I'm an alchemist. I've dumped self-restraint into the trash - Chapter 22
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- I'm an alchemist. I've dumped self-restraint into the trash
- Chapter 22 - S-Rank Adventurer
When he went inside, it looked a bit dusty, perhaps because of how long he’d been away. Raith coughed as he advanced further in.
Lined up on the shelves were nearly every type of potion, as well as items that were the minimum requirement as daily necessities. The potions were ones he had made previously as a test, and there were even many finished products.
However, Raith was seeking the ingredients. They were stored not on the shelves, but in the workshop in the basement.
Incidentally, the basement and the workshop had been created with Raith’s teacher’s magic. The workshop was ideal for alchemy research, to the point that it could be called perfect. Raith respected his teacher only in regards to her skill in alchemy and magic.
Raith descended the stairs to the basement for the first time in a while and entered the room where the ingredients were being stored. Even the temperature in the room was controlled through magic, and the feeling of the air on his skin was completely different from outside. Feeling this familiar sensation, Raith began to retrieve the ingredients.
Raith would have preferred to bring everything back, but unfortunately, he didn’t have anything as convenient as a bag that could disregard mass and endlessly fit things inside of it.
“Damn it… Forgive me for being such a coward, ingredients that I risked my life to gather. I swear, I’ll come back for you someday.”
With overwhelming sorrow, he tearfully selected the ingredients he needed and packed them into his bag. Despite how long it had been since he had last been here, he hadn’t forgotten how the ingredients were organized, so this process went smoothly. His heart, however, was filled with uncertainty.
With his glass heart wounded, Raith quickly finished retrieving the ingredients. Among them, of course, were the ingredients for saving Sylvia.
As he immediately began hurrying back to Laffy, something at the edge of his vision caught his eye.
“A sword…”
There was a sword leaning against the wall. It wasn’t something Raith had made, but that he had inherited from his teacher.
“That was bullshit, I thought I was gonna die, you piece of shit teacher! How could you send your valued student to a place like that?!”
It was the day Raith had first encountered an undead. Raith had gone to a certain place alone to gather ingredients. Even so, Raith hadn’t gone there because he had wanted to, but because his teacher had forcefully sent him there.
“Oh, Ray-kun, you’re back, huh. Make sure to store the ingredients, ‘kaaay?”
“Could you not change the subject, please? I mean, isn’t that way too weak of a reaction to your disciple coming back all beat up? That’s weird, isn’t it? It’s not like I just went out to the market or anything, and anyway, I never heard anything about undead showing up!”
“Because I never said it!”
“Saying something like that like it’s only natural, that’s just like you…!”
As his teacher made potions, he directed a resentful gaze towards her, but she looked unconcerned, or rather, smug.
At this rate, sooner or later, he would die. He’d die for sure.
His vision clouding over, Raith slumped down to the ground.
“Fufu, that was a joke. I didn’t know monsters would show up either. And anyway, you can easily beat undead if you just keep tossing holy water at them!”
“I can’t use magic like you, and I’d just end up being made into mincemeat while throwing it.”
“Hmm. Then, you could use this thing!” she said, proudly holding out a sheathed sword. There didn’t appear to be anything unusual about it, but if he had to say, the sheath was pretty well decorated. Unable to grasp her intentions, Raith looked his teacher in the face.
“What is this?”
“Hm? A sword, it’s a sword! One that works on undead, I made it a while ago. I thought it’d be good to try making one, but I don’t use it, so I put it in storage.”
“But I can’t use a sword…”
“Well, if you ever need it, just wave it around!”
“I’d rather not get into a situation like that in the first place.”
It wasn’t a good memory. He could only smile bitterly at it. However, it was true that the sword would be useful in this situation.
“So that piece of shit teacher is helpful once in a while…!”
This was an incredibly moving experience. To think that the day would come where something his teacher had given him would be helpful.
Raith grabbed the sword and hurriedly left the basement.
“Raith, hurry up and get out of there!” Laffy shouted as soon as Raith climbed to the top of the stairs to the ground floor.
“Huh?” Raith said, stiffening for a moment. Then, even though he still didn’t understand, he started running, escaping the house with enough force to break the door down.
“What the heck is–” Raith said, interrupted by a longsword quickly passing by next to him.
There was a boom from behind. Raith had a bad feeling and turned around a few seconds later to find that his house had been destroyed. At the center of the destruction, a familiar longsword was sticking out.
Raith instinctively looked to Laffy, who looked apologetic.
To sum things up…
The ingredients had been retrieved safely. However, his house had been destroyed by a thrown longsword. Since his house was destroyed, it would be exceedingly difficult to obtain the ingredients left behind in the basement…
“Skeleton, you’ll pay for this…!”
With rage in his heart, Raith glared at the Skeleton intensely. Then, before the Skeleton started moving, he rushed to Laffy, handing his sword over to her.
“If you cut it with this, you can probably beat it… Probably.”
“You sound pretty uncertain…”
“Well, I’m not the one who made it, my teacher is.”
Come to think of it, Raith had never used this sword, he belatedly realized.
It was, perhaps, a bit rash to trust his teacher without verifying its ability. If it didn’t do anything, then the next time he saw his piece of shit teacher, he would incessantly harass her. Yes, that was what he would do.
After making this mysterious decision, Raith distanced himself from the fight to avoid getting dragged into it. Now, the best he could do was root for Laffy.
Laffy, who Raith was putting his faith in, pulled the sword she had received from him out of its sheath and readied her battle stance.
“…It’s light.”
However, since she couldn’t feel as much weight from it as the swords she normally used, she felt a sense of discomfort. The blade of the sword was a black that seemed to absorb the sunlight. It hadn’t been made from a normal ore, but formed by combining a special ore with magic.
Incorporating the other weakness of the undead, holy magic, into the sword made it an extremely effective anti-undead weapon.
However, since Raith’s teacher, Lurimes, could use holy magic, the sword had been rendered useless. Although, the sword had only been created as an experiment to incorporate magic into an object in the first place, so she never had any intention of using it from the start.
In any case, Lurimes’s experiment was useful for Raith and Laffy right now, so it all worked out in the end. Raith, whom she had caused trouble for countless times in his life, considered this turn of events to be similar to recompense.
Laffy, who wasn’t the least bit aware of Raith’s inner thoughts, steadfastly advanced towards the unarmed Skeleton.
“Hah!”
Along with a shout, she let loose an attack that stopped a blow from the Skeleton’s arm and then proceeded to chop it off. This scene had repeated many times before this. The problem was that, no matter how many times it was cut, it was able to regenerate back to normal.
Now, however…
“It’s… not regenerating.”
The arm, which, until now, had regenerated within a few seconds, didn’t return to normal no matter how much time passed. The Skeleton, sensing that something strange was happening, also looked at its arm in surprise.
Then, perhaps understanding that Laffy’s sword was capable of dealing it a fatal blow, it showed extreme caution.
“Well then, if the sword works, I’ll take it.”
Although it wasn’t quite wicked, there was a rather intimidating smile on Laffy’s face.
Perhaps overpowered by the manliness of this smile, the Skeleton slowly sank into its shadow as if in fear.
When all that was visible was the Skeleton’s shadow, without hesitation, it began moving directly away from Laffy.
In other words… It ran away.
“…Hm?”
This completely unexpected action left Laffy stunned. A monster running away was extremely unusual in and of itself.
Laffy paused for about a second as the Skeleton got further and further away.
However, Laffy, an S-rank adventurer, wouldn’t let an enemy get away so easily.
“Sorry, but I won’t let you escape.”
Gripping the hilt of the sword, Laffy then threw it towards the shadow with all her might. The sword glided through the air and hit its target dead on.
Then, as it smashed into the ground, the Skeleton, unable to endure it, crawled out of its shadow.
It seemed that one of its legs had gotten blown off from the impact and was now missing. Its bone body was in a state where it couldn’t even move anymore.
Which meant that it no longer had any way of moving except by shadows.
“Now, you’ve given me quite a bit of trouble.”
Before it knew it, Laffy appeared before the Skeleton, her sword in hand.
Its chances of surviving this were now hopeless.