AK - The Alchemy Kingdom

Year 5, Spring, Third Month, Fourth Week.

Karl stretched his arms trying to reach the strange blueish flame, but it didn’t matter how much tried, the flame seemed unreachable. After countless tries, he finally forfeited on the futile attempt and focused his attention on analyzing the thousands of complicated symbols that formed the flame. However, before his observation efforts could bear any results, the sounds of heavy knocking awaked him from the dream.

“Karl… Are you alright, son?”

His mother concerned and judgmental tone finished bringing him to full awareness.

“I’m fine, mom… Just overslept… I’ll be up in a second.”

In less than five minutes the young man was entering the kitchen dressed in his fashioned clothes, which were deemed barely acceptable by Mrs. Mathilda. Surprisingly, his parents, who should be out carrying their duties, were sitting by the table with a troubled expression on their faces. Karl tried to voice his confusion but was interrupted by his mother, who urged him to eat first.

The Alchemist loved the new morning eating trend that was taking over the Capital, a black tea with a strong energizing effect and stuffed bread that could sustain one through a tiring day. Unfortunately, the pressuring gazes ended up ruining his mood, he wondered if there was such a thing as toxic concern.

“What is it?”

His father was the one to talk while Reiner focused on scrutinizing his reactions and answer.

“Son, you keep telling us that everything is fine, but we know something is happening with you… You’re sleeping through almost half of the day, and your eyes don’t have the previous bright… We never saw you like this, not even when you started studying Alchemy in secret…”

Karl had to control himself to not roll his eyes. It wasn’t the first time his father mentioned his initial studies with a wounded tone, why couldn’t he get over it? Didn’t everyone’s lives improve? If he had told his parents about Alchemy before he started to study it, wouldn’t they prevent him from trying it? Anyway, he was now 19 years old, couldn’t they treat him like an adult? He silently decided to buy a house and move out before thinking about their question.

Actually, he was also aware of the changes that Alchemy was causing to his mind and body. First, his unusual large spiritual pool, apparently, the other magic users struggled to increase their spiritual energy while he was somehow getting it at a lower cost. He observed some considerable increase on his disciples once they learned how to draw Runes, but nothing as disproportionate as he was experiencing. Fortunately, the abnormality only caused good changes, like improvement of his mental abilities and sensitivity to magic energies.

However, the changes didn’t stop there. When he started studying Spiritual Alchemy, the way he thought and his perception of the world also started to change. Instead of only focusing on the task ahead, his mind started to wonder about other things, like right now, he was talking with his parents while trying to find mistakes in the design of the new forge.

As for the changes in his perception, he couldn’t explain it clearly, but he was seeing more than before, and maybe more than he should. That’s when he started to get some impressions of people having dubious thoughts, and sometimes even plotting against him. It appeared that his mind was processing all the small information around him and coming up with its own impressions on people’s true intentions. Strangely, not even his new observing abilities could help him understand some odd behavior, like Diana’s.

Because of the lingering paranoia that made him feel like someone could be trying to make a move on him, Karl was pushing himself too far. He started training energy-drawing every day before sleeping, but now he was emptying his energy reserves every time he had a chance. The constant spiritual burnout was causing the side effects that his parents were talking about, not without benefits, of course. His ability to draw in the air had grown several tiers lately. He could now draw complete designs with simple Arrays and hold the effect for a few seconds.

Karl breathed heavily as he considered the consequences of opening up to his parents and keeping up with this training regime. Maybe he had gone too far, he could be causing more harm to himself than a hidden enemy could. Parents are really powerful, with only one question and a lot of complicated staring, they made him reconsider his recent behavior.

He looked up at them, ashamed of his lack of maturity, and answered:

“I’m sorry… I’ve been pushing my training too far because I was afraid something unseen would put our recent piece at risk… I think I got so used to being in constant danger that I didn’t know how to deal with our current situation… I’ll train less and be more responsible with my health… Thanks for the talk… I do need to get going…”

Fortunately, his sincere apologies appeared to calm his parents, who just demanded a hug before letting him go.

***

“So, what do you think about it?”

Arnold stared at the stone that was supposed to be his new forge. He was excited about the new function, but he didn’t know if he would be able to control it. The function itself wasn’t surprising, in fact, he had discussed it with Karl many times. Having specific temperatures to melt the metals worked in most cases, be if he could completely control the temperature, it would be even better, especially when he was working with alloys.

Since Karl already had to modify the forge to make the new weapons, he used this opportunity to add a temperature regulator. However, Arnold didn’t feel confident in controlling it, because it used spiritual energy to set up the temperature.

Like all AK citizens, the blacksmith had learned how to push his energy into an Array during registration. The process was easy and only needed to be practice before anyone could be doing it almost unconsciously. Karl explained that this might become standard in many tools in the future and that he only needed to push the energy while focusing on the temperature he wanted. Of course, he would need some training to pass the right values, but the process itself was simple.

It might be difficult to explain the levels of temperature since it varied according to the person, some might use warm, hot and burning, while others would use high and low. The blacksmiths also had subjective concepts of temperature through the flame color, the heat emanating from the forge, or even the metal’s reaction. When Karl built the first forge, it took them something to define the specific concentration of energy that would translate into the right temperature, but now, he was asking the blacksmith to think in terms of numbers.

Concept was an ambiguous thing, both complex and simple at the same time. Simple because it would get what the person meant regardless if one had the wrong idea or an incomplete understanding. For example, with someone thought of “hot”, the concept would register the person understanding of hot, which would probably be something capable of causing a mild burn, but it would surely vary from person to person. So, simple because it would accept almost any notion of temperature, but complex because it would be difficult to create a pattern.

Fortunately, for quantity, they had numbers. The concept of zero, one, two and so on, was the same for everyone, it wouldn’t change. So, Karl decided to use numbers as the standard to measurement. For example, when he drew the temperature regulator Array, he set it to receive a number from 0 to 100 to decided on the level of the thermal energy in the object.