Alice took a few moments in the court room to simply breathe in and out. The feeling of relief that she felt when the court pronounced that she was innocent was a huge weight off of her shoulders. At the same time, the knowledge she would never be going home was like a stone in her heart. Still, after taking a few minutes to cry herself out in the now-deserted court room, she got up and tried to focus on the bright side of things.

She had walked into this courtroom with the fear that she might be executed or imprisoned, and compared to that the end result was… mostly fine. She had been exposed as a mage, so she would need to survive possible mage hunters, and even if Illa and the priest had stated that revealing her {Outworlder} nature would be a violation of the law, nearly twenty people knew that she was an {Outworlder} and word would probably eventually spread anyway, even if it might take some time. She would probably need to figure out what the Society of Starry Eyes was, since they would possibly be coming for her in the future. It seemed that even though she wanted to avoid it, she would ultimately need to keep improving her combat proficiency.

However, at the very least, that felt like a problem she could put off for the future – for now, at least, she was safe.

In addition, she felt like, for the first time in months, she was thinking clearly. If she couldn’t return to her life on Earth, she would make a new life here. She hoped that she could see her friends and parents again, someday – but even if she couldn’t, she wanted to live a life that her parents and friends could be proud of, if they knew of it.

After taking some time to sort out her feelings, she walked out of the courtroom. Outside of it, she found Illa discussing something with the old man who had represented the Mage Estate, before Illa turned towards Alice.

“Ah, there you are, Lady Alice. It took you a while, didn’t it? I’ve already sent my servant to request one of the [Organic Mages] come over – I’ll pay for it, since it represents a possible threat to the town, and so it’s my duty to resolve it. Until then, let’s talk. If mages were either nonexistent or not public knowledge in your home dimension, you must have a lot of questions, no? Ask away.”

“That would be really useful, but….why are you helping me so much? I’m grateful, but I’m also confused.” Alice had seen Illa step forward to help her multiple times by now - granted, some of that seemed to just be shutting down Lady Vallis, but there was no such thing as free lunch.

Illa drummed her fingers against her leg for a moment, before finally shrugging.

“I don’t know how negotiations and such are done on your home world, but I was an army [Warmage] for a decade and a half, not a [Diplomat], so please excuse my bluntness.” Alice looked at Illa, who looked, at oldest, in her early thirties. A decade and a half as a [Warmage]? Was this the effect of slowed aging the [Priest] had mentioned?

“Frankly, Lady Vallis and I do not see eye to eye on a lot of things – she is not a bad person, per se, but she is a noble brat who has no clue what she’s doing and a habit of messing things up. After the assassinations at Riverbranch, the Crown still hasn’t made a response yet – I expect it will be coming in the next week or two, and once they send reinforcements, we should be safe from any errant [Spies] or [Assassins]. But given the rate messengers travel between here and the capital, for now we are still waiting, which is part of why everyone is so jumpy about suspicious individuals in the town. Sorry about that. Anyway, Vallis wants to flee back North, and she’s not the only one. Since Vallis was basically exiled here due to her noble house’s internal politics, I think she wants to use this as an excuse to return, while the rest are just scared and looking to her for a reason to flee. I don’t blame them - the Sigmusi Empire is a threat, and with Eric’s death, it’s obvious there are plenty of dangers if you travel beyond the walls. However, Cyra is one of the few towns in the South that isn’t horribly understaffed with mages – even though we only have 17 here, that’s almost a full one percent of our population, every one of them earned through diligence, connections, and a great deal of money. If Vallis manages to take any mages back north, it would naturally be a huge waste of time and money for my husband and I, as well as detrimental to the safety of the town.

“Therefore, what I propose is such – you will work for me for a few months to a year, depending on circumstances. During that time, you will help out around the town, especially with construction, as well as working in one of the monster-hunting squads. If Lady Vallis and the others see that a young, newly-baptised mage is bearing the risk of staying in the South and working towards building up Cyra anyway, it will weaken their resolve to leave quite a bit. If the other mages flee while you stay, the comparison will seriously damage their reputations – Lady Vallis in particular is already in hot water with her house, and even if she personally doesn’t care much about her reputation, if she becomes known as a weakling or a coward her family will not be pleased.

“In exchange, I will provide food and shelter for you, as well as magical education and one golden sun a month for any additional expenses. If you impress me, I’m even willing to talk about paying for tuition for you if you want to go to one of the mage academies in the North, and if you pick up other useful skills like Enchanting, I will increase your pay accordingly. In short, I’ll give you some of the magical education that you’re lacking, and in exchange, you help me with the political situation in Cyra.

“You are, of course, free to refuse this offer, and I won’t pursue the matter further. However, I wished to be upfront about using your talents and offer you a deal we can both benefit from. At least in most circles, that is worth something, no?”

Alice took a moment to think over the offer, before deciding she didn’t know enough. The offer actually seemed quite reasonable, but she still wanted to check out what other potential offers there might be in the town, as well as double-check as much of Illa’s information as she could. She might need to gather information somewhere other than the inn, since its inhabitants had last seen her dragged off by the guard. Something to think about later.

While Alice was mulling over the offer, a middle-aged man wearing a silver bracelet with an eye insignia walked up to the two of them while talking.

“Is she the one you think might be sick?” The man asked, cutting out any potential chatter and cutting straight to the heart of the matter.

“She is. She spent a while in a broken mana zone. All sorts of weird diseases floating around in those, so I thought it was best to have her checked over before she infects the town with something. Newly baptized by it, too.”

“Baptized in a broken mana zone? Why? The bonuses are barely better than the regular Achievement. I understand wanting to get ahead, but youngsters are really too reckless with their lives…” The middle-aged man shook his head, before sighing and giving Alice a closer look.

“Here, let me just take a quick look…” the man looked at Alice, waiting for something. After a moment, seeing her confusion, Illa gestured towards Alice’s wrist. “Give him your wrist and concentrate on allowing his mana to interact with your body. It won’t totally kill the resistance against mana all living creatures have, but [Organic Mages] get some Perks which can still seriously reduce mana consumption if the patient consents to having foreign mana inside of them.”

Alice did as she was told, and a moment later, the man laid a single finger on her wrist. She felt a strange tickling sensation under her skin, before it quickly spread throughout her entire body.

“Far as I can tell, lots of strange diseases, but for some reason most of them seem to have died quite a while ago, possibly as a result of contact with mana. I did notice some remnants of the swelling sickness, but it looks like her body fought it off already, and she shouldn’t be a carrier either. Even if she was, since there isn’t much broken mana here, the disease shouldn’t be a problem. I flushed out all the fragments I could find, so she should be good to go.”

“Thanks, Gustav!” Illa gave the man a cheerful grin and flicked him a silver crown. “Ah, I almost forgot! Do you have any spare insignias?”

“No. My apologies, Lady Illa. If that is all?” Gustav was already turning towards the exit.

“Drat. Yeah, you’re good to go. Guess I’ll have to have a new one made. Until then… Hmm…” Illa looked around for a moment, thinking, and then, a moment later, a small pebble ripped itself out of the ground while Gustav quietly made his exit. Illa looked at it, frowning, and Alice watched as chunks of rock slowly began to separate from each other. After a few minutes, Alice still had no idea what was going on, but at the very least, this was the first time she was able to watch a mage who actually knew what they were doing practice magic. Even if she was missing most of the details behind what was going on, she wasn’t going to miss it.

Piece by piece, tiny little fragments of gravel peeled away from the stone, with the chunk of rock gradually obtaining a shape closer to a medallion, or a disc. Then, Illa spent some time carefully carving away bits of stone from the center of the disk, the fragments carefully separating themselves one after another. Finally, Alice realized she was looking at a stylized eye.

The same eye she had seen several other people wearing, including Illa herself. Although, the ones she had seen were silver or copper, not stone.

“Here you go. This is a symbol that shows you are a mage. For any non-mage to wear it is illegal, because doing so is to impersonate a mage. It will help you get around town and speak with people – I strongly recommend wearing it when you’re in public, although you aren’t obligated to. I’ll get a real one made at the town’s blacksmith, so you can pick it up later – consider this one a temporary stopgap. There’s no real important distinction between different metals when it comes to the mage’s eye, but most mages like to use the most expensive metal they can comfortably afford. It’s a status symbol, of sorts.” Illa gestured towards her own silver eye. “I’ve never really seen the point, but I upgraded mine to silver after founding Cyra. Maybe I’ll get one made out of gold or marrun sometime if I get around to it. Anyway. As a mage, regardless of your proficiency, you’re entitled to certain rights and have some status in society. If someone calls you by name and doesn’t add in the ‘lady’ first, you can have them fined if you are wearing your insignia. It’s not really worth the trouble, but if someone is pissing you off, you can at least make them pay a bit for disrespecting a mage, especially if it’s in public. Don’t bother trying it with upper nobility, obviously, although most of them will still refer to you as ‘lady’ unless they don’t like you for whatever reason. Apart from that, you have a few other legal protections that you should know about…”

Alice spent a few hours going over some more specifics of what mages meant to the population, before she finally got around to asking a question she had been curious about for a while.

“How rare are mages, exactly?”

“Hmm. It’s a bit difficult to say exactly, because the numbers tend to get a little weird from country to country. Mana Baptisms are always a path for the desperate, and how well-treated mages are in a particular country can drastically change how many people are willing to risk a baptism. Still, most estimates put mages between one and two percent of the population, usually closer to 1.5%.”

Alice boggled at how low the number was. She had expected something… quite a bit higher, really. She had heard the note of pride in Illa’s voice when Illa had said that the town’s population was nearly one percent mages, but she had chalked that up to mages really not wanting to move south for some reason. Hearing that they were so rare put a lot of people’s attitude regarding mages in a much different context – suddenly it made sense why mages were treated as something like pseudo-nobles, at least according to Illvarian law. Alice had pretty much survived in the wilderness exclusively due to the abilities she had gained from being a mage, even though she had no damn clue what she was doing and had trash physical stats compared to the average citizen of the country. She was willing to bet that a trained [Warmage] was probably a terror on the battlefield, even if she hadn’t seen one actually fight yet.

Eventually, after chatting with Illa for a while longer, Alice excused herself. She still wanted to investigate what the ‘political landscape’ of Cyra was, and it was best to do so away from Illa, so that she could verify some of the woman’s claims. Illa had told her that the expedition to the broken mana zone should be formed within the next two weeks, and that there would be an announcement to the town she should keep an eye out for. Apart from that, Alice should seek her out when she made up her mind about Illa’s offer. Alice simply nodded, before moving away.

* * *

Her first stop was the Church of the System. A moment before she crossed the threshold, she paused as a thought crossed her mind.

She didn’t think much of the church as a religious institute, but the System really was quite similar to a god in a lot of respects. And now that she was trying to look back at her past decisions and her analysis of this world in general, she started to wonder – was she actually correct in her speculation that the System wasn’t intelligent?

Oh, sure, it didn’t seem intelligent sometimes. However, there were actually several possible explanations for what she had observed from the System so far. The System could have some sort of intelligence, and was just partially automated for dealing with more ‘routine’ stuff, for example.

She had probably been too hasty in her first assumption. Something to keep in mind for the future – at the very least, the System was still granting her levels and Skills, so believing the System to be nonsentient hadn’t stopped it from helping her out. Still, she would keep an eye on things and see if she could dig up some more information later. Come to think of it, why had she been so insistent on thinking of the System as unintelligent?

A moment later, it hit her – she had been afraid. The thought of something intelligent looking over her thoughts as they formed, possibly tinkering with them, placing in Skills and Knowledge and god knows what else terrified her. She had been eager to push away any idea that it might be possible, even if it meant that she had concluded the System was unintelligent with almost no evidence to confirm that theory.

She closed her eyes, trying to fight off a wave of dread that even the thought of the System being intelligent brought about. She thought more closely about her entire train of thought all those months ago, and quickly realized something - she hadn’t actually chosen the most logical conclusion. Instead, she had found the most logical train of thought that led to the conclusion the System wasn’t intelligent. The idea of the System being intelligent filled her with such dread that, at the time, she had actively avoided thinking about it, building her entire argument with the subconscious demand that it must convince her that the System wasn’t intelligent.

Why was that? It only took a moment for her to find the answer. If the System actually wanted to manipulate her thoughts and memories, she didn’t think she could do anything about it. The idea filled her with a sense of fear and helplessness, and she wanted to avoid that at all costs, even if it meant sacrificing any ‘true’ explanation of the System she could have found. She couldn’t do anything about that directly - even now, the idea of an intelligent System quietly manipulating her thoughts and feelings filled her with a sense of fear and desperation that made her want to do anything to avoid it. For now, she pushed the train of thought away. However, she did realize that, especially in situations where she felt fear, she might leap to conclusions quickly and without information or evidence. That had been most of her time in this dimension so far, which meant she seriously needed to rethink a lot of things.

Later. It had already been a long, stressful, and tiring day. She would deal with all of this later.

You have leveled up!

Scholar: 9

Well, she must be doing something right, at least.

She stepped into the door, taking a moment to scan the paintings on the walls of people achieving superhuman feats, before turning to the [Priest]. He was still annoyingly handsome in an incredibly distracting way, and Alice felt herself grow irritated as she waited for him to finish a conversation with another person. Finally, the other person left, and Alice walked up to the priest.

“Oh? If it isn’t you again, Lady Alice.” The [Priest] had a complicated expression on his face when he looked at her now – it wasn’t quite the same mild condescension he had displayed when he had thought she was from another church, and nor was it the warm, fatherly expression he had made when he had assumed she was an orphan. Now, it was a sort of strange in-between expression – a bit of pity, a bit of interest, and a bit of warmth.

“I wanted to know more about classes.”

“Ah, that’s right – you had said that mages were either hidden or nonexistent in your home world, yes? In that case you must have lots of questions about classes relating to mages and mage classes. Just for reference, what did combat classes look like in your home world? I can’t help but admit I’m very curious to know what classes would be available in a world where magic was so cleverly hidden.”

Ah… Alice suddenly realized that she hadn’t mentioned the System not existing at home. She had mentioned that Magic didn’t exist, but she didn’t recall saying anything at all about the System. Come to think of it, she also remembered the [Priest] briefly mentioning that this world had a time where the System hadn’t existed as well – that probably meant that discussing the System’s nonexistence at home might be fine. On the other hand, it also might not be – she had no way to tell at all.

For now, she defaulted towards pretending that the System had been in place – even if the [Priest] of this church might find it interesting, he might also take offence to her suggestion that the god he worshipped was not present in her world. She didn’t know, and didn’t want to find out, just in case. Her safety came first, after all.

“We mostly had people specialized around various weapons at home if they did combat, as well as some people who had hobby classes for fighting in tournaments and stuff. Really, combat classes weren’t too popular at home.”

“Combat classes weren’t popular? How could that...ah. You said there was no mana, right? In that case, were there no monsters as well?”

“Yes, there weren’t any. How did you figure that out so quickly?”

“It’s a well known fact that monsters can’t exist without mana – it’s the very factor that distinguishes them from humans and regular animals. A few centuries ago, during the era of broken mana studies, there was a famous [Scholar] that took a bunch of monsters and placed them in rooms which were enchanted to keep out mana. Every single monster died within a day or less – some of them died within minutes, in fact. All monsters both use and need mana, and anything that can survive without it is an animal, not a monster. If your world had no mana, it’s natural that no monsters would survive there. It also makes sense that your world would have fewer combat classes – while the monsters are a test given to humanity by the almighty System, to allow us to grow and achieve greater things, it may have chosen different tests for your world. The System recognizes all paths, after all.”

“Huh.” Alice was glad that, at the very least, her speculation about the System’s designation of Monster vs. Animal was correct – Monsters were distinguished by mana.

“What I really wanted to know about was more about classes – how do people build themselves in this dimension? Is there anything I should know? My parents…. Uh… didn’t tell me much about classes, and the System seems to be different as well. Basically, is there anything I should know in order to better build myself up? Ah, actually, is there any sort of book or list of common classes and theories on builds I could look over?”

“Hmm… You only had three classes, right? In that case, am I correct in assuming you’re looking for what to fill in your last two slots with? Even if you’re a bit late in getting your last classes, there’s nothing that can’t be overcome with more hard work and effort. As for books, there is one... how about… hmm…”

The priest went towards the back of the church, and emerged with a thick book. “Here – you can look through this, as long as you don’t take it out of the church. It contains a lot of information about classes, Skills, Levels, Perks, and Achievements. If you seek a more… personal connection with the System, I don’t mind letting you look through it, considering how many challenges and problems you’re going to face from the Society of Starry Eyes. Those misguided children are barely better than monsters, and you’ll need all the help you can get. If you have any questions, you can come and ask me.”

“Thank you.” Alice replied with a nod, before she moved over to one of the benches at the side of the room. It was time to do some reading.