Becoming an Alchemist
I stared at Aaron in silence for a long moment before finally speaking first. When in doubt, lowering your head is usually the safest move.
“I didn’t mean to eat it. I’m sorry.”
“Your face already told me that much.”
“Urp. Ah, sorry about that.”
Aaron let out a dry scoff at my tiny burp, as if he couldn’t believe me.
“It’s fine. It wasn’t on purpose. I’m glad it seems you enjoyed the meal.”
“The taste wasn’t bad. But… what exactly did I eat?”
“A human soul.”
“Eww. Am I possessed or something?”
“It’s nothing but leftover mana residue… Never mind. Let’s drop the subject.”
“There are two ways to piss someone off. The first is to stop talking mid-sentence, and the second is—”
Aaron ignored my complaint completely and continued.
“If mages have their First Circle and knights have their Level One, alchemists call that initial stage the First Hierarchy.”
It was an incredibly abrupt change of topic. But good lord. The words were so intriguing they completely wiped the unfinished sentence from my mind.
That’s right. Mages, knights—who cared? The only thing that mattered to me was alchemy. I only wanted to know what an alchemist could actually do. Who cared if I’d swallowed a piece of someone’s soul? As long as I could become an alchemist, I was ready for anything.
“Ooh, that sounds cool. So what exactly can a First Hierarchy alchemist do?”
Aaron scooped up a handful of blood-stained dirt from the ground.
“Disassembly.”
Golden light poured from his hand. It was the same golden radiance I’d seen when he severed the Black Mage’s neck. Back then, metal had surged out from within the glow. I wondered what would emerge this time.
Entranced, I reached toward the light. My fingers met something sticky and cold. A metallic, fishy smell followed right after—the familiar scent of blood. It hadn’t been familiar in my previous life, but it was all too familiar now. The word rose in my mind and I spoke it immediately.
“Blood?”
As the light faded, the result was indeed blood. The dirt had been stripped away, leaving only the blood behind. Thus, disassembly.
“Whoa…”
I examined the blood coating my hand, then brought it straight to my mouth. Salty. Metallic. Definitely blood. On my tongue I could only taste and feel the blood itself; the texture of the dirt had vanished completely. At the same time, I felt a strange sensation—like something foreign wriggling on my tongue. I frowned.
Then I realized the wriggling was tracing a specific pattern. I didn’t know what the pattern meant, but I felt an overwhelming urge to copy it. So I did. I pulled my finger from my tongue and dipped it into the pool of blood resting in Aaron’s palm.
Disassembly. Or maybe it was closer to extraction. If I wanted to turn blood into water, what would I need to remove? Red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and every toxin swimming inside. I wasn’t an expert, but if I stripped all of that away, wouldn’t it become clear water?
The thoughts swirling in my head coalesced into a single flow—the same flow dancing across my tongue. I followed it without resistance. A tearing pain ripped through my body. I endured it.
In my past life I had already died once for the sake of alchemy. I’d trembled for five straight hours, bleeding from my eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, before finally dying. And even then the experiment had failed. Instead of the Philosopher’s Stone I had created some bizarre object. The failure had hurt far more than death itself.
Now I stood on the threshold of success. Pain like this would not stop me.
Whether my stubbornness paid off or not, the agony soon faded. And at the same moment—
Disassembly — First Hierarchy
“Ah!”
A gray light sparkled from my own hand.
“Alchemy!”
The gray light soon faded, leaving behind a transparent liquid. It looked exactly like water. Had I really turned blood into water?
Thinking about it was pointless. The only way to know was to test it myself. I brought the liquid on my hand to my mouth.
“What the…?”
The moment it touched my tongue I realized the truth. It wasn’t water. It was clear and clean, yet it tasted more like a light meat broth or diluted sports drink.
“You really do put everything in your mouth,” Aaron said with another dry chuckle.
“Simply removing every component from blood doesn’t turn it into water. To truly transform blood into water, you need a much higher level.”
“I see. But I did perform Disassembly, right?”
When I turned to look, Aaron was staring at the clear liquid pooled in his own hand.
“How much did the Black Mage pay for you?”
“Four silver coins.”
“You’ve become a slave worth two gold coins, then.”
I tilted my head for a second before realizing it was a compliment. It meant I had definitely succeeded in alchemy. In other words, this orphan had just become fifty times more valuable.
Joy surged through me. I thrust my arms and legs forward in celebration.
“Yahoo!”
Almost immediately, my limbs grew impossibly heavy. My eyelids felt like they were weighted with lead and began to droop.
“Teacher… my body feels weird.”
“You tried to achieve something greater than what was given to you. This is only natural.”
“Am I dying? I can’t die yet. I still have to learn alchemy. The Philosopher’s Stone. The truth… the answer is alchemy…”
“You’re just falling asleep. Close your eyes and don’t worry.”
I managed to murmur some sort of thanks before my eyes shut. Or maybe I only imagined I did.
Aaron swallowed a helpless laugh as he looked down at the limp girl in his arms.
Not only had she performed Disassembly on her first try—something he hadn’t even properly explained the principles of—but she had broken down multiple components at once. The girl was interesting in more ways than one.
Lulu had pushed the technique even while it devoured her own soul. If Aaron hadn’t lent her his power, she would have died the instant she reached the First Hierarchy. She had probably sensed that herself. Yet she had ignored the danger and pursued the alchemy anyway.
Her obsession with becoming an alchemist bordered on madness. No—calling it madness still felt insufficient.
The word made him remember how, even while facing death, she had shown interest in alchemy.
“What a strange creature.”
Aaron gripped the transparent liquid she had refined. He had analyzed its components to better understand the extent of her talent.
…This is.
He realized the moisture content was abnormally high. Even if every other element had been stripped from the blood, it shouldn’t contain this much water. The same would be true even for diseased blood.
Feeling something was off, Aaron reversed the transmutation she had performed. After all the components returned to their original state, a single transparent droplet floated above the pooled crimson blood.
“Hah.”
Aaron had only helped enough to keep her from dying. He had lent her mana to support the Disassembly, but he had not guided her to the next realm of alchemy.
She gathered moisture from the air on her own.
She had achieved things he had neither taught nor shown her. Aaron looked at Lulu, who was now dozing peacefully against his shoulder, and burst into laughter once again.
“…You really are a strange creature in every way.”
Taking her in and teaching her might be worth the considerable risk.
I opened my eyes. I wanted to say something about the unfamiliar ceiling, but a more pressing impression came first.
“What a beautiful morning.”
It was the morning after I had become an orphan worth two gold coins. Of course, a few days might have passed while I slept, but in my world the standard was me. Therefore, it was the morning after becoming an orphan worth two gold coins. It was also the first day of my life as an alchemist.
I stretched my stiff body, twisting this way and that, then sat up. This was definitely my first time seeing this room. Still, I wasn’t particularly worried. The person who had carried me here was an alchemist, after all. And alchemists were the strongest. That meant there was no chance I’d been kidnapped again to birth some monster’s offspring.
As I blinked, savoring the beautiful morning, I noticed the luxurious texture enveloping my body.
“Hm?”
I looked down at the clothes I was wearing. The fabric was soft, breathable, and clearly expensive—something a noble’s child might wear outside the orphanage. Maybe even better. I’d never worn anything like it before, so I couldn’t be sure. But since an alchemist had given them to me, they had to be the best.
When I swung my legs off the bed, I found a pair of cool slippers waiting. Good grief. Alchemist, are you even the strongest in consideration?
I slipped on the slippers while murmuring in awe. The floor was marble. When I looked up, the walls were marble too—luxurious stone rarely seen even in the modern world. I had imagined the alchemist’s workshop would be a rundown shack with a bubbling cauldron. I felt utterly betrayed.
Of course, this kind of pleasant betrayal was more than welcome.
Tap, tap. I knocked on the marble with the toe of my slipper, then opened the door and stepped outside.
“Did I die again?”
Spreading before me was the interior of a massive mansion. A four-story mansion, no less. I was on the third floor. For a second I thought I really had died and reincarnated—maybe as a princess this time. That is, until I saw Aaron sitting on the first floor reading a book.
“Good morning, Teacher Aaron. Did you sleep well?”
“It’s evening.”
“Good evening, Teacher Aaron.”
In my world I might be the standard, but an alchemist greater than me was an even more important standard.
Tap, tap. I descended the stairs in slightly oversized slippers. Aaron closed his book.
“You’ll need smaller slippers.”
“I’m still growing, so I’ll fit them soon.”
“That phrasing bothers me.”
“Even if I grow taller, my feet won’t grow much, so smaller ones are better.”
“Eat first.”
“Aren’t you eating, Teacher?”
Without answering, Aaron headed for the dining room. A large rectangular table filled the space, with food prepared at both ends. Had he known I would wake up today? Or did he have two people’s meals prepared every day? There was no need to overthink it.
With lighter steps, I followed him down to the dining room. The rectangular table was long enough to seat thirty. I called out to Aaron, who sat far at the other end.
“It’s a bit far. Can I sit next to you?”
“Sit where you are and eat.”
“Thank you for the meal.”
Dinner was soup. It looked like it contained plenty of ingredients, but my bowl held almost nothing solid. Did they only give me broth because I was now worth two gold coins? If I’d still been worth four silver, would I have gotten nothing but water?
I took a sip and asked, “How long was I asleep?”
“Four days.”
If I hadn’t eaten for four days, starting with broth made sense. Besides, the broth tasted wonderful. I was confident I could live happily on soup alone.
“Thank you. It’s delicious.”
I eagerly spooned up the warm soup. As I ate, I realized I wasn’t as hungry as I should have been after four days of fasting. Back at the orphanage, even skipping one meal had nearly brought me to tears.
When I looked at Aaron in confusion, he had already finished his bowl.
“Your body was in terrible shape, so I gave you some medicinal elixir.”
“Thank you.”
I continued eating, tearing off pieces of the incredibly soft bread to dip in the soup. When I had nearly finished the bowl, Aaron spoke again.
“Do you still want to become an alchemist?”
“Yes.”
He nodded, then slid a dagger across the table toward me.
“Cut out your tongue.”
I picked up the dagger. Curious how sharp it was, I touched the blade with my finger. Blood welled up instantly even though it felt like I had barely made contact. It would definitely cut clean through. I stuck my tongue out as far as possible and brought the blade down.