A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World

Chapter 81

Chapter 81

Alice’s group of [Students], along with the injured [Knight] and the convulsing [Scout], made their way back towards the hunting camp in silence. Alice decided to reveal that she could discover the location of monsters with the help of [Sixth Sense], since the group no longer had a [Scout] and monster detection wasn’t exactly rare in this world. Since nobody else had a good method of tracking monsters, Alice ended up taking the lead. She also took over the duty of levitating the [Scout], since Alice wanted to observe the process of a broken mana baptism. Nobody else in this world had ever been able to make the process of undergoing a mana baptism any less dangerous during hundreds of years of research and failed attempts, but as far as Alice knew nobody else could see System mana either. She could probably learn a lot from observing the process, even if she failed to improve the whole process.

Luka was more than happy to give her the duty of dealing with the injured [Scout], and so Alice was able to observe the [Scout] with one of her four mental focuses while the other three scanned her surroundings with her regular human eyes, {Sixth Sense}, and {Vastly Improved Kinetic Vision}.

Every single second, atmospheric mana seeped into the [Scout’s] body through his skin. Upon entry, the System would automatically convert the atmospheric mana into the purplish broken mana Alice had seen the [Dimensional Mage] use during the fight. After being converted, some of the purplish mana looked especially odd, and was far less… pure than normal dimensional mana. Whenever this mixed mana cropped up, the System would quickly put it through a second round of purification with slightly different mana glyphs, giving Alice a few new insights about what the System thought was important to do during a mana baptism. Since the System focused so much on keeping all of the mana similar to the kind that had started the baptism, perhaps it was safer to finish the process using the same kind of mana? Alice wasn’t sure if her assumption was correct, but it was all she had to go on right now.

Once the mana entered the [Scout’s] body, it immediately began heading towards his heart and brain, ignoring the rest of his body.

However, the way the mana entered and interacted with his body seemed to cause a fair amount of damage to other areas, even if the mana used them only as roads to reach the important organs. As the mana came into contact with the man’s skin, the skin seemed to deteriorate, developing strange lesions and injuries at times, and at other times bubbling up like accelerated tumors. Alice was baffled when she saw this. She had never seen mana actively harm tissues and organs before. In fact, mana seemed to be fairly beneficial when it was below the threshold for a mana baptism. Why was the mana involved in a baptism so different? Alice had no idea, but she took note of her observation to make sense of when she had more information. She also wondered if this sensation continued inside of the man’s body. Right now, Alice had no ability to see what was happening to the man’s organs. She could observe the mana there, but she couldn’t see the actual fleshy bits and observe them in any way, which made Alice feel more than a little bit frustrated.

However, the reactions of the mana inside of the man’s body painted a disastrous picture. The mana passing through various areas in the man’s body would occasionally explode, releasing little fountains of broken dimensional mana as they spun wildly out of control. The man’s complexion was steadily getting worse, and at times his breathing began to sound labored as the group continued to walk. The strange lesions on the man’s body also began to bleed occasionally as well. The sight was gruesome enough that Alice very nearly lost her focus, but she did her best to push her thoughts and feelings aside for now. She wasn’t willing to force someone to undergo a mana baptism against their will, so this might be the only chance she had to observe one up close. Even if she sympathized with the man’s plight and hoped he would pull through safely, she needed to learn what she could here.

She redirected her focus to observe the System Mana in her surroundings. System Mana was naturally present during the entire process. It seemed to be doing two things. First, it was trying to help filter and guide baptism mana away from areas it didn’t need to touch, which helped reduce and control the damage the mana did to the [Scout’s] body and (presumably) organs. Second, the System mana was working overtime to try to mess with the mana near the [Scout’s] heart and brain.

The mana in those areas was quite a bit more… violent than in other areas. In most parts of his body, mana seemed to damage it mostly by accident as it was passing through. However, near his heart, mana was actively and violently shuffling around, erupting towards the nearby organs as they built… something. And near his brain, it seemed like a few extra bits of mana were trying to fashion themselves into a new part of his brain that didn’t currently exist. Alice was guessed that the new part of his brain was what allowed Mages to actually control their mana – without it, they might have a mage core but no actual magic abilities, making the entire process a very dangerous and lethal accident with no upsides. She didn’t have a way to verify this guess right now, so she added it to her mental list of things to search for more information for when she had the opportunity, but it seemed like a reasonable assumption. As for the mana near his heart, it was probably trying to form a Mage core.

This was also the place where System mana was mostactive in the man’s body. Right behind the man’s heart, the System was throwing an obscene amount of Organic Mana at the man’s body, trying to do… something? Heal? Keep flesh intact? Alice frowned, trying to make out what was actually happening and what the System was trying to do, before she realized something.

Slightly behind the human heart, there was a rather important part of the human body. This was the spine, which the human brain used to relay commands to the rest of the body. Mage cores were always, without exception, located behind the heart. Even though they didn’t touch the human spine, they definitely got kind of close to it. And unlike class fractals and such, the Mage core was an entirely physical organ. If a new organ grew right behind a human heart, it wouldn’t be surprising at all if it damaged the spine or messed up arteries or something in the process. Even a light consequence might be the newly formed mage core pinching a few vital nerves, causing a newly baptized mage to lose the ability to move anything below their ribs or something. Alice wasn’t a doctor, and she wasn’t entirely sure what would happen if a fist-sized organ was suddenly added behind the human heart, but she didn’t need much medical knowledge to realize it would be bad.

This gave Alice a much better guess what the System was doing. Even though she couldn’t make out the small, specific details, most of the chunks of Organic Mana Alice could figure out the purpose of were either rerouting the nerves in the man’s spine so that they didn’t get pinched or destroyed by the new organ, and at the same time, shifting the placement of the human heart ever so slightly so that the newly growing mage core and the heart didn’t get in each other’s way.

There seemed to be some other, smaller details that Alice couldn’t quite make out, but she was pretty sure she at least had the gist of the System’s purpose correct.

The other area with the heaviest concentration of System mana was the man’s brain. Alice was pretty sure a small part of what the System was doing there was making the new part of the brain, linking it up to other parts of the brain, and keeping everything else in the man’s skull working during the whole process. However, there were also about twenty different things going on with System Mana, Pure mana, and Organic Mana that, frankly, Alice had no understanding of at all. The lack of quantity present near the [Scout’s] brain was more than rivalled by the sheer complexity of whatever was happening there.

For now, Alice just memorized everything she could see while throwing every fractal she could get a full picture of into {Mana Construct Modelling}. Even if she had no clue what she was looking at right now, she could look more closely at the other System fractals she didn’t understand and try to interpret them later. It wasn’t much, but it was a plan at least.

And then something strange happened. The System fractals, which had previously been clearly working to guide and control the mana in the man’s body, seemed to mess up for a moment. Mana surged and spiraled out of control for about two seconds, and for a brief moment, the mana in the [Scout’s] body no longer had a guide carefully controlling the mana entering his body. The man arced his back and screamed in unbearable agony. The relatively minor lesions and bumps on his skin grew much worse, as if his condition had suddenly worsened over the course of a few seconds, before the System fractals reasserted control over the situation. Alice stared at the System fractals in shock, trying to figure out what had happened. Was this normal? Did something happen?

Was the System mana messing up the reason why the fatality rate was so high when it came to mana baptisms? Was this some sort of quirk related to dimensional mana? Was this just a result of the man’s unique biology? Was it something else entirely? Alice had no clue what was normal or a problem in this situation.

She was sure that the [Scout’s] situation was becoming more and more dangerous. The System mana stabilized and got back to work. Anxious, Alice stretched out a mana tendril and tried feeding the man a bit of Healing Mana. After all, Healing mana didn’t have any major side effects even if one had no clue what they were doing. It was absurdly wasteful and often struggled to handle major injuries with the level of precision they deserved, but it was never bad even if it was strictly inferior to Organic mana in most situations. Which was perfect since Alice had no clue what she was looking at right now.

And then after Alice tried to feed the man a little bit of help, Alice’s mana vanished into the whirlpool of broken dimensional mana like a drop of water thrown into the ocean. Alice saw no results of her action, and the man certainly didn’t heal. If Alice hadn’t been closely observing the whole process, she might have doubted whether she had even tried to heal the man in the first place.

Suddenly, Alice had a better understanding of why Mages struggled to make this process easier or safer. Since the System converted all kinds of mana into the ‘correct’ mana for a mana baptism, and the man seemingly needed to stick with one kind of mana from start to finish during his baptism, trying to use any kind of healing-based mana during the healing process might be useless. Since most of this world’s complex healing procedures involved magic, that meant that every single kind of treatment this world specialized in would vanish directly into the vortex of mana and accomplish absolutely nothing.

Alice frowned, but didn’t try to heal the man anymore. In fact, she was beginning to feel a massive headache as she tried to think about how to improve this process. Anything she did with mana would have no effect, and without that Alice felt surprisingly helpless. If she couldn’t use her magic, how could she help?

The System mana was still clearly doing something. Maybe she needed to use Perks or something? As Alice wrestled with the question of what let System mana work here while healing mana didn’t, the group finally returned to camp.

“Open up! We have one injured and a prisoner!” Yelled Arin, at the top of his lungs, the moment the group came within sight of the camp. “We ran into some members of the Society of Starry Eyes! Get me some Organic Mages! Also, the injured has come in contact with what might have been dimensional mana. Keep him quarantined.”

Alice heard professor Felissa yell something she couldn’t make out, and the wall of the encampment was almost immediately torn apart. Four Organic Mages rushed out, before separating the group of six and quickly taking a look at the [Students] first. Meanwhile, two of the other [Knights] took the seriously injured Society member and dragged him away.

“You appear to be largely fine, Student-Lady Alice,” said professor Felissa, after giving her a quick checkup with a few Perks and injecting a bit of organic mana into her. “Just some scratches and minor bruises. Even if I don’t do a thing, you probably won’t even notice the injuries, but I gave you a heal anyway.” Then, Professor Felissa ignored her and focused on the remaining people from Alice’s hunting group.

[Knight] Arin’s arm was quickly healed up by another Professor. However, the [Organic Mages] simply took a look at the [Scout] before one of them used kinetic magic to gently set him off to the side. They gave him a bed someone pulled out of Storage, but otherwise didn’t touch him or interact with him. An enchanted item was even set up to keep other people from getting close to the [Scout], since nobody had confirmed whether he was contagious or not.

“How is he doing?” asked Alice, once one of the [Organic Mages] finished checking up on the [Scout].

“Poorly. Generally speaking, a successful mana baptism tends to be a faster baptism. The longer it takes, the worse his odds are,” said the [Organic Mage]. “Combined with how quickly his organs are deteriorating, and how much damage his body is suffering… I do not think he is going to succeed. He might pull out of it, because it’s never too late to succeed a baptism until you’re dead. However, at this point, I don’t like his odds.” Alice frowned, but nodded. She also wondered what a ‘normal’ speed for a mana baptism looked like. She seemed to recall that her own mana baptism had taken a much longer period of time than the [Scout’s], and yet she had succeeded…

She shook aside her thoughts, refocusing on the [Scout’s] desperate struggle for survival as she ignored her System notifications. Another hour passed as she watched in silence. The System mana in the [Scout’s] body never seemed to make another ‘error’ and lose control of the mana the way she had observed earlier, but the man’s situation continued to deteriorate.

The [Organic Mage] didn’t heal the man, but he was more than happy to narrate the situation to Alice in detail. His organs became more and more damaged by as time passed, his mage core continuously failed to form properly, and the System’s frantic attempts to feed mana into his brain never stopped, but never seemed to finish whatever it was trying to do either.

Finally, his body reached its limit. The man’s thrashing and screaming began growing weaker, and finally, his breathing stopped. The rainbow mana in his body seemed to give up, dispersing back into Alice’s surroundings, and atmospheric mana stopped flowing into the man’s body. Alice realized, with a small pang of sadness, that the man was dead. She didn’t feel any great amount of grief at his passing – after all, she had never met him before today, and she could count on her hands the number of sentences they had spoken to each other. She didn’t even know the man’s name.

But Alice still allowed herself a few minutes of silence for the death of the [Scout] that had fought with her and the rest of the group. Even if she had barely spoken with him, his death was worthy of a few minutes of silence and respect.

Finally, Alice returned to her own area. Night was beginning to set in, and the [Teachers] began preparing to move the [Students] back to town. A few of the [Organic Mages], led by Arin, had returned from investigating the bones Alice’s group had stumbled across, and had reported that the bones weren’t human – they were just chunks of organic matter heavily manipulated with Perks and organic mana to look like bones. This had set Alice’s heart somewhat at ease, because she had felt rather bad for the kids who had died earlier. With the investigation finished and the [Scout’s] fate already decided, there was no reason to stick around anymore. The [Teachers] in charge of the hunting trip announced that they would leave in thirty minutes. Which gave Alice just enough time to look through her Status Screen and system notifications, and after that she should still have enough time to go to the rest of her group and figure out what to do with the items they found on the bodies of the Society members. She started out by looking over her previously ignored System notifications.

You have leveled up!

Survivor: 47 -> 50, Explorer of Magic 54-> 55, Kinetic Manabinder 19 -> 23, Scholar 39 -> 40

Through Training, you have increased an attribute!

Endurance 122 -> 123, Magic 145 -> 146, Perception 129 -> 130, Dexterity 108 -> 109

Through training, you have increased a skill!

Kinetic Manipulation: 64 -> 65, Mana Control: 44 -> 46, Mana Precision: 45 -> 47, Kinetic Force: 41 -> 44, Projectile Awareness : 20 -> 23, Divided Attention: 23 -> 25, Broken Mana Purification: 14 -> 15, Basic Human Biology 26 -> 28

Even if today wasn’t exactly a day Alice could feel happy and celebrate about, given the fact that the [Scout] had died and Alice had finally had her first encounter with the Society of Starry Eyes, at the very least her levels had progressed quite nicely. She would be getting four new Perks. She would also be able to see her first Perk fusion, which she had been waiting to see for months now.

She opened up her Perk selection menu and started with [Explorer of magic]. As usual, there were three new Perk options. However, there was also a new icon at the bottom of her Perk selection screen.

Since this class is above level 50, you may combine two Perks. Resulting Perks will be labelled ‘tier 2 Perks’ and will not be able to be used as fuel for further Perk combinations until after level 75.

Perk 1: ____________ + Perk 2: _______________ = ??????

Note: While a rough description of the resulting Perk is often at least moderately accurate when predicting the result of fusing two Perks together, please keep in mind that the exact details may vary somewhat.

Upon focusing on one of the two empty slots for Perk combination, a list popped up of all of the Perks Alice had acquired for the [Explorer of Magic] class so far.

Magic Proficiency (Explorer of Magic 5)

Enhanced Regeneration (Explorer of Magic 10)

Combat Spellcaster (Explorer of Magic 15)

Improved Seed (Explorer of Magic 20)

Seeds of Magic (Explorer of Magic 25)

Three Seeds (Explorer of Magic 30)

Broken Seed (Explorer of Magic 35)

Infusion of Comprehension (Explorer of Magic 40)

Mana Construct Modelling (Explorer of Magic 45)

Reset (Explorer of Magic 50)

The exact same list of Perks appeared when Alice focused on the empty Perk slot for Perk two.

Just out of curiosity, Alice tried putting ‘Improved Seed’ and ‘Three seeds’ into the first and second slot. It didn’t appear to finalize her selection until she clicked ‘confirm,’ so she was free to experiment a bit with what the System thought would come out of each Perk combination.

The system description for the result was far, far less concrete than the Perks Alice was used to seeing.

Perk 1: Improved Seeds + Perk 2: Three Seeds = ??????

????: Perk probably retains your original three magic seeds gained through the ‘three seeds’ Perk, then drastically improves the Mana conversion ratio under the effects of ‘improved seeds.’ May also boost effect of mana stat by a small to medium amount, or give the seeds some sort of ability to improve themselves through continuous use?

Would you like to combine these two perks?

Alice looked at the description and couldn’t help but feel a bit weird. She had already gotten used to thinking of the System as less of an odd, omnipotent law of this world and more as some sort of concrete, massive mechanism with definite, specific flaws that, despite occasional mistakes, seemed to be largely benevolent in purpose. However, despite the fact that Alice had already confirmed the System wasn’t omniscient, it was still pretty darn close, at least from Alice’s perspective. This was the first time Alice had seen the System directly admit that even it had no idea what would happen when she tried something. Though, the System had also glitched out when trying to figure out what language ‘English’ and ‘Russian’ were before it fixed the names of both Skills in her Status Screen later on… Alice shook her head, refocusing on her Perk combination.

The resulting Perk didn’t seem too appealing. Alice already had {Seed Creator} and {Scholar of Mana} to help her boost the mana conversion ratios of her seeds, so even a ‘drastic increase’ in the mana conversion ratio of her pure mana seed, organic mana seed, and healing mana seed didn’t feel significant enough to waste a Perk slot on right now. It might finally bump her up to the minimum requirements for [Organic Mage], but considering how heavy the penalties were for a secondary class, Alice didn’t feel the need to waste a perk slot on getting the class. Especially since she would eventually meet the minimum requirement of a 40% mana conversion ratio on her seed by using {Scholar of Magic} for a longer period of time anyway. Alice discarded that combination and started looking at other options.

She spent several minutes just cycling through Perks, trying to get a feel for how the whole process worked. It didn’t seem to matter what order she put Perks in – there was no difference between the first and second Perk slot in a Perk combination. There were a variety of options that seemed appealing to her, and the three new Perks weren’t good enough to be worth considering. After much consideration, Alice decided to combine {Infusion of Comprehension} and {Reset}.

Infusion of Comprehension

Requirements: Explorer of Magic level 40 or higher, at least one magic seed, Intelligence 150 or greater, Magic 100 or greater, At least one achievement related to magic at rarity 5 or higher and 1 or more Achievements related to Scholarly or Scientific investigation at rarity 5 or higher.

You may select one of your seeds. Over the course of the next eight hours, you will gradually improve both your internal comprehension of the seed as well as the seed's conversion ratio. The results of this perk will vary based on how quickly you understand the concepts inherent to the magic seed, but will have an absolute minimum improvement of 30% and absolute maximum improvement of 100%.

Warning: You will be helpless during this time, so it is highly recommended you activate this perk only when your safety is assured and you are in an environment where you will not be interrupted.

Reset

Requirements: Explorer of Magic level 50 or higher

Once per month, you can reset the cooldown on a Perk as long as that Perk is related to Magic or granted by a magic class.

Perk 1: Infusion of Comprehension + Perk 2: Reset = ??????

????: You will probably lose the Mana Conversion Ratio bonus from Infusion of Comprehension, and the Perk will completely detach itself from your Pure Mana seed. Instead, some amount of times per month, you will gain the ability to use a lesser form of ‘infusion of comprehension’ on a magic seed of your choice. The lesser form of {Infusion of Comprehension} will probably give you the ability to increase your understanding of a certain magic seed you have already formed, and may or may not increase your mana conversion ratio by an unknown amount. It should probably be possible to change the target of this Perk each time you use it, though this is uncertain. May have other minor beneficial effects?

Would you like to combine these two Perks?

The reason Alice decided to combine these two Perks was simple.

Infusion of Comprehension was a Perk Alice had taken quite a while ago, in order to try to understand more about the nature of mana. She had gotten a few interesting clues and ideas from activating the Perk on her Pure Mana seed, some of which she still hadn’t connected into her growing overarching theories about how the System and this world worked, but Alice had only been able to activate the Perk once. She had only gotten a 40% bonus to her Pure mana seed, and while Alice certainly HAD gotten plenty of economic value out of her 40% boost to pure mana capacity, Alice now had {Scholar of magic} and {Seed Creator} to fall back on for the sake of boosting her mana conversion ratios. She would still be losing some economic stability after losing her 40% bonus to her pure mana seed, but Alice’s levels in her enchanting related classes were becoming higher and her Skills were all becoming better as time passed. Her position on Ezrien’s team had also become more secure as she picked up new Perks, and Ezrien had become more and more willing to give her small bonuses for her work, even though he had already theoretically paid her for the next year of labor. Alice felt that she could survive without her boosted Pure mana seed now, even if she might need to cut down a bit on her already nearly nonexistent free time for a while.

As for {Reset}, Alice was a bit more hesitant to lose access to this Perk. She had started out by using this Perk to let her use {Broken Seed} more often. However, {Seed Creator} had already drastically increased the flexibility and frequency at which she could use her {Broken Seed} Perk. {Reset} was still useful, giving her the option to mess with unusual seeds three times per month instead of twice, but Alice felt that being able to ‘see’ more about the nature of various kinds of mana would ultimately be more valuable than a third seed experiment a month. If she was able to figure out more about the ‘true nature’ of things like Pure Mana, Organic Mana, and most valuable of all, System mana, she would be able to optimize her attempts at making Enchantments with each kind of mana. Even if she didn’t get any concrete benefits out of it, Alice thought that she might be able to learn new and interesting things with this Perk. She did need to successfully make a System mana seed to maximize its value, of course, but Alice was pretty sure she could make one with enough trial and error. Her attempts to make a magic seed without the help of the System had already proven that she could make seeds without the System, it was just much harder, and that gave her more courage when she thought about taking this Perk. And even while she waited to form a System magic seed, she could at least mess with her pure mana seed while she worked on forming a System seed.

Alice activated Perk fusion for the first time.

Alice watched as Rainbow mana flooded towards her brain. She lost sight of what was going on inside of her skull, sadly.

After about a minute, Alice felt something change.

The {Infusion of Comprehension} bonus to her pure mana seed melted away. The sudden loss of 40% of her pure mana seed’s mana conversion ratio felt… uncomfortable. It was sort of like being inside of a manaless room – Alice could feel the lowered amount of mana in her body, and it made her feel uncomfortable. However, soon, Alice’s new Perk was formed.

Expanding Comprehension (Tier 2 Perk, level 55 Explorer of Magic) (Level 50 Explorer of magic Perk + Level 40 Explorer of Magic Perk)

Perk Costs: Infusion of Comprehension + Reset Perk sacrificed to create this Perk.

Once per two weeks, you may select one of your seeds. Over the course of the next hour, you will gradually expand your understanding of the Seed, as well as the concepts associated with it. The clarity will be lower compared to directly using {Infusion of Comprehension}. In addition, the Mana Conversion Ratio of the seed may improve by small amounts with each use of this Perk. At maximum an increase of 5% may occur. This Perk may never improve the Mana Conversion ratio of a given seed by more than 50% in total.

Warning: You will be helpless during this time, so it is highly recommended you activate this perk only when your safety is assured and you are in an environment where you will not be disturbed.

Despite how depressing and long most of the day had been, Alice almost felt the urge to smile now. No wonder people said Perks made by combining Perks were much stronger. {Scholar of Magic} was a Perk that was subject to diminishing returns, like most other Perks. Alice wasn’t entirely sure what those diminishing returns were, but the Perk directly stated that the higher the mana conversion ratio of a seed, the slower its further growth would be.

This Perk instead had an upper limit on growth, but that upper limit was massive. Even if each boost was only 2-3% every time, it would take four uses to directly outstrip the bonus of {Improved Seeds. And unlike {Scholar of Magic}, it didn’t suffer from diminishing returns the more powerful a seed was, making it ideal to push high power seeds even further. Alice had gotten a 40% bonus to one seed from {Infusion of Comprehension}, but this seed offered the chance of improving every seed by 50% as long as she had enough time, and scaled with every single new seed she formed for the rest of her lifetime. Combined with the ability to get glimpses into the nature of a certain kind of mana, providing her with all sorts of information and research ideas to boost all of her Research related classes, the Perk was worlds beyond what many of her other Perks from her classes were able to accomplish. It was basically a weaker version of {Infusion of Comprehension}, which Alice had sacrificed, but it was now usable once per two weeks instead of usable once in her entire lifetime. It was a huge upgrade, even if it did slightly weaken her immediate financial situation and take some time to get working.

After that, Alice went through and grabbed her other three Perks. These three were much less exciting.

Extended organics

Requirements: Survivor level 50 or higher, Endurance 100 or higher, Magic 125 or higher

The area which you will naturally apply resistance against magic to is extended by 3m. Your body’s natural resistance to mana is greatly enhanced. This can be turned off. This does not apply inside of other objects. This area is counted as ‘inside your body’ for the sake of other magic-related Perks you control as well, allowing you to extend magic tendrils from anywhere inside of this space without the need to form a tendril and move it outside of your body, or use any point within this three meter range to form tendrils before moving them elsewhere.

Alice took this Perk mostly because of the fight with the Society of Starry Eyes. The woman with dimensional mana had teleported a dagger very close to her, nearly catching Alice off guard and getting a hit in. Alice wasn’t sure if one dagger would have killed her or not, but the rainbow mana surrounding the dagger suggested some kind of Perk was activated on the dagger, and she would rather not take her chances. Even though Alice didn’t want to fight with the Society of Starry Eyes due to the large risk of dying in the process, having the ability to turn off teleportation in her immediate surroundings could prove surprisingly useful in some scenarios. This also had a rather useful effect of suppressing a wide variety of monster abilities. After all, monsters that used magic needed to fight against mana resistance just like Mages did. Vinebears would almost directly lose the ability to use plants against Alice as a result of this Perk, since most plants couldn’t reach three meters away very well, and Lurkers would lose a lot of their ability to potentially drown and eat her. Alice wasn’t familiar with the massive variety of monster species in this world, but since the Perk almost outright nullified the combat abilities of some monster breeds she was familiar with, Alice suspected that the Perk would be surprisingly valuable against a wide variety of monster types. Even if the Perk was utterly worthless against nonmages, Alice felt that it was worth taking.

Lesser Organic Vision

Requirements: Scholar level 40 or higher, Perception 125 or higher, Magic 100 or higher, Organic Magic seed present

You gain the ability to spend some organic mana to temporarily look inside of people's bodies, assuming they give you permission or are unconscious. The level of detail may vary.

This Perk solved a pretty immediate problem that Alice had very recently encountered, which was the inability for her to see things besides mana inside of people’s bodies. If she had gained her extra level in [Scholar] before the [Scout] had started to undergo his baptism, she would have been able to get more information about the process. Sadly, the level in [Scholar] had come from her observations.

She wasn’t entirely sure whether she would need this ability in the future, but the other options weren’t that appealing this time. Alice knew that not every single level in every class would have amazing Perks, and since this one seemed like it might be useful in the future she took it and moved on. She had gotten {Scholar of Magic} just 5 levels ago from [Scholar], so getting a weaker Perk this time wasn’t a big deal.

Overclock

Requirements: Kinetic Manabinder level 20 or higher

For two hours, only while you are enchanting, drastically increase the speed and focus you have while thinking and manipulating mana. Does not apply to any mental processes or magic-related abilities besides enchantments. Only usable once per day.

Alice was finally starting stabilize her schedule a bit. However, she still often found herself cutting away time from her sleep, or time away from her friends in order to make everything fit together inside of a day. Alice wasn’t sure if this Perk would totally solve the problem, but with every new Perk related to time management, Alice felt the growth speed of her classes and the stress of her schedule get better. Even though Alice was effectively working two jobs, acting as a very nearly full-time student, and stacking her own research projects onto her already overburdened schedule, with the sheer number of Perks she had improving her efficiency and reducing her need for sleep, she was almost on top of her schedule now. Maybe this Perk would be the one to finally fix her time management problems, or maybe she would need another one or two Perks or Achievements to get there. Either way, every bit of progress helped.

After Alice finished selecting her Perks, she went over to the other members of her group. Arin was now healed up, and the other [Students] all had their various bumps, scratches, and minor wounds looked over and healed if necessary.

“What do we do with all of the stuff we got from the Society Mages?” asked Alice, turning to Arin. As a [Knight] he probably knew the legal code better than she did, and asking him before she broke a law by accident seemed pretty reasonable.

“Legally speaking, all of the stuff you scavenge from the Society members belongs to you, as well as a small bounty the Crown has issued for anyone who kills a member of the Society. That might take a while to process, because the Crown needs to verify that they were Society Mages, or at least very likely to be, but it should go through within a few weeks. You will also need to fill out some paperwork. I’ll get back to you four on that tomorrow, after we have a nice rest.

“As for their items, the Crown does first want [Knights] or [Guards] to check over the bags and such. Just to make sure there aren’t any illegal items inside. If any are found, you will get a small ‘finder’s fee,’ although you’ll need to read out some statements under the watch of some lie-detection Perks to make sure you aren’t involved in the operation first. Any information or documents about the Society’s future movements are also legally required to be turned over to the Crown, also rewardable with a finder’s fee after some paperwork. So if any of the items you find have information we miss during this initial inspection, please report it to the [Guard] immediately. If any of you end up with written texts of the Society, you can look over them now, but I’ll need to take them from you so that the [Guard] can inspect them, and I’ll return them tomorrow.” Arin shrugged. Alice nodded. Even though most of what Arin described sounded mildly irritating, most of it also sounded like pretty reasonable precautions to take. She would deal with that later on.

“As such, let’s open the bags first and see what’s actually inside of it. The [Scout]… he also gets a share. I’ll be sending that to his family. His family should also have a secondary reward issued by the Crown soon, as is standard for those who fall in the line of duty to the country. But I’m not going to steal from a dead man and his grieving wife and children.”

Nobody objected to this, and the group pulled out all of the various bags that they had looted from the battle. They started opening the bags one by one, finding a few miscellaneous research materials, (Which nobody wanted, and so Arin offered to handle selling it and divide the money fairly) some research records written down on valuable paper, (Which Alice took. She would never do unethical research on her own, but she had no problem stealing information from the Society and using it to help make their Society of unethical jerks obsolete) and a few random enchanting materials (Which Erkki mostly monopolized, since Alice had already taken her share of everything). However, once they opened the bag with four weird mana signatures, Alice was dumbfounded.

She had honestly been expecting to see four slightly weird enchanting materials pop out of the bag. Instead, four kids, maybe four or five years old, were sleeping inside of the {Kidnappers bag.} Alice finally realized that the fake children’s bones the group had stumbled across were probably meant to cover up the kidnapping of the children, but that left a few rather important questions unanswered.

First, the most obvious question was where these kids came from. Where they orphans? Did they have families looking for them somewhere? If they had parents, the group needed to figure out where they were so they could return them.

However, Alice also had another, very different question when she saw the four kids. What the heck is up with the mana in their bodies? The three kids who had pure mana bubbles deflecting most of the mana in their surroundings made sense to her. After all, Alice had already learned that kids didn’t unlock the System until they turned six, and she also knew that the System used mana to operate. The System helping the kids by forcefully keeping mana out of their bodies made perfect sense with that information.

However, the fourth kid had no such ‘anti-magic’ bubble around him. Instead, it looked like two different system fractals were jammed into the same space, both trying to activate at the same time, and neither of them was working perfectly. Was this… a second System error on the same day? What in the world was she looking at?