After several hours of waiting in the wagons, Alice was bored. The mystery of exactly how and why she had appeared here was intriguing, and Alice had wondered what the expedition itself would be like. She had imagined something far more interesting – an exploration of a world filled with magic and monsters. Events, treasure hunting… something.

Imagination, sadly, was not very close to reality. The most notable thing she had done, was see Illa fly over to her carriage every few hours and confirm that the expedition was still supposed to follow the river. Alice had been shocked when she had first seen it, but couldn’t help but think back to her time escaping from being eaten as she had fled towards Illvaria, when she had briefly propelled herself into the air. Perhaps for higher level [Kinetic Mages] they could use their clothes as some sort of flying tool? Alice couldn’t help but want to level up more quickly when she thought about flying.

Apart from that, all Alice had done was look outside of the covered wagon and see that, indeed, the covered wagon’s wheels were somehow travelling across the rugged, hilly terrain in a way that her brain somehow completely failed to conceptualize. Even if the wagon was travelling across tree roots on one side and uneven dirt on the other side, the inside of the wagon somehow still felt like it was even and flat, despite the fact that the wagon logically should have been tilted sideways whenever this happened. Heck, half the time, the wagon wasn’t even flat on the ground – it frequently ended up at strange angles, and somehow, this wasn’t reflected inside of the wagon at all. Whenever Alice poked her head out of the wagon, she could tell that she was looking at the ground from a weird angle, but when she was inside of the wagon, somehow, it felt almost like she was sitting in the back of a car travelling along flat roads.

After spending a while observing this little miracle, however, the novelty of it had worn off, especially because she hadn’t managed to create any interesting experiments to do. She could probably have interacted with it if she actually had any of the Perks in question, or time to investigate, but sadly nobody had time to sit around for hours while Alice messed with the wagons.

“Bored?” Asked Milo, giving her a friendly shrug.

“Yeah. Isn’t there anything to do?”

“If you had a book, I would recommend reading it, but those are expensive,” said Milo, absently. Alice winced, thinking of Illa’s book collection. Even if she wasn’t supposed to take them out of Illa’s mansion, maybe Illa would have let her make an exception? She hadn’t thought to check. “Maybe if you have any Achievements or Attributes to work on? Or Skills?”

Alice frowned, but shook her head after a moment. She had tried to observe the surroundings of the carriage using only her Skills and Perks, but she wasn’t getting close enough to succeeding to make good progress on her Levels and Skills.

Eventually, Alice sighed. “I wonder if I could sit in the front of the carriage and try to kill some Spidercrabs as we move on? It would be something, at least. I wanted to get {Monster Slayer} up to Tier two,” she said absently.

“You don’t have {Monster Slayer} at tier three yet?” Asked Milo, surprised. “Then it’s not a terrible idea to work on it. Go to the front of the carriage and see if you can hit some spidercrabs while we’re moving – I know the guard has been shooting them down semi-frequently whenever they get too close to the wagons. Even if we move faster than them, they might spook the horses if they get too close. Even if they would be easy to dispatch afterwards, don’t wanna waste time,” he said. “Just don’t ever go below 80% mana – gotta keep some in reserve for if something actually problematic comes to attack us.”

Alice did as he suggested, moving to the front of the wagon and asking if she could work on her {Monster Slayer} Achievement. The guard took one look at her mage insignia and then nodded, switching to the back of the wagon. Then, Alice began to work on trying to hit roaming spidercrab packs as they travelled.

The first few hits were incredibly difficult – Alice wasn’t used to attacking from a moving vehicle, and since the guard had left behind a cluster of arrows for her to use as ammunition, Alice had to try to figure out how to keep the arrows straight when she influenced them. Otherwise, she would hit the Spidercrabs with the side of an arrow and it would just bounce off. Alice swore as another arrow bounced off of the edge of a spidercrab, wondering why she couldn’t seem to hit the spidercrabs effectively.

“Try attaching a thread of your mana to the arrow and keeping it straight mid-flight,” said Milo. Alice couldn’t help but jump, nearly falling off the wagon.

“Where did you come from?” She asked, startled.

“I got bored sitting in the wagon, so I decided to come out and see what you were up to. You’re struggling a lot,” said Milo, with a hint of mirth. “Here, you’re never going to inflict any damage if you just hit the spidercrabs with the side of the arrow, unless you back it up with overwhelming power. You need to control the arrows a bit better when you launch it, or ‘guide’ them for a few seconds. Watch my mana.” Milo quickly demonstrated what he meant, taking one of the arrows and slowly wrapping it with a tendril of mana. He controlled four mana tendrils at the same time, wrapping them around the arrow, before in a sudden flash of energy, all four of the mana tendrils injected mana into the arrow and it was suddenly sent whistling towards a spidercrab. One of the mana tendrils managed to keep up with the arrow for a fraction of a second, making a few last-minute adjustments to the arrow’s flight path as Alice watched.

“Like that!” Said Milo, giving her a grin.

Alice frowned, but tried again. Her {Divided Awareness} Skill wasn’t high enough to let her control two Mana tendrils yet, so she was stuck with one, but she managed to at least try to help ‘guide’ the arrow as it flew away from her.

The next few hours were spent with Alice gradually mastering how to accurately control arrows and actually hurt something when she hit it.

Finally, a few hours after the {Travelling Merchant} had pulled some rations out of his storage Perk and handed it to the members of the wagon for lunch, Alice managed to harvest the last few spidercrabs she needed for {Monster Slayer}.

You have gained an achievement!

Monster Slayer (II) Rarity: 1

You have Successfully Slain 25 monsters.

Increases the effect of the ‘Strength,’ ‘Dexterity,’ and ‘Perception’ Stats by 5%. Improves your ability to perceive monsters in a ten meter radius.

Alice frowned, watching as the mana around her started gathering. However, it didn’t look the same as it usually did when she gained a new Skill or Achievement. Instead, the mana formed another fractal – just one that was far, far less complex than it had been when she had nearly died during the mana seed incident. A much smaller multicolored mana fractal formed inside of her body, and for a brief moment, the two of them touched each other. Like liquids being mixed in a blender, they seemed to flow into each other. Then, moments later, both dissolved into nothing, while even more mana rushed into Alice’s body from her surroundings. The dissolving fractals guided the mana into her body, and Alice was suddenly ever so slightly stronger, faster, and able to see better. Since her base stats were much higher now, it was becoming easier to notice when the ‘effect of’ each stat improved. The improved monster perception didn’t seem to do much, though – {Sixth Sense} was already doing the same thing, just much, much better.

More importantly, Alice was suddenly interested in improving Achievements. Would all of them create interesting fractals whenever they were upgraded? Alice could still vividly remember the incredibly complex fractal that had formed when she had nearly died, and even if she couldn’t remember very much of it because of how incredibly complex it had been when she had seen it, it was still a very obvious sign of how incredibly complex the seemingly-simple magic used today could really be. She couldn’t understand any of it now, but maybe someday…

In any case, seeing the complex fractals form also hinted that maybe there was a lot going on behind the scenes whenever an Achievement was upgraded. Much more complex than the simple rush of mana Alice had seen when she got her {Truth Seeker} Achievement, even if the total quantity of mana was much lower.

Still, for now, she was quite far from Tier 3 of {Monster Slayer}, and didn’t have any other Achievements that were quick and easy to upgrade. She sighed, before she moved back into the back of the carriage. She was at about 80% of her mana reserve, so it was time to stop anyway. Gradually, as the carriage moved along, Alice began to nod off. There was nothing much to do or pay attention to anyway, after all.

* * *

Far away, in another country, there was an Immortal. He looked to be in his early thirties, and sat at a table with four assistants. Two of the assistants were male and two were female. None of the five looked to be older than fifty, at the absolute oldest, but each and every one of them was over a century old. In fact, all of them were much older than the Society they had founded together, the Society of Starry Eyes. It was a name that caused many smaller countries in the Shil Confederacy to have an endless headache, and the organization even had feelers that extended all the way to the central continent. Even the big 5 countries in the Shil Confederacy, Illvaria, Norwick, Eldren, Selth’as, and Kraelden, all had an endless headache trying to figure out how to remove the organization.

“What are the results of experiment Mana-41 and Mana-42?” Asked the Immortal, giving his subordinates a glance.

“The subjects did not immediately die, but complications immediately ensued. It is likely that the subjects will have severe problems interacting with mana if the conditions remain the same, and may suffer the same… melting effect most subjects experience after enough time passes. It seems that the hypothesis is correct. The control group has experienced no abnormalities. Also, regarding experiment forty two, those cut off from mana entirely have experienced a variety of odd symptoms. However, none of them seem to be lethal, even if extended to a multi-month period with no mana. All the symptoms clear up if they’re exposed to mana again. The results are here…” Said one of the males as he handed over a sheet of paper with a variety of tables and numbers inscribed on it. He looked like a man in his late forties, with slightly greying hair but a firm and strong expression. However, in truth, he was nearing the midpoint of his second century of life. The man wore an uneasy expression on his face, one laced with faint traces of guilt.

The Immortal simply sighed, and a trace of guilt flickered through his heart as well. He gritted his teeth, and banished the feeling. He had no choice. Two of his assistants seemed to catch the emotion in his eyes, however, and both gave him wan, but still comforting, smiles.

“There is no choice. After all, it’s the reason the Society of Starry Eyes was founded. For the salvation of the human race,” said one of the female assistants. She absently rubbed her forehead, but stopped herself as she seemed to realize what she was doing.

“For the Salvation of the human race, indeed,” muttered the Immortal quietly. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of fatigue as he thought about the number of corpses his experiments had produced. He didn’t feel happy, using his fellow humans as test subjects.

However, if he did not do it, no one else would. Since no one else understood how bad the crisis was becoming, he needed to take matters into his own hands if he wanted anyone to survive. His thoughts couldn’t help but turn back towards the experiment that had changed everything.

Once, instead of a feared leader of an illegal organization, he had been an ordinary promising soon-to-be immortal. He had made great discoveries, changing the lives of the common people. He had even made the very first ‘healing’ enchanted items, finding a way to compensate for the lack of intelligence enchanted items displayed by using a low-efficiency magic seed called ‘healing’ to replace the years of hard work and understanding most [Organic Mages] needed. Then, when he had gotten a permit to study Dimensional Magic and had done his first few experiments, he had realized how wrong many of his assumptions about the world had been. The System, humans, mana… Everything. He didn’t even have a good estimate for how long they had left – it could be centuries, or days.

Such was the nature of dimensions colliding and unravelling.

The Immortal sighed.

“Are there any updates on the other observation lists?”

The other female assistant frowned, scanning a list of reports. Her eyes seemed to move inhumanly fast, and she processed information at a ludicrous rate, taking only a few seconds to fully read and comprehend each report. Finally, she sighed.

“The teams on the Western Continent got wiped out again. We need to increase the level requirement for making observations there – the fact that there are no human civilizations present on the continent and there are so many powerful monsters makes it hard for any teams to survive, and the mana is so dense that even high level humans go through mana baptisms nearly instantly before they can even land. The Central continent has seen several unusual fluctuations in mana as well, and it seems like there were two notable incidents of mana suddenly breaking within the last decade, although luckily both were in uninhabited regions. Finally, there were three oddities on the Southern Continent, especially in mana-dense regions. We hired some [Bandits] and [Mercenaries] to do some searching around both areas, but the weakness of both classes makes it hard to get useful and conclusive results in a timely fashion. One of them was concentrated somewhere in Illvaria, although we didn’t get any particularly good idea where, and two were somewhere in the southern Corellion Empire. There might have also been one in the western area of the Sigmusi Empire, but it’s much harder to get information from there, since we didn’t manage to get any observation bunkers set up.”

The Immortal frowned, before he sighed. “Raise the level requirement for the teams on the Western Continent, but send out another batch. Splurge a bit and dip into the high-grade enchanted equipment to ensure the safety of the teams – there is no sense in letting them die for no purpose. As for the anomalies recorded on the Central and Southern continent, you mentioned already taking care of it?”

“Yes. Considering how active the Sigmusi Colonia is recently, it’s easy to slip into the chaos, especially in the southern region of Illvaria, but I used some of our information loops from the northern area as well. No hint on what exactly is going on yet, though. Not enough people with good message-related Perks or movement Perks to keep information flowing.”

“The Sigmusi, huh. I had nearly forgotten. Very well. Keep up the good work,” said the Immortal. With a weary sigh, he got up, and the other four [Assistants] stood up after a few moments. “For now, the meeting is adjourned. Everyone, keep up the experiments, and see if we can find anything else that might be relevant. In particular, I want you to keep a close eye on the research subjects who were cut off from mana – see if their symptoms persist, and record their survival. If anything happens, let me know immediately.”

“Yes, sir,” said the final male lab assistant.

With a heavy heart, the meeting adjourned, and five silent people left the room, left alone with their thoughts. However, in the end, there was no choice.