Proper Penmanship
Sian had first met Berka back in his days as an active adventurer — or to be precise, back when he was scraping out a living digging herbs around Cavelon.
The first time they'd crossed paths over a patch of herbs, they'd actually fought, each insisting they'd found it first. But after running into each other a few more times, they'd naturally drifted into talking.
Then one day, finding nothing but silent herb-digging a little too dull, Sian spoke up first.
"You're that old alchemist granny, right?"
"That's me, herb thief."
"I keep telling you, I'm not an herb thief. Anyway — when you say alchemy, there's really only one thing that comes to mind. The Philosopher's Stone. That's the ultimate secret of alchemy, isn't it?"
"Alchemy's not even magic, you punk. What 'ultimate secret'? What even is this Philosopher's Stone you're on about?"
Sian did his best to explain the Philosopher's Stone from a manga he'd watched in his past life — one starring a pair of alchemist brothers — recalling whatever details he could.
Berka snorted at the explanation, looking at him like he was pathetic.
"Hmph. That thing's called the Blood of God, and it only shows up in legends, you dummy."
"Different name here, huh. So even in a fantasy world, it's not easy to come by."
"? ...Well, that aside, it is strange."
"What is?"
"That you know about that thing at all."
"Really?"
From what the old woman said, alchemy in this world seemed to be a fringe discipline.
After all, magic existed — a superior concept looming over it.
When magic let anyone with mana wield instant, overwhelming power, how many people would bother committing themselves to alchemy, with all its materials and preparations?
Unless one couldn't use magic at all, there was hardly any reason to learn alchemy.
Even mages who studied it treated magic as their main pursuit and alchemy as, at best, a side interest.
There were plenty of mages who never touched alchemy at all.
That being the case, even fewer people knew of the Blood of God — the Philosopher's Stone — the purported pinnacle of alchemy. And hearing that name drop from the mouth of an unremarkable adventurer? Berka couldn't help but find it curious.
"Did you hear it from some alchemist?"
"Something like that."
More accurately, he'd seen it rather than heard it.
"So some drunk fool was babbling, I take it. What else did this alchemist say about the Philosopher's Stone?"
"Hmm. I remember him saying that with the Philosopher's Stone, you could become a god."
Apart from ignoring the law of equivalent exchange, that was about all that came to mind.
Though he supposed the final boss had, for a brief moment, become something godlike.
At Sian's words, Berka fell silent for a moment, as if turning something over in her mind.
"...Now that's a new perspective."
Perhaps because the topic of alchemy had come up, she started asking question after question that day.
"That alchemist's name?"
"Uh, hmm... Hohenheim?"
"...Never heard that name before."
She murmured it with a note of surprise.
It was a narrow industry, so she'd assumed a name worth knowing would come up.
"I think he was also called Paracelsus, or something like that."
Sian vaguely recalled that the character was based on some historical figure — Paracelsus this, Hohenheim that — but he couldn't remember the full name.
Then again, she wouldn't have heard that name either.
Different world and all. There might be people who'd achieved similar things, but never the same person.
"If you ever meet him, tell him I'd like to have a word."
"Er, I don't think that'll ever happen."
He was a fictional character even back in the original world, after all.
In this world, not even the books he'd appeared in existed anymore.
And so the two of them chatted away over this and that while digging herbs, then made their way back to Cavelon together.
'I did have that conversation, though.'
As far as he remembered, the subject had never come up again after that.
So what exactly was the connection between a story he'd tossed out offhandedly and a Heretic Cult currently running rampant in the West using his name? He couldn't see how the two were related at all.
Perhaps guessing at his confusion, Berka settled into the chair across from him and continued her explanation.
"You said this Hohenheim or Paracelsus fellow claimed that with the Blood of God — the Philosopher's Stone — one could 'become a god.' Yes?"
"He did say that, but..."
He'd only repeated what he'd seen in the manga, but he did vaguely remember the line.
"And you think that person is connected to the cult?"
"The man calling himself the cult's leader right now is declaring that he will become a god using the Blood of God, you punk."
"...Huh?"
At those words, Sian began to understand why she'd brought this up.
But before he could sort it out neatly in his head, her mouth was already moving.
"The Philosopher's Stone was, even among alchemists, a thing of legend. All anyone ever had was 'speculation' about what abilities it might possess."
The reason they called it the Blood of God despite never having seen it wasn't because it was literally divine blood — it was because something with powers bordering on the absurd might as well bear such a name.
"That's why it wouldn't be strange at all for someone to claim the Blood of God could make a god. A new fact we never knew would simply have come to light."
But what if someone had known the Stone's exact purpose — long before the Philosopher's Stone had ever appeared?
Suspecting that person was both the Stone's creator and the cult's leader was the only natural conclusion.
"Which is why I suspected you might be one of them, since you'd heard all that."
"......"
"But judging by your reaction, you're clearly not with the cult."
"......"
"So where in the world did you meet this man? And why would he go out of his way to tell you about the Philosopher's Stone?"
No, I just watched a manga, that's all.
He wanted to say it.
But the words had risen all the way to his throat, and he found himself swallowing them back down instead.
With the misunderstanding already having snowballed this far, what good would saying "actually, that was a lie" do? What answer could he expect other than—
"And you expect me to believe that?"
If anything, the more he denied it, the more she'd think he was hiding something, and the deeper the misunderstanding would burrow.
As he agonized over what to do, Berka's voice cut in.
"In any case, if you've got no connection to the cult, be careful."
"Not 'if I do have a connection'?"
"If you've got a connection, careful doesn't even enter into it — you handle that yourself, you punk."
"Fair point."
"But if you truly have none, then there's a reason that Hohenheim fellow told you of all people about the Stone. He may well come looking for you."
"......"
The Hohenheim Sian knew wasn't about to come find him, but somehow he had the sinking feeling that something remarkably similar might happen anyway.
'...Maybe I should stick with Tiana for a while?'
Peeling her off later would be a problem, but it beat running into a cult.
The moment that thought crossed his mind—
Beep.
The magical device he'd been holding his hand against let out a chime.
Along with the sound, the sticky, prickling sensation vanished from his palm.
"Here, rub a bit of this on your hand."
Berka handed him a small potion vial.
He poured the liquid onto his hand and rubbed it in, and the pins-and-needles feeling gradually faded away.
Clunk.
Berka drew a small vial from the magical device, blood sloshing gently inside.
"Didn't take all that much, did you."
"If it's just an examination, I don't need much more than this. Come back tomorrow and I'll have your results."
"Aw, can't it be today?"
"You punk, what do you take an examination for — some spell you can snap your fingers and cast? I have to run all sorts of checks first, don't I?"
"......"
Now that he heard it out loud, it made sense, and he had no comeback.
Had he fallen too deep into the fantasy world's magic-solves-everything mentality?
In that case, there was nothing for it but to come back tomorrow.
When Sian stepped outside, the sun had already set, and shadows were settling over the alley.
"That took longer than I thought."
Between the blood draw and all the chatting in between, quite a lot of time had slipped by.
Leaving the deserted back alley and emerging onto the market street again, he saw merchants packing up their stalls one by one.
Halfway down that street, a thought struck him and he stopped dead in his tracks.
'Come to think of it...'
He'd simply asked Tiana to book a room at an inn.
On the assumption that he'd only be staying long enough to get his test results, he hadn't even told her where they'd meet up.
Still...
"...Don't tell me."
Somehow, he had a feeling that Tiana — the Tiana he knew — might have picked out one particular inn.
Just to check, he thought, and turned toward it—
"Teacher! So this is where you were!"
At the sound of her voice, Tiana's figure appeared in front of him in the blink of an eye.
Beaming brightly at their reunion, she looked up at him and continued.
"Just as you commanded, Teacher, I have secured lodgings for you."
"Call it a hunch, but is that inn called the Hero's Rest?"
The Hero's Rest.
A luxury inn in Cavelon that had only just been completed back when he was working as an adventurer.
And not just any luxury inn — one expensive enough to be called ultra-luxury.
'Nobility and A-rank adventurers and above. Or adventurers with a noble patron — those were the only people allowed to use it.'
Thanks to those absurd conditions, it had earned nothing but curses from the adventurer community, and yet business had been booming all the same.
Call it a differentiation strategy that actually worked, he supposed.
Anyway — somehow, he'd suspected that the Tiana he knew would be there of all places.
"Gasp?! As expected of you, Teacher! You see straight through my every move!"
At her astonished reaction, Sian sighed inwardly.
Anyone could have predicted that behavior just by watching her for five minutes.
With the misunderstanding deepening beyond all salvage, he worried that if things kept going this way, one day people would marvel at the sheer greatness of the man for simply breathing.
Meanwhile, back in Sian's village.
Countless people were hard at work, hauling materials back and forth.
Construction projects sprawled across a considerable stretch of land, all radiating out from Sian's house at the center.
"Well, it is a bit on the cramped side."
Selene nodded as if this would do just fine, murmuring to herself.
Of course, "cramped" was by her standards alone.
The footprint of the renovation (?) alone already dwarfed the entire village.
And considering that, beyond the mansion itself, the grounds would be packed with magic-related facilities, the cost of construction had ballooned to an astronomical sum that would strain the purse of any ordinary noble.
'Truthfully, I considered expanding the grounds even further...'
She had thought about clearing part of the forest behind Sian's house to free up more space.
But a barrier was woven through it — one so subtle that even she couldn't readily parse it — and so she'd decided to leave it alone.
'It's most likely a barrier Master laid down himself.'
He was the only person in this village capable of weaving a barrier of such refinement.
A ward she herself couldn't identify at a glance.
As expected of Master — nothing but admiration would come.
She was curious what kind of barrier it might be, but she'd decided that completing the mansion came first.
The ground had already been tamped down and leveled with magic; all that remained was raising the buildings, so it shouldn't take long.
Just then, Estel approached her side.
"My lady. While sorting through Sian's belongings, I found this."
"Hmm?"
Estel had been tasked with organizing the items that had been in Sian's house.
Had she turned up something?
"A notebook?"
"Yes. We believe it belongs to Sian, but..."
She refrained from adding that the handwriting was so abysmal it was unreadable.
To speak ill of the master her lady sought instruction from was, in Estel's eyes, no different from insulting her lady herself.
'Every person has their flaws, surely.'
So what if the man couldn't write? As long as he taught well, what did it matter?
"Th-this is...?!"
Selene's blue eyes went wide as she stared at the notebook.
Startled by the reaction itself, Estel asked in a flustered voice.
"My lady?"
"......"
Selene didn't even hear the call, her gaze boring into the notebook.
Far more of it was beyond her ability to decipher than within it.
And yet—
'It's similar.'
There were portions that resembled the records of Aman Vesperia her family had spent generations studying.
Certain sections contained brief sketches and explanations concerning hand seals — suin, signs formed with the hands.
Beyond that, nothing could be interpreted at all.
"This is a grimoire. And one written by Master's own hand, most likely."
"Pardon? But for a grimoire, I sense no mana from it?"
"That's only because our own level is too low. We can't even decipher it, let alone activate it."
"...It's not simply bad handwriting, then?"
The claim bordered so closely on the absurd that Estel couldn't help voicing the question she'd just swallowed.
But to her words, Selene only shook her head.
"You wouldn't know this, Estel, but parts of this match the records of Aman Vesperia exactly."
"...I see."
To Estel it remained, at heart, a notebook scrawled in dreadful handwriting — but if her lady said so, she nodded and resolved to accept it.
As Selene quietly studied the notebook, her eyes flushed crimson, a pattern of three interlocking tomoe surfacing in her irises.
Perhaps these eyes, which read the flow of mana itself, would see something others could not.
And yet—
'Even the Magic Wheel Eye can't read its flow...'
It looked so utterly like an ordinary notebook that it sent a chill down her spine.
So this was a grimoire penned by a transcendent being.
She furrowed her brow and concentrated — and somehow, the illegible letters began to yield, just barely, just a little at a time.
The way indistinct figures start to resolve when you glare at them long enough, screwing up your face at scribbles you can't quite make out.
Eyes squeezed nearly shut, she faintly picked her way through the notebook's writing, one character at a time.
"Ten... thousand... grateful... sword... draws?"