Academy Terror (4)
The Philosopher's Stone.
A legendary artifact said to be capable of creating any substance in existence.
Medieval alchemy had originally begun in pursuit of gold, but with the emergence of the concept known as the Philosopher's Stone, alchemists' ambitions shifted. Gold was no longer the goal — the Stone was.
It was only natural. If one could successfully transmute the Philosopher's Stone, gold would follow as a mere afterthought.
History records a fair number of alchemists who claimed to have created one. The French alchemist Nicolas Flamel. The German alchemist Paracelsus. The Persian alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan.
Whether any of them truly succeeded, however, remains unknown.
Even modern alchemy — fused with contemporary chemistry capable of producing gold itself — has never managed to create a Philosopher's Stone. Scholars still debate whether the less knowledgeable alchemists of the past could possibly have done what modern science cannot.
In that sense, the Philosopher's Stone housed at the Academy is not a true Philosopher's Stone at all.
The Philosopher's Stone Project.
Launched in the 1960s alongside the founding of Warna Academy, the project was a joint endeavor between the Korean government and the Academy's first principal.
That first principal was Kim Dong-hyuk — a renowned magitech engineer, mage, and alchemist who had long dreamed of creating the Philosopher's Stone, the ultimate aspiration of every alchemist who had ever lived.
Dreamed was an understatement. He was obsessed.
Why he fixated so completely on the Stone, no one knows. Perhaps resentment toward senior alchemists who insisted it was impossible. Perhaps a hunger for immortality. Perhaps simply the desire to be the first.
But the Philosopher's Stone was an object of uncertain existence to begin with. Failure after failure followed, and with each one Kim Dong-hyuk tasted bitter defeat.
That was when the Korean government made him an offer.
Become the Academy's first principal, and we will help you achieve your dream.
Having already poured his entire fortune into the pursuit of the Stone, Kim Dong-hyuk could hardly refuse a government promising both honor and funding. And so he accepted.
The government kept its word, investing capital and materials into his research. In return, it demanded full reports on every advance and every result.
Among the failures that emerged from that research, one piece caught the eye of the president himself.
It was, without question, the most extraordinary of all Kim Dong-hyuk's failed attempts at creating the Philosopher's Stone.
At the time, Kim Dong-hyuk had been grafting magitech engineering onto alchemy in his efforts to produce the Stone. The result was something previously imaginable only in theory: a device capable of classifying and storing the unique mana of every individual human being.
The president who recognized its potential was, understandably, beside himself.
The government promptly proposed that Kim Dong-hyuk set aside the true Philosopher's Stone and first refine and complete this device — after which he could resume his original research.
It was a proposal in name only. In practice, it was a threat. Kim Dong-hyuk had bankrupted himself on the Stone; the government held the purse strings, and he had no leverage against them.
After relentless persuasion, the Philosopher's Stone Project was redirected entirely toward perfecting the device.
They even gave it a name.
The Philosopher's Stone.
The performance of the new creation — built from the blueprint of what had once been a mere failure — was so extraordinary that the government, moved by its brilliance, christened it the Philosopher's Stone and launched a new project under that name.
Time passed. In the early 1980s, the device was completed.
It could collect, store, and analyze human mana in real time — a capability not unlike that of a modern computer.
The government that had seized power through a coup installed the devices across cities and schools nationwide. The original Philosopher's Stone, however, was far too massive to place in a school as-is. So they worked every magitech engineer and alchemist they could find to the bone, redesigning it until its size was drastically reduced.
Performance shrank along with it, but that hardly mattered — each unit only needed to function within the narrow confines of a single school.
The government of the day used the mana data collected from every city, sorted through the master unit at the Academy, to identify potential threats in advance — eliminating or co-opting dangerous individuals as tools of dictatorship.
And the Philosopher's Stone has endured even into the present day, long after Korea became a genuine democracy.
It has proven invaluable for screening Ability User terrorists who infiltrate the country with hostile intent, and for identifying promising talent across the nation.
One could argue the method infringes on personal freedom. But the United States and Japan pour every resource they have into identifying their own Ability Users, monitoring threats, and bringing them to heel. China needs no mention. Other nations employ methods equal to or worse than Korea's. Why should Korea alone be forbidden?
At any rate, an artifact of this caliber was exactly the sort of thing that would pique Gamigin's interest.
A demon already burning with curiosity — and her contractor volunteering to go of her own accord? Of course Gamigin would have leapt at the chance.
Moreover, the mana surging up from below was growing fiercer by the second. A violent battle was clearly underway.
To reach the underground, one had to go where the stairs were. But anyone who went looking for those stairs would find only bare floor — no staircase in sight.
That was because the first principal, Kim Dong-hyuk, had sealed the underground behind a barrier the moment the Philosopher's Stone Project changed course. An alchemist, a mage, and a master of barrier arts, he had found it trivial to cloak the entire subterranean complex from the surface world.
In the original story, the facility had remained hidden behind that barrier until the Academy buildings were reduced to rubble by the terrorist attack, finally exposing what lay beneath.
So the entrance to the underground should still have been sealed.
And yet, when I arrived at the place where the stairs ought to be, a staircase leading downward stood right there before my eyes.
From within came the roar of combat and the pulse of clashing mana.
I was startled for a moment, then quickly recovered my composure.
A demon contractor must have shattered the barrier and forced their way inside.
All the better for me. I could walk straight down without any trouble at all.
I descended at a leisurely pace, deliberately letting my footsteps ring out.
The sharp clash of metal, the burst of exploding flame, the crack of freezing ice, the keening wail of the undead — all of it mixed together and rose to meet me.
I made my footsteps louder still.
Whether the noise had the intended effect or not, the sounds of battle grew quieter the farther I went. By the time I reached the bottom, two women had stopped fighting entirely and were watching me with open wariness.
One had long navy-blue hair. Four distinct spirits floated around her like a living guard. Her entire body was faintly translucent — almost certainly a specialized spirit clone. That would make her the current principal, Lee Seon-hee.
The other had short gray hair, amber eyes, and four bracelets on each wrist. Black Mana leaked from those bracelets. This, then, was the one contracted to Gamigin.
"Strange. I detect Gamigin's scent, yet it is so faint it is as though I gaze upon a phantom. Did she form a contract merely to employ this one as a bodyguard for her true contractor? But this rather reeks of a discarded pawn, does it not?"
A sacrificial piece, while the real contractor remained hidden?
That would explain why Miho had struggled to sense this person's mana. If the contract had been made for the express purpose of creating a disposable decoy, there was no reason to leave any clear trail back to the true contractor. The arrangement assumed this one would die or be captured and forced to talk — which meant that without Marbas, I never would have recognized the Black Mana as Gamigin's at all.
And this pawn would have done its job admirably, protecting the contractor Gamigin truly valued, before dying at the hands of the holy mages.
Well. Another demon's affairs were none of my concern.
What I intended was conversation and persuasion.
Gamigin's contractor gets to walk away alive for now — good for her. I avoid bloodshed — good for me. The principal stops exhausting herself, and the underground facility stays intact. How could that not be ideal?
My purpose was peace. Pure, simple dialogue. Starting a fight down here would only make everything more dangerous.
"How about everyone stops fighting, and we talk this out instead?"
Both of them grew even more wary.
Uh. That's not how this is supposed to go.