Ch. 240: Peckly Duckling

The sudden protest brought an instant hush over the shop.

The teller pulled his hands back, and Serena's butler quietly stepped half a pace away.

Flora said nothing, merely watching the customer.

Mo Fei spoke up first. "This machine verifies the money, not the person."

Everyone turned toward him.

"If counterfeit coins aren't stopped here and get mixed into the vault, there's no telling who deposited them. Next time someone withdraws money at the counter, the one who receives it could be anyone—or it could be you."

The customer parted his lips, glanced back down at the coins in the reject slot, and ultimately said nothing.

He grabbed the coin pouch resting on the counter, let out a huff, and pushed through the door.

Serena glanced at the butler beside her. "When something is flagged with the money, the person standing at the counter feels the most humiliated. Just like my man a moment ago. When explaining, it's best to save them some face as well."

Flora nodded, picked up paper and pen from the counter, and began writing.

"From now on, whenever customers ask why deposits must be verified first, stick to this explanation: we verify the money, not the person. Keep the counterfeit coins outside the vault, and every single coin leaving the bank will be genuine."

---

That evening, while Mo Fei was tidying up his desk, the tracking doll on the workbench suddenly twitched.

He picked up the doll, and Corone's cool voice came from the other end.

"It's me. Here are the requirements for this transaction."

Mo Fei picked up a pen and noted them down one by one.

"That's all," Corone said. "I'll contact you again tomorrow night at this time."

"All right."

The doll fell silent. Mo Fei looked over the list and set it back on the workbench.

...

The next morning, after contacting the chamber of commerce and settling the transaction, Mo Fei set off for the Royal Alchemy Academy.

The advancement exam for the Vitalist School was held in a demonstration hall. A row of workstations lined the center of the hall, and quite a few people were already seated on the spectator bleachers.

Mo Fei found a seat and scanned the waiting area, quickly spotting Mira.

She sat at the edge of the waiting area with her head down, flipping through her notes. Every two pages, she would lift her head, and when her gaze swept past the audience, her eyes met Mo Fei's.

Mo Fei waved to her.

Mira froze for a moment, brought her hand to her chest, and gave a gentle wave back.

The examiner walked into the center of the hall, waiting until the chatter in the stands died down before speaking.

"The subject of this examination is the transmutation of a spirit phial. The artificial Ether seeds used at each workstation are provided by the academy. Each candidate has only one attempt." He paused. "Grading is determined solely by success or failure. We begin now; candidates will proceed in order."

The first candidate was a tall boy. Quick with his hands and feet, he poured the fluid and pricked his finger in a seamless sequence. Once the light faded, the mass in the array split open, and a furry little creature crawled out, rolling over onto the table. The examiner jotted down a note with a nod, and a wave of applause rippled through the stands.

The second candidate was not nearly as fortunate. His hands trembled uncontrollably as he poured the fluid, and the glow flickered erratically before he could even draw blood. In the end, the entire reactant collapsed into a puddle of soggy mush, completely inert. He stood staring at the workstation for quite a while before walking off with his head bowed.

Two more candidates followed after that—one succeeded, one failed.

"Next, Mira."

Mira closed her notes and walked up to the workstation.

She poured the base material into the matrix, then set the artificial Ether seed right into the center. The Ether fluid spread along the inscribed grooves, and the sealing runes along the matrix's rim lit with a faint glow. Every step was executed with steady poise.

Watching from the stands, Mo Fei thought to himself, Her hands look pretty steady today. There shouldn't be any mishaps.

Just as Mira took up the thin tube of stabilizer, her hand suddenly jerked.

A massive splash of liquid dumped straight into the mix.

The glow of the sealing runes dropped by a tier, and the warm luminescence of the Ether seed nestled in the center dimmed alongside it.

Someone in the stands drew a sharp breath. "She dumped in too much stabilizer! The reaction's about to be suppressed!"

Mo Fei's grip tightened on the armrest.

Seriously? Of all places, it had to happen here...

Staring at the liquid surface, Mira turned pale, but her hands did not stall for long. She took the artificial Ether fluid, her lips moving as if running mental calculations, and carefully added just a tiny drop into the grooves.

Ripples spread across the surface, and the light from the sealing runes and the Ether seed slowly climbed back to their former brilliance.

An elderly scholar nodded. "Too much stabilizer, so she used Ether fluid to push the reaction back up. Well handled."
A bystander chimed in softly, "And to gauge the amount so precisely, too."

Mira drew the carving knife across her fingertip, dripping the bead of blood into the pool just before the energy reached its critical threshold.

Vmmm.

A halo of light flashed across the matrix, and the workstation began to vibrate. The boundaries between the base material, the Ether seed, and the Ether fluid blurred, churning into a single mass. When the brilliance subsided, only an egg-like object remained within the array.

Silence fell across the hall.

Second by second slipped past, and the egg-like object remained completely motionless.

The examiner waited a moment, lifting his pen to record the verdict.

Whispers rose from the waiting area.

"Looks like that salvage attempt didn't work."
"As expected of 'the Hand of Disaster.' What good is acing the written test if this is the result?"

Clutching the edge of the table with both hands, Mira stared unblinkingly at the egg.

Mo Fei leaned forward in his seat. Come on, move...

Crack.

A fine fracture crept across the surface of the egg.

The examiner's pen hovered over his parchment.

The fissure spread outward in a flash, and a piece of dry shell peeled away. A small head poked out from within, grayish-yellow down still clinging damply to its frame, with a flat bill crowned by a pair of round, dark eyes.

"Is that... a duckling?" someone murmured in the stands.

The fledgling turned its head, right into the face of the examiner leaning down to inspect it. Stretching its neck, it opened its beak and let out a shrill screech.

Flapping its stubby wings, it scrambled to the edge of the table and pecked down hard on the record sheet—right on the mark he had just begun to draw. The examiner jerked his hand back, catching a sharp peck on the back of his knuckles as well.

The stands fell stunned for a second, then erupted into uproarious laughter.

Rubbing the back of his hand, the examiner cleared his throat, crossed out the mark, and announced, "Transmutation successful."

Only then did Mira's hands loosen their grip on the table's edge.

Looking at the fledgling, her eyes welled up with faint redness, but the grin on her lips was impossible to suppress.

Only then did Mo Fei release his white-knuckled hold on the armrest.

Yet the fledgling showed no intention of calming down. It waddled erratically across the workstation, pecking at the rim of the matrix one second, then sending the carving knife clattering the next.

"It even dares to peck the examiner—this duckling's way too fierce," someone in the waiting area laughed.

"Might as well just call it Peckly Duckling."

The name "Peckly Duckling" caught on around the arena in no time.

Watching the ball of grayish-yellow fluff spinning around on the desk, Mo Fei casually engaged All-Seeing Gaze.

[Name: Peckly Gosling]
[Race: Alchemical Lifeform]
[Ability: Error Pecking — Instinctively driven to peck at errors and mistakes]
[Status: Newborn]

...A goose? So it wasn't a duck after all.

After the exam concluded, the candidates filed out of the hall.

When Mo Fei reached the edge of the arena, Mira was clutching the spirit phial to her chest. Curled up inside the glass, the fledgling had finally settled down.

"Mr. Mo Fei," she whispered softly. "Th-thank you... for coming all the way out today."

"You did great. That scare back there left my palms soaked in sweat."

Watching the examiners leave, Mo Fei suddenly remembered someone: Tacksha, the instructor of the Vitalist School.
He had seen her at the academy salon, and later down in the sewers, she had personally admitted to posting the hunting commission for the rat-hound monsters; those very creatures were still biting people in the Lower District to this day.

"By the way, doesn't your Vitalist School have an Instructor Tacksha? How has she been lately?"

Mira looked up and blinked.

"Instructor Tacksha? She's already been dismissed by the academy."