A Life Dedicated to Alchemy

Alchemy.

It was the precursor to modern chemistry — and, more than that, the absolute peak of humanity’s oldest craft of taking trash and making treasure. An alchemist turned worthless lead and scrap iron into gold and gemstones. From field weeds and lye they brewed panaceas that cured every disease. With the right ingredients they mixed artificial life-forms and tools that should not have existed.

Humans had always yearned to transform the worthless into the valuable, and even in an age when alchemy had been dismissed as pure fantasy, that hunger never truly died.

The same yearning lived on in the globally explosive MMORPG that had taken the world by storm. Alchemy wasn’t a combat-focused class, but as a lifestyle-content specialist it still drew plenty of curious players at launch.

And then it died a dog’s death.

People barely dipped a toe into the class before gagging and spitting it back out. You could count on one hand the users who stuck with Alchemy for more than a month. There was no scandal, no bug, no conspiracy. The class was simply that bad. Even accounting for its lifestyle specialty, the performance was abysmal.

They say that wherever five people gather, at least one of them is trash. And if “trash” means someone whose way of thinking sits outside ordinary common sense, then I could proudly claim first-class, premium-grade status. I’d prefer the softer word “eccentric,” but since Alchemy itself was a trash class, my nickname had long since calcified into King of Trash.

Honestly, it couldn’t have gone any other way. I was the only dedicated Alchemy main on the entire server. While everyone else abandoned the class, I clung to it to the bitter end and carved a build out of pure craftsman’s obsession.

And this was the result.

With an Alchemist character, I placed well enough in the official ranking tournament — held only once a year — to put my name on the board. Seventy-third out of a hundred wasn’t exactly the summit… but an Alchemist climbing that high at all was already a ridiculous, history-making event.

“Whoa. It actually worked.”

After the tournament ended, I returned to the contestant waiting room, let out a hollow laugh, and sank into the sofa. Truth be told, even I had never expected seventy-third place. I’d been hoping to scrape into the low nineties at best. Seventy-third was so far beyond my projections it was almost absurd.

“Hyung, did you see the post that just went up on the official admin account?”

“A post? What post?”

While I was still giggling to myself in a private little cloud of bliss, a college underclassman I got along with wandered over. We didn’t bother with stiff senior-junior formality — just hyung and dongsaeng — and now that same guy was practically vibrating as he shoved his phone screen in my face.

And sure enough, the official admin account had posted something worth making a fuss over.

“You don’t usually see this kind of thing these days. Hyung, they straight-up immortalized you officially.”

“Wait — it actually went that far?”

The post was simple. Impressed by what I’d ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠done, the staff announced that in the next major update, they would preserve my character as the representative NPC of the new region’s alchemy workshop.

It wasn’t unheard of for the operators of an old RPG to name-drop a player and honor their achievements… but I never imagined that player would be me.

“Man, you really made it. You’ve been saying for years you were going to take Alchemy and crack people’s skulls open with it.”

“Yeah. Your hyung here just beat twenty-two rankers with alchemy.”

Even lifestyle classes had a baseline combat kit. And once profession mastery hit the cap, you could choose either a Class Transfer or an Awakening and push into a higher tier of growth — so Alchemy wasn’t uniquely snubbed on paper. If anything, my Alchemist had received something like special treatment. While everyone else agonized over Transfer versus Awakening, I had been able to take both.

“But running both main job and sub job as Alchemy is still pure madness.”

“Doesn’t it feel pureblood Alchemist, though? Kind of nice, right?”

“There’s an utterly deranged Alchemy demon sitting right here.”

Main job and sub job. System-wise, a single character could hold two professions at once — and you were even allowed to double up, taking the same class as both. Most players still picked two different ones. The reason was simple: growth efficiency and character ceiling both climbed much higher that way.

The most basic combo was Mage and Swordsman. Mages specialized in mid-to-long range and buffs but folded in melee; Swordsmen thrived up close but were weak at buffs and anything that wasn’t a knife fight. Pair them and the problem vanished. A Swordsman stacking buffs like armor plating, then opening distance to fling spells — that was the kind of nonsense you ran into. I’d walked into the arena as a clueless newbie and gotten my face rearranged enough times to know. Meta slaves with zero romance in their souls.

“Alchemy’s one of those classes where, past the early game, you basically have to raise it like a combat character anyway.”

That was part of why the class got abandoned. Everything an Alchemist was supposed to do — brew potions, combine materials — was front-loaded into the early leveling curve. Unlike other professions, you could half-ass the beginning and still extract the full lifestyle value. Raising it further did produce a character that could fight… but most people just leveled a real main and kept a throwaway alt for alchemy chores.

“No, but seriously — if you look at it realistically, nothing is more useful than alchemy.”

“Hyung. Games are games.”

Games-are-games, whatever. This was the part that always got under my skin. Why did the vast majority of games treat Alchemists like glorified potion-wrappers? Changing a substance’s nature, shaping it, manipulating it at will — in a material world, that was an absurdly powerful force.

Magic lights a fire? An Alchemist rewrites the composition of the air and snaps their fingers, and the empty space burns. A swordsman wraps their blade in sword aura and swings? Transmute a pile of dirt into a mana-soaked rock blade and you’ve got a cleaner, more efficient attack. Magic and swordsmanship had arts alchemy genuinely couldn’t copy, sure — but those were treated as exclusive signature skills from the start. Alchemy didn’t get that kind of love. Damn it.

“Anyway, what’s in the next update?”

“Hyung, you didn’t read the notice?”

Major updates hit once a quarter. I always checked the official café announcements and prepped for the next patch — but this time tournament prep had swallowed everything, so I’d missed the notice. When I asked, the answer was more interesting than I’d expected.

“They’re finally opening the Destroyed Kingdom.”

“The Destroyed Kingdom region is opening? Are they actually trying to finish the story now?”

The Destroyed Kingdom was one of the five major regions in the game’s world. It had been name-dropped steadily since the early story, and last year’s player conference had officially labeled it a late-game zone. They opened one major region a year, so it was about time — but I’d figured next quarter, or the one after. Hearing it was coming in the immediate next update sent a rush of surprise and anticipation through me at once.

“We should head out. Rankings are posted, and just sitting in the waiting room is getting boring.”

“You’re going home to prep for the update, aren’t you.”

There was plenty to do. Tournament prep had pushed the update prep and even weekly bosses onto the back burner. But the tournament was over. Now ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I just had to go home and enjoy the game hard until the patch dropped.

What first? The daily quests, more precious than life itself. Then weekly bosses and lifestyle content. My head full of those happy dilemmas, I got home and booted the computer at once. Muscle memory ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠launched the game, and I selected my main character without hesitation — the Alchemist.

I’d changed the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠nickname to my real name as a way of steeling myself for the ranking tournament. I briefly considered switching it back, but the feeling that I myself had become the Alchemist wasn’t half bad, so I left it. Plenty of people knew the name now anyway. Changing it at this point would just feel… unnecessary.

And the moment I started the journey the way I always did, without a second thought—

“…What?”

The landscape of the Destroyed Kingdom, something I had only ever seen in concept art, suddenly unfolded across the vision that had been fixed on my monitor.