Arca's Back Alleys
Now that I was an instructor at Origin Academy, I had to teach classes like the others.
Alchemy, however, already had its academic schedule set by Instructor Charlotte, so my workload this year wasn't all that heavy.
Meeting her today had been precisely about sorting that out. With two instructors on the roster, leaving one of us idle for an entire year felt a little awkward.
Some people might say that was a good thing, but honestly, it would look bad—and I had my own reasons for wanting to get close to the cadets.
The more allies, the better.
More than anything, this world was one I'd loved enough to call my favorite game of all time. I would save it so that I could survive. Even setting that aside, this was a chance to live among characters I'd only ever known through a screen.
It would have been nicer if I could have enjoyed a bright, carefree campus life as a fellow cadet—but being an instructor didn't mean I couldn't get close to them. The only real difference was rank. In age, we were barely apart. The first-years, where most of the main cast was concentrated, were twenty. I was just one year older.
"So, I'd like Instructor Ryu Seojun to take the next class."
Charlotte's request came at the perfect time. I'd missed enrollment season, and barging into a class she was already teaching cleanly would have been awkward. If she was asking me herself, I had nothing to complain about.
When I accepted, she rummaged through a stack of papers piled on one side of the desk and handed me several sheets. A year-long academic calendar and progress plans for each class.
"We've covered up to here. You can start from this point next session."
Charlotte walked me through what she'd taught so far, tapping various places on the documents with her finger. I listened carefully—and, inwardly, I was impressed.
Alchemy was never an easy field. That meant it was hard to learn and use, but the reverse was just as true: teaching it was every bit as difficult as mastering it. There was even a saying that alchemy had two separate talents—one for learning, and one for teaching.
Alchemists who learned well usually made terrible instructors. The ones who taught beautifully, on the other hand, often weren't all that strong themselves. Charlotte was different. The genius of the Hohenheim family—called the progenitor reborn—had both gifts in full measure.
"…You're incredible. Truly."
As an alchemist, I couldn't help but respect her. I couldn't help but admire her. And yet that very quality of hers was what I found so heartbreaking.
She was sick, down to her core. A pitiful girl who had fled the crushing pressure of her family. Gaslit since childhood into believing alchemy was the only way she could prove her worth, she was headed for a wretched end.
"Then for the next class, I should take it up to here?"
I held out the papers, pointing to one section. As I watched Charlotte look them over, my expression hardened in secret.
In the game she had met the worst possible ending—but now that this was reality, I had no intention of letting that ending stand.
The Abyss that would drive this world toward ruin didn't frighten me much. There were plenty of strong people who would stand against it, and I already knew how to finish it completely. The problems I truly meant to stop and resolve weren't those grand ones.
This world was full of vicious criminals and people who would crush others flat for their own gain. And I had no intention of standing by while the characters from a story I cherished were destroyed.
"Then I'll take the next class through here."
"Yes. I'll leave it to you."
I gathered a few of the papers and left the lab.
Back home, I organized the documents and let the hours pass until sunset. When night had fully fallen and darkness settled over Arca, I pulled on a black hoodie I'd bought in advance and stepped outside.
All I wore was a matching black hoodie and cotton pants. Nothing in my hands, nothing else brought from home. Even so, I walked Arca's night streets without hesitation, making my way into a district left half-abandoned and neglected. What I meant to do tonight, I could manage bare-handed.
Denis van Hohenheim.
The old man who never stopped tormenting Charlotte under the pretty pretense of "for the family." A greedy fossil with no real ability of his own—and the informants he'd secretly planted were still here, in Arca's back alleys, in an abandoned industrial complex.
I'd love nothing more than to hit the Hohenheim family head-on right now.
But it was still too early. Cut off the limbs first. Isolate him completely. There would be time enough after that. More importantly, I needed to persuade Charlotte—whose heart the family had poisoned—to look at the world with her own eyes.
For now, this will have to be enough.
With that thought, I crossed the iron gate ahead of me with alchemy. In a single step, the street that had been lit by sparse streetlamps ended. This was a truly abandoned zone—a bleak, lightless place without even a single lamp.
"Perfect spot for people with something to hide."
With that short review, I walked into the dark of the industrial complex—one of Arca's back alleys.
Arca was the most peaceful city in the world. International treaties bound every nation to protect it, and at the same time forbade them from meddling in its administration.
But when had the world ever been that simple? For every advantage the treaties granted Arca, they created a matching disadvantage.
A land of opportunity. That was how cadets described it as they set foot here dreaming of Origin Academy. Criminals and ambitious schemers, however, said the exact same thing. People who lived in the light dreamed of good jobs and solid infrastructure. Those who worked in the dark were no different. A city overflowing with people and technology was a wide enough pond for them, too.
"Haa…"
A girl sat on the roof of a thoroughly dilapidated factory. She looked up at the stars for a while, then lowered her gaze to the pitch-black ground below. The stars in the sky always shone beautifully—but tilt your head even a little, and there was only endless dark.
Enjoying a brief escape on the night wind, she measured her own situation against the view.
Pathetic.
She wanted to shine. Like a star in the night sky, she wanted to be acknowledged as a presence in her own right even in the dark. Reality, though, was merciless. The slightest flaw was enough to drag you down and swallow you whole.
Calling herself pathetic, she touched her "flaw." Her ears were pointed compared to a human's—but short, not even half as long as an elf's.
A half-elf. Trash born when the pure, noble, sacred blood of the elves mixed with the filthy, ugly blood of another race.
…Or so the elves hiding in Arca's back alleys all said with one voice.
Ugly, base, filthy, impure—and yet.
When I do it, it's romance; when you do it, it's adultery. She had no idea who coined the phrase, but it cut straight through the thinking of thoroughly small-minded people.
The girl was a princess. More precisely, that was what they called her. The elves who had brought her from Hwan-guk called her that, and so she was a princess.
Did royal blood run in her veins? Impossible to say. The elven monarchy had long since become meaningless. Was she a high elf chosen by the World Tree? Not a high elf—but a half-elf, yes. One letter of difference, and the world shifted that much. A pity, really.
So why, then, was she a princess?
This damned Gift.
The half-elf girl was exceptional. Too exceptional. She had seized a blessing so vast she couldn't bear it, and that was why she had become unhappy.
For something this small, those mad old fools hail me as a princess.
She stood. Walking to the edge of the roof, she did not stop—she stepped out into empty air. At once, greenery erupted from the ground far below and from the building she had left, rising to meet her. The plants willingly offered themselves as her footholds. Whether she wished it or not, growing life threw itself forward to love and protect her.
That power was her inborn talent made real. An abstract gift given form as a unique ability—a present handed down by the world itself.
Gaia Nova.
The power of the progenitor from the distant age of myth, who had grown the World Tree and laid the foundation of every elf. The progenitor was the first high elf—and the mother who had given birth to the World Tree, mother-tree of all elves. Naturally, as the mother of mothers who raised the sacred tree, she was the Great Mother, to be revered. And so any elf who inherited that power was likewise meant to become the Great Mother: to spread and restore the long-forgotten glory of the old age, the reign of the elven race.
Bullshit.
Recalling the elven elder who had spouted that nonsense at her, the girl twisted her face. Cursing roughly under her breath, she prepared to end her brief escape. If those elf-supremacists, bloated with chosen-people arrogance, discovered she had slipped away for a night out, there would be an uproar.
But the world, perhaps, was not yet ready for her to go back.
What's that?
Her gaze caught a figure in a black hoodie and cotton pants. Someone dressed in a way that looked suspicious no matter how you cut it was walking between the factory buildings. In the dark it was hard to tell whether it was a man or a woman—but the color of the clothes alone was an open advertisement that they meant to move in secret.
…Maybe I'll watch just a little longer.
The girl's escape was not over yet. The dark night sky still nodded permission for her path.