Management of a Novice Alchemist: Volume 1 (eBook)

Mizuho Itsuki (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
250 Seiten
J-Novel Club (Verlag)
978-1-7183-3480-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Sarasa, a newly graduated state alchemist, has been gifted a shop of her very own by her master. The catch is...it's an abandoned building on the frontier! She sets out on the journey there, dreaming of the elegant life that awaits her as a shop owner, but she's quickly disappointed to learn just how much of a fixer-upper the place really is. Still, even if she's not thrilled with the rustic location, she's got a shop to run or she won't be able to make a living! Surrounded by cute part-timers and kindly villagers, Sarasa is determined to stand on her own as an alchemist. This laid-back story of a magical work life is now open for business!

Textauszug

Episode 1: Graduation!

The Royal Alchemist Academy was the sole institution in this country where a person could get certified by the government to become an alchemist.

If they could just make it to graduation and get their certificate, that person would then be set for life. From graduation onward, they’d be living on easy street.

But competition was high, so getting in was hard, and graduating even harder. That’s the kind of super prestigious school we’re talking about.

Being an alchemist was synonymous with being one of the elite. It wasn’t just that they were able to craft all the potions and artifacts that were essential to people’s lifestyles, but also that demand always outstripped supply.

There were also price controls instituted by the state, which meant that no one could undercut the competition. As a result, profit margins were high, and so long as an alchemist was discerning in what they chose to produce, they didn’t have to worry about items going unsold.

Simply put, they made bank.

So if a person could just manage to become an alchemist, they’d never go hungry again—no, more than just that, they could get by without working very hard at all.

One other unique trait of the Royal Alchemist Academy was that, if they worked hard enough, anyone—a commoner, or even an orphan—could get in.

There were textbooks that taught the necessary material for the entrance examination, and they were free to anybody who applied for them. What’s more, taking the exam didn’t cost anything.

Now, obviously, if a person was illiterate, then they were out of luck. But even in an orphanage, anyone who wanted to learn how to read could, so such a person could make up for what they lacked with a solid work ethic.

Furthermore, those who got good grades were exempted from tuition fees, and there were monetary rewards for each exam, leading to an environment where “all you need to do is study.”

However, because of how ideal that environment was, its gates were tightly guarded.

For a commoner or orphan, alchemy was more or less the only job that would let them move up in the world. That meant there were a lot of people trying to get in, and the exam naturally had to be difficult. Added to that, the children of the nobility, who had their own dedicated tutors, also took the test, so it was impossible to outdo the competition with half-hearted effort.

And even once a person got past the entrance examination, they still couldn’t let their guard down.

There was an exam every four months. If a student’s grade on it didn’t meet the academic standards set by the school, they were expelled without mercy.

Obviously, there was no such thing as a makeup exam, not even for the nobility.

The end result, it was said, was that less than one in ten students who made it into the school would be able to attend graduation five years later.

That was the school that I, Sarasa Feed, would graduate from today.

Man, it sure was tough!

Was I excited to be graduating?

To be honest, I haven’t had time to feel it. After all, I’d had the graduation exam to think about up until yesterday. The results had only been announced this morning.

If, by some awful stroke of luck, I hadn’t passed, then I would have been in for the nightmare of showing up to school only to be unable to attend the graduation ceremony.

I don’t know who came up with this schedule, but it is just wrong.

Well, not that I’d heard of anyone ever actually failing the graduation exam, since anybody with grades poor enough to do so was shown the door long before it came to that.

If someone really let their guard down, that would be another matter, but just the thought of being left all alone in the classroom on graduation day had been enough to make us put more effort in than we would on any ordinary test.

The only real risk was getting sick, perhaps. Of course, everyone had known that, so we’d done our absolute best to take care of our health, and anyone who’d felt even slightly uneasy about it would take time off school to rest up.

For my part, I put in my very best effort too!

Thanks to that, I’d ended up receiving not just my diploma, but a monetary reward for my exam scores.

Yeah...and I’m really grateful for it.

Thinking back, in the time since I’d lost my parents at the age of eight and was put into an orphanage, with the exception of taking the bare minimum amount of part-time work needed to get by, I’d done nothing but study like mad, as if I was using it as a way to escape from reality.

I know that must have caused trouble for the folks at the orphanage, but there was an unspoken understanding that everyone there should support any child who was aiming to get into the Alchemist Academy, so no one had ever criticized me for it.

Although, the other unspoken understanding was that, if I did manage to become an alchemist, I was supposed to send donations to repay everything they’d done for me.

As a matter of fact, it was the donations from alchemists who’d once lived in that orphanage that had spared us from living in abject poverty.

Thanks to being such a study bug, I’d managed to get into the school with grades that were pretty impressive for a commoner. That had entitled me to be exempt from tuition, to be given a scholarship, and to live in the dorms, allowing me to move out of the orphanage when I’d only been ten years old.

From then on, my days had been made up of nothing but part-time work and studying.

Fortunately, I’d been able to get hired by an alchemist’s shop, and the owner had taken me on as her apprentice. That had turned the job from work into study, and I’d been able to build up enough academic ability to earn exam performance bonuses. Sadly, I’d only been able to take the top score a handful of times, but everyone above me in the rankings had been a noble, you know?

So why was that situation “fortunate”? Well, it’s because there was a custom—or maybe “tradition”—when it came to exam performance rewards. Normally, the reward money for highest exam scores was paid out to the top three students. If that rule were to have been strictly applied, I’d have gotten about half the reward money that I actually did.

But when a noble was in the top ranks, they were traditionally expected to forgo the money as a sort of “noble obligation,” and they ran the risk of being mocked if they accepted it.

When they declined the monetary reward, it automatically went to the next-highest-ranked student. That tradition was what had let me earn reward money for the majority of my exams. It wasn’t something that was enforced, of course, but the nobility had their pride and vanity. In the case of lesser nobles, some of them were even poorer than a wealthy commoner, so I think they must have had a hard time with it.

I was still super glad the tradition existed, though. Thanks to it, I was graduating with more than five million rhea saved up. The ordinary commoner couldn’t even earn five hundred thousand rhea a year, and I had ten times that much saved up!

Yep, I sure did work hard! Go me!

After all, while a little more than half of it was from my scholarship and all the monetary rewards, the rest had come from my part-time job!

Even accounting for the fact that living in the dorms had meant I’d paid nothing for room and board, it had still been really, really tough to earn this much in the time I hadn’t been busy with my studies.

Thankfully, my master had paid me a daily wage that was equivalent to what a commoner could earn for a full day’s work. It was an exceptional amount; I’d only earned that rate because I’d been an apprentice alchemist.

I’d been able to make that much as a part-time apprentice who’d only been available for a limited number of hours, so you can imagine just how much a professional alchemist made.

And starting today, I’m one of those alchemists!

I pulled the alchemy license that I had received at the graduation ceremony out of my pocket and stared at it. It was made of a mysterious substance, like a thin sheet of metal, but incredibly light and flexible. It bore the mark of an alchemist along with my name, and a certificate of graduation from the Royal Alchemist Academy. In addition to that, it had my magic crest recorded on it, and was designed to stop displaying anything if someone other than me was touching it. In a way, this thing was an alchemical masterpiece in its own right.

I had to put my hand over my mouth to stop myself from chuckling and grinning like an idiot. I’d look pretty suspicious doing that all alone in front of the gate, after all.

Alone...

That’s right, I’m alone.

With the graduation ceremony over, I was setting off on a new journey.

And yet here I was, in front of the school gates, all by my lonesome.

Yep, I sure did spend those five years doing nothing but study and work!

Thanks to that, even though I was leaving the school, there was no one who’d come see me off, and no one for me to go say goodbye to either.

As my classmates bid tearful farewells to their...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 11.3.2024
• Reihe/Serie: Management of a Novice Alchemist
• Illustrationen: Mizuho Itsuki
• Übersetzer: Mizuho Itsuki
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Schlagworte: apothecary • Coming of Age • cute girls • Fantasy world • lighthearted slow life • Light Novel • Slice of Life
• ISBN-10: 1-7183-3480-X / 171833480X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7183-3480-9 / 9781718334809