9. You, Become My Alchemy Slave (1)

The Draconian corpse lay toppled face-first on the floor.
A gleam of greed too plain to hide glistened in Yujin’s eyes.

The emblem’s nice and all, but to me, this is the real reward.

— Sssssh!

Dense spirit-power burrowed in, seeping into the corpse’s skeleton and the hardness lodged in its bones.
Yujin pored over the toppled body inch by inch.

Splendid. This is beyond what I expected.

A laugh slipped out on its own.
The hardness of the bone, the toughness of the muscle, even the mana held in the blood. Not a single flaw to find, a splendid material for an undead.

That’s right.

What matters is the rank of the dragon race held in this thing’s body.

The dragon race.
A species that occupies one of the worlds of gods registered in the Pantheon, the so-called “stellar fields.”
The six dragon legions are an organization even the Constellations cannot make light of.
Not some half-baked monster spat out by a gate.
A Draconian that formally contracted through the Pantheon and took up the post of examiner under a stat restriction is the genuine article, carrying the rank of the dragon race.

At the most ambitious, a Spartoi, I’d say.

The Spartoi.¹
An undead bearing sword and shield, a warrior so powerful even a Doom Knight would struggle to oppose it.
Dragon-native magic resistance, naturally. And on top of spewing dark fighting-aura out several meters, it has regenerative ability too.

But a Spartoi feels like a bit of a waste, too.

A dragon-race corpse, hard to come by in the first place. A species rarely seen even within a gate — greed got the better of him.
The rank of the dragon race dwelling in the Draconian corpse was stronger than Yujin had thought.
Yujin mulled it over, chin propped in his hand, then let out an “Ah” of realization.

Maybe I’ll try crafting an Eldritch Dragon.

Something like a Lich.

The Eldritch Dragon.
A dragon of death that became undead by binding its life essence into a sealing vessel. In human terms, a being like a Lich.

You might say an undead crafted from a dragon corpse already exists. The Bone Dragon.

Same undead, but different. Quite.

A Bone Dragon can never surpass the original dragon-race body.
It has no Dragon Heart, the mana organ. And since all the flesh sloughs off during processing, its physical abilities drop too.
Even if you process the dragon corpse with costly reagents and carve every manner of formula into the bones, matching the original body’s physical abilities is the best you can manage.
To say nothing of the dragon-tongue magic that symbolizes a dragon. It’s a half-wit that can’t even handle mighty mana.

A mere imitation of the original, at the end of the day.

A dragon’s rank. And the enormous output pouring out of a Dragon Heart.
Those two things, even Yujin, who had reached the pinnacle of necromancy, would struggle to revive.
By contrast, a being that became undead by sealing its own life essence, the Eldritch Dragon, can grow as strong as it likes, beyond what it was in life.

What if I started with a Draconian’s body and grew it all the way up to a full-grown dragon?
Ooh. Just thinking about it is incredible.

It won’t be easy to craft, though.

The reagents alone consumed in crafting an Eldritch Dragon run to billions, at a rough estimate.

I’d have to pour spirit-power into the bones, the muscle, the scales, and carve each and every formula in.

It doesn’t have to be a dragon’s soul.

Strictly speaking, a Draconian isn’t a perfect “dragon” either.
Half-human, half-dragon. Since half of it bears human traits, you just have to breathe in a soul strong enough to bear a dragon-race body.

And I happen to have just the right fellow for that.

The strongest right hand the Yujin of his past life ever commanded.
That soul should resonate with the Draconian’s corpse.

Yujin laid his hand on the Draconian corpse once more.

“Store.”

A whitish current leaked out of the Ring of Black Darkness, coiled around the Draconian’s body, and then, with a sssrrk like the sound of a collar sliding down, sucked it in.

The Draconian corpse was secured.
There was no more reason to linger in the Ancient Proving Ground.
He turned toward the passage shimmering with white light.

What is it?

The sole follower and Saint of the Giant of Defiance.
The “episode” of Yujin felling a mighty foe had been reflected in full, raising Kronos’s existential force.

Interesting.
Look how high Life Drain’s utility alone runs. Pile up more deeds, and new holy spells will be added too.
Even Yujin couldn’t easily guess how far his abilities as a Priest would develop.

I’m getting far too much out of this.

The corners of Yujin’s mouth drew into an arc, curving like a crescent moon.

The moment Yujin stepped out of the gate, he reached for his phone.

A fattened account.
Barely any time had passed since the regression, and more had been deposited than all the money he’d saved over the past three years.

And I spent twenty million on the ring, too.

Yujin fiddled with the Ring of Black Darkness out of habit.
The Draconian corpse was stored inside it now. To process it into a powerful undead, he’d have to invest a great many reagents.
Pour his entire fortune in and he’d barely meet the bare minimum for an Eldritch Dragon.

And I haven’t even factored the tools for making the reagents into the budget.

That part didn’t worry him much. He already had a fellow in mind to supply the alchemy tools.
Chin propped in his hand, Yujin called up the memories of his past life.

Around this time, he’d still be in Paju, running an alchemy workshop and faffing about, wouldn’t he?

The sun was beginning to slip westward.
He had to reach Paju before nightfall.

No time to rest.

Grumbling briefly, Yujin flagged down a taxi at once.

Even after the Great Cataclysm, Paju is classified as a frontline region.
The Kim Kingdom up north went belly-up, having failed to respond in time to the gate breaks that ruptured one after another, but the monsters that settled into its territory would cross the old armistice line and push south whenever they got bored.

Lousy public order, too.

Part of Paju was scorched to the ground during the Great Cataclysm and remains unrestored even today, decades later.
In place of the native inhabitants, what seeped into the concrete graves were people with one foot in the criminal world, so western Paju turned into a lawless zone once the sun went down.
That was the reason Yujin moved in a hurry.

“Young man. This where you wanted to come, sure about that?”

The taxi driver, who’d driven exactly as the navigation said, scratched his head vigorously as he asked.
The only building that caught the eye was a bus stop that wouldn’t look out of place collapsing any second.
The rest was a small town, old plate-built houses clustered close together.

Jeokseong-myeon, Paju.
A countryside that looked as though it had been skipped over by the flow of time was Yujin’s destination.

“Yes. Thank you.”

He finished paying and set foot in the quiet rural village.

This place is the same ten years from now as it is now.

The first time the Yujin of his past life visited here was in his tenth year as an Awakened.
To strengthen undead, alchemy is essential. You can process a corpse to make it exert power beyond its raw material, or craft a powerful undead with reagents.

This is where the alchemist who’ll become the very best in our country lives.

Still a future tense, for now. But soon it would be so.
Since the village hadn’t changed in decades, finding the workshop wasn’t hard.
A quiet road led off behind the bus stop. Walk about ten minutes and a half-abandoned side path appeared, choked thick with weeds.

No upkeep. Same now as ever.

He parted the weeds aside in pleasant déjà vu and made to head in.

— Kabooom!

A roar that ripped the air apart shook his eardrums without mercy, and a beat late, black smoke billowed up, surging into the air to form a single pillar.

“Now if even this part were the same, that’d be a bit much.”

Heh heh heh.
A laugh spilled out at the déjà vu so like his past life.
The source of the black smoke was a large abandoned factory with a slate-style roof, much like the buildings in the vicinity.

“Kek! Kek! Cough!”
“You there. You all right? Nothing injured?”
“Excuse me. I don’t know who you are, but isn’t it usually the other way around?”
“From the way you’re answering back, you’re fine.”

What broke through the smoke was a man who looked to be in his early thirties.
A small scar below the cheek and a slightly stooped back. His hair, full of premature gray, was matted as though it hadn’t been washed in a good several days.

Was he able to make such a guileless expression too?

Heh.
He bit back the single thread of laughter that tried to slip out.

The Grand Alchemist Shin Junseok.
Before the regression, a figure who made his name as the most skilled alchemist in Korea.
He was the first in the entire world to establish the formula for the Mass-produced Mid-grade Potion, and a talent who developed countless other medicines and magical formulae besides.

I came here for advice on corpse enhancement too, didn’t I.

When he wore a contented smile, recalling the memory, Shin Junseok’s eyes turned fierce.

“I don’t know what brought you onto someone else’s land, but if you’re here to talk nonsense, get out quick.”
“Ah. I do have business, though.”
“With the workshop, you mean?”
“My name is Cheon Yujin. I came to use your alchemy tools.”

A question mark floated up over Shin Junseok’s head.
A moment later, as though he’d belatedly grasped Yujin’s words, he erupted with a rebuke, his face gone bright red.

“Are you out of your mind!”
“Ah. It’s not that I’m asking to just borrow them.”
“I don’t know who you are, but if you’re going to spout nonsense, clear off, fast.”

Shin Junseok dropped the polite speech entirely and snarled.
Right. The Grand Alchemist Yujin remembered always wore that venom-laced expression.

A bit better.

Alchemy tools.
From the beaker-type equipment you’d see in an elementary- or middle-school science class, to a scale that checks even minute weights, to a furnace that kindles magical flame.
Equipment you could call the entirety of an alchemist.
For a Necromancer, it would be like corpses — so when someone asked to borrow them, Shin Junseok flying into a rage was only natural.

I’ve used your tools too, so I know how to handle them.

Before the regression, Yujin frequently exchanged with the nation’s top alchemist.
To strengthen necromancy he had to be well-versed in alchemy as well, and there was hardly any talent worth turning to for help.
That being so.

“Mid-grade Healing Potion.”
“…What?”
“You’re researching a mass-producible potion recipe, aren’t you.”
“You. How do you—”

What Shin Junseok was developing around this time. And which catalyst fell short in that blending process. He knew all of it, down to the last.
Because he’d heard every bit of it from the man himself.

Yujin strode into the abandoned factory where the explosion had just gone off.

“That’s my laboratory.”
“If you want to see the potion completed, stay put.”

A potion formula that, in the original history, would be completed a year from now.
Yujin meant to move that timeline up.

Even in those days his eye for tools was something else.

A Witch’s Cauldron. A Guard Cylinder. A Darkness Ever-Stone.
And besides those, a heap of alchemist-only equipment hard to come by in the current era.
Equipment that didn’t suit the shabby interior of the abandoned factory at all.
Valuable catalysts and herbs lay scattered here and there as well.

As he looked the abandoned factory over, Yujin halted in front of a reddish liquid spewing bubbles.
A Mid-grade Healing Potion.
From the way the bubbles rose, it looked ready to explode at any moment.

Raise the mana-stone concentration by four percent and neutralize it with five grams of Odram’s Grass, and that should do it.

The moment he grabbed the Odram’s Grass, Shin Junseok flew into a temper.

“That’s for stabilizing mana. The potion’s effect isn’t even coming out properly, and if you put in Odram’s Grass—”
“Match it to a fixed mana value and it helps with amplification and improving healing power. You’re an alchemist and you don’t even know that?”
“…”

No wonder he didn’t know.
It’s alchemy knowledge unknown in the current era.

Because the one who figured it out is you.

Not so much as a flicker of color changing on his face, Yujin focused on crafting the potion.

Shk, shk, shk.

With unhesitating hands he processed the leaf, and dropped the powdered, split mana stone into the potion.
Watching it with a blank expression, Shin Junseok’s eyes wavered without pause.

Is it — is it actually working?

This made no sense.
That he knew Shin’s own research project was strange enough. And the way he used the workshop’s tools and materials like his own home was suspicious too.
And yet.

Odram’s Grass had an effect like that?

The picture of a man without a shred of hesitation.
Sensing there was some unspoken “basis” to Yujin’s work, Shin only stood there, blankly watching.

How much time passed.

— Bubububble!

The bubbles stopped rising any higher and the reddish liquid stabilized.

“Shall we give it a test?”

Yujin calmly raked a preparation knife across his forearm, a clean sssk.

“Y-you. The blood!”
“I know. To see the effect, breaking the skin is best, isn’t it.”

Blood streamed down freely, but he only knit his brow slightly, and without a single groan healed the wound with the Mid-grade Potion.
Whitish smoke rose up, and fresh flesh sprouted over the wound on his forearm.
Blinking both eyes, Shin Junseok looked back and forth between the potion and Yujin’s forearm, his mouth dropping wide open.

“It’s a success. It’s a success!!!!”

He came running with bloodshot eyes and gripped Yujin’s hand tight.
A tone brimming with elation.
Now he’s ready to have a conversation.

“Aren’t you curious?”

Shin Junseok nodded fast. The displeasure he’d shown at first was long gone.
A man who’ll stop at nothing to raise his level in alchemy.
That’s the essence of the alchemist called Shin Junseok.

“You. Do just one job with me.”

One corner of Yujin’s lips curled upward.