The Weakest Alchemist

The laboratory was a wreck. Research materials lay strewn about with no regard for order, reagent bottles and test tubes rolling idly across the floor. Anyone who walked in would have taken one look and called it a disaster.

"Should I just give up on this research...?"

I let out a sigh from where I lay on the floor.

"There's just no solving this..."

In my hand was a research journal, its pages filled with crooked, uneven handwriting.

"Months of theory, and not a single one of them is worth a damn..."

Still lying there, I flung the journal aside.

It was hopeless. Even I couldn't undo a curse a Transcendent had laid down.

"Uuuugh...!"

Irritation welled up from somewhere deep in my chest, and I scrubbed my hands over my face. The sensation of those hands against my skin was far too soft.

"...I'm going to lose my mind."

I pulled my hands away and looked at them. Small, supple hands. Pretty hands I could never believe belonged to me.

"What am I supposed to do about this..."

Still on my back, I turned my head toward the mirror standing in the room. The figure reflected in the full-length glass was me.

Fox ears. A gently swaying tail. Long mint-colored hair.

"...Cute. Uselessly cute."

I sighed at the adorable girl in the mirror.

A heavy metal case scraped across the floor. Papers scattered in its path crumpled one after another.

...Were those even important documents?

They'd been dumped on the floor, so they probably weren't anything critical. I hauled the case as far as the desk and tried to lift it.

"......Heavy."

Something I could have picked up without much trouble before. Now I could barely get it off the ground with both hands.

"...I was already the weakest, and now my body's like this too."

On top of everything, I'd gotten shorter, so it took even more effort than it should have.

Decades had passed since the Gates first appeared. Awakeners and hunters were no longer anything special. Talent decided everything — some people were strong, and some people were weak. But at the very least, an awakener was stronger than an ordinary civilian. Even an F-Rank hunter, written off as worthless, could still handle several unawakened people without breaking a sweat.

Awaken, and you get stronger. That was common sense. That was obvious.

I was the only one who fell outside that rule. I had awakened, and I was still weaker than an ordinary person.

The worst unique ability I possessed. Because of it, my body was weaker than a civilian's.

I was already weak, and then I shrank, and then my gender flipped, and now I'm even weaker than before...

I couldn't even lift a case like this properly anymore.

It had been three months since I'd become a woman. And the reason I was like this — all of it — was Sangun.

A feminization curse she'd slapped on me as a joke. She'd had her fill of laughing at me, then run off, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and I hadn't heard a word from her in three months.

"Just wait until I get my hands on you..."

Nobody else could undo this. I'd tried everything I could think of to brew a reversal with alchemy, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠but—

A Transcendent's power just doesn't budge.

No method I tried had undone this state. The only thing I'd managed, thanks to a badly made potion, was turning my hair mint-colored.

The skills I have don't even come close...

"I'm going to have to give up on undoing this."

I was out of options.

"Anyway... the delivery that came in this time..."

Clack—

The case opened with a dull, heavy sound. Nested in soft cloth and cotton so they wouldn't break were five glass bottles. Inside them was the venom of an S-Rank monster: the Sky Queen Bee.

A sensory-amplifying neurotoxin that pushed the body's perception to lethal extremes.

"An A-Rank hunter who got hit with this went into shock and died just from a breeze brushing past them, right?"

This should be usable, I think.

The Sky Bee venom I'd gotten last time had been a disappointment, which was why I'd bought the Sky Queen Bee's — several times stronger.

"...Using it on myself won't produce particularly meaningful data, though."

My body was pickled in potions at this point, so the results wouldn't be precise. But I'd at least be able to tell how much stronger it was compared to the previous Sky Bee venom.

I pulled a research journal off the desk. Unlike the chicken-scratch I was producing now, this one had been written in clean, even handwriting.

I looked over the old journal, then got up and crossed to the laboratory refrigerator in the corner, pulling out a single test tube.

...The Sky Bee venom antidote I mixed yesterday.

Odds were I wouldn't need it, but in research, safety always came first.

I sat back down and took one of the glass bottles from the metal case. The moment the seal broke, a faint acrid smell brushed the tip of my nose.

"...This is stronger than I expected."

I grabbed whatever scrap of paper was nearest and scrawled across it in crooked handwriting.

The sound of the pen was unbearably loud. The ballpoint rolling, the sensation of holding it, the acridity crashing in at full force — my suddenly expanded senses made my head throb.

...I'm poisoned.

Just smelling it had been worse than injecting Sky Bee venom directly into my body. I slammed the bottle shut and downed the antidote I'd prepared in the test tube.

A bitter coffee flavor.

Last time I tried it, it tasted like vomit and I nearly died.

Raising the concentration must have altered the flavor. Flavor alteration... doesn't seem like there's a problem with the antidote itself... I should look into this separately.

The composition was identical; only the concentration was different, so my senses snapped back to normal soon enough.

"Well... good. This should be enough."

In the neatly written journal, I drew a line through the name Sky Queen Bee.

I've got the venom, and I can get True Ancestor's Blood one way or another...

How to obtain the last ingredient was a complete mystery.

"Well... it's not like I'm in a hurry."

I sighed and stood up from the chair.

"Nngh..."

I stretched my arms out as far as they would go. My back arched, and the muscles seemed to loosen properly for once.

The woman's body is more flexible, I'll give it that...

That was the only advantage. ...Being cute doesn't count as one. Not to me, at least.

"I think... I'll call it a day."

I tossed my lab coat over the chair in a heap.

I'm exhausted.

Three months of barely sleeping, doing nothing but building theories and running experiments, had caught up with me in a serious way.

"No matter how much I love research, this is insane..."

I'd been sleeping four hours at a stretch, pushing myself to find a way back. And the only thing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all that effort had produced was a floor buried in discarded research records.

"Just how strong of a curse did she put on me?"

Under any ordinary circumstances I should have been able to break it, but no potion or gas had come close to neutralizing it.

Don't tell me it's permanent...

Nah. That couldn't be. Even she wouldn't go that far...

...Would she?

A chill ran down my spine, but I shook my head hard.

"Come on, that doesn't make any sense..."

If it were a permanent curse, that would be a real problem.

Clack—

I opened the laboratory door and climbed the wooden stairs. In the living room, I dropped onto the sofa without ceremony.

"...Nothing going on these days, I assume."

I turned on my phone and, for the first time in a while, started browsing news articles and community posts. Nothing serious was happening on the internet.

...A solo clear. So she walked into a place that dangerous all by herself.

There was nothing in the news about anyone's secrets being exposed, or the world ending, or anything of the sort. Same as always: which celebrity was in trouble, which gates the hunters had cleared, what the otherworlders had been up to. Ordinary newspaper fare.

A gallery where all the gossip the news wouldn't touch piled up. It was a dumping ground for rumors and meaningless chatter, but every so often, real information turned up there too.

Yeah. Information like that.

...Is this real?

The news was unexpected enough that I had no choice but to sit up on the sofa.

The Transcendent Sangun. The one who had put this curse on me.

I closed the community site and called her immediately.

Fake or not, I need to check.

I'd tried hundreds of times over the past three months, and every single call had gone straight to out-of-service.

These days you can get a signal even from other dimensions.

The call didn't drop. The gallery post had been real.

"......"

I swallowed. The ringtone was the only sound filling the living room.

...But what am I even going to say?

Should I yell at her for turning me into this and running away? Or tell her I'd been worried because I couldn't get through?

Half-formed sentences drifted through my head, refusing to settle. I wet my parched lips with a tongue that had grown too short.

Ring... ring... The tone kept going. She didn't pick up.

...Did something happen to her?

Or was she just screening my calls...

Ding-dong—

Someone rang the doorbell while I still had her on the line.

"...Who is it?"

Almost nobody came to this house. Especially not in the middle of the afternoon.

...She's not picking up.

Phone still in hand, I got up and went to the intercom.

"...There's nobody there?"

The screen showed no one at all.

One of my disciples, maybe...?

...Did any of them even pull this kind of prank?

I walked over to the door. The building was old enough that the front door still had a peephole. If they're not on the intercom, then maybe here...

The peephole sat just a little above my eye level, so I rose onto my toes and put my eye to it.

"......!"

And I couldn't help but freeze at the person standing outside.

A beautiful woman with white hair, a black streak running through it, and striking golden eyes. She was wearing that distinctive, mischievous smile of hers.

The woman on the other side of the peephole was the Transcendent who had done this to me and run — Sangun, Kang Hayeon.