As Alice continued to look through the Society’s documents, she found more and more records of strange medical cases popping up recently. The Society’s later documents did include some of the things Alice was expecting – namely, records of horrifying experiments, kidnappings, and people’s agonizing deaths after being kidnapped and used as experimental subjects. However, the documents also detailed, more than anything else, the Society’s attempts to figure out if there was a pattern to what the Society called ‘dimensional floods.’ They had recently spent a great deal of time documenting and analyzing every single outbreak they were aware of, trying to catalogue each one and cross-reference them against maps, times, and mana densities in order to find out when and how they occurred.

Alice also realized that the Society was terrified of this phenomenon. If anything, the Society seemed to place dimensional floods at a higher level of importance than even the preservation of their research bases and personnel. Their study of dimensional floods was reaching a point where it was genuinely harmful to the Society to obsess over it so much. They were forcing uninterested and unspecialized personnel into looking into this matter, even when it was directly detrimental to the Society. Since many of the Mages who joined the Society from around the world did so primarily to have an easy method to gain Levels and easy money, at the cost of their morals, this was causing the Society to face internal problems. However, the higher ups of the Society didn’t care, and kept pushing their way through as they gathered as much information as they could about dimensional floods.

Alice’s understanding of the inner workings of the Society wasn’t very good, so she couldn’t figure out why they were behaving the way they did. She shrugged, and put aside the Society’s documents regarding their long term objectives after reading through all of them. Her lack of understanding didn’t change the parts that interested her, at least.

Namely, dimensional floods. A dimensional flood sounded… remarkably similar to the sudden teleportation that had dragged her to this world. While Alice hadn’t been able to see mana when she first came to this world, when she had gone back to investigate the area with Illa later, it had basically been an ocean of purple mana. While Alice hadn’t seen any of these ‘dimensional floods’ firsthand, they certainly sounded like another teleportation point between this world and her original world. Alice wondered if any other people like her, who had been dragged to this dimension, or if she was still alone. When she had first arrived, Illa had confirmed that she had never heard of an {Outworlder}. However, if random dimensional gates were starting to pop up left and right, it was possible that other people from Earth might get dumped into this world sooner or later.

However, dimensional mana floods suddenly appearing out of nowhere was also awful news for most residents of this world. Mana baptisms were huge threats to people’s lives, and an entire area suddenly being flooded with dimensional mana that most people couldn’t see or protect themselves from was even more dangerous than an invisible volcano suddenly erupting in the middle of town. Most people wouldn’t even realize what was happening unless there was a Mage nearby to warn them of the danger.

Alice felt that she needed to get a dimensional seed as soon as possible, so that she could get a better understanding of these dimensional floods. Previously, getting a permit to study dimensional mana had been a huge hurdle for her, but with dimensional floods becoming increasingly common the Illvarian government may become less strict about dimensional mana studies.

Alice made a mental note to mention this to Ethan later, since he would know how to add the proper ‘spin’ to Alice’s hopes of getting a dimensional magic permit, and then turned her attention back to the other Society documents.

Alice continued to parse through the documents as minutes passed by. As she continued to browse through the documents, however, Alice got a sudden, seemingly random System notification.

Alice frowned. Why had the System taken so long to give her this Achievement? When she hadn’t gotten an Achievement for healing Samantha earlier, she had simply assumed she wasn’t going to get a reward and moved on. However, the fact the System had given her the Achievement several minutes late felt very odd to her.

She frowned, thinking back to the behavior of the System over the past few months. Recently, there had been a lot of problems with the way the System interacted with the world. The assistance the System usually provided to people forming their magic seeds was occasionally breaking down behind the scenes, for one thing. Alice had also noticed Boris getting access to his Status Screen far in advance, and the Society had noted down several other cases of children like Boris appearing throughout the world. Since the System was experiencing strange problems left and right, Alice wasn’t sure if the strange delay between her curing Samantha and her receiving a new Achievement was another manifestation of the System’s increasing problems. Even the Society hadn’t noted anything odd about Achievements yet. Was this due to the problem with Achievements being recent? Alternately, the strange delay could be some sort of hint about the true nature of Achievements, similar to how the odd way Class Seeds absorbed mana seemed to be a hint about how Class Seeds actually worked.

Unfortunately, Achievements were probably the part of the System Alice understood the least out of all of the components of her Status Screen. She was starting to get a rough idea how some parts of ‘Classes’ worked, and she had a good understanding of Attributes. However, her understanding of Achievements was still rather weak.

A few seconds later, another popup appeared. This one, at least, was considerably less oddly timed.

Alice felt the urge to grin as she got another useful secondary class. Even though secondary classes weren’t particularly powerful, having more never hurt. And {Organic Mage} actually had a few Perks she might find useful in the future. In particular, she was aware that the class had Perks that could allow one to see things about other people’s bodies, as well as improving methods of healing people with organic mana. The {Lesser Organic Vision} she had picked up from her [Scholar] class already gave her some useful organic vision, but it never hurt to have more options.

After dealing with her oddly timed System notifications, Alice heard Samantha slowly walking through Ethan’s mansion, guided by a [Maid]. She ignored the sound as the pair passed by the room Alice was sorting files in, and soon enough, the [Maid] and Samantha continued past her, before exiting the mansion.

Ethan walked into the room where Alice was sorting documents a few minutes later.

“I admit, I wasn’t sure if you would actually sort through the documents. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, you know. I have a few Perks that make reading very easy for me,” said Ethan, absently picking up a few of the documents Alice had set aside for him to look at. “I do, however, appreciate the help.”

“I’m also interested in seeing what the Society is up to,” said Alice. “After all, I keep running into them recently.”

“Fair enough,” said Ethan, thumbing through the documents in his hands. “Oh, how strange…” Ethan began speeding up his reading, before he began frowning and flipping through more and more pages of documents. Finally, he turned back towards Alice. “This is… concerning. I see why you set those particular documents aside. I’m beginning to get a better grasp of why the Society is acting so crazy recently. I don’t understand all of the logic behind their actions, but I have a better idea why...” Ethan finally sighed, before falling silent. Apparently, whatever he was seeing concerned him enough that he wasn’t even willing to comment on what he was reading anymore. Instead, he simply focused on flipping through the Society’s documents as quickly as he could.

With the help of {Super Speed Reading}, after an hour Alice was over halfway through the entire stack of documents, even though it probably would have taken her at least a day to read the same amount of words back on Earth. Then, Ethan set down his documents and stood up. Alice eyed the pile of paper in front of him, and realized that he had finished reading everything. Alice remembered an issue she had wanted to bring up with Ethan before he left, so she quickly memorized the part of the document she had been reading before she spoke to Ethan.

“Do you think you could use these documents to prop up my request for a dimensional magic seed permit?” Asked Alice. “I know you originally said it would be really hard, and it might be easier if I produced some results with my research, but…” Alice gestured towards the documents the two had found in the Society base, especially those discussing dimensional floods. “I am beginning to think there are some rather urgent problems cropping up recently, and if Illvaria doesn’t start studying dimensional magic on a larger scale than now, it might be left very vulnerable to catastrophes in the future.”

Ethan paused, frowning as he eyed the documents again. He gave Alice a rueful chuckle, before shrugging. “Maybe? It’s worth a shot, at least. I’ll see what I can do. But I make no promises.” Alice nodded. It was as good as she was likely to get. After that, Ethan left the room, and Alice continued scanning through Society documents.

Alice, for her part, began putting the documents back in order after she finished reading through everything. She wasn’t sure if Ethan still needed the documents, so she decided to leave them in his mansion instead of shoving them into her storage Perk. As she stepped out of the door, she was surprised to encounter a [Maid] standing just outside of the door, who greeted her with a curtsy.

“Lady Alice,” said the [Maid]. “Honored Immortal Ethan has instructed me to wait until you finished reading. He has advised you to sleep in this mansion for the night, if you don’t have a pressing reason to leave. The Society isn’t likely to launch an attack against you in the city, but after Lady Samantha was kidnapped, we can never be entirely sure what their actions will be. Thus, Honored Immortal Ethan felt it was best to keep you nearby, so that he could personally protect you in the case of your [Hidden Bodyguard] failing. Few are foolish enough to pick a fight with a combat-oriented Immortal, so you will be safer here.” The [Maid] paused. “However, he also instructed me to inform you that staying in this mansion is optional. You are free to do whatever you feel is best, he is simply offering his recommendation.”

Alice thought about Ethan’s suggestion for a moment, before she shrugged. While she and Ethan had done their best to cover up any of Alice’s more notable research-related abilities, there were plenty of smaller holes in Ethan’s story about her being a ‘combat oriented’ Mage. It would probably take some investigation before the Society realized Alice’s real focus, but it would probably happen sooner or later. If that was the case, it didn’t hurt to start taking precautions now.

She had nothing in particular that she needed to return to her Inn room for – after all, {Sample Collection} allowed her to store most of her stuff inside of her Perk, meaning she didn’t store very much in her room. Her room was just a place to sleep for the night.

“That sounds good to me,” said Alice, after a few moments of thought. “Does Honored Immortal have a room prepared for me?”

“Yes. Please follow me,” said the [Maid]. Alice was quickly led to a luxurious room, where the [Maid] gave her a late dinner. Alice quickly ate, before activating {Intuitive Mana Modelling} so that her senses would finally finish upgrading. Then, she went to sleep.

* * *

When Alice woke up the next day, her perception of the entire world felt completely different from before. It was as if previously she had only been seeing the world in black and white, and suddenly her vision was upgraded to full color vision. She could now sense every single speck of mana in her surroundings, no matter how minute, and could get a sense for what kind of mana they were. It was like the vision {Vastly Improved Kinetic Vision} granted her, which had allowed her to see in all directions, but it was dozens of times more detailed and useful. Alice was sure that if anyone stepped within ten meters of her, she would know. And with the help of her other Achievements and Perks, she would be able to guess their level, whether or not they were Mage, and would even potentially know what kind of focus their classes had. This Perk gave Alice a level of observation that most weaker Stealth Perks would have a hard time working around. She now had a level of protection against [Assassins] and any would-be kidnappers that she had never possessed before, meaning that the Perk was already an incredibly valuable addition to her Status Screen. Since Alice was now more sensitive to mana than ever before, and had plenty of Perks boosting her ability to observe things other people couldn’t see, Alice should be able to shut off most attacks as long as she reacted quickly enough. Combined with {The Science of Mana Deprivation}, Alice would even be able to cut off Perks other people tried to use against her, which was a fascinating thought.

However, {Intuitive Mana Modelling} didn’t just make Alice functionally immune to most lower level Stealth Perks and most covert attacks. It made it far easier for Alice to understand enchantments in her surroundings, just as she had hoped it would. It didn’t make it possible for her to replicate a new enchantment the first time she saw it, or anything quite that exaggerated – however, if Alice was studying a new enchantment and trying to replicate it, she could probably learn the new enchantment in half the time it would have previously taken her. The Perk’s information wasn’t quite as detailed as she would have liked, but it was still certainly helpful.

But those two upgrades paled in comparison to a third, more important use for her Perk. Alice was able to view System mana in her surroundings with far greater clarity than she had ever been able to before. However, the way the Perk fed her information about System mana made it hard Alice to sort out what she was seeing – it was like trying to look at the sun, and describe a couple individual rays of sunlight. There was too much information to process at once. Alice frowned, trying to figure out what her new Perk was telling her. If there was one thing she was quickly realizing, it was that System mana was much more complex than she had previously imagined.

“Lady Alice, here is your breakfast,” said a [Maid], breaking Alice out of her thoughts as she set down a tray of food.

Alice gave the tray of food the [Maid] had set on the table a single glance, then began shoveling whatever food was in front of her into her mouth. These foods all disappeared into her stomach, with Alice completely missing the efforts a level 90 chef had put into the meal as she tried to figure out what System mana was.

Finally, as Alice started to wrap her head around the flood of information, she realized something. Something she never would have considered, and probably never would have noticed if she hadn’t already spent months studying the System and the way it interacted with other types of mana.

The System mana that she saw in her surroundings wasn’t a type of mana. Or, perhaps more accurately, it wasn’t one type of mana. Kinetic mana, organic mana, etc. were all pure kinds of mana. If Alice were to compare mana types to vegetables, pure kinds of mana were sort of like potatoes, carrots, and other vegetables. They were all distinctly different from each other, and all had very distinctive flavors and textures. This made it difficult to mistake one for the other.

However, System mana was completely different from these other, simpler forms of mana. This was because System mana wasn’t actually a type of mana at all – it was a compound mana, made of several other kinds of mana all woven together. If other forms of mana were like vegetables, System mana was like a vegetable salad. It didn’t include literally every other kind of mana Alice had ever seen, but it included a lot.  

Alice finally realized why her first attempt at forming a System magic seed had failed so utterly, and why it hadn’t even been the right color. From the very beginning, she had been going about creating a System magic seed in the wrong way. She needed a different process to create a System magic seed. Instead of just focusing on what she knew about the System, pulling in mana, and then compressing all of that information and mana together into a magic seed, Alice needed to grab several other kinds of mana before compressing them all together into a System magic seed. However, Alice couldn’t help but wonder how in the world System mana had actually come to exist in the first place. Alice had already had similar thoughts in the past, but she really couldn’t help but feel that System mana wasn’t terribly… natural. All of the other kinds of mana she had observed were ‘pure’ kinds of mana. And yet, System mana was like a hybrid of several other kinds of mana working together. Alice couldn’t identify all of the types of mana combined to make System mana yet, but she seriously doubted that System mana had just… sprung into existence somehow.

She sighed, rubbing her temples as she tried to get a better grasp of the smaller components of System mana. Even though the information she was receiving right now gave her a mild headache, she finally knew where her first System magic seed had gone wrong. As Alice pondered this information, she also had the niggling feeling that the System mana in her surroundings… reminded her of something. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what, but she had the strangest sense that the System mana in her environment had a sort of pattern to it, once that she had seen before. But she couldn’t quite put her finger on what she was looking at, or what it meant.

Alice sighed, shaking her head. At the very least, her new Perk was far more useful than she had imagined it would be. It had given her a new layer of protection, boosted her ability to make money with enchanting, and most importantly of all, had given her new insights on the System. That, at least, was worth celebrating.

acaswell

I’ve mentioned this (at least) once before, but I will be on vacation for the next two weeks. So no chapters during that time! I’ll return after that with the next chapter of the story. Thus, the next chapter of Budding Scientist will be released on January 13^th, assuming I don’t get hit by a car or struck  by lightning during my vacation.

See you next year, and have a lovely holiday season, regardless of which holiday(s) you celebrate (and if you celebrate none, I hope you have a lovely few weeks anyway :D ).

 

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