This time I decided to travel on my own, leaving behind the comfort of the caravan. My destination was the heart of chaos, the region where the fiercest wars for territory and power were fought. These were city-states, fragmented in their internal struggles, but staunchly opposed to outside forces. Surrounded by Creta, Aerugo, Drachma, and Sinus, these states were at the center, engulfed in an endless series of internecine wars.
Despite their fierce rivalries, the city-states displayed a strange unity in the face of a common enemy from among the surrounding nations. But this unity was fleeting, and as soon as the external threats subsided, they were at each other's throats again.
I knew that in these endless wars, where life was considered a bargaining chip, I would find what I needed.
The constant war made it clear that there was no shortage of "materials" here. Human lives were spent recklessly, whether in battle or as collateral damage. My mind was buzzing with possibilities. These were the perfect conditions to realize my plan to create the Philosopher's Stone. But first, I needed to infiltrate one of these city-states - to find my way into their ranks, either as a soldier or a medic.
As I walked, I began to figure out how I could blend in with the crowd, hiding my true intentions under the mask of a healer.
I found a city-state called Erimor, ruled by a man named Lord Velatis, known for his ambition and cruelty. This city-state was larger than most others, with an army that was constantly mobilized for wars against almost all of its neighbors. Velatis believed that his military might would allow him to subdue the surrounding states and bring them under his rule, making Erimor the dominant power in the region. His arrogance played to my advantage - Erimor was always in need of soldiers and medics, and the constant bloodshed gave me plenty of "material" for my research.
As I approached the gathering place, chaos reigned. Men lined up in uneven columns, some with weapons, others with only the clothes they were wearing. Farmers who had lost their lands, impoverished nobles hoping for a chance to regain their fortunes, and criminals - thieves, murderers - all mingled together under the blazing sun. They accepted everyone without question.
- Hey, get in line! - came a rough voice from behind me. I turned around and saw a stout man with a scar on his face pushing me forward.
"Chill out, we're all here for the same reason," I replied, hiding my contempt.
"Doesn't matter, just want to get it over with." The man muttered something, but backed off.
Up ahead, I saw several lines of columns. I headed towards the last of the columns in the distance, pushing through the crowd. As I approached the front row, I noticed a stern-looking man with a notepad writing down names and skills.
"I'm versed in medicine," I said when it was my turn, in a calm and confident tone. "I've treated wounds and diseases before. Whatever I don't know, I'll learn in the process."
The man raised his head, his eyes studying me intently. "We need anyone who knows how to hold a needle. You're a doctor, or at least you'll be one. - He didn't wait for my response, just put my name on his list and pointed to a group forming off to the side. - 'Join them. First mission tomorrow.
An old gray-haired soldier who was missing two fingers snorted from the corner. ''Heh, I hope you have a strong stomach. You still have a lot to see. War isn't the best place for a healer."
The other trainee medic sitting next to me smirked, too excited about what awaited us. "As long as I stay in the rear, I don't care. It's better than being out there getting chopped up by a sword."
"Keep it up, kid," I said, amused by his naivete. "But be prepared to get your hands dirty. Medicine isn't just about curing. Sometimes it's important to know when to let someone die."
The reality of those words seemed to chill his enthusiasm, but it was the truth. I needed to make sure I was as close to the battlefield as possible, where life and death would give me access to fresh bodies for my research. My mind was already calculating the possibilities.
"Next!" - shouted a stern officer, gesturing for the next person to come forward.
After we joined the army as doctors, we were sent straight to a fort known as Fort Asharn, located on the western borders of Erimor. The fort was a bastion of stone and wood, badly damaged by the weather and the constant strain of war. Upon arrival, no promised mission awaited us; instead, we were immediately sent to the front lines to aid the wounded from the ongoing conflict with the neighboring city-state of Varkon.
Varkon was known for his fierce warriors and strategic cunning, often launching surprise attacks that took Erimo's troops by surprise. The battles were brutal and chaotic, and I quickly realized that I was in the grim realities of war.
The first few days were tumultuous. I became accustomed to the sounds of the fort: the clanking of metal, the distant shouts of soldiers, and the insistent shouts of my fellow medics. I didn't have time to dwell on my own ambitions; the needs of the wounded came first, for I should get used to the surroundings first.
Each morning I donned a simple tunic adorned with a red cross, a sign of our role as healers. We were divided into teams and assigned to different parts of the fort to treat wounds received in battle. I found myself working in a crowded temporary infirmary, a large tent filled with the sick and wounded. The air smelled of blood and antiseptics, flavored with human excretions, mingling with the earthy scent of the nearby meadows. It created an unbearable aroma of mixed odors that for the first few days the newcomers simply vomited at the entrance to the tent, and especially these odors were most abundant near the seriously wounded.
"Get that one over here!" - shouted a gray-haired medic named Khalek, pointing to a soldier who had been brought in with a deep wound on his arm. "We need to clean the wound before it gets infected."
I quickly began gathering the necessary supplies. My hands worked almost mechanically, bandaging the wounded arm with clean cloths, applying ointments and stitching where needed.
In the afternoon, more casualties arrived at our front line - soldiers with broken bones, shattered limbs, and severe lacerations, as well as severed limbs. Each time, I felt a growing sense of urgency and responsibility. Despite the chaos, I quickly learned how to assess injuries and prioritize treatment.
I spent countless hours in the infirmary sewing up wounds and soothing soldiers' pain. Although I didn't have time for my own experiments, I observed the human body under stress and trauma, learning more about anatomy and treatment than from any book. I kept my mind sharp, taking notes and observations at every opportunity. There would come a day when I could continue my studies using the experiences I had gained in this war-torn area.
Time flowed like a fog because of the suffering of the people and the rush. In the army, I had established myself as a capable healer. I had earned a reputation for caring and skillfully tending to the most severely wounded. My efforts did not go unnoticed; eventually I was assigned a private tent to sleep in, a small sanctuary amidst the chaos of war. But I had other plans for my newfound privacy. I asked to be stationed closer to the battlefields, on the pretext that I wanted to help the soldiers directly on the front lines. The officers, who were eager to see more soldiers healed, agreed, and thus began my long-awaited exploration.
Under the pretense of trying to save the lives of the severely wounded, I began conducting experiments on those whom fate had already deemed dead. I quietly gathered the sick and dying, people who had no hope left, and approached them with a look of compassion on my face. "Please," I said quietly, kneeling down at their bedside. "Let me try one last time to save you. You have nothing left to lose."
They looked at me with tired eyes, occasionally nodding in submission to fate. These men, battle-weary and pain-ridden, were my volunteers, unaware that I intended to use them as vessels to carry out my alchemical designs.
During each experiment, I set up a small alchemical circle in my tent, carefully drawn on the ground and illuminated by flickering lanterns. Tension hung in the air as I prepared my materials, scraps of parchment with hastily scribbled notes.
The first experiment involved an incurably wounded soldier named Trod, whose leg had been severed beyond repair and had already begun to fester, and who had contracted tetanus. This place was the abode of the disease. Practically 1 in 3 died here from it. I told him it was a treatment, a way to ease his suffering.
"Just relax," I said soothingly, blindfolding him with a tissue. "You'll feel the pain, but I promise it will be worth it."
I was anticipating this moment when I finally used the alchemical circle. "Let this be the path to something more," I whispered.
I felt the energy in the air change as I focused the flow of this man's life force, trying to recreate the red stone by visualizing one unified mass. As I began the process, I watched the soldier's body closely, feeling the subtle changes. The alchemical transformation was delicate; I was attempting to merge his essence with the energies surrounding him. The formula I came up with was experimental, untested, and when I reached the climax, a surge of power enveloped the room. But something went wrong. Instead of reaching my goal, the man's body went into convulsions. His eyes went wide with terror, and for a brief moment I saw a glimmer of consciousness before he collapsed.
"What went wrong?" I muttered. He was dead, and my hopes of turning him into something had failed. I moved on, determined to learn from this failure.
My next attempt involved a different approach. I chose a soldier who was comatose. This time I focused on the concept of essence rather than direct transmutation. I put more of my energy into the process, hoping to guide him toward transformation. As I worked, I tried to infuse its essence into a single mixture. As the process unfolded, the soldier's body began to faintly shimmer, but instead of becoming something more, his figure warped grotesquely. Instead of the expected transformation, he let out a blood chilling scream, transforming into a mass of pulsing flesh.
I needed to find the key to creating a new red stone, but every step forward felt like two steps back. Without a red stone to guide my work, I was left in the dark, but I was determined to keep going. The whispers of my ambition echoed in the corners of my mind, urging me to move forward regardless of the consequences.
As my obsession deepened, the lines between research and cruelty blurred into something darker. I continued to conduct my grotesque experiments, pushing the boundaries of alchemical transmutation in ways that even I myself could not have imagined when I began.
My failures to create a new red stone tormented me, but I found fleeting solace in the progress I was making with the chimeras. Though imperfect, these bizarre creations lived longer - if only for a few hours. One of my most recent endeavors involved combining a human with various animal components. I picked up a badly wounded soldier, half-dead, from the battlefield and combined him with parts of a wolf, hoping that the animal's endurance and aggression would combine with the intelligence and will to survive as a human. The result was nightmarish - a creature with elongated limbs, sharp teeth, and eyes that glowed with an unnatural light. For once, the chimera did not die immediately. It moved, though hesitantly, and rose to its feet in the dim light of my tent. It let out a low, guttural growl.
"It's... alive," I whispered, marveling at my creation before me. But my triumph was short-lived. After nearly three hours of slow, agonizing life. The creature collapsed, its body convulsing before it turned into a puddle of foul-smelling detritus.
I stood over it, learning my lesson: I had extended its life, but the fusion was still not perfect. I needed a way to stabilize these abominations so they would last. Perhaps if I could harness the essence of multiple beings in a more controlled way....
In moments of desperation, when neither chimeras nor red stones seemed available to me, I turned to another type of research: dissection. It was a crude, brutal form of research, but the insight I gained from dissecting living and dead bodies was invaluable. I dissected soldiers who were already on the verge of death from their injuries, explaining that they could not be saved.
Sometimes, as a form of entertainment, I enjoyed methodically dissecting a living thing. The feeling of the blade gliding over skin, muscle and bone mesmerized me. I needed to understand how everything fit together, how life flowed through each organ, and what drove the energy of the human body.
One night I tied a still breathing soldier to my desk. His eyes were glazed with pain and heat, and he was barely aware of his surroundings. I held the cold scalpel to his chest and made a careful incision, pulling back the skin to see his heart beating. Every breath he took made his heart flutter like a captured bird, and I felt a peculiar thrill watching it race blood through his veins.
When I worked, my hands were bloody, and I would sometimes stop to take notes, rough sketches of human anatomy spread out on my desk. I was no longer just an alchemist; I had become a butcher, trying to unlock the secrets of life one piece at a time.
But no matter how many bodies I dissected, how many lungs I punctured or hearts I stopped, the answer I sought still eluded me. The perfect alchemical circle to create the red stone, the way to stabilize my chimeras-all of these things were beyond my grasp, taunting me with their proximity.
One night, I attempted to combine two corpses - one just dead, the other in a stage of decomposition - using transmutation to combine their bodies into one. The result was a combination of rotting flesh and still-warm tissue. It moved jerkily at first, and then let out a pitiful cry. For a moment I thought I had succeeded, but it soon collapsed, the tissue incompatibility too great to support any semblance of life.
Of course, I later dissected it. As I studied the hybrid form, I noted the places where decomposition had spread to fresh tissue and where blood from the fresher body had stopped circulating through the rotting limbs.
The chimera I finally managed to create was both a triumph and a repulsion. A fusion of two soldiers, it was a mass of deformed muscle, bone, and sinew, a creature that barely resembled the humans it had once been. Its body was a squirming mass of flesh, unnaturally curved. Limbs were fused together at strange angles, some growing out of the torso in awkward directions, others were shriveled and seemed useless.
At the center of this abomination was a head - if it could even be called that - formed from the fused skulls of two soldiers. It had no definite shape; its features were elongated and distorted, as if the flesh and bones were trying to find equilibrium, but to no avail. The creature's mouth, obscenely large and twisted, was nearly three times as wide as a normal human's, and full of jagged, jagged teeth. It opened its mouth, ready to swallow anything I threw at it.
His eyes-the ones that hadn't fused with the surrounding tissue-were bulging and bloodshot. He made no sound other than the occasional gurgle or wet sigh, though he seemed to be breathing heavily, his deformed lungs struggling to function properly.
The chimera couldn't move, its body too deformed for any coordinated movements. It just lay twitching in the corner of my tent, a throbbing mass of flesh and muscle, and its only instinct was to survive. I fed it human remains - corpses discarded from the battlefield or soldiers who had died of wounds under my care. The creature devoured them with its mouth, its huge jaws snapping and tearing flesh with frightening efficiency.
It had been alive for four days now, and I counted each day with a mixture of admiration. It was unlike anything I had ever created. The fact that it had lived - no, existed - for so long was a testament to the potential of my research. But it was also a reminder of the unnatural and terrifying path I had embarked on.
Every day I watched its condition closely. The creature did not seem to be decomposing, as one might expect from the fusion of such incompatible forms. Its body was surprisingly stable, though I could see it straining as it tried to digest the leftovers I was feeding it. His muscles twitched, and every now and then one of his limbs twitched involuntarily. In my notes, I pondered whether the chimera could exist indefinitely if I continued to feed it. I wondered if it would eventually mutate further or simply cease its ugly existence.
Could I have perfected the process? Could I have created something even more stable, more controlled? Or would every creation be a squirming abomination like this one, doomed to feed and survive but never truly live? Days passed and I continued to feed this creature, expecting it to show signs of deterioration or death. But it clung to life, its body absorbing the flesh of the dead, adapting to the horrors I was inflicting on it.
And I was going to keep exploring until I created the perfect chimera, or succeeded with the red stone.