Iron-Blooded Alchemist
Iron-Blooded Alchemist
A specter was haunting the Borus Empire.
The specter of <Iron-Blooded Alchemist>.
"Stop pushing! I've been camping out here for three days to hold this spot, and you dare cut in?!"
"No, wait, I just went to the bathroom. How is this your spot?!"
"You lunatic. Don't you know that once you leave the line, it's over?"
This was now a common sight at the capital branch, the main office of the Yuren Merchant Company.
Promotion for the release of the new manga volume <Iron-Blooded Alchemist> Volume 1 had begun a week earlier, and from the day the promotion appeared, a long line had formed in front of the merchant company.
Compared to the previous work <Kingdom of Ice>, the line had grown far longer.
There were several reasons for that.
The first was scalping.
"I heard Sampson bought the limited edition of the last manga and sold it for three times the price."
"What? Three times?! That limited edition was insanely expensive, so three times that means he hit the jackpot!"
Among Rupert's manga volumes, the limited editions and premium hardcovers sold to the wealthy had fixed quantities.
So when rumors spread that people who had missed out were paying steep prices to buy copies from those who had gotten them,
word spread that this was an easy chance to make money, and everyone rushed to join the line.
The second reason was a single piece of news.
'Please note that this manga may only be purchased and read by those aged twelve and older!'
A single phrase the Yuren Merchant Company had added when advertising the new manga.
This became a hot topic too after word from a company insider spread.
The rumor was that, unlike the earlier works, this one was aimed at young adults or older rather than little children.
In particular, the picture books were naturally content that girls enjoyed, and while the first manga <Kingdom of Ice> was said to be suitable for all ages and genders.
It was still a work with a higher proportion of female readers.
Perhaps because of that, men had not shown such enthusiastic reactions to picture books or manga so far.
But this time, when rumors spread that the artist had openly made the work for male readers, curious people flocked in.
That was how this long line came to be.
However, the three men holding places 12 through 14 near the front of the line were painfully awkward.
'What the hell, why are these bastards here?'
'Damn it, how did I, the Imperial Princess's escort knight, end up here?'
'Isn't that guy the Crown Prince's attendant?'
By coincidence, number 12 was the Third Imperial Prince's attendant, and number 13 was the Crown Prince's attendant.
And number 14 was the Imperial Princess's escort knight.
All three served the imperial family in the imperial palace, so they had seen each other's faces coming and going, which made it even more awkward.
They were by no means standing in this line for three days to buy manga for themselves.
They were merely following the orders of those they served. Yet they were embarrassed that people might see them as obsessed with manga, something girls liked.
Worse, none of them could simply step forward and start a conversation.
No matter how trivial the order to fetch a book was, it was still an order from the imperial family.
If they let it slip during their mission that they were people of the imperial household, rumors could spread, so they had to keep their mouths firmly shut.
And so the three men pretended not to see each other and spent three days in silence.
***
"Whew... This is seriously good."
Esteban was sitting in a comfortable chair in his office, where a magic-stone heater maintained a suitably warm temperature, reading a manga volume.
In fact, this was already his fifth read. By now, he had practically memorized the story and the dialogue.
Yet it was just as entertaining every time.
The content in particular was extremely gripping.
A mother who died of illness. A father who left home and never returned.
And the adventure of the two brothers left behind.
The opening had made Esteban doubt his own eyes.
Seeing two brothers, he had expected an adventure story—perhaps an action-packed journey of alchemist brothers, judging by the title <Iron-Blooded Alchemist>.
He thought it would not be bad.
If you swapped alchemists for knights, it would feel like one of those heroic epics of knights that men go crazy for.
But what came right away was a beginning completely different from what Esteban had imagined.
『The materials required for human transmutation, based on one average adult, are 35 liters of water....』
The protagonists were not setting off on an adventure.
Instead, the brothers attempted the forbidden art of Human Transmutation to bring their mother back to life.
Human transmutation, a forbidden secret art said to revive the dead. Did such alchemy really exist?
And what were all those materials supposedly making up a human body? Some were familiar, others he had never heard of, but the list was disturbingly specific.
Even Esteban, who knew nothing about it, got chills looking at materials that seemed plausible.
'What is this? How does Master Rupert know things like this...?'
And then the very next part.
『Uwaaaah...
What came out through the transmutation circle was not my mother. No, could this even be called a person?
I looked around, blood dripping from the place where my left arm had been.
My younger brother 'Alex' was nowhere to be seen.
It was the rebound—the price of attempting forbidden transmutation.
It had taken my younger brother.
"No!!!"
I screamed and struck the ground. Even that made me lose my balance and collapse, since only one hand remained.
But I could not give up like this.
"Wait, I will definitely get you back!"
A decorative suit of armor in one corner of the house caught my eye.
Human Transmutation had failed, but perhaps I could still bind a soul.
I began to draw a transmutation circle with blood.』
No matter how many times he read it, Esteban could only stare in awe at the shocking turn of events.
No—was awe even the right word for what he felt?
How on earth could Rupert create such a work?
Looking at the works Rupert had made so far, Esteban had sensed potential, but he had never felt shock.
But this work was different.
Putting business aside, he simply wanted to keep reading. He was practically frantic for the next volume.
"So this is the series Master Rupert was talking about?"
Esteban had wanted to keep the current success going, so he had suggested adapting the three existing picture books into manga instead of launching an entirely new work.
By anyone's judgment, that was the safe plan with guaranteed success.
But Rupert had said that was actually more dangerous and prepared a new work.
His judgment had certainly been correct.
Esteban looked out the window of his office.
Even though sales had not yet begun, the line stretched endlessly in front of the merchant company.
And the queue had not appeared that day. It had been there since the advertising campaign began a week earlier.
"When those people read this work, they might really storm the Somerset Count's House."
It was not a joke; he meant it.
In fact, if he were not the company head, Esteban himself would have rushed straight to Rupert and begged him desperately for the next volume.
"This work will definitely be far more popular than Kingdom of Ice."
His instincts as both a reader and a merchant told him <Iron-Blooded Alchemist> would surpass everything that had come before it.
"Then I should start planning the merchandise right away."
They were already making large profits from the <Kingdom of Ice> merchandise, but the goods sold out as fast as the merchandise factory produced them, so supply was always short.
In this situation, it was impossible to also produce merchandise for this new work, so preparations had to be made in advance.
First, they had to decide which items to make into merchandise, recruit various artisans, and of course secure materials.
As for the factory, the mansion grounds were still spacious, so it seemed they could build another one next to it.
'Come to think of it, the count's house said they were recruiting additional knights and soldiers this time too.'
At first, he had thought they were crazy for building a book factory and a merchandise factory on the mansion grounds, but the more he thought about it, the more it made sense.
The territory soldiers guarded the grounds tightly enough to keep thieves and spies out. And, unfortunate as it was for them, workers who tried to flee the grueling job tended to get caught too.
When he had visited the household not long ago to pick up the completed books, he remembered Rupert proudly saying that with the help of divine power, he could now go without sleep, and he had looked happy about it.
Indeed, did one have to be that crazy to produce such a work?
Personally, he was quite fond of the man. If he were not a noble, he was the kind of talent Esteban would want to recruit into his merchant company right away and keep by his side.
In his own youth, Esteban had sometimes gritted his teeth and downed Vitality Potions to push through brutal workloads. Rupert, on the other hand, drank them as though they were soft drinks.
"Ah, I need to discuss that too."
Thinking of Rupert reminded him that he needed to talk about the picture books that had been gradually increasing in number lately.
Naturally, no one dared touch Rupert's works because they feared the imperial family, but since the picture book format was free to copy, new picture books had begun to appear.
Of course, their quality and storytelling were still so far behind Rupert's that they barely counted as substitutes.
But these things naturally developed little by little.
If they became complacent, competitors could be breathing down their necks before they knew it.
Therefore, they needed to maintain the picture book market they had already captured.
"But I don't see a solution. Unless Master Rupert's got several bodies, asking him to keep producing picture books on top of everything else is impossible."
The current pace was already absurd, so asking him to draw additional picture books on top of that was basically telling him to drop dead.
No matter how much Rupert loved work, there were things that were impossible.
Still, simply abandoning the picture-book market—which appealed to everyone from little girls to young women—felt like too much of a waste, and Esteban's worries deepened.