After Alice’s experiment was over, she left the room in order to handle her System notifications. Alice hadn’t discovered anything revolutionary, beyond the fact that monsters reacted to some kinds of System mana and totally ignored others, but she hoped Ethan could still get something useful out of her test results. At the very least, the fact that monsters seemed to ‘copy’ Perks that they consumed was useful information, although Alice wasn’t entirely sure how and when monsters could find and absorb Perks from the System. The monsters that had attacked Cyra had mostly been normal monsters, but a few of the monsters had access to knockoff Perks, so there was obviously some way for monsters to find System mana in the wild. But Alice wasn’t sure whether the monsters that had attacked Cyra had stolen them from travelers they had eaten, or from the burst of rainbow mana that had covered the world a few days ago, or some other source entirely. But that was the best information she had right now.

Now it was time for Alice to focus on the rewards for her experiments. During her experiments on the monsters, she had gained a few System notifications that she was eager to look at. Before investigating exactly what she had gotten, she used her filtration magic seed to purify all of the clogged up mana stuck inside of her class seeds. Once she finished turning all of the mana she had collected into the right types of mana, Alice started looking through her various rewards.

You have leveled up!

Scientist: 62 -> 65, Scholar 60 -> 62, Survivor 59 -> 60

And there was one more notification that Alice was very pleased to see.

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

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)

When Alice saw the second System notification, she grinned.

A long time ago, Alice had picked up a rather interesting Perk.

For Science! Requirements: Scientist level 45 or greater

Whenever you successfully complete an experiment related to science or magic which you do not already know the results of (with reasonable certainty), you gain a permanent increase in levelling speed of 20% for all Research related classes. You will also gain a permanent +5% bonus to the attribute growth of all mental stats. (This will be added to your Status Screen as an Achievement named {Scientific Discoveries Rarity: N/A}. Upon reaching five completed experiments, an additional beneficial effect will be added to the Achievement.

When Alice had taken the Perk, she had wondered what the beneficial effect of the ‘upgrade’ for the Perk would be. She had not expected that it would take very long to reach rank V, considering how often she did experiments, but the Perk’s definition of an ‘experiment’ had proved hard to nail down. But after several months of slow and steady hard work, Alice was finally ready to see the upgraded version of the Perk.

A few moments later, Alice saw a new System notification pop up.

Upgrade Requirements met. {Scientific Discoveries} Achievement reconstruction in progress.

Alice was more than a little surprised to see that this System message didn’t have any of the broken grammar or glitch signs she was starting to get used to. This particular System message looked exactly like the old System messages – complete, concise, and translated directly into English for her. Perhaps the System notification for this upgrade had been created a long time ago, and then stored for whenever Alice had finally unlocked the next tier of the Perk? Since Alice didn’t see any odd streams of System mana in her surroundings, that was her best guess for why the perk wasn’t part gibberish.

A few moments later, a new System notification appeared.

Upgrade Complete.

 

In pursuit of Science

An Achievement Created by the ‘For Science!’ perk. It has reached max tier, and cannot improve any further.

+100% class experience for all research related classes, +25% bonus to mental attribute growth.   As a final benefit to this Perk, You may choose one of the Perks for any research or Science related class, and upgrade it. (Perk must be a Tier 1 or Tier 2, and be below level 75).

Alice blinked at her new notification, and then grinned.

The ability to ‘upgrade’ a Perk was quite rare. Alice had only gotten one other opportunity to upgrade a Perk so far. Getting another chance was very exciting.

Alice started thinking about which Perk she wanted to upgrade, and immediately thought of one Perk in particular. A Perk that Alice currently needed to use over and over again, but simply had too long of a cooldown, especially considering how useful it was in helping to resolve the current crisis.

Naturally, Alice was thinking about upgrading {Seeds of Ambition}, the Perk that let her create two new Magic seeds a month. Right now, Alice needed an absolutely insane amount of magic seeds if she wanted to replicate the System. Currently, she still needed a magic seed for math mana, so that she could finally add it to her version of System mana. She also needed a magic seed for ‘meaning’ mana, or something of the sort, because it helped her System notifications work the way they were supposed to. She also had a few magic seeds that she had lost access to while she was combining perks and had simply never had the time to regain access to, and a few other, smaller components of System mana that she knew less about, but were likely important in their own ways. She still needed more time to heighten her understanding of all the mana types she was missing, but Alice desperately needed more magic seeds as fast as she could unlock them.

Alice hoped that upgrading {Seeds of Ambition} would solve this problem.

She double checked the new menu in her Status Screen that had been created after her Achievement finished upgrading, and started scrolling through a long list of Perks she could improve. Alice double checked that she wasn’t missing some other amazing upgrade, before she zeroed in on {Seeds of Ambition}. And then Alice frowned.

She wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the way the upgrade would change the Perk. She had been hoping it would let her create more magic seeds per month, or perhaps reduce its cooldown time. Alice had gotten a similar result when she had upgraded {Broken Seed} in the past. The upgrade for {Seeds of Ambition} didn’t do either of those things.

Instead, upgrading the Perk would give Alice a new, separate ability that she could use once a month, alongside her regular ability to create two new magic seeds.

Alice hesitated for a moment, before she sighed, and upgraded the Perk. Even if it didn’t let her create more magic seeds per month, the Perk gave her something else that Alice hadn’t even realized she wanted until now, but would certainly go a long way towards solving more of the problems Alice had encountered while creating a new System seed.

It took a few moments for her Perk to rebuild itself.

Seeds of Ambition (upgraded) Perk Costs: Three Seeds +  Seedy Ambitions sacrificed to create this Perk.

Two times a month, you can create an inferior magic seed with a maximum mana conversion ratio of 30%. The seed creation rules from {Seedy Ambitions} are applied to this Perk. However, Achievements may now apply to the Inferior magic seeds as they would to other magic seeds. Once a month, you may combine two of your inferior magic seeds.

Alice hadn’t really thought about how to combine all of the different components of System mana together into a singular magic seed yet, but once Alice saw the text for the upgraded {Seeds of Ambition}, she realized that the Upgrade to the Perk provided a golden opportunity to start combining magic seeds together.

After Alice finished upgrading the Perk, she took a look at her magic seeds. She had five lesser magic seeds right now.

Lesser Magic Seeds (Base Max 30%, Achievements now apply as usual)

Display Seed 14%/16% Organic Seed 77%/79% (6% Exp. Comp.) Pure Mana Seed 47%/49% (12% Exp. Comp.) Filtration Seed 38%/40% Dimensional Seed 38%/40%

Alice had never thought about combining magic seeds before, but she had already discovered that System mana was some sort of compound mana made of many smaller mana types. In retrospect, the idea that she needed some way to combine other magic seeds together felt startlingly obvious. Her upgraded Perk let her get started now. Which was good, because Alice probably needed to combine all of her Inferior magic seeds besides her dimensional magic seed if she wanted to recreate the effects of the System.

But for now, Alice would start by compacting two of the lesser magic seeds together. She wasn’t entirely sure whether this would provide an immediate, practical upgrade, but she was hopeful that it would give her some sort of benefit. Alice was also starting to get a sneaking suspicion that combining mana types together somehow let her step around the usual limitations of enchanting materials.

One of the biggest limitations on enchantments had always been how limited the number of situations an enchantment could respond to appropriately was. But the System obviously didn’t have this problem. Alice hadn’t actually thought much about this before, since the System had always seemed absurdly powerful. Alice had sort of just assumed that the System employed some way of increasing the instruction limit of everything it touched. But perhaps it cheated the limitations of enchanting materials in a different way, by combining different types of mana together? Or perhaps it employed both solutions at the same time, by enhancing the instruction limit of everything it touched and compounding instructions together somehow.

Alice shrugged. In any case, it was worth seeing what happened.

Alice decided to combine display mana and filtration mana first. She wasn’t entirely sure what would happen once the two types of mana were combined together, and she wasn’t even sure how useful the end result would be. However, Alice had about two weeks left on her cooldown for creating more lesser magic seeds, so if the result was useless she would only be out of useful seeds for two weeks. That would be unfortunate, but since Alice was actively trying to rely more on the people she and Cecilia were training, it should be possible to make do for two weeks until she could rebuild the lost magic seeds. She made sure that {Safety Analysis} wasn’t blaring any alarm bells at her first, and then combined the two magic seeds together.

For a few moments, Alice felt as if her entire torso was heating up, sort of like someone had lit a bonfire just behind her heart.

Then, two different kinds of mana… merged inside of her mind. It was an indescribably odd sensation, akin to having two different limbs suddenly fuse together as one. A few moments later, Alice had a completely new kind of magic seed.

Lesser Magic Seeds (Base Max 30%, Achievements now apply as usual)

Compound Seed 1 (Display/Filtration) 54%/56% Organic Seed 77%/79% (6% Exp. Comp.) Pure Mana Seed 47%/49% (12% Exp. Comp.) Dimensional Seed 40%

Alice was more than slightly amused to see that the new magic seed didn’t even have a proper name. It was just ‘compound seed 1.’ She was also very interested in seeing what had happened to the mana conversion ratio of the two magic seeds. Originally, she had a mana conversion ratio of 16% for her display seed, and 40% for her Filtration magic seed. She had assumed that the new magic seed would take the average of the two numbers, and end up with a man conversion ratio of around 28%. Perhaps a bit less, since {Creative Healer} still wasn’t perfectly applying its bonuses. However, instead, the two numbers had simply been added together, giving Alice a much larger pool of mana to work with. It also meant that some of Alice’s Achievements that boosted the mana conversion ratio of different mana seeds was now applying multiple times to the same seed. Alice wasn’t sure exactly how that worked, or if it would continue to be the case if she acquired more Achievements with similar rewards. However, the strange interaction between Achievements and her new magic seed was certainly appreciated.

Alice noticed that a few [Explorer of Magic], [Scholar], and miscellaneous mana wisps had gotten stuck in her [Explorer of Magic] Class seed while she was looking at the changes to her Status Screen. It would serve as a nice experimental material to see what her new magic seed could do.

Alice filtered the mana using her new magic seed. It worked just like before. However, there was something rather different once she finished.

Normally, Alice’s fake System messages didn’t really bear much resemblance to the System in how they worked. Sure, Alice could create a System message that looked kind of like the original System messages – but Alice had never really understood how the System knew when to send things like level up notifications.

But this time, as Alice filtered the incredibly tiny amount of [Explorer of Magic] mana that had tried to bond with her seed, she got a very different System notification.

You have leveled up!

Explorer of Magic: 78 -> 78

Some of the text for Alice’s new System notification was nonsense. She hadn’t leveled up – she had gone from level 78 to level 78. In other words, no advancement at all had occurred.

However, the display mana was accurately reporting Alice’s level the moment she filtered her mana now. In other words, the two different kinds of mana were now communicating with each other. Alice’s Filtration mana had helped her filter all of the mana into [Explorer of Magic] mana, and then sent that information to her display mana so that it could be turned into a proper System message afterwards.

Alice grinned.

She was now very curious to see if this worked for other things. Specifically, Alice wanted to see if her new magic seed would automatically translate other types of System message. During her experimentation with her new mana type, a few wisps of [Scientist] mana had drifted over. Alice tried filtering it.

You have leveled up!

Scientist: 65 -> 65

Alice tried opening her Perks list… and blinked in surprise.

Alice saw the usual System Screen for levelling up appear… and along with it, Alice saw her Perk selection screen open as usual.

However, even when Alice stopped using her Compound Mana 1, the Perks that she had unlocked didn’t suddenly turn into gibberish. Instead, all of the Perks and Perk combination options that Alice had unlocked after levelling up remained exactly the same, even when Alice didn’t actively try to translate it.

In other words, unlike before, the Perks that were unlocked through Alice’s mana usage now stayed translated.

Alice grinned.

This was definitely a step on the right path towards copying the System. Alice didn’t pay too much attention to her new Perks yet, because she was distracted by yet another surge of [Explorer of Magic] mana. This one was much bigger than the previous one. After Alice finished filtering it, she was happy to see that she had gained another level in [Explorer of Magic].

You have leveled up!

Explorer of Magic: 78 -> 79

Getting levels in her primary class still felt glacially slow, compared to the breakneck levelling speed Alice was used to. But it was obvious that the Perks she was building up, such as {System Teacher}, as well as the little bits of experience points she collected while searching for a way to fix the System, were still adding up. It was slow going, but Alice was getting closer and closer to fixing the System – and to reaching Immortality.

She still needed to figure out how to prevent her new magic seed from spamming her with incorrect System notifications, of course. But she was at least another step closer to copying the System.

Alice smiled to herself, and started paying closer attention to the rest of her upgrades. Now that she had gotten the most exciting improvement out of the way, she still had two more Perks to deal with. She was more than slightly surprised by the fact that [Survivor] had levelled up, considering the fact that Alice had done basically nothing related to survival. However, since Alice had at least some insight into how Classes worked behind the scenes, and how they seemed to be related to people’s beliefs, Alice eventually came up with a theory for why she had gotten a level in [Survivor].

Experimenting with monsters was probably perceived as dangerous by most people, even if those monsters were just spidercrabs. And after the events of the past few days, Alice suspected that people were much more afraid of monsters than before – possibly including even spidercrabs. Since most people felt that spidercrabs were dangerous right now, spending time near them probably felt like ‘surviving’ something dangerous?

At least, that was Alice’s best guess for how it all worked out. The fact that classes and how people levelled up was so fundamentally tied to how people believed those classes to work still threw Alice for a loop sometimes.

Alice frowned.

Beliefs and people’s understanding. Monsters. Inconsistency.

Something about all of those ideas started pulling at Alice’s brain, and she started thinking.

According to the church of the System, monsters were supposed to be the expressions of humanity’s laziness, the greatest human sin.

Alice hadn’t found any concrete ideas about what this actually meant, and nobody else seemed to, either. So Alice had always just taken it as church nonsense and ignored it. But most people in Illvaria were followers of the church of the System.

But the System, and the way magic worked in this world, had shown signs of reacting to people’s expectations before.

A long time ago, when Alice and Ethan had rescued Samantha from a base of the Society of Starry Eyes, she had gotten an Achievement for it. From that Achievement, as well as several other discoveries, Alice had mostly confirmed that Classes relied on people’s understanding of them, and Achievements probably had at least some similarities to Classes. After all, the description for {Immortal’s Disciple at the battle against the Society} described Alice as a combat Mage, despite that being wholly inaccurate. In other words, classes and Achievements reacted to people’s understanding of them.

Alice started wondering if other things also reacted to people’s beliefs in this world. Such as monsters. What if monsters were also somewhat defined by people’s expectations?

What if the System somehow stopped things from reacting to people’s expectations, and enforced some kind of rigid, underlying reality? Such as keeping people’s beliefs from actually turning monsters into incarnations of humanity’s sin of laziness?

And with the System gone, the monsters were suddenly able to break free of this behavior somewhat?

Or perhaps the System had limited monsters in some other way before it had collapsed. Since the System only ever worked to benefit humans, Alice was pretty sure the System was pretty explicitly pro-human. It wouldn’t seem out of place for the System to explicitly adapt to screw over the monsters on this planet and give humans every single possible advantage it could. Preventing monsters from suddenly mutating and getting new abilities left and right based on people’s understanding of them definitely seemed like a useful action to keep humans safe.

In that case, perhaps the ability for monsters to consume different mana structures and improve themselves wasn’t a ‘new’ ability.

Perhaps it was one that monsters had all along, and that the System somehow messed up by relying on people’s perception of monsters to keep them locked in place. Or maybe it was an ability somehow created by people’s belief that monsters were incarnations of humanity’s laziness. Alice wasn’t quite sure how that tied in to monsters copying System abilities, but there were probably a few ways the ideas could be linked together.

Alice wasn’t entirely sure how that worked… but since she had already seen a few different aspects of mana explicitly changing based on people’s beliefs, now that she had thought of the idea, she was loath to completely dismiss it. At the very least, it required more testing. She had never seen mana so directly warp the physical world around it, but it was possible that the System somehow worked to keep that from happening. Alice wasn’t sure.

Alice sighed.

She had a lot more tests to run involving monsters if she wanted to figure out what was going on behind the scenes.

Then, she turned back towards her System notifications.

She still had two Perks to choose, and she had even more questions and ideas than before to think about.