9. You, Become My Alchemy Slave (1)

The Draconian corpse had toppled face-first to the floor, and 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 through the corpse’s skeleton, probing every vital part down to the hardness of its bones. Yujin pored over the toppled body inch by inch.

Splendid. This is beyond what I expected.

A laugh slipped out of him on its own. The hardness of the bone, the toughness of the muscle, even the mana held in the blood: he could not find a single flaw anywhere. 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. They were a species that occupied one of the god-worlds registered in the Pantheon, the so-called stellar fields, and their six dragon legions formed an organization even the Constellations could not make light of. No half-baked monster spat out of a gate, then. A Draconian that had formally contracted through the Pantheon and taken up the post of examiner under a stat restriction was the genuine article, and it carried the rank of the dragon race.

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

The Spartoi.¹ An undead that bore sword and shield, a warrior so powerful even a Doom Knight would struggle to stand against it. Dragon-born magic resistance came as a matter of course, and on top of spewing dark battle-aura several meters out, it had regenerative power besides.

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

A dragon-race corpse was hard to come by in the first place, a species rarely glimpsed even inside a gate, and his greed got the better of him.

The rank of the dragon race dwelling in the Draconian corpse ran stronger than Yujin had thought. He mulled it over, chin propped on his hand, then let out a small “Ah” of realization.

Maybe I’ll try crafting an Eldritch Dragon.

Something like a Lich.

The Eldritch Dragon. A dragon of death that had turned undead by binding its life essence into a sealing vessel; in human terms, something like a Lich. Of course, an undead crafted from a dragon corpse already existed: the Bone Dragon.

Same undead, but different. Quite.

A Bone Dragon could never surpass the original dragon-race body. It had no Dragon Heart, the organ that produced mana, and because all the flesh sloughed away during processing, its physical abilities fell off as well. Even processing the dragon corpse with costly reagents and carving every manner of formula into the bones, the most one could manage was to match the original body’s physical strength. As for the dragon-tongue magic that was the very symbol of a dragon, the thing was a half-wit that could not so much as handle mighty mana.

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

A dragon’s rank, and the enormous output that poured from a Dragon Heart: those were the two things even Yujin, who had reached the pinnacle of necromancy, would struggle to bring back. By contrast, a being that turned undead by sealing away its own life essence, the Eldritch Dragon, could grow as strong as it pleased, far beyond what it had been 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 for crafting an Eldritch Dragon would run to billions, at a rough estimate. He would have to pour spirit-power into the bones, the muscle, and the scales, carving each and every formula in by hand.

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

Strictly speaking, a Draconian was not a perfect “dragon” to begin with: half-human, half-dragon. Since half of it carried human traits, he only had 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 had ever commanded. That soul ought to resonate with the Draconian’s corpse.

Yujin laid his hand on the Draconian corpse once more.

“Store.”

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

The Draconian corpse was secured. No reason remained to linger in the Ancient Proving Ground. He turned his body 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 credited in full, raising Kronos’s existential force.

Interesting. Look how much utility Life Drain alone carried; pile up more deeds, and new holy spells would be added besides. Even Yujin could not 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 up 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 yet more had been deposited than all the money he had saved across 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 sat stored inside it, and turning that into a powerful undead would take a great many reagents. Even pouring his entire fortune in, he would barely scrape together the bare minimum for an Eldritch Dragon.

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

That part did not worry him much. He already had someone 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 remained a frontline region. The Kim Kingdom to the north had gone belly-up, having failed to answer the gate breaks that ruptured one after another in time, and the monsters that settled into its territory would cross the old armistice line and push south whenever boredom took them.

Lousy public order, too.

Part of Paju had been scorched to the ground during the Great Cataclysm and stood unrestored even now, decades later. In place of the original inhabitants, what seeped into those concrete graves were people with one foot in the criminal world, and once the sun went down, the western half of the city turned into a lawless zone.

Which was why Yujin moved in a hurry.

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

The taxi driver, who had driven exactly where the navigation told him, scratched his head hard as he asked. The only structure that caught the eye was a bus stop that looked ready to collapse at any second. The rest was a small huddle of old plate-built houses pressed close together.

Jeokseong-myeon, Paju. A stretch of countryside that looked as though the flow of time had skipped over it entirely. This 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 had set foot here was in his tenth year as an Awakened.

To strengthen undead, alchemy was essential. It could process a corpse to draw out power beyond its raw material, or conjure a powerful undead outright from reagents.

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

Future tense, for now. But it would be so soon enough.

The village had not changed in decades, so finding the workshop was no trouble. A quiet road ran off behind the bus stop, and ten minutes along it a half-abandoned side path appeared, choked thick with weeds.

No upkeep — same now as ever.

The instant he parted the weeds in pleasant déjà vu and made to step through…

— Kabooom!

A roar that ripped the air apart battered his eardrums without mercy, and a beat later black smoke billowed up, surging into the sky 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 of him at déjà vu so like his past life.

The black smoke was pouring from a large abandoned factory, its slate-style roof much like the other buildings nearby.

“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.”

The man who broke through the smoke looked to be in his early thirties. A small scar sat below one cheek, his back slightly stooped, and his prematurely graying hair was matted as though it had gone unwashed for a good several days.

Was he able to make such a guileless expression too?

Heh. He bit back the single thread of laughter trying to slip free.

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

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

As a contented smile rose on Yujin’s face at 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 Yujin’s words belatedly sank in, he erupted, 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 as Yujin remembered him had always worn that venom-laced expression.

A bit better.

Alchemy tools: beaker-type glassware of the sort found in any school science class, a scale that registered the minutest weights, a furnace that kindled magical flame. Equipment that amounted to the whole of an alchemist.

For a Necromancer, it would be the equivalent of his corpses. Asked to lend such things out, flying into a rage was only natural.

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

Before the regression, Yujin had kept up a frequent exchange with the nation’s top alchemist. Strengthening necromancy demanded a firm grasp of alchemy too, and there was scarcely any other talent worth turning to for help.

And 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 kept falling short in the blending: Yujin knew all of it, down to the last detail. He had 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.”

In the original history, this potion formula would not be completed for another year. 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. On top of those, a heap of alchemist-only equipment hard to come by in the present era, none of it the least bit suited to the shabby interior of the abandoned factory. Valuable catalysts and herbs lay scattered about as well.

Looking the place over, Yujin halted in front of a reddish liquid spewing bubbles. A Mid-grade Healing Potion. From the way the bubbles climbed, it looked ready to blow 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 did not know. This was alchemy that no one in the current era had uncovered.

Because the one who figured it out is you.

Without so much as a flicker crossing his face, Yujin bent to the work of crafting the potion.

Shk, shk, shk—.

With unhesitating hands he processed the leaf, then dropped the powdered, split mana stone into the potion without a moment’s pause.

Shin Junseok watched it all with a blank expression, his eyes wavering without pause.

Is it — is it actually working?

None of it made sense. That the stranger knew Shin’s own research project was odd enough, and the way he handled the workshop’s tools and materials as though they were his own only deepened the suspicion.

And yet.

Odram’s Grass had an effect like that?

The very picture of a man without a shred of hesitation. Sensing some unspoken “basis” beneath Yujin’s every move, Shin only stood there, watching blankly.

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 freely, but Yujin only knit his brow a touch and, without so much as a groan, healed the wound with the Mid-grade Potion. Whitish smoke rose, and fresh flesh sprouted over the gash on his forearm.

Shin Junseok blinked, looking back and forth between the potion and Yujin’s forearm, his mouth falling wide open.

“It’s a success. It’s a success!!!!”

He came running, eyes bloodshot, and gripped Yujin’s hand tight. His voice brimmed with elation.

Now he was ready to talk.

“Aren’t you curious?”

Shin Junseok nodded quickly, the displeasure he had shown at first long gone.

A man who would weigh neither means nor method if it raised his level in alchemy. That was the essence of the alchemist called Shin Junseok.

“You. Do just one job with me.”

One corner of Yujin’s lips curled upward.