The village square had transformed. It wasn't a site for an execution anymore; it was a classroom. Alfred had pinned a large, yellowish parchment to the side of the blacksmith's forge. On it was a grid of boxes, letters, and numbers that looked like a madman's crossword puzzle.
"This," Alfred announced, tapping a charcoal stick against the parchment, "is the Periodic Table of Elements. It is the map of the universe. Everything you touch—the iron in your anvil, the air you breathe, the beer you're currently spilling on your boots—is made of these."
Barnaby the blacksmith squinted at the box labeled Fe. "You're telling me my iron isn't 'tempered by the breath of the forge-god'? It's just... an atom with twenty-six protons?"
"Precisely," Alfred said. "And the reason your swords keep shattering against monster hide isn't because you're 'unworthy.' It's because your carbon-to-iron ratio is a mess. You're making brittle pig iron, not steel."
Alfred reached into his satchel and pulled out a small vial of powdered additives he'd refined using his [Basic Distillation] skill. "Add this Manganese and Nickel to your next melt. It's not magic; it's an Alloy."
Barnaby followed the instructions, his movements stiff with skepticism. But when the cooling metal emerged with a dull, silver-blue sheen—stronger, lighter, and sharper than anything he'd ever produced—the blacksmith let out a long, weary groan and facepalmed so hard the sound echoed.
"I've spent forty years praying to the Great Anvil," Barnaby cursed, throwing his hammer into the dirt. "Those damned dwarves! They told us metallurgy was an 'ancestral art' passed down through song! It's a gods-be-damned puzzle! They've been gatekeeping the math for centuries!"
The crowd murmured, their fear turning into a strange, communal irritation. If the "miracles" of the dwarves were just recipes, what else had they been lied to about?
"And the Alchemists?" a woman asked, holding up a murky, expensive 'healing tonic' she'd bought from a traveling merchant. "They told us these were 'essence of soul' mixed with 'starlight.'"
Alfred took the vial, sniffed it, and made a disgusted face. "This is mostly alcohol, willow bark—which is basically aspirin—and a tiny drop of Chaotic Energy used as a catalyst to speed up the molecular bonding. It's a remedy, not a ritual. If they had just used a clean beaker and the right pH balance, it wouldn't taste like swamp water or cost you a month's wages."
The crowd went silent. The realization hit them like a bucket of ice water. They hadn't been living in a world of terrifying demons; they'd been living in a world of terrible science.
"So..." a farmer said, his grip tightening on his pitchfork, which was now being looked at as a potential source of scrap iron. "You're saying the Alchemists let us die of fevers because they wanted to look 'mysterious'?"
"Pretty much," Alfred shrugged. "Mystery is profitable. Knowledge is free—well, once you learn to read the table."
"I'm going to give that Alchemist in the next town a stern scolding," the woman muttered, her eyes narrowing. "And by 'scolding,' I mean I'm demanding a refund and throwing his 'starlight' in his face."
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[Task Complete: Demystify an Industry.]
[Reward: 400 System Points.]
[Status: 'The Boy Prophet' title updated to 'The Annoying Truth-Teller'.]
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******
The village of Tretogor was no longer a place of quiet desperation. Usually, this time of year was marked by the "Hunger Moon," where families prayed to the Goddess Melitele for their shriveled turnips to last the winter.
Instead, the fields were screaming. Not with monsters, but with a vibrant, unnatural green that could be seen from three miles away.
Alfred stood at the edge of the orphanage's garden, holding a simple wooden bucket. Inside was a gray, granular powder that smelled faintly of ammonia.
"Is that more of your 'dragon dust,' Alfred?" Barnaby asked, leaning over the fence. The blacksmith now wore a clean apron and carried a notebook, looking more like a lab assistant than a warrior.
"No, Barnaby. This is NPK-Magical Catalyst 1.0," Alfred explained, tossing a handful onto the soil. "The land isn't 'cursed' or 'tired.' It's just depleted of Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium. We use a tiny fraction of Chaotic Energy—the kind mages waste on making their eyes glow—to fix the nitrogen from the air into the soil."
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[System Notification: Optimization Complete.]
[Yield Projection: 400% Increase.]
[Reward: 600 System Points unlocked for 'Ending Localized Famine'.]
------
Within weeks, the results were undeniable. Wheat grew thick and heavy-headed; cabbages reached the size of boulders. Alfred didn't hide the recipe. He sat the village elders down and explained the Nitrogen Cycle using a series of diagrams in the dirt.
"It's not a miracle," Alfred told them, his five-year-old voice echoing in the silent square. "It's just feeding the dirt so the dirt can feed you. Any Alchemist with a basic understanding of transmutation could have done this for you centuries ago."
The gratitude of the folks was immense. They brought Alfred honey, warm bread, and the best cuts of meat. But underneath the gratitude was a bubbling, volcanic rage.
"Wait a minute," a farmer growled, holding a cabbage that weighed more than his dog. "You're saying Master Eltibald, the 'Great Mage' who passed through last year, could have fixed my soil with a wave of his hand?"
"Easily," Alfred said, biting into an apple. "Probably would have taken him five minutes. Instead, he charged you ten gold crowns for a 'blessing' that did nothing but make your cows moo in a higher pitch."
The silence that followed was terrifying.
"I paid that fraud my daughter's dowry!" a woman shrieked.
"The Alchemists' Guild told us the soil was 'weeping for our sins'!" another yelled, waving a pitchfork that Barnaby had recently reinforced with high-carbon steel. "They charged us a 'Purity Tax' for every acre!"
The village didn't just want to thank Alfred; they wanted vengeance. The "otherness" of mages and alchemists was gone. They weren't scary demons anymore; they were just scammers in fancy robes.
"We're going to the capital," Barnaby announced, his new steel hammer glinting in the sun. "I want to see the look on the Court Alchemist's face when I ask him to explain the Molecular Structure of Fertilizer before I cave his smug chest in."
"Careful," Alfred cautioned, though he was secretly enjoying the chaos. "They have fireballs."
"And we have Gunpowder and Logics!" the mob roared in unison.
As the villagers began packing carts—not with tribute, but with demands for refunds and sharpened tools—Alfred received a new prompt.
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[New Quest: The Royal Audit.]
[Objective: Accompany the angry mob to Tretogor. Demystify the Royal Court.]
[Bonus: Face your 'Father' without being executed for heresy.]