Tears of Alron
a novel
by Vasily Mahanenko
THE ALCHEMIST
Book 3
Magic Dome Books
Tears of Alron
The Alchemist, Book # 3
Copyright © V. Mahanenko 2020
Cover Art © Ivan Khivrenko 2020
Cover Design © V. Manyukhin 2020
English translation copyright © Jared Firth 2020
Published by Magic Dome Books, 2020
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 978-80-7619-185-3
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental..
New and upcoming releases from
Magic Dome Books:
If you like our books and want to keep reading, download our FREE Publisher's Catalog, a must-read for any LitRPG fan which lists some of the finest works in the genre:
Tales of Wonder and Adventure: The Best of LitRPG, Fantasy and Sci-Fi (Publisher's Catalog)
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Chapter 1
“WHERE ARE you going?” The path forward was barred by a guard wearing level five armor. Powerful, fearsome, and practically unbeatable, he would have instilled terror in anyone. Well, anyone but Forian Tarn, level 44 mage, one of the best the Magic Academy had turned out over the previous few years, and a favorite of the magic card department dean.
“They’re with me. Here’s their pass.”
It was nearly impossible to tell what Forian was actually wearing — his armor was disguised as the snow-white robe worn by academy mages. With that said, anyone observant and knowledgeable enough could see the giveaways revealing that it was level four. There was the patch on the sleeve, the pattern on the collar, the unusual hood. The pass disappeared in the hands of the guard as though it were nothing, a special mark immediately appearing next to the mage’s companions indicating that they were to be let through without being checked. As long as they were with Forian.
Access received to the academy library.
“Go ahead.” The guard stepped to the side, letting the odd trio through. While it made sense to see Forian there, the mage having gained incredible notoriety among even those outside the world of magic, nobody would have expected to see the two kids. Of course, academy students often dropped by the library after winning a pass for exceptional work, but they were all at least fifteen years old. And even if the girl might have been close enough at twelve, the boy was just eleven. What had they done to earn the provost’s favor?
Taking Valia by the hand, Tailyn did his best to avoid looking around despite the fact that his curiosity was eating away at him. And it wasn’t just that he wanted to see what the interior looked like. Over the previous two weeks he’d spent living at the academy, the boy had gotten more than his fill of riches and splendor. No, he’d finally finished the mage’s encyclopedia and found out that the academy library was famous for its unique collection of books supposed to be burned as soon as they were discovered. The System ruthlessly destroyed everything still around that the ancients had written, the sole exception being that there had to be a copy already in the academy library. If not, the finder was handed a mandatory mission requiring them to turn the book over to the mages on pain of death. The god kept a close, scrupulous eye on dealings like that. And the books in the library couldn’t be copied, logged, stolen, or destroyed. The only options were looking at them or, if you had the personal permission of the provost, reading them.
Forian had exactly that permission. The hero who had delivered to the torturer’s table Vu-Rga, the greatest of the lix shamans, was given quite a bit of leeway, and that even included bringing his two students with him to the library. Unable to say no to the dean, Forian had taken Valia Levor under his wing, automatically pulling the girl over to their department. She’d gone from battle magic to magic cards.
The energy field protecting the entrance to the library’s holy of holies disappeared, and the group stepped into an enormous room packed with shelves. To the boy, it looked like the store. But as soon as the protection was gone, Forian explained what they were doing there.
“As you both know, my mysticism isn’t working — my mana refuses to regenerate. None of my colleagues or the other mentors are able to help, which means I’m going to figure it out myself. Everything around you was written by the ancients after the god showed up on our planet. Presumably, this has happened before. I can’t imagine it’s unique. So if you look around, you’ll see that the keeper collected almost seven thousand tomes that mention magic and its use. That’s too many for me. Your help is going to be invaluable — we need to look for any mention of blocked attributes, mysticism or otherwise, as well as how to unblock them. Does that make sense, or do I need to repeat myself?”
“Will even the three of us be enough?” the boy asked as he scanned the list of books dubiously. “What if they all have a thousand pages? We won’t even have time to leaf through them.”
“We have to be enough,” his mentor replied, the emphasis on the second word. “Anyway, we’re wasting time. Repeat back to me what we’re looking for, and we’ll get started.”
“Mentor, what if we take a different tack?” Valia had her doubts, as well. “Instead of looking for parallel situations, why don’t we figure out the reason behind the problem?”
“I thought about that,” Forian replied. After taking the pair on as students, he’d taken to speaking with both of them as equals, explaining everything calmly. “The pool of red acid is the reason why the attribute was blocked. But Vu-Rga doesn’t know how the liquid works or how it drains mana from mages. Actually, it just works on people — trying to hang other lixes up just got them burned immediately. Halas is the only one who knows, and he presumably isn’t going to tell us. And we can’t study the acid since it even eats through glass.”
“But the walls of the pool and the rope they used to hold you up were fine,” the girl said.
“Organic matter and baked clay,” the mage replied. “Red acid barely does anything to them.”
“So, we can study it, we just need a special container. Something simple, the kind of thing potters in some village might make,” Tailyn said. The conversation was turning to alchemy, which was his turf. “And we know where there might be another pool.”
“We can’t say for sure if there is one in the abandoned city where they wanted to sacrifice you. Most likely, there’s just a terminal there. Okay, tell me what we’re lo
oking for, and we’ll get started,” Forian said after a pause. He’d thought about the city, too, though he’d ended up deciding to go with more tried and true methods. To start with, at least.
The library keeper turned out to be a gray-haired old man. But Tailyn couldn’t read his attributes, even including his name, his perception just giving him: Keeper, level 352. Placing his load down on the table as if it was made of expensive and fragile crystal, the gentleman set off for the next batch. The System kept close track of what belonged to it. All around each book, there was a protective field that kept the pages safe from the ravages of time. Tailyn reached out to pick up the book that looked thinnest to him — he could read, but he didn’t enjoy the process. That earned him a disapproving glare from Valia. The girl pointedly picked up the fattest tome, while Forian ignored their childishness altogether. He was too busy leafing through another book in search of a way to unblock his attribute.
It was just a good thing the books weren’t encyclopedias. Tailyn didn’t have to memorize every page before turning it, though the bad news was that the first book was a dud. Sure, it was interesting to read the names of the ancients who had been locked up with negators, but neither they nor the negators were what the trio was after. The book was set aside. And while the next one was heavier, it was still just half the size of the one Valia was going through. The boy got to work. After reading the summary, however, his face fell — it was a romantic story of how one lover broke the law for another and was banished to some mine or other. Obviously, there was nothing about attribute blocking. The only interesting point was that attributes were limited to level ten in the mine, though that point was hard to pick out among the sniveling and kissing. It felt like the pair went at it ten times a page. It was nasty…
Tailyn’s interest was only piqued toward the end of the book. The new romance kindling between the prisoner and one of her overseers wasn’t his cup of tea in the least, though it did strike him that the whole book was built on limiting parameters. That was what kept the criminals from escaping the location. With that said, there was one clever devil who was able to break into the protection using a unique attribute called hacking. And while there wasn’t a description, the boy liked the idea — it would have been awfully useful to be able to connect to terminals by going around their security systems. That was especially important given he was going to lose his partially initiated status the next day.
Shaking his head to clear away irrelevant thoughts, Tailyn went back to the beginning where the prison was described. There was something there. But what? Given the author hadn’t been writing a technical manual, instead putting together some slop for people who like to sit around and cry, there wasn’t a lot of information about how the limitations worked. The prisoners weren’t forced to wear anything, there wasn’t an implant, and there wasn’t even any magic. They just were suddenly restricted the moment they stepped inside the mine. Of course, everything ended well — after making a break for it, the new pair made their way back home, where the first man graciously stepped aside and even gave the pair tears of Alron as a parting gift. After that, they all lived happily ever after. The end. But wait — there it was.
“What are tears of Alron?” Tailyn asked. When he saw Valia and Forian stare at him uncomprehendingly, he turned to the old man. “Keeper, are there any other books that mention them?”
The gentleman thought to himself, having just carried over the latest set of books. Scratching his beard, he headed off slowly toward the shelves. He wasn’t much of a talker.
“They can restore attributes?” Forian pulled the book out of Tailyn’s hands and frowned. “Student, is this some kind of joke? You spent more than an hour on this nonsense?”
The large letters on the cover read: Passionate Overseer, Rebellious Criminal. Valia couldn’t help but laugh when she saw what Tailyn had been going through, but the boy decided to go down fighting.
“It talks about a place where parameters are limited. Almost like yours, only they work — ”
“I could come up with a hundred places like that!” Forian shot back in a rage. His student’s idiocy had him flying off the handle. “This is a made-up story. Only the god can limit attributes, and definitely not some mine! I had you come with me to help, not read through trash like this.”
Remembering suddenly where he was, Forian repressed the urge to send the book hurtling off in the direction of the nearest wall. Instead, he placed it in the pile they were done with, pulled out a heavy tome, and handed it to Tailyn.
“These are the memoirs of a mage from back then. Read it.”
Time slowed to a crawl. Tailyn diligently read through each line, stunned by the descriptions of how the ancients had lived. As it turned out, they’d had flying machines, all kinds of mechanisms, and even electricity. But there wasn’t much to glean from that book, either. For the most part, the mage just discussed his relationships with his colleagues — who he’d been able to set up, who had set him up, and how the provost had reacted to all of that. Yes, the person born before the exodus who to that day ran the academy, having built it from the ground up.
“This is everything we have about the tears of Alron.” The keeper held out a worn notebook even magic hadn’t been able to save. “Just one mention in the entire library.”
Something in the old man’s eyes flashed, and Tailyn realized he wasn’t looking at a human. He was a machine. The keeper was one of the ancients’ devices, his entire purpose being to maintain order in the library. And the boy had no doubt the contents of every last book lying on the shelves was stored in the device’s memory. If Forian had had the right access, he could have just asked the keeper directly and gotten an answer to his question, only the provost had decided good mages should be able to get to the bottom of something like that on their own. And that’s why he’d limited Forian’s access to the library. If he wasn’t a good mage, after all, there was no point having him around in the first place.
“They really existed?” Forian asked in surprise as he took the notebook. “I thought the author just made them up. And they’re alchemical, too? Hm…”
There wasn’t much to read in the notebook’s ten pages, though Forian stuck with them for a while. Symbols… There were symbols everywhere. And the god never did anything just because. It hadn’t been dumb luck that the elixir had caught Tailyn’s eye — that was the System’s will. There wasn’t much to read about the tears, but that was still enough to put aside the other books.
For if anyone wishes to reroll their attributes, returning themselves to their virginal state and gaining a mountain of free points to use on themselves, they shall make use of a tear of Alron. Sadly, only Isr Kale and Mark Derwin know how to make them. But while the latter may have disappeared without a trace, Isr Kale is still breathing our air. And so, let us laden ourselves with gifts and visit the head of Crobar if we have blundered in our personal development.
Crobar. Yet again, the accursed school of assassins and its founder were popping up. Even the absorber, may his name be cursed, had something to do with it. That explained why there were so few mentions of the elixir — the assassins had done everything they could to make sure the mages remained in the dark. Well, that just meant there was something else to discuss with Vu-Rga and a couple other prisoners, all Crobar spies captured at the academy. Forian had no doubt there was quite a bit they could shed light on. His decision made, the mage set the notebook aside. There was nothing else for them to do at the library.
“Let’s go. Keeper, thank you for your help — it was invaluable.” Forian nodded his students toward the door. Valia placed her tome back in the pile wistfully, sad to be walking away from the incredible knowledge to be gained there. It wasn’t like anything she could learn at the academy.
The entire way home, Forian said nothing, his mind working over the problem of his next move. It was only when he got to his office and sat down at his favorite desk that he turned toward his quiet students.
&nbs
p; “You did good work, exactly what students should do. Tailyn, for future reference, if you’re sure of something, learn how to stick to it. Leave embarrassment and stammering for the rabble. Valia, that goes for you, too — why didn’t you support your partner? You’re only strong when you’re together.”
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door, and Patrick, Forian’s servant and personal assistant, stepped in when the mage called him.
“Master, you have a guest, the dean of the magic card department. He said it’s critically important. I’m not — ”
“Forian, my student! How lucky to catch you at home.” Patrick was brushed to the side as the dean swept grandly into the office. Just as had been the case with the keeper, his parameters were also hidden. Dean of the Magic Card Department, level 412. He was a bulky, overweight, middle-aged man, his neatly trimmed beard hiding his age. And while the kindly face and broad grin were enough to fool someone more trusting, Forian knew his mentor was crueler than most.
“Leave us,” Forian barked as he laughed to himself. Sure, the dean had caught him at home. The older man’s network of spies was legendary, and he’d known exactly where his student was.
“No, no need for that,” the amiable dean said, stopping the kids by the door and turning them back around. “I’m actually here for them. As they’re now students of the magic card department, the provost asked me to give them their well-earned reward.”
Tears of Alron (The Alchemist Book #3): LitRPG Series Page 1
