The Third Class (3)
For some reason, the second floor of the guild house, which was usually buzzing with people, felt unnaturally quiet, and I couldn’t quite get used to it.
So I’ve gotten attached, huh.
It had only been a few hours since the party members left, and yet I never would have imagined I’d feel this kind of emptiness.
Of course, it wasn’t to the point where I could call it loneliness. It was probably just a natural reaction to the sudden change in my surroundings.
Honestly, there was even something a little pleasant about it.
There was no denying that things had been uncomfortably hectic until now, after all.
Between Jung Hayan constantly watching my every move, Park Deokgu barging in at all hours, and Sun Heeyoung trying to drag me out for volunteer work, I’d been sorely lacking in any private time.
I was honestly grateful that even Kim Yeri wasn’t talking to me for once. If that kid had joined the chaos too, calling it a lack of privacy would have been an understatement.
I’d have to handle everything on my own for the time being, but even so, it almost felt like I’d been given a vacation.
Doesn’t change the fact that I still need to move like my life depends on it.
In order to achieve Kim Hyunsung’s target third job and push my own stats upward, I needed to work just as desperately as he did.
I had no idea what he was thinking, believing I could keep up with his growth, but I supposed he had his own reasons.
In truth, my situation wasn’t even that bad.
I had heroic-grade alchemical equipment, a mountain of catalysts and materials, and effectively a future that was already guaranteed to keep growing.
As for my stats, I didn’t have any real problems—except that the one stat I could actually improve was intelligence.
Since the other stats were effectively impossible to raise in the first place, I didn’t have much of a choice.
That was why the third advancement was so important.
I never expected to keep up with anyone in direct combat, but I still wanted to become someone who could be of some use.
As a pure researcher, there was a limit to how far I could keep following this party.
As I walked slowly, I couldn’t help but consider a number of possibilities. They were answers to questions I hadn’t yet fully shaped in my mind.
A way to keep my identity as an alchemist without losing the minimum amount of combat ability.
First of all, homunculi…
That had actually been one of the reasons I’d chosen alchemy in the first place.
The ability to control a summon-like existence without consuming mana was tremendously advantageous for me.
In fact, Ramus Tucker’s Introduction to Alchemy treated homunculi in great depth.
[A homunculus refers to an artificially created lifeform that does not require a woman’s womb. Interpretations vary slightly from school to school, so the opinions differ somewhat, but at the very least, I define a homunculus as a created lifeform.
Of course, this does not mean a chimera. Unlike a chimera, which creates life from life, the homunculus handled by alchemists is a concept of creating life from nothing.]
A homunculus was, in essence, an artificial lifeform.
How it would look, what it would be able to do—I had no idea.
There wasn’t even anything beyond theory in Tucker’s book.
Chimeras were explained in comparatively greater detail, but the nature of a chimera, which involved manipulating genes, was fundamentally different from a homunculus, which was a manufactured lifeform.
Perhaps homunculi had been an unknown frontier even for Tucker.
No, even if he had truly brought life into being, I doubted he would have gone around boasting that he’d created a new life.
That was practically the domain of gods.
The second option is potions.
By potions, I meant the elixirs this world called “potions.”
If you asked whether it was even possible to build combat power through potions, I’d naturally shake my head, but this was merely one of the theories born from my own imagination.
Can magic be stored in a potion?
The principle of magic on this continent could be explained simply like this.
You build up a tower of mana, then chant an incantation to shape it into an image.
The completed spell remains within the arm or some specific part of the body, then activates together with the user’s trigger words.
Couldn’t a spell that normally remained within the body be contained in a potion or some kind of object instead?
That was the experiment.
Of course, some items seemed to contain magic already.
But those kinds of items weren’t things made by people; they were finished products from the moment they existed.
In fact, some magical schools did enchant items, but the effects were said to be negligible and the efficiency terrible.
The research had been abandoned because the effort outweighed the result.
If an alchemist using alchemical magic could apply a transmutation circle and store one-time spells, it would certainly help me—and it would also produce impressive commercial results.
The third is chimeras.
That would be a way of creating summons by manipulating genes or cells.
Honestly, I thought this might be the simplest method.
Even in this world, monsters were fascinating lifeforms.
Just manufacturing a chimera wouldn’t be difficult.
Some monsters had extremely similar genes, and if I actually mixed them in an experiment, the monster would no doubt still live.
But controlling it wasn’t the realm of an alchemist; it was the realm of a black mage.
With the mana I had, I couldn’t control a created chimera.
Of course, there was a method where I could capture one that hadn’t yet matured, cultivate it, and then raise it—but the problem was whether that method would actually work.
I had no desire to be eaten by a chimera I raised myself.
And then there’s…
There were plenty of directions I’d considered.
This was a matter directly tied to my survival, after all.
The risk was high, but I had even considered directly modifying my own body, and I’d thought about refining the Philosopher’s Stone for real as well. Still, I wasn’t sure the efficiency would be good, and there were aspects of it that were still beyond my current ability to handle.
I’d been putting it off, but it was time to decide on a growth path and move accordingly.
If I wanted to keep up with the regressors’ party, running until sweat poured off the soles of my feet was important—but moving efficiently was even more important.
Of course, I couldn’t accomplish all of this in the short term. I had no desire to waste time repeating experiments and failures forever. The answer to that was already set.
Getting help isn’t a bad thing either…
If there was something I didn’t understand, I could ask. If research got stuck, seeking advice was common sense.
Magic and alchemy might be different branches, but their roots were the same.
The same went for all the other professions.
Since every field had its own interpretation, receiving help from others was the most rational course of action.
The Magic Guild would be best, I guess?
That certainly wasn’t a bad option.
The people who had been clamoring to get involved in the research on the Philosopher’s Stone might even become loyal workers in Lee Kiyoung’s lab.
I was lost in thought as I entered the dining hall, and that was when it happened.
“Are you eating alone today?”
“Ah.”
A voice came from beside me.
When I turned my head, I saw a woman who looked a little younger than me.
“Ah! This must be our first introduction, right? I’m Hwang Jeongyeon, and I’m the party leader of Blue Fifth Party.”
“Ah. Nice to meet you. I’m—”
“I know. Lee Kiyoung, the alchemist from the Seventh Party. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Did you enjoy your trip to the Garden of Terror?”
It was a somewhat abrupt question.
Still, I quickly understood why she’d asked.
The discoverer.
The woman standing in front of me was the one who had found the dungeon and yielded it to us.
“Thank you very much. Thanks to you, we had a wonderful experience.”
“Just as I heard, you’re quick on the uptake.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It was meant as one. Honestly, I do feel a little sorry. I really wish you’d come out of it having had a good experience, but... there was a bit of an unpleasant incident, so to be honest, I wasn’t exactly in the best mood. I’m only saying this now, but a friend of mine from the Black Swan told me to pass along their apology.”
“Ah! No, it’s all right. We already received an apology, and everything was resolved smoothly. If anything, it helped me realize my own shortcomings.”
“Hearing you say that makes me feel better too. This is the first time I’ve spoken with a Seventh Party group that everyone expects so much from. I’m delighted.”
Her face and voice were both a little low-energy.
If I had to describe her, “laid-back” would probably be the best fit.
She looked a little young, but there was something about her that brought to mind old memories.
It wasn’t the sort of impression you’d expect from a modern woman, but there was a strangely refined air about her, almost like the daughter of a respectable old family.
“Actually, we’d been back from the expedition for a while, but you Seventh Party people were all so tightly knit that it wasn’t easy to start a conversation.”
“Ah, I see.”
“I’d been counting the days until we could all gather for a company dinner, but your other parties didn’t even seem to be coming back from the expedition... The guild has gotten busy, hasn’t it? I suppose everyone must have been too busy to relax.”
“Ah, yes. I heard you entered a heroic-grade dungeon….”
“Yes. More than that, though, you seem to have something on your mind…?”
“Hmm…”
She looked exactly like a mage.
She’d probably assumed I was sharing the troubles of a fellow practitioner.
Judging from her habit of speaking to a silent junior without hesitation, as well as how she’d yielded the dungeon’s ownership, she seemed to be quite nosy.
Of course, that kind of nosiness was precisely what made her useful to me.
I didn’t even need to check her status with Mind’s Eye to know she was a capable mage.
The mana she made no effort to conceal let me gauge her approximate level, and the intelligence in her eyes was immediately apparent.
Her easygoing personality was probably also a product of her own mana.
She’ll do.
It felt like I might not even need to ask the Magic Guild for support.
I could probably ask her anything I wanted.
“Yes. Embarrassing as it is, that’s exactly the situation. Lately, I’ve felt like I haven’t been finding my direction very well.”
“Mm-hmm. I understand. Everyone goes through that.”
“I have quite a few options, but I honestly can’t even tell which direction I should be heading in….”
“That too, I understand. It happens to everyone. Especially someone like you, Kiyoung.”
“Pardon?”
“You’re torn between the Mercenary Queen and Hayan, aren’t you? One is a lover you’ve been dating since Earth, and the other is someone you survived life and death with here... Of course it’s hard to choose.”
“Excuse me?”
“I know modern ethics, where monogamy or even polygamy can be taken for granted, might make it hard to understand, but in situations like that, choosing both people can actually be the right answer.”
“…….”
It became clear almost immediately that we were talking about completely different things.
She could probably see the utterly bewildered look on my face.
Hwang Jeongyeon, who had been speaking with a slow smile, quickly shut her mouth.
“Ah. So that wasn’t what you meant.”
“No.”
“S-sorry. You looked like you were worrying about something really serious, so I just assumed….”
“…….”
I could see the awkward look on her face. She seemed to be trying to salvage the atmosphere, which had lost all sense of direction, but something wasn’t going very well.
I felt like I’d experienced a similar kind of vibe somewhere before.
She’s similar…
Her impression and appearance were completely different. No, it almost felt like they weren’t even the same species.
The face I was imagining was that of a pig with a bandit’s mug, while the woman in front of me had the image of a model wife and mother.
And yet I could somehow sense that she carried a fragrance similar to Park Deokgu’s.
She’s the same.
That feeling too—that “if I get involved with this, I’m going to end up exhausted”—was exactly the same.
While I was debating whether I should leave the scene, her voice rang out again from across the table.
“Goodness, look at me. I’m sorry. It’s been so long since I watched a drama... I said that without thinking.”
“Ah… yes.”
“The two of you get along so well, you know. In fact, whenever I see Hayan and you together, I can’t help but smile. Especially Hayan—she really does seem to like you a lot... Maybe that’s why she’s walking around with spells like that.”
“Pardon?”
“The location-tracking magic. I’m not sure whether I should even be here with you. I’m sure the fact that you’re with someone gets transmitted to her too….”
“Hm?”
“You don’t need to be embarrassed. You even handed over part of your own body, didn’t you? How romantic.”
“…….”
“…….”
“Could it be... that you didn’t know?”
“…….”
“Pretending you didn’t hear that... won’t help, will it?”
It was an extremely absurd piece of news.