Chapter 99
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 99
Chapter Title: Alchemist
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"Alchemist?"
Eleanor knew quite a bit about alchemists from various sources.
-If you want potion recipes, head to the 5th floor.
That was something a famous adventurer had once said back when the potion business in Blackout was booming.
The 5th floor was full of potion-related stuff, and the most iconic were the "ancient alchemists."
However, finding traces of alchemists on the 5th floor was incredibly difficult.
'Those guys hide away so damn thoroughly.'
In the game, encounters with alchemists were extremely rare.
But whenever you did find one, the rewards were spectacular...
Jun stared at the mana cylinder in his hand, lost in thought.
Alchemists were shrouded in mystery in every way.
Their labs required scouring every inch of the map, and even then, you had to complete countless prerequisite quests.
'Are those purple monsters connected to the alchemists?'
Then, someone flashed through Jun's mind.
'Wait. Does that mean he's here too?'
A certain NPC came to mind.
He couldn't be sure if that guy was actually here, though.
'Not important right now. Moving on.'
Jun stood up abruptly and began rummaging through the cabin.
"What? Why are you suddenly acting weird? You're scaring me."
Eleanor asked, while Maya looked at him like he was some weirdo.
"Alchemists are all perverts. Every last one loves hiding things. They hate letting anyone know their whereabouts."
"And?"
"That freakish creature guarding this cabin. And the cylinder from its heart. Need I say more? There's gotta be..."
Tap tap. Tap tap. Thunk thunk.
"...a secret room around here."
Jun tapped along the wooden floor with his foot until he found a hollow spot underneath.
"Must be because it's so remote. Found it pretty easily."
The sound echoed emptily below one particular section, so Jun called Maya over and flipped up the floorboard.
"Wh-what? A real secret room? But it's sealed shut."
As Eleanor exclaimed in surprise, a sturdy steel door without even a handle stared back at them.
"Told you. Perverts."
They hid their identities with all sorts of bizarre tricks.
Finding the entrance was one thing; getting inside was another.
"Hmm..."
Jun racked his brains again, drawing on memories from his "Lee Jung-jun" days with Exceptional Memory.
Alchemists were tied to the Potion Brewing skill, so they'd come up in various guides he'd read on the forums.
"Can't we just smash it open?"
"They're meticulous. Open it wrong, and the whole thing collapses."
"...Perverts."
In the end, both turned back to Jun.
Then.
"Huh."
Eleanor pointed at Jun's neck.
"Something weird around your neck. Feel any strange energy? Maya, see anything on his neck?"
"...? Oh. Yeah, I see it."
"What? What are you talking about?"
Jun, deep in thought, touched his neck at their words. Instead of soft skin, he felt something hard.
"Huh?"
"Leader's neck... scales? Purple scales."
"What the... Wait. Maya, your forehead."
"...?!"
Only then did they all clearly notice each other's conditions.
"My skin... it's cracking."
Purple scales began sprouting on Jun's neck, while purple cracks appeared on Maya's forehead.
"What? What's happening? Me? What about me?"
Eleanor belatedly sensed something off and asked. Jun pointed to her hand.
"Your hand's turning purple."
"Son of a..."
All three turned to Aiden at once.
On the head of Aiden, deep in slumber...
"Ears..."
"Like puppy ears. All floppy."
"Holy shit."
Purple-furred ears had sprouted.
"...Captain."
"Yeah."
"Hurry up and open that damn door."
"...Already working on it."
Something was happening to their bodies.
The party simultaneously recalled the freakish creature they'd defeated in the cabin.
It felt like a glimpse of their own futures.
"Got it!"
After half a day, Jun finally opened the sturdy steel door.
Next to him lay the now-empty mana cylinder.
"Kinda hoped, but... it really was the key."
The liquid mana inside the cylinder was the clue to opening the door.
Pouring it into the engraved pattern on the door produced a grinding grrrk as it swung open.
"Whoa, let's go in quick."
"Hurry up."
Eleanor and Maya were in a mild panic.
Can't blame them.
In just half a day, the purple cracks on Maya's forehead had grown, and Eleanor's entire hand was now purple.
Jun was no exception.
"...Yeah. Let's go."
Maya hoisted Aiden onto her back, and the party moved beyond the door.
But the moment they stepped into the corridor...
"Wait. This place..."
"I sense mana."
"Is it because it's separated from the outside?"
Grrrk.
Looking back, the steel door had sealed the entrance again.
"This feels... totally different from outside."
"Clean."
As they said, beyond the steel door lay a pristine white corridor.
'Feels modern.'
Like a scene from an Earth movie.
Jun glanced at Aiden, still out cold.
'He'd love this. Guy's a total exploration nut.'
Following the corridor, they soon found a room without a door.
"What's this?"
"Looks like a lab."
"Lots of stuff."
Not a speck of dust in the lab.
Cylinders everywhere, papers scattered haphazardly, human body models, massive cylinders filled with mystery liquid.
No one would call it ordinary.
"An alchemist's lab... Rare find."
Jun immediately started reading the nearby papers.
All in ancient script, but deciphering them wasn't hard.
'Potion recipes? Not what we need right now.'
He sorted through the papers one by one, flipping open every book in the drawers.
"Found it."
"What?"
"A log. Belongs to this lab's owner, looks like."
After a quick explanation, Jun began reading the log.
The first line:
-Our world has been abandoned.
Pretty grim.
Summarizing lightly...
'Tech advancement, leading to doom. Then the outer gods appear...'
With the outer gods' arrival, the people realized their world was collapsing.
So they tried everything.
The result: human experimentation.
-Every success was born from failure. But we have no time.
After that, it was all failures, partial successes, and so on.
"Skip, skip..."
He skimmed until the relevant parts.
Even so, the encyclopedia-thick volume took time.
Still, he gleaned some info.
"Oh. Leader. Your neck looks better."
"What?"
A little time passed, and the changes on their bodies started receding.
The scales covering half his neck had shrunk to a single knuckle-length.
'What kinda lame-ass [Field Effect] is this?'
He learned the secret behind it the next morning.
"Found it!"
The log was packed with secrets of this field.
"Ugh..."
Aiden's eyes fluttered open half a day later.
By then, all physical changes on the four had vanished.
Spotting Aiden stirring, Jun stopped what he was doing.
"Aiden."
"Cap... tain?"
"You okay?"
"Uh... what happened to me?"
"Phew. Details later. How's your body feel?"
"Just a bit drained... otherwise fine."
Jun looked to Eleanor.
She channeled holy power over Aiden's body and nodded.
"Yeah. No issues."
"Good. Whew... relief."
Jun sighed deeply in genuine relief, and Aiden spoke up.
"Felt like... a long dream."
"Dream?"
"Yeah. Not sure, but in it... I was furious."
"..."
"Weirdly, it felt like me... but not me. Like I entered another being's body..."
Jun's expression was ambiguous.
He knew what it sounded like.
'Too soon. Way too soon.'
It matched a scene from Adrian's storyline in the game.
'Encounter with an outer god.'
Lucky it wasn't full possession, thanks to Beast's Body resistances.
'That's why he wouldn't wake—no mana to resist it.'
Unlike outside, this alchemist lab brimmed with mana.
Probably why he recovered.
"Anyway, you're up. Rest and listen. Our situation..."
Jun explained everything that happened.
"Fell to the 5th floor...?"
"Yeah. While you were out, we learned some stuff."
First, the body changes were from the purple mist outside.
"Like a [Field Effect]. Breathing it turns you into a monster over time."
"What kinda bullshit [Field Effect] is that?"
Eleanor sighed deeply beside them.
"But it's not unsolvable."
"How?"
"Absorb mana. That's the only way."
"But outside has no mana... Oh. That monster?"
The liquid mana from the dead creature's heart.
"Right. That's why mana flows here."
"Injecting it into the sealed door?"
Hence the mana in the lab.
"Why no mana outside then?"
"Complicated. Short version: that purple mist absorbs it."
"Sigh... Got it."
"S-Senior. No way out at all?"
"Not true. Problem is... we gotta cross this."
Jun pointed to the map.
"Alchemists' city. 'Head Dravan.' Through here to escape."
For now, it was where most of those freakish creatures likely lurked.