The Alchemist's Blindspot
By @john1208
Mellina wakes up suspended in the glowing, carnivorous vines of the Royal Conservatory's ceiling - a completely impossible place for a junior artisan to nap. She brushes it off as sleepwalking, unaware her coworker, Ovelia, used a Fate-Stealing System to teleport her there to be eaten. Ovelia's System has one ultimate condition to steal Mellina’s imminent promotion: she must make the stern, unyielding Guild Magistrate, Zareo, absolutely despise Mellina. Ovelia begins spreading vicious rumors and laying traps, but Mellina’s fiercely loyal friends intercept every sabotage, refusing to believe a single bad word against the girl who bakes them lavender-buns. Meanwhile, Mellina's 'ditzy' mistakes - like spilling neutralizing acid on Zareo's coat - secretly cure his chronic magical affliction. As the story unfolds through both Mellina and Zareo's perspectives, Zareo falls completely for the supposedly airheaded artisan, driving Ovelia to the brink of madness as she tries to complete the System's increasingly impossible sabotage quests. But what will happen when Ovelia realizes Mellina misunderstood the Guild’s promotional rules from the very beginning, and her 'lucky accidents' were actually a deliberate, genius strategy?
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