The rain was a cold, rhythmic drumming against the pavement, the last sound of a life that made sense.
I should have looked left, he thought, but the thought was truncated by the shriek of hydraulic brakes. The truck was a wall of wet steel, an unstoppable force meeting his fragile, teenage frame. There was a sickening, wet thud—the sensation of his ribs folding like dry tinder—and then the asphalt rushed up to meet his cheek, smelling of oil and ozone.
Then, the world didn't go black. It went red.
"Push, your Majesty! The Ninth Soul is crowning!"
The crushing weight of the truck was gone, replaced by a suffocating, fleshy heat. He tried to gasp, but his lungs were full of fluid. Instead of the sterile scent of a hospital, he inhaled the heavy, cloying aroma of frankincense and old blood.
Where am I? What happened to the driver? he tried to shout, but all that emerged was a thin, pathetic wail.
He opened his eyes to a blur of flickering torchlight and stone arches. A woman in a stained apron held him aloft. "A boy! The Ninth Prince, Charles Buckman, is born!"
Twelve years had passed since the truck took his life, yet Charles still felt the phantom vibration of the engine in his marrow whenever he stood still. To the court of Rondon, he was a silent, brooding prince. To himself, he was a scientist trapped in a dark age.
Charles stood in his cellar laboratory, the air thick with the scent of crushed chlorophyll and sulfur. On the table before him lay the three pillars of Alchemilla.
"The book is too vague," Charles muttered, glancing at Alchemillia Vol. 1. "It treats these like spells. It's not magic; it's molecular stabilization."
He picked up a Blue Herb and a Red Herb. In the game of survival, this was the most precious combination. He ground them with a rhythmic, surgical precision. Most alchemists burn the fibers, he thought. They lose the restorative enzymes.
Charles used a cold-press technique remembered from his past life. The resulting Blue and Red mix wasn't a clumpy paste; it was a shimmering, deep-violet salve that could knit a punctured lung back together in minutes.
He moved to his next success: the Green and Red mix. He watched as the vibrant, muddy-olive paste settled. The Green purges the toxin, the Red jumpstarts the heart, he noted, labeling the jar 'Antidote.' Finally, he placed a concentrated Blue Vial—the result of two Blue herbs—at the end of the row.
But his eyes drifted to his own creation.
He took the aromatic Lavender and the orange-tufted Wild Dagga. In this world, the "Mind" was a resource that burnt out like a candle. He ground them together, filtering the extract through a charcoal mesh. The liquid turned a luminescent, ethereal purple.
"The Lavender Vial," he whispered. "Peace for the fractured."
The heavy oak door groaned open. Lord Ludwig Buckman, the Crown Prince, stepped into the dim light. He looked at the array of vials—the healing mixes, the antidotes, and the glowing purple glass.
"They're calling you the 'Saviour of the Sanctuaries,' Charles," Ludwig said, his voice filled with a genuine, quiet pride. "The mages say your purple water is the only thing that keeps the voices of the Old Gods from tearing their brains apart."
Charles wiped his stained hands. "I don't care about their titles, Ludwig. I just want to make sure that when someone gets hit by the 'truck' of this world, they actually get back up."
Ludwig frowned at the strange metaphor but smiled regardless. "Father wants to see you. He says if you can cure madness, you can certainly handle a Royal Banquet."
Charles looked at his vials. He didn't want the throne, but he realized his alchemy had just made him the most dangerous man in Rondon—the only one who could keep the kingdom sane.
******
The Royal Banquet was a sea of shimmering silk, forced laughter, and the underlying scent of rot that always clung to Rondon's elite. Charles sat at the far end of the high table, his mind miles away, still calculating the shelf-life of his Lavender Vials.
"To the Alchemist Prince!" the King roared, raising a golden chalice. "Who ensures our mages remain sharp and our scouts remain breathing!"
Charles offered a shallow nod, but his eyes caught a flicker of movement to his left. His fifth brother, Prince Aris, was smiling too broadly. Aris leaned over, his hand brushing against Charles's crystal glass.
"A toast, little brother," Aris purred, his voice dripping with false affection. "To your... unprecedented contributions."
Charles looked at the wine. His Prodigy Soul didn't just grant him knowledge; it granted him an almost chemical intuition. He saw a microscopic sheen of oil on the surface of the red liquid—the telltale sign of Nightshade extract.
Typical, Charles thought, a cold boredom settling over him. In my old life, it was a truck. Here, it's a coward with a vial of poison.
Without a word, Charles reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a small jar of his Red and Green mix. The table went silent. The King leaned forward, his brow furrowed. Ludwig watched with a hand drifting toward the hilt of his sword.
Charles scooped a dollop of the muddy-olive paste and dropped it directly into his wine. The liquid hissed, turning a foul, swampy grey.
"What are you doing, Charles?" the King demanded, his voice echoing in the hall.
"Ensuring the toast is... safe, Father," Charles replied.
He drained the glass in one defiant gulp.
The reaction was instantaneous. In the world of Fear & Hunger, alchemy didn't wait for digestion. The Red and Green mix hit his system like a surge of electricity. The tightening in his throat from the poison vanished before he had even set the glass down. His pulse stabilized, and the cold sweat prickling his neck evaporated. The effect was so sudden it felt like a physical snap back to reality.
Aris paled, his fork clattering against his plate.
"The Antidote works, Aris," Charles said, his voice flat and terrifyingly calm. "In case you were wondering about the dosage."
The hall was deathly silent. Ludwig let out a sharp, barking laugh that broke the tension, while the King looked at Charles with a new, predatory respect. The "gears of fate" had shifted again; the siblings who had intended to humiliate or kill him now realized that Charles wasn't just a boy in a basement—he was a boy who could laugh at death itself.