How to Survive as the Academy Student Council President

Club activities.
Also called sub-activities or academic societies, these are representative social activities where students in the Union — where it is hard to build bonds due to itinerant lectures — can form friendships.
Of course, since each club has a vastly different nature, there are places that operate with a focus on research or academic improvement on a specific topic rather than on socializing.
This Alchemy Club is especially so.
Eredor does, strictly speaking, have proper lectures on alchemy, but this club experiments with practical, hands-on matters you cannot learn from lectures alone.
In modern terms, think of the relationship between the business administration department and a stock investment club.
Knock-knock-.
When I knocked on the clubroom door with its shabby nameplate, a bright voice soon came from inside.
“Yes, coming~”
Clack-.
The door opened and a female student appeared.
A short female student wearing a blue-toned robe.
On her head she wore something like a pointed hat people think of when they hear “wizard.”
Loen isn’t especially tall, but the top of her head barely reached my chest.
She stared at my face for a moment without a word.
Bang-.
Then she shut the door again.
Right after, with a click, the door locked from the inside.
“……”
Turned away at the door.
I shrugged as I looked at the door, still trembling faintly.
I was used to being treated like this, so it didn’t particularly bother me.
I spoke toward the firmly closed door in a calm voice.
“I’m applying to join, Trishi Medici.”
Trishi Medici.
She is a descendant of the fallen noble Medici family and possesses extraordinary talent in alchemy.
Even though she, unlike Loen, does not have the [Alchemy] trait, through brilliant insight and endless effort she is the alchemist who came closest to the “Philosopher’s Stone,” and later a prodigy who will climb to the top of the Alchemists’ Tower as a great mage.
To me, she can be considered a good helper.
‘Right now I’m using alchemy magic with systemic assistance, but I’m ignorant about its fundamental operating principles.’
Even if I later obtain the Sage’s Glasses and inherit a great mage’s knowledge, it’s uncertain whether I could directly use such high-level magic.
The person who could help me then is precisely that Trishi Medici.
If it’s her, she can analyze and research the magic in question and help make it usable for me.
“……”
After a brief wait, a voice came from the quiet clubroom interior.
“I’m not accepting your application!”
“It says you’ll accept any student interested in alchemy.”
I read the recruitment notice posted on the wall, but the answer that came back was the same.
“……I’ll refuse at the club leader’s discretion.”
“I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
“Are you trying to tempt me with money? Even if you offer more than I can refuse, I won’t take it.”
“Something more valuable than money.”
“……Did you bring some precious alchemy materials?”
Perhaps tempted for a moment, Trishi asked cautiously.
I held back a laugh and said,
“More valuable than that.”
“……”
She thought it over briefly, but rejected me, overcoming even a researcher’s curiosity.
“Still, I don’t trust your words.”
“Why not?”
Then Trishi suddenly shouted from inside.
“Why do you think! You can’t see we expanded the club facilities trusting your promise to invest, got stabbed in the back, and went completely bust so we ended up like this?”
A shout loud enough to make the door shake. Her voice was full of anger and resentment.
That’s right.

This Alchemy Club is located on the very outskirts of Eredor territory.
A shabby abandoned building in a forest that’s barely maintained.
As far as I know, the club «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» currently has a total of five members.
It used to be a fairly large club with more than fifty members, but now, with even its past glory forgotten, it’s desolately on the verge of being dissolved.
And Loen was deeply involved in that process.
This body’s got plenty of grudges attached to it.
Anyway, my job is to resolve the karma and grudges Loen piled up.
I spoke toward the other side of the door.
“I feel sorry about that. It wasn’t my intention.”
“Is ‘sorry’ everything!?”
“Not everything. But I’ll pay the price in full. If you’ll just accept my membership.”
“……Come in for now.”
The door soon opened again, and only then was I able to enter the Alchemy Club room.
I stepped inside and swept my eyes over the interior.
The room was thickly draped with blackout curtains patterned like the night sky.
It looked to be about fifteen pyeong in size, and along the walls were cupboards and tables like you’d find in a school science lab.
The structure looked like a facility that used to be a temporary magic stone warehouse, roughly renovated.
Compared to my laboratory it was shabby, but it still seemed to have all the basic experimental tools one could gather.
“You’ve set it up well.”
“Are you mocking me right now? We sold all the expensive stuff; there’s nothing left to use.”
“Expensive doesn’t always mean good.”
Though the good stuff is expensive.
I took a seat and asked Trishi for tea.
“Got black tea?”
“What black tea.”
Trishi brought a glass of cold water, slammed it on the table, and asked irritably,
“So, what price are you going to pay to make up for your mistake?”
Instead of bowing her head and accepting an apology, Trishi demanded proper compensation.
An equivalent exchange instead of some useless apologetic words. As expected of an alchemist.
“First, I’ll resume the investment in the Alchemy Club that came to nothing back then.”
Slide-.
I took a check out from my inner pocket and handed it to Trishi.
It was money I had originally intended to give to Rize, but since I’d gotten her employed with the Panopticon, it wasn’t particularly necessary anymore.
“Use it for now. I’ll continue investing every month with amounts beyond this.”
“……”
Trishi didn’t accept it immediately; narrowing her eyes, she asked suspiciously,
“You’re not trying to call it square with just this, are you?”
“Of course not.”
The higher the grade, the more the material costs for alchemy experiments go beyond imagination.
Thirty million Krone isn’t a small sum, but from the perspective of someone in alchemy, it also isn’t that large an amount.
Besides, since Loen is the real culprit who ruined the club, she wouldn’t drop her guard over this kind of money.
I then took out another envelope from my breast and set it on the table.
“Open it.”
With a guarded look, Trishi asked me,
“You didn’t coat it with poison or something, did you?”
“……What do you take me for.”
“What else. A shameless, thuggish rascal who wrecked our club and then barged in saying you want to rejoin.”
Even as she said that, Trishi opened the envelope I’d handed her and checked the contents.
And—
“!”
Her eyes went wide, and she couldn’t speak properly.
“Th—this is……!”
“Right, the Alchemists’ Tower. A tour pass for the Deialon Magic Tower.”
This was one of the gifts I’d received earlier from the Chairman.
A tour pass to the Deialon Magic Tower that any student studying alchemy would dream of.
This should be enough to atone for Loen’s atrocities.
“But…… the maximum number is five?”
“Five is more than enough. If anything, they’re being very considerate of our situation.”
A tour of the Deialon Magic Tower is, if you break it down, basically the same as touring a big corporation’s cutting-edge industrial research lab.
The fact that they’ll let as many as five outsiders tour is impressive in itself.
“Well, that’s true.”
As a researcher, she assessed the situation rationally.
“So don’t think about using this to recruit members. The people going are already decided. I’m including you.”
The five participants were already decided.
Me and Trishi, Bell and Beatrice, and roughly Yulina.
As for Beatrice, as a princess of Cassandra who owns the Tower, she could easily arrange a tour, but I should include her in this sort of thing.
“……”
The people who could go were limited to five anyway, and the Tower wouldn’t like it if this became widely known.
Trishi closed her eyes for a moment, thinking.
She seemed to be weighing whether to accept me again in exchange for resuming the cancelled investment and arranging a Tower visit.
After a brief consideration, she opened her eyes and handed me a sheet.
“Fine. I’ll accept you again as a member. Fill out the application. But.”
Glaring at me, Trishi declared,
“I haven’t forgiven you yet. Just think you’ve met the bare minimum conditions to join.”
“That’s enough.”
If the channel of connection is open even a little, I can improve the relationship somehow.
I drank the glass of cold water Trishi had given me and moved to the next topic.
“What are you researching these days?”
“……I wouldn’t go so far as to call it research.”
“Are you making some preposterous potion like a love potion again?”
When I teased her, Trishi slammed the table and shouted.
“How can you call it preposterous! It’s a potion clearly recorded in the works written by Lord Trismegistus!”
Hermes Trismegistus.
In this world’s lore, the legendary alchemist who is the origin of alchemy.
His book, The Key of Kabbalah, is still called the textbook of many alchemists.
“What era was he from again? Don’t take at face value what someone from thousands of years ago left behind.”
That said, there’s the setting that The Key of Kabbalah is a very old book, so there’s a slight gap with the alchemy of this era.
For example, it’s similar to the Dongui Bogam: it was a great medical text in its time, but from modern medicine’s perspective there’s a lot to criticize.
It contains that much content infused with superstition or divinatory meaning, and the love potion is one such item.
Of course, in a world where people use magic and fight demons, it’s not that a love potion is absolutely impossible, but at least as far as I know, there’s no item that easily raises someone else’s favorability like that.
If there were, I’d have gotten it and gone around doing easy favor-grinding and bond-grinding.
“Do you like someone?”
“Wh—what are you saying? I’m just making it out of curiosity. And it’s good for drawing in other members.”
“That’s true.”
Considering academy students’ ages, a love potion is quite a decent promotional item.
“Anyway, do that research as you please, and I’ve brought something new we can research.”
“What is it?”
“You know the Academy Festival is being held, right?”
“Yeah…… well, won’t it be held in the fall like last year? I’m preparing an entry too.”
The Academy Festival hosted by Voltimir, held around the fall of next term.
“How about we put up a booth in the name of the Alchemy Club then?”
“A booth?”
“Yeah, use the festival to recruit a large number of members and also raise the funds needed to keep the club running. This formula is a stepping stone for that.”
Flip-.
I took out a sheet with an ingredient formula written on it and handed it to Trishi.
Boldly at the top of that paper was written [Love Potion].
Trishi scowled hard and glared at me.
Considering I’d just derided it as nonsense a moment ago, coming out like this was rich.
No matter how she looked at it, she could only think I was messing with her.
“……What exactly are you trying to do here?”
To her barbed question, I grinned and answered.
“What else? Peddling.”