A Major Variable
Casian and Isabella's eyes went round the moment they spotted the girl sitting beside me.
"Felicia?"
"How are you here?"
"I came to play!"
The girl answered the royals' questions in a bright, sunny voice, swinging her legs back and forth and humming a little tune under her breath.
While the rest of us were still trying to process what we were seeing, an elderly woman stepped in through the half-open door.
"My apologies. The young lady insisted, quite out of the blue, that she simply had to come to Astrum."
So this was what a beauty looked like when she aged gracefully. The splendor of her prime had long since passed, yet a dignity that even time itself could not bend still shone from her with quiet nobility. At her words, the two royals composed their expressions.
"Sigrid came with you?"
"That's a relief, at least. Without Sigrid, this could have gone very badly."
"Heh heh. Such extravagant expectations make these old shoulders feel rather heavy."
Heavy, my foot. Coming from an Imperial Hero, that kind of talk only ever sounded like humility.
While the long-parted group caught up, Theo and I found ourselves in an awkward spot.
"Where did you angel-sirs come from?"
"Umm..."
Uh...
I rolled my eyes carefully instead of answering Felicia's question on impulse.
Why is the Seventh Princess showing up here?
Seventh Princess Felicia. Her nickname was the Lucky Princess. She was so absurdly fortunate that people half-seriously called her the reincarnation of the Goddess of Luck herself.
I knew plenty about her. More than plenty — I knew her down to the fine print of her lore. And yet I was rattled, because the game Felicia appeared in was not Alchemist Story.
She was a hidden character in a different title that shared the same world — an academy story, of all things. The situation had diverged so far from the original Alchemist Story that my head was starting to spin.
Still, the variable itself wasn't a bad thing. Peeking at the future had always come with a steep price.
"Well. This should thoroughly inoculate me against the Curse of Knowledge, at least."
The Curse of Knowledge. It was the pathological obsession with believing that a future one had seen must come to pass. When a variable appeared and the future shifted, the afflicted were hit with extreme stress and mental collapse. The condition was vicious enough that countless prophets had gone mad from it, and modern-day seers still wrestled desperately to keep the madness at bay.
It wasn't as if most of them had asked for the gift of prophecy in the first place — and if their talent was weak, they couldn't even control when the visions came. One of the preventives discovered along the way was simply this: never put blind faith in a prophecy. The future was only a bundle of possibilities, and people's choices could rewrite it at any time.
I had just walked into a scene that would never have appeared in Alchemist Story. For a good while, at least, I wouldn't need to worry about the Curse of Knowledge.
I sorted my thoughts and looked back at Felicia. While I'd been silent, she had been happily chatting away with Theo.
"So you angel-sirs came to Astrum after your master disappeared?"
Calling it independence is a stretch, honestly. We worked ourselves half to death climbing to Nigredo, then woke up one morning and the atelier was just... gone. One letter telling us to go independent and a little seed money left behind. We got kicked out more than we left.
Theo dumped the whole grievance in a rush, like he'd been sitting on a mountain of resentment toward his master. I jabbed him in the side in pure alarm. He came to his senses a beat late and cleared his throat.
Sigrid smiled faintly at the sight and rose from her seat.
"We ought to be heading back soon."
"Ehh, already?"
"They're in the middle of work. We shouldn't keep interrupting."
Felicia wilted at Sigrid's words. Casian shook his head as if to say it was fine.
"We've finished what we came for. It's all right."
"From what I've heard, these two boys seem to have rendered quite the service."
"Ah."
Casian let out a belated sound of realization at Sigrid's remark. With three royals gathered in one room, of course Theo and I were feeling the pressure — and he had finally noticed. I shot Sigrid a look of genuine gratitude and started timing my exit.
"Look at the time already. We'll take our leave, then."
"You're going already?"
The moment I laid the groundwork, Felicia's face fell with disappointment. Maybe the story of an otherworldly transmigrator and the alchemist who'd cheerfully accepted him had been that entertaining. She clearly wanted to hear more, and Sigrid coaxed her gently.
"Alchemists are busy people, my lady. Especially right now — this is a critical period for these boys. Let's save the rest of the stories for next time."
"Okay..."
Felicia nodded at Sigrid's words, put on a brave little face, and stood. Then she stuck her pinky out toward us.
"We'll meet again! Promise!"
"Of course. Theo and I are always at the atelier, so come visit whenever you like."
Only after we'd locked pinkies and sealed the promise did she look satisfied. I had no idea how long she'd be staying in Astrum, but given luck that bordered on the supernatural, I was sure we'd run into her again soon enough.
Once Felicia and Sigrid had left with a promise for next time, Casian and Isabella rose from the sofa as well.
"We should head back too."
"It was a pleasure talking with you."
And just like that, the two royals were gone as well, leaving only Theo, Lowell, and me in the branch chief's office. In the quiet left behind by the royal storm, the three of us let out a long breath of relief. Nigredo-rank or Chitrinitas-rank — being around royalty was exhausting either way.
I rolled the stiffness of tension out of my shoulders and started tidying up.
"We'll be heading back as well."
It was fun talking with you.
I was already thinking about getting home and working the fatigue out through alchemy when Lowell stopped us on our way out.
"One moment. There are various materials stored inside that subspace pouch — a little surprise I prepared for you. Put them to good use."
Startled, I checked the interior of the subspace pouch. Materials I hadn't noticed when I first received it were packed inside. Nothing extravagantly rare, but every last piece was exactly what someone at my level needed right now.
I looked up at Lowell in surprise. He only grinned playfully.
"Thank you! I had no idea a surprise like this was hiding in there!"
We'll put the materials to good use!
We left the branch chief's office with light steps and headed for the atelier. The moment we arrived, I bolted for the storeroom, dumped every last scrap from the subspace pouch, and dove straight into alchemy.
"Go! Get everything set up perfectly!"
"Kyuuut!"
"Kyu!"
I summoned the spirit familiars and gave the signal. They scrambled into motion, hauling materials this way and that.
The moment we opened an entrance into the Demonic Realm, monsters would come pouring through. If I didn't want to sit there sucking my thumb when that happened, I had to prepare hard starting now.
I moved to the transmutation circle etched into the stone floor and called over the golems standing in the corner of the atelier.
"Arms up. Let me check the state of your internal circuits."
Nod.
The golems dipped their heads and spread their arms. They hadn't been worked especially hard, so there were no major problems. A few sections of the mana circuits were a little rough — the inevitable result of drawing them with whatever materials I'd had on hand — but I'd built them from the start with expansion and modification in mind, so the fixes wouldn't be difficult.
"Time for you lot to graduate from pack-mule duty."
Conveniently, the subspace pouch had held Malleable Stone ideal for use as cores. Refined from mana stones through alchemy, Malleable Stone was a key material for crafting minion cores.
I set the Malleable Stone and a golem onto the transmutation circle and drew a deep breath.
"Hoo. Let's begin."
I cycled mana through my whole body and sharpened my senses. The moment I poured mana into the circle, light flared and the Malleable Stone rose into the air. I shaped my mana around the fist-sized stone as if cupping it in both hands.
In the wider world, the process of an alchemist creating a minion was called the work of breathing life into the lifeless. You took an inanimate object with no life of its own, poured knowledge and wisdom into it, and gave it the capacity to judge and move on its own — so of course the romantics had piled on the flowery language.
To someone from Earth, though, it looked like something else entirely.
Coding. Programming. The root of all evil that had driven countless engineering students into despair. The very thing that had reduced programmers — people who were supposed to worship reason above all else — into superstitious wrecks. And in Alchemist Story, it was content that had broken just as many players.
"Please. Just succeed on the first try."
Even a Nigredo-rank minion required combining hundreds of transmutation formulas. The higher a minion's grade, the more the number of formulas needed for its core ballooned exponentially. I'd once seen a core inscribed with hundreds of thousands of formulas — only once, but once was enough.
Holding a state of absolute focus, I rendered the formulas I wanted in runic script. I compressed complex formulas down smaller than a fingernail and etched them into the Malleable Stone. A rune-engraving pen would have made the work far easier, but the atelier didn't have anything that expensive, so I had to carve every line by hand.
I drew the formulas with painstaking care and thought to myself, Once I've saved up some money, alchemy tools are the first thing I'm buying.
Alchemy was a bottomless money pit. Proper results demanded proper tools, and without them you had no choice but to brute-force everything with raw physique and talent.
While I was mentally ranking my shopping priorities, the engraving finished. I withdrew the mana I'd poured into the circle and worked the stiffness out of my body.
"That's the core done."
I checked the core, its surface rounded smooth by the engraving process. Not a single scratch. Top-grade work. Smiling at the satisfying result, I looked at the golem still standing on the circle.
"Next up — the mana circuits?"
In human terms, it was the work of building the pathways that served as blood vessels, muscle, and nerves all at once, and the difficulty was nothing to sneeze at. With Theo's body, though, it wasn't hard for me.
"No time to waste. Let's move fast."
I drew my mana out into hundreds of impossibly fine threads. Then I worked every last thread at once — and the circuits completed as if I'd been running hundreds of tools simultaneously. I wiped the sweat from my brow and pressed the core against the golem's chest.
Wooooom—!
The mana circuits and the core resonated, releasing a strange wavelength, and the core was absorbed into the golem. The body of the powered golem — no, the minion — shuddered. Starting from its extremities, the minion slowly came to life, stepped down from the transmutation circle, and dropped to one knee.
Thud!
"Working perfectly."
I watched it move exactly according to its programmed commands with a look of deep satisfaction. Theo, who had been brewing potions, glanced over with interest.
Is that minion an Oathbound?
"That's right. One of the ones you can make with the recipe your grandfather — and master — gifted us."
We don't even have that recipe yet.
"Then let's call it a gift pending delivery."
The story was so twisted I was starting to lose track. I chuckled and looked the Oathbound over.
If I remembered right, Theo's master had excavated the recipe from ancient ruins in his youth. True to its name, the Oathbound grew stronger the more faithfully it kept the vows engraved in its core — a solid minion in its own right. Compared to a plain golem, it was in a completely different league.
This one alone was a meaningful jump in combat power. But there was still a long list of things left to make. I sent the finished Oathbound to the corner, set another golem on the circle, and scratched my head.
"At this rate, we're pulling an all-nighter."
A few all-nighters won't kill us.
"It's the 'few' turning into a few weeks, then a few months, that I'm worried about."
Aww, you're just imagining things!
Theo soothed me gently after I voiced that odd prickle of unease. But the look in his eyes was pure pride — the pride of watching me fall magnificently into full alchemist corruption. Looking at that face, I made a silent vow.
Just this once. One all-nighter, and after that I was fixing my sleep schedule for good.