The Main Story Goes Off Course
Body enhancement.
A technique that uses the mana built up inside the body through cultivation methods to heighten physical strength, durability, and more.
For any superhuman capable of handling mana, body enhancement comes as naturally as breathing. It proves useful in every kind of situation, and after generations of refinement, its degree and efficiency have become quite high even without any particular secret arts.
But that same body enhancement carries one fatal weakness.
While it grants enhanced athletic ability and high resistance to external physical impact, several other factors were sacrificed to secure those two advantages. Among them, the most representative weakness was the very thing I was stabbing into right now.
"Ah—hot!"
"Hey, hey! The water's boiling!"
External environmental change.
"Alchemy is my specialty. If you meant to force the battlefield to suit your alchemy, you should have also accounted for the situations where you'd lose the initiative."
When different alchemists attempt alchemy on the same substance at the same time, control of that alchemy is decided by any number of factors. Among them, the simplest—and the one with the greatest influence—is precision.
How precisely one manipulates mana, and how precisely one calculates the structure of matter, decides who seizes the initiative.
"I'm well aware of that much!"
Barely had my advice finished when Victor took a heavy step and splashed the water. He merely stomped hard on the water at his feet and kicked it up—childish-looking, almost—but the result came back as a rather terrifying attack.
Whoosh!
The water at Victor's feet, kicked up in a line, surged straight at me. A blade of ultra-high-pressure water several meters high tore violently across the floor as it flew.
I had just enough time to smile at the thought that he was finally using alchemy properly—and then it was over.
"Whoops!"
The reflexes and combat instincts I'd honed sparring with Sayulcheon over the past few days paid off. The instant something registered on my detection, I twisted my head on pure instinct, and almost in the same breath an ultra-high-pressure jet of water skimmed my cheek.
I swept my hand through the air, decomposed the oncoming water blade into spray, and looked toward Victor with a wry laugh.
"Impressive. I didn't expect that first massive attack to be a smokescreen."
"It was my trump card."
As if he hadn't imagined I would dodge even that so easily, Victor's face was thick with regret.
A technique meant more for killing humans than monsters. Something thoroughly designed to take me down?
I analyzed Victor's technique while working out a countermeasure. Even so, this was a practical exam—I intended to avoid wrapping myself in a Transmutation Barrier and one-sidedly crushing them if I could help it.
A practical exam wasn't only for verifying the students' progress. One of its goals was also to let them gain real combat experience by facing an overwhelmingly strong instructor head-on.
"That alchemy just now, when you fired the water stream—it seems like an applied technique. Does it have a name?"
"Pressure Pierce."
The name meant to press and pierce through. A technique that fired ultra-high-pressure compressed water to drive a hole through the enemy—perfectly matched to the words. And as a single-point penetration strike, it would punch through any ordinary body-enhancement defense.
The principle was simple enough to explain, but structurally it demanded considerable concentration to use directly.
At that level, Victor easily clears a passing grade.
I began scoring with an inward smile. He'd always been highly skilled, but he used to think and move like some vanguard martial artist rather than like an alchemist. Now that he'd corrected that and further refined his personal alchemy, I could give him a high enough mark without hesitation.
Hiss!
I needed to see the other students before long as well, so I pushed ether into the surrounding water. Converting some of the boiling water into vapor, I blanketed the area in a hazy fog that cut off vision.
But a mere steam screen that only blocked sight didn't seem to mean much.
As expected—everyone's detection is excellent.
Even with visibility ruined, attacks poured in from every direction, locked precisely on me. Not only the students trying to close for melee, but even those firing magic from a distance seemed to have pinpointed my location without error.
So I changed tactics a little.
Gathering every drop of water and every wisp of steam in around myself, I shaped a ring of water centered on my body. It looked something like a hula hoop made of water—but for all its appearance it was a proper weapon with enormous mass relative to its size. I had drawn in every scrap of moisture filling the gymnasium and compressed it. By rough estimate, a mass weapon weighing at least in the tons.
"Well then."
From here on I wouldn't change the properties of matter. I would only reshape its form—and pour out a variety of attacks.
"Shall we get serious?"
I'd been on the defensive until now. It was time for my side to start attacking as well.
At those words the students who had been charging in boldly tensed up and snapped into defensive stances. Watching that with satisfaction, I swept every direction with a water whip that weighed several tons.
"Whoa—holy crap."
Starting with that one line from some unknown student, screams erupted all across the floor.
The back alleys of Arca, where every kind of criminal from across the continent came flocking.
Even those back alleys were relatively quiet during the day alone. There were none of the brawls and crimes that were practically the district's trademark, and everyone held their breath by daylight as if they had all become nocturnal animals.
But daytime in the back alleys was not the ordinary state of things.
Even in well-policed Arca, the back alleys ranked among the high-crime zones. And among them, the roughest and most avoided place of all—so bad that even the Security Bureau had issued a curfew—was the district people called the Forbidden Zone.
In that place, several people had gathered, pressing their heads to the ground and bowing low.
The air was heavy.
Their throats constricted.
Their bodies shook.
They were afraid.
Everyone shared those emotions, trembling like aspen leaves—because before them stood the one who had ordered them to bow their heads. An absolute being whom even they, who had deceived and mocked Arca's public authority, dared not think of resisting, was looking down on them with a thoroughly displeased expression.
"Disappointing."
Just that short word. At that brief utterance, the bodies of those pressed flat to the floor like insects flinched as one.
"And I don't understand."
The man in the dark crimson suit continued in a cold voice. Shadow fell across his face at a perfect angle, making it difficult to make out its shape even if one raised one's head.
"You who ought to be competent—why do you keep failing the plan so frequently?"
That question carried a great deal of meaning. That the man had placed no small expectations on the subordinates currently bowing before him—and that he had never even considered the possibility of their failing the plan.
So he wasted no words and simply asked.
"Answer me."
"......We have no excuse. An unforeseen variable appeared that we failed to account for."
"A variable? I should have calculated every variable that could interfere with my plans."
The man's voice held a note of puzzlement, but displeasure gradually crept through the gaps. Whether he grasped that intent or not, one of those with his head bowed cried out urgently.
"The new instructor at Origin Academy! An alchemist named Ryu Seojun is ruining all of our plans!"
The man's head turned, his gaze locking onto the one who had shouted. The elf who received that look swallowed a dry breath and trembled as if an electronic device were vibrating through him.
"Ryu Seojun, you say?"
"Y-yes......! He's the one who seduced the princess who holds the power of our progenitor, and who killed one of the elders of our Green Forest Dawn Society! It's certain that he's also the one who interfered with the Hohenheim family's affairs and those of the great Johar!"
After the Green Forest Dawn Society elf elder finished his impassioned outburst, silence settled. In that still quiet, those with their heads bowed felt only the pounding of their own hearts, gripped by anxiety.
How many minutes passed like that?
At last the silent man's mouth opened.
"If he's that strong, it might be better to make him mine."
Flinch—once more the bodies of those bowing jerked. Because the true meaning of those words was nothing like accepting the man as a comrade.
"Denis van Hohenheim."
"Yes!"
"Prepare a Transmutation Circle. It's unfortunate we can no longer obtain Imitation Reproduction—but if that man truly disposed of James Baker, I shall verify it myself and use him as a sacrifice in his place."
"As you command!"
The moment those words ended, the man vanished from that place.
Strolling leisurely out of the back alleys, he put on the sunglasses he'd kept in his pocket, casually hailed a passing taxi, and climbed in—to meet the new instructor who had given his subordinates such a hard time, and at the same time to confirm whether the man was suitable as nourishment to replace James Baker.
"Driver, to Origin Academy, please."
"Yes sir, understood!"
Johar Cardmon, in complete contrast to moments before, behaved like a kind and simple young man as he headed toward the academy—to confirm whether the Gift of the one called Ryu Seojun held greater value than James Baker's Imitation Reproduction.
It was the moment the main story, as Ryu Seojun had feared, began to diverge in earnest.