Rules of Biomancy: A LitRPG Healer Fantasy

Vera had to admit that these so-called otherworlders were very different from what she had expected. Both showed off very distinct personalities, reacting very differently to having to hide within the meeting rooms. One, the woman who wore a frown from the second she’d entered, sat by the door, waiting for the second she could leave once again. Sasha Petrova was her name, one that Vera thought fit rather well.

On the other end of the spectrum was one Jack Larson, the man sitting on one of the other couches. He was a strange one, about her age but not acting like it. He was more… childish in some ways. A reaction to the new world perhaps, since he clearly had been more mature in the past. He had briefly talked about his old job as a soldier which made that clear, though she was able to gather more information from the way he winced when putting pressure on his left leg. It was an injury that wasn’t mentioned but obvious to anybody who paid attention.

It didn’t seem to deter the man, though, as he continued explaining the concept of ‘movies’ to her, as a form of theater that was magically recorded and shown off without having to repeat the performance itself. She had understood the concept from the start, having several magical artifacts that could replicate such a thing, but she felt it best to not interrupt too much.

At least his words provided a good foundation of what the other world in question was like. Though she had to prod him a little and ask him to expand on some points, he did give a general view of the history of the other side. The idea of no magic existing there was certainly an interesting one, but it was counterbalanced by all the usages of electricity. Things she’d never thought of herself became obvious the more she listened, yet so many more glaring problems were likewise presented without the man seemingly noticing them.

“So the story is focused around a man that’s forced to begin a life of crime to pay for his medical treatment?” Vera concluded.

“Yes, though it is a little more nuanced than that since he rejects multiple offers of help from others because of some desperate attempt at being independent,” Jack replied, Vera nodding along while she wondered why she even entertained this discussion. “I don’t want to spoil it further for you, though, on the off-chance you might be able to see it someday. Depends on whether we can find a way back.”

“That remains to be seen,” she commented. Personally, she thought it a fruitless endeavor. From what the archives said about the concept of summoning from other worlds, it was usually an incredibly randomized and chaotic process.

Was it possible to pull creatures or items from other worlds to this one? Most certainly, entire branches of Magic were entirely focused around the idea. To send entities to another world, and to choose which world they would arrive at… that was where most of the texts deemed it impossible. To send them somewhere without the anchor of a Ritual Circle at the destination didn’t seem doable with the current methods. Maybe if they had somebody on the other side who helped with the Summoning, yet their world was already described as being without Mana which made that work-around impossible as well.

“It’s kinda shocking how much our own ideas about Mana and monsters relate to what’s over here,” Jack commented, once Vera brought up the topic in the hopes she wouldn’t need to listen to his surface-level analysis of older pieces of fiction. “Like, Elijah knows how to do Alchemy. At least the potion and elixir part of Alchemy. The other part, with turning metals into other metals, is my domain of expertise.”

At that, her interest was perked up once again. The Royal Healer had mentioned those abilities somewhat, but other matters had taken priority before she could start questioning exactly what it was he could do.

“Is it just restricted to metals, or is it all materials that you know of?” Vera questioned, the man smiling before grabbing his bag and pulling out several glass bottles. They were filled with a black powder of some sort, except the last one which had some pink dye mixed in as well, along with a fuse at the top that could be lit by a simple flame.

“I’ve been able to make it work with everything I’ve tried, though I haven’t really pressed much more than what I needed at the moment,” Jack admitted, bringing out one last thing from the bag. She heard Sasha snort when he did, placing the metallic tool onto the table as well. “Gunpowder, the black stuff here, and other semi-solid chemicals have been made without too much problem. If I know how the material is put together, at some level at least, I can transmute any other material into it. The costs are dependent on amounts, what I’m starting from, and how much Mana is already present. It can get a little slow sometimes, but it’s very nice regardless. Cool, right?”

Talking with this man, who wasn’t far off from her own age, reminded her of talking to one of those over-excited children showing off their toys. She was relatively sure that the curved metallic tool on the side was the so-called pistol, a weapon able to shoot a metal projectile fast enough to instantly kill a monster if it was hit right. A dangerous thing, and yet he treated its presence so casually.

Vera had seen veterans treating weapons they’d carried for decades with more wariness. It was… she wasn’t sure what to call this. Pulling out a weapon capable of such swift lethality in front of a Royal would’ve qualified the otherworlder for a death sentence, yet he never seemed to consider that implication. Did he even know of it?

The other world is a strange place.

She hoped nobody else would step into this reality if this was how they were all like. Either incredibly untrusting and hostile or entirely without self-awareness while also without the ability to keep quiet. And, to put an extra layer of complexity on top, both seemed to own incredibly rare Affinities.

“So you have only truly attempted to transmute other materials into ones used for your weapon?” Vera asked, starting to wonder what the limits of the man’s abilities truly were.

“Basically, yeah,” Jack confirmed. “I… should’ve probably tried to push it a little more than that, shouldn’t I?”

“If you saw no benefit from it at the time, few can blame you for not doing as much,” she lied, though it seemed to assure him regardless. Looking around, she was able to find a small teaspoon on one of the shelves that contained plates and cutlery. “Could you transform this silver into gold?”

“I mean… probably?” he supposed. Vera looked on as she sat back down on the other couch, spotting the moment where his Core was pulled on and the golden shine began to appear on the spoon. It was a mild coloring at first, barely moving away from the original shine, but a minute more allowed half of its surface to be covered. “Okay, I can’t do more than that at once. Going from normal silver to gold is much more expensive than I thought it would be.”

She was handed back the spoon, and Vera was immediately able to notice the change in weight and balance. It wasn’t just the surface that had been transmuted but everything inside as well. With nearly half of it being changed as well, and the density of gold being double that of silver, that would have to be… twelve grams of pure gold sitting in her palm? Not too massive a sum, compared to what their coffers contained, but the fact that it had been created in the span of two minutes made her eyes shine.

This man is suddenly very useful.

And maybe he had even more potential than she’d found just now.

“Do you have any clues on what determines the pricing of transmuting one specific material into another?” Vera questioned. “Would it be easier to, say, transmute silver into tin instead of gold?”

“Uhm… my gut feeling says ‘yes?’” Jack replied, sounding rather unsure himself. “I’ve been starting to think that the atomic number of the basic elements might have some backing in the cost, with a larger distance between them being a higher cost, but it hasn’t really been too consistent. And the fact that I’m usually making stuff that’s made of more elements, and there might be a lot of different elements in this reality than the old one, complicates it even more.”

A list of the elements? Vera wasn’t too sure there was a standardized list of such things, but it was an intriguing theory. With how little information there was regarding this ‘Metamancy,’ it wouldn’t hurt to make notes.

“Regardless of whether you think it’s a semi-flawed idea, it wouldn’t hurt to try it out,” Vera said, her smile seeming to cheer him up. So easy to manipulate, honestly. “I assume that these… atomic numbers you mentioned have some correlation to density? If so, perhaps you could try to change this gold into platinum and see if it is easier to do? And maybe the remaining silver afterward, to see if the costs for transforming that into platinum is somewhere close to transforming it into gold.”

“Damn, you might be a little better at this than I am,” Jack commented when she finished her proposal, chuckling at his own expense. She mirrored it, making it seem more lighthearted than anything. “Gold into platinum… here we go, I suppose.”

Pulling on the Core was faster this time around, the man barely needing a second before the gold was steadily replaced by a light-gray coloring once again. She could hear it as he muttered a few words in surprise at the speed of it all, making Vera smile once again. It worked as she’d hoped, the cost of transforming the gold into platinum being reduced to almost nothing.

Even with just this, she was going to work hard to keep him around. While gold had its place in the economy, with its high worth to the people and to the Royal Mages who used it in excess to fuel some of their more esoteric rituals, platinum was far rarer. That was because one of them could be harvested from the Dungeon every three years, veins of the ore fully grown then, but platinum didn’t carry that potential. Despite wishing for it heavily, it never appeared in the dungeon like other resources.

No Dungeon on the entire continent contained the metal, if you went by what the public had been told. Some places far off might’ve been in possession of one which did, but it didn’t matter here where the price was nearly fifteen times as high as gold.

Other than expensive imports, they had no way of getting the metal.

That had changed now.

“Just a third of the cost,” Jack commented, handing back the spoon with shock. It had taken a few more minutes to transform the other half of the spoon into gold, but it didn’t matter to Vera. If she handled this well, she suddenly had a great boon for the country. “Kinda shocked at that difference.”

“Magic can be shocking when you learn just how efficient it can become,” she agreed wholeheartedly, putting the spoon back onto the table. “Do you think your Spell, Transmute Solid, could change the structure of a material instead of changing it into a different one?”

“Uh, could you be more specific?”

“Do you feel as if you have a chance at making diamonds from coal?”

From the way that the man’s eyes shined after thinking it over, she knew this exchange could become a very profitable one.