Chapter 99: Volume Two Prologue – The Alchemist on the Run
“Haa… haa…”
There was a buzzing sound in her ears caused by low blood sugar. Her vision was going dark, and the only sound she could clearly hear was her own ragged breathing.
“What the… what is going on…?!”
A young girl stumbled forward, using the wall for support. Her body was so weak it felt like every step landed on cotton.
Her long, messy, and tangled hair hung down all over the place. She tried to push it out of her face with her little hand, but before long, it fell back down, blocking her sight again.
“This isn’t what I wanted when I decided to grow my hair out—!”
She screamed in her mind, but could only make a few weak noises out loud. She hadn’t eaten for days. Her stomach was growling louder than her quiet mumbling.
“How can this be? I’m a proud royal alchemist! Am I really going to starve to death on the street?!”
Thud! She tripped over a passing cat and fell to the ground because she couldn’t see clearly. Instinctively, she reached out and managed to touch the furry thing, but her current body was just too small and weak.
Even though she touched it, she couldn’t hold on. The stray cat slipped away from her arms easily, and before leaving, it even kicked her on the head. Its claws scratched her cheek, making her face sting with pain.
The girl spat out some dirt and wiped her cheek. Even if she was starving, she wasn’t about to start eating rocks.
“I’ve fallen so low…”
She wobbled as she sat up, thinking that if she had caught that stray cat just now, she could’ve eaten it. That would be better than starving to death. After all, she’d heard that assassins eat cats, dogs, or rats when they’re desperate. No one said they died from it.
“If I had known this would happen, I wouldn’t have made this child-sized body so realistic…”
She sniffed the air. A delicious smell was coming from not far away. Her mouth watered uncontrollably. At this point, her clothes were already dirty beyond saving, so a little more drool didn’t make a difference.
She cursed silently in her heart. She never should’ve trusted that so-called Second Prince, who promised her a big reward and rare alchemy materials. Bah! What reward?!
Her original body’s head had been ripped off by someone called “Red Crow”! Her entire alchemy workshop was burned to the ground! A hundred years of hard-earned research, ruined by that damn Second Prince! All her backup bodies were destroyed too. The only one left was this little girl’s.
This body was originally made to test whether an alchemically created being could grow up normally. That’s why she designed it to look extremely young, like a four- or five-year-old girl. She even once thought she could raise it like a daughter. But now look, she had become the “daughter” herself.
Well, it wasn’t like she couldn’t get used to using this body. After all, a proper alchemist has to be willing to experiment on themselves.
Over the years, she had taken on many different forms, male, female, old, young, even cats, dogs, birds, and other strange-looking creatures. She had tested them all. But to avoid going insane, she never stayed in non-human forms for too long. It had been nearly a hundred years now, and she had even forgotten what she originally looked like. But she had tried just about every other shape.
As a research maniac, she had no real friends. And even if she once did, they probably died a long time ago during her never-ending experiments. Now, she had no one she could turn to.
Because of the limitations of this body, she didn’t want to use it unless she had no choice. But now… this was the only one left.
At first, she had big dreams. Even with a child’s body, she thought she could find a way to rebuild her alchemy workshop. Everything she had done, was just because she wanted to understand alchemy better.
“Haaah…”
She rested for a while, then slowly got up from the ground and continued walking while holding onto the wall.
Because she had once worked for the Second Prince, she knew very well that the orphanages couldn’t be trusted. And now, the "House of Nightingales" kept taking in new members, especially children like her, small and helpless, easy to control. So there was no use even thinking about going to a place like that. On the Black Street, there were also people involved in human trafficking, so she had to be careful with every step.
She used to get her alchemy materials from… let’s say, not-so-legal sources. So when she ran away, her instincts led her down the same back alley route she used to use to get materials. But not long after she left, she ran into real human traffickers.
That was when she finally realized, she wasn’t that mysterious alchemist in a cloak anymore. She was just a little kid, barely a meter tall. In the end, she had to hide in a trash bin to avoid ending up as a bag of coins for some criminal.
But… she was so hungry.
If only she had designed this body with superpowers or something! Who would’ve thought that a body made for “raising like a daughter” would end up being an emergency escape tool? Still, being small had its benefits. Thanks to her tiny size, she could crawl out through a dog hole. Otherwise, she would’ve been turned into a roasted wing in that fire.
“Please don’t let me run into those people again…”
‘Those people’ included, but were not limited to, the Second Prince and his agent, ‘Red Crow.’
She didn’t know what the Second Prince really wanted, or what that “Red Crow” was planning. He was just someone who worked for money. But she never thought she’d put her trust in the wrong person.
Back when she was younger, she worked for the royal family. Later, she shut herself away to focus on research. It wasn’t until the Second Prince’s mother found her that she came out again, to help grow that assassin organization by doing alchemy experiments. She had, without a doubt, helped the wrong side for many years.
The alchemy seals and equipment used by the House of Nightingales were all created by her. When she made a new body for “Red Crow,” she thought it would be her greatest work. She planned to study that assassin’s actions and improve her alchemy based on them. She didn’t expect that she’d almost not live to see that future.
Now, she didn’t know where she was or what day it was. All she knew was that the celebration had ended days ago. Without the busy crowds, she couldn’t steal food in the chaos. She hadn’t had a proper meal in days.
She had even thought about pretending to be cute to trick a rich noble into adopting her. But maybe because she had died once, she just couldn’t trust others anymore. She couldn’t bring herself to let a total stranger take her in.
So she kept living like this, wandering from place to place. It had already been about a month since she changed bodies. Even she was surprised she had survived this long. At the same time, she blamed herself, how could someone who calls herself a “genius alchemist” not find a single way to save herself after a whole month?
Of course, the word “genius” was something she gave herself.
“So good… smells so good…”
She trembled. Her vision was going black, and the night was deep and dark. She couldn’t see, so she followed the smell of food floating through the air and took one step at a time.
But no matter how strong her will was, her tiny body couldn’t take it anymore.
Thump. The girl collapsed.
In a dream-like haze brought on by the smell of food, she closed her eyes and fell into what felt like a dream.