Alice did her best to focus on her System messages. After all, she didn’t want to focus on the corpse of the woman who she had failed to treat, and Alice was also slightly worried that something would go horrendously wrong during the process of levelling up. Thus, with a bit of fear, Alice opened her System notifications, wondering if she would just find a line of glitch signs or something.

You have leveled up!

Scholar: 55 -> 56, Scientist 58 -> 60, Explorer of Magic 75 -> 76, Student of Organic Magic 11 -> 17

Alice felt a small breath of relief. It seemed that her Classes had still gained experience pretty normally. When she gained a level, she usually saw the System first filter all of the mana in her environment before it was absorbed by her magic seeds. This time, the System wasn’t around, so it couldn’t filer her mana. Despite the System’s absence, however, she had still gained levels after her class seeds processed the incoming mana.

Then, she frowned.

If she could gain levels with or without the System’s purification efforts, why did the System go through so much effort to purify mana right before people levelled up? What was the point? Alice started paying closer attention to her own body, as well as the mana inside of it, in hopes of finding an answer.

And as she watched mana slowly work its way through her body and towards her class fractals, {Intuitive Magic Modelling} started to let Alice know that the types of mana going through her body weren’t quite as pure as she had thought. There were essentially bits of other kinds of mana stuck to the original blobs of mana. Her [Scientist] mana, for example, had some chunks of [Scholar] mana attached to it, possibly because the image of a [Scholar] and a [Scientist] were probably close to each other in most people’s minds. Similarly, both chunks of mana had bits of the other kind of mana stuck to it. Instead of a pure blob of [Scientist] mana and a pure blob of [Scholar] mana, each blob of mana was around 80% of its ‘main’ mana type and 20% a different type entirely. Even though the majority of the mana was still correct, it was going to the wrong place. And there were a few other, smaller chunks of mana that Alice couldn’t identify that were also coming along for the ride.

Once the bits of scholar and scientist mana reached the class fractals in her brain, each class fractal absorbed most of the mana correctly, but the extra bits of mana that had been stuck together just… got stuck. It was kind of like seeing a giant piece of food get stuck in a drainpipe: it just sat there, unable to move forward or backward. The class fractal just didn’t know how to handle kinds of mana that weren’t aligned with itself at all, and so the mana was just stuck.

Furthermore, a few minutes after the chunks of extra mana got stuck, Alice felt a very, very subtle inclination to behave more like a [Scientist] and a [Scholar], as well as a subtle inclination to behave more like a… [Doctor]? Alice was pretty sure there was some [Doctor] mana mixed in, although it was hard to say for sure. It was an incredibly weak inclination, and Alice could easily squash it. But it was still very concerning, even if it was easy to handle right now.

Alice frowned, and tried to reach for her pure mana seeds, to see if she could somehow drag each bit of mana over to its ‘correct’ class fractal, but her head started pounding the moment she reached for her pure mana. She had used too much of it treating the patients, and she was totally out of pure mana now.

Alice winced, and shook her head, before moving on to her other System notifications. The external influence on her personality was incredibly minor, so she doubted it would be a problem to wait a few hours to recover some pure mana before she tried again. She didn’t think this problem was actually that hard to solve: she just needed to manually grab the mana that was in the wrong spot and then throw it at the correct class seed. For now, she ignored it and continued examining her System notifications.

Scientific Discoveries (Rarity: N/A) III -> IV

An Achievement Created by the ‘For Science!’ perk. It currently has one successful experiment catalogued. Upon reaching five experiments, this Achievement will receive a beneficial upgrade.

+20% class experience for all research related classes, +5% bonus to mental attribute growth (Per Tier of the Achievement)

Alice felt her relief get stronger as she noticed her {Scientific Discoveries} Achievement upgrade with no weird complications or issues. However, her relief was short lived. Moments later, Alice saw… a rather odd blob of mana. The way this chunk of mana started out was pretty similar to the way it looked whenever she gained a new Achievement.

At least, it looked similar to an Achievement at first. Unfortunately, it seemed that her new Achievement had gotten ‘stuck’ while trying to move through her body, and after a few minutes of movement, started instead bouncing off of her bones and muscles. It looked like a drunk squirrel trying and failing to scamper up a tree.

Alice frowned, wondering what was going on, and then, in a fit of inspiration, connected a mana tendril to the strange clumps of mana and started using display mana, to see if she could get access to any System notifications that she ‘should’ be able to see.

After all, as far as Alice could tell, Display mana would never actually let her ‘lie’ about what was part of her Status Screen. Even when Alice had deliberately tried to give herself ‘fake’ level up notifications, it had never worked. She had been able to make System messages that displayed the words ‘level up,’ but no matter what she tried, the System messages would end up showing her correct level. She frowned for a moment, and was able to remember what her best ‘fake level up’ notification had looked like.

You have leveled up!

Survivor: 54 -> 54

In other words, if Alice used Display mana to look at the System notifications for her new, messed up Achievement, she should be able to get some idea what was going on.

It worked, and moments later, Alice started examining a rather unique set of System notifications.

Legendary Healer (Rarity: 7) -> SD??SD@#$@ (This Achievement cannot be upgraded. Error!

 

Legendary Healer (Rarity: 7) -> SD??SD@#$@ (This Achievement cannot be upgraded. Error!

 

Legendary Healer (Rarity: 7) -> SD??SD@#$@ (This Achievement cannot be upgraded. Error! Connecting to main server to find resolution for issue… failed. Connection cannot be established. ?@#%(#)@$@#()(@#$* @#$*# @#$@#($ @#( (!)%#(!@$#)*^T$_#@ @#_ (@#_$

Alice blinked at the increasingly bizarre System notification. Then she started to worry.

A moment later, the clump of mana started to sink into her muscles and bones.

Error resolved. (Rarity: 4)

Y0^ h@ve cu**d a mEEEEdic((((l c*(Sn which kn***# how to. Y((*U.

@#*$&# @#*$(&@#$ @#$*()@#$ @#)(*@#$(@# @#)(@#$*@

A new Achievement appeared on her Status Screen.

Its name was ‘Error resolved,’ and it was a rarity four Achievement. It had no text.

Alice wondered if her Status Screen had just permanently glitched out. She… wasn’t sure what to make of that. She had been hoping to get more information from using her Display mana, but instead, Alice felt very worried.

If her Achievement was glitched out… what happened?

Right as she was starting to seriously worry about what would happen next, Alice noticed that the Achievement {Error Resolved} was beginning to change again.

The mana in her body was still attached to her muscles and bones, but after a few minutes, it started to unattach itself and start moving back towards her mage core. And then, a few moments later, the System notification started to change again.

Creative Healer (Rarity: 4)

You have used multiple magic seeds to heal a patient, and have used magic seeds beyond the basic healing seeds, such @s your P*^e magic seed.

Organic Magic Seed Conversion RaTTTTio: +10%, Mana Capacity for ALL seeds +5%

While this was definitely better, Alice still felt worried when she saw the new version of her achievement.

The weird glitch words and spelling errors in the Achievement had significantly decreased, but they hadn’t disappeared entirely. And even more oddly, Alice could still see the Achievement hovering around in her body. It wasn’t… quite right. It didn’t look like other Achievements.

She shifted uneasily, and examined the Achievement more closely to see if she could figure out what was wrong with it. It looked almost right, but there was definitely something off about it. At the back of her mind, she kept hoping that the Achievement would keep modifying itself, until it became fully ‘safe’ and easy to understand. Even if it might waste an opportunity to learn more, Alice also didn’t like the idea of having uncontrolled glitchy mana inside of her body. However, it didn’t seem inclined to change any further.

Alice sighed, and then decided to look on the bright side. There were a few bits of the Achievement that looked a bit scrambled, but it didn’t look like the Achievement was totally ruined. As long as it didn’t influence her personality, Alice felt that she had plenty of tools to deal with weird System errors: out of all of the people on this planet, Alice was definitely one of the ones who could handle this problem most effectively. And since she still had {Moderate Tissue Regeneration}, she could probably handle at least some health issues pretty easily as long as they weren’t too severe. She just needed to stay calm, use her Perks to keep an eye on what was happening, and start fiddling with the broken mana in her brain and inside of her Achievement once her pure mana seed was ready again. After using {Safety Analysis} to make sure she wasn’t about to kill herself by accident, of course.

Alice tried to examine her magic seeds, doing her best to feel out whether there were any changes in them. After all, while her new Achievement claimed that she had just gained a 5% boost to her mana conversion ratio for all of her seeds, she had no idea whether the Achievement was working right now. And if she tried to access her new Achievement the ‘normal’ way, by simply opening her Status Screen and then focusing on her new Achievement, she still got a giant load of nothing showing up. There was obviously still something wrong with the new Achievement.

However, when Alice investigated her magic seeds, she realized that all of them had expanded slightly. Nowhere near the amount they were supposed to expand, but… Alice was still definitely seeing a 2-3% increase in the mana capacity of her magic seeds, and her organic mana seed had gotten around a 7% boost out of the 15% boost it was supposed to receive. She was missing about half of the benefits she was supposed to have gotten from her new Achievement, but right now Alice was just grateful that her messed up Achievement wasn’t warping her personality or causing her mage core to implode or something.

Alice felt her empty pure magic seed again, and sighed.

She couldn’t wait for her mana to recover so she could sort this mess out. It didn’t look like the situation was immediately dangerous, at least, so she had more time to think and examine things. However, she made a mental note to ask Ethan if the Church of the System was flooded with people wondering what the heck was going on with their glitch status screens and Perk notifications. She doubted Ethan had originally thought to check the Church of the System before she had discussed her study of the System with him, but now, Alice felt there was a good chance that the Church would have noticed something was up. The number of people in Illvaria who tried to make a new magic seed each day was quite small, but the number of people who picked a new Perk or got a new Achievement each day in Illvaria probably numbered in the hundreds or thousands. How the Church responded to the System collapsing would be a good indicator of whether working with them to quell the chaos when it started to really break loose was a good idea. And it would also help Alice keep an eye on what other problems people were encountering now that the System was down. Even though Alice had a good understanding of a lot of parts of the System, today had been a good reminder of the fact that she didn’t know everything that would happen once the System started to fall apart.

For example, the weirdly clumpy chunks of [Scholar] and [Scientist] mana that Alice had noticed earlier. Even though they hadn’t started negatively influencing her yet, Alice was very nervous about what would happen in the future, especially if other people were running into similar problems. She already knew that little chunks of unpurified class-related mana would warp their personality a bit, transforming them into a perfect model of whatever Class they had if they had too much mana that wasn’t controlled by their magic seeds. And in the process, they would lose almost any speck of individuality or sense of self. While it was highly unlikely that anyone but children would reach that point quickly, it was very important to keep an eye on.

She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down as she thought of the future, and then tried to shake off her fear and worries.

She managed to calm herself down a little bit, and then decided to look at her Perk selections for reaching level 60 in [Scientist]. She had no idea what would happen if she tried to pick a Perk now that the System was down. Her first assumption was that Perk selection just wouldn’t work, but Alice wanted to make sure. But before messing with her Perk Selection at all, Alice ran a few checks with {Safety Analysis}. Now that the System wasn’t around to keep her safe if she messed up, Alice had to be extra careful with every single action she took.

Alice got a slightly fragmented response back. Messing with Perks apparently wasn’t completely safe, but it also wasn’t incredibly dangerous. It was just… mildly dangerous. Alice got the feeling that it was similar to sticking her hand on a hot stove: it would hurt, and she might burn herself – however, no matter what happened, it shouldn’t threaten her life or her sense of self. Alternately, perhaps it was possible that she could hurt herself, but there also ways she could get a new Perk without hurting herself at all. It was a bit hard to interpret what she was getting from her Perk, but Alice was pretty sure she could at least take a look without getting in danger.

Alice gritted her teeth, and decided to push on. If she wanted to fix the System and deal with whatever was happening to the world right now, she needed more Perks. The ones she had were good, but were wholly incapable of dealing with the situation in a timely manner. If her new Perks were just like her new Achievement, they would probably be weaker than they should be, and might leave behind some weird medical complications she would need to sort out later. However, the alternative was to keep working with only the tools she currently had available to her: and Alice suspected that was ultimately far more dangerous than taking a few calculated risks to get some more Perks. Society wasn’t falling apart yet, but with the System gone, it was only a matter of time before things got really bad.

True to Alice’s fears, her Perk selection screen looked far more messed up than before.

Perk Selection: ----- (missing entry)

?????????

Perk Selection: ----- (missing entry)

?????????

Perk Selection: ----- (missing entry)

?????????

Perk Selection: Combine Perks

(Add Perks here)

Alice looked at her messed up Perk selection in complete confusion.

What in the world was she supposed to make of this? This was just… nonsense. Her three available Perk selections were just question marks.

Alice waited, hoping that the words would rearrange themselves, the way her Achievement had. However, nothing happened.

Alice frowned, and then decided to try poking her messed up Status Screen with display mana and see if that clarified what her Perks were supposed to be.

To her surprise, they did. Somewhat.

Perk Selection: ----- Contact with main System lost. Loading from last previous record… Perk_Name: Study_???? Requirements: HOsT meets requirements. Scientist level 60+

Grants better Study. Increases Intelligence????.

Perk Selection: ----- Contact with main System lost. Loading from last previous record… Perk_Name: Learn_Magic Requirements: Host Meets Requirements: Achievement Requireemnt Meeet. Scentist level 60+

Better Learn Magic. Gooder sleep learn. Increase learning Intelligence by by by Number_amount.

Perk Selection: ----- Contact with main System lost. Loading from last previous record… Perk_Name: Memory_Other Requirements: Creative Shared Memory. Stat Requirement. Level Requireemnt. Scientist level 60+

Learn_from_other memories. No violation of core tenet. Core Tenet _ Free/Will.

Perk Selection: Combine Perks

(Add Perks here)

Alice could definitely still get some idea what each new Perk did based on the current text, but there was obviously something messed up about how every Perk was displayed. Without Display Mana, Alice couldn’t make any sense of her Perks at all: they just looked like question marks, which gave her absolutely no useful information at all. However, even with Display mana, Alice was beginning to get the feeling that she was missing some sort of other component that the System used in conjunction with Display mana to make words… make more sense.

Alice distinctly remembered that the System had showed her a Status Screen entirely in English the moment she arrived on this world, after all. This was before the System even figured out what English was and created a language skill for it. However, when Alice used Display Mana, she could only show System messages that she wanted to display. While she couldn’t lie about any System components with Display mana, she could absolutely fiddle around with the language each message used. And most importantly, they did not automatically translate themselves for the reader if Alice used her display mana. Any System message Alice created was bound to whatever language she tried to make the message in – it wouldn’t be comprehensible to those not fluent in the language.

Which meant that whatever she was missing was rather important, since it seemed to somehow obviate language itself as a form of communication. Alice still wasn’t sure how that was even possible. Perhaps the System was directly translating concepts to people’s minds, or… something?

Alice wondered what other component she was missing, and resisted the urge to sigh.

At least for now, this would be good enough to make new Perk selections. She didn’t exactly have the precise numerical breakdown she was used to, but as long as she had some idea what her Perks did, that was at least good enough to make reasonably informed decisions, even if it was disappointing that she couldn’t get as many details as she was used to.

Alice looked her Perk combination options as well, and found that it had run into fewer problems. Which amused Alice quite a bit.

This was probably because even the System never seemed entirely certain what the result would be when combining Perks. Since it had always provided less information than just flat-out picking a new Perk, it lost less information.

Of course, her Perk combination options were still subject to the broken grammar and weird System notes that her Perk selection options had fallen prey to.

After a few minutes of thinking, Alice eventually decided to combine together two Perks. Two of the three new [Scientist] perks actually seemed somewhat appealing: Learn_Magic and Memory_Other were, as far as she could tell, Perks that would let her use her {Sleep-Reading} Perk to learn magic, and a Perk that would let her read other people’s memories and experience an enhanced learning effect. She probably needed the other person’s permission to use the Perk, but she was willing to bet Ethan would let her observe some memories of his own training: he seemed pretty committed to the idea of raising a new Immortal, and this was definitely something that would help her. And even if Ethan wasn’t willing to share his own memories, Alice doubted he would have a hard time finding a teacher who was willing to share their memories, if the pay was good enough.

Both Perks sounded incredibly useful. However, Alice had noticed a rather curious (and possibly critical) Perk that she could create by combining together two other Perks. It was an option that hadn’t existed in her Perk combinatinons at level 55, but even though the grammar was a bit broken, Alice was still pretty sure she knew what the Perk would do. So she combined the Perks.

The Science of mana deprivation Requirements: Scientist level 50 or higher, Intelligence 150 or higher, Must have extensively experimented with mana and lack of mana and its effects on other creatures and/or oneself, Magic 150 or higher, Pure mana seed (or similar seed) present.

You may use your mana tendrils to interfere with mana, allowing you to create manaless fields at will given enough time or otherwise allowing you to prevent mana from interfering with your experiments. Note 1: The farther away the mana is, the more difficult and mentally draining it will be to activate this Perk. It is advised you use this on areas near you. Note 2: Please remember that interfering with mana controlled by other people will be far more mentally taxing than manipulating the same amount of mana would be if it were uncontrolled.

Alice loved the Science of Mana Deprivation. It was a Perk that didn’t sound amazing, but the most powerful component of the Perk was the fact that it let her mess with other Perks and System mana. It could let Alice deflect or deactivate Perks that other people tried to use in her surroundings, assuming she had fast enough reflexes.

However, it also had several shortcomings right now. Most notably, it couldn’t interact with most kinds of mana besides Perks, because it required her to spend a fair amount of mental energy and pure mana to properly mess with other Perks, and it was very mentally exhausting to actually create things like manaless fields, despite that being the ‘main’ use of the Perk. Right now, Alice wanted a fast and easy way to turn off all kinds of mana: even if that mana was inside of other people. It would be the most effective way to treat problems like going nuts because one’s mana hadn’t been absorbed by a class seed. It would have also helped a lot when trying to treat the final patient earlier.

This was why she had decided to combine it with another Perk to get the result she wanted.

Frankly, Alice didn’t have much use for this Perk anymore. She generated two new magic seeds a month. And she had practiced creating magic seeds without the System. While this situation wasn’t the reason she had worked on learning to form seeds without the System, her practice was incredibly useful now, since she was probably one of the only people in the world who didn’t have to worry about dying after forming a new magic seed right now. In any case, a Perk giving her one low-quality magic seed was just not that important after she gained the {Seeds of Ambition} Perk.

Thus, Alice stuffed the two together and nervously watched as the System combined the two Perks, hoping it didn’t mess up and cause some sort of disaster.

Before hitting the ‘combine’ button, Alice did to do a final check with her {Safety Analysis} Perk, just to make sure she wasn’t about to screw herself over. Luckily, it seemed that she was safe. Alice activated the Perk combination.

Perk_Name: No_Mana Perk Costs: Degraded Seed Slot + The Science of Mana Deprivation

You create a No_Magic magic seed. This magic seed can deactivate or potentially delete mana. Warning: Without permission, it’s harder you modify____ seed another person.

Shortly after she combined the two Perks, Alice felt a new magic seed start to form inside of her mage core. This seed was the first magic seed she had ever had formed directly as a result of a Perk existing, instead of just having a magic seed slot granted to her. Instead of Alice needing to concentrate on a specific idea and then absorb mana to make a magic seed, this time, her two class fractals just took over the process entirely, dragging in mana and turning it into a specific concept. Which was probably why Alice could do this safely: the System was still doing the dangerous bits for her, even if the main frame of the System was down.

A few moments later, Alice had an entirely new magic seed. One that was, apparently, called a No_Magic magic seed. Alice suspected the name was slightly off, but as long as the magic seed itself worked, it would be fine.

Then, Alice tried poking herself in her [Student of Organic Magic] class seed and using a small wisp of her new magic seed.

To her delight, she felt the very small mental boost that she had barely been aware of… fall away for a moment. Alice wasn’t particularly aware of the effects of {Improved Organic Manipulation} most of the time, since the Perk was highly specific and not particularly strong. However, after Alice tested it out, she confirmed that her new No_Magic class seed could literally deactivate Classes. Which meant that it could probably also deactivate mage cores, and a bunch of other things if Alice needed to mess with them for a while.

Alice turned back to the second patient, who still had several patches of flesh that were currently going out of control, and then quickly used her new No_Magic seed after a few moments in order to deactivate some of the flesh writhing and pulsing like mad.

The man’s situation didn’t stabilize completely, but it at least improved a bit after Alice emptied out her new magic seed.

She checked its mana reserves, and after some estimation, realized it had around a 30% mana conversion ratio. Not amazing, but not terrible, either.

She grinned to herself. At the very least, she had a way to treat patients a little more effectively now. She could deactivate magic seeds that were going haywire, and possibly delete mana that wasn’t properly integrated with a class seed. She could finally treat Borris completely, instead of just giving him a ring to stave off the worsening of his illness. It was nowhere near enough to handle the problems caused by the collapse of the System, even in a country as small as Illvaria, but it was definitely a good start.

“Alice, are you done?” asked Ethan. “If so, we should go back for now.”

Alice nodded, and then gave the corpse of the woman she had failed to heal one last, sad glance.

If she had access to her new Perk before she had started treatment, she would have been able to keep the woman alive. But each patient had been worth about half of the levels she had gotten: she simply had no way to have made the timing work out.

She sighed, and then followed Ethan as the two of them left the healer’s office.