Eminence in Technomancy (Golden Ascension Marcus)

After being tortured by the dentist and drugged with painkillers and antibiotics for a week, I was still able to write something!

~~~~~~


Marcus ‘Iron Wolf’ Goldman was sure that he died. When a star many times bigger than the Sun goes supernova, it shatters even the biggest of worlds, like it's paper.

It was not a joke; he was the premier Alchemist in his birth world, also known as Grand Alchemist, the Nuclear Deterrent of West Federation, the one who ended World War 3, and the one who returned Human civilisation to the Stone Age.

But even with these titles, he was nothing in front of a supernova.

It had ended his life, he was sure. But then here he was, in the body of a baby.

A woman dressed in ancient clothes, by all means, was holding him, hugging him closely.

‘What the fuck is going on?’

~~~~~~Few Years Later~~~~~~

Well, I was not Marcus Goldman anymore; my new biological name was Lucan.

Or I thought so by the time I thought of starting to be part of my new family, a tragedy struck.

‘Demonic Beasts’ destroyed my home. This thing killed my new ‘father’ and ‘mother’.

I was angry; yes, it might be a short while of seven years, but I have grown attached to them a bit. It has been over 150 years since my last social activities with other human life forms.

I was learning about this new world, taking my time to understand all the kinks, like magic, usage and other things like knighthood.

Magic knighthood.

But now, I am on the path of slaughter.

My first thing was to recreate Iron Wolf gloves.

Nothing major, Iron Wolf is magic armour technomancy. I worked for around 200 years in my past life.

Thankfully, I have gathered some scrap metal, which will help me in its creation.

Or is it recreation?

Anyway, I collected a bunch of scraps of metal from my destroyed home, cutlery tools, hinges of the doors, and anything which had metal in it.

And then I started to draw a magic circle.

“Let's see if this will work…”

I was going through phases which were semi-instinctual to me by this point. A few minutes later, I finished drawing a transmutation circle.

“Hmm, let’s start with cheap iron first…”

For the first few tries, I adjusted the circles while trying to grasp how different this world was from my original one.

I quickly realised that mana was more volatile; this meant extra circles for regular alchemy—something to improve on.

Regardless, I was able to transmute enough Carbon-Titanium alloy to make gloves. Carbon-Titanium was a metal I used to make my Iron Wolf suits. A particular alchemy is needed to transmute metal like Carbon- Titanium.

Alchemy usually comes in several ways. The most common technique was imagination being transmitted via mana and imagining one metal turning into another.

But that's like putting a V-12 6-litre engine into a Golf. It's ineffective and mana-consuming.

The method I devised was atomic structuring. One needs to have a formula in mind and pour mana into the material closest to it.

Metal to metal, organic to organic, wood to wood, gems to gems.

Stuff like that.

‘But I guess it's more like matter control than alchemy by this point.’

As I pondered on that, I altered the ingot I got into gloves before starting to carve runes.

‘Right… I should check if runes work the same…’

For now, I delayed my gloves creation, and instead, I tried out the runes on boulders.

*Crack*

*Shatter*

“Hmm…”

*Crack*

*Splinter*

Wood exploded into many splinters going in all directions.

After preliminary tests, I went for some alterations and repeatedly tried the new configurations until I found what I needed.

With those done, I started to carve the runes into the gloves.

The only way I could do it is with branches at this moment. They last quite a bit after casting reinforcement on them.

Regardless, with prep work done, I proceeded with my hunt.

~~~

“Hey! It's dangerous there!”

A girl shouted at me as she rushed over to my side. I ignored her and didn't even look at her. Instead, I walked into the forest.

“You don't say.”

“...Don’t ignore me, you brat!”

She tried to grab my hand, but I used my magic.

As someone who lived for over 300 years and studied gravity waves emitted by planets, I can cast my magic in wave fashion to imitate gravity.

Just like now, my magic affected her.

The girl couldn't even touch me as her knees gave in as she collapsed on the ground.

“As I said, ‘you don't say’.”

“...W-What is this!?”

“Magic,” I said to her as I continued to walk into the forest.

After a while, she was out of my range, and the magic ceased to work.

So, instead of being terrified by me and running away, she caught up with me!

She dashed in front of me and cut my path.

The girl had long black hair and striking red eyes. She pointed her training sword at me.

“You are being annoying. Get out of my way.” I said with an annoyed voice.

“This forest is full of beasts with mana! If you go deeper, they will eat you!”

“No, duh… I know I am going there to kill a specific beast before returning to my tinkering. So move aside, little girl.” I waved my hand casually.

“...You! Call me little girl!? You are smaller than me!”

“I don't care about age, you dofus; I am talking about mental capacities. I am prepared; you are not.”

I lifted my hand to the side and pointed my palm at a tree. My mana started to flow into the gauntlet, the runes glowed, and a white beam punched through a tree trunk.

“...”

“I am an Alchemist reborn, and you are a little girl who doesn't know what is what.”

“...wait…you are an alchemist!? Like those people with potions and stuff!?” For a second, she looked awed at me.

“Yeah, like those, if you don't get out of my way, I will turn your hair blonde.”

“!!!”

“H-Hold it! Let me join you!” She pointed her hand at herself.

“...What for?”

“...I am the future Baroness of this place! These are my lands!”

I rolled my eyes at her words, so Noblesse Oblige, fine with me.

“Fine, I can use you as a meat shield.” I shrugged at her without care.

“...You are one annoying kid! I have won a local Dark Knight tournament! I know how to fight!”

“...Right. Because a beast will care about your victory in a tournament.” I scoffed at her as we continued to walk.

After walking a few minutes in silence, I stopped in my tracks and looked around.

“What is it?”

“My sonar has picked up a source of mana. A big source.”

“... ’Sonar’?”

“A technique I developed over the years. By sending a wave of magic, it hits something, creating an image; this way, I can sense what is far away from me.”

“...Impressive.”

“...Indeed.”

~~~

A few hours later, after following a trail of a ferocious beast, I found my target.

My crushing gravity magic descended on the beast. My gloves glowed, and beams of white energy slammed into the beast.

“...”

“...”

A girl named Claire Kagenou looked at my handy work with wide eyes. She finally revealed her name to me.

“You can pin down beasts of that size!?”

“Yeah, but it's not dead yet.”

Then waves of sickly yellow started to hammer the beast, who began to rot in front of us.

“...” Claire’s mouth was wide as she looked at my handy work.

Once the beast rotted enough, I shot at it once more. This time, the blast has its head blown away. This time, it died for sure.

“Well? As I said, I had this covered.”

“...Yeah… Do you have anywhere to go?”

“...I don't need to go anywhere. I can live anywhere I want. I am an alchemist, remember?”

“...Still, if you want, I can arrange a place for you to stay.”

“...Yeah…”

~~~

Claire Kagenou didn't give up easily; what she saw was extraordinary. An alchemist in the flesh was a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from.

Sure, she might not use his magic, but she could exchange something.

So, she decided to be on the lookout for the alchemist boy.

“...Gahh!!! I forgot to ask for his name!!! Damn it all!!!”

“I will find you! Once I do, you won't escape me that easily!” Her long brain came alive for a moment. A red aura surrounded her as she was feeling pissed for being used like this!

*Hmph!!!*

She huffed for a bit before returning to her estate.

~~~

I sighed in relief as I was able to ditch that girl. She was overbearing, reminding me of my mother. Whoever will marry her later in life can have my prayers now because I will forget it later.

My destination was a less-used woodland area. I swiftly found a stream of water, which I used as a starting point for my search.

As I said before, I spent over 150 years in space; I saw some terrifying and beautiful worlds with dangerous water depths.

All in all, I have some idea how to build a base for research and tinkering.

Walking from the water stream, I found several boulders in a forest clearing.

They are big enough for an adult man to sit on.

“...It appears I have struck gold.”

Stone boulders like these are perfect for triple-core reactor building. It's a technomancy based on the science of the composition of a planet. You have a core, the rotation and the magnetic field.

All of that makes a triple core, the core which generates the heat for power, the rotation which generates the gravity and the magnetic field which creates the boundary field.

A boulder is essential for that because a boulder is a very compressed material; that's half of the work I need to make the reactor.

After spotting the boulders, I looked for the best-looking tree and started to carve—time for territory creation.

…

…

…

A basic boundary field is not complex; select a form like a triangle, a square or even a circle, and then mark the boundaries with a boundary circle.

Carve and hide away, for that I used trees and large stones. Symbolism is essential as well.

Once boundary circles were fine and the boundary field was running, I started to dig my base.

For that, I picked a spot close to the water stream until my reactor was online. Running water would do for power.

As I was digging an entrance to my man cave, someone triggered the security of my boundary field.

“...”

My gaze went in that direction. I could sense some mana levels from this group.

The taste of the mana was that of ruffians.

“...bandits… well, well… I guess I shall check how well I remember humanoid physiology.” With a burst of mana, I was out of the hole and walked towards the ruffian camp, which was in my area.

~~~

“My oh my… is that stuff for me?”

A voice spread through the area of bandits who were camping around a campfire.

“...Who's there!?” The leader bandit asked as he pulled out his sword.

“Your bogeyman.” At that moment, everyone dropped to the ground as gravity started to crush them.

“!!!”

“!!!”

“!!!”

Everyone started to panic as they couldn't move.

Then yellow waves started to bombard them, and right before their eyes, they saw how their friends began to rot away! It was gory and terrifying.

Screams and begging followed, but it was no use as they could move!

By the time the boy arrived, all the ruffians turned into dust.

“...Ah..human biology is so fragile.” He commented for a bit before he sensed something in a carriage. “Hmm?”

He walked over and lifted the covering blanket. It was a blob of brown mass with blue eyes and large teeth.

The boy frowned when he saw this, his senses telling him this was some sort of mana overload.

“...a foreign mana flooded a body. I'm curious— this is worthy of research, some sort of mutation route?”