A New Discovery
The day I took down the little golem, I scrubbed myself squeaky clean and flopped comfortably onto the bed. I hadn't gotten a proper rest in six days. Just thinking about getting pummeled by that thing again the next morning made my hands and feet shake. But today I won. I smashed it to bits. Maybe that's why I slept so soundly—perhaps a little too soundly.
[Heehee! Heehee!]
"From now on, face it using only disassembly."
The next morning, I found myself staring down the little golem again. This time it had legs attached, a complete version. I was sure it had to be a dream.
"This is a dream, right?"
[Heehee!]
"Kyah...!"
Only after getting drop-kicked did I realize it was real. Once more I had to fight the little golem—this time with legs—using nothing but disassembly.
Until now I'd only disassembled and sorted stationary objects. Now the target moved. I learned the importance of speed all over again.
I flopped onto my back and asked Aaron, "Master, once I fully adapt to this fighting style, could I disassemble a knight's sword too?"
"A Level 3 knight's sword? Possible."
A Level 3 knight can wrap their blade in aura. At Level 5 they coat it in aura, and at Level 6 they envelop their entire body. The metal becomes harder than ordinary steel, and the properties within the aura seep into the whole form. That means disassembly can already handle a sword wrapped in aura.
"Then how do I disassemble a sword coated in aura?"
"Reach the fourth rank."
The fourth rank is Harmony—the alchemy of mixing what cannot be mixed. The description in Alchemy Basics Even a Child Can Learn! was frustratingly vague.
"How does Harmony do it?"
"Disassembly and augmentation belong to the realm of matter. From the third rank onward—Multiplication and Division—we enter the realm of concepts. At the fourth rank you can mix things that cannot be mixed within that conceptual space. You must blend someone else's mana into a pure aura and shatter its balance."
I roughly understood. The more cryptic the explanation, the more complicated and finicky the actual process had to be. So the fourth rank was the bare minimum needed to oppose aura. The proper level was probably the fifth. Once I reached that same rank and could perform Distortion, I'd be able to break aura without any roundabout steps.
Still, it was all conceptual rather than material, so it felt impossibly far away. Thinking about it, a question suddenly occurred to me.
"But Master, in Alchemy Basics Even a Child Can Learn! I read that even first-rank disassembly can scatter mana. I thought that meant I could handle aura. Mana isn't matter, though, so... huh? What does that mean?"
"A Level 3 knight's aura has plenty of gaps."
"Ah."
Stick your hand into those gaps, disassemble the sword, and the aura scatters with it. The technique wouldn't work on a Level 4 knight—they can swing a solid sheet of aura. That was why Aaron had said a Level 3 knight's sword was manageable.
"Then what about that theory? The one about reading the flow of magic and breaking its framework... whatever it was called."
It claimed that if you could grasp the ever-shifting framework of mana and disrupt its core, even someone of low rank could dismantle aura or spells.
"That theory surfaced briefly about eighty years ago. It leaned more toward magic than alchemy. Every mage tower investigated it and declared it impossible, so it was discarded. Since no books have been published after alchemy was banned, that must be why it ended up in there."
I understood why the theory had appeared in the book. What I didn't understand was the timeline. I'd dozed through history lessons at the orphanage, but from what Aaron just said, alchemy had been banned roughly eighty years ago. If the book contained an eighty-year-old theory and was the last one published before the ban, then the prohibition happened eighty years ago.
Wasn't alchemy banned because of Master?
I blinked at Aaron. No matter how I looked at him, he appeared to be in his mid-twenties.
"Master, how old are you exactly?"
"I stopped counting after I passed a hundred."
Alchemy had been banned about eighty years ago. That meant Aaron had already been a legendary alchemist feared as a Disaster while still in his early twenties. How much stronger had he become after another eighty years?
I felt a pang of regret that I couldn't gauge his true level, yet my chest swelled with pride that someone like him was teaching me.
"Whoa."
At my exclamation, another little golem was transmuted. This time I had to face it with disassembly alone. I'd gotten used to its movements, so it shouldn't be too hard—though Aaron wouldn't assign it unless there was some tricky element involved.
[Heehee!]
I dodged the charging golem's first strike and thrust out my hand. I focused on the sensations in my palm and tongue to analyze its composition. Stone and various metals, followed by water and mana stone. Easy enough to disassemble.
Huh?
Nothing happened. While I hesitated, the golem's fist slammed into me. I could have blocked with an augmentation shield, but I was restricted to disassembly. The blow sent stars bursting across my vision and knocked me flat.
"Aaaagh..."
[Heeheehee!]
The golem climbed onto my fallen body and started pounding away. Thanks to my hard-earned skill at taking hits, the blows didn't hurt as much. I kept thinking while it rained punches.
The golem's structure was simple. Even while it thrashed around, I should be able to disassemble it completely in under a second. Contact should trigger instant disassembly. Yet it wasn't working. Something was interfering.
On the nineteenth punch to the head, realization struck. What powered the golem? Its core. The core ran on mana. That meant mana flowed through the golem's body—and that mana was blocking my disassembly.
Did I have to disassemble the mana itself? Unfortunately, that was impossible. As Aaron had just explained, first-rank disassembly couldn't touch mana.
A Level 3 knight's aura has plenty of gaps.
So gaps must exist. I needed to find the places where mana didn't flow.
By the twenty-second strike I'd made my decision. The moment the golem grabbed my hair like a handle, I reached for its torso. Using the taste on my tongue, I mapped its components and hunted for gaps. The instant I found a spot where the flavor changed, I jammed mana into it and triggered disassembly.
Did it work?
Thwack!
Failure. The price was a headbutt.
Wow, this...
It was hard because the target kept moving. Even a slight shift from the golem changed where the gap appeared. So this was why he'd made me do it. I filed the realization away and braced for the next hit.
The next hit never came.
I cracked one eye open.
"Huh?"
The little golem hung limp. The hand that had been clutching my hair like a handle slowly released. I poked it a few times. No response.
Blinking, I looked at Aaron.
"Master, did this thing suddenly break... or..."
"You."
He was staring at me with wide eyes. After a long moment he strode over.
"What exactly did you do?"
"...Hic?"
"That wasn't the face of someone who knew what they were doing."
Aaron lifted the golem and let out a dry chuckle.
"You just disassembled the flow of mana."
"I did?"
It didn't feel particularly joyful or proud—after all, it had nothing to do with alchemy.
"This might overturn the very foundations of alchemy."
"I did!"
Suddenly it felt deeply connected to alchemy, and pride swelled in my chest.
*****
After I succeeded at whatever that mana disassembly was, Aaron kept throwing every kind of golem at me. Each time I managed to sever the mana flow. It wasn't easy—maybe one success in fifty tries. The mental and physical drain was enormous; I couldn't manage more than ten attempts a day.
Once those ten left me exhausted, I switched to sparring or practiced ordinary disassembly and augmentation out of habit. The theoretical studies required for the second rank took only two days. I memorized all thirty volumes in that time.
My daily routine became: wake up, eat, wash, practice mana disassembly, eat lunch, spar, eat dinner, practice transmutation, sleep. Aaron had drawn up the entire schedule. Following it kept me pleasantly tired and challenged. It fit me perfectly.
As mana disassembly grew more familiar, my success rate climbed. One in five, then one in three. Eventually I could describe the sensation clearly.
It happened on the day I became Aaron's disciple a full year ago.
"The taste changes. It's like... um... the flavor of soil that's been wet once and is slowly drying. But the wet soil is made of mana stone, so it tastes like wet soil. Astringent, bitter, and spicy?"
Someone might ask what wet-then-drying soil even tasted like, but I'd discovered it while disassembling various materials. It came from breaking down something made of water and earth. No other comparison captured the strange sensation, so I had to describe it clumsily. Aaron understood anyway.
"Water is mana, and soil is the medium that holds it. That would mean the source itself contains no mana. Plausible. Some Heresy Inquisitors of the Holy Kingdom track residual mana traces to pursue their targets."
"But it isn't completely dry soil. It feels like it gets wet and dries in cycles."
"Mana doesn't return to the source until the full cycle completes? Its structure must differ from a human heart. Can you follow that flow—that current?"
"I'll try."
I failed. The mana flow was too intricate, too chaotic, shifting without warning. The only constant was the dry-soil taste; everything else was dizzyingly complex, as though disorder itself were the rule. Still, after more attempts I succeeded in guiding the flow in one direction.
Aaron's eyes burned brighter than I'd ever seen. He spoke faster and more than usual. In the entire year we'd lived together, I'd never heard him talk so much. His expressions varied so widely I wondered if his twin brother had shown up. When I cautiously asked, he answered with his usual deadpan.
"What you achieved is worth that much."
"Whoa."
Hearing praise from the ever-stoic Aaron left me oddly flustered. At the same time, I sensed he had a goal of his own. Everyone had goals, yet until now he'd never seemed quite human. After my discovery, I felt I understood him a little better. Maybe he also wanted to build a giant transforming combining Tyrannosaurus.
Then came a spring day, one year and three months into my apprenticeship. Aaron nodded as if satisfied after breakfast.
"The research is sufficient. We've done enough."
"I can keep going."
"You won't progress further from here. At best you'll only twist the flow more. Continuing the research can wait until you're a high-ranking alchemist. Right now, succeeding at twisting the flow is already more than enough. Well done."
That single "well done" made the corners of my mouth curl upward. It was only the third time in one year and three months, after all.
"Ehehe. So what good does twisting the flow do?"
Aaron pondered briefly, then chuckled. Unlike a year ago, the laugh no longer looked awkward.
"It might make it possible to change the taste of potions—something that has never been altered throughout history."
"Gasp."
I understood perfectly. Any regret about stopping the mana-disassembly practice vanished instantly.
"Does that mean we'll get rich?"
"I'm already rich."
"I'll make you the richest person in the world."
"No need. Keep it all for yourself."
"Thank you."
"Starting tomorrow, you may use the morning research time for your own experiments. Tell me if you need anything."
"Yahoo!"
I recalled the goal I'd set aside for the past year. Making delicious potions. The time had finally come.