What Do You Do for a Living, Master?

What did I do for a living?

Horn lowered his head and looked at Wilma's clear yet slightly foolish eyes before answering concisely:

"Me? Alchemist. Procurement."

After listing the ingredients needed to brew nutrient solution and handing them through the window, he also told Wilma to charge all material costs to Professor Borlaug's account. In high spirits, Horn hummed an unknown tune, tucked the heavy reagent case under his arm, and headed to the café beside the hall.

After taking his reserved seat, Horn habitually ordered a cup of Morning Lion coffee.

When the coffee arrived, Horn greeted the white-haired owner. Then, as he slowly sipped the rich fruity brew that Kate & Hallow Co., Ltd. claimed had been brought from beyond the desert, he relaxed his taut nerves and waited for his visitor.

Time passed.

As he drank in an almost meditative state, Horn's spirituality gradually recovered. Before he knew it, when he lifted his cup again, the porcelain-white bottom was already faintly visible.

"She stood with the mirror of light above her head, rendering the night mute; behold, she stood at the entrance to the summit, and she would open the gates for us..."

"..."

"Balance has reached perfection. At this moment, beauty is truth, and truth is beauty—"

In the distance, the great clock atop St. Paul's Church's domed roof rang six melodious chimes. Hymns accompanied by organ music drifted over from afar. At this hour, the priests of the Church of the Sun would conduct afternoon prayers, praising the rise of Dusk Star—the Arc Moon—and welcoming the arrival of night.

It was worth mentioning that this world also had twelve months, with one sun and one moon hanging in the sky, matching the common knowledge Horn had possessed before transmigrating. However, both its historical development and technological tree differed subtly from his previous life, creating an entirely different world.

From Horn's modern perspective, although the knowledge he studied was called Alchemy, it resembled a discipline blending chemistry, botany, and mineralogy from the classical era. In practice, it spanned metallurgy, medicine, mechanical dynamics, and many other fields. The learning process was also full of deciphering technical terms and metaphorical allusions, while quoting classics and parsing every word was commonplace.

Although the title "alchemist" sounded fantastical, just as law students became lawyers rather than mages, this world had no extraordinary people who could fly through the heavens or attain Longevity. There were no floating cities, hidden paradises, Dreamlands, or any other bizarre places either. While that disappointed Horn, it also made him somewhat relieved.

There was nothing wrong with a peaceful life, really.

Was there?

Although this world had reached roughly the level of twentieth-century Blue Star, with productivity and public security superior to the outrageously awful Britain of his previous life, its most advanced power mechanism was still a magically modified internal combustion engine. Armed with a transmigrator's confidence, Horn believed he could be a science-and-engineering plagiarist and give the Alchemy Academy a tiny taste of modern industrialization.

"Mr. Lancaster, I hope I haven't kept you waiting. I'm Daren Garcia from Sacred Heart Hospital's procurement department."

The middle-aged man's eager greeting pulled Horn back from his daze. Horn looked at the identification he proactively presented, its cover bearing the abstract emblem of a Beating Heart.

Horn nodded in confirmation. Though he was currently only an Apprentice, he was affiliated with Professor Borlaug. To outsiders, he was already regarded as a full-fledged alchemist and deserved the corresponding respect.

Gathering his coat tails, Garcia sat across from Horn and opened the reagent case that had been pushed to the middle of the table. Holding one of the bottles up to the light, he carefully admired the impurity-free gray-blue solution inside. His eyes lit up, and he exclaimed in admiration.

"What pure stuff!"

Don't!

My specialty was Alchemy, not making ice!

Instinctively wanting to cover the man's mouth, Horn glanced around at the customers behaving as usual. He lowered his abruptly raised hand, still shaken.

Good thing there weren't any cops around, or that would have been embarrassing.

Taking Horn's overreaction as one of an alchemist's usual eccentricities and tolerantly overlooking it, Garcia gazed into Horn's crimson eyes. Understanding each other without words, he nodded politely and bowed in farewell.

"It has been a pleasure speaking with you. I look forward to our next collaboration. The money will be transferred later to the Wolfram Bank account you provided, at ten percent above market price. Please check it when it arrives."

"The doctors and patients of Sacred Heart Hospital will all thank you."

"Sure, sure. See you next time."

Horn cheerfully waved Garcia off, drained the rest of his coffee in one gulp, and felt thoroughly refreshed.

Alchemy turned lead into gold. In this line of work, anyone who paid was the boss. Generous fools—cough, patrons—who paid this promptly were getting rarer and rarer.

Alchemy was an immensely profitable trade, but having gone through the Apprentice stage himself, Horn knew exactly how expensive it was to train a qualified alchemist.

Just mastering the most basic three elements—mercury, sulfur, and salt—required buying at least twenty sets of materials for practice, and most of the resulting products were worthless scraps.

And that was only the cost of materials. A suitable alchemical environment was even more indispensable for becoming a qualified alchemist.

The cost of building a complete alchemical workshop from scratch was something no one but nobles could afford. Fortunately, his mentor, Professor Olive Borlaug, was beautiful, kind-hearted, and loaded. With a wave of her hand, she granted Horn the right to use a standard workshop for four years, leaving him so grateful he had nearly wanted to offer himself to her.

Beyond those visible expenses were the invisible costs. Every failed alchemical experiment meant losing not only materials and tools, but also precious time and energy.

Ordinary Apprentices should thank the heavens for achieving a thirty percent success rate. Someone like Horn, who used [Flame of Destiny] to lock his success rate at one hundred percent, was an exception among exceptions. Each time, he had to secretly pocket half the materials cost to avoid causing a sensation.

Earning money through pure skill.jpg

Looking at the blood-red sunset hanging low on the horizon, Horn decided not to become a grind addict. He would give himself a break, go home early, and get some sleep to replenish his depleted spirituality.

Without [Flame of Destiny] backing him up, it would be too ridiculous if he recreated the original owner's cause of death. Who knew whether he could transmigrate again?

"Night comes from day~ silver is born from gold~"

Humming an alchemical maxim he had heard somewhere, Horn turned his back to the setting sun and hurried through the streets toward the apartment he rented in the Lower District.

On the street, a hooded figure sniffed, then turned in confusion toward the now-empty road. A hint of scarlet welled up in the depths of their brown eyes.

How could it smell so good?

In the Lower District apartments, even peaceful sleep was something one had to wish for. Cold in winter, hot in summer, swarming with mosquitoes, drunken howls at night, leaking pipes—there was always something for everyone.

"Sigh, what else can I do? I'll make do for now. Sooner or later, I'll live in a big house."

Having thrown all the money he earned from Alchemy back into that bottomless pit, Horn rented the apartment with the lowest deposit under the mindset that anywhere livable would do. It also made it easier to grab a bucket and run after an alchemical explosion in the house.

Life was hard. Horn sighed.

As he sprinkled sulfur powder swiped from the alchemical workshop and watched the pests scatter, Horn reached out and wiped the leaking pipe. A colorless flame flickered for an instant, and the fragile, corroded metal wall at the leak was reinforced again. The erratic dripping stopped abruptly.

Although [Flame of Destiny] had limited capacity for fine manipulation and could usually only be used to light fires, it was more than enough for little everyday tricks like this.

After cleaning the room and lying on the freshly tidied bed, Horn hugged his small blanket, closed his eyes, and drifted heavily to slee—

"Baby, why are you home so early today? Did Hound Bar stop making you work overtime? Nobody bullied you, right?"

A male voice asked in delighted surprise.

"Mmm, I'm so hungry..."

A female voice replied.

"Hungry? I'll make you something right away. What do you want to eat first?"

"I want to eat..."

"Hey, baby, why are you so enthusiastic today? You're already hugging me. Could it be..."

"I want it now!"

The paper-thin wall had virtually no soundproofing, transmitting every word of the neighboring couple's conversation with meticulous clarity, as if it were happening beside his ear.

Endure it, Horn. Endure it...

Irritably rolling over, Horn tried to ignore the sound of something heavy hitting the floor, followed by a series of soft bodies colliding. Endure, endure, endure, endure, endure...

Bang!

Something heavy was shoved into the corner, producing a loud crash. Clumps of dust fell from the ceiling and stuck to Horn's freshly cleaned bed.

Inside the cocoon of his blanket, darkness and silence were torn apart by rising fury. A pair of eyes snapped open, their whites webbed with dense blood vessels.

Fuck, how was he supposed to endure this?

He was going over there to blow up that shameless couple!