On Ethan’s suggestion, Alice and Ethan both took carriages to the palace on the day of the tea party in order to maintain some distance between them. Even though Alice was Ethan’s apprentice, she was also a prospective future Immortal in her own right, and so Ethan said that it was important to send that Alice was someone to be remembered on her own, instead of only because of her connection to Ethan.

Which, apparently, translated to Alice and Ethan taking different carriages. Alice’s {Etiquette} instructor had told her that she should spend some time with Ethan at the tea party, to show that they were on good terms, and some time on her own, but Alice hadn’t realized that she should start before they even arrived. She was glad Ethan was there to help her along with the political stuff, although Alice was also quickly realizing just how woefully inadequate her Skills and Classes were at dealing with social situations. She was starting to get used to having Perks and Skills help her navigate new and interesting situations, and not having any she could rely on felt a little strange to her now.

As the two carriages rode down the more well-paved streets of the Illvarian capital, Alice was amused to see a few other [Nobles] moving down the streets in a variety of ways, most of which she wouldn’t have expected [Nobles] to ever use.

Back home, when she had read stories or watched movies about [Nobles] in the middle ages, they had all arrived in fancy carriages, with each [Noble] working to outdo the next noble in terms of how fancy and lavish their carriage was. Alice and Ethan were both in carriages right now, and Alice had assumed everyone else would do the same.

However, there were a few [Nobles] Alice could see riding horses and heading in the same direction as the two of them. Somehow, their Perks and Skills were ensuring that they remained utterly spotless during the ride.

Which was probably the point, now that Alice thought about it. Considering how important people found levels in this world, showing off that one could stroll through filth and come out spotless was a method of flexing one’s Perks and Levels. And remaining spotless while standing in the middle of a cloud of dirt seemed like a very [Noble] Perk to have, considering how useless it was for almost every other profession Alice could think of.

The most extreme example of [Nobles] flexing their Perks was a [Noble] couple simply strolling towards the palace, which caused Alice to let out a few chuckles when she saw them. They were moving fairly quickly, and Alice guessed that they had decent [Dexterity] along with whatever Perks they had keeping them clean.

Seeing [Nobles] ride on horses and stroll through the city towards a tea party was surprisingly interesting, and Alice found herself far more entertained by the journey than she had expected.

Finally, after rolling down a few more streets and past a few other [Noble] carriages and travelers, the carriage came to a stop.

The [Coachman], who Alice realized was actually her [Hidden Bodyguard], knocked on the door, before opening it and helping her get down. Alice didn’t actually need his help: however, as she looked around, she realized that in the distance, she could also see a [Noble] getting helped down from the carriage by his own [Coachman]. Perhaps it was some sort of {Etiquette} that hadn’t been covered in her lessons?

Alice mentally shrugged, and allowed the [Hidden Bodyguard] to guide her out of the carriage.When he realized that Alice had identified him, he gave her a friendly wink before moving to the side, along with some of the other carriages who were parked outside.

Alice frowned, as she noticed that the mana around her [Hidden Guard] was acting oddly. She tried to get a closer look at it, but couldn’t quite see what was happening before it vanished. She squinted at the spot where the System mana had acted up, but it seemed completely normal now. She couldn’t figure anything else out. She sighed, and turned her attention back to the [Hidden Guard] pretending to be a [Coachman].

“If you need anything, let me know, Lady Mage,” he said, a small note of unchecked amusement present in his voice.

“I’ll be sure to do so,” said Alice, giving him a practiced ladylike nod. She didn’t think anything would happen in the middle of the palace, but knowing her [Hidden Bodyguard] was nearby was still comforting.

Then, Alice got her first look at the palace itself. She had never had a reason to venture this far towards the center of the city before, so it was her first time seeing where the royal family lived.

The palace itself was… big. It wasn’t quite as opulent as something like the palace of Versailles from Earth, but it was still a major feat of architecture. It was made of a stone that strongly resembled marble, with highlights made of turquoise stone and some kind of gold plating attached to the side. Alice was pretty sure that without whatever Architecture-related Perks were keeping the building intact, the whole building would have collapsed. Alice didn’t know very much about architecture, but she was still pretty sure that there were too many spires and domes present for the building to plausibly support its own weight.

However, the building did look incredibly impressive. The impossible architecture of this building really hammered in some of the more interesting aspects of what the people of this world could do when they had the right Perks.

However, Alice quickly lost interest in the architecture, because she instead latched on to a much more interesting part of the building. Even more fascinating than the building itself were the building’s enchantments. It also had so many enchantments attached to it that Alice had a hard time making out where one enchantment started and the next stopped. There were probably eleven or twelve different enchantments encoded into the building, all of excellent quality.

Alice wondered who had made the enchantments. The work looked kind of similar to an Immortal’s work, but as far as Alice knew, there weren’t any Immortals in Illvaria who specialized in enchantments. Ethan was more combat focused, and while he could throw together some basic enchantments, Alice was pretty sure he wasn’t good enough to make the enchantments in the palace. Perhaps she was underestimating what a team of dedicated [Enchanters] could do with the right resources and motivation?

The enchanting materials were also clearly top-notch. The materials Alice was used to working with could hold, at most, three or four instructions. And that was after she used {Kinetic Enchanting} to increase the maximum instructions of a material by one.

Admittedly, Alice had generally worked with budget materials when she relied on enchanting as a source of income, which meant her understanding of top-notch enchantments was a little more limited. But as far as she knew, even for a higher-grade [Enchanter], having a material that could hold 7 or 8 enchantments was still rather high-end. Whatever the palace was made of, it could hold far more enchantment instructions than even a normal high-grade material. Which spoke of the obscene amount of money that had probably been poured into securing materials for the palace’s construction. To build an entire building out of this ludicrously expensive material seemed completely insane to Alice.

As she looked at the impressive enchantments of the palace, Alice found herself thinking of something Cecilia had mentioned a long time ago, when the two of them had been sailing up the river to Metsel from Cyra. Something she hadn’t thought very much of recently, because it hadn’t been relevant to her at the time. However, since Alice’s status was quite a bit different from when she had first entered the city, she might actually have a chance to interact with this tidbit of information.

Somewhere in the palace, there was supposed to be an Artifact, one of the greatest feats of enchanting that existed in this world. Specifically, the Artifact was supposed to be responsible for controlling the flow of water in most of the rivers of southern Illvaria, turning a single river into a giant set of canals that were perfectly shaped for both irrigation and sailing trade boats upriver and downriver.

Alice had never seen an Artifact before. She had seen the other three kinds of enchantment, and could even create traditional and consumable enchantments on her own. And she was currently wearing a System enchantment, in the form of a dress the [Tailor] had made for her. But she had yet to see an actual Artifact.

She wondered if she could see it while she was in the palace, before deciding to ask Ethan later. Alice was much more focused on her experiments than on her enchantments, but that didn’t mean Alice intended to let her enchanting fall completely to the wayside in the future, even if it wasn’t her focus. Besides, observing an Artifact might give her some new inspiration on how the System or magic worked, which meant that she might get a lot out of observing an artifact. It could also turn out to be completely useless, of course, but Alice felt it was worth trying to see. She just didn’t know if Ethan could convince the royal family to let her see the Artifact.

As she found herself musing over the possibility of seeing an Artifact for the first time in her life, Alice walked towards the palace. The [Guards] near the entrance were more rigorous than she had expected. They had Alice read out a list of statements verifying her identity and lack of malicious intent towards the palace, the royal family, and so on, before finally allowing her to enter. To the side, Alice could see Ethan going through the exact same process.

Then, Alice and Ethan were allowed inside the palace.

The insides were just as decorated and soaked in Perks as the outsides. Alice was sure that most guests of the palace were supposed to ooh and ahh at the paintings and furniture placed around the palace, but Alice found herself drawn to the intriguing high-end architecture and Perk usage instead.

After all, most of the furniture, paintings, and so on weren’t anywhere near as magical. Alice could see some Perks attached to them, but since they looked quite normal, Alice guessed the Perks did things like make each piece of furniture sturdier or more comfortable.

“The enchantments in the palace walls are quite interesting, aren’t they?” Asked Ethan, seeing Alice’s wandering attention.

“They are. I don’t actually know what most of them are doing,” said Alice. “I can see a few of them are kinetic in nature, but it looks like nothing I’ve seen before.”

“There are some Perks explicitly woven into the enchantments to make it harder to figure out what each enchantment is doing,” said Ethan. “It’s supposed to make it harder for a would-be [Assassin] to hijack the palace’s enchantments. Or at least that’s my best guess about why those Perks are present. And I’m pretty sure at least a few of the enchantments in the palace are rigged to blast down anyone who tries to interfere with the enchantments. So don’t mess with them. I imagine that your speed boosting Perk would keep you alive, but we would both have a pretty bad time explaining what happened afterwards.”

Alice nodded, and made extra sure not to poke at any of the enchantments in the palace walls. Even though the Perks and enchantments present were really interesting. Then, she started scanning their surroundings again, trying to see if she could pick out the Artifact. Strangely enough, despite all of the time she had spent looking at the enchantments or architecture, she hadn’t spotted anything that was obviously unusual. She wasn’t quite sure what an Artifact looked like, but she had expected it to be obvious to her when she spotted it. However, there was nothing.

“What are you looking for?” Ethan asked, as Alice eyeballed a few more areas.

“The artifact that controls the rivers,” said Alice. “I want to see it, at least from a distance. I might learn something interesting from taking a look.”

“Ah,” said Ethan. “Look down. It’s quite a ways beneath the palace, actually.”

Alice looked down, and finally, at the edge of her eyesight, noticed a giant tapestry of especially interesting globs of mana, well below her feet. Given how much System mana was clogging up her eyesight, it was easy to miss, but once Alice knew where to look, she could finally see… something that looked like a giant multicolored wheel. At the edge of each part of the wheel was a giant pipeline of mana, which stretched far into the distance. It also grew fainter and harder to notice the further away from the wheel it got.

In a very strange way, it actually reminded Alice of a map of the sewers back on Earth.

“Yup, that’s it,” said Ethan, seeming to notice as her eyes fixated on the giant wheel of mana.

Alice nodded. It was a bit too far away to make out anything interesting, at least from this distance, but she still did her best to memorize everything she saw.

“Do you want to look at it later? I can probably convince a few people to let you take a look after the tea party,” said Ethan.

Alice immediately nodded. Ethan chuckled.

“All right, and… here we are,” said Ethan, before opening the door to another part of the palace.

The room Ethan and Alice had walked into was some sort of mixture of a ball room and a garden. On one side of the room was a variety of flowers, vines, and other greenery, all artfully arranged to give half of the room a certain overgrown garden-like image. Then, the influence of flowers and greenery gradually tapered off, leaving the area more and more like a ballroom, with two floors, and a wide open, flat area set up for dancing. On the second floor, there were resting areas set up where people could sit down and chat over cups of tea and snacks.

A small group of [Bards] and [Musicians] sat to the side on the first floor, absently tuning their instruments and preparing for their performance later. Despite half of the room looking like a garden and half of the room looking like a more traditional dance room, the two halves of the room were artfully blended together in order to create an image of cohesion.

Alice noticed that she and Ethan weren’t the first people to arrive.

Sitting at the table was a woman who looked… an awful lot like Ethan.

Alice recognized her from the list of [Nobles] and other important figures she had memorized. She was Ethan’s mother.

Much like the other Immortals Alice had spotted, she looked like a cloud of humanoid mana. However, unlike most Immortals Alice had met, the woman didn’t have five large class seeds, and then a small handful of scattered secondary class seeds. Instead, she had something like two dozen fairly large class seeds, and then one exceptionally large class seed. Her secondary classes were clearly smaller than her main class, but the difference was much harder to spot than usual.

Since Ethan had mentioned that his mother enjoyed working on her secondary Classes, Alice assumed that each Class she could see was a ‘project’ Ethan’s mother had spent a considerable amount of time working on. Most of the Class seeds she could see looked like they were probably around level sixty, and while Alice had no idea what most of the classes were, she could still appreciate the time and dedication Ethan’s mother must have devoted to levelling up her classes.

Alice glanced at Ethan again, and then glanced at the woman, before she felt a slightly amused grin pull at her lips.

Both of them looked like they were the same age. If she was on Earth, she was pretty sure she would have assumed they were siblings. Having a child that looked the same age as you must be… odd.

Alice spent a few moments musing over the oddities of Ethan’s family dynamic, and then continued examining the other people at the table.

Sitting at the head of the table was a woman with warm brown eyes and rich black hair. She was stunningly pretty, and looked to be in her early twenties. She was chatting with Ethan’s mother, and was currently laughing at something Ethan’s mother had said. She was a about average in level, perhaps around level 50 or 55. Alice identified her as the second princess, and the host of this tea party.

Finally, there were about a dozen people sitting near the back of the table. They varied wildly in age and level, but Alice was able to recognize over half of them as a result of her studies on the [Nobles] and {Etiquette} of Illvaria. Alice noticed two people near the back of the table who were talking with each other, and noticed that there were various bits of rainbow mana being fired at each other every single second. Some mana looked like a more normal lie-detection Perk, with both parties trying to figure out whether the other one was lying. Some other mana, oddly enough, looked like a string that connected the two men, and Alice had absolutely no clue what that particular chunk of system mana was doing. Alice wondered what Perks were being used. Perhaps they were using Perks related to analysis? Or Perks to help them poke holes in the other’s ideas? Alice lacked the context to make sense of whatever was happening over there, but she found the mana involved to be fascinating.

She glanced at Ethan curiously, waiting to see if he had any special reaction to any of the [Nobles] present.

Ethan, however, focused on his mother and the second [Princess]. He gave his mother a warm smile, and his mother pulled herself out of her conversation for a brief moment to give Ethan a warm smile back. Then, she nodded at Alice, and returned to her conversation with the second princess.

“I believe you should already be able to recognize her, but that’s my mother, Myra. And she is speaking with the second princess.” Ethan said. Alice noticed a small, fond smile on Ethan’s lips as he spoke of his mother, and a hint of pride as well. Clearly, Ethan’s family was quite close. Then, the grin on Ethan’s lips changed to one she recognized…

“Do you know the other people here?”

Alice suppressed a groan and nodded. “The two over there are a pair of counts who are in charge of the eastern border of Illvaria. Due to their geographical position, they have reasonably good access to trade with some of Illvaria’s more amicable neighbors, and so they’re reasonably wealthy. However, due to the fact that they run part of Illvaria’s border, they also need to fund a notably larger garrison than the average [Noble], meaning that, strangely enough, it basically balances out. But they’re still fairly influential,” said Alice, glancing at the two she had seen conversing at the back.

“Then, next to them is Baroness Helia, who has a fairly wealthy barony in the mid-eastern parts of Illvaria. A fair amount of paper is produced there, which means that she’s almost as influential as some [Counts] due to the amount of money her land produces. The woman she’s talking to…”

Alice started to run through her memories, listing out every [Noble] she recognized and a few interesting tidbits about their land and political position. Ethan nodded along as Alice spoke, occasionally taking a moment to interject if he felt that Alice had missed something important, but for the most part he was content to let Alice keep going.

Ethan grinned and nodded. “Well done. I’m surprised you learned so much, even if you missed some important details. I don’t recall all of those facts being part of your lessons, in fact. You did a decent job assimilating all of the knowledge available to you and turning it into a more coherent picture. Well done.”

Alice nodded. “I learned about it using one of my new Perks. It gives me a huge advantage in learning new information quickly and efficiently without cutting into my time for experiments and organizing information. It’s very helpful,” said Alice, thinking of {Dream Reading}. The Perk was doing wonders for her reading time and learning time available each day: previously, she had been able to spare a few hours per day for reading new information, but it had never felt like enough to catch up on all the things she wanted to know. Now, Alice even had an hour or two each day to spare reading for fun, and was still learning far more each week than ever before.

Ethan’s grin grew wider. “I’m glad all those books are getting put to good use, then.”

Ethan led her towards the head of the table, near where Ethan’s mother and the princess were sitting, and Alice swallowed down a hint of nervousness. This was the first time she had ever interacted with royalty.

In fact, barring her association with a few Immortals, this was the first time she would interact with the [Nobles] of this world. Alice did her best to school her expression into a normal one, hoping that she wasn’t frowning or grimacing.

Meanwhile, Ethan’s mother and the Princess seemed to have finished their conversation, and Ethan’s mother gave Alice and Ethan a more welcoming grin and nod, before patting one of the seats next to her.

Alice swallowed a nervous lump in her throat.

It was time to meet another of Illvaria’s Immortals, and the mother of her teacher.