Fate Alchemist - A Regression Academy LitRPG

Wulf spent his next mornings and evenings on alchemy. He kept his head down, spent as much time in his storage pendants as he could, and worked the hardest he ever had.

Whether this was truly his heart's desire, whether he was working toward what he actually desired, he couldn't say. It was part of what he wanted, sure, to protect and stop the world he knew from ending.

He did know that the Wulf of forty-one years ago wouldn't have dared steal an Oronith. The younger version of him might have wanted the adventure, but he wouldn't have done it.

The Wulf of today was willing to make the leap. And afterward, he'd just have to keep making leaps, until they did what they had to.

For the first phase of his plan, he made an invisibility potion. First, he ventured into the eastern plains, an hours' walk from the Academy, where the iceshrubs would be budding, and snatched up enough buds to fill his pockets. He mashed them into a pulp, then extracted their essences in a tincture and blocked their transmutation with a backward catalyst. By evening on the first day, he'd created a Low-Copper invisibility potion. It'd work on anyone who hadn't developed their perception abilities at all, or anyone who wasn't paying close attention.

He took stock of his entire potion inventory: six basic poison potions that caused nausea or blindness or a common cold, his splatter potion, a luck potion, and two Yeti's Might potions. Enough potions to fight with, but he needed one more.

He gathered up the ingredients from the High-Iron yeti. He only had enough to create one of his best potions yet, and he'd need that in the coming days.

Using everything he knew, he melted the ice shards into mana-water, he extracted the yeti hairs into a sickly gray tincture, and he mixed and boiled them down into a Middle-Silver Tier juice.

He consumed his luck potion to feed his potion the aura, but he wanted the proper yeti potion, so he used a catalyst-slip in reverse, and attached it just in time to stop the potion from transmuting.

When the potion finished, the Field identified it as:

Yeti's Authority Potion (High-Silver Quality)

Greatly increases user's strength and speed, grants immunity to cold, and creates an aura of fear around you in anyone lower in rank than this potion. Active for a half-hour.

[By crafting a potion, you have increased your mana. Advancement progress: 4%]

Wulf nodded in satisfaction, and kept it in his flask. He hadn't had time to custom make a flask for it, so he knew there was still room to improve, but he'd need more ingredients when the time came.

For now, he needed more constructs—both for himself, and for the dream sockets. He knew he'd be putting Seith on a tight timer, but if he could get her the material she needed, hopefully she could still produce something in time for him.

Besides, he needed to try out his new transmutation Skill.

He gathered up a bunch of rusty screws, nails, and other metal scraps, then melted them in his crucible and poured them into a packed-sand mould that he roughly hoped was ingot-sized. It was low-quality iron, and of course, it didn't register with the Field.

As soon as it was cool enough to touch, he placed it on the desk, then withdrew a poisonous potion.

Targeting the poisonous potion in his mind, he triggered [Chaotic Alteration]. He wasn't sure what was supposed to happen, but the Field tingled on the surface of his hand.

Then the potion changed colour. First, it became an opaque black, and with every second, it simmered down, until there was a little sliver at the bottom of the vial. But after a few more seconds, the liquid turned a dark blue, with white, starry pinpricks and magenta swirls. It had no depth, and it made his mind fuzzy the longer he looked at it.

But…if he was looking at this right, he'd just created a sliver of Primal Matter at the bottom of the vial. He stoppered it with his free hand as quickly as he could, but it kept shrinking, until there was only a tiny droplet at the bottom. In an instant, it froze, and sprang up into a tiny crystal of about the same volume. It looked like it had no depth, but when he turned it, it had three dimensions. It was a tiny window into space.

When he shook the vial around, the crystal made no noise. Nothing.

But he had other concerns other than a crumb-sized crystal of Primal Material. Chaos swirled in the palm of his left hand. He turned his palm up, dreading what he'd see, but again, his mind barely understood. A tiny hurricane swirled above the palm of his hand, with no colour, but wherever it touched, it turned the air into broken glass, almost like a kaleidoscope.

And it was starting to sting.

Not knowing how else to transfer it, he slammed his hand down onto the top of his homemade iron ingot, willing the chaotic energy of the poison potion into the metal.

With a pop, the metal shifted, and the chaotic energy transferred from his hand to the steel.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

He reached for his alchemy textbook and flipped it open to the page with all the alchemy tables and charts. According to the IRON chart, a base iron ingot (about one pound) could be transmuted into seven different substances by adding chaos, and two different substances by adding order. On the order side, it ended at lead, and on the chaotic side, it ended at raw, pure sodium, but not all were proper elements.

There were some intermediaries which were, in fact, arcane substances.

Adding 'one unit of chaos' would lead to quiversteel: a substance known for its vibration-enhancing properties. The final, strongest arcane intermediary on the chaotic side, which required near a thousand units of chaotic energy, was titanbone. If you added too much, it'd transmute too far and become sodium, and not enough, and it'd stay as a weaker 'starskel'.

The textbook stated: It is difficult to know how much a unit of chaos or order is, but as an alchemist practices, they will learn to feel the different amounts of material they are employing. However, one unit of chaos is roughly equivalent to the chaotic energy from burning a single tree.

Given that the poison potion had been Low-Copper…well, it felt roughly equivalent to the strength of a burning tree.

He picked up the ingot of quiversteel. It was slightly shinier, and it registered with the Field now:

Quiversteel Ingot (Low-Coal Quality)

A garbage ingot repurposed into a tool by a determined alchemist. Enhances all vibrations it receives.

Wulf picked it up and carried it to the common room, where the others agreed that they could be found if he needed them. Of course, they weren't the only ones in the common room, so Wulf motioned to Seith, beckoning her to the door. She stood up from the couch that she, Kalee, and Irmond had been sharing, and walked over.

As soon as she was out of earshot and sight of anyone else in the common room, Wulf placed the ingot in her hand. "Would you be able to make a mana absorption construct out of this?"

"Where did you get this?" she whispered. "Did you steal this from the artificers' labs, Wulf? No…it's not neat enough to be an academy supply, not rigid enough."

"Not this time," he agreed. "I made it."

"Made it? You don't make arcane metals out of nothing."

He pointed his thumb at himself. "Alchemist."

Shaking her head, Seith tossed the ingot from hand-to-hand, testing its weight. "Yeah, I think I can make something out of this. Give me until tomorrow morning. I'll get you a storage construct, and two basic dream sockets."

"Only one dream socket," he reminded her. "Kalee is a Mage, and needs regular mana sockets. You have schematics for those?"

She nodded. "In our textbook. Good luck."

They had one more day to prepare, and he could spend the day tomorrow expanding and drawing mana into his storage core. By now, with all his practice, his storage core was nearly as large as a Bronze's main core would be, and about twice the size of his regular Coal core.

But of course, Wulf didn't want to rely on an Artificer to make all his personal equipment. Earning constructs was one thing, but he planned to make his own weapons and armour.

The next day, in the morning, he practiced creating Primal Material. He took blocks of scrap wood from outside, and, given they were a raw material, and they were weak and didn't register with the Field, he could draw the chaos right out of them without much effort. But, the longer he held the little swirling maelstroms of chaotic energy in the palm of his hand, the more it etched his skin and…changed things. The creases on his hand changed orientation, and some disappeared altogether. Calluses would probably form to prevent that, but for the moment, he was just earning blisters.

An ingot-sized block of wood condensed down into barely a flake of Primal Material, but he stored it all in the same vial. It wasn't nearly enough to use in a Skill—apparently, some complex transmutations needed Primal Material as an ingredient. But he'd keep producing it.

He added the chaos he extracted to a different block of wood. One unit of chaos was enough to turn it to arcane spongewood, and another two units converted it to a brick of compact loam.

He then tried drawing chaos from his plants. He picked two sacrificial orcweed plants. They condensed down into slightly larger droplets of Primal Material, being arcane plants, and each netted him two units of chaos. He turned the block of wood into whitewood, an ivory-like arcane substance, and then finally, into coal.

When he had half a vial of Primal Material crystals, he dumped them out onto the table, onto a sheet of steelglass. Glass was resistant to the hungry, aspect-devouring effects of the Primal Material.

According to the textbook, some weapons in the ancient era had been made directly out of Primal Material, and though he'd never seen one, he could always try. The crystals were hard to the touch, but in his crucible, they sintered together into a lump of void, a slightly larger window into space. Using steelglass, he hammered them into a crude dart—it was all he could muster.

With his bare fingers, he tried touching it. It tingled, trying to tug aspects out of his skin, but it was slow. He could hold it for a while before it'd do any damage.

It was liquids and dusts that you had to watch out for. Primal Material drew aspects out of powder much easier than a solid lump of stone.

Then…he tried throwing the dart. It was heavy, about twice as heavy as it would have been if it'd been made of steel, and when the sharp tip bit into the dorm wall, it sank a few inches into the stone, creating dust. Immediately, it consumed the dust. Veins of disturbance spread from the impact point, trying to implode the brick, and Wulf lunged forward.

He snatched up the dart before it could do any more damage, but a clump of weakened material still crumbled out of the stone. He shifted his paper calendar up the wall to hide the impact point and winced.

If that dart broke skin, he didn't want to know what it'd do, trying to absorb the aspects of blood. He tucked it into the glass vial to keep it safe, then, for experiment's sake, spat on it.

Instantly, it absorbed the spit. Liquid seemed to interact with Primal Material well, as well as if it penetrated deep into a substance. A slice of the dart crumbled off the side, turning to some sort of real-matter dust, before bursting into flame and disappearing.

"Keep that safe," he muttered, then sealed it up with a cork stopper.

A few minutes later, Seith arrived carrying an armful of equipment. She silently handed it to Wulf, and he nodded his thanks.

Inactive Arcane Construct: Mana Tablet (Middle-Bronze Quality)

Stores mana for up to two months. Maximum storage: four mana stipends.

Creator's note: Just figure it out.

"Thanks," he whispered.

She dipped her head, then set off back down the hallway.

Now, Wulf only had twenty-four hours to keep gathering mana, expanding his core, and prepare himself to pilot an Oronith, and there was still quite the checklist to tick off.