Fate Alchemist - A Regression Academy LitRPG

Wulf turned around in the cockpit, taking stock of their situation. "Anyone get any Marks?"

"We're still in battle, according to the Field," Kalee said. "It must've registered Umoch as a contender in our little squabble with the fiends."

Wulf scowled. The boy was literally throwing in his lot with the demons just because of a petty squabble.

He rolled his shoulder. It stung where the harness had caught him, but it still worked, and he could still move the rest of his golem. He pulled his scissors off his back. "I'll deal with Umoch if you guys can keep the demons off me."

By now, Seith and Irmond had dropped in through the cockpit's back hatch, and they ran to the cockpit glass, standing beside Wulf. "We'll get the little demons."

He reached into his haversack and retrieved his Yeti's Authority potions. He passed one to each of them, then downed one himself. "We've got ten minutes of these. Make it count."

They nodded, and with a grimace, drank their own potions.

Then, the floor of the cockpit shuddered. The entire Oronith shifted.

"What's that?" Kalee whispered.

Wulf ran back to the cockpit hatch and climbed outside, then looked around. There were no more colossal fiends. Just…regular demons. Some had reached Wraith's legs. And of course, Umoch was there. The little demons were still attacking him. He blasted some away, then scrambled up the side of the Oronith's body.

The Oronith shuddered and tilted again. Without being able to reposition the Oronith…

"The lakebed is shifting beneath our feet!" Wulf called.

The Wraith tipped sideways on the unsteady ground. Without a Pilot to keep it upright, it was as good as a statue—an enormous statue on loose ground. It tipped toward the shore, then plummeted shoulder-first toward the lake.

"Get out of the cockpit!" Wulf called, then as the surface shifted and gravity allowed, ran around to the side of its head. Irmond and Seith were the next to escape, and Kalee climbed out last, only seconds before they reached the waves, holding her hand out. Wulf caught her wrist and helped her up.

Water surged over the side of the head, and together, the four of them ran to the highest ground—the shoulder, now upright, like the Wraith was sleeping on its side. It wasn't sinking anymore.

It made a small island in the middle of the lake, fifty paces down and ten paces wide, and elevated a few feet above the demon-infested waters.

As the waves subsided, dark shapes—including Umoch—approached. He blasted a few demons away with small spell Skills, then hauled himself up onto Wraith's shoulder, panting. "You! You stole an Oronith!" he gasped.

"What are you doing here?" Wulf demanded. The demons were getting closer and closer. He stepped toward Umoch. The boy was drenched, but he wore a rank pin—Low-Copper. He displayed it proudly.

Technically, a tier above Wulf still.

Wulf tightened his grip on his scissors. "You weren't helping the demons, were you?"

"I was stopping you!" Umoch shouted, a craze of desperation burning in his eyes. "You can't beat me! You just…can't! It shouldn't be possible, for a lowling like you! But if I have to drop out, at least you'll get expelled too. You stole an Oronith, and you—you failed here! You failed!"

"I clearly didn't fail." Wulf crossed his arms. "As you can see, the fiends are dead, and we saved three Oroniths." He tilted his head down at Wraith. "Found another one, too, if you count this."

Umoch shouted something angrily, then kicked the empty air. "Fine! I challenge you to a duel. Right now!"

"No," Wulf said. There was no point. He might have been a High-Coal, but he was confident he could beat Umoch in their deal.

"Yes, yes, you will fight me. No one tells me no."

"I just did."

The air cracked as Irmond fired a Skill-empowered arrow. It split a demon's skull. The horde was getting closer. Kalee unleashed another skill, dragging a few demons below the surface and drowning them. But before long, they'd need Wulf. He had to make this quick.

Umoch, apparently, wanted the same.

He sprinted forward, triggering a Skill. A shadowy axe appeared in his grip and he swung it at Wulf. Wulf leaned back and dodged, using the footwork he'd learned in the Weavers' manual.

Umoch unleashed a deluge of blows, but Wulf dodged or blocked them all. He deflected with the scissors, or caught the axehead between the blades. Umoch had more practice with an axe than Wulf did with scissors, and he was a tier higher, but he was also half-drowned and desperate. With each swipe, he shouted and cursed.

It was quite the tantrum.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

But even a drowning rat could get lucky. When a stray demon gripped Wulf's ankle, he stumbled. Seith used her wrist-blades to destroy the demon, but Wulf was on the back-foot, and Umoch slammed his axe into the chest of Wulf's weakened golem.

The golem sputtered, and his connection with [Arm of the Alchemist] faded. The Skill ended, and Wulf still pushed out of the golem, stumbling forward.

His mana was an eighth full, at best.

Wulf immediately triggered [Arm of the Alchemist] again and drew out his two poison potions to deflect Umoch's next attacks. The boy cleaved right through them.

Wulf parried the blows with a desperate swing of his scissors, but Umoch kept slashing and hacking. Finally, a slice bit into Wulf's bare shoulder. Had it not been for his strength enhancements, he'd have lost his arm, but as it was, the axe still bit in a few inches. He yelled in pain.

Reaching out, he punched Umoch, sending the boy sprawling back across the platform. Umoch kept hold of his axe, and it ripped free.

Wulf stumbled back to his feet. He couldn't wait any longer to advance a tier. Sure, expanding his storage core was important, but Umoch had forced his hand. Kneeling down, he slotted his fingers into a runic pattern in the gaps between two of Wraith's shoulder panels.

Normally, extracting the mana out of an in-use Oronith would be impossible, and Wulf wouldn't get back all of what he had fed into its main mana pool. But Wraith had no Pilot, and the connection had been so abruptly severed. Not to mention, the mana wouldn't vent properly through the regular channels, because of the damaged neck and the incomplete mana loops.

In other words, he could draw the mana right out of it and back into himself. He'd become the vent.

He shut his eyes and drew on the mana, like he was pulling it from a storage construct.

But he'd built up such high amounts of mana over many weeks, all to fuel an Oronith early, and tugging it all back into his body would be…almost too much to handle.

And this time, he wasn't putting it away into his storage core.

He shut his eyes, clenched his teeth, and waited for the blasting pain of intaking way too much mana.

But, considering all he'd done in the past few hours, it wasn't even remotely as bad as the sensation of getting your head chopped off. Mana surged in, and he removed all the mental barriers that he used to direct it into his storage core.

His eyes burst open, shining blue for a moment, before dimming. His enchanted parchment fluttered and words poured across it:

[Your mana has increased. Advancement progress: 249.8%]

[Your core has adopted an aspect.]

[You have a Skill upgrade available.]

Wulf didn't need the sheet to tell him his core was gaining an aspect. In accordance with the Field, his main core, the relatively small orb of blue light, shifted in his mental perception. It became a ball of turquoise, then changed again to an orb of swirling, bubbling green. A neon, toxic green.

A poison aspect.

He pushed himself back up and faced Umoch. "Two hundred and forty-nine percent, huh? What are the chances I'm a Middle-Copper now?"

He didn't have time to worry about upgrading a Skill. Umoch was still standing there, across the shoulder, looking at him in shock. He grinned, then said, "I think you'll find that I'm stronger than you. Care to back down?"

Umoch sputtered, "H—how! You shouldn't have enough mana to fuel an Oronith in the first place, let alone the constitution to reabsorb the mana! That should have broken you!"

Wulf snorted. "Perhaps I'm just better at magic than you. Or maybe, just maybe, you're not as good at magic as you think." He crossed his arms, despite his shoulders painful, screaming protests. "I'm a Middle-Copper, and you're a Low-Copper. I've faced much, much worse than you, and it didn't break me. Give up."

"Not to a dog like you!" Umoch shouted. "It's a trick! It's a mistake of some kind!" He raised his axe and charged forward. Wulf sidestepped, using the footwork he'd drilled perfectly into his mind, and adjusted his grip on the scissors, holding them perfectly.

Instead of cutting Umoch, he clamped Umoch's axe's haft between the blades of his scissors and held it in place. Umoch strained, and the boy had enough Marks to make holding him back tricky, but Wulf released one hand and snatched the splatter potion from his haversack, then sloshed it over the surrounding hordes of demons. They hissed and scrambled, and the Field recognized tens of potion effects activating at once.

Wulf's own strength surged. He returned his hands to his scissors and gripped them tight, holding his hands exactly where the manual suggested, placing his feet exactly where they should be.

The xerion resonated. It chimed with purpose, then sent vibrations through his bones, like it had just attached to his skeleton.

It wanted to obey his command. It wanted to listen to his orders. He wanted to work with it.

It was ready to conduct and store essences. Whatever its hidden property—and there was no time to check what that was—he had a feeling of what it would do.

He shut his eyes, then focussed on the chaos in Umoch's axe.

And with a tug, he drew it out. The xerion rippled, barely fazed, barely reaching even a fraction of its storage capacity.

The axe trembled, then exploded in Umoch's hands. It would've sent the boy flying back across the platform had it not been for Wulf grabbing his hair and holding him steady. Then, he threw Umoch face-first into the ground, slamming his face into the stone.

Umoch gasped and writhed. He snivelled, shouted, and cried all in an incoherent mess.

"That's for Ján," Wulf snapped. "You've lost. Everything. I should kill you right now…"

He pointed his scissors at the pathetic boy's spine.

Master Arnau had always said that to spare the guilty was to condemn the innocent. Umoch would deserve everything coming to him.

But Umoch was going nowhere. He was going to drop out, and he'd be stuck at Low-Copper for the foreseeable future. He wasn't going to pose a threat to Wulf or his friends for any longer.

And he'd have to answer to his father. That would be a more satisfying annihilation than anything Wulf could come up with.

"...but I won't," Wulf continued. "You'll have to live with this. You'll have to go back to your father and explain that a Field pact with a commoner forced you out of the Academy. Find a way to explain that you'll never even be on the crew of an Oronith. You just ruined your life, and that's better than any merciful death I could give you."

"Th—the term isn't over!" Umoch exclaimed.

"You have a month and a half, and with exams…do you really think you can overtake me?" Wulf shook his head. "You're done, and you know it."

Umoch collapsed, letting himself fall face-first on the slick stone of the Wraith's shoulder. He sputtered and sobbed incoherently, and Wulf turned away.

He still had actual demons to clean up.