Last Gun Alchemist

The group turned toward Diane in stunned silence.

So, she was actually awake?

That was what most of them thought, judging by the way several pairs of eyes remained fixed on her.

Ezra was the only one who didn’t seem surprised.

He simply continued reading through the document Jeremy had placed on the table, his eyes moving from one line to another while the conversation continued around him.

"She’s not wrong, though."

The last male upperclassman nodded in agreement.

"Yes."

Jeremy replied with a pleased expression.

"That’s why I spent some money printing extra copies of the documents, so all of us can read through the written information on the Ghost Crawler that Professor Nine already prepared for us."

He reached beneath the table and brought out a stack of documents.

The papers were still neatly arranged, and Jeremy began handing a copy to each member of the group.

"Here."

He passed one to Emily.

Then another to Agnes.

Then he continued around the table until everyone had received a copy.

Diane accepted hers without opening her eyes.

She placed the document on the table in front of herself, her eyelids still closed as if she were preparing to sleep again rather than study a monster.

Emily looked down at her copy and began scrolling through the digital version on her Zphone Tablet.

Her eyebrows slowly drew together.

"Isn’t this information only about the small organisms found inside the monster?"

She asked while moving through the document.

"Yes, but if you check the other pages in the documents..."

Jeremy opened his own copy and turned it toward the page he was talking about.

He placed one finger against a large blank section.

"This empty space is for our own research work on the monster."

He pointed toward the blank page.

"There’s more."

He turned another page and showed them.

Emily immediately looked through her own copy.

The other upperclassmen did the same, turning through the documents until they reached the empty pages Jeremy had mentioned.

"So, we will have to do our own research on the monster, huh?"

Agnes said lazily as she leaned back in her chair.

She looked at the blank pages for a moment before resting her chin against one hand.

"We can all do this during our study time or back at our homes."

Jeremy calmly explained the plan.

"Then every Friday and Saturday, we will compare our research together and begin full strategy planning against the Ghost Crawler."

His expression became more serious as he looked around the table.

"We have just two more months to go, so we all have to be ready."

The members nodded.

Nobody argued with him.

Two months might have sounded like a long time, but they were preparing to enter the Academy’s Black Zone and face an Arcanist-rank Monster.

There was no room for laziness.

Ezra gave a small nod before closing his document.

Diane did the same, although she still looked as though she could fall asleep at any moment.

At almost the exact moment Jeremy finished speaking, the bell rang throughout the club building.

The sound marked the end of their club activities for the day.

Jeremy glanced around the room.

Students were already packing their things, pushing chairs back, collecting documents, and preparing to leave the meeting area.

"That’s the end for today."

He announced.

He waited until several of the students had started leaving before speaking again.

"We should try to start the research tonight and see our progress when we meet again tomorrow."

Jeremy picked up his own documents and began packing them away.

"Don’t wait until the last moment."

He gave the group one final look, then he left with the other upperclassmen.

Ezra gathered his belongings as well.

He left with his usual group, except Vera and Diane were not with him this time.

It was only Lucy and Cyrus who walked beside him.

The three of them eventually made their way out of the club building and back into the Academy grounds.

The evening air had already begun cooling.

Students from other clubs were also leaving the Mix Arena, creating a steady stream of people along the Academy roads.

When they reached the area where their paths separated, Cyrus went his own way.

Ezra and Lucy then boarded a Noble Steam-Carriage and headed back home.

The next day arrived.

As planned, the research began.

Each member of the group had spent the previous night studying the information Professor Nine had provided about the Ghost Crawler, and they brought whatever they had discovered back to the group.

However, it had only been one day.

So, their research on the Ghost Crawler wasn’t very deep yet.

There simply hadn’t been enough time to investigate every part of the monster properly.

Still, the group compared what each person had found.

One student had focused on the monster’s physical body.

Another had looked into its venom.

Someone else had researched its webs.

Others had focused on the small organisms living inside it.

They placed their information together and discussed the monster from different angles before the Research Unit had to move on to their work inside the Small Organism Farm for the rest of their club activity time.

Like that, time passed as usual.

A cycle of studying, academic life, training, researching, and planning continued day after day.

The Academy remained busy.

Students continued moving through their classes, clubs continued their activities, and the first-years gradually became more familiar with the demands of Academy life.

The days turned into weeks.

And before Ezra and his group realized it, there were only a few weeks left before the day they would journey into the Academy’s Black Zone.

During the months leading up to that day, Ezra had also made considerable progress of his own.

He had finally reached the stage where he could use the Law of Inversion, and he had passed the second test Professor Kent held for those who are ready.

Although, he purposely didn’t show the full extent of his understanding during the test.

At the moment, Ezra still wasn’t at the stage where he could turn an Alchemy attack into another material closely related to its physical properties.

However, he had effortlessly destroyed the close-to-Adept-rank Alchemy attack Professor Kent had thrown at him.

That alone had been enough to show that his understanding of the Law was already solid.

Selena Galehart, Starke Drakes, Princess Stella Aethelmont, Lyra Ashenlocke, Page Ashenlocke, Nate Ashenlocke, and Priscilla Ashenlocke also managed to join the students who completed the Law of Inversion class.

Each of them received the thirty points given for completing the class.

Then, around the middle of the second week, the students who had mastered the first Law began training to master the Law of Magnetism.

For Ezra, however, the Law of Magnetism wasn’t the only thing occupying his time.

He continued his studies and research into his invention.

And eventually, he completed the full schematics for the heat-stimulating bandage.

The design was finally finished.

Now, all that remained was for him to actually create it and test whether it would work as intended.

He also began working a little on breaking down the Nano Path.

For now, he was only laying out the diameters and determining what shapes the nanobots should have.

Since he wasn’t trying to build the entire system immediately.

Instead, he was breaking the problem down into smaller parts.

Ezra also began breaking down what he knew about Artificial Intelligence.

Using his Book of Memories together with his own understanding, he tried to organize the knowledge he possessed into something that could be used within an Alchemy System.

The idea was still in its early stages, and there were still many things he needed to understand before he could create an actual AI system for the Nanobots using Alchemy.

But that didn’t bother him.

For now, he only needed to understand the foundation.

Step by step.

Piece by piece.

He would eventually put everything together.

Ezra also finished reading all the books on Essence that Professor Nine had recommended to him, along with all the books related to his Academy courses.

Because of that preparation, when the main test week finally arrived, Ezra moved through the examinations with ease.

The tests were not difficult enough to stop him.

He had already spent too much time studying the material for the questions to become a serious problem.

However, the actual results wouldn’t be revealed until the end of the semester.

There was still time before everyone would know how well they had performed.

Many things had happened during those months.

There had been growth.

There had been new knowledge.

There had been new problems.

And there had also been many things Ezra had managed to remove from his list of things that still needed to be accomplished.

Now, another matter had returned to the front of his attention.

The Ghost Crawler.

Inside the Craft & Research Seekers club laboratory.

Ezra’s group was seated at what had now become their usual gathering place.

The documents containing their combined research were spread across the table.

There were several pages now, unlike the nearly empty sheets they had received when the project first began.

Jeremy picked up the main report and began reading it aloud.

"The Ghost Crawler..."

His eyes moved across the written information.

"An eight-legged creature with fangs filled with venom. It has the ability to spit venom and also produce webs that are sticky enough to lock a person in place if the webs wrap around their body."

He turned the page.

"Because of the elasticity properties of the webs..."

The second male upperclassman continued while looking at his own copy of the research report.

"The webs are difficult to break once they have wrapped around a person, which means anyone caught by them could become an easy target for the Ghost Crawler."

Emily listened while looking down at the report in front of her.

She still seemed unable to completely accept some of the information they had discovered.

"I still can’t believe just one Ghost Crawler was able to wipe out an entire town without anyone noticing."

Her voice carried a mixture of fear and amazement.

She looked down at another section of the report.

"It was only after more and more towns began to vanish that the local guards finally noticed something was wrong with the reduction in the population of commoners."

She tapped the section where the information had been written.

"They first thought that maybe the commoners had begun migrating from their towns to other places."

Emily slowly shook her head.

"But after searching those towns..."

She paused.

"No findings were made."

A sigh escaped her mouth.

Even after reading the report several times, the information still sent a chill through her.

The idea of an entire town disappearing without anyone immediately understanding what had happened was disturbing enough.

But the fact that it had happened more than once made it worse.

"It was after the local guards who were stationed in one of the towns went missing..."

Agnes spoke while reading through the report.

"That the suspicion finally began to ignite."

She turned another page.

The group became quieter.

The Ghost Crawler wasn’t simply a monster they were going to study from a safe distance.

They were preparing to enter the Black Zone and hunt it.

And after reading what a single Ghost Crawler had already done to several towns, everyone at the table was beginning to understand why their upperclassmen had taken this mission seriously from the very beginning.

The research they had gathered was still incomplete.

There were still many questions they needed to answer.

But now they finally had something to work with.

And with only a few weeks remaining before their journey into the Black Zone, the group could no longer afford to treat the Ghost Crawler as just another Academy assignment.

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