Advancement, Encounter

The dingy hollow dome covered in pipes was the meeting place of team Father and Sins once again. Sloth as usual was too busy to make an appearance and Greed had flown the coop 200 years ago, but they were missing one more this time.

"Pride has still not returned." Father's voice rang out in a tone as hollow as the room. "And there were elements concerning your most recent operation that do not bode well even in your success. We can assume Pride is dead... as to how you three survived where he didn't, I have not a clue." He insulted while stroking his beard without the slightest change of tone. The three who came back looking like hell were kneeling and gritting their fist. Envy was back to his human size after a meal of some of the mindless army they had in stock. Except for Gluttony, he was just looking around without gums or teeth.

"I can't believe the Elric brothers put you in this state of affairs. The one who killed Pride must have been Hohenheim, the Mystic Alchemist, or an unknown element."

Lust and Envy looked between each other for a moment before looking back down. They had blamed the Elric brothers for their defeat, and cited their ability to use Alkahestry to sense them as the reason. They said they tried to flee since the brothers were sacrifices, but were dealt heavy damage and didn't have the confidence to subdue them quietly. As to how they knew the brothers could sense them with that, they didn't know.

"Wrath! It seems you are the only one who hasn't disappointed me so far."

Bradley was almost happy, but he saw Father's opinion of him didn't change a single bit.

"Since those Elric sacrifices are so effective, why don't we use them? From now on, the only one of you allowed to be within range of the Elrics or the Nightingales is you, Wrath. The others would be spotted and be in a bit of a bind for now, I will research Alkahestry and see if there is a way to hide from it. Wrath, assign Edward and Alphonse to help you retrieve Greed. We need him back as soon as possible. Make anything up that you want to rile them up, Chimera who were sent by another country or something."

"Father, we can take care of Greed without the brat!"

"Evidence suggests otherwise. I need this done quickly and efficiently without another coverup job and they produce results from their reports. Dismissed!"

Near a shadow on the top of this dark dome, an eye closed and swirled out of existence.

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Yuri opened his eyes, the sound of shifting waves and cawing seagulls greeted him.

"So he has a little bit of foresight after all. Perhaps he really did lose his Pride, haha." Yuri said before getting up from his beach chair. He turned around and went towards a nearby hut, a forest secluded from all signs of civilization behind it. In the hut, a circular formation of black ink was scrawled on the ground and a dog was laid down on a nearby counter with similar ink surrounding him. These processes were entirely independent of each other.

Yuri waved his hand and gemstones flew to eight different points around the circle where smaller but similar circles acted as false vertices that were connected to the original. He raised his arms and a formless power moved gently from within him, covering the gemstones and allowing the formation within to encroach on them with its black ink.

This wasn't Magic or Mana, and it clearly wasn't Alchemy. No, Yuri harvested the Intent of his very own Skeleton Key to form a bridge between this formation and the now eight gems that would send it there. The Skeleton Key has much fewer Intents than the Record he brought from the Aurbis. That's why he had already harvested both the Aurbic Opening and Closing while it took him ages to find the very basic fire intent from the Record Domain.

The point here is that the formation of ink on the floor had no pattern he recognized, because he didn't hand craft it from a language he learned but just Intent. Only a very small amount of energy would be needed to start the process of transferring whoever was wearing the gem, which the gem itself would power since he made them from the Varla stones that were collecting dust in his vault.

This was revolutionary to him, because while the spells he placed in the Sigils worked so that Toni and Ally had to use them to cast one of their loaded spells to talk or to go to Avalon, the sigil with Intent alone would be much faster and more intuitive. A split second could save their lives. Nina wouldn't even need mana or chi to use it since it was bonded to her soul which could read her Intent, however small it was.

Yuri was satisfied, stowed away the gems, and moved over to the table Alexander was prone on while sleeping. He stroked the dog's golden fur gently and let out a sigh.

"No pet of the Nightingales is going to leave us so soon."

Alexander was already 8, two years older than Nina. He had at best, 12 more years to give to Nina and the rest of them before Yuri decided to take it up on his own hands. But this was still Nina's dog and he didn't want it to be supernatural and shit while Nina wasn't yet. Fetch would be the most boring thing in the world for him, the gap would be unnatural. The only thing he did was give the dog another 100 years to live. He didn't even have any gray furs yet, so the difference in appearance from this operation was minimal.

Yuri ran his hand down and back up again, then crossed to the dog's large paws and rubbed them. With a small blink of glittering green, a Nightingale appeared just beneath his short furs. Yes, he gave the dog a damned Sigil. The horse had one too, he might as well.

[Vassal Toni has learned 'Remote Automatic Transmutation Formula' - 450 RP gained]

[Vassal Ally has learned 'Remote Automatic Transmutation Formula' - 450 RP gained]

Yuri frowned. What the hell was that? He picked up the dog and vanished from his little bungalow, having to teleport at least 6 times to get back to Amestris from the southernmost coast in the continent.

He walked in through his garage, setting down Alexander's big ass floofy body that was twice as long as his shoulders were wide down onto a dog bed in the room. He walked forward and found the whole crew minus Nina, as they were informed she was still not comfortable around Alchemy.

He reached the workbench and saw a silver cube on a transmutation circle, sitting without any movement but the others were still gaping at it.

"I sensed a disturbance in the force and came as fast as I could," Yuri remarked gravely.

Ed snorted before getting back to his tone of excitement. "Yuri, look!"

Ed picked up the cube of silver again and dropped it while the others stood back. The silver cube landed on the circle, and a flash of lightning transpired and lit the room up before the cube changed back to gold without any further ado.

The description and the fact that they didn't even touch the transmutation before it happened clued him in on what just happened. Ed did it again anyway. He dropped the now solid cube of gold onto the circle and it changed back into silver.

"Automatic Transmutation. Anything made of gold will be changed to silver, anything silver will be changed to gold." The circle used the sun and moon symbols that Kimblee was using without the fire, earth, and air triangles in a yin-yang pattern.

Yuri had simulated this effect before with a magic circle determining the timing around a genuine Alchemy circle, but decided it would be too dangerous to spread for a number of reasons.

"This will revolutionize Alchemy!" Ed cheered. And he was right. "Alchemy can be sold and performed without Alchemists, energy can be converted from Tectonic Friction to sustainable electricity with ease, machine effects can be reproduced with a simple formula and costs can be cut across all kinds of manufacturing!"

"It sure will. How are you going to go about introducing it?"

Ed paused and knew where Yuri was going with this. It was just mentioned to them not long ago after all.

"You think that people will take the idea and use it for war?"

"I don't think, I know. If you want to introduce something revolutionary, others will simply find out its possible and it will be copied into oblivion. And once it spreads far enough, it won't take long for it to be weaponized."

"We can't stop advancing a single inch just because the people behind us will bicker with it!" Al motioned.

"I never said you should. You either accept the responsibility of making sure this never turns into a weapon, or you take as many measures against it as you can and worry about the consequences later. Even without missiles, people will kill each other with stones. The difference will be that your methods will be a lot more efficient in every respect."

"So what, we're supposed to baby-proof every fucking invention?!" Ed was nearly snarling and Winry was rubbing his shoulder.

"Normally, no, but this will accelerate every aspect of life, especially war. Do you realize what Alchemy without Alchemists will do to the world? Everything will accelerate beyond your control. It will open a new age."

Yuri had watched human history stand still in the iron age for thousands of years before the steam engine finally took off from its eighth iteration and the industrial age was catapulted. What happened less than two centuries later? Nukes. Even the inventors hated what they had done, and it only had one purpose. War had advanced faster than any other industry and they were still using fucking gasoline in the 21st century. He wasn't naive enough to think the humans on this planet would develop any slower with that kind of mystical lubricant pushing the gears of innovation.

"If you wanna let this fly, you need control of it. Every part of it."

"How are we supposed to do that?"

"Simple. We use magic."

"...What?"

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A young man in a yellow vest with baggy pants and a leather belt was running excitedly over rooftops as his two attendants were chasing after him not nearly as excited.

"Young Master, please do not charge ahead so hastefully!"

"We're a whole day ahead of Mei! We have to take this advantage while we can. I felt this guy from all the way in the West Region! He has to be good!"

Old man Fu frowned. He didn't know how his Young Master could feel someone that far away, was it his newfound power or the person's aura? And then it hit him like a truck. Energy, pure and unadulterated Chi with another aura that seemed to be hampering it. This person didn't feel even close to his master Drem, but he had enough to draw his attention and probably had his own secrets from his weird signature.

Lan Fan, a young lady about his age who had been Ling Yao's retainer since she was a child, dutifully followed without saying a word. Her face was disguised by a mask resembling Fu himself, along with a utility belt and several visible arms and non-visible ones.

Ling Yao leaped down when he felt close to the feeling, surprising several passersby before continuing his mad dash and turning down an alleyway.

A couple, in particular, frowned even deeper. One man seemed tanned and quite burly but no longer on the bigger side in his gut as he had thinned down. The other was a woman who was significantly shorter and thinner, but had lost her pale color and was looking healthier than ever. She was gaining fat and muscle faster, though she hadn't changed her style or demeanor otherwise.

"I need to go teach those ruffians a lesson, dear. They even landed right on one of our tables!"

"Dear, they didn't damage anything. They looked like warriors from afar, I'm sure they were just in a rush."

"Hmph... I guess I can forgive them..."

Ling continued pushing forward, breaking a few steel doors on the way down to an underground section filled with concrete hallways. Ling was running left and right with seemingly no pattern before running into people who investigated the noise.

"Hey!" A woman with the neck scales of a snake and a scar running from her neck to her cheek shouted out in a concrete hallway. "Who are you?!" Martel was immediately on guard, pulling out a knife from the sheath on her suspenders.

Ling sized her up quickly with slightly squinted eyes. "You feel like shit. Do you happen to have an immortal boss?"

Ling's blunt question triggered an immediate reaction from Martel. Ling's eyes opened even more than usual and a vicious smirk crossed his face.

"Where the fuck are these guys coming from?..."