The Alchemist And The Dispatched Devil (1)

“Add Bloody Grass to the distilled water~♪”

Mitt the alchemist tore up crimson Bloody Grass and added it to the distilled water filling the large pot over the fire.

I looked at the crimson sphere in my hand, but there was no reaction.

Everything was fine so far, so I returned my attention to Mitt’s work.

“Stir it round and round while pouring in mana to speed up the reaction~♪”

Singing cheerfully, Mitt stirred the pot with a mixing rod and poured in mana to accelerate the extraction of the Bloody Grass essence.

But at that moment, the crimson sphere flashed once.

Yep, one strike.

“Next, add Purple Berry morning dew~ and keep stirring round and round~♪”

What Mitt called Purple Berry morning dew was, more precisely, an alchemical ingredient made by mixing morning dew collected from Purple Berry leaves with juice squeezed from Purple Berries.

But the instant Mitt dropped the Purple Berry morning dew into the pot, the sphere in my hand began flashing repeatedly.

That made two strikes. It was probably about time to get ready.

“And once we add powdered Star Sand at the end, ta-da, all done!”

She sprinkled in powder made by grinding sand from a place called the Lake of Stars even finer, and the instant Mitt tapped the rim of the large pot with her stirring rod to signal completion, I grabbed her by the collar and pulled her toward me, protecting us with a barrier of wind.

BOM!

The surface of the pot flashed, followed immediately by a thunderous blast, a shock wave, and a cloud of black smoke.

It was the mysterious phenomenon that accompanied failure in alchemy, the extraordinary art of synthesizing matter through mana: an explosion.

“Mitt, you okay? Good. Villa, go ahead and grade her.”

After confirming that Mitt was unharmed thanks to my Magic, I prompted Villa, the crimson sphere and newly created Devil I had made, to assess her performance.

I could not judge the fine details of the alchemical procedure myself, but Villa, a Devil of Knowledge created from the soul once known as Planetary Environmental Preservation AI Eden, could compare the recorded procedure with Mitt’s actual process and point out every discrepancy in detail.

“Yes, my lord. Ms. Mitt made three mistakes. First, the Bloody Grass pieces were too large, and the acceleration caused by the amount of mana she infused was insufficient to extract enough essence. Second, she added the next ingredient without first removing the spent Bloody Grass after extraction.”

Villa’s calm voice listed Mitt’s mistakes one by one.

In truth, because alchemy produced results through the use of mana, one or two minor mistakes would negatively affect quality, but would not ordinarily cause a failure severe enough to result in an explosion.

If the alchemist held a strong enough image of success, the infused mana could compensate for a certain amount of error.

“Finally, Star Sand is used after all reactions have finished, when it is added to the completed medicinal solution to adsorb impurities. Afterward, only the clear upper layer is transferred into another container, completing a Mid-Grade Healing Potion. Star Sand must not be added before the reactions are complete.”

So a failure severe enough to cause an explosion could fairly be called a catastrophic mistake, and… Mitt’s shoulders slumped weakly.

But we had known from the beginning that this would happen.

After all, this was Mitt’s first attempt at making a Mid-Grade Healing Potion, and it was the kind of potion that, if you could make it reliably, was enough to support yourself as a town apothecary.

Neither Villa nor I had expected her to succeed on the very first try.

“However, Villa believes that aside from those three points, your procedure, timing, and mana infusion were all very good. When you first attempted the Mid-Grade Antidote that you successfully produced last time, you made five mistakes. Ms. Mitt, you are unquestionably improving.”

Even if others mocked it as progress at a snail’s pace, progress was still progress.

Mitt’s greatest virtue was that although failure could discourage her, she never tried to stop moving forward.

At Villa’s words, Mitt nodded, stood up, and smiled.

“Hehe, thank you, Villa-san. Then next time I’ll make even fewer mistakes! Lept-san, I’m sorry as always, but could you help me clean up?”

I nodded at the now-recovered Mitt, tucked the spherical Villa into my clothes, and rolled up my sleeves.

Cleaning up after an explosion, especially scraping away the soot caked onto everything, was understandably impossible for Villa in her spherical form.

As I tucked her away, Villa blinked apologetically, but it was nothing for her to worry about.

She was already more than useful enough. If anything, unless I handled the cleaning, I would have so little to do that it would become a problem.

I had arrived in this world half a year earlier.

It had been through a dispatched summoning arranged by Grazen’s faction.

“Right, so Great Alchemist Vermission-san is looking for two Devils to serve as guards and assistants for two students who will be running alchemy shops in town for a fixed period as part of a practical academy assignment.”

The one explaining the details of this assignment to me was Zaras, a female Devil whose frightening appearance was thoroughly demonic, while her voice alone was exceptionally beautiful.

She was a Devil I had previously worked alongside during another dispatched summoning, and she had kindly taught me all sorts of things back then.

At the time, I had been the Devil of the Light Seat, while Zaras had been the Devil of the Dark Seat.

According to Zaras, Great Alchemist Vermission was an instructor at an academy that taught alchemy, and among the students she currently supervised, two girls in particular possessed exceptional talent.

One was the top-ranking student, Pallas Cook, and the other was the lowest-ranking student, Mitt Shett.

Their grades were at opposite extremes, but Vermission apparently believed that if either of them continued developing solely within the academy curriculum, their talents would end up going to waste.

So Vermission used her authority to arrange for Pallas and Mitt to each operate an alchemy shop in a town outside the academy for a fixed period.

But aside from being able to use alchemy, both Pallas and Mitt were ordinary girls, and suddenly giving them shops and making them live alone in town would expose them to plenty of danger.

Well, sure. If a girl of that age ran a shop alone, there would inevitably be people who came along with bad intentions.

That was why Vermission used two elixirs made with lavish amounts of rare ingredients as payment to summon two Devils, one to accompany Pallas and one to accompany Mitt.

“So Lept-sama and I will each be assigned to one of them, Pallas-san and Mitt-san respectively. It’s a shame we won’t be working together, but apparently when the final examination comes around, the Devil assigned to whichever student receives the higher evaluation will receive one additional reward of their choice from Vermission-san on top of the agreed payment, so I don’t intend to lose.”

After casually choosing the top-performing student for herself and only then revealing the existence of the bonus reward, Zaras made me smile wryly.

That sort of cunning was something I ought to praise as truly befitting a Devil.

That said, I had no intention of losing either.

If Vermission, our summoner, had deliberately provided an incentive for us to compete, then regardless of their current abilities, her evaluation of Pallas’s and Mitt’s underlying talent was probably quite close.

And in that case, I had a trump card.

A trump card that only I could prepare, because unlike Zaras, I possessed the qualities of a Devil King.

Bella, Pisca, and Anis were all out on other dispatched assignments and could not be called in, but I still possessed the soul I had obtained in the world of my previous summoning.

If I used it to create a new Devil, I could gain an advantage in numbers.

And so, using the soul of Planetary Environmental Preservation AI Eden, I created Villa, a Devil of Knowledge, and the three of us—Mitt, Villa, and I—began our life together running an alchemy shop.