Chapter 9: The Godforsaken City
Ambrose had lived three completely different lives.
In his first, he had been a science student with a meaningless diploma. He had been lost, aimless, and perfectly content to bury every trace of ambition beneath layers of cheap entertainment. When death finally came for him, not a single frame of the reel of his life was worth remembering.
Then, he found himself thrown into another world, one chaotic and dangerous, but exhilarating beyond measure. Young and brash, he was convinced he was the chosen one. Three years to make it to the rank of legend, then ten to godhood—how hard could it be? He'd started out as an adventurer, dreaming of glory, until reality smacked him in the face. Even as a so-called legendary magician, he was, frankly, a fraud.
They say that a man grows up the moment he realizes he's not the center of the world.
Ambrose was no exception. As he grew old and gray, still a broke "legend," unable to afford even a single vial of a Potion of Youth, he finally understood the truth. He was nothing more than a slightly luckier speck among countless others. Being a transmigrator didn't make him any special.
So what if he was a legendary magician? He was still poor. In fact, he might as well stop being human altogether.
And thus, Ambrose became a lich.
Honestly? It wasn't so bad. Without a heartbeat, and with a half-functional brain, Ambrose stared absently at his reflection in the mirror. Then, he slipped out of his dark, death-tinged robes into something more casual as he prepared to head into town for supplies.
Passing another of his laboratories, he noticed Isabel hard at work brewing a potion.
This was Basilisk Oil, a potion that could undo petrification. Mixed with a few cheap additives, it made for a fine rock-softening agent that was perfect for reclaiming wasteland.
Unfortunately, it wasn't easy to brew, especially for an apprentice.
Ambrose paused, watching her work. After a moment, he couldn't resist giving her a few pointers. "Reasonable technique, but your flame's too cool. The flask's sitting too low. Without enough heat, the reaction won't proceed to completion. You'll lose potency and waste your ingredients. The hottest part of a flame is on the outside—didn't your master ever mention that?"
Isabel jumped and spun around, startled to see a dark-haired boy she didn't recognize standing in the doorway.
"You..." she began, about to ask if he was one of the newly hired freemen. Then, her eyes lit up. "You know alchemy? What did you say about the flame? My master's lab used fixed burners and calibrated setups. I've never seen one you could adjust manually!"
Ambrose chuckled dryly. "Oldest trick in the book: masters afraid to teach their apprentices too much."
Many alchemists guarded their trade secrets more fiercely than their lives, and their laboratories reflected that.
They had pre-built apparatuses at fixed heights, with fixed flame temperatures, and fixed feedstock rates. As a result, their apprentices basically couldn't mess up. They were almost always able to brew whatever potion the apparatus had been set up for, but only that. And the less they failed, the less they learned.
It was just like the factory jobs Ambrose remembered from his first life: repetitive, mindless work that taught you nothing of real craft. Take the machines away, and most apprentices couldn't brew even the simplest of potions.
The fact that Isabel could produce a basic calming draught outside her teacher's lab already meant that she was one of the better apprentices.
"Alchemy," Ambrose said, stepping closer, "isn't about following recipes. Temperature, humidity, air flow—everything matters. Every step of the procedure serves to prevent or enhance a reaction. If you don't understand how all this works, you'll stay an apprentice forever."
He adjusted the height of her flask, shifted a few ingredients around, and in a few deft, fluid motions, produced a perfect vial of basilisk oil.
Isabel stared wide-eyed as he worked. His hands were steady and his movements confident, every gesture flowing gracefully. The boy looked younger than her, yet his grasp of alchemy was leagues beyond hers. Even his explanations were clearer and more elegant than her master's lectures.
She turned around to set the fresh vial of potion aside. She wanted to ask his name and maybe get a few more pointers, but by the time she turned back, he was gone.
For a moment, Isabel just stood there, her scalp prickling.
This lich's castle... wasn't haunted, was it?
Her imagination kicked in immediately. The boy had to be a genius apprentice who'd died here, still bound by his obsession, appearing whenever someone dared to use his laboratory. The more she thought about it, the colder her back felt. This castle really did have a terrifying atmosphere.
She prayed that the lich meant what he'd said about being able to move out and build homes elsewhere once they cleared the land.
Meanwhile, in his human guise, Ambrose stepped out of the castle gates, muttered an incantation of flight, and soared into the open sky.
Half an hour later, after gliding over some fifty kilometers of rolling plains, he finally saw his destination before him: the City of Alchemists, Alkhemia.
The city rose proudly from the plain, its vast walls studded with arcane metals and etched with tens of thousands of alchemical runes. Legend said the entire city was one colossal alchemical construct capable, in theory, of transforming into a titanic golem should the need arise.
"Yeah, right," Ambrose thought. "If this thing ever stood up, half the citizens would die before the enemy even showed up."
𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎
Still, the runes pulsed with undeniable power. Before the economic crash, Alkhemia had been the wealthiest city on the continent.
There were seven enormous alchemy towers that stood in a neat line, each built from gemstones of different colors. They dazzled in a hideously discordant fashion under the sunlight.
They varied in height, color, and even architectural style, yet all shared the same warped, grotesque aesthetic. Ambrose wasn't much of an art critic, but even he had to admit that these towers were ugly. No, they were spectacularly ugly.
He wasn't alone in that opinion. Alkemeia had won the "Ugliest City in the Nine Kingdoms" award for several consecutive years, and even the city's own Alchemists' Council was thoroughly embarrassed about it.
Unfortunately, there was nothing they could do. The towers were a divine "gift."
Long ago, the Council had tried to create a god. In their hubris, they had offended the God of Alchemy, who struck back and cursed them to eternal stagnation. Not only that, for good measure, he sculpted these seven eyesores as a reminder of their deeds.
Anyone versed in alchemy could tell what each tower represented.
The green one resembled the burnt residue from an overheated healing potion. The red, bulbous one looked like the coagulated mess left over from a failed Bear's Strength potion. Each of the seven towers embodied a classic type of alchemical product, or, more specifically, its most common mode of failure.
The God of Alchemy had literally nailed Alkhemia's shame onto the land as a monument to the folly of mortal pride.
Ambrose, of course, couldn't care less. He entered through the city gates like any other traveler. But it didn't take long for him to notice that something in the city had changed.