“Professor Daw! Please. Could you spare me a moment?” Alira called out once she caught up. Even then, she had to half-sprint to keep pace with the woman’s walking speed.
“Miss Ravon, if you cannot wait until next lecture, check page thirty-two. Alchemic Link.” Professor Daw didn’t spare her a glance, taking a sharp left turn toward the departmental offices where students needed special permission to enter.
Oh, no, you don’t.
“I already checked. The answer wasn’t there.”
Professor Daw stopped dead in her tracks. When she turned, her grey eyes bore down on Alira with surgical precision. She had the look of a lifelong nitpicker.
“You’re telling me that the textbook I spent half a year writing doesn’t answer a first-year question?” Her voice dropped to a dangerous quiet. “That’s quite a claim, Miss Ravon. I’d be very careful about making accusations against faculty work.”
Alira held her ground, meeting the professor’s stare. “I’m not making accusations. I’m stating facts. And I don’t appreciate being called a liar, Professor.” Alira wasn’t lying—not technically. She had read the textbooks, just through Raine’s POV during those late-night study sessions and in-class dialogues in the novel.
Professor Daw studied her for a long moment, as if she was mentally cracking open Alira’s skull to see the thoughts written on her brain.
“All right, then.” She turned toward her office door. “Follow me to my office. We’ll see about that.”
Professor Daw’s office was almost exactly as Alira imagined—only with far more fully stacked bookshelves that required a wooden ladder to reach the top shelves, even for someone as tall as the professor. The only wall that wasn’t a bookshelf was covered with five oil paintings of identical size, all perfectly aligned and evenly spaced.
Alira sat in the chair facing the professor and the wall. It felt like she was being judged not just by her, but also by the five people in the classical paintings with their dreary eyes.
“So?” Professor Daw prompted.
Alira swallowed a lump in her throat. Maria was waiting for her outside, separated by a single wall. Yet she felt as if she were isolated in some kind of cosmic court where her fate would be delivered.
“I want to know how to break a bind cast by Duke Ravon. Or who could break it.”
The question might taint the duke’s reputation and raise questions if it got out, but he deserved it. She wouldn’t be here if not for him forcing her to stay alive for whatever reasons that benefited him somehow. Amusement, maybe. Some kind of twisted entertainment for the bored, overpowered evil guy.
Not that he has much of a reputation anyway.
Professor Daw lowered her eyes. “I see. Well, Miss Ravon, the textbook, in fact, did not answer your question. My future students might hate you for this.”
“Huh?” Alira blurted. She tried to save her noble girl character. “I mean, why is that?”
“Because thanks to you, I will have to consider adding an additional chapter regarding important figures in the history of Alchemy.” She stood up, pointing toward the paintings. “To break that guy’s bind, it would have to be one of them. Unfortunately for you, or whoever is bonded by Everett, they’re all dead.”
Everett. Professor Daw was actually on a first-name basis with the duke. More importantly, what was she trying to say? Alira knew very little about the duke thanks to Raine hating him so much that he’d rather not mention the man at all.
“What do you mean?” Alira clenched her fists.
“You know very little about your father, Miss Ravon. Assuming you already read the textbook, you should know that to break a bind—without shattering the passive party’s soul, that is—it’d take someone who’s on the active caster’s level. So naturally, to safely break a bind cast by a Grand Alchemist, the person breaking has to be yet another Grand Alchemist on par.” Professor Daw said, pointing at the empty spot in the second row after the fifth painting.
“That spot would have been his. Unfortunately, he happens to be a Grand Mage as well. No mage is welcome in my office. Back to the topic, the dead can’t help you. So I suggest you wait for the next generation’s Grand Alchemist to appear to break the duke’s bind...” She paused. Her voice softened, almost inaudible as she added, “...or become one yourself.”
Alira barely heard the last bit of the professor’s words, her brain freezing at the part where the duke turned out to be both the Grand Mage and Grand Alchemist. She already knew he was a formidable mage with him regularly showing off his all-powerful lightning magic, but the novel never mentioned that he was a Grand Alchemist, so she assumed he was an Elite Alchemist at most.
What the actual fuck. What kind of villain plot armor is this?
This was the man rumored to be serving the Mother Cult that wanted nothing more than an apocalypse. If this world weren’t doomed, which world would be?
Shit. I might actually end up dead here.
Die as in actual permanent death. Not the die and go back home kind of death.
Four months... Can I actually find someone who can break this stupid bind?
Alira began to tremble slightly, gripping tightly onto her skirt without realizing it herself. Her eyes watered as she felt a wet heat in her nose. She hated the crybaby she’d killed long ago, one who cried at any minor inconvenience, as her mother would say, showing her ugly face once again. She fought against that girl to not break down before a complete stranger—her professor, at that.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
But this is banana.
The thought of dying was as terrifying as it could be for Alira, as any other eighteen-year-old who had barely lived their life. Only the fact that she would return to Earth after death had managed to keep her rational. Now she was trapped here for who knew how long with a gazillion things that could corrupt her soul.
She mentally flipped through all the pages in the novel. Even to the furthest future she’d seen, there had been no one who could come close to the duke. There had been many Elite Alchemists, one right before her, but all of them would be stuck in their rank for most likely the rest of their life, unable to break through the sky as their limit.
The protagonist, Raine, had great talent in alchemy as Duke Ravon’s real, biological daughter, but she ended up finding a strange artifact that fully occupied her, steering her away from the path of alchemy.
No. I can’t let that happen now, can I?
Raine was the only person in the novel who had Middle Prismatic Favorability of the Will—the highest ever seen in the past thousand year. If anyone had the chance to become a Grand Alchemist, it would be none other than the protagonist.
Okay. I will just take the artifact away from Raine and make him—or her—speedrun to the peak of Alchemy. Then, I will ask him for help and leave.
Alira exhaled.
It will take some time... But that’s ok... I just need to be careful and avoid anything dangerous in the meantime.
She managed to regain some of her composure now that she found a vague direction to work toward. When she finally looked up, she was met with a curious look on the professor’s face.
“Ah. I see you’ve found a solution. Though, quite unfortunately, something tells me that you’re not quite in the right direction, Miss Ravon.”
With the orientation and alchemy class completed and dusted, the remainder of the day was free. After sending Maria off on errands to give herself some breathing room, Alira was finally alone. She needed space to sort things out—and come up with a plan, a 101 survival guide in a high body count novel—since she’d be here far longer than she’d wanted.
Even with the help of an outsider with future knowledge, and even if it was the protagonist, it would be nearly impossible to become a Grand Alchemist in a matter of days, or months and even years—if she had a lesser dose of optimism.
From earlier events, Alira knew for sure that she couldn’t rely on the novel alone. This was the same novel that didn’t mention the fact that an important antagonist was both a Grand Alchemist and Grand Mage.
Thinking about it now, after she had regained her calm, it was strange that the novel barely mentioned anything about the duke. Sure, Raine hated him, but surely the villain’s true abilities should have, inevitably, been mentioned at some point. Surely. She couldn’t help but suspect whether she had forgotten some parts of it. Her memory was relatively good, but it was still three books' worth of content to recall.
Either way, there wasn’t much she could do about that apart from trying to fill in the gaps herself.
That was exactly why she’d sent Maria off to the library to bring all the books on the duke and a few other things she needed to check. Knowing Maria, that girl would get lost in the magic section and definitely wouldn’t return until she got kicked out when the library closed.
Alira rubbed her aching temples as she focused on the squirming worm-like runes before her.
It’s the first time they show up twice on the same day.
[ Guest1236: Finally, something. Just took four darned scenes. Surely the plot will start rolling from now on. The way it’s going, she is a hundred percent planning to tear apart the original novel to shreds. No complaints from me. Rather, I hate it when the transmigrator worries too much about sticking to the original plot. ]
[ salty-as-sea-salt (Guest1898 *): Alright, alright. guest period’s almost over so I caved and signed up. Better early for more IP later on as a villain endorser, I know I will have to fight some of u who baby mc too much ]
Alira raised her brows. Guest period. Yet another function related to them. Also, villain endorser. She didn’t like the sound of it.
What’s wrong with babying a cute girl a bit?
[ LoveFurries: ?
[ fiend (Guest1221 *): Staying as well. The last story I read featuring Mother was fun. ]
[ Guest1236: ?
[ salty-as-sea-salt: Guess who found out about Mother before anyone else. The whispers...they talk to me. ]
[ LoveFurries: ?
[ fiend: ?
[ fiend: @LoveFurries wouldn’t you like to know? ?? ]
[ AllHailMother: Fourth! The Mother tag has summoned me. What did I miss of this sacred text blessed with Mother’s grace? ]
[ Guest1236: ?
[ LoveFurries: ?
[ LoveFurries: ?
[ fiend: @Guest1236 heads up, Mother’s got a pretty large fanbase. Someone’s def out there camping your logout timer for the fifth and last seat. Sign up if u plan to commit. ]
[ fiend: @LoveFurries No need to be so rude & personal. ]
Alira was chewing on her pen when the glowing white runes faded away mid-conversation. The duration of their comments visible to her had never exceeded twenty minutes so far. She flipped through a few pages of messily written notes she had taken from this session. Everything she wrote was in English to ensure no one else could read it, even if they came across it.
As much as she dreaded having to seriously analyze the bunch of rowdy internet trolls, her survival unfortunately depended on them for the time being. Alira exhaled heavily as she went through her chicken scratch log word by word.
There are five of them: salty-as-sea-salt, fiend, LoveFurries, Guest1236, and newcomer AllHailMother.
According to Fiend, five seemed to be the limit. Alira thanked all the Divinities she knew for that.
These chats actually helped her think things through despite how messy they were. For one, Fiend was right that it was risky to completely change the novel, which she would be once she took the artifact before Raine found it.
But she wasn’t betting on a slim chance, and despite Fiend’s ill wishes, she knew she could and would go back. Her freedom was in death’s hands—the goddess promised. Surely, gods wouldn’t go back on their words...
Alira pushed down her looming pessimism and trust issues for now.
“I can do what the artifact did for Raine in the novel. Plus, also acts as his personal prophet. In return, he just has to unalive me. Fair trade. I can also just return the artifact to him before I die in case it’s important later on...”
Alira snapped her notebook shut as she flopped onto her bed. Mother Cult was a major problem, but they wouldn’t be too active early on. The first time they appeared was during the event in the forest where Lillian and a dozen other students met their demise. It was also what led up to Raine finding the artifact.
The first practical test of the magic module will be two weeks from now.
Alira had hoped that she wouldn’t be here by then, since that would mean she would then have to do something about it herself with so many lives at stake. Now, it was just a blissful wish.
Whether it was to save Lillian and others to prevent their deaths from haunting her for not doing anything, or to get the artifact in one long plan to leave this world, it was decided that she needed to interfere with the novel and squeeze herself into the plot.