After her training session with Illa, Alice went to the church. It was on the way to Cecilia’s shop, and Alice wanted to see if there were any records about magic seeds, or the massive number of weird System messages she had seen yesterday. Apart from that, she wanted to see if the church had any records of ‘before the System.’ It might prove invaluable as a source of investigation, if she could get some solid details on what mages had been like before and after the System ‘revealed itself’ to humanity. Of course, Alice would need to take any records from the Church with a grain of salt – if there was one thing she was familiar with, it was that history written by any organization was likely to have some… biases written into it. Especially if the organization wanted to make itself look better. And every organization wanted to make itself look better.

Still, it was a place to start, at least.

When Alice stepped into the church, Priest Friedheim gave her a surprised look, followed by a courteous nod.

“Lady Alice. I was not expecting you today. What brings you here?” He asked.

“Hello, Priest Friedheim. I was wondering if you have any records of times before the System?”

“Before the System?” Priest Friedheim. “There aren’t any written records of times before the System that would be available in a little town like Cyra, besides what’s written in the holy words.” He gave Alice a thoughtful glance. “Say, have you actually read the Holy Words of the Almighty System? If you haven’t, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to introduce yourself to the faith. Why do you ask?” Priest Friedheim asked, giving her a curious look.

Holy Words of the Almighty System? Is that the equivalent of the bible in this world? Alice wasn’t familiar with the term, but based on the Priest’s reaction, she felt it was a reasonable guess.

Alice described the failed attempt at forming magic seeds she had gone through this morning, complete with all of the bizarre System notifications. She noticed, with interest, that Friedheim’s expression became more and more curious the more she spoke. After she finished speaking, he was nearly squirming in his seat.

“So you had such an experience! Surely now you can see how wonderful the System is, yes? You can clearly feel its benevolence and kindness!” Said Friedheim, and Alice felt a bit of an internal wince. Priest Friedheim was a decent enough person, but he got very… passionate about his religion. Still, she couldn’t really disagree – if the System had been what stopped the mana in her body from melting her, she was grateful that it had stopped her from dying, at least.

“Erm… yeah. I wouldn’t mind taking a look at it,” said Alice, after some thought. Regardless of how religious she was, and how religious she intended to be in the future, it didn’t hurt to at least familiarize herself with the local religion. Furthermore, if she had to worship a god, the System honestly wasn’t a bad choice – she was absolutely sure it existed, and as far as she could tell, it had stopped her from dying, even if she wasn’t really sure what had placed her in such a dangerous situation in the first place.

She would think about it some more.

Priest Friedheim seemed excited when Alice agreed to read the Holy Words of the Almighty System and left, before returning moments later with a heavy book. Its cover was embossed a very light tinge of gold, and Alice couldn’t help but wonder if the actual metal was present, or if it was just some sort of Perk changing the book’s aesthetics. Still, for now, it didn’t matter.

“Would you prefer to read it yourself, or have me read it out loud?” Asked Friedheim.

“I’d like to read it myself – I like to think while I read, after all, and I also want to grab the {Bookworm} Achievement at some point. I have a few other Achievements I’m also shooting for, but they’re a bit more time consuming to grab,” said Alice absently.

“Oh? That’s a good choice for you. All right. However, if you have any questions, feel free to ask me – I live to help others learn of the System, after all,” said Friedheim, and Alice could feel his excitement as he practically vibrated in place.

“Which part of the book should I read from – that is, which part has the bits about before the System? I want to start there,” said Alice.

Priest Friedheim quickly flipped through the book before stopping at a specific point. “Here!” He said, before giving Alice a friendly wink. “You can start reading from here. Don’t forget. If you have any questions, ask me!” Then, with a buzz of happiness, Priest Friedheim left her alone with the book. Alice could see him watching her out of the corner of her eyes – to be fair, there wasn’t anyone else in the church right now, so perhaps he had nothing better to do. It was a bit uncomfortable to have someone watch her while she was reading, but Alice did her best to ignore it.

She turned back towards the pages, and began to idly skip through the text.

Before the System, humanity existed only on the fringes of the central continent. At that time, humans only lived in scattered societies, fleeing from monsters. The few communities who embraced farming were usually wiped out by Monsters whenever their population reached a certain point, and mages were both far rarer and far less able to survive. Oftentimes, mages would suffer as a result of their gifts, and were referred to as the cursed children of the gods. For whatever brief lifespan they had available to them, they would work to protect their communities, but would often die young from a variety of strange illnesses. Cooking themselves alive whenever they reached a certain level of power, shredding their body to pieces… there are many ways that mages would die during their development period in the days before the System. Luckily, in the thousands of years since then, the System has blessed humanity as well as mages and mages no longer kill themselves as a result of their blessing.

The text continued on for several more pages in this manner, as if it wanted to highlight how miserable humans had been without their great and benevolent god watching over them and blessing them. Alice was somewhat tempted to wonder how much of this was actually attributable to the System – the Church seemed all too willing to ascribe EVERY aspect of humanity’s advancement entirely to the benevolence of the System. Still, Alice was also fairly certain that she had run into a similar problem just this morning – she had nearly charbroiled her internal organs as a result of her failed magic seeds. She still remembered the nightmarish feeling of heat rising up from inside of her body, as everything she touched twisted, and the knowledge that soon her body would also collapse… and the crushing relief she had felt when System messages had started spamming themselves across her line of vision, and the kaleidoscope of color had fixed the rampaging mana in her body.

Alice also found it a bit curious that the text explicitly mentioned ‘cursed children of the gods.’ Did that mean humanity worshipped other gods before the System? What gods were they? Where had worship of them gone?

No, perhaps it was inevitable that worship of gods had disappeared in the wake of the System – after all, the System ‘actively blessed’ humans left and right, and Alice had no idea if the gods worshipped before the System were similar to the ones on Earth, where it was impossible to verify their existence or actions. In that case, Alice could definitely see how worship of those gods would decline to near irrelevance.

Alice turned her attention back to magic, trying to avoid letting herself get side-tracked.

Perhaps the Church’s insistence that the System was the true god of humanity wasn’t wholly mistaken. At the very least, assuming the System messages and the massive strings of colored mana were related to each other, the System had certainly saved her from frying herself. Perhaps the System did so for all mages – or at least did something to that effect. Even if Alice didn’t know exactly what had happened, she was willing to at least think about it.

Alice spent several more hours reading through various chapters in the Church’s book, trying to familiarize herself more with the church’s ideology and religious doctrine. She learned a few interesting tidbits – the church believed that ‘laziness’ was the fundamental ‘great sin’ of humans, and that the System had ‘revealed its glory’ in order to help humanity purge this fundamental flaw in human makeup. To some extent, Alice could see where they were coming from – the System obviously rewarded hard work above most other things, and if the System was worshipped as a god, it made sense that people interpreted hard work as king and laziness as a sin.

Apart from that, there were a few other interesting tidbits, mostly relating to Immortals – apparently, most Immortals got to a high enough level to stop aging specifically by stacking Achievements together to boost levelling speed. Even hard work wouldn’t be enough to bridge the gap between a ‘hard working’ person, who usually reached around level 60 or 65, and the class evolution most classes got at level 100, not to mention the extra 25 levels most people needed to fully stop aging after that. Immortals, obviously, weren’t just so much more efficient at working hard that they bridged the gap through sheer force of will – instead, they stacked together dozens of Achievements to boost their levelling speed for a few classes, and then focused a few to get them to the right level. Oftentimes, Immortals were stacking 1200% boosted levelling speed or more and then still busting their ass to get one of their classes to the right level, and that was still considered ‘hard’ when it came to bridging the massive gulfs between higher levels.

Finally, Alice learned that, according to Church theology, monsters were… apparently the physical manifestation of Human laziness. And, simultaneously, they were the food that encouraged humanity to never stop growing and reaching towards greater goals, even though they were supposed to be the physical manifestations of human laziness. This… seemed to kind of contradict itself? Or maybe there was some sort of explanation that made this seem less contradictory than it seemed to Alice? Or maybe she was just overthinking it?

Alice had a bit of a hard time figuring out what that meant in practice – as far as she could tell, monsters just seemed like animals with high levels of aggression and the ability to consume mana in place of food, usually mixed with magic abilities if they weren’t at the bottom of the monster food chain. Even though Alice was trying really hard to keep an open mind, she had serious doubts about that one, but filed it away for future reference anyway.

All in all, it was a fruitful reading session. Alice thanked Priest Friedheim for giving her the time to look over the holy book, returned it to him, and then went on her way.

She had an [Enchanter] to negotiate with.

* * *

“So, what you’re saying is, you want to exchange the possibility of getting an Achievement with me in place of money?” Asked Cecilia, giving Alice a strange look.

“Yes.” Said Alice.

The emotions from Cecilia’s face drained away unnaturally, in a way that Alice was beginning to suspect meant people were turning on Perks that let them ignore or remove their emotions, before Cecilia turned back towards her.

“Tell me more about the Achievement in question. I suppose I can at least hear you out.”

“Are you willing to promise not to speak of the Achievement? I don’t actually think it’s a problem, but I also don’t know what possible problems it might bring to me, so while it’s not a huge secret, I don’t really want to make it public knowledge either.”

“I, Cecilia, daughter of Erik and Lucinia, hereby swear that I won’t speak of the contents of this conversation to anyone. Even though it’s not an oath backed by anything, it’s the best I can do unless you want to actually hire Friedheim to make a {Trade Contract.} is that good enough?”

Alice nodded. “I’ll trust you.” After that, Alice began by outlining the experiment that had started the whole mess – her attempt to figure out whether or not mana somehow improved muscles and physical strength. Cecilia looked at least moderately interested, despite her oddly stiff facial expression. However, when Alice talked about the {Truth Seeker} Perk, Cecilia seemed quite a bit more interested in the subject.

“Hmm…” Cecilia frowned as she thought about it. “From what I know of Achievements, that shouldn’t be an ordinary Achievement, yes? It sounds more like a unique Achievement based around specific events. The fact that the Rarity is so high is also strange… how has no one ever discovered this before?” Cecilia looked at Alice, who simply shrugged.

“I have no idea. It seems like such a basic thing, so the fact no one else has stumbled onto this train of thought is really baffling to me as well.” Said Alice.

“How about this? Are your Attributes at one hundred yet?”

Alice checked her Status screen, although she already knew most of the contents of it by now.

Author’s note: After someone asked if I could start putting the previous level of the class every time Alice gets a level, I thought it was a pretty good idea. Recently, I wondered if maybe people would prefer if I started writing down Alice’s previous Stats and Skills in her Status Screen as well, so that it’s easier to track changes. Let me know what you guys think. Changes are in bold, and if it’s a new entry to something like the Perks, I also underlined it. Changes are tracked from the last time Alice looked at her Status Screen in-story (chapter 23).

Name: Alice Verianna

Age: 15

Strength: 98 (+10) (104%)

Perception: 113 (+1) (140%)

Dexterity: 94 (+9) (103%)

Intelligence: 158 (+1) (113%)

Endurance: 103 (+11) (103%)

Willpower: 133 (+1) (103%)

Charisma: 125 (+0) (102%)

Magic: 108 (+12) (102%)

Primary Classes: 5/6

Survivor: 37 (+0)

Explorer of Magic: 31 (+4)

Scholar: 17 (+8)

Scientist: 12 (+11)

(Student) of Kinetic Magic: 10 (+10)

Secondary Classes: 1

Fisherwoman: 3

Perks:

Foraging (Survivor 5)

Microbe Resistance (Survivor 10)

Extremophile (Survivor 15)

Camouflaged (Survivor 20)

Sixth Sense (Survivor 25)

Enhanced Training (Survivor 30)

Sense Hostility (Survivor 35)

Magic Proficiency (Explorer of Magic 5)

Enhanced Regeneration (Explorer of Magic 10)

Combat Spellcaster (Explorer of Magic 15)

Improved Seed (Explorer of Magic 20)

Seeds of Magic (Explorer of Magic 25)

Three Seeds (Explorer of Magic 30)

Enhanced Memory (Scholar 5)

Lesser Reduced Sleep Requirement (Scholar 10)

Accelerated Thinking (Scholar level 15)

Precise Mana Measurement (Scientist level 5)

Sample Collection (Scientist level 10)

Object Control (Student of Kinetic Magic 5)

Mana Sight (Student of Kinetic Magic 10)

Skills

Basic Mathematics: 122

English (Language Proficiency): 100

Illvarian (Language Proficiency): 94 (+2)

Kinetic Manipulation: 44 (+6)

Mana Control: 28 (+7)

Weaving: 27

Woodworking: 25

Mana Precision: 24 (+3)

Kinetic Force: 22 (+4)

Spearmanship: 19

Sprinting: 15 (+1)

Dodge: 13 (+5)

Cooking: 12

Stoneworking: 11

Climbing: 9

Fishing: 9

Digging: 8

Projectile Awareness : 5 (+5)

Divided Attention: 4 (+4)

Stealth: 4

Basic Medicine: 3

Magic Seed: 2/4

(Organic Seed +2 Undetermined Seeds Max 10% Conversion Ratio)

Kinetic Seed (135%)

Organic Seed (10%)

Achievements

Outworlder (Rarity: 10)

Seeker of Truth (I) (Rarity: 8)

Baptized by Broken Mana (Rarity: 6)

Survivor of Winter (Rarity: 3)

Monstrous Encounter (Rarity: 1)

Monster Slayer (I) (Rarity: 1)

“Not all of them are at 100 yet, but some of them are. Why?”

“I want to see if I can get an Achievement from observing the mana as well,” said Cecilia. “I think that would be useful for both of us, no? If there’s actually any merit to me joining in your experiments, I should be able to figure it out by observing as you gain an Attribute point. So I wanted to know if there was an easy way to get an Attribute – after all, my Attributes are all at least a little above 100, before factoring in all the Perks and Achievements I have boosting the effect of each stat. Since it’s obvious I won’t be getting Attributes easily in the future, I wanted to know if it would be easy for you to pick up an Attribute Point or if we needed to find another way.”

Alice thought it over for a few moments, before shrugging. “Seems reasonable to me. It will still probably take me some time to me to pick up an Attribute point without a Teacher, though. I’ve observed the same mana surge when it comes to both levels and skills as well – perhaps just watch for any of those?” Alice shrugged.

“If it works for Skills as well, perhaps you could do something like math? Since Skills face their own growth penalties every 50 levels, most Skills are pretty easy to level if they’re below 50,” said Cecilia absently. “Or calligraphy or something? I don’t know – what Skills do you have that are worth looking into?”

Alice suddenly remembered the way she had suddenly gained 122 points in Basic Math once she hit whatever ‘unlock conditions’ were required for the {Basic Math} Skill. What would it look like if she grabbed a bunch of other Skills? Alice was overcome by curiosity. Whatever she found, it would certainly be interesting, right? And most people on this world wouldn’t have come across similar conditions, since most people would have just levelled each skill step by step, meaning she might see something other people had never seen before.

“Is there any sort of {Advanced Mathematics} skill?”

“Do you not have it unlocked yet? Wait, do you have {Intermediate Mathematics}? You need to unlock the math skills in order, so we can start with {Basic Mathematics} if you don’t have it,” said Cecilia.

“What do I need for {Intermediate Mathematics}?”

“Here. 1 sec,” Said Cecilia, as she grabbed a plank of wood. Alice watched with fascination as two tendrils of mana crawled out of Cecilia’s arms and began burning words into the plank of wood. A solid minute later, there was a simple mathematical problem charred on the piece of wood.

2(x) + 3 = 7

What is X?

It was just a basic Algebra question, the kind Alice remembered learning how to do when she was a child. She immediately determined that X = 2, and a moment later, a massive surge of mana gathered in the air around her. It was smaller than the Surge of mana she had gained when she had gotten the {Knowledge Seeker} Achievement, but far larger than the surges of mana she saw from only gaining a single level or skill. She tried her best to measure the mana within one meter of her body, and got the number 137 Mariums before it dropped to around 14 again a few moments later.

Through training, you have increased a skill!

Intermediate Mathematics +78

The amount of mana in her body increased by about 1 Marium. The rest of the mana seemed to simply disappear into nothing.

Alice looked back at Cecilia, who was frowning.

“It’s so… hard to see,” said Cecilia after a moment. “I noticed a small amount of mana being pulled in from the surroundings, but whenever it got close to your body, I had a hard time tracking it – kind of like a book that got wet and didn’t have any {waterproofing} Perks.” Then Cecilia shrugged. “I did get an Achievement out of it, though – it’s called {On the Shoulders of Giants}, and it’s only Rarity three. It has a tier symbol, though, so it can certainly be upgraded.” Cecilia looked back towards Alice. “Weirdest description ever – it says I am able to see unhindered. And it also gives me some boosts to Perception, Intelligence, and a small boost to levelling speed.” Cecilia seemed to think about it for a while longer, before she nodded.

“I’m interested in seeing more of your experiments. Let’s talk about money.”

The two spent several minutes haggling, but by the end of the conversation, Alice was practically humming as she finally left Cecilia’s shop.

As of now, her lesson fees were mostly waived – Cecilia would only charge her one golden sun for Alice’s first four lessons every month, rather than one golden sun every lesson. In exchange, Alice would include Cecilia in all of her future experiments. In other words, Alice got both money, and a research assistant. Cecilia noted that it would be a good idea for Alice to start her lessons after the expedition ended, which Alice could see the logic of – it would be hard to learn anything about enchanting if she only had time for a lesson or two before she had to tromp through the wilderness for a week or two before coming back to Cyra and trying to remember what she had learned.

In all, it was a promising setup though – Alice managed to resolve multiple smaller problems at once. It was a good day. And tomorrow, Alice wanted to see if she could at least get started on one of her experiments – trying to figure out how mana was created inside of her body. She was missing over half of the supplies she needed for the experiment, but she could at least pursue a little piece of the question. Did mages get mana from food, or the atmosphere? Or some other way entirely? Alice couldn’t isolate herself from mana in her surroundings, due to lacking supplies and the fact she still hadn’t done a test to make sure it was safe for her. However, she could see what happened if she messed with her food. She wouldn’t change too much, since the expedition was coming up and she needed to be in good shape, but she could still test a few things.

And Alice was very curious to see what the results would be.