Marseille Harbor Labyrinth Mystery

Wanted To Survive

The leather-bound journal missed Jean’s foot, landing just inches away from him, triggering a deadly crunch. Anton didn't wait for an answer. He simply stood, a cold aura of calm and annoyance enveloping the filthy cabin that reeked of fear and oil.

"You are too weak for 'The Black Sea Alchemist'," Anton sneered, nudging the journal closer with the tip of his polished leather shoe. "You're still Jean Valéry, the trash. Stinking of filth and pharmaceuticals. You think you can master the ocean with lungs full of nicotine and veins pumping poison?"

Jean tried to speak. He stumbled, the severe alchemical exhaustion combined with residual hallucinations from the Perception Shifter Potion making Anton seem to spin in a stinging haze. "Anton... you traitor..."

"Traitor?" Anton cut in, his laugh dry and humorless. "I am a pragmatist, Jean. You found the power of a god, and then you used it to fight Le Requin's thugs. That isn't ambition. That's garbage."

Anton retrieved a small silver flask from his jacket pocket—an exquisitely elegant alchemical vial, a far cry from the rusted cans Jean used. He sprayed a small measure of clear fluid into the air. Instantly, the residue of the Perception Shifter Potion in the cabin vanished, replaced by a thin aroma of ozone.

"See?" Anton shrugged. "An elegant solution. I learned from your notes, Jean. Too bad you're still shackled to the filth of the past. You let this vessel stay dirty, and you let yourself stay dirty."

Jean felt a painful clarity as the hallucinatory fog lifted. His true physical agony emerged, throbbing in every drained muscle.

"I'm not here to kill you," Anton continued, glancing at the journal on the floor. "Not yet. Neptune just wants you to know: stop this mud game. We are harvesting the energy of the Mediterranean Alchemical Nexus. And you are a pest that must be eliminated."

Anton stepped into the doorway. "This book is a copy I made before I left. Study it. Or die in your foolishness. I will return. And when I do, you had better have made your choice. Criminal King? Or a loser who dies on his own ship?"

The cabin door closed with a grinding squeak, leaving Jean alone in the darkness that smelled of residual oil and salt.

Jean couldn't move for several minutes. His head throbbed, not just from exhaustion, but from the bitter truth in Anton's words.

The vessel was rusted. You couldn't hold the power of the sea in a container full of the poisons of the earth.

The cold voice of the Black Sea Alchemist, now louder and clearer without the Potion's interference, boomed in his skull. *Every drug residue you used in your filthy life, every chemical you inhaled, every physical weakness—they are anti-catalysts. They corrupt Transmutation, Jean. You are the strongest Alchemist who ever existed, yet you are blocked by a loser's toxins.*

Jean crawled toward the journal Anton had left, the leather cold and hard. The emblem of the sea lion and three shark teeth was stamped on the cover. The Neptune Cartel. They knew. They were waiting.

If Jean wanted to survive and use alchemy on the scale required, he had to purify himself. He had to kill Jean Valéry the addict.

He crawled out of the cabin onto the deck, wet with the foul bilge water he had absorbed earlier. He had to work quickly, before Le Requin's other men arrived.

"Instant Purification Potion," Jean muttered, recalling the recipe from his ancient memory. "Internal Transmutation. Requires pure salt and the strongest acid."

He didn't have strong acid. He had to make it.

Jean scraped thick rust from a ship's mast—iron oxide. He mixed it with the foul water containing residual fuel leaking from the tanks. He used his fingertips, which now felt like cold electrodes, to channel his remaining alchemical energy.

The Transmutation was slow and painful. He forced the elements to change: the oil into a dilute sulfuric acid compound, the rust into a binding catalyst. All of this was done in a small bowl made from a dented soda can.

The resulting fluid was blood-red, smelling of copper and the rotten deep sea. It was a fluid designed to burn out all biological impurities from his system.

*This is going to hurt,* the Alchemist's voice warned. *But you will be pure. Only water and salt. Not human.*

Jean grabbed the can. His hands trembled. This was the most dangerous transmutation. If he misjudged the dosage, he would become a block of salt.

"Are you ready to die again?" Jean whispered to himself, staring at his reflection in the red fluid. His eyes were hollow, his face still displaying the exhaustion of his past.

"I have to be," he answered. "Otherwise, I will die for nothing."

Jean lifted the can to his lips and drank the Instant Purification Potion.

The pain was instant and total. It wasn't physical pain he was used to; this was chemical agony. It felt as if every cell was being converted into hot salt, then liquefied again.

Jean screamed. He collapsed onto the deck, his body arching backward. He felt all the chemical residues of his past, all the traces of drugs, all the lingering toxins from his chaotic life, forced out of every pore.

His mouth flew open, and he began to vomit violently. The fluid that came out was first pitch-black, like crude oil, smelling of tobacco and pharmaceutical poisons. Then it turned gray, followed by a fluid that was only pure, trembling water and salt. He was cleaning the vessel he commanded, and he was cleaning himself.

The process lasted ten minutes that felt like a thousand years. When it was finished, Jean lay on the filthy deck, gasping for breath. He was empty, drained, but a cold, pure sensation of clarity flowed in his veins.

He touched his face. The alchemical power flowed unimpeded. His body was now a perfect conductor. Jean Valéry the addict had vanished.

He stood, slowly. His hunger was now different. Not hunger for food, but hunger for water, salt, and alchemical energy.

Jean looked toward the dock. Le Requin and the Neptune Cartel would come. He had to protect his fortress.

He walked to the derelict captain's cabin, tossing Anton's journal onto a heap of trash. Jean began to touch the rusted metal walls, ready to begin the next great transmutation: turning this ship into an impenetrable laboratory and fortress.

Energy flowed from his hand into the metal, forcing it to harden, to resist rust, to become a perfect alchemical coral.

As he focused his will on the hull's transmutation, he heard a heavy sound below the waterline, a sound that shouldn't be there.

*Thump... Thump...*

It wasn't water vibrating. It was a deliberate metal impact. Someone was trying to cut through the new alchemical coral shell he had just created on the hull. They were coming from underneath.

Jean moved quickly, channeling energy into the water beneath him, trying to sense the intruders.

"Who's there?" he shouted.

The impact grew louder, regular, and rhythmic.

*Thump! Thump! Thump!*

Suddenly, the metallic sound ceased. It was replaced by a far more alarming sound: the high-pressure whirring of a power saw underwater, gnawing through the alchemical shell.

Jean realized the intruders were not Le Requin's thugs. They had sophisticated equipment.

He knelt on the deck, forcing a faster transmutation, trying to turn the shell into salt diamond.

Abruptly, the saw burst through the hull with a horrific ripping sound. Cold, black, pressurized seawater sprayed into the cargo hold beneath his feet.

And along with the water, a massive hand in a thick diving glove gripped the edge of the newly created hole.

Jean didn't have time to formulate. He only had time to strike. He focused all his newly acquired pure energy into the spraying water. He forced the water, in a fraction of a second, to turn into sharp salt crystals, stabbing the intruder below.

The intruder screamed. The hand retracted. Jean leaned over the hole, preparing to seal it with full force.

Yet, before he could react, something hard and cold shot through the hole—not a weapon, but a massive alchemical probe. The probe impaled itself on the deck and began emitting a freezing pulse of energy.

It was the Anti-Alchemy Potion.