She was a contrarian who always pushed people away with those kinds of statements. Yet, coming from her, it was convincing. She was a truly inspiring woman, never relying on titles or pedigree, living on nothing but her own merit.
So Rondered is marrying Marcus Ril’s wife, hmm…? I didn’t know his wife’s name and had never met her. Apparently, she was a very pretty woman.
Marcus always did brag that his wife was too beautiful and graceful for him.
But wait…did she seduce Rondered away from me? Or was Rondered disloyal to both me and Marcus? I still love Rondered, but…stealing Marcus’ wife… How can I ever look Marcus in the eye again? How can I ever apologize? I was more heartbroken for Marcus at that point.
“If you want to regain your life as a woman,” Elysis said, “I can make a tonic to fix your face. Making the Supreme Tonic has always been my dream.”
“No… I don’t need it,” I told her and meant it. “My face, it’s my…punishment for being immature. This face suits me…”
“If you say so,” she accepted my decision. “But if you change your mind, come to me at any time.”
I hung my head. Elysis really was kind.
That was how I became the female alchemist knight with half her face burnt off. I sank deeper into my research, experimented on the battlefield, and killed enemies. Before I knew it, I became Captain of the Ebony Knights and started running into my father and brothers in the castle. Dirbleu went out of his way to keep me from running into Rondered. I was lucky to have such good friends.
Elysis was right. I’d no luck with men. Despite that, Rondered—my failed first love—still gripped my heart. With my face the way it was, I had no hope of finding new love. So I clung to the past, knowing all the while it did me no favors.
Before I knew it, the war had ended. Marcus lost his arm in combat and retired. I heard he went back to his family home: an inn in the middle of nature. That he’d divorced his wife after all, but was raising an orphaned baby he’d adopted. Dirbleu was worried about him. But apparently, Marcus was enjoying his new life.
He was managing a place called the Rofola Lodge. While I was investigating traces of monsters in the forest near it, a serpent monster took me by surprise and bit me. Its bite was venomous and made my body go numb.
I was in trouble. I tried moving out of the forest to where I could find people, then I found the monster attacking two young girls. I moved in to save them and saw one of them had familiar pink hair.
Where’ve I seen that hair before? I can’t remember…
I was wondering why the serpent monster didn’t finish me off. Then I saw why. It preferred to pursue the two girls over me. Monsters always moved in the direction where the most people were, so they could hurt as many as possible.
Injured as I was, I was still a knight. It was my duty to protect the powerless to my last breath. This was why I studied alchemy and became a knight and I’d be shaming myself by not doing that duty. I took so many lives in the war. So dying to protect others will be the best way to end my life with pride.
So I believed. Yet the pink-haired girl bravely kept the monster at bay to stall for time.
“I am Nakona Ril! My father is Marcus Ril, former vice-captain of De Marl’s Azure Knights! I won’t be careless! I’m not very experienced, so I think the most I can buy you is thirty seconds!” she cried.
“You’re…Marcus’ daughter?!”
I thought she looked familiar… So that’s Marcus’ daughter… She’s as pretty as her mother. But her courage comes from her knightly blood—Marcus’ blood…
The other girl, a petite blonde, gave me a supreme antidote and low-grade tonic that detoxed the poison and healed my wound. Thus I could fight, fulfill my duty, and defend these girls!
I couldn’t defeat the monster in the end. But I did manage to drive it away. I never thought little girls would save my life.
And Marcus’ younger daughter, Tinaris, was an alchemical genius. She came to me for advice and, through my feedback, grew as an alchemist at blistering speed. I thought her skill as an alchemical apothecary was already a match for Elysis…and possibly greater!
Since Marcus wasn’t knowledgeable about alchemy, he had no clue what Tinaris was truly capable of. But it was plain to me that she could very well create the Supreme Tonic. If she came to De Marl and became Elysis’ student, she most certainly would.
But I knew Tinaris was too kind and nowhere near stout-hearted enough to be able to shrug off the pressure the authorities would put on her. Alchemists, and especially alchemical apothecaries, had to both enmesh themselves into politics and fight over authority. Disease was a constant concern, more than monsters. That meant having control over apothecaries—the one source of medicine in the world—meant a powerful person could keep them within arm’s reach for themselves and outside the reach of their political opponents.
Tinaris being so young and talented was a dangerous combination. She’d surely be abducted and held captive. Sadly, I could think of many noblemen who’d stoop to such stupidity if it suited their ends.
Once, Elysis herself had even been kidnapped and forced to make a poison that left no traces after killing its target. She gave one of her guards a poison in the form of a fruit and, when he’d passed out, had tortured him by turning his blood acidic, driving the man mad with pain, only to heal him with tonics and repeat the process. By doing so, she struck terror into her guards and her captors, allowing her to buy time until she was rescued.
Elysis never spoke of this story publicly; she wasn’t proud of what she did. But her ordeal was just a testament to the many dangers alchemical apothecaries faced.
Marcus was no longer in the Azure Knights. So bringing Tinaris to De Marl unprotected would be dangerous. Even if I placed her under Elysis’ care, she’d still be in danger if she hadn’t the courage to escape peril on her own.
I’d once been abducted myself. Forced to make weapons, I’d escaped by making a bomb that blew the whole place sky-high, escaping the blast radius by taking cover underground.
All this was to say that large countries were by no means a safe place for alchemists. De Marl wasn’t particularly guilty of this, and I’d heard that state alchemists from other countries were abducted once or twice because someone had wanted to extort them for their talents.
In the end, I believed young Tinaris was best left in Rofola to study alchemy in peace.
But then the monsters started growing in both numbers and size, which required me to go out on patrols. Monsters were always a problem. Defeating them scattered Kathra that turned plants, animals, and people into more monsters. Thus, the only way to handle monsters was to drive them away.
But it was tricky: monsters were drawn to wherever the most people were. The only way to defend human settlements was to rout the beasts away. But there was a limited number of knights. To maintain trade routes, we had to be dispatched every few months to drive away monsters.
Thankfully, my alchemical weapons were quite adaptable, making me easy to dispatch to different battlefields. I ended up joining the patrols, despite being a captain, both because my father was still a politician and because Dirbleu had told me Rondered was living in the capital and came to the castle often. So, if I wanted to avoid seeing him during meetings—and I did—I had to go out on expeditions.
My father didn’t want me running into Rondered either. So, in the end, he’d chosen me and handpicked troops from the other knight orders and sent us off.