Fate Alchemist - A Regression Academy LitRPG

As the rest of the semester flew past, Wulf and the others spent their evenings working with the insect draugr's chainmail.

They plucked off tiny rings. Most were about the size of a bracelet, but there were some smaller (like those they used for Kalee's staff) and some larger, which they discarded. They needed the ones appropriately sized to be a storage pendant.

As Seith and Kalee had explained, "All rune-lines have a basic form that's common across every construct. You always start with the same set of runes, then add on to it. We're looking for ones that don't have too many additions. The effect is to create a device that the Field thinks is lighter than normal, but some have less runes than others. We're going to need to strip those off, so we can add our own modifications."

If they'd had to script all the runes by hand, it would've taken ages, but the chainmail gave them a headstart.

They set up a production line. Irmond climbed the hanging sheet of chainmail, hunting for suitable links and breaking them off. He tossed them down to Wulf.

Wulf then dipped them in a vat of solvent he'd created. It had taken time to get enough metal-softening solvent—relying on random potions—and since he nearly had ten flasks worth of it in a hastily-forged steelglass cauldron, it had numerous poisonous side effects.

It'd taken nearly three days of nothing but crafting potions and attending lectures. Now, when he assessed the cauldron with the Field, it read:

Assorted Metal Softeners (Low-Iron Quality)

Weakens any metal dipped in it, as long as the object has low resistance to potion effects. Metal under this effect can be bent and manipulated like clay.

Contains numerous Low-Iron poisons. Do not ingest.

The last line made Wulf chuckle. He was pretty sure the Field didn't care if he ingested it, and he wasn't exactly sure why there was a warning label on it. Maybe he'd been thinking about how dangerous it would be when he mixed all the potions together.

It also raised a few questions of his own, though. For one, apparently metals had their own resistance rating. He'd consulted his textbooks, and apparently, the Field determined a substance's resistance to arcane tampering based on how much order it had. A high concentration of chaos would achieve the same effect, though.

Adding more poison to something chaotic just made it more chaotic, and likely wouldn't tip the scales too much in either direction.

But then there was the second problem: where did the solvents come from? Wulf made them with Alchemy, but the Academy had their own source of solvents, and if they shunned alchemy, how were they supposed to get them?

The longer he thought about it, though, the more the answer became obvious. There were creatures that contained solvents naturally. The widowlob, for example. While its venom wasn't a solvent like this, it was destructive in its own right. There were plenty of creatures with acidic bile.

He'd be willing to bet that most came from creatures in dungeons. Wandering Artificers and their parties would gather them as loot in dungeons, and either they would use it or sell it.

For a moment, Wulf considered that he could have used Alchemy to build an economic powerhouse. He could've created his own guild to rival the Orichalcums.

It sounded somewhat fun, but impractical on this timescale. Maybe that was a job for another time. A job for the future.

Besides, punching things was easier than selling things.

His job in the production line became dipping the rings in the solvent, shaping them all to a consistent size, then passing them off to Kalee. She used a brush to smooth out the other runes, the ones they didn't need, then handed it off to Seith, who etched the new runes they needed to turn it into a storage pendant.

Finally, at the end of the production line, Wulf used [Deadline] to end the potion effect immediately, hardening the rings back into a solid object.

They caught a few intrigued stares from the other people in the hangar. "Why could they need so many storage pendants?" Wulf caught someone asking.

The next day, he offered to sell them to anyone who walked past, and the suspicions dried up immediately. They were just some students trying to make some extra money, and that weird alchemist kid was helping them. But he wasn't very high in the school rankings, and even though he was doing well in the tournament, he wasn't anywhere near the top.

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At least, that was what he gathered from extending his senses and listening in on their whispered conversations.

No one took him up on the offer, and it was a good thing. If he finished them right now, they'd probably be at best Middle-Iron. But they weren't even finished. The Field knew they weren't making a bunch of tiny storage pendants. It didn't mark anything as finished.

"Sooo…" Seith began one night. "What do we actually plan on storing in here, anyway? I assume you're going to try to link them into one big construct, right?"

"Yeah," Wulf replied. "I have a few ideas. One: the Academy has a lot of treasures. They have mana-water, they have…basically any supply you could dream of. I don't know where they keep it, and probably not on campus. If worst comes to worst, we steal that. And we'll have a place to put whatever we steal from them."

"But wouldn't most of that stuff be a waste?" Kalee asked. "It wouldn't be tuned to us. It wouldn't be nearly as good as anything we could make ourselves. At best, we could sell it, but even then, we really don't need to buy much."

"That's why it's a last resort," Wulf replied. "Though having lots of money could definitely help us get our way in the world—but that's assuming people would be willing to buy stuff stolen from the Academy, and I don't think they would."

"What's the first resort, then?" Irmond asked.

"We copy the Academy's codex," Wulf said. "I have the crystals, and they'll take some work, but I think I could copy their codex if we needed. And we'd have some place to store it."

"But you don't have the infrastructure to access…any of that information," Seith countered.

"More importantly, he doesn't just have a spare Messenger laying around," Irmond added.

"I'm working on those things," Wulf muttered. "Still a work in progress. If it doesn't work out, though, we can still build a massive storage array inside Wraith."

~ ~ ~

The last day before exam break, Wulf hit ninety-nine point nine nine percent advancement progress while crafting a batch of potions. He didn't feel much, only that there was something inside him that wasn't ready to push beyond the barrier.

It would've been a natural barrier to regular wizards before the Field existed, too. It was an itch in the back of his mind, telling him that there was something missing before he could make it to gold. But he couldn't put his finger on it.

He would never have figured it out without the Academy. Without them giving him thousands of years of trial and error condensed into one single teaching.

But he still had to find those spirits.

It was a problem for later. Wulf descended down to Dr. Tallari's workshop, hoping to ask a question about an assignment for a different class. Dr. Tallari, however, should've had an innate knowledge of the resonance of crystals and crystal structures, and should've been able to help Wulf.

But when he arrived at the workshop, Dr. Tallari was nowhere to be found. Wulf ran over to Mantri and checked the Messenger quickly. The cat was still alive, but still asleep. Wulf ran a hand over Mantri's head. There was a soft rumble, like the cat was purring, but nothing else. Wulf sighed, then continued on.

He took the maintenance hallway, travelling deep beneath the academy, until he reached the main codex storage hall. Two non-Ascendant guards blocked the hallway, crossing their halberds to stop anyone from passing between them.

Raised voices and frustrated shouting seeped out from the room beyond. Dr. Tallari was yelling at someone, but Wulf couldn't tell who, and he wasn't paying close enough attention to decipher what the professor was saying. Guards marched past, their red gambesons bright in the torchlight, and a few other men in orange robes, lamellar armour, and turbans stood alongside the wall. On the other side, Ascendants in chainmail armour, holding spears and swords. Judging by their arcane presence, they were Irons and Silvers. And by their attire, they were guildies—from the Orichalcums.

"What's going on?" Wulf asked the guards.

"Sorry," said one of the non-Ascendant guards who blocked the hallway. "You'll have to turn back."

"I just came to see Dr. Tallari," Wulf said.

"He is preoccupied—hey!"

Before the guard could finish, Wulf pushed aside their halberds and rushed past. He sprinted into the room beyond. An ascendant in a white coat was chiselling jagged, destructive lines through the runes of the codex crystals on one shelf. They weren't runes—he was destroying the runes that were already there, deactivating parts of the codex.

"You can't do this!" Dr. Tallari shouted. "You're cutting centuries of data out of the codex? And for what?"

The man tried to run over, but Dr. Blyke held him back. "Professor, don't." What was he doing here? He should've been in the hangar. "I tried to stop them, but…"

And then there was Dr. Long. One of the combat instructors. He held a hand out toward Dr. Tallari. "If you do not shut it, I will remove you from the premises. The Orichalcums have assigned us a task."

Wulf ran over to the professor. Dr. Blyke tried to shoo him away, but Wulf whispered, "Professor? What's going on? What are they doing?"

"They're destroying any mention of Alchemy. All of it, gone. Wiped out in the blink of an eye."

"No offense, professor," Wulf whispered, "but there weren't too many good alchemy resources in this codex to begin with."

"It's the principle of it!" Dr. Tallari roared. "This device stores all information, not just the information the guilds deem suitable for our eyes!"

"Wulf…" Dr. Blyke whispered. "Take Dr. Tallari out of here. I'll make sure their Artificers don't overstep their bounds and only remove mentions of alchemy."

"Yes, sir," Wulf whispered. "Come on, sir. There's nothing more we can do."