Alice spent the time she was asleep reading through Ethan’s exceptionally detailed library, trying to absorb as much knowledge as she possibly could. Since she now had an extra eight hours a day to just read and relax, she didn’t worry too much about only reading information relevant to her research. Instead, she was more than happy to read through everything that interested her, no matter how relevant or irrelevant it was to her current research projects. She spent a little more time learning about geography, before transitioning to reading a few stories dedicated entirely to entertainment, before studying a few books about biology and physics.

Despite her lack of focus on one topic in particular, Alice still gained a lot of information from her dream-dive into various topics of study. Her memory-enhancing Perks, as well as the comprehension boost granted by her reading Perk and the minor boost given by {Bookworm} gave her a massive leg up on how effective her reading time was. Sooner or later, Alice was confident that she could use all of this information to learn new things about the world around her.

Of course, Alice also took some time to read up on {Etiquette}, now that she had an additional eight hours a day to read while she was asleep. She learned a great deal of useful tidbits of information, such as how the seating order for a tea party worked, and what the proper title for various kinds of nobility in Illvaria was.

Generally speaking, during a tea party, Guests arrived and interacted with each other before the event officially began. Then, the host would sit everyone down, and have servants serve tea to the guests from the highest-ranked noble to the lowest ranked noble. While tea and various snacks were being served, the host or one of the other nobles associated with the host would bring up a light topic of conversation. This minor topic was still usually at least tangentially related to the ‘main’ topic of the tea party, which would be discussed once everyone had their tea and had settled in.

The topic of a tea party could be nearly anything an Illvarian [Noble] found important. Perhaps they would discuss monster incursions in the south, or perhaps they would discuss how to mitigate the effects of a drought on a certain region. Or perhaps they might discuss recent noble fashion.

After that, the host would declare the end to the most formal part of the tea party, and then the guests would be given leave to join the more… noble ball-esque part of the gathering. During this phase, there would be dancing, various conversations in the background, and so on. After some hours of dancing, conversing, and making or breaking alliances, the tea party would gradually dissolve, before the guests retired.

 Despite carrying the name ‘tea party,’ something Alice associated with a much lighter social interaction, Illvaria apparently took its tea parties very seriously. It was still less formal than a full-on ball, but it was still very structured and formalized.

Alice also learned that her position in all of this would be… interesting.

She had always known that Illvaria favored Mages a great deal, as a method of encouraging Mage immigration. Mages in a tea party tended to occupy a very weird place where, rather than their ‘rank’ being determined by their proper noble rank, they were instead served tea based on a number of other factors. Mages had a great deal of social mobility based on their Achievements and Level, more so than any other social class. While Alice had never made her level public, most people with some knowledge of the relationship between mana and levels, as well as familiarity with Alice’s published paper, could probably infer that she was fairly high level. That would normally put her at around the equivalent of a somewhat poor Baron, unless Alice made it known that she was at level 75 in one of her classes. If she made that piece of information available, she would probably be treated as someone equivalent to a weak viscount instead.

However, ever since Alice had become the apprentice of Ethan, her status had become a little more complicated. Alice being an apprentice of an Immortal, as well as her young age, meant that she would be perceived as having a high chance to proceed further in her lifetime. After all, there weren’t may level 75’s that weren’t physically 17 yet.  This meant that Alice might have a standing more akin to a proper, relatively influential count, a full rank above a regular viscount. And this was despite the fact that Alice had no land, little wealth, and basically no political connections besides Ethan.

Which was incredibly strange for her to think about. In a strange, theoretical way, Alice was actually somewhat influential in Illvarian politics, despite knowing almost nothing about Illvarian politics.

And, of course, since Alice had no idea what she needed to prepare for, the realization that nobles might actually want to talk to her sent Alice into a mad frenzy of reading. She tried her best to learn everything she could about the local political climate of Illvaria, just in case she was asked about the subject. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself in public, after all.

Since the push to resettle the south was the biggest current issue, Alice ended up focusing on that.

The push to resettle the south was mostly a directive from the current [King] of Illvaria, since, according to him, now was a golden opportunity to strengthen Illvaria. Since the nomads of the north weren’t raiding Illvaria very frequently, it was the perfect time to invest manpower and resources into strengthening Illvaria for the future.

However, many [Nobles] criticized the [King]’s push to resettle the south, claiming that they were rash. Illvaria’s knowledge of why the nomads weren’t raiding Illvaria was patchy, and resettling the south was leaving Illvaria dangerous overextended. If the Sigmusi Colonia or one of Illvaria’s neighbors attacked Illvaria while the country was trying to resettle the south, the country wouldn’t have the manpower to deal with it.

These criticisms had increased dramatically after the Sigmusi Colonia started its espionage war in the southern territories which had nearly killed Alice during her time in the south. The Sigmusi Colonia’s understanding of Illvarian internal politics was clearly excellent: they had launched raids and put pressure on Illvaria to exactly the level needed to stir up internal discontent, without uniting the country against them. There were plenty of [Nobles] who still supported the recolonization effort, but it was a much more divisive topic than it had been two years ago.

This was likely to be the main topic of the tea party Ethan had suggested Alice attend. The [Nobles] criticizing the [King] had increased their criticism as the reclamation of the south encountered new obstacles, with some suggesting the [King] was more worried about trying to gain Immortality than focusing on the best interests of the country.

The second princess, who was hosting the tea party, was likely trying to rally more support for the southern recolonization effort from some of the more neutral [Nobles].

The Immortal Estate was mostly in favor of the recolonization effort. Ethan, in particular, stood to benefit from the recolonization of the south, since the more enchanting materials were available in the country, the stronger the position of [Enchanters], and thus Mages in general, would be in Illvaria politics. And since Ethan was an Immortal Mage, that would naturally strengthen his position by a moderate amount.

As Ethan’s apprentice, Alice would be expected to support Ethan’s position on the recolonization effort, though she also wouldn’t actually be involved in any decisions related to the recolonization effort.

Luckily, Alice’s night of slogging through books on {Etiquette}and diving into the nitty-gritty of Illvarian internal politics gave her a much better understanding of why the tea party was being held, and how she was expected to act during the tea party. And when she woke up, she had acquired the {Etiquette} skill and levelled it up to level nine. Which wasn’t bad for a single night of work.

Alice spent the next two weeks attending classes at her magic academy, as usual. This brought her [Student] Class to level 9, which was a nice, if minor, change. She was only 1 level away from a new Perk.

In addition, Alice’s nights spent reading about various academic subjects, as well as her time in school, caused {Scholar of Magic} to continuously activate, boosting her various magic seeds to new levels as a result of her hard work.

Through Perk Usage, you have improved a Seed!

Organic Seed (68% -> 74%), Kinetic Seed (147% -> 151%), Pure Mana Seed (36% -> 44%)

The usage of Alice’s new Perk had drastically increased the efficiency of {Scholar of Magic}. Even Alice’s kinetic magic seed, which previously hadn’t benefitted very much from the effects of {Scholar of Magic}, started to show visible improvement as a result of her dramatically increased reading time. Which was a benefit Alice hadn’t originally thought of when creating the Perk, but it was a benefit she certainly appreciated once she noticed it.

There were also two new additions to her schedule.

First, Alice needed to learn under an {Etiquette} teacher every day after class. Her {Etiquette} teacher was a delightful old man who had an easy grin and a cheerful attitude. His name was Carlisle.

Carlisle was an absolute delight to learn from, and almost managed to make the incredibly dull topic of {Etiquette} interesting.

Almost.

Her teacher spent a day or two going over a variety of things Alice needed to pay attention to and that were hard to learn from a book. For example, Alice learned the proper methods of addressing various nobles, how to sit down, how to walk, how to hold a teacup, which fork to use when, and about a dozen other minor things that Alice needed to take note of. She was also given a set of paintings and a list of names that she was told to memorize before the event, as well as a few quick introductory notes to each person.

Carlisle seemed delighted that Alice had such an easy time remembering everything with the help of her Perks, and after three days, he deemed her theoretical knowledge passable enough that she could start practicing. After that, he started running mock tea parties with her every day, trying to get her used to properly attending a tea party.

Alice was more than a little amused by the fact that the man kept his cheerful grin and tone of voice during each practice scenario. With the old man’s help, at the end of two weeks Alice’s {Etiquette} Skill had risen to level 21 and she had also gained a point of [Charisma], bringing her total up to 131. Which was the fastest one of her Skills had ever increased. Ethan’s financial resources as an Immortal were no joke, and made getting access to a competent teacher far easier than ever before.

Apart from that, Alice spent her time reading her library of books anytime she fell asleep. With an extra six hours of highly efficient learning squeezed into every night, and an extra hour or two of relaxation reading, Alice was both more relaxed and levelling more quickly than ever before. She picked up another level in [Scholar], bringing her to level 56 just from reading every night.

The other thing Alice spent a week doing was getting a dress fitted for her. Which was surprisingly slow.

Alice had gotten rather used to seeing people do things at incredibly fast speeds in this world with the help of Perks. At higher levels, some people could even outpace modern technology.

And now, instead of a quick hour or two inside of a [Tailor] shop before walking out with a new set of clothes, Alice was forced to sit for a few hours every day a [Tailor] fussed over the details of her new dress.

Apparently, [Tailor] Perks could go in several directions. Generally speaking, however, they either emphasized speed or quality. Most [Tailors] usually took a mix of both, before grabbing a few System-enchantment related Perks at level 55 and above, if they ever reached those levels. However, dresses and suits made for [Nobles] tended to largely emphasize quality, making it much more of a pain in the neck to get clothes for a noble party than it was to get regular clothes.

Though, Alice had to admit, at the very least, she got to observe the [Tailor] using his Perk to create a System enchantment for her dress, which was something she found rather fascinating. As a finishing touch to the dress, the [Tailor] created a System enchantment that added to her [Charisma] and [Dexterity]. Being graceful was looked upon favorably in noble circles, and apparently Alice’s face was a little too plain for a normal [Noble] party, since most [Nobles] focused on [Charisma] as their primary stat.

[Charisma] was Alice’s third lowest stat, ahead of only [Strength] and [Dexterity]. It was a little higher than someone who had no Perks or training dedicated to the stat, but compared to a regular noble who spent years honing their [Charisma], Alice didn’t really blend in very well.

After a week, Alice finally had a decent dress for the event. And, grafted onto that dress, there was a System enchantment that boosted Alice’s [Charisma] by a solid 30 points and [Dexterity] by 10 points.

The rest of the time up to the tea party proceeded quickly. Alice didn’t find any opportunities to seriously explore mana baptisms that would qualify as ethical, beyond more opportunities to observe people who were already intent on going through a baptism. She observed each and every person who was willing to allow her to observe the process, getting another four observations in, but she still couldn’t quite put together a proper way to interfere with a mana baptism. The biggest issue was that Alice had confirmed that any kinds of mana placed near a mana baptism got sucked into it, adding to the baptism process. Alice suspected that she could somewhat circumvent this issue by using her pure mana seed to command the nearby mana to stop ‘eating’ her own mana. However, System mana seemed uniquely well situated to actively interfere with a mana baptism without contributing to the problem. And, more importantly, Alice couldn’t take a step forward without being reasonably certain she could make the process safer. Otherwise, there was no way any attempt to interfere with a mana baptism would make it through the ethics committee.

Since Alice didn’t have a System magic seed yet, the only way she could plausibly interfere with a mana baptism was using a pure mana seed. And due to the restrictions of the ethics committee, she wasn’t allowed to interfere until she was reasonably sure the person going through a mana baptism was already effectively dead if she was mostly guessing at the results of her potential interference. And that basically meant that Alice couldn’t do much when it came to advancing her attempts to improve mana baptisms.

As much as Alice appreciated the Ethics committee keeping her from taking a step towards becoming a person she would be uncomfortable with, she still found them somewhat annoying from time to time. Which, to be fair, meant that their existence was especially important for her. If Alice was going to delve deeper and deeper into the more gray areas of magical experimentation, having an outside party who could shut down any experiments that crossed the line was valuable.

Apart from that, Alice (very hesitantly) kept delving into the nature of Class-based magic seeds. Every single time she did, she got a set of cascading error messages from the System, as well as the mind-numbing feeling of nearly losing her sense of self. But since the System kept her safe, Alice was, just barely, able to work up the courage to try again each time. Alice did learn several things about her Classes and how they worked on a deeper level.

Alice had learned, for example, that [Survivor], as a class, didn’t necessarily care about whether she had truly survived ridiculously difficult odds out in the wilderness somewhere in order to earn her class levels. As long as she experienced something people perceived as dangerous, she would get the exact same XP reward.

For example, if Alice locked herself in a manaless room for an extended period of time, something which was considered unquestionably lethal by the overwhelming majority of the human populace right now, Alice would get XP for the [Survivor] class. Even if being in a manaless room did literally nothing to put her life in danger at all.

Suddenly, all of Alice’s seemingly random levels in the [Survivor] class whenever she completed an experiment made a lot more sense. Alice had always thought the timing of those levels was pretty weird, but she had never perfectly connected the dots before now.

After learning this tidbit, Alice immediately made her sleeping area completely manaless, and woke up to a nice chunk of [Survivor] XP every morning. She was definitely starting to notice the rewards drop off after two weeks of intentionally exploiting the massive loophole in the System, possibly because her paper about manaless rooms was starting to become more well known, but Alice had still gained another level in [Survivor] as a result of setting up some very simple enchantments near her bed.

You have leveled up!

Survivor: 55 -> 56

Similarly, a [Farmer] gained XP by doing things people of this world thought of as being ‘farmer’ related. And, in turn, as one gained farmer mana, everyone’s perception of who and what a ‘farmer’ was would begin to twist that person’s personality, making them more and more tied to their identity as a farmer and rapidly stripping away their personality and free will until they became nothing more than a puppet to the common perception of farmers. Worse, these two processes would feed into each other, creating a positive feedback loop that would quickly replace a person’s free will and sense of self with someone who was nearly a mindless puppet to their own mana.

At least, that would be the case if the System didn’t intervene. The System stopped the entire process at the very beginning, by absorbing all of the relevant class-related mana. Thus, the class was fundamentally unable to exert any influence on a person’s personality, leaving a person with the [Farmer] entirely as themselves, plus a bunch of neat supernatural abilities derived from their class seed.

As a final test, Alice had confirmed that her magic seeds based on Classes did very little. At least as far as she could tell. Perhaps there was a way to manipulate a class-based magic seed to do interesting things, but as far as Alice could tell, anytime she tried to do something with, say, a [Farmer] magic seed, a whole lot of nothing happened, even when she tried speeding up the growth of crops and such. Alice suspected this was because she had almost nothing in common with regular farmers. Since her actions up to this point didn’t fit the identity of a ‘farmer,’ the magic seed associated with farming didn’t really work very well for her.

Or perhaps she was just using the magic seed incorrectly, or perhaps it just couldn’t do anything in the first place. Since her [Explorer of Magic] Class seed had encountered similar problems before she deleted it, Alice was beginning to suspect it was just a problem created by turning a class into a magic seed.

Finally, during the final few days up to the tea party, Alice had realized there was a rather interesting question she could consider in greater detail, now that she knew more about the mechanics behind mana and class seeds. She had noticed it while using {Expanding Comprehension} on her pure mana seed. Sometimes when she used the Perk, she only got a minor boost in mana conversion ratio, but the more useful part of the Perk was the fact that it sometimes gave her unique insights into the nature of how a certain kind of mana worked.

This time, in addition to a 3% boost to her pure mana seed, Alice was reminded of a partiulcarly interesting fact about Immortals.

A long time ago, when Alice had delved into the nature of pure mana seeds using the original form of {Expanding Comprehension}, she had seen an image of Immortals as clouds of mana that continuously transformed into themselves.

Alice hadn’t really known what to make of this the first time she saw it. However, now that she had some context for how magic and class seeds worked, she couldn’t help but wonder what this meant on a more fundamental level.

The System had clearly demonstrated on multiple occasions that it would safeguard free will. In fact, it seemed to be one of the highest priority directives in the System.

How did that translate to Immortals, who, by definition of their very existence, should basically be entirely controlled by other people’s perception of who they were? After all, even regular [Farmers] would be basically taken over by their mana, if a class seed didn’t get rid of the harmful mana for them. But an Immortal was just a solidified clump of magic flesh. How did they remain themselves?

Alice wasn’t sure, but she was fairly certain the fact that Immortals were continuously shifting, over and over again, into themselves was probably some part of how the mechanics behind Immortality actually worked in practice.

Not to mention, it also shed some light on a possible reason why all Immortals could regenerate their body once per day. Perhaps the fact that an Immortal was continuously turning into themselves every single second of the day also let them regenerate missing chunks of their body, so long as the core of their existence remained intact. Which, in this case, appeared to be their brain.

Unfortunately, Alice didn’t have enough data to figure out how everything worked behind the scenes yet. She decided to keep an eye on Ethan and ask him about it when she had a better idea what questions she should ask.

However, two weeks of analysis and preparation soon came to an end.

It was time to attend a tea party.