Alchemy Is Hard

The Hunter Gallery.

South Korea's largest anonymous community for hunters.

In public, in front of cameras, hunters had to mind how they looked. Outside those walls they played the part of endlessly gentle, impeccably polite professionals — but even they needed somewhere to let loose. Hidden behind anonymity, they could dump whatever garbage posts they felt like. In the Gallery, they found release.

And right now, one particular piece of bait was rolling across that community's hot plate.

The topic setting the Gallery on fire was, of course, the first-floor NPC.

As expected, that was how the bait had been rolling so far — pure chaos, everyone screaming that they were right.

Han Sung-woo carefully checked the featured posts as well. The Gallery was mostly leaning toward the "attention-seeking concept hunter" camp.

I need to set the record straight, fast.

As if on cue, his video editing finished. He stepped straight onto the hot plate.

The moment the post went up, the view count rocketed at a terrifying speed.

Three high-resolution videos shot from fairly close range. More than enough to serve as evidence. On top of that, the overwhelming firepower on display, the monster corpses evaporating into thin air, and the lunchbox — the scales had already tipped hard toward the NPC camp. The Gallery users still pushing the concept-hunter theory were steadily losing ground.

And so the Gallery arrived at a single conclusion.

That girl is an NPC created by the Tower system.

Nobody had formally exchanged opinions, but they had reached a silent consensus all the same.

Nebula Guild Lounge.

Guild Leader Yoo Se-ah had just finished a long, tedious, and pedantic round of coordination with the Hunter Management Bureau. She sank deep into a plush sofa, a shallow sigh escaping her of its own accord.

"Haaah…"

Fatigue washed over her, and she was about to close her eyes for a moment when the lounge door opened and guild members bustled over.

"Guild Leader! You really need to see this video."

Faced with her fussing subordinates, Yoo Se-ah accepted the tablet without so much as a flicker of annoyance, her expression calm. Playing on the screen was footage of the NPC she had seen before — no, the next video after that one?

Thwip! Thwip! Thwip!

On screen, daggers threaded on crimson silk tore through the air like living things. Every time a dagger carved a trajectory, wild boars toppled one after another — and once the hunt was over, both the corpses and a lunchbox vanished into thin air.

Watching the entire sequence, Yoo Se-ah's eyes went wide.

That's… magic?

No casting. Daggers that flew as if locked onto targets. Not a single sign of mana. A phenomenon that made no sense unless it was the Tower's system at work.

"That's the first-floor NPC from last time, right? They're saying she showed up on the fourth-floor field!"

"She's dressed like some kind of celestial maiden now. Her weapon changed to something like a dagger, too. Doesn't it look like she leveled up?"

The guild members chattered excitedly. Yoo Se-ah's brow furrowed.

Leveled up? The fourth floor?

Normally, NPCs inside the Tower were bound to a specific floor, a specific zone. An NPC ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that climbed the Tower on her own, changed her gear, and even grew in combat power? It was a pattern she had never encountered.

"Everyone's saying she's way stronger than before. What's your read, Guild Leader?"

Yoo Se-ah stared through the tablet, then spoke with quiet composure.

"At least A-rank."

"Huk!"

"No — it could be higher. The destructive power is one thing, but a targeting skill like that doesn't make sense."

She tapped the NPC on the screen with a fingertip.

"Just a few days ago, this NPC was throwing fireballs. Overnight, from B-rank to A-rank."

"…"

"As a hunter, that leveling speed is flatly impossible."

Her answer set the guild members buzzing again.

"The whole bait's shifted that way now. How many floors this NPC is going to punch through."

"How many floors…"

Yoo Se-ah looked at the screen again. An absurd growth curve that jumped from the first floor to the fourth in a matter of days, alone.

If this growth rate holds…

She would clear the twentieth floor with ease. Optimistically, solo runs up through the thirties were possible. South Korea's top rankers were currently stalled in the fifties.

And in that situation, an NPC is growing on her own and chasing them from behind?

How was she supposed to interpret this? What intention had the Tower had in creating this NPC?

No — she didn't have the luxury of fretting over that right now.

I need to solve the food problem first…

"Interesting material. Thanks for showing me."

Yoo Se-ah left her guild members behind and headed for her office.

A lonely mountaintop on the 4th Floor Public Field.

Right now, I was hard at work stirring a pill furnace.

The enormous furnace Ok Han-bing-hu had sent through the Heavenly Dao Net. It came up to my chest, so even the ladle was barely manageable.

"Eugh~! Ugh!"

Hot. And I was dying of exhaustion.

Apparently it was a vessel for making pills. Or maybe I should just call it a giant cauldron that came up to my waist? Either way, all I had to do was keep stirring the thick liquid inside so it wouldn't burn.

The problem was that the furnace was way too huge for my body.

More than that — the reason I was grinding through this manual labor in the first place was alche…? Alchemical Refining?

I'd heard it was a technique for making medicine, at least.

"Is this enough?"

"Spirit charcoal? You mean charcoal, right?"

I didn't have the bandwidth to care about everyone yapping away. I'd already failed three times.

Stirred too fast, or too slow. Fire too strong, or too weak. Poured in spiritual energy too hard, or too soft. Why were there so many things I had to get exactly right?

With that much to track, I could only half-read the chat window at best.

No — more than that, the word that kept circling in my head was this "spirit charcoal" thing.

Charcoal is charcoal, right? Is spirit charcoal somehow different? The "spirit ginseng" I bought from the Heavenly Dao Net earlier just looked like regular ginseng, too.

Was it like K-food and K-pop — they just really wanted to brand everything? Was slapping "spirit" on the front of every name the trend over there?

Going out of their way to name-drop and market it like that is honestly kind of cringe.

No, wait — people's reactions were weird, too. I was butchering the wild boar exactly the way they'd taught me, and they were making a huge racket on the side.

"You want me to send them? Hold on. Let me finish this first, then I'll send them."

Did they just want to eat pork? But they'd said we were making spiritual medicine out of this pork.

"Don't you need the pork for making the spiritual medicine, though?"

Blub-blub-blub—

I thought a grenade had gone off.

Weren't we making medicine? I thought a bomb had dropped.

Thankfully I'd listened and backed far away, so I wasn't hurt — but the problem was that the second they confirmed I was fine, they basically rolled me up in a mat and started a public trial. This wasn't a people's court…

Ugh. The chat window's gone nuclear again.