Nanomancer Rising: Divine Alchemist Reborn as Academy's Worst Teacher
Chapter 102: Materia Prima

Chapter 102: Materia Prima

The sensation Theo felt in the back of his head was exactly the same as the one that he experienced when his own formation first came to be.

Figuring out that he now found himself within the formation was only one thing, though. Finding a way to escape from it now that he was under its influence, though, was an entirely different topic altogether.

Thump!

Pulled ahead, Theo only had enough time to see where he was getting pulled to before he crashed through the item stand on the stage and then into the stage itself.

Pushed by the momentum of his fall, he rolled three times on the stage’s hard floor before finally grinding to a halt.

By now, Theo’s body had all tensed up, his mana activating and his nanites rushing through his bloodstream... But, for some reason, the mana that he never had any problems controlling before now simply refused to follow his commands, opting to just flow through his structure rather than doing what he wished for it to do.

’Shit!’

Not giving Theo any time to react or adapt to the new situation, the shadows all jumped on him, all sorts of blades shining in their hands as they prepared to strike him down.

For a moment, Theo was at a loss.

Without his powers and without any real knowledge or experience in martial arts or something as simple as a weapon, how was he to ward off the attacks from seven different people, all of whom were armed and clearly trained?

Heck! They even managed to deploy a formation on the go in such a covert way no one appeared to notice it!

By all rational means, Theo should be severely and sorely fucked. He had no weapon to guard himself with, no skill to combat the trained assassins, and no power to overwhelm them.

Or so would be the case if he was just another nameless teacher of the academy with his powers limited to what was common in this world.

’Okay,’ Theo breathed out, watching how the sharp blades closed in on his vitals, now just a few meters from the furthest and a few inches away from his flesh from the closest one. ’That’s enough.’

BOOM!

If normally Theo expelled the nanites from his body in the form of a thin mist to keep anyone from noticing it, this time, he released them in the form of a solid wall.

"Master! NO!" Tesh shouted from the tribunes, her voice filled with desperation while Lukas obediently followed Theo’s request and dragged her away from the danger.

To their side, Celeste — while still stuck frozen in shock — was already gathering mana for a counterattack while scanning the entire hall in search of any further, possible dangers.

TANG!

The sound of the metal blades striking a solid wall of nothing more than air was already quite satisfactory. But when adding up the shocked and puzzled looks in the eyes of the assassins, the whole thing turned into pure comedy.

"So it wasn’t the auction house but yours truly that was your aim?" Theo asked out loud, carefully picking himself up from the floor, only to then wave his hand as he realized he put it right in the puddle of some crimson, sticky liquid.

’Huh?’

Turning his eyes away from the now powerless attackers slamming their fists and weapons into the invisible barrier of nanites arranged in a crystal-like structure, Theo looked down to investigate.

The hue of the liquid quite clearly came from his own blood, spilled when he rested his hand on the floor littered with pieces of sharp glass.

Those shards of glass were just enough to cut through Theo’s skin, but failed to do anything beyond spilling just a few drops of his blood, failing to penetrate any deeper than just the surface of his hand.

The liquid that Theo’s blood tainted, however, had to be something else. And between its sticky nature, the shards of glass all around, and the auction taking place right as the attack happened...

’Materia prima, huh?’ Theo thought as a vile grin appeared on his face. ’Seeing how this place failed to protect its customers, I might as well just... partake in it, can’t I?’

In alchemy, materia prima was nothing more than the most basic of ingredients. And while impossible to synthesize back on Earth due to its mystical if not outright magical nature, here...?

In this world it was exactly what Theo thought it would be — a god’s particle for any alchemist, perfectly malleable and usable as a basis for quite literally any other alchemical concoction.

Useless by itself, but full of potential in the hands of someone capable of bending it to his own desires. In the hands of a proper alchemist.

And in the hands of Theo, who spent the better part of his near immortal life back on Earth doing nothing but twisting every law of physics and biology to turn the most random of items into stuff it was never supposed to be?

"This is..."

The moment Theo infused a small bit of his nanites into the liquid that stuck to his hand, he couldn’t help but gasp.

’I already had some expectations for it, but this...?’

Theo gulped hard, struggling to properly process the information his nanites fed into the hive and the hive translated back to him.

This materia prima, even though only a middling tier according to the auction house, was already leagues better than anything Theo had imagined!

It felt... like it was a seed of the matter. Each particle of it stuck in the superposition of every particle in existence, its nature only determined once Theo decided what he wanted it to turn into.

’This might be the thing that truly deserves the name of a god’s particle,’ Theo thought with awe.

On its own, it was an extremely simple thing. Just a mix of highly reactive acid and extremely pure alcohol infused to hell and back with mana.

A concoction that Theo could craft in a literal garage given some simple reagents.

The grade of the materia prima was likely all dependent on the amount of mana infused into each brew, allowing for easier modeling of more complex structures from it.

That was all.

But in Theo’s hands? And with the benefit of the nanites permeating through it?

"Now then," Theo muttered to himself as he looked up at the seven shadows still desperately bashing at the invisible wall of Theo’s nanites. And judging from the looks on their faces, they still had no idea just what the hell it was that stopped them from advancing.

All of which resulted in just the perfect opportunity for Theo to gloat... if he had both the time and energy to waste on something so pointless.

"Are you guys going to tell me what the hell you have against me?" he asked as the small amount of liquid still stuck to his hand suddenly flashed, only to transform into a simple, metal blade growing directly from the palm of Theo’s hand like some sort of a mutated and extremely lethal finger. He then raised his face and locked eyes with the nearest of the assassins.

"Or should I just kill you all?"