Immortal Ethan already had a manaless room set up in his mansion, so the experiment only took a few minutes to set up. After Immortal Ethan finished his preparations, he stepped into the manaless room while Alice watched. Alice activated her {Timer} Perk to get as accurate of a measurement of time’s passage as possible, and kept her eyes trained on Ethan as closely as she could. Every single Perk she had which boosted her perception of the world was activated as she tried to glean every speck of information she could from this experiment. It wasn’t every day that an Immortal volunteered themselves to be part of an experiment, and Alice didn’t intend to miss this chance. After all, she doubted it would be easy to get an Immortal to help her with random experiments unless she became an Immortal. This might literally be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

 Once Immortal Ethan stepped into the manaless room, Alice observed carefully. Initially, Ethan’s body didn’t react strangely at all. It just looked like any other person stepping into a manaless room. The System mana around him didn’t react to Ethan, but that was nothing unusual. Ethan started out by lifting a few sacks of weights – apparently, he intended to evaluate the decrease in his physical strength over time. Alice was more than slightly amused to see how ridiculously heavy the weight sacks were – even though Ethan was almost entirely focused on magic, he had still slowly gained other Stats over the course of his long life. The amount of weight he was picking up could probably rival the weight a level 70 [Knight] used during training, despite the fact that Ethan was obviously highly specialized in Mage Classes.

The amount of weight that Ethan could carry at decreased at about the same rate other people’s Stats decreased. According to Alice’s estimation, Ethan seemed to be losing about 2% of his Stats per minute, which about matched up with Alice’s previous results. So far, nothing particularly unusual was happening, at least as far as Alice could tell. Alice frowned, wondering if Immortals would have no unusual interactions with a manaless room at all. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but she had thought something different would happen, at least. So far, Ethan had lost some Stats and his Perks had gotten a bit weaker – but that was it.

That changed at around the fifteen minute mark. Normally, after fifteen minutes in a manaless room, people’s Stats would stop dropping, and would start to stabilize. People would keep 70% of their Stats, lose 30%, and then nothing new would happen until they left the room.

However, after fifteen minutes, Ethan’s Stats didn’t stop decreasing. They just kept dropping. After 20 minutes, Immortal Ethan’s Stats had dropped by 40%, and still showed no sign of stopping yet.

Alice tried feeding the current situation into {Safety Analysis}, just to make sure this situation wasn’t dangerous. Ethan had just warned her about how the Perk had small, subtle flaws in how it analyzed information, but he had also said that it was at least somewhat reliable. The fact that Ethan’s Stats were still dropping was starting to make Alice feel a little worried. If someone’s Endurance got too low, it was very easy for them to get sick or hurt, as long as they were exposed to even a minor problem. Ethan’s Stats were still probably monstrous compared to hers, but if they kept dropping at 2% a minute, he would hit dangerously low numbers sooner or later. Was this really a good idea?

At 25 minutes, his Stats had dropped 50%, and Alice’s uneasiness was climbing higher and higher. {Safety Analysis} still wasn’t finding anything wrong with the experiment, but Alice was half tempted to tell Ethan to stop. However, Ethan was an Immortal, and he didn’t seem to feel there was a problem with the experiment yet. This made Alice wonder if she was overreacting.

As Alice was wondering whether she should say something or just keep observing, Immortal Ethan’s expression changed. His previous expression of curiosity had warped into a full-blown frown as he eyed the manaless room around him. At the same time, Alice noticed something very odd.

Normally, when a person sat inside of a manaless room, their class seeds would grow dimmer as time passed. Alice assumed this was because their class seeds were receiving less and less fuel, and the fact that people’s Perks got weaker as time passed seemed to back up this theory. Brighter class fractals meant stronger Perks and Classes, while dimmer class fractals meant weaker Perks. However, once Ethan had stood in the manaless room for more than 25 minutes, parts of the mana in his body just seemed to shut off. If previously they had resembled bright suns in Ethan’s body, now they resembled dim moons, instead. Ethan frowned, eyeing his surroundings, and began walking towards the door. However, he seemed hesitant, as if wondering if he should actually leave or whether he should stay in the room.

Another two minutes ticked by. In that time, Alice noticed the mana in his body had stopped changing. He no longer seemed to be losing Stats, and his body had stabilized. However, the dim patches of his body remained dim. Alice had no idea what that meant, but it was obvious some parts of his body were experiencing major weakness as a result of the experiment.

Finally, after two more minutes passed, Ethan decided he was done. Nothing had changed in the past five minutes anyway, so Alice doubted anything would happen even if he stayed longer in the room, but Ethan had also started to look distinctly uncomfortable. Once he walked out of the room, the dim patches of mana in his body quickly lit up again, and he seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as he scanned the manaless room with curiosity.

“Interesting,” he said, but didn’t elaborate. For a few moments, Alice could only stare at him in curiosity. What had happened after 25 minutes?

Ethan looked at her for a few moments, as if thinking, before nodding his head. “Very odd.”

Finally, Alice wasn’t able to bear it any longer. “What happened?”

Ethan fell into thought for a few moments, before he gave her a more curious look.

“Well, a few things happened. First of all, my Stats went down quite a bit more than a regular person’s Stats do, at least according to your sample information so far. Most people’s Stats stabilize after 15 minutes, but mine just kept dropping. And instead of keeping 70% of my Stats and Perks, I was still losing more Stats after 25 minutes in. I was down to about 50% of my power, which is the weakest I’ve felt in… decades. It was very uncomfortable. After 25 minutes, I seemed to stop losing Stats after that point, so if I assume the difference is my Immortality, Immortals probably stabilize at 50% of their Stats instead of 70%.”

Alice nodded. So far, she wasn’t terribly surprised. Alice had always suspected that one of the reasons she lost less Stats than natives of this world when placed in a manaless room was because she had gained a lot of her Stats while on Earth, rather than with the help of the System and its mana manipulation. This seemed to support her theory, which was nice, but wasn’t particularly surprising. However, some of Ethan’s body suddenly switching off like a light powering down had caught her much more off-guard.

“Near the end of the experiment, after 25 minutes, your expression suddenly changed a lot. Why was that?” Alice asked, after hesitating for a moment. She couldn’t force Ethan to talk about it if he didn’t want to, but she was hoping he would share what happened with her. Ethan looked at her, and for a moment seemed to visibly hesitate, before he sighed.

“My second life was disabled. For a moment, it felt like I had suffered a lethal attack or something, and so I felt a moment of panic before I realized I hadn’t actually been attacked. It hasn’t happened to me often, of course, but I have suffered a fatal injury a few times, especially right after I reached Immortality and got overconfident in my abilities.” Ethan scratched his head. “Part of the way I teach my apprentices now is based off of some of my more embarrassing near-death experiences. If I wasn’t a little luckier, I probably would have died after becoming an Immortal… which is embarrassing, but definitely happens sometimes. Immortals are much harder to kill than regular people, but realizing you’re in Immortal is a huge confidence booster. Some new Immortals charge into much more dangerous situations the moment they become an Immortal, which leads to them dying right after reaching Immortality. Immortals are much stronger than regular people, but nobody is invincible.”

Alice noticed a phrase she had never come into contact with before. “What’s a ‘second life?’”

Ethan frowned, looking at her with curiosity. “You don’t know?”

Alice shook her head.

“Really? How did you manage to get this far in life without learning – ah, do you just not know much about the characteristics of Immortals?” Ethan seemed to think for a moment as he examined her. Alice hesitated for a moment, before nodding.

“I’m really not sure what a second life is. All I know about Immortals is that they’re people who have stopped aging, since they reached a really high level.”

“That’s correct, but I think you’re missing a rather important piece of information, despite it being quite well known.” Immortal Ethan said. He seemed to pause for a moment, before sighing. “Normally, people never share details about their Combat-oriented Perks and Achievements. In fact, if I ever catch you trying to tell someone about your combat Perks and Achievements, I don’t know what I’ll do, but neither of us will be happy at the end of it. Since you’ve accepted becoming my apprentice, you had better believe that I’ll punish you if you do something stupid like that. However, second lives are common knowledge, so I’ve quite surprised you aren’t aware of it already.”

Alice suddenly felt a bit embarrassed. Apparently, ‘second lives’ were well known topics when discussing Immortals. And as an {Outsider}, she simply had no awareness of the topic at all, which was surprisingly frustrating for her.

Ethan, seeing her embarrassment, cleared his throat.

“In order to become an Immortal, you need to level up lots, right? Generally speaking, you become an Immortal somewhere between level 100, where you evolve your class, and level 25 of your Tier 2 Class. The exact level varies a bit from person to person, since things like Rarity of your Achievements, how high your Stats are, and so on also seem to play a role in things like aging speed. However, people generally hit Immortality somewhere within that level range. Have you ever wondered why people know exactly when they became an Immortal, though? After all, once you only age one year per five or six decades, it’s pretty hard to notice your age changing. Many people might think that they’ve become an Immortal already, only to realize they’re a few levels off a century or two after the fact.”

“That’s… something I haven’t considered in detail before,” said Alice, after a few moments.

“Simply put, you don’t have to stand around guessing whether you’ve stopped aging completely or whether you only age one year every fifty. The moment you stop aging completely, you get an Achievement for it. This Achievement also has a lot of other components to it, including your ‘title’ as an Immortal. For example, most people know me as the Immortal of Spells and Seeds – and that’s because after getting my Achievement for reaching Immortality, my Achievement referred to me as ‘the Immortal of Spells and Seeds.’ Most Immortals take their Achievement and use it as their official title, although it sometimes gets shortened. My father, for example, is known as the ‘Sun Knight,’ but his actual title given from his Achievement is “The Valiant Knight of Glittering Sunlight. That’s a bit of a mouthful, so people shortened it to ‘Sun Knight.’ In short, all Immortals have an Achievement given to them by the System, announcing exactly when they have permanently stopped aging, and giving them a title to use in the future.”

“All right. How does this tie in to a ‘second life?’ “

“Everyone’s Immortality Achievement is different, and gives completely different bonuses. However, every single Immortal, no matter what they’re known for, has one common trait besides the fact that they don’t age anymore. That’s the ability to ‘revive’ once per week from lethal damage. This is usually referred to as a ‘second life.’ It’s not applicable 100% of the time – if your brain is destroyed, you are permanently dead. The rest of your body doesn’t matter much, and you can even regrow a new body if you get beheaded. However, if your brain is destroyed or damaged beyond repair, the Perk won’t work.

“Of course, this is a lot less powerful than you might think. If you’re in a situation where someone managed to kill you once, they can often do it again while you’re recovering from your injuries. The Perk isn’t instant- it takes about two seconds to work. And this trait isn’t exactly secret. Almost everyone knows about Immortals being able to regenerate once per week, which is why I assumed you were familiar with this already. Immortals don’t die every day, but it still happens often enough during wars on the Central Continent that this trait is well known and documented. And an [Assassin] aiming to kill an Immortal will just aim straight for the brain. So it’s not that useful in practice.”

“I see,” Said Alice, finally understanding what had happened. Ethan had suddenly left the manaless room because his ‘second life’ had deactivated.

“Is your Second Life activated again right now?”

Ethan nodded. “If it had been ‘used up’ for the week I wouldn’t have mentioned it to you. I don’t mind helping you with experiments and gathering information, but there’s no way I would compromise my safety if I was actually placed in more danger for the rest of the week. I would have waited until the Achievement was reactivated to tell you what happened. The only reason I’m willing to tell you this much is because there’s no way I’m trying this experiment again. It was like the Achievement was temporarily turned off, but the moment I was exposed to mana, my second life was back.”

Alice nodded. However, she wondered why had Ethan’s Achievement deactivated after 25 minutes. When she had tried her manaless room experiments with other people, Stats and Perks had both been temporarily weakened, but this was the first time she had heard of an Achievement actually being ‘turned off.’

“Were your other Achievements still working? Or was it just your Immortality-related Achievement that got turned off?”

Ethan frowned, as if he were trying to think.

“None of my other Achievements were totally turned off, I think. Only my ‘second life’ granted by my Immortality was completely turned off – everything else was weakened, but still worked.”

Alice fell deeper into thought. If every Immortal had the ‘second life’ ability, and the Achievement had turned itself off once Ethan was deprived of mana for more than 25 minutes, perhaps the ability to revive once per week was simply a property of having a body made out of pure mana? That was her best guess for now, at least. The knowledge that Immortals would still immediately die if their brain was destroyed was also interesting. It made Alice wonder if the System was afraid of totally removing the ‘human’ parts of an Immortal’s brain for some reason.

Alice filed the results of the experiment away in her mind. Perhaps in the future she would have a better idea what was happening behind the scenes. For now, Alice decided to keep this experiment in mind as she collected more information about the System, Achievements, and how everything worked behind the scenes.

* * *

The next day, before Alice met with professor Feliza and set off to meet Boris, she took a few hours to stop by Samantha’s house and check up on the girl. Now that Samantha had some time to relax and see her family and closer friends after being kidnapped by the Society, Alice felt it was a good time to see how the girl’s recovery was going, and to see if Samantha needed anything. Even if Alice wasn’t as close to Samantha as she was with some of her other friends, she felt obligated to check up on the girl and see if she had any other lingering issues Alice could help with. Since Alice could see some problems other Mages weren’t able to, she thought it was best if she didn’t only rely on the words of other [Students] to see how Samantha was doing.

“Alice! I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” said Samantha, when she saw Alice knocking on her door. “I really wanted to thank you for saving me from the Society. I don’t remember if I did so the first time I saw you – things were a little chaotic at the time, and I wasn’t exactly in my best state of mind, either. Most of what happened after I woke up in Honored Immortal’s mansion is a huge blur. But I bet a lot of the reason an Immortal was willing to personally save me was because you became his apprentice. I won’t ask about the details, and I don’t know if you’re trying to hide that fact, or if you’re going to announce it later, but… thank you. Really. You’ve done a lot for me.” Samantha gave Alice a huge grin, and Alice noticed that Samantha’s smile was brighter than before. The eye bags and signs of stress on Samantha’s face hadn’t disappeared, but they had certainly started to fade. It seemed that she was doing well.

“Don’t worry about it – I’m just glad things worked out, honestly,” said Alice. It wouldn’t have been surprising if Samantha had died after being kidnapped by the Society, but fortunately, things had turned out all right. “How are things working out for you now? Is there anything I can help you with? Or have you noticed any strange health abnormalities or problems? If you have, let me know – I can inform Honored Immortal and see if he can give me any ideas or information, or even a follow-up examination if needed. Don’t be afraid to let me know,” said Alice, scanning Samantha carefully with all of her observation-related Perks. She didn’t notice anything particularly unusual so far – Samantha hadn’t replaced her destroyed kinetic seed with anything yet, but she otherwise looked like a normal average-level young Mage. But there was always a chance she could miss something.

“I haven’t noticed anything odd after being rescued. My mental state is also recovering well. Immortal Ethan got me in contact with a pretty good [Psychologist] – he’s level 80, if you can believe it. Not someone whose services my family could afford under normal circumstances, but Honored Immortal was kind enough to pay for it. I wish there was something I could do in exchange for his help, as well, but… he’s an Immortal,” said Samantha, before giggling. “It’s not exactly like he’s lacking anything I can give him. I wonder if Immortal Ethan even needs anything in the first place… I’ve never thought about what an immortal’s life is like, because it always seemed so far away…” Samantha began to ramble about Immortals, which quickly changed into a recount of some of her favorite bedtime stories about the Sun Knight.

Alice often found the girl’s digressions difficult to deal with, but for once, she found Samantha’s rambling to be comforting. A lot of the mental scars from being kidnapped by the Society seemed to be shrinking by the day, and Alice was relieved to see the girl recovering well. When Alice looked at Samantha, she found herself glad that she had helped save her from the Society. Alice’s role may have only been to set things in motion, but ultimately, she had made someone’s life far better as a result of her actions, and felt glad that she had tried so hard to make things right for Samantha.

She spent a few hours just chatting with Samantha, checking up on various things in her life and seeing how she was doing. Samantha’s family was relieved to have her back alive and well, and were more than happy to see Alice as well. Alice was politely pressured into having a home cooked meal and was showered with thanks, while Samantha rambled about her meetings with her [Psychologist], mundane speculations about enchantments, and Samantha’s hopes of returning to school life soon.

It was a pleasant morning.

Afterwards, Alice met up with Professor Feliza and Immortal Ethan. Shortly afterwards, they departed for Boris’s village.

acaswell

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