Alchemist

Alchemist is a pharmacist and medical researcher whose extraordinary production talent makes her one of Babylon's leading support hunters. In one erased future she becomes the fifth-ranked Master Alchemist; after Kim Gong-ja's regression, he finds her still struggling in a slum shop and deliberately helps her talent reach the Tower sooner. Her work supplies Gong-ja's early sensory potion, cures the epidemic that destroyed the Murim world, and later restores hunters from injuries that ordinary recuperation could not address.

Biography

From a slum pharmacy to the ruined Murim

The first timeline presents Alchemist as a top-ranked guild leader who brings doctors and pharmacists to a major fire, isolates the danger zone, and immediately argues for a rescue team despite being told the district is abandoned. In the regressed timeline, however, she begins as a nameless pharmacist whose shop and equipment are threatened by slum gangsters. Gong-ja buys her stock, introduces her medicine to Patricia's Civil Militia, and gives her the commercial opening her work had lacked. Her gratitude does not make her passive: when Marcus Calenberry follows Gong-ja to the store, she stands between her customer and the highest-ranked hunter even while visibly terrified. A sensory-amplification elixir she made later helps Gong-ja survive the Devil King battle, and the Tower rewards that world-saving use by granting her the title Alchemist. (Chapters 4 and 34–35 and 58)

Gong-ja then selects her for the ruined Murim expedition over the already famous Medicine King. Publicly challenged to prove that confidence, Alchemist turns identical ingredients into a quasi-Myth-grade Soma Strawberry capable of reattaching severed limbs without aftereffects, decisively surpassing Medicine King's Unique recovery potion. More importantly, she does not protect that advantage when the expedition discovers an unknown contagion. With only days before the stage's destruction, she reveals her skills and their weaknesses to her rival, offers even her recipes if he will cooperate, and takes command of their research because saving the remaining patients matters more than ownership or status. Gong-ja repeatedly carries their accumulated findings backward through regression until Alchemist and Medicine King complete a cure, perform the necessary surgery on the long-infected Murim leaders, and mass-produce a preventive vaccine. The success saves So Baek-hyang and the Murim Lord long enough to choose their own conclusions, while establishing Alchemist as a stage-conquering researcher rather than merely a gifted crafter. (Chapters 59–80 and 85)

Alchemy Castle and an established medical career

After the Murim stage, Gong-ja gives Alchemist space on the twentieth floor for a larger pharmacy. She makes vaccination a practical gateway to the still-dangerous twenty-second floor, while the clinic also attracts so many ordinary customers that she cannot handle demand alone. Medicine King, now both rival and proven collaborator, takes responsibility for vaccines and emergencies from the Murim side. Their work converts an apocalyptic disease into manageable public-health infrastructure, and Alchemist's small shop develops into the Alchemy Castle she had led in the earlier timeline. (Chapter 88)

Her later career shows both greater reach and firmer judgment. During the Magic Tower campaign, she reduces wounds expected to require a year of recuperation to roughly a week, reconstructs Gong-ja's almost completely shattered body, and warns that apparent recovery does not erase physiological adaptation or accumulated loss. When summoned as judge of the seventy-fifth floor, she moves beyond medical expertise and correctly infers that each judge is matched to the afterlife they would desire, not to the professional subject of the stage. Her reasoning exposes the Wand of Ages' hidden selection rule, while her own preference for a world without anxiety over what others truly think reveals the social uncertainty beneath her clinical confidence. By the later Cafe Planetarium gathering she is openly recognized as Master of the Alchemy Castle, runs an institution with disciples, and can frighten an errant student more effectively than the petty hunter pretending to intimidate her. (Chapters 308–309, 350–358, and 389)

Appearance and personality

Alchemist is a tall woman with glasses and notably dry, thin hands. During her early poverty she looks dirty and overworked; once Gong-ja helps stabilize the shop, she presents herself more neatly as a professional pharmacist. Her expressions are easy to read when nervous—trembling chin, hunched shoulders, flushed face, and eyes magnified by her glasses—but concentration can make her face and voice abruptly cold. (Chapters 4, 34–35, and 58–67)

She is timid in unfamiliar social or physical danger, yet morally and professionally stubborn. She defends customers, treats helping strangers as natural, and will expose proprietary skills if secrecy obstructs a cure. Praise embarrasses her, while confidence can make her unexpectedly severe toward a rival or disciple. Her scientific caution balances this pride: she names misdiagnosis rates, observes clinical trials before declaring success, explains treatment costs, and refuses to call an adapted or damaged body “completely cured” simply because the patient feels well. (Chapters 35, 60–80, 309, and 389)

Abilities and skills

Alchemist is a support hunter rather than a front-line aura fighter. Her strength lies in unusually efficient alchemical production, portable diagnostic skills, experimental design, surgery support, and restorative treatment. She requires combatants to protect her in hostile environments, and her strongest healing can impose extreme pain or other backlash on the patient.

Alchemy and potion production

With the same ingredients available to Medicine King, Alchemist can produce approximately fifteen times his quantity, and the contest between them shows a difference in quality as well. Her Soma Strawberry is a quasi-Myth-grade potion that can graft preserved severed body parts without aftereffects, while her earlier sensory-amplification potion heightens Gong-ja's perception enough to help him read the Devil King's sword and awaken aura. These results establish talent and effects, but the corpus does not describe a single innate skill that automatically guarantees every recipe's rarity. (Chapters 58–61 and 350)

She can adapt products for scale rather than only make exceptional one-off elixirs. After developing the Jiangshi cure, she identifies commonly available ingredients and mass-produces both treatment and preventive vaccine. By the later floors she supplies Gong-ja with customized “special potions,” including preferred flavors, and presides over an Alchemy Department that separates development from sales and distribution. Her latest status as master with disciples shows that her craft has become an institution, although the corpus does not catalogue every potion it produces. (Chapters 79, 88, 350, and 389)

Moving Hospital and Life Diagnosis

Moving Hospital is a portable medical skill capable of real-time testing from blood work to EEG examination and of storing prepared drugs for use. Its stated weakness is a two-percent chance of misdiagnosis. Life Diagnosis reads a patient's condition at the genetic level; Alchemist combines the two skills to reduce the chance that either one will lead her to a false conclusion. She openly reveals these mechanics to Medicine King so that he can work around them during the Murim emergency. (Chapters 62 and 67)

These skills let her determine time and cause of death, distinguish an unregistered contagion from hypothermia, compare DNA in a corpse's mouth, assess whether infection has crossed the brain-spinal barrier, and identify when further treatment is futile. They provide information rather than invulnerability: Alchemist cannot use aura to resist the ruined world's cold, has no safe response to martial zombies, and depends on Gong-ja or other combat hunters to create the conditions in which diagnosis can matter. (Chapters 62–65 and 82)

Medical research, surgery, and healing

Alchemist designs the Jiangshi research program, dissects samples, requests patients across ages and sexes, and works through the transmission of murky energy in blood and breath. Gong-ja's regression is essential to compressing months of work into the stage's ten-day window; he and Bae Hu-ryeong memorize the researchers' files and return them to earlier iterations. The final cure clears recent infection and prevents reinfection, but long-infected martial artists require removal of the lower-abdominal pathways in which disease and life energy have become inseparable. Medicine King performs the specialized procedures with Alchemist supporting him. (Chapters 65–80)

Her later restorative skill can reduce catastrophic recovery times and rebuild a body whose bones are pulverized throughout. The more severe the injury, the greater the backlash: Gong-ja's reconstruction takes about a week of sustained, extreme pain, and Alchemist supplements the skill with potions rather than claiming effortless regeneration. She also explains that healing does not restore an untouched baseline. Gong-ja's body has adapted to aura so completely that it would fail in an environment without it, and every apparent cure leaves some change or loss. (Chapters 308–309)

Technical and deductive analysis

Alchemist applies experimental reasoning beyond the laboratory. On the seventy-fifth floor she compares earlier judges, rejects professional expertise as the selection principle, and infers that the assigned heaven corresponds to the judge's desired afterlife. The Wand of Ages confirms her conclusion. This is a demonstrated act of comparative deduction rather than a supernatural truth-reading power, and the stage later removes her memory of the event as part of its rules. (Chapters 350–358)

Relationships

• Kim Gong-ja: Gong-ja rescues Alchemist's struggling business, becomes the first major user of her medicine, and repeatedly places public trust in her ability. She repays that support with research and treatment but gains enough confidence to reprimand him, restrict his potions, and state medical limits he would rather ignore.
• Medicine King: He begins as an arrogant senior rival and loses decisively in their public alchemy contest. During the Murim crisis, Alchemist exposes her skill cards and directs their shared research; his experience and surgical expertise then become essential to the cure. Their later mockery coexists with durable professional respect.
• So Baek-hyang: Alchemist develops the cure for the disease consuming So Baek-hyang's body, supports the surgery that removes the infected lower-abdominal pathways, and confirms that she can move safely afterward. So Baek-hyang responds by praising the young doctor's insistence on helping strangers.
• Patricia: Patricia becomes one of Alchemist's first institutional customers and publicly defends the quality of her medicine. Their early connection helps turn a slum pharmacy into a trusted Babylon service.
• Marcus Calenberry: Alchemist initially fears Marcus but still protects Gong-ja from him. Marcus later apologizes for underestimating her and recognizes her as the better alchemist after the public contest.

Items

Alchemist produces and handles many potions, vaccines, diagnostic supplies, and surgical tools. Soma Strawberry, the sensory-amplification potion, and the Jiangshi treatment are important examples of her work, but the supplied corpus treats them as products or consumable medicines rather than persistent personal possessions requiring separate item articles.