves.

If you contained a mountain spirit before it gained too much intelligence on its own, you could once again use it as the base of your Oronith. They weren't sentient, and it was like building a treehouse.

But eventually, they would become sentient. With enough time, and with enough power.

The internal spirit was what gave them the drive to protect. Wulf watched, answering the questions on the worksheet. Most were rather banal, outlining the difference between Piloted golems, Oroniths, and wild golems, but near the end, it asked him to make observations about how the golems reacted.

And they were supposed to do it without even hurting a tree.

To tell the truth, he hadn't paid that much attention to the wild golems in his past life. Most of them had been harvested and converted into Piloted golems by the time he was ever interested.

But now, he had a chance to learn more than just the utilitarian principles. He watched as the trees swayed and shook in the wind. When their branches stuck together, or when their tight knit branches clacked, then golems shifted. Their heads spun quickly, shifting to face the source of the noise. They always looked in a straight line, and at first, Wulf thought they were just responding to the sound.

But they flinched and faced the trees on the other side of the clearing, too, even when it would've been impossible to hear the trees shifting or locking over the rushing wind.

Something was calling on their attention, and it wasn't physical. Wulf recalled what Mantri had said—the cords.

It was doing something with the Field, that much he could say for certain. They locked onto something worth protecting, and they'd only awaken when that thing was in danger. A tree, in this case.

They were always alert, always protecting, and sentient only because of the spirit inside them.

The same thing had to apply to the mountain spirits inside an Oronith.

If he could awaken his Oronith's sentient mind before he even became an Iron? That would surely prove he was worthy of piloting Wraith.

But then again, people like Lord Umoch didn't work on logic—that much he knew. Or if they did, they couldn't show it, because then they'd lose face.

He was getting closer, but the more important thing was advancing him and his crew.