10. You, Become My Alchemy Slave (2)

“What is it you’d have me do alongside you?”

Shin Junseok had slipped into polite speech without realizing it.
His gaze was laced with bewilderment, expectation, and suspicion.
Those eyes, a tangle of complicated feelings, demanded an answer from Yujin.

If Yujin hadn’t shown him a Mid-grade Healing Potion in the making, the conversation wouldn’t even have gotten off the ground.

Considering what that fellow’s been through, it’s fair enough.

A researcher at Daeseong, the largest corporation in the country.
That had been Shin Junseok’s former job.
Mana-circuit development.
Potion-recipe research.
He’d produced results in plenty of fields beyond those two, but then.

He got stabbed in the back.

Shin Junseok’s direct superior, the story went, had cunningly worked an angle and walked off with every last one of his results.
By the time he realized it, it was already too late.
He raised an objection, but with no proper evidence it was dismissed.
The superior who’d snatched the research, meanwhile, climbed the ranks at a rapid clip and made it all the way to executive level.
There was not a single person in the workplace who would take his side.

Was it good luck, then?
Around the time he’d grasped the whole affair and was losing his will to stay at the company, he received the System’s invitation and became an Awakened.

“I resign.”

He submitted his resignation without a moment’s hesitation.
Coming back down to his hometown, the man before Yujin had emptied every bit of his savings, taken out a loan on top, and built a workshop.

“I’ve got a fair bit of alchemy knowledge, see, but no equipment and no skills.”
“So you want me to be your hands and feet?”
“That’s right. If you don’t want to, then nothing to be done about it.”

When Yujin reached a hand toward the finished Mid-grade Potion, the red liquid sloshed at his beckoning.
Shin Junseok’s eyes tracked left and right in time with the motion.

He won’t be able to resist this.

He’d seen the potion do exactly what it was supposed to, with his own two eyes.
He’d want to know at least the catalyst and the ratio that finished the Mid-grade Potion.
The bold little performance had landed exactly as intended, no mistake.

“And what do I get out of it?”
“The recipe to complete the potion. And I’ll teach you plenty besides.”
“I don’t believe it. No price at all…”
“Heh, look at this guy. Trying to get my knowledge for free.”

At Yujin’s sneer, Shin Junseok’s face went red.

“When did I say I’d just hand it over?”
“You did ask me to be your hands and feet, didn’t you.”
“It’d include a royalty on any items you make from here on with my advice.”

Yujin gave the potion another shake.
In a voice gone low with chagrin, Shin Junseok muttered.

“I could’ve finished that myself if I’d just had a little more time.”
“If you don’t want to, then nothing to be done about it.”

Not a trace of reluctance in Yujin’s manner.
Shin Junseok’s eyes quivered.

Torn, aren’t you?

Having seen the finished potion with his own eyes, he’d find it hard to give up.
Take Shin Junseok on as a sla— no, as a partner, and not only would the money troubles ease up, but every tedious bit of alchemy work could be handed off to him.

“Ratio’s sixty-forty. The four-tenths is only for what I had a hand in producing.”
“That’s a bit much.”
“I’m not asking you to decide right this second.”
“Thank you for giving me time.”
“Just let me use the workshop in exchange. I’ve got things to do myself.”
“That much isn’t difficult.”
“Think it over, take your time. I plan to stay here a few days anyway.”

You’ve already bitten the hook.

Yujin smiled softly.

The alchemy workshop, set up inside the abandoned factory.

Yujin roamed it as naturally as if he were coming and going from his own home, gathering up materials and tools one by one.

“Um. Could you not—”
“I know how to handle them and what they do, so don’t worry about it.”
“You’ll still have to pay for them.”
“…”

The future Grand Alchemist, sure enough. Not one to be pushed around.

“Don’t worry. I’ll pay it all back within the month.”
“And just how long do you intend to keep talking down to me, anyhow?”
“If it galls you, drop the formal speech yourself. Then we’re even. You managed it fine when we first met.”

Sheer absurdity laid bare on his face, Shin Junseok at last heaved a deep sigh.

“Forget it. I’ll just be the only one using polite speech.”

What a pushover.

His hands kept moving without rest even as they traded words.
From among the materials in the workshop, he sorted out what he needed at speed.

“Got any dark blood and ghoul bones?”
“Those are black-magic catalysts. There’s no reason to handle… them.”
“Narrow thinking won’t do any good for the advancement of alchemy.”
“Ah, ngh, nghh.”

Unable to summon a word of rebuttal, Shin Junseok groaned over it for a good while.

A narrow field of view and narrow thinking don’t help alchemy. Those are your own words.

Watching Shin Junseok wrestle with his future self, Yujin let out a short snicker, kik.

“Throw in a Darkness Orb with that and put the order in, then.”

Order placed, he tossed in blue herb, mana grass, and red mint at a four-to-two-to-one ratio and ground them with practiced ease.
The herbs turned to powder in an instant.

“Smelt me five F-grade mana stones and bring them to forty-two percent.”
“Are you putting me to work?”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

When he muttered though who’s the one losing out here, I wonder, Shin Junseok rolled up both sleeves.

“Just what the devil are you doing, barging into someone else’s workshop out of nowhere.”

Sorry, but you’re going to have to suffer a little too.

Smelt was an alchemy skill that broke down the form of an object and extracted only its essence.
If Yujin had hit the 2nd Rank and unlocked the alchemy-school knowledge with the Ring of Black Darkness, it might have been another matter, but at the present moment Shin Junseok’s help was essential.

Shin Junseok gathered up a bundle of mana stones and stood before the tub.
A five-meter-wide tub.
He drew water into the alchemy-dedicated tub, which was marked off in millimeter units, and dropped every one of the mana stones into it.

The hard surface of the mana stones turned soft and mushy, then dissolved all at once like salt melting into water.
A liquid giving off a faint glow.
Wearing a grave expression, Shin Junseok drew mana together into his palm.

“Forty-two percent, correct?”

Shin Junseok had matched the ordered ratio perfectly on a single try.

Because he’s the man who’ll become the Grand Alchemist.

The mana stones’ peculiar wavelength and the amount of water.
And the mana loss rate that arises during smelting.
All of it had to be calculated, and that was easier said than done.
Even a seasoned alchemist found matching a smelting ratio difficult.

Meanwhile.

Shin Junseok, too, stole sidelong glances at the deft work of Yujin’s hands as he tossed assorted leaves into a mortar and ground them.

Not a wasted motion.

Otherworldly plants, found in gates or in erosion zones.
If you put force into the grinding without minding it, the sap held in the leaves gets exposed to the air, and the herb’s mana bleeds away with it.
To keep the potency from escaping, you have to channel mana into the mortar and rotate it at a steady rate. And yet.

He looks like he’s just stirring it any old way, and it’s flawless.

In his days working at the Daeseong Group laboratory, Shin Junseok had seen no end of Magic-line Hunters.
It looked simple at a glance, but a single tiny error often spoiled the catalyst and dropped the efficiency.
Even among the high-flying experts at Daeseong, how many Magic-line Hunters handled herbs as casually as Yujin did?

Even I’d only manage something close with a skill correction.

— Gulp.

Without realizing it, Shin Junseok swallowed.

“Ugh. This is exhausting.”

Grumbling lightly, Yujin dropped the fully ground herb powder straight into the mana-stone smelt fluid.
The smelt fluid bubbled.
The faintly bluish liquid stained purple in an instant.

“Release.”

A whitish mist seeped out of the Ring of Black Darkness.
From a gray current too thick to see into, a Draconian corpse came bursting out.

“Hieek!”
“What’s there to be startled about. It’s just a corpse.”
“Isn’t that the bigger problem?! You can’t go dumping a human corpse in here!”
“Does this look like a human to you?”

Shin Junseok stared at the Draconian corpse laid out in the tub, then let out an “Ah—,” the air going out of him.

“Honestly. What a fuss.”
“Is this how all undead are made?”
“If it were, anyone could be a Necromancer. Only special corpses get processed.”

Yujin tossed off the reply and plunged his hand into the smelt fluid.
Mana that felt full to the brim, thanks to having just smelted the F-grade mana stones.
Slowly, he dissolved the essence of death, converted through the Ring of Black Darkness, into the purple-stained liquid.

— Vmmm!

Mana, reacting to the essence of death, gradually wound itself in.

“A property meant to be repelled, and yet how…”

Watching from the side, Shin Junseok let out a short groan.

Sorry, but I can’t explain.
I have to put every nerve into this.

The essence of death was the needle.
The mana that came trailing after was the thread, near enough.
To inscribe a formula into a dead body without so much as a single skill correction took an extreme degree of focus.

The formula inscribed all across the bone activated, raising bone density, and then.

A sorcery that heightened the resonance between spirit and corpse to lift the undead’s performance up a notch was inscribed into the brain.
Beyond those, a formula to loosen the muscles, gone rigid with rigor mortis, back to suppleness.
A magic circle to raise mana receptivity, and the like.
It was a magical craftsmanship possible only for Yujin, who had reached master level in both necromancy and alchemy.

— Drip. Drip.

Beads of sweat gathering on his brow wet the floor, but he did not stop.
A focus so complete he wouldn’t have registered a blade going into his neck.
Only once the smelt fluid had all soaked into the Draconian corpse’s body did he let out a short “Phew—” and drop straight down where he stood.

“A-are you all right?”
“No. I’m hungry and worn out enough that my eyes are about to roll back.”

“The artistry of weaving mana together,” Shin Junseok said.

“Truly, it was beautiful beyond anything I could put into words.”

His hostility had melted away like snow.
For all his snarling earlier, in less than an hour he’d been so captivated by Yujin’s technique that he’d let down the bar across his heart.

“Ah. I said I’m hungry.”
“Next time, teach me that technique too, would you.”

Shin Junseok, rattling on about only what he wanted to say.
Right.
This man was always like this.
A human obsessed with alchemy. An oddball who, even at a major conglomerate like Daeseong, paid no mind to anything but research.

“I’ve got a lot to do, so I’m working the moment my stomach’s full.”
“Then I’ll get dinner ready quick.”

Shin Junseok fussed about and brought food together.

The next day.

“The materials you ordered are here.”

Shin Junseok set down the materials wrapped in packaging.

“I figured it’d take three days at least.”
“I’ve got my own supply contacts, you see.”

Connections that could get a delivery out to this mountain valley right away.
It seemed they were contacts he’d built back in his big-corporation days.
No need to dig too deep into it.

“The Darkness Orb’s out of stock, so it’ll take a little while.”
“How long?”
“Around a week, by their estimate.”
“Good. I’ll be staying here for the time being, so that’s no problem.”
“You can have the payment ready, I trust?”
“Don’t worry about it.”

As for the money, I’ll have to start hustling for it now.

Once Shin Junseok had a Mid-grade Potion production line running in earnest, it’d be a different story.
But before that, the funding problem needed minding too.

“Do all these materials go into making undead, as well?”
“No, not these. I’m going to make magical armaments.”

Yujin’s eyes scrutinized the materials with care.
A gleam of satisfaction settled in his sharp eyes.

This much should yield a usable armament.

Smiling with satisfaction, he held out the black liquid, the dark blood, to Shin Junseok.

“What’s this?”
“What are you doing, not taking it. It needs distilling.”
“I’m asking why I’m the one who has to do it.”
“You agreed to be my hands and feet, didn’t you.”
“I haven’t decided yet, you know?”
“Don’t, then. We’ll call our deal off too, while we’re at it.”
“Ah, I’ll do it. I’ll do it!”

Grumbling, Shin Junseok poured the dark blood into the distillation apparatus.
Grinding herbs he could manage with sheer dexterity, but the distillation apparatus was alchemist-only equipment, so Shin Junseok’s help was essential.

Now then, shall I get the rest of the process ready.

First he sorted out half of them in order of soundest durability, then poured an excess of spirit-power into the remaining bones.

— Kraddk!

The ghoul bones, granted energy beyond their limit, cracked with a crrk and shattered into hundreds of fragments.
Yujin gathered the fragments in one place and laid them atop the ghoul bones he’d set aside.

First, the necromancy-line formula.

He moved the spirit-power that had seeped into the inside of the bone, inscribing a mana circuit within.
A difficulty so low it made him yawn, compared to reinforcing the Draconian corpse.

— Saaaak!

A ghoul is an undead that craves the blood and flesh of the living.
The concept of [Gluttony] dwelling in the bone.
As the sound ghoul bones absorbed the white fragments he’d split off, they grew sturdier and larger.

It changes the shape, too.

Beyond reinforcement, the domain of reconstruction.
Splitting the bones had been to intervene in the absorption process and reshape them into a form fit for a magical armament.

The ghoul bone had grown sharp. It had changed into something close to a stake.
Still just ‘Sundries’ by the System’s reckoning.

The first stage of work was done.

“How’s your end?”
“Finished. It separated into dark essence and dark matter.”
“Splendid. Then carve a reinforcement spell in here too.”
“You processed the bone already?”

Shin Junseok ran his eyes over the ghoul bone, his eyes glittering.

“A mana circuit inscribed with spirit-power. Precious indeed.”
“Use the dark blood as the medium for the reinforcement circuit. The knack should be the same.”
“Understood.”

A mana circuit inscribed with dark blood.
The ghoul bone dyed pitch-black, then gave off a droning vmmm.
With the reinforcement circuit added, a Necromancer-exclusive magical armament was complete.

“M-me, completing a Rare grade…”
“Is Rare such a big deal?”
“It’s not just anything. It’s a Necromancer-exclusive item that isn’t even in the Daeseong Group’s records!”

The corners of Shin Junseok’s eyes quivered.
He’d be curious, no doubt.
The recipe for the Mid-grade Potion.
The method for crafting Necromancer-exclusive items unknown at this point in time, and so on.

If you’re curious, take my hand.

Yujin manipulated the Cursed Fang with Bone Control.
The magical armament floated up lightly.

Spirit-power loss is around 7.2 percent, is it.

Excellent for a Rare-grade armament.
Control something remotely and force is bound to be lost in the process.
He’d used the Staff of Resentment as an offensive weapon back in the Garden of Antiquity too, but the force bleeding off then had been considerable.
The fact of it was that Yujin’s process had come that close to perfection.

By way of a test, he loosed the Cursed Fang at a sizable boulder outside the workshop.

— Kabooom!

The boulder split into several pieces along with the roar.

“What did you do?”
“A power test. This much should be worth using when I tackle a 1st-Rank gate.”
“1st Rank, you say. You — don’t tell me you’re 1st Rank?”
“It hasn’t even been a week since I awakened. My Stellar Rank will climb soon enough.”

Yujin spoke in an unruffled tone.
Shin Junseok was struck dumb.
Going purely by the power he’d just shown, it was a level capable of subduing not a 1st-Rank but a 2nd-Rank Hunter.
He could be certain of it, having met no end of Hunters during his time at Daeseong, ranker-class Hunters among them.

This man. He’s a monster.

— Gulp.

Shin Junseok’s throat bobbed hard.