Fate Alchemist - A Regression Academy LitRPG

Wulf didn't know what he was going to need. He did, however, know where they were going to face Varl—or Gom Pyek, whatever the spirit was calling himself—for the last time. Either they went down, or he did. And it was going to happen in the dungeon, in just a matter of days now.

He needed to be ready with at least some potions. He'd worked through most of his previous supply.

First, he crafted vials for them. There was no reason he had to keep using his basic vials, especially not when he could create arcane glass now.

For the first few days, he worked on just vials. With the last of his steelglass supply, he hammered out and shaped ten glass tubes.

They weren't going to be as powerful as the Serpent's Demijohn, considering their size. Three of them didn't come out magical at all. The rest, though, he did give a snake-like motif. Instead of rounded bottoms, he hammered out flat bottoms for them, like they were tall and skinny shot glasses, and etched snaking, swirling markings along their sides.

When he finally completed them, using the same Field-shifting, almost begging strategy, he ended up with seven arcane vials.

The Seven Cylinders (High-Silver)

A set of seven steelglass containers crafted by plucking the cords of fate. When all seven are full, their activation condition triggers. For each vial that is depleted after this condition is met, the potion effects in the remaining vials increase in potency, until all seven are used. Their tier will not increase.

This effect is doubled for poisonous potions.

[By crafting an item of significance, you have increased your mana. Advancement progress: 93.9%]

That'd be useful enough. Once they cooled, Wulf brought them across from his forge pendant to his main, time-altering storage pendant—where he kept his alchemy lab. He slotted all ten vials into his alchemy rack, then stared at them for a few seconds. He needed to make a High-Gold potion. If he could make a High-Gold potion in these, then he could make a Ruby-tier potion if he used the Serpent's Demijohn.

But he wasn't about to fill the Demijohn yet. Since he had a time-altering construct, he could wait until he knew exactly what he needed in the heat of battle.

The better question was if he could survive ingesting a Ruby potion as a Bronze—soon to be Iron.

He'd deal with that as it came. Like with many things, the conventional wisdom of what you should do wasn't exactly the limit of what was possible.

He fired up his burn-box, then enhanced its flame with some of the magmamarrow they'd acquired from their first dungeon run. The phoenix dust already burned bright and hot, but it was a surface level heat. The magmamarrow gave heat a different quality. Aside from expanding the range, it made it deeper and more penetrating.

But the steelglass could handle it.

Wulf selected the strongest plants from his collection. The best plant he had was a borichasprout clipping—now grown into a full bush—from the late King Athem. They were a somewhat rare plant from this continent, with broad, magenta leaves and a central stalk that bloomed with a green flower late in the summer. Apparently, it was edible, and lots of nobility served the flower petals and the sprouts on meals. This one was a Low-Silver, which was about as high as you could get them without a specialized growing environment.

Maybe distilleries and the Alchemists of old would've needed massive greenhouses to raise a borichasprout higher naturally, but Wulf didn't need any of that. He could use alchemy, not gardening.

First, he pruned one leaf, then laid it out on his counter and minced it with his scissors, then stuffed the mince into the bottoms of the vials. Next came a little vinegar.

He added yet another problem to his list of problems for the future: eventually, vinegar wasn't going to be strong enough to create tinctures, and already, the vinegar was likely one of the components holding his potions back.

But it would work well enough for now. Perhaps he could study his transmutation tables a little more, and see if there was any easily available arcane variant of vinegar to make.

After you're done this, he promised himself.

He let the vinegar sit, slowly bubbling and doing its job, and left the storage pendant sealed as he went about his day.

As he went about his day, attending classes and studying, he assessed their progress. Irmond had advanced to Middle-Bronze as well throughout their missions, and Seith made the same leap after helping Dr. Blyke repair an internal system of the Wraith.

It put them all at the same tier, which was what Wulf needed, though he was certain both he and Kalee were close to advancing. Kalee assured him that a trip through the dungeon would be enough.

Wulf had to consider his own advancement. He was going to hit High-Bronze this afternoon, and then he'd need the help of either the resources in the dungeon, or the challenges he faced (which would inspire certain potions) to advance.

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He could do it, but they'd all be cutting it incredibly close. After the dungeon dive, it was final exam season. The potential Oronith crews of their generation would be selected. Even though it was only second year, they had to have some preliminary ideas, and start teaching their crews to bond with their Oroniths.

Which led to yet another problem: Wraith was still in a coma, and Wulf couldn't begin any of that if he didn't figure out how to get it out of a coma.

He couldn't do that now, though.

When he returned to his dorm room that evening, it'd been about eight hours since he had begun the tinctures. They'd be a decent quality, but since the base plant itself was a Low-Silver, it was taking longer than normal. It was stronger than a regular plant, and resisting the dissolving effect of the vinegar, even if Wulf had cut it into tiny pieces.

Given time, it would work. He had two options. Feed partial tiny bits of chaos into the vinegar, which would still take hours of care and attention, or speed up time.

Without entering the pendant, he simply joined both halves of the device, then let it sit for a few minutes. He watched the storm core carefully, trying to gauge if he was draining anything. The core itself seemed to begin swirling less intensely when he drew on it for minutes at a time, which became hours—even days—within the pendant. Steam poured out of the pendant's opening, likely from all the evaporating water from the plants.

The swirling clouds of the core shrank to about half their original size. Not consumed, just…compressed.

When Wulf disconnected both halves, the clouds sprang back to their original position. They weren't used up, but it did put a time limit on how long Wulf could run the construct. If he left it together, he supposed it would get so compressed that it would eventually destroy the core.

But when he entered again and assessed the tinctures, it had worked. The heat from the burn-box had evaporated much of the liquid, leaving behind a syrupy, bright magenta slurry that looked toxic and probably tasted awful.

If he just left it, without letting his main Class ability take effect, then he would end up with a Toughness potion, enhancing how much damage he could take. It'd be useful, but he wanted to push the tier.

He filled the rest of the potion vials with the last of his saved mana-water from the semester, then stirred them, mixing in the tinctures. With careful straining, he scooped out any non-active plant debris, and assessed the quality.

He'd raised it to High-Silver already. A good start.

With the help of the burn-box, he boiled the tinctures, condensing, combining, and thickening the potions once more. He stirred, too, destroying bubbles and ensuring that each potion maintained the same concentration and thickness. Holding a stir-stick in each hand, he shifted between all ten vials, moving as quickly as he could. (Though, he had to admit, he favoured his seven enhanced vials.)

Finally, when he started to feel the Field tingling, he stopped stirring. They were ready. He'd listened to the liquids, stirring them as they naturally wanted, feeling the thrum of the ingredients. For the three vials not a part of his Seven Cylinders set, he stoppered them without completing them. He was going to need to activate golems at some point, which he would need mana for.

Then he drank the last of his previous potions, a poisonous but easy-to-resist potion from his Serpent's Demijohn. The aura activated, and he pushed a wave of mana into the potions, fuelling them.

When he assessed them, they were all High-Gold.

Not quite Ruby, not yet, but he was getting there. All seven potions had a different effect. Four were poisonous, with effects that would stop hearts, melt organs, or cause permanent nerve damage. One attacked a person's mana system itself, shredding their core if they didn't have enough resistance.

All nasty stuff. All stuff he was pretty sure he couldn't resist yet, and he'd save for his enemies.

There was also a speed potion, a strength potion, and a resistance-enhancing potion, all of which would be very useful.

Once they cooled, he stoppered them and stuck them in his pockets.

Finally, he checked his sheet, assessing it. It read:

[By potions, you have increased your mana. Advancement progress: 106.4%]

[You have increased your Tier to High-Bronze.]

[You may upgrade two Marks.]

That, however, he was going to save for later. They were going up against Gom Pyek, and however powerful that demon spirit was, Wulf needed all the surprise he could get. If he could upgrade a Mark in the middle of the fight, it could give him just the edge he needed. And he was going to need every edge.

~ ~ ~

Later that week, during Dr. Arnau's office hours, he met her. There was no one else outside the office, and Wulf was the only other person inside.

"Is it something dangerous?" she asked. "Should you close the door? We don't know who might be listening."

"No," Wulf said. "I just wanted to ask you about mountain spirits. I…have no idea how to awaken the Wraith."

"I'm afraid that's a difficult task," she said. "It was harder than I thought it would be, and I had to return back to my original dissertation to study it."

"What's wrong?"

"Simply put, the Wraith has been asleep for nearly four thousand years. A mountain spirit can live that long, of course, but it would need to eat—normally. Some spirits start by going into torpor, then hibernation entirely. Not even immense distress could wake it. Clearly, losing a hand wasn't enough to drag it out of its slumber."

Wulf shook his head. "Sorry about that."

"I've heard you're preparing a replacement."

"We…don't really have any ideas of how that would actually work," he said. "It seems like there's some residual mana from the original Viridian golem holding it together, but I don't see how we're supposed to join it with the Wraith."

"And there was my suggestion," Arnau said. "Some spirits are more interested in protecting and building than destroying. The storm spirit we encountered on the crossing was the same way. You'll find that, though they do look after their own safety and can feel fear, they also have an element of striving."

"The storm spirit seemed…almost like it was jealous of us. It respected us, but it appreciated that I had something to fight for."

"Precisely," Arnau said. "Use the dream-link, perhaps. Expand the Wraith's mana channels, try to lock into it with your own power, and try to reach out to the hand as you attach it. You're building something. You need to build something. The Wraith will respond to that much better than pain or fear."

"Thank you for the suggestions, ma'am," Wulf said. "I'll get to work on that."