Three weeks have passed since Loyd left the atelier, and there is no sign of him returning.
I don’t know for sure why he left, but what I do know is that I’ve completely lost interest in him.
Loyd was third-rate as an exclusive mage, especially when it came to his picking rate, so even someone as lenient as me could only overlook it for so long.
The fact that he failed in getting materials about sixty percent of the time should tell you all. This lack of reliability as an exclusive mage is so bad, that I have been forced to clean up his mess over and over.
I have been constantly irritated lately, and lashing out at Loyd a lot.
But Loyd running away is very convenient for me. I wanted to work with a higher level exclusive mage anyway. I can’t call someone who is nothing but a burden to me a true partner.
It’s not bad to forget about him and find a new exclusive mage. In fact, it’s for the best. Surely.
I don’t need to be hung up on Loyd.
He couldn’t do his job well, had no sense of responsibility and was always selfish.
Why was someone so irresponsible my boyfriend all this time anyway?
Changing the subject, a new problem has popped up after he left.
I look at the pile of requests, and let out a big sigh.
“I really need to do something about all these requests…”
I can’t say things are going well for me right now. In fact, I might even call this situation troubling.
Alchemists work by taking materials picked by exclusive mages and transmuting them, so if one side of this operation is gone, it throws the whole thing off.
Without an exclusive mage, I can’t get materials, and I can’t transmute them.
I don’t have multiple exclusive mages like other ateliers, so I have no way to get materials without Loyd.
Currently, there are no exclusive mages in my atelier.
If an alchemist can’t complete a request for some reason, they can deny it or pass it along to someone else.
Both result in a demerit, but at least if the person the alchemist passes it off to succeeds, it minimizes the damage.
I’ve been to other ateliers to pass requests to them, but I was politely refused by all.
The materials are all too difficult to acquire, and all the exclusive mages refused, they said.
I don’t believe that. Even Loyd could pick them.
That just makes me angry towards them. I’m sure they’re laughing as they see someone as talented as me so troubled.
Some of the requests have gone past their time limit, and my atelier was demoted from A to B rank.
That is taking a big toll on me mentally. It takes about a year to go up just one rank.
At this rate, I’m going to go down to E rank in half a year.
I really need to look for a new exclusive mage.
…Ah, geez! I shouldn’t have accepted all these requests!
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This whole system of alchemist + exclusive mage is just odd. Per the earlier chapters she is a once in a generation alchemist who has created the new / better recipes for some of the best curatives now known, and yet the system is willing to allow her – the crème de la crème of A rank – to become E rank simply because she lost her supplier? A system like that makes all ranks worthless. Rank is supposed to inform the request giver on the ability of the one trying to take on the request. But if the best are regularly labelled the worst due to situations not entirely under their control, then in little time no one will trust any of the ranks, as an E rank may be superior to an A rank, or a B rank may be inferior to a D rank. Why should a quest giver pay more for an A rank when a B or even C rank may be more competent?
Furthermore, are there really no kings, nobles, or wealthy merchants in need of healing or some cure who would not finance adventurers to get the necessary materials? For that matter, why on earth do alchemists limit themselves to only one material gatherer rather than several – or at least a full team per excursion? It is way too inefficient. The entire arrangement comes across as a deus ex used by the author to justify the highly unusual background he wanted for the MC. Which further comes across as unnecessarily complicated (and at times irrationally circular) reasoning.
Having such irrationality in the first few chapters is something I’ve come to unfortunately accept from many stories, as some use illogical arrangements to justify the next step, which is where the story actually takes off. And then the story never look back or revisits their past irrational foundation, allowing it to fade from the readers’ memories. I’ve come to accept such in order to get into the meat of several decent stories. There have been times that until the story was animated I had even forgotten the crazed strangeness of how it started.
But this story continues to look back and dwell upon its start, forcing the reader to repeatedly recall just how irrational the setting of this story is. My guess is that this is intending to become some type of revenge fic, but if so the world building regarding alchemists is just too poorly structured. It keeps taking one out of immersion every time it is brought up. Hopefully the story will eventually put this behind it and get on with the actual story (which I presume / am hoping does not involve the alchemist).