Fate Alchemist - A Regression Academy LitRPG

In preparation for his first tournament fight, Wulf modified his scissors. He had two tasks to accomplish: for one, he didn't want them to look like xerion. He didn't know how many people actually knew what xerion looked like. Dr. Arnau had seen them and she hadn't said anything. But he didn't need to find out the hard way when people asked what his scissors were made of.

Second on the list was to make them separable. That was less of a product of Alchemy and more of a job for an Artificer, so he figured he'd deal with the first task first.

It wouldn't be too difficult to make it look different. He could just paint over it. But the moment another Ascendant took hold of them, they could in theory observe exactly what the scissors were, and that would mean Wulf had a lot of unpleasant explaining to do.

There was a technique people had used in his past life to hide the true quality of their weapons from thieves. They'd put a sacrificial weapon in the hilt, so if the thief was an Ascendant and got ahold of the weapon, they'd sense the sacrificial weapon first and sense it instead.

Wulf got to work. He fired up his furnace in his second storage pendant. Using his slowly-dwindling supply of steelglass, he forged and shaped a tiny pair of scissors. He didn't have any other material on hand, so if he was going to finally make a glass object resonate with the Field, he'd have to do it here.

Nothing like a little pressure to get the creative juices flowing.

He crafted a miniature set of scissors, leveraging the glass-smithing practice he'd gotten over the summer, but concentrated on what he wanted them to feel like as he was crafting them. Instead of a jug to splash with, he began with the intent of them being big.

Of course, they couldn't actually be big. They had to fit within the leather wrap of his scissors' hilt—and that'd make them smaller than normal scissors. But size was a matter of perspective. He made the handles of the scissors tinier than normal, so he couldn't even fit his pinky through the loop. He made the blades wide, and the tips long, so they'd run the entire length of the scissors.

Then came the 'purpose.' Any Ascendant would register them as slightly magic, especially when it came to the enhanced perception of a really powerful Ascendant. So, the scissors had to register as slightly magic as well.

He quenched them in his leftover strength potion, infusing them with mana. It didn't matter what ability they got, as long as they got some ability.

Lastly, they needed to register as a different material—not glass.

He paused for a moment and transmuted a few chunks of bonesteel from wood scraps, then chiseled swirling markings all along the scissors' blades with them. It left some of the bonesteel behind, but more importantly, as he chiselled, he poured out the impression that he was making something special with bonesteel.

He could've tried to transmute the glass scissors after, but that seemed even harder than trying to imbue them with simple magic.

Finally, when the scissors were complete, he quenched them in the strength potion once more.

Once they were cool enough that he could touch them without his tongs, he assessed them with the Field. For a few seconds, nothing happened. He breathed an annoyed sigh. Then, weakly, the enchanted parchment on his wrist fluttered.

Bone Cutters (Low-Coal)

Large bonesteel scissors crafted in a hurry. Their strength has been slightly enhanced, and they can easily cut through bone.

It was the perfect cover. Wulf took the tiny glas scissors, and carefully wrapped them into the handle of his larger xerion scissors. He covered them entirely with the leather wrap of the hilt, hiding them from sight.

Still, when he tried to assess the scissors, he only pulled up the message about the weak bone cutters. If he wanted to assess the Fate Cutters themselves, he would have to touch the blades of the scissors. A weakness, technically, though few Ascendants would think to do that. The trick he used hadn't become common in pleasant society yet.

The next day, he worked on altering the scissors' appearance. Though he kept them in a simple sheath on his back, hiding the blades from most people's view, he'd need to do something about the scissors when he fought someone.

He snuck to the Artificers' labs early in the morning in search for paint, but instead, he found glue. It wasn't stealing; the labs left the paint and glue out in the open for anyone to use. It wasn't exactly expensive, and most Artificers didn't use it for their constructs.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

Wulf siphoned off a cup of glue, then returned to his dorm. The glue smelled…industrial, almost like the Artificers' solvents, so he left it by the dorm window, which he kept open a small crack.

Then he bashed up his remaining bonesteel into a fine powder. Steel wasn't the right word for it, really, considering it was a transmutation of wood, not metal. And it was nowhere near as strong (making it much easier to bash into a fine powder with the bottom of a steelglass beaker). But it was the name the substance had been given, and it had stuck.

He mixed the powder into the glue, then smeared it over the blades of his scissors, hiding the blackish-red rock of the xerion beneath a thick coat of white dust.

When it dried, the scissors looked enamel-white, the colour of bonesteel. It was the perfect cover.

Now came the part he'd need help with.

Worse, he only had about a day to get this done before the fight, and between their morning routine, watching over Prince Athelas, and their evenings spent working on the Silent Wraith, it didn't leave a lot of time for Wulf to bug Seith and Kalee.

He found them in the common room with Irmond, and true to his word, he brought a potion he'd finished earlier that day for Irmond.

Flow Potion (Middle-Silver Quality)

Increases the user's eyesight and mana flow for a half hour, then inflicts weakness for a day.

Similar to Seith's potion, it had a positive effect and a negative effect, but this was one that Wulf figured would be better for a Ranger. Better eyesight wouldn't help much for an arena fight, but the improved mana flow would let him trigger Skills faster, enhancing his arrows at a faster rate.

"Thanks so much!" Irmond exclaimed. "Guys, like, did you ever wish you had an older brother?"

Seith scowled. "You don't want one."

"Okay, but Kalee?"

"Younger brothers are enough of a hassle," she replied.

"Besides, he's more like a grandpa," Seith said.

"I'm calling him my older brother." Irmond crossed his arms. "Thank the Field I don't have to be the most mature one in the group."

Wulf chuckled, then knelt down in front of Kalee and Seith. "Hey, guys. So…I have a bit of a favour to ask."

"What kind of construct do you need this time?" they both asked at once.

"I'm that predictable?"

They nodded.

Wulf glanced around the common room, making sure no one was looking. Once he was certain it was safe, he pulled his scissors off his back and held them out. "I need to alter the pin at the center."

He tapped the inch-wide pin of xerion he'd used to fasten both halves of the scissors together. "I shouldn't have made it out of xerion. That was a mistake. I plan to use one half to store order, and the other half to store chaos. But if they mix, it'd be catastrophic. So I need to take the pin out and replace it."

"Can't you do that with anything?" Kalee asked.

"I could, but I had an idea. If I could separate both halves of the scissors, then I could use more of the combat forms from the weavers' book. They provided a design for the construct, I just can't really make it on my own. I don't know the right runes."

He reached into his haversack and held out the combat manual he'd gotten from the weavers' guild, then flipped it to a page he'd marked earlier in the week.

"I also made some ingredients, and my forge is ready," Wulf said.

Both Kalee and Seith gave him a skeptical glance, but Seith said, "I think I can do this. I've got a new Skill for shaping metal with I want to try out. What do we need?"

"It suggested marbled relfidium," Wulf replied. "Which, I made a chunk of." He reached into his haversack again and held out a lump of brown metal with streaks of dark red through it. It was heavier than a lump of iron, and when he tapped it with his fingernail, it let off a chime like a bell. Supposedly, when stretched thin, it could become rather elastic, making it perfect for contraptions that relied on springs—and needed to interact with mana. A touch of mana would make it release all its elastic properties.

"What?" Seith exclaimed. "In our textbook, they say that's at least a fourth-year material. As in, one we should only get when we're in our fourth years."

"I've advanced the schedule?" Wulf shrugged. "Do you want to work with it or not? You'll get a mana boost, what with your crafting class and all."

"Of course I do—that's amazing!"

Kalee stood up and said, "Come to my room. I'll get things started."

"Uh, guys?" Irmond said. "No offence, but no one's watching Athelas. It's the middle of the afternoon, and he'll have a class soon. And then I will."

They collectively winced, but then decided that Irmond needed to be the one to go. He agreed.

As he walked away, Wulf, Seith, and Kalee all walked to Kalee's room, keeping a brisk pace. They would have to get to their classes soon, too, but, being a Fourthday, they had a slightly lighter schedule.

When they made it to Kalee's room, Wulf placed the marbled relfidium on the table, then helped hold it steady with tongs as Seith shaped it and Kalee helped etch runic patterns into it. Halfway through the process, they cut it into two halves, then, following the book's instructions, developed a mechanism to lock two halves of the cylindrical construct together, while still keeping each half embedded in their respective side of the scissors.

With a push of mana, they'd release their grip, separating the scissors into their halves, and giving Wulf a sword to hold in each hand.

Working all together, they finished in a half hour. Wulf said, "That…went faster than I thought."

"You thought you were going to make us late for classes?" Kalee asked.

"We're getting better at this," Seith said.

"I was expecting to have to take a break," Wulf said. "But you're right. We do have to get to class. Thanks for the help!"