Chapter 22: An Unexpected Gift
“I-I’m crazy...!”
Sera struggled with all her might to stop me.
But I wasn’t about to be shoved around by a non-alchemist.
I even squeezed out the last scraps of strength I had from drinking elixirs and dragged her along by the arm. She eventually started whining and crying, but I ignored her completely.
I may be an alchemist who can soothe the fragile heart of a non-alchemist, but if you coddle someone too much all the time, they end up spoiled.
After I finished the job of throwing a robe over Sera’s head, we finally arrived in front of the suspicious alchemist.
He looked like he’d been through some hard times; his face was worn and pale.
Most of all, the way his pupils trembled and his fingers shook told me he was probably addicted to some kind of drug.
His gaze fell on us.
A wary gaze. I met it calmly and sat down across from the man without hesitation.
Sera, who had been at a loss a moment ago, also settled beside me and tried to look prim and composed.
Now then. How should I open this conversation?
While I was still thinking it over, the man lifted two tattooed fingers and smiled faintly.
“So you came.”
I looked at Sera, wondering what this was about, and found that she was already looking back at me.
After blinking at one another for a moment, I turned back to the man and asked, “Do you have the item?”
“It’s ready.”
Sera jumped and shot me a glare.
It was the look of someone asking whether I knew him already.
As if.
I’d only asked because the atmosphere felt like that, and happened to get a perfectly decent answer in return.
“May I take a look?”
“Here, right now? Ha. You must be confident in your skills.”
“Enough to remove one body, at least.”
“Then I suppose it doesn’t matter, but if possible, ask me somewhere else. I already went through a whole mess of things just now.”
“Did you get any materials?”
“I did, but they’re not very good. Not the sort of material you’d want to put there.”
“May I see it?”
The man’s eyes narrowed.
But I remained steady.
“Why are you so wary on a street like this? How many non-alchemists do you think could even recognize it?”
“Non-alchemist? Ha, hahahaha! Right, yes, that’s true. Ah... yes, sorry. I’ve been wandering alone for so long that caution became a habit. Heh. But non-alchemist, huh? That’s... that’s a wonderfully heart-stirring phrase.”
As he said that, the man tapped his own finger.
Then the remnants of mana bulged up from it in a grotesque, lumpy mass. It was hideous and bizarre, like some cosmic monster tearing its way out through a belly.
I carefully took hold of it.
I did feel the urge to eat it, but I remembered Aaron’s warning not to go picking up strange things and eating them, and endured it with inhuman self-control.
Instead, I licked my lips and sampled the residue’s flavor.
Faint, but tangled with all sorts of things.
I’d handled enough residues to know that this kind usually didn’t have very good effects.
And flavors like this usually came from human residue. In other words, residue that only appeared where people had died.
So by “went through a whole mess of things,” did he mean he’d killed someone?
Probably. And because of that, rumors must have spread through the city that an alchemist had slipped in here.
The shape is off.
As I touched it a little more, I realized the residue’s form was somewhat unnatural.
How should I put it?
For Aaron and me, it was like simply taking something out that had been placed there. This, on the other hand, felt more like forcibly yanking out something that had been deeply embedded.
The difference between a loose baby tooth that comes out easily and an impacted wisdom tooth that has to be smashed out with a hammer.
Which meant the scraps produced during the extraction process would remain behind in the workshop as well.
That would have a bad effect on the body.
Other people’s mana can’t properly mix with your own.
The method for breaking aura proves that much already.
Didn’t they say that if you mix your own mana into an opponent’s aura and disrupt its mana pattern, the aura is erased for a moment?
I couldn’t say for certain what kind of harmful effect mana mixing would have, but one thing was clear: it was definitely not good.
Is that why they rely on drugs?
What about other alchemists?
I suppressed the curiosity that was beginning to rise in me and set the residue back on the man’s finger.
“It really is bad. It won’t last long.”
“Just by looking at it, you can tell? Then your level must be quite impressive.”
“Yes.”
I learned that alchemists with inferior workshops couldn’t be judged just by looking. Still, it seemed the higher the level, the stronger the sensitivity.
“By the way, the girl beside you doesn’t seem like an alchemist. What is she?”
“My assistant.”
“Assistant?”
“Yes. I bought her from an orphanage. Four silver coins.”
“Don’t tell me in the Eskart Empire?”
“Yes.”
“Huh...”
The man’s eyes went wide.
“You went into the Eskart Empire? You’ve got some nerve.”
“Like I said, I can remove one body, at least.”
“No, leaving aside the removing part, you’d get caught at the checkpoint just trying to get in. How did you get through?”
What on earth was he talking about?
When I only blinked at him, the man’s eyes narrowed again.
“Hmm?”
Beside me, Sera pinched my side.
It meant: what are you going to do?
“I think you need proof from that side now too.”
The man’s hand slipped into his robes.
An openly hostile posture, no matter how you looked at it.
But I stayed calm.
In moments like this, you had to advance boldly.
Still, anger was the worst possible approach. It only signaled that you’d been poked.
“I’ve been proving it from the start.”
“...What?”
“Did you not recognize the artifact hanging around my neck? Then what made you decide we were the people here to collect the item? Are you always this careless? At this rate, can you even handle your next errand?”
“Y-You can tell just by the finger workshop... I-I mean...”
The man, who had been glaring at me with a terrifying look, flinched and leaned back.
“I’m a rather forgiving alchemist, so I’ll let it slide, though I am a little offended.”
I gave a light tap with my foot beneath the table against Zalman’s shoe.
Then, rustle—his shoe disassembled into tiny pieces.
Zalman’s eyes flew wide open.
“D-Dismantling... There isn’t even a refinement circle, so how is this... how can it be this fast...”
“Give me the item.”
“S-So... then you really were a first-rank official?”
“Quickly.”
The thing the man scrambled to produce was a small wooden case.
I took it and stood up.
“What’s your name?”
“...You didn’t hear it from someone?”
Sure enough, to survive for a long time without getting killed by your own master, you had to be this suspicious.
“It wasn’t worth remembering. But now I think I need to.”
“P-Please... please, I beg you...”
“What’s your name?”
“Zalman... Zalman Becker...”
“Zalman Becker. I’ll remember it. Thanks for the item. I’ll put it to good use.”
Leaving the slumped Zalman behind, Sera and I slowly walked away.
“Wow, Lulu, you’re seriously a great actress. Like, seriously, seriously amazing. I almost believed you were a first-rank official!”
“Alchemists are all good at that sort of thing. By the way, Mr. Zalman seems to be with the Pantheon, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah, probably? The title ‘first-rank official’ is only used in the Pantheon. And, well, most alchemists ended up joining the Pantheon anyway, so I guess that’s right.”
“Then what is this?”
I shook the wooden case.
Clack, clack—something rattled softly inside.
As Sera listened to the sound, she shook her head.
“I still don’t know. Let’s go somewhere with no people and open it.”
“Let’s do that. You covered your face properly, right?”
“Yeah. If I need to, I can use a cognition-disrupting spell for a little while. What about you? Did you cover yourself well?”
“I’m fine thanks to this robe.”
“Right, I couldn’t tell whether you were a dwarf or a beastkin until you took it off, either. Then we should be fine.”
I understood dwarf, but why did beastkin keep coming up?
I asked the question I’d been curious about for a long time.
“Are beastkin usually short too?”
“Most of the smaller animal types, like rat beastkin, are.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, where are we going?”
“I’m thinking of stopping by the adventurers’ guild before we head to the inn.”
“Why?”
“If there’s a bounty when I report it, I can collect it during the process. We’ll go to Tea Salon tomorrow.”
“Mm, good idea. But if there’s a wanted notice up, wouldn’t it be better to report him simply as a wanted criminal? If you say he’s an alchemist, they’ll get suspicious.”
“Yes, that sounds better. We only need the money.”
Sera, who had been blinking at me, suddenly grabbed my hand tightly.
“...You’re not dragging me around because I might have a bounty on my head too and you want to cash it in, right? You’re not, right? Huh? We’re friends... right...?”
“Of course not. Even if you are a non-alchemist, I don’t see you as money. And I’m not the kind of alchemist who’s obsessed with money, either.”
And so Sera and I arrived at the adventurers’ guild and headed for the bulletin board covered in wanted notices.
As expected, Zalman Becker’s notice was already posted there.
=========================
Name: Zalman Becker
Crimes: Robbery, serial murder, corpse mutilation and abandonment
Details: Former 3rd Circle mage of the Imperial Black Magic Tower, who left the tower and took refuge in the Pantheon.
Over the next roughly three months, he brutally murdered an estimated 61 commoners and adventurers along the border city of Valag and the southwestern merchant route.
It has been confirmed in multiple cases that he split open the victim’s chest and abdomen and searched inside.
This is believed not to have been for the purpose of extracting organs or for dark magical purposes, but rather to find something hidden inside the corpse.
As the recently discovered corpse was found intact, it is presumed he has secured the object he had been searching for, and caution is advised in pursuit.
Bounty: 7 gold coins
Description: Witness statements regarding his appearance vary so much that a composite sketch cannot be posted.
The common details across those statements are a pale complexion, trembling pupils, a habit of tapping the table periodically, and the habit of slipping his right hand into his robe just before combat.
=========================
Sera and I silently exchanged a look, then promptly tore down the wanted notice and headed for the counter.
*****
After the girl suspected to be a first-rank official of the Pantheon left, Zalman slumped over like a man who had lost his country.
The fact that a first-rank official had said she would remember his name had delivered a truly bone-chilling shock.
It was, in essence, a death sentence for his future life in the Pantheon, or rather, a warning to stop worrying about promotion and focus purely on survival.
That was what Zalman was brooding over, trying to figure out how he could possibly smooth over the official’s anger.
“Zalman.”
Someone walked up in front of him—some man who looked a little less suspicious than those two who had claimed to be first-rank officials.
“Zalman Becker, is that right?”
Zalman raised his head and looked at him.
“...Who are you?”
“You don’t even know the face of a fellow official? I’m Morman, a 4th-rank official.”
“If you’re a 4th-rank official... ah, yes. Mr. Morman. Of course I remember you. But what brings you here...?”
“I came to collect the item.”
“Pardon...?”
“You managed to bring it back. Good work. Leave the rest to us in the Pantheon.”
“Pardon...?”
Wrinkles formed between the man’s brows.
“How many times do I have to say it... Hah, just hand over the item.”
“Pardon...?”
“I said I came to receive the item you brought back.”
“No... what item are you talking about...?”
“The Earth Dragon Heart Fragment you recovered. You tracked down the bastard who bought it on the black market, killed him, and took it back, didn’t you? Wasn’t I here to receive that?”
“I-I was, but?”
“Ah, this bastard is really something.”
Grinding his teeth, Morman sat down in front of Zalman.
“Has the drug worn off less than I thought? Did you switch painkillers or something? What the hell are you babbling like an idiot for? I said hand over the item. Is that really so hard to understand?”
Still blinking blankly, Zalman opened his mouth cautiously.
“I-If you mean the item, didn’t I already give it to you?”
“...What?”
“A first-rank official and his assistant came by and took my item...”
“First-rank?”
“Yes!”
Zalman held out the disassembled remains of his shoe.
“Even though I doubted them, they were merciful enough to spare me with only this much. It took them less than a second to dismantle this... M-Mr. Morman?”
“Hahah...”
Suddenly, Morman burst out laughing.
“Hahahaha!”
Zalman, at least, laughed along.
That’s how it went. If you laughed along in moments like this, you could salvage at least half of it.
Then, suddenly, Morman’s laughter stopped.
“Hahaha! Hahahak! H, ha... ha......?”
Ah. Was this not right?
Zalman awkwardly looked away.