Yes, it was indeed the one—the Seventh-Class Pill, Panacea. Capable of instantly curing any human disease. Valm had created it a few years ago while traveling between kingdoms in search of the best healing academies. Luck smiled upon him—he accidentally stumbled upon a rare ingredient, a flower called Goddess’s Tear. This capricious plant couldn’t be preserved for long without special treatments once plucked from its stem, so Valm had to prepare the pills right there, in the middle of the mountain road. He managed to make three—two of the eighth class and this one, of the seventh.

  “ Yes, Master Alkus. As promised, this is it. The Panacea. Seventh class.”

  “You are an incredible alchemist, Master Valm!” said the old mage, closing the case. “I know no one in the kingdom capable of creating a Panacea.”

  “ Oh, please, I was just lucky.”

  Alkus removed his barrier and headed for the door.

  “ Best of luck to you, Master Valm!”

  The alchemist gave a short nod and deactivated the barrier around the Citadel. It was time to arrange the furniture in his new home. Tonight, he would sleep here.

  For the past few days, a stifling atmosphere had hung over the mayor’s estate. The servants moved around on tiptoe, careful not to make even the slightest noise. The only thing that prevented complete silence from consuming the place was the mayor’s curses and his daughter’s pitiful groans.

  “Father! It hurts! It hurts so much!”

  “ Hold on, my dear, just a little longer. The alchemists and healers from the capital should arrive soon…”

  The woman lying under the thick blanket groaned again and arched her back. Her face shifted from green to a reddish-brown hue. A hoarse scream echoed through the mansion.

  “Father, it hurts!”

  Gorp clenched his fists. It hurt him too. Hurt to watch his only child suffer. Deep down, he knew he bore some of the blame—he had seen his daughter beat servants to death with that cursed whip more than once but never said a word to her about it… Yet he wasn’t ready to acknowledge that or take responsibility.

  It was all that damned Valm’s fault! His beloved Sari had simply been unlucky to cross paths with him. Nearly a week had passed since she began suffering like this, and no cure had been found yet. Perhaps the capital’s alchemists or healers could help… If only he could get his hands on a Panacea… Gorp had searched every available auction house and trading company in the kingdom, but no one had such a pill.

  No other medicine, as the local alchemists had said, would help without knowing the exact recipe for the poison Sari had ingested. The mayor recalled the vial the alchemist had given him at their meeting. Should he give that liquid to his daughter? But what if it didn’t ease her pain and instead made it worse? He would be the one to do that with his own hands…

  Gorp already knew that Valm wasn’t a local alchemist. He had arrived in the city a few months ago and had been attending a monsterology course at the local academy. Strangely, neither the professors nor the students had any idea that Valm was an alchemist, as if he had kept it a secret. The mayor had also been informed that Valm had previously studied in the capital, also in the Faculty of Monsterology, but finding any older information about him was difficult. Gorp had even involved the Kingdom’s Secret Service in the investigation. And yet, time kept slipping through his fingers like sand.

  Sari screamed again in pain. The mayor placed a hand on her forehead.

  “ Hold on, my dear, hold on… The healers will be here soon; they’re already on their way…”

  “ Father, I can’t! It feels like I’m burning inside!”

  Gorp jumped to his feet and left the room.

  “ Father! Don’t leave me alone! Father!”

  He couldn’t bring himself to look back, just as he couldn’t bring himself to stay with her any longer. A maid stood silently outside the door.

  “ Watch over her!” he ordered.

  “ Master Mayor, Sir Ladbor is waiting for you in the parlor.”

  Gorp merely nodded and went to meet his guest. Ladbor… Captain of the Silver Dragons and his daughter’s fiancé. Walking down the brightly lit corridor, the mayor pondered what to say. The captain thirsted for the alchemist’s blood, and stopping him was becoming increasingly difficult. Ladbor had a fiery temper.

  “How is she?”

  The moment Gorp entered the parlor, a young man in his thirties, clad in lavish armor with a large silver dragon on his chestplate, jumped up to meet him. Gorp shook his head.

  “ No changes. Neither better nor worse.”

  “ I’ll kill that bastard, Gorp! First, I’ll crush his arms and legs until he gives up the cure, and then I’ll tear off his head and mount it on a stake!”

  “ Calm down! It’s not time yet! First, we save my daughter, and then we’ll kill him. But quietly—so no one even thinks to look our way. Do you understand me, Ladbor?!”

  “ Gorp, I don’t understand why you’re hesitating… You’re not yourself.”

  “ Ohhh. Ladbor… What class of alchemist do you think would choose you, a B-class adventurer, as a patron? Be honest.”

  “Probably a third-class one…”

  “Exactly. Valm is certainly above the fifth class. What kind of power do you think stands behind him? Can you handle the consequences? So shut your mouth and do as I say. Do you understand?”

  Ladbor turned red but silently swallowed the mayor’s words.

  “ I asked if you understood!”

  “Yes, Gorp. I understand.”

  The mayor sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. Ladbor was an arrogant fool with the brains of a chicken. And if he weren’t the strongest adventurer in the city, Gorp would never have agreed to his engagement to his daughter.

  At the same time, completely unaware of the storm brewing behind his back, Valm watched with excitement as his laboratory was being assembled. The moment the builders stepped away, even for a minute, he would approach and run his hand over the thick walls of stainless alloy. It was no ordinary metal—its most remarkable property was its near-immunity to any magic. That was a necessary condition for the experiments Valm planned to conduct on monsters. They simply had to be as close to perfection as possible.

  “ You have a visitor, Master Valm!” one of the workers called out.

  The alchemist walked to the gate, where the head of the Merchant Guild awaited him.

  “ Manager Pak! You came personally… I’m honored to welcome you to my humble Citadel!”

  Pak looked around in fascination as the alchemist led him to his office.

  “ I wouldn’t call this humble, Master Valm! There’s so much magic here that it’s hard for me to breathe. Your Citadel is… quite something, I must say! But I’m here for another matter.”

  He pulled out a thin folder containing a dozen pages inside.

  “The contract for the supply of monsters, just as you requested. Do you need time to review it?”

  “ Oh, that won’t be necessary, Master Pak!”

  Valm quickly read through the text, scrutinizing the numbers in particular, then signed both copies of the contract with a sharp motion.

  “ The advance payment, Mr. Manager!”

  Valm handed over a heavy purse along with the signed contract.

  “A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Alchemist! Since I’m already here, would you mind giving me a short tour?”

  “ With pleasure, Mr. Pak, with pleasure!”

  Valm was truly proud of the Citadel, so he didn’t stop talking for the next hour, showing his guest nearly every corner.

  “ But… I still don’t understand, Mr. Valm. What is all this for?” Pak twirled his finger in the air.

  Valm stopped abruptly, stunned. To him, it was so obvious…

  “I want to create the largest and most accurate encyclopedia of the monsters of our world!”

  Pak didn’t even know how to respond. The alchemist said it like a child. A child who believes in a fairy tale. It was so sincere…

  “A noble goal, Mr. Valm!”

  On his way back to the city, Pak pondered—how could an adult so vastly overestimate his own strength? Dozens of scholars worked on various monster catalogs, and this young man wanted to create the largest encyclopedia all by himself?! Was he an idiot, or just na?ve? Pak shook his head. No, if there was one thing that alchemist certainly wasn’t, it was an idiot. No idiot could have cornered the mayor like that. The manager understood that sooner or later, in this confrontation, he too would have to pick a side. But for now, he was unsure.

  From the day the contract for the supply of monsters was signed, Valm started badgering the head of the craft guild to speed up the installation of laboratory equipment. The alchemist, though not very skilled in reading technical blueprints, stuck his nose everywhere, which, in truth, hindered the work more than it helped. Yet, given his enthusiasm, none of the workers dared to say so.

  And over the next week, two significant events took place. First, the trade guild delivered a dozen first-class monsters, partially filling the empty cages of the Citadel. And second, Valm received a letter from the mayor, agreeing to let the alchemist strike his daughter twice with a whip in the square in front of the trade guild. But because Valm, overjoyed by the arrival of the monsters, had sat down opposite the cages to make the first sketches for his Encyclopedia, he had shoved the letter from Gorp into his pocket and completely forgotten about it.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  The monsters in the cages hissed, growled, screamed, and some even spoke, observing Valm with as much curiosity as he observed them. The alchemist himself sat opposite the cages with a clipboard and several sheets of paper, sketching diligently. He tried to capture each monster from multiple angles and in motion. And he was succeeding—his drawings turned out better than most engravings in the monster catalogs he had seen.

  No one was happier about this than the laboratory equipment installers—the client was neither seen nor heard at the site. It was almost idyllic, until one day, Gorp arrived at the Citadel in person. Hearing him bellowing at the gates, Valm frowned and set his sketches aside.

  “ Mr. Mayor, I believe I know the reason that brought you to me today.”

  Gorp nearly went mad at those words. He had waited four whole days for a response to his letter, holding his suffering daughter by the hand. The hope that the capital’s healers and alchemists could help her had proved futile.

  “Then perhaps you’ll finally answer now, Mr. Alchemist—when would it be convenient for you to settle our matter?!” he hissed through clenched teeth.

  Before the letter to Valm had been sent, a brief report from a Kingdom Secret Service agent had landed on the mayor’s desk. Not even a report—just a simple note. It contained only one sentence: “Valm is the last apprentice of the Toxic Dragon.” But it changed everything. And at the same time, it put things into place.

  The Toxic Dragon. Mothers across the world used this name to scare their disobedient children. That merciless beast eliminated enemies of the empire—or those whom the emperors designated as enemies. And it didn’t matter if it was a single person or an entire people—when the Toxic Dragon came for them, they were already corpses merely walking their last steps by inertia. And those old monsters who had stood behind the alchemist’s teacher were feared even by the emperors who once commanded the Toxic Dragon. No one could say for certain whether they were now standing behind Valm, just as they once had behind his master.

  “ Now. There’s no need to delay. I’ll be at the square in an hour.”

  Valm returned to the Citadel and got into his capsule. He even felt a bit guilty for having completely forgotten about the mayor’s letter. The alchemist sped toward the city at the maximum speed his capsule could manage, eager to get it over with and return to his sketches. He still had three monsters left to draw, and now this mayor with his daughter was in the way.

  When Valm stopped his capsule at the square, Gorp was already there with his daughter in a wheelchair, along with several attendants. As the alchemist noticed, Gorp’s guards had quickly cleared out any onlookers. Perhaps, if Valm had more time, he would have been outraged by such actions, but right now, he didn’t care.

  Valm wasn’t skilled with weapons, and he had never held a whip in his hands before. So when Gorp placed it in his hands, he hesitated. The alchemist was also surprised by the weight of the whip. How do they even swing this thing? Watching from the side, it seemed so easy and simple… He gripped the handle tightly, letting go of the tightly coiled loops. The firm lash, woven from monster sinews, fell onto the cobblestones, scratching the stone.

  “ Just do it already, you freak!” Sari screamed and immediately doubled over from the pain in her insides.

  As if in a dream, Valm pulled his hand back and to the side, then swung it forcefully toward the woman in the wheelchair. The whip came to life, hissed, and accelerated along the trajectory he had given it. But the lash fell helplessly to the ground, missing Sari by several meters. Of course, the distance… A still somewhat dazed Valm hadn’t even considered it.

  Around him, a few of the mayor’s attendants chuckled quietly.

  “That was your first strike, Mr. Alchemist!” Gorp immediately pointed out.

  Valm frowned. It wasn’t that he particularly wanted to hurt Sari—his poison had already been enveloping her nerve endings with acid over and over, slowly burning them away. And that pain was far worse than anything a whip could cause. But he had come here, so he had to finish the job. Four meters…

  Valm took five steps forward and repeated the same strike as before.

  Sari saw the lash flying toward her and, even seated, would have bowed… But a fresh wave of pain surged through her body, forcing her to bend forward—right into the path of the lash. And at that moment, they met—the thin skin of Sari’s face and the tightly woven monster sinews.

  Valm’s strike wasn’t strong—physically, he couldn’t have managed that—but the speed of the whip’s tip did its work.

  Sari’s nose was split in two, the delicate cartilage of the nasal septum torn apart. Then the lash ripped through her upper lip, knocking out her front teeth and driving them into her lower jaw, before finally slicing through her chin to the bone.

  Sari gasped and recoiled so violently that the frail wheelchair couldn’t withstand it and toppled over with her. Meanwhile, as Valm slowly approached, rolling the whip back into tight loops, Gorp looked in despair at his daughter’s bloodied face.

  “ You’ve fulfilled your part of the deal. Now it’s my turn.” the alchemist said, returning the whip to the mayor. “Where’s the vial I gave you at our first meeting?”

  The confused mayor, in front of his daughter, pulled a thin vial from the storage and handed it to Valm. The latter quickly tore off the cork, leaned in, and, grabbing Sari by her bloodied cheeks, poured the liquid into her mouth, forcing her to swallow. Within moments, the woman’s brownish-green skin began to turn pale.

  “So, all this time, the cure was…” Gorp couldn’t believe it.

  For nearly three weeks, his daughter had suffered unbearable, hellish pain, while the cure had been lying peacefully in his own storage.

  “ I told you to give it to your daughter when the pain became unbearable. Wasn’t she in pain?”

  Valm let the empty vial drop onto the pavement and, turning around, headed toward his capsule.

  “ Father?” Sari, despite how awful she felt, immediately understood everything.

  Gorp seethed with rage. He didn’t even notice that blood was still trickling from his daughter’s pale face. That alchemist… That bastard had made it so that all of his daughter’s suffering was on his, Gorp’s, conscience. He clenched his fists.

  “ You’d be better off dead, you scum!” the mayor shouted at Valm’s back.

  The alchemist walked on, paying no attention to the cries. He had done exactly as he was supposed to—and as he wanted. Only when he was near his capsule did he pause for a moment, feeling a heavy gaze on his back. Valm turned around but saw no one. So, shrugging, he silently got into the capsule and headed to the Citadel.

  Ladbor, who had been watching Valm from the rooftop of a tall building several blocks away, jumped down onto the sidewalk from a height of over fifteen meters. He had memorized the alchemist’s face well. And he was sure they would meet again. No matter how big this city was—it was too small for the both of them.

  By the time Valm reached the Citadel, he had already forgotten about Gorp and his daughter. Monsters—finding their weakness—had to be his only goal. The alchemist believed that all these creatures, regardless of their strength, had a common weakness. Just like monster cores were their shared trait. The key was to find it.

  In some ways, he followed the example of his late master—who had known human weaknesses so well that many of the poisons he created were impossible to detoxify. Unfortunately, however, poisons had no effect on monsters. Not even the strongest ones on the weakest of them. The moment a poisonous substance entered a monster’s body, the mana within its core neutralized it instantly.

  For Valm, this was both incredibly fascinating and deeply frustrating. He had fought so hard to become the Toxic Dragon’s apprentice for the sole purpose of destroying monsters with poisons. And he had already experimented extensively. By now, he knew with certainty that it was pointless to use natural poisons derived from plants, animals, or microbes. Synthetic poisons weren’t any better. He had tested various delivery methods—inhalation, ingestion, contact… The mechanism of action didn’t matter either—whether neurotoxic, hemotoxic, asphyxiating, cytotoxic, carcinogenic, hepatotoxic, or nephrotoxic… The monsters’ bodies simply didn’t react to these substances at all! Everything that killed humans effortlessly did nothing to these creatures.

  Valm sat down again in front of one of the cages and placed a clipboard on his lap.

  “Your turn, you freak!” he said to the monster crouched silently in the corner.

  It was a Pamlak—one of the weakest known monsters. The creature resembled a grotesque, not particularly massive being with a skin texture like rough, weathered tree bark or cracked stone. Its massive maw was lined with sharp, yellowed teeth, giving it a menacing look, while its cold, blue eyes gleamed with an unsettling glare. A bony protrusion—perhaps a skull or some kind of growth—crowned its head, adding to its eerie appearance.

  Its shaggy fur—or whatever material covered its body—looked chaotic and unkempt, resembling tangled smoke or wild moss. Its eyes and mouth radiated a restrained aggression and ruthlessness, embodying an image of primal, untamed force. This monster inhabited dark dungeons and forests, though, fortunately, it was far from a dominant predator, occupying the lowest rung of the food chain.

  Despite its fearsome maw, all four of its limbs were comically short, ending in cloven hooves like a pig’s. In the wild, this made it incredibly slow, forcing it to subsist mainly on plants or rotting carrion. Alone, it posed no threat to humans—one could easily outrun it even at a walking pace. But everything changed when Pamlamaks gathered into massive swarms of several thousand. Then, moving like a living avalanche, they devoured entire villages, leaving behind only barren, dung-covered wastelands.

  Over the next hour, Valm meticulously sketched the monster, then picked up a stick to prod it into changing position. He wanted to make sketches from every possible angle. But the moment the stick touched its skin, the creature lunged forward with a feral growl, snapping it in half with its powerful jaws.

  “Damn beast!” Valm barked. “I swear, you’ll be my first test subject!”

  The alchemist pulled out a new stick from storage and struck the monster several times from above—on its head and thick back. The Pamlak, unable to jump, responded with an irritated screech before grudgingly waddling to the other corner of the cage.

  Satisfied, Valm hummed contentedly and returned to his chair to sketch the creature’s back. He was nearly finished when he noticed the head of the artisans’ guild standing nearby.

  “Master Mahur? Do you need something?”

  A wide grin stretched across the guild leader’s face.

  “ We’ve completed the installation of your laboratory, Master Valm!” he said cheerfully. “ Please come and personally conduct the test launch and verify that everything meets your requirements!”

  This was the best news the alchemist had heard in a long time. He jumped to his feet and nearly ran toward his new toy.

  From the outside, the laboratory looked strikingly minimalistic—a simple steel cube, twenty meters per side. No windows, no visible doors.

  “ As you requested, it is fully autonomous, with internal power sources. Air, water, and other supplies are constantly renewed. Nearly one hundred percent resistance to external and internal magic, though it is itself an artifact of spatial magic! This baby could withstand being submerged in a volcano for weeks!” Mahur boasted enthusiastically.

  Valm approached the steel wall and placed his palm against it.

  “ Open.” he commanded.

  The surface rippled like liquid, and a rectangular opening appeared in the half-meter-thick steel wall—large enough for two people to walk through side by side.

  “ The entrance and exit will form wherever you touch the surface and give a command!” Mahur added proudly. “And it will adjust to the size you need to pull any monster inside!”

  Indeed, the laboratory was a spatial artifact—the interior was at least two hundred meters across. The moment Valm stepped inside, overhead lights flickered to life one by one.

  “ What’s the minimum and maximum energy consumption?”

  “Under normal, planned operation, two first-class cores per day. But if you activate additional external defenses or try to contain a powerful monster alive… it’s hard to say. Energy consumption could become unpredictable. Perhaps even a fifth-class core per hour…”

  Valm nodded and walked between the rows of equipment, lightly brushing his fingers over the instruments. Stopping at the central control station, he activated all the holographic displays and powered up the manipulator arms.

  “ I told you, bastard… You’ll be the first.”

  He muttered to himself.