Illa, retired [Warmage], leader of the town of Cyra, and former mentor of a certain budding [Scientist] named Alice, looked at the air around her and frowned.

{Detect Danger}, a Perk from her [Warmage] Class, was very quietly ringing an alarm in the back of her mind. It wasn’t the immediate alarm that let her know she was in danger this very second, but she still felt that something wrong was happening. And sooner or later, it would impact her.

However, she couldn’t quite put her finger on what was dangerous right now. Even though her Perk was letting her know that something had changed in the world around her, Illa couldn’t quite figure out what was different.

At first, she thought that another group of [Assassins] from the Sigmusi Colonia had come to kill her. While she had thought that most of the [Assassins] and [Spies] in southern Illvaria had been removed by Allira near the beginning of Spring, it was entirely possible that the Sigmusi Colonia had sent a new group of [Assassins] to deal with her. A level 75 or above combat-ready Mage leading one of the towns in the South was a great look for the crown, since it showed just how much potential the southern recolonization effort had for Illvaria as a whole. Naturally, the Sigmusi found her especially problematic because of that, and were more than happy to assassinate her anytime they found an opportunity to do so.

She immediately called one of her [Servants] to send a message to her [Guards], telling them to be wary of a new assassination attempt. If the Sigumusi was insistent on sending [Assassins] her way, she would simply exterminate them all as they came.

However, after sending the [Guards] with more specialized skill sets to investigate the town, they couldn’t find any signs of suspicious activity at all.

This sent Illa into an even deeper level of worry and confusion. It was possible that they simply hadn’t picked up any signs of the [Assassins], but even so, putting her [Guards] on alert should have lessened the feeling of danger her Perk was notifying her of. After all, it was much harder to assassinate somebody who was on guard, and in the middle of a well-fortified town full of [Guards] actively trying to weed out [Assassins]. Normally, the level of danger detected by her Perk should have weakened.

She started to think that perhaps she was on the wrong track.

If there weren’t any [Assassins] sent after her…perhaps a disaster was about to befall the town of Cyra? A monster swarm could prove just as disastrous if not carefully handled. However, none of the [Scouts] had picked up any unusual activity in the woods surrounding Illvaria.

Illa hesitated for a moment, before she decided to swap out some of her enchanted items. She took off most of her [Charisma] and socially-oriented enchanted items, and put on some combat items instead. It never hurt to be prepared. However, even that didn’t ease the constant twinge of anxiety sent by her Perk. No matter what Illa did, she couldn’t quite pinpoint what was different, and that was the most frightening thing about the situation. If she didn’t know what the threat was, she couldn’t take countermeasures against it.

Illa shuffled uneasily, and for some reason, her mind drifted towards the Mage that had passed through her town quite some time ago. She thought of the rather unusual girl named Alice, who had a slight obsession with scientific experiments and learning about the world around her. At the time, most of Alice’s experiments hadn’t seemed like anything too impressive, but with her out of the box thinking, and her experiences as an {Outworlder}, the girl had brought a refreshing and interesting perspective to her experiments.

As far as she knew, Alice had been taken in by the Immortal of Spells and Seeds, Ethan, as his latest apprentice a few months ago. Clearly, her experiments had come quite far, if an Immortal had taken an interest in them.

Even though Alice probably didn’t know what was making her feel worried today, her habits and instincts as a [Warmage] had kept her alive on the battlefield dozens of times before she retired. And right now, she felt as though perhaps the young woman she had sent to Metsel just before summer started would have an idea what was happening.

Illa looked at the town of Cyra again, and felt a stab of hesitation pull at her.

She didn’t like the idea of being away from her town for an extended period of time. However, the sense of uneasiness in her heart, and the prickling warnings of future danger from her Perk, simply wouldn’t go away. Was a subtle, potentially incorrect feeling and a vague notification from her Perk worth leaving her town behind? If she went to see Alice, she would need to journey to the capital. That meant she would be spending at least a week traveling to Metsel, and another week travelling back. And that was an absolute minimum estimate: she might be away from her town for as long as a month, if she had to take some sort of follow-up action after meeting with Alice. And Alice might not have any idea at all what was wrong. If Alice had no idea how to address the problem, and Illa wasted two weeks traveling to and from the capital, she might lose any chance to address the problem. Was journeying to the capital and seeing Alice on a hunch really a good decision?

Illa gritted her teeth. The years she had spent mired in politics and the years she had spent on a battlefield warred within her mind for a brief moment, before her instincts as a former [Soldier] won out.

Moving the moment she felt something was wrong was precisely what had kept her alive during her time in the military. Even if she had no concrete evidence that Alice knew what was happening and how to address it, Illa was prone to trusting her instincts. Since the bad feeling in her heart wouldn’t go away no matter what precautions she took, and her Perk was still notifying her that she was in a bit of danger, she needed to figure out why she felt uneasy. She just had to hope that her instincts were correct again. In the worst case scenario, she could still leverage some other avenues of information she had in the capital. Even if Alice had no idea what the problem was, she wouldn’t be completely wasting her time if she headed north.

Illa quickly summoned her [Combat Maid], and her old friend.

“Ellia, let the other Mages of the town know that I’m going north. I felt something weird a few hours ago, and no matter what I do, I can’t seem to shake off the warning signals from my Perk. I can’t figure out what the problem is, so I’m going to meet with some people and see if they have any more information for me. While I’m gone, I want you to take care of the town for me.” Illa handed Ellia her personal token. “I trust you more than anyone else. If it’s a problem you can’t manage, hire a [Messenger] to get in contact with me as fast as possible. For smaller problems, handle them as you see fit.”

“Me?”

Illa didn’t hesitate for a moment as she nodded, and gave her old friend a wry grin. “I trust you the most. I know you won’t let me down.” Illa’s grin deepened. “Besides, you can handle yourself well in a fight. If someone tries to assassinate you while I’m gone, they’ll get a rather unpleasant surprise.”

The [Combat Maid] frowned, hesitating for a moment, before she sighed. “I’ll do my best to hold down the fort, my lady. Come back safely, and make sure that your trip is fruitful.”

Illa nodded, and the two started to make more specific preparations for her departure.

* * *

“Alice? Can you tell me what’s wrong?” Alice heard Ethan call from outside of her door. Unlike usual, Ethan sounded a little bit… worried.

Ethan hadn’t had a flood of reports break down the doors of the mansion yet, but Alice knew that he had found that, in the last twenty four hours, not a single person in Illvaria who had tried to go through a mana baptism had lived. And while Alice had never explicitly talked in detail about her study of the System, she hadn’t put a huge amount of effort into hiding her research from Ethan, either. He probably knew something, and with the help of his social Perks, he could probably also tell just how worried Alice was.

After all, less than a day ago, the System itself had winked out of existence. The System, which, as far as Alice could tell, was responsible for keeping most of the humans on this planet alive. It did a huge variety of critical things, such as helping people survive mana baptisms, keeping their mind being eroded by mana, and giving people the strength to resist monsters.

“Not yet,” said Alice, frowning. She took another look at her Status Screen, the very thing she had been observing for the past day. Now that the System had suddenly disappeared, it would naturally make sense for her Status Screen to also encounter some kind of problem.

However, oddly enough, Alice’s Status Screen looked quite normal. If Alice ignored the fact that System mana in her surroundings had disappeared, she wouldn’t have thought there was anything wrong at all. The System mana inside of her body seemed to be working just fine. Which was a relief. If Alice’s class seeds had just suddenly turned off, she doubted she would have still been Alice within twenty four hours of the System disappearing. Her Class mana probably would have erased her mind.

Alice thought about the moment she had seen the System blink out of existence, and couldn’t help but shiver.

Moments after Alice had seen the System mana in her environment disappear, she had simply sat there, frozen in fear.

The System had been getting weaker for months. It had been growing more and more glitchy, with numerous problems beginning to arise as the System got weaker and weaker for reasons she didn’t understand.

 Alice had spent the last few months wondering if the System would collapse someday, as she saw more and more weird errors start to appear in the world around her.

That being said, knowing that something might happen in the distant future was very different from seeing it happen in front of her eyes. One minute, the System was still functioning as if it were any other day. The next moment, it was as if the System had simply… disappeared into thin air.

And less than twenty four hours ago, as Alice was examining an Artifact for the first time and trying to figure out what she could do with her studies of enchantments and the System… the System had shorted out, like a lightbulb with no electricity.

Alice had a hard time imagining what life even looked like in this world without the System. She wasn’t sure what all of the changes would be, now that the System was clearly collapsing. Since the System was so integral to life on this planet, it was hard to imagine what it would look like if the System was gone.

But Alice was quite sure that it would be very bad for this world.

In the day she had spent studying her Status Screen, she had started to notice a few peculiarities that hadn’t been there before. Normally, when she tried to examine System mana, the System was... less than cooperative. Even though System mana was present in a wide variety of things, from every single Class Seed in her body to her Status Screen, it actively avoided being caught in a small space, touched by other people’s mana, or studied in any way, shape, or form. The System seemed to be actively designed to prevent other people from interacting with it or learning about it.

And now, the usual System mana reaction to Alice’s attempts to catch it and study it were seriously lacking. The mana inside of her body no longer avoided her mana tendrils if she tried to poke it, or even if she tried to toss a little display mana at it. Interestingly enough, adding display mana to her class seeds now gave her weird, nonsensical strings of binary numbers, none of which she could make heads or tails of.

At the very least, the lack of reactiveness from System mana had made identifying the types of mana present inside of System mana much easier. Alice had found several new types of mana that she intended to form magic seeds for later. However, none of Alice’s discoveries after the System collapsed seemed to lead her towards the root problem: the collapse of the System and its mana. Now that there was no rainbow mana in Alice’s surroundings, the only System mana she could find was the System mana already present in her body. This made studying the System notably harder.

Alice looked at her door, and frowned again.

She had never spoken about her studies of the System: after all, she was afraid of stepping on the toes of this world’s religion. The Church of the System worshipped the System as its god: if Alice had publicly announced that she was studying the god of one of this world’s two major religions, she suspected that she would get burned at the stake the following week. As tolerant as this world’s religion seemed to be, Alice really didn’t want to see how far she could push things.

However, that had been her mindset before the System had disappeared into thin air. If nothing was done, Alice was pretty sure the human species on this planet would be pushed to the brink of extinction within a few decades. Kingdoms would collapse as every single child in the country found themselves twisted by the class-related mana they absorbed, their body unable to handle the increasingly dangerous mana they were absorbing with every single action they took. And the of the world Mages would experience all sorts of strange problems.

She took a deep breath, thinking about the possible consequences of her next action, and then shuddered a bit, before she took in a deep breath. She had already trusted Ethan with most of her other secrets, and the Immortal who had taken her as an apprentice had never betrayed her confidence. He was more than willing to help her keep secrets when she needed them to remain secret, and had extended a great deal of help and trust towards her.

Perhaps it was time to discuss the nature of the System with Ethan, even though Alice had only discussed the full nature of her research with Cecilia, her best friend, so far.

Alice took a deep breath, to steady her nerves, and stepped out of her room. If Ethan knew about the current situation, he would be able to help her work her way through the best following actions. Alice’s research wasn’t just a personal hobby anymore, or a potential fix to obscure problems that might appear someday in the far-off future. Now, even if Alice didn’t know the solution, she had exact knowledge of what had just happened, and at least some idea how incredibly bad the situation was.

In the coming days, allies might be necessary if Alice wanted to fix whatever had just gone horribly wrong. Alice didn’t know exactly why the System had broken, or how to fix it. But if human life was to continue to thrive on this planet, fixing or replacing the System was critical. And she might need help fixing or replacing the System.

Then, she opened the door and stepped outside, preparing to talk with Ethan about her studies of the most important religious entity in the country. Even if the topic of conversation might put her in a bit of danger, if she didn’t say anything, this entire world might suffer the consequences.

Author’s Note:

acaswell

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