Fate Alchemist - A Regression Academy LitRPG

The entire class seemed to lean forward slightly. Everyone in the room went silent. No more whispers, no more murmurs.

Dr. Konstant strode across the slightly raised platform at the front of the class, holding a walking stick. He wore a white gambeson, and had long black hair and pointed ears. For a professor, the attire he wore seemed mostly average. His rank badge displayed Low-Ruby, and he had affiliation to a small guild that Wulf couldn't identify. He must've known that he was bland though, because he always gave an extra flourish or two with his walking stick. It certainly wasn't a cane or a crutch to keep himself upright.

Dr. Konstant pointed his stick at the sheet of enchanted parchment behind him, tapped it, and said, "First slide, please."

His TA, a boy standing at the edge of the room, held a codex terminal. He fed mana to it, manipulating it without being an expert librarian, and causing the parchment to shift and change. Instead of a few large words displaying the lecture number, it depicted an Ascendant's core. A large sphere, the storage core, with a smaller sphere orbiting it.

Dr. Konstant said, "Your cores, by now, should all look like this."

Wulf's wasn't exactly the same. On the sheet, the main core was only about a quarter of the diameter of the storage core. His was probably a sixteenth, just judging by his mental perception of it.

His main core hadn't shrank, but his storage core was so massive that, in comparison, it dwarfed his main core. If they had a physical volume, the storage core would probably be leaking outside his body. But they didn't.

"Your goal is to tie them together," Dr. Konstant said. "Return them back to one."

Wulf tilted his head. Wasn't the whole point of the storage core to be separate?

"Don't worry," Dr. Konstant continued, as if reading Wulf's thoughts. "You will not lose any storage capacity, and your cores have become so advanced and powerful by the time that you reach Gold that your previous advancement will be locked in. You will not be able to draw enough mana to lower your tier, because it will become part of the arcane organ.

"How, you must be wondering?" Dr. Konstant flashed them all a massive grin. He must've done this lecture hundreds of times, but he seemed to enjoy it much more than any other lecture he'd taught. "That's the real trick of the advancement to Gold, and why so many people struggle to get past it. You need some extra matter. You need to bind a spirit to your core."

Wulf raised his eyebrows, then glanced over at the others. Kalee didn't seem nearly as shocked, but Irmond and Seith's mouths gaped.

"There's a bridge here, between your two cores," Dr. Konstant said. "If you concentrate closely and intensely, you may identify strands of arcane matter beginning to bind them. But as Ascendants, we aren't naturally skilled at this process, and our bodies do not create arcane matter readily.

"Spirits, however, are made up entirely of it. They are a combination of fundamental essences, chaos and order, but instead of placed atop the foundation of real matter—perhaps you have heard of this notion, of Primal Material, which is the fundamental foundation of all the matter you interact with in the physical world. Arcane Material is a similar foundation for spirits' bodies, and for your core. We cannot explain why, but the Field ensures that some people are born with enough of it to eventually form a core when you turn eighteen—those lucky few become Ascendants."

Wulf folded his fingers together. How was it that they could build a core, then? If their bodies only had a set amount of Arcane Material, how was it that he could expand his storage core at all?

But at least he kept his mouth shut, because Dr. Konstant kept speaking, kept explaining.

"Arcane Material naturally accumulates in your body. There's a bit in mana water when you drink it, and some animals have very tiny amounts. But the amount you absorb over your life is never enough to bridge the gap between Silver and Gold, even if you ate twice as much food as a normal man, or drank enough mana-water to completely dilute your advancement and your connection to the Field."

Which was why they needed the spirits.

"Most of you will end up consuming the spirit. That is natural. That is, in fact, normal. You'll find a mindless spirit at Silver tier. You'll defeat it, and you'll draw in its Arcane Material with an absorption technique I will show you in the following lectures. With that material, you'll cement the link between your cores, then, like two drops of water touching each other, they will reach a critical mass, and they'll be drawn together effortlessly, combining into a single core. Since your advancement to the higher tiers has little to do with how much mana you gather, it won't matter that your cores have combined."

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Wulf knew there was something else Dr. Konstant needed to say. There was still plenty of time left in the lecture…

"But for the lucky few of you, you will earn a Spiritmark." He stared out at the class with intensity, and his eyes flared bright blue. Fire burned behind his pupils, and a mane of arcane fire erupted in his veins, illuminating a pattern similar to the Orichalcum with turban—except only temporarily. It was bright enough to illuminate the first few rows of students in the lecture theatre.

"Most of us with a Spiritmark can choose whether we display it or not," Dr. Konstant continued. He reined his own back in, and the light faded. "I drew in a Litterland fire spirit. It was a difficult process. The spirit was much stronger than me—at the time, it was a ruby, and it was beginning to form a mind of its own. It was almost too late, but I was determined. Remember, spirits may not have the capacity to think and feel like we do, but they do have the capacity to respect. If they do not respect you, you'll never form a willing bond with one."

"You'd think that they wouldn't want to form any sort of bond at all…" Wulf muttered. "Given how it seems to destroy them."

"Remember," Dr. Konstant began. If he'd heard Wulf, he gave no sign that he did. "Remember that spirits want to become like us. They wish to share in our feeling, in our impulses, in our desires and our struggles.

"It is like they are on the cusp of something, but they never quite make it, and they are quite internally tortured because of it. It makes most of them hostile when they're weak, and it makes it possible to negotiate with them when they're stronger. If you find a strong spirit, it allows you to bond with one, instead of destroying it for its matter.

"I must stress, however: the Spiritmark is rare. There are very few Ruby-tier spirits in the world, and anything below Ruby doesn't have the intelligence to form a proper bond, to join your core and share in your adventure. You will be forced to dominate the will of a Gold-tier Spirit, and while I won't say it is natural, it is certainly common. Of our last generation of Oronith crews, only two of them had Spiritmarks."

"So that all but guarantees you two are getting Spiritmarks, then," Irmond whispered to Wulf and Kalee.

Wulf shrugged. "I…yeah. I supposed we will."

Dr. Konstant hadn't said it, and probably for a reason—no need to make everyone in the class extremely competitive—but there was no way that you could bond with a stronger Spirit and not become stronger because of it.

"Where do you think we're going to even find a Ruby-tier spirit?" Kalee whispered incredulously. "Wulf, I know you're ambitious, but that seems impossible."

"That sounds like a challenge to me," he replied. Then, he looked back at Seith and Irmond. "And you guys. Don't think that we're not going to do our best for you two, either. If we can get Spiritmarks for you two as well, then that's all the better."

Irmond smiled appreciatively, and Seith nodded, before saying, "Yeah, but don't wait on me. I'd understand if you didn't waste your time."

Wulf only shook his head. He knew Seith was just being self-deprecating to distract from the notion of someone else helping. But there was value to raising up a team, and if he could find a Ruby-tier spirit from each of them, then that was what he'd do.

"But what if some things just aren't possible?" Kalee asked. "We don't have all the time in the world."

"We'll make do," Wulf replied. "We're going to need everything we have if we want to beat that demon spirit."

Dr. Konstant cleared his throat. The entire class had begun to murmur, and it was starting to get overwhelming. Quickly, everyone quieted down.

"I'm not our resident spirits expert," he continued. "In the coming weeks, Dr. Arnau will come as a guest lecturer to give us a few more details on the types of spirits and solutions for completing your core. And remember: you will not be able to advance to Gold until you have reached ninety-nine point nine nine percent advancement progress. You'll still need to accumulate as much mana as you can—a regular advancement's worth."

~ ~ ~

Over the next few weeks, Wulf attended his lectures dutifully, but part of him suspected something was being left out.

All the Orichalcums must've had Spiritmarks, whether they showed them or not. There must have been a guaranteed way to form Spiritmark. The Academy just wouldn't say—probably because the spirits were rare, and they didn't want everyone trying and consuming all the good spirits.

The reality was that there were far more Ascendants than high-tier spirits. Not everyone could get one.

In fact, lots of Ascendants got stuck at High-Silver due to personal failings, too. The technique to intake a spirit's Arcane Matter required a strong will and a stronger purpose. You had to overwhelm the spirit, or it'd fight back. If it went wrong, it'd kill you.

Then, if you were shooting for a Spiritmark, the same thing applied. If you let it, you would lose your mind to the spirit. Its own will would overwhelm yours, and you would be consumed by it instead.

But Wulf had a challenge. He wasn't backing down from it.