Fate Alchemist - A Regression Academy LitRPG

After talking with Athllas, Wulf ran to the audience stands to regroup with Irmond, Seith, and Kalee. Seith wasn't going to be participating in the combined tournament this year or the next, but Irmond and Kalee still were. Their fights just weren't taking place today.

He settled down in the audience stands beside them, looking out over the arena below. The shattered pane at the center of the skylight still leaked, but from down here, the water was a barely noticeable mist. Like the air had become slightly more humid. There was no potion left in it.

When Wulf arrived, though, Irmond wasn't back yet.

"Is he alright?" Wulf whispered when he sat down beside Kalee.

"He'll be fine," she replied. "He'd found a perch in the maintenance rafters to help you out. He'll be down in a moment—I really don't think anyone's even noticed, and by the time they do, the blame will be off our shoulders."

Wulf watched as they raked the sand and cleared out the arena for the High Bracket, tapping his foot with anticipation. There weren't too many fights taking place tonight, but he had a suspicion about the next fight…

Two contestants stepped out into the arena. One was a Ranger who'd taken on a rare lightning aspect, but he wasn't too interested in that. The other was a Pilot with an advanced sandstone aspect—he'd already managed to refine his aspect to a specific type of stone, even being a Middle-Silver.

That tier was impressive by itself, for a third year. There were a few explanations, of course. A wealthy family with a dedicated mana-water supply, and more likely than not, he was the heir to a guild, with access to a reserved family dungeon.

Vae Kella announced, "For our next round, we have Lirrim Ills, an independent, guildless Ranger, with a respectable Low-Iron ranking. In past years, he's ranked in the top eight of the High Bracket, and this year, he's aiming for first. Will his lightning-aspect be enough to carry him through the fight?"

The crowd began muttering skeptically. The odds weren't looking good for Lirrim.

"And in the center of the arena, we have the reigning champion, Leo Constel, with what looks like a newly-made golem to match his specially refined aspect." The man needed no other introduction; the crowd began cheering and clapping immediately after. "Wingmaster Terrence must be proud of his current enforcer!"

Leo raised his pike to the sky, which looked more like a spear in his golem's hands, before performing a cocky backflip in his golem.

He wasn't anywhere as heavy as other golem pilots, even though he definitely looked bulky. His new golem had the head of a lion, but a body carved to look like armour. A red fabric cloak trailed behind him, buoyed by currents of rushing sand.

The odds were listed as fifty to one against Lirrim. For this fight, Wulf believed it, but he held out hope that Lirrim would somehow embarrass Terrence's enforcer.

Surely, Leo Constel was going to be Terrence's chosen champion to fight Wulf.

The fight began. Lirrim retreated, or he tried to. He made it three steps back before tendrils of sand reached up and wrapped around his arms, holding him in place. He waved his bow side-to-side to dispel them, and sent bolts of lightning arcing through them, turning them to glass pellets.

But more came, overwhelming him. He didn't even get an arrow off.

Leo charged forward, making a fist, not even deigning to use his pike. He punched the Ranger square in the center of the chest with a stone-encased hand. Lirrim skidded back across the arena, the sand ripping up his back, and blood lurching out of his mouth.

Before he even came to a halt, Leo turned away and faced the crowd, holding his pike up. "Healer!" he shouted gleefully. "We'll need a healer!"

His voice boomed, probably enhanced by some sort of Mark or strength-enhancing skill, and echoed for the entire audience to hear.

"Alright," Wulf said. "Not a fan. Really not a fan."

But the crowd cheered, whooping and hollering, and Vae Kella shakily declared Leo as the victor.

"And this is the guy that Wulf got himself into a fight with," Kalee grumbled.

"It'll be fine," Wulf replied. "I've got time. The gap between Silver and Gold is wide, and I'll have time to catch up. We know well enough how hard it is to make the leap from Silver to Gold."

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Kalee breathed out a sigh. "Yeah. But something tells me he's going to accomplish it."

~ ~ ~

For the next few weeks, up until Reading Week of the first year, Wulf spent much of his free time in the king's library.

His main focus was on methods of building underwater, and if there was any way alchemy could help him. But his secondary focus was on the demons. There were a few books about them, which he skimmed through.

The demons had destroyed the world in his last life. They'd probably tried to do the same thing during the first demon wars, and Wulf needed to know how they'd done it.

Sure, he had time, in theory. But that was no reason to sit around until the very last minute. There was a chance the world's fate had been sealed decades in advance, and he needed to know how or why.

But on the topic of alchemy: he found a few solutions that he thought might work. Since they were entering the rainy season, there was plenty of time to try them out.

He left their dorm room window open most times, and tried different mixtures of grout, seeing how they reacted to the water. He needed something that didn't bind to water, but bound to stone, and didn't wash away when rain pelted it. At the same time, it had to harden and cure underwater.

Perhaps there was a material that ancient bricklayers had discovered, but he wasn't one of them. He spent days searching the transmutation tables, seeking substances that had the effect he need—and substances that wouldn't react with each other. If they reacted with each other and turned into something else, he'd lose any effect they had.

Then there was the problem of arcane effects. He was going to need to transmute some substances, and he needed to make sure that, even integrated into a powder or in a fluid solution, they would maintain their effect.

For water repellent, he chose his base fluid—an oily material called scalesyrup that you could transmute from wood, which happened to be the same material found within the whites of dragon eggs. They didn't have dragon eggs, but it only required five units of chaos and order each to transmute twenty pints.

Then, he'd mix in a stone-binding salt that, when dissolved into scalesyrup, acted as a glue between stone in any condition. Finally, he added a powder of a weak arcane stone, which suspended itself in the liquid and acted to cure and solidify grout when pressure was applied—as far as he could tell, and with his tests—it worked perfectly fine underwater.

With his test solution prepared, he hunted down Athllas as soon as they got back to classes after Reading Week and presented the solution. The only caveat was that Wulf needed lots of spirits if he was going to make this work. He needed something to draw the essences from, because they were going to need lots of grout. Even if the substances were relatively weak, they had to build a wall across the strait on both sides of the harbour.

"That can be arranged," Athllas said without hesitation. "We will have some in by the end of the week. How quickly can you begin working?"

"Tonight. I'll spend an hour in the evenings," Wulf said. "That should be enough to create a day's worth of supply, and I'll come back the next day."

"Understood." Athllas dipped his head. "Thank you."

"No problem. I'd rather keep the city protected, too."

True to his word, he travelled to the harbour construction zone every evening. Instead of taking a carriage through the packed downtown streets, though, he took the city's outer wall. It wasn't as direct, but with the ramparts mostly complete, it was faster than braving the city traffic.

And better yet, he didn't need a carriage. He simply ran.

He didn't find himself getting tired anymore. Working with the Star Hearts had enhanced his durability, which meant his legs weren't taking strain from the run, and he feet wouldn't blister, and the impact to his joints from running fast wasn't nearly as bad.

He had his speed enhancements, which helped, but strength also had a side-effect of increasing your speed. He blew past workers, careful not to interrupt their progress, and leapt over chasms that hadn't yet been finished.

The harbour construction zone was just a wharf, but the workers had taken it over for construction of the wall. Enormous mixing pots urns sat along the shore, filled with various liquids, and a back-up of bricks and brick-carrying ships waited in the harbour, each carrying massive stone blocks.

Wulf met Athllas at the foremen's tent, along with a couple construction overseers in vibrant orange gambesons and wide-brimmed helmets.

"The King tells me that you can help us," said one of the overseers. He was a non-Ascendant, and he held a clipboard with a long list of tasks to complete. Some of which looked very overdue.

"Yeah," Wulf said. "I—"

"They know," Athllas said. "I didn't tell them what you were, of course, and they don't know your name—I figured you'd like to keep it that way."

"You're the one the Black Pilgrim's been talking about, aren't you? An alchemist?" a different overseer asked.

"...Probably not?" Wulf tried. He didn't sound too sure.

The first overseer asked, "Is it true that you're a reincarnation of Panne?"

Wulf swallowed. "No. I'm not. I'm just here to help. Please, please…can we keep this quiet?"

"The others will find out soon enough," Athllas whispered. "We need to figure out who this Black Pilgrim is."

Wulf sighed. "You wouldn't happen to have any leads, would you?"

"I can send some spies looking, if it'd help."

"I'd appreciate that," Wulf said. "Now, I hear you guys brought in a load of spirits?"

"We caught them in the wilds earlier today," said a third overseer. "And we went to the fishmarket to see if the fishermen had caught any. There were plenty to choose from. We put them under a tarp so the other workers wouldn't see their cages and get antsy."

"Excellent," Wulf said. "Let's put them to use and get started."