Fate Alchemist - A Regression Academy LitRPG

On the way back to the dorms, they took an outside route, circling around the hangar and navigating in a loop around the Academy. There were still a couple hours until midnight, but the air was fresh, and the twilight breeze was a welcome break from the searing heat within the hangar. Torches, fires, the body heat of hundreds of workers…

At least Wulf was going to the bathhouse before bed.

But, as they circled over to the west side, drawing closer and closer to the dorms, a voice called out from behind.

"Kalee, dear! Kalee!" It was the voice of a middle-aged woman, a little husky from smoking, but warm and welcoming.

Kalee winced, groaned, then turned around. "Mom?"

Wulf, not wanting to be disrespectful or insert himself into someone else's family matters, backed up to the academy's outer wall, and pressed his back against the bricks. Other than them, there were a few students and general civilians wandering about on the roads and plazas around the Academy.

Seith backed up just the same, and leaned against the wall beside Wulf. "I didn't expect her mom to be…like that. She must've gotten her looks from her dad."

At that, Wulf blushed. It felt like an oddly childish response, which he didn't really have control over, something caused by the younger body and soul which his older, more rational memories didn't want to listen to.

He tried to make it look like he wasn't paying attention to Kalee's mom, but he couldn't help it. Like Kalee, she wore no shoes. Unlike Kalee, she wore a plain summer dress with a long skirt that went down to her ankles, an apron, and a bonnet. As modest and plain as could be, especially considering that she was a pangian as well.

"Mom…" Kalee groaned. "What are you doing out here? How…how did you even find us? Me, find me?"

"You've been avoiding me, dear. I came wandering around, looking for you. I was watching, waiting. You did get my letter, yes?"

"Y—yes."

As best Wulf could tell in the dim light—there were only a few distant street lanterns—Kalee's face had gone pale. She swallowed, a visible lump moving down her throat, and her eyes glistened.

Kalee's mom circled around her, brushing crystal dust off Kalee's shoulders and straightening out her uniform. "What did you do, dear? You're all covered in dust? These two aren't being bad influences on you, are they? And that skirt, it's so short. I can see your knees! And your tights have pulls already…"

"Mom…" Kalee complained.

"You should see what she wears to the gym," Seith muttered, and Wulf nudged her, as if to shut her up. They didn't need to get Kalee in more trouble.

"Ah, but just look at you! My daughter, in a Centralis Academy uniform!" Kalee's mom went up on her tip-toes and squished Kalee's cheeks, but she flinched away.

"Mom, please, I need to go—"

"Yes, yes, you can go. But dear, the rest of us are leaving in a few weeks. Our ship will bring us back to Istalis, and we can't wait here any long. Take one of your Seventhdays, will you, and come meet us at Uncle Cheenalu's apartment. You can bring one of your friends if you absolutely must. It feels like it's been ages since I've seen you."

"It…" Kalee scrunched her eyebrows. "It's only been about a year, hasn't it?"

"A year, two months, three weeks, and four days!" Kalee's mom insisted.

"Yeah…alright, I'll think about it."

"You haven't been avoiding us, have you, dear? I promise we won't be weird. We won't embarrass you in front of your boyfriend."

"It's not…" Kalee exhaled. "Alright, mom. Next Seventhday. I'll meet you, and we can get this ironed out."

"Ironed out…?"

"Sorry. I…uh, I'll see you." Before her mom could say anything else, Kalee turned and ran away. Wulf gave Kalee's mom an awkward wave, then jogged away after Kalee.

~ ~ ~

Something was wrong. Something was just so slightly off, like the Ghirrar were just bent a little too far out of shape. There were ripples in the fabric of the world, which Khinna Gom Huteyn had never felt before.

Gom Huteyn's demonic instinct was to charge in, to attack, to quell the odd sensation, remove the irritation like it was a sulfur itch, but he had evolved beyond the base instinct of his peers.

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He was a Khinna, lord of the harvest, and his plans had to be perfect. The goal of all life was to expand, spread, broaden the horde, and for that, the acquisition of resources had to be perfect.

No backing down from a challenge. No flinching away. Meet all foes head-first, destroy the weakest, and keep growing. Why deny their nature? Just because he'd shed his base demonic form didn't mean he had to change.

Some might say he was aware enough to change, but he just didn't care. It wasn't in the chits, it was too much effort, those under him would rebel…whatever the justification was didn't matter.

He couldn't deny that he wanted to see this pitiful world stripped bare of resources. It made his airy gut rumble, his mist-made chest hunger.

Gom Huteyn was a demon-spirit, the most intelligent of the demons, and temporary suzerain of the planet dubbed Irillud. He floated slowly down the hallway, misty black feet hovering only inches above the ground.

He had the shape of an average demon. Two legs, two arms, two horns, standing upright, but he found walking awfully tedious, especially when he could buoy himself on the natural mana currents of the universe—the Ghirrar.

There was no light in the hall, but his glowing orange eyes illuminated the route ahead of him, making the living tapestries on the walls shine. Twisted intestines, bare tendons, and glistening redblood veins wove together to tell a history of the Huteyn hive's glorious expansion. He reached out a misty black arm and ran his fingers along the surface of the wall, enjoying the texture, relishing how the flesh-crafters' work bent and bulged slightly under his manipulation.

Gom Huteyn passed through a doorway and paused on a balcony, overlooking the Khinna's estate. It was his personal voidcraft, a sphere designed to drift through the great darkness between worlds, awaiting a victim, then crash unceremoniously into its surface. He hadn't had much choice of where to crash, but praise unto the Ghirrar, because his voidcraft—an enormous sphere of black steel—had fallen in the vast desert wastes of Irillud's equator.

There had only been a few weak tribes of flesh-beings, which had begged him for mercy in their garbled language. He and his guards had killed all but one, who he imprisoned in the depths of his voidcraft. With painful and violent coercion, Gom Huteyn convinced the man to begin teaching him their language.

He rested his smokey hands on the balcony's railing, then looked down over the vast curve of his sphere's edge, now sunken slightly into the sand. The impact had turned the sand around it to glass, and created an enormous crater nearly as far as the eye could see.

Gom Huteyn inhaled, enjoying the dry air, enjoying the flecks of sand that blew in it. Then he reached out with a push of intent and touched the Ghirrar.

With his mind's eye, he peered into the threads of fate that wrapped around the planet. Every planet he'd harvested had them. They usually took a different form, becoming a different type of…magic. Some called theirs mana, some hadn't even discovered the rules of their magic yet, and thought of their users as 'wizards.' Some called it qi, some called it pneuma.

This was the only planet whose Ghirrar felt wrong. There was tampering, as if the threads had been knotted.

Using his third eye, Gom Huteyn peered far into the distance, crossing vast distances with just his senses. He called on the Ghirrar to show him the strongest beings on this planet. They called themselves Orichalcum Ascendants, and there were five of them, all scattered in different corners of this planet.

They were the only beings on this pitiful rock that could cause him any trouble. But even they flowed normally with the Ghirrar.

The Ghirrar. Fate, or what these people called 'the cords.' Something had altered it.

These people, Gom Huteyn thought with disdain. Only a few of them even knew of the concept of the cords. They rarely talked about it.

After a few hours of staring into the distance, of searching, he located the tangle in the Ghirrar. It was on almost the opposite side of this planet, located in a pair of beings. They were far from the most powerful, but the golden threads that connected them to the universe were…bent. Intertwined, knotted, pulled, fraying in places and bulging in others.

That was it.

Gom Huteyn intertwined his fingers, pulled his consciousness back to himself, then floated back inside. A lesser demon spirit met him inside the sphere, standing inside the door.

At first, demon-spirits couldn't interact with the physical world. Once they freed themselves from their corporeal forms, they had limited awareness. It took hundreds of years, thousands even, to accumulate as much of a physical form as Gom Huteyn had. His lieutenant, Yae Huteyn, only had hundreds of years to advance as a spirit.

As such, Gom Pyek had a half-transparent form of black mist. His eyes didn't glow as brightly, and his claws weren't as real. In order to affect the real world, he would have to temporarily enter and control one of the beings of this planet.

"I have a quest for you, Pyek," Gom Huteyn stated. "Travel to a place these beings call the Centralis Academy. There are two anomalies. I do not know what they are, but you must…destroy them. Being the fools they are, they built their academy over a dungeon, thinking they could claim the power for themselves."

"You wish for me to…use the dungeon?" Pyek asked.

"This planet survived us once," Gom Huteyn grumbled. "But they have since grown weak, and there are leftovers in the depths. Use them and erase the Academy and city from existence."

"Understood, Khinna."

"Leave immediately."

"Understood, Khinna." Dipping his head, Pyek floated away, disappearing down the hallway.

The beings here had a concept entirely foreign to Gom Huteyn: concern. He didn't really understand what it meant, or what it felt like, but if his understanding was correct, this matter of twisted Ghirrar could be a cause for concern in other beings.

There was a reason they had to destroy the dominant species of the planets they harvested. Those species tended to resist, and as it stood, this planet was only just passing through the edge of the demon-sphere cluster. There weren't enough Fiends for Gom Huteyn to command yet.

But if he let this fester, it could spell the doom of his harvest. That was unacceptable.