The expedition continued on for the rest of the day with a quiet and somber mood. The guards were required to patrol the area much more frequently, and Alice occasionally saw Illa or one of the other high-level [Kinetic Mages] fly to the tops of trees and scout the surrounding area from the air, as well as one of the other mages who she didn’t know. The expedition maintained a semi-alert state and frequently stopped to scan the surroundings, but didn’t encounter any other ‘deserters’ or other attempts to interfere with the expedition at all. Their hidden enemies were either uninterested in making another attack right now, or had given up entirely. Alice wasn’t sure which.

When the expedition stopped for the night, Alice was finally able to get a rough look at the rest of the expedition. There were only two people who were actually dead – most of the rest were either already healed, or mostly healed, doubtless a result of the hard work of the [Organic Mages]. The expedition quickly set up campfires, using some sort of Perk to restrain the light and smoke from stretching too far away from the group, and then quickly assigned watches to the guards and mages. Alice herself was in charge of the last watch of the night, right before the group would get up and continue moving.

The Expedition’s mood was still somber. Two people had died, after all. Though it couldn’t be considered to be a huge percentage of the expedition, it couldn’t be considered a tiny amount, either. Alice had originally intended to get to know the other mages of the expedition a bit, but she found that she had neither the mood nor energy to deal with it that night. Instead, she sat at the same campfire with Milo and the guards that had been in her wagon. Since their wagon was one of the two with an actual death, the mood was especially quiet – apart from the occasional murmur or whisper, the group was mostly silent.

Finally, one of the guards broke the silence with a sigh.

“I just can’t believe Liam’s gone.” The group didn’t respond for a moment. The group simply sat in silence. Then, one of the other guards raised his hand in a kind of salute Alice had never seen before.

“He was a good man. He was always energetic and happy when he was in his cups, and he always brightened up a drinking session after work. You know, back when I was just starting out as a guard, he was the one who taught me [Spearmanship]. Said it might save my life one day.” The man laughed, bitterly. “It did. But it didn’t save his.” The guard also made the strange salute.

This time, it didn’t take long before one of the other two guards joined in.

“He was the one who introduced me to my missus. Said his wife had a friend who was looking for someone, and she was real pretty. He and his wife set up a nice dinner for the two of us to get to know each other – we sat around and talked for a few hours before I started to really like the woman. I changed my [Apprentice Merchant] class out for [Ordinary Husband] under the [Priest] last year with him and his wife as two of the witnesses. He was a tough old bastard. Liked helping the newbies and showing off his high level and Skills.” The guard snorted. “He only had his damn {Spearmanship} at 130 or so – barely better than average for his age. And his level was barely at 50. He had a few decades left in him, but was that really worth showing off? Crazy bastard.” The guard sniffled a little, before repeating the strange salute the first guard had done.

“He’s returned to the System now. He lives on in our Levels and Skills, and he’ll continue to do so for generations to come,” said the final guard, the only female in the group besides Alice. After a moment, she gave a solemn sigh, before following up with another repetition of the strange salute.

“For all the time I knew Liam, he always tried his best to help out newcomers. He was… he would have been a good [Teacher], I think. Hell, he might have going for the class, or had it as a secondary class. I never knew him well, but he was a decent sort,” said Milo. After a moment, he performed the same half-salute Alice had seen the other guards do.

The group turned towards her, and Alice pondered for a moment. She didn’t know exactly what was expected of her here, but she could at least guess what was needed. Her voice was a bit shaky, but she spoke as well.

“He pulled me out of a bad situation when the ambush happened. I… I don’t know if I would still be here if he hadn’t. There was so much going on and I … I just… I never spoke with him, but I won’t forget that.” Said Alice, and she couldn’t help but have her memories flash back to the fight for a brief moment, and to the feeling of impending death as she came to the realization that the attacker in front of her was going to speed up again soon. A spear, killing the attacker before an arrow killed the guard who had helped her.

The air around the campfire fell into silence again, before the guards, as well as Milo, raised imaginary glasses. “To Liam. May he be remembered and his Skills and Identity live on,” they said. Alice followed through a moment later, even though she didn’t know exactly what it meant. Even so, it felt right somehow – giving closure to someone who had died in the process of helping her. A form of respect for the deceased. She closed her eyes, trying to imprint this feeling into her memories – the feeling of gratitude, of loss, and of farewells and change. Finally, the group drifted off back to their tents for the night, save for the group in charge of the first watch of the night.

Alice laid in the tent she shared with the female guard, thinking.

She had killed someone today. She had watched other people die in front of her. She would never forget any of that. She had already known, intellectually, that she might already be in danger. However, knowing something was far different from seeing it firsthand. Monsters and humans were both cruel in this world, and ordinary people like her and the [Guards] were just doing their best to get by. Right now, she could barely defend herself against a few ordinary adults – even if she was a mage, she had to remember that she only had a few weeks of real training, half her classes were devoted to learning and research, and her combat abilities were low. She would probably never match up to strong professionals who excelled in violence, but she needed to be able to help herself and defend herself when push came to shove.

Alice spent a long time thinking about that before she finally drifted off to sleep for the night. She slept fitfully and uneasily.

* * *

When she woke up, she was on watch with Milo again. Since Illa was the one in charge of arranging the watches, Alice couldn’t help but wonder if the woman had rearranged the watches in light of what had happened today, to give her some more time with familiar faces. She couldn’t help but feel a bit grateful for that. The two sat in comfortable silence until morning, which gave Alice more time to think as she scanned the surrounding forest and occasionally blasted down a few overly curious monsters. From time to time, Milo gave her a few glances, but he seemed to be able to tell that she didn’t want to talk right now, and maintained the silence. Finally, just before morning came, he gave her a more direct look.

“You don’t have to feel bad about what happened. You killed somebody, but it was in self defense. And Liam was always a bit of a brave fool – he wouldn’t want you to beat yourself up over his death. Don’t forget what happened, and don’t lose the weight of taking a human life – but don’t spiral into depression either. Everything in moderation, right?” Milo gave her a friendly grin, and Alice returned his gaze with a slight grin of her own. She felt a bit better.

Dawn came, and the rest of the camp came to life. The group set off after the tents were packed up and stored away in either the wagons or storage Perks. The group set off within an hour of daybreak, maintaining the same level of vigilance they had yesterday.

The next few days were more of the same – unlike the initially explosive start of the expedition, not very much happened. The group remained highly vigilant of another attack, but despite the group’s increasing vigilance and wariness towards the area around them, no more ‘deserters’ or other dangers appeared aside from the occasional monster pack.

Over time, the expedition started to regain some of its initial energy and vibrancy, although Alice didn’t feel as much excitement as she had at the start of the expedition. However, her mood gradually recovered, and after two days, she moved around campfires a bit and at least introduced herself to the other mages in the expedition, as well as the names and faces of the other [Guards] and [Wandering Merchants] making up the rest of the group. That night, her Status Screen also finally changed a bit, and her age increased to 16. Granted, she had actually turned 16 a few weeks ago, but it was nice to know that her Status screen was still picking up on her age – it just seemed that her aging speed had slowed down a bit.

The expedition’s ability to blast away or shoot down monsters while travelling to the broken mana zone made the trip much faster than Alice’s originally panicky flight to the city, since they didn’t have to run and hide from stronger monsters for large parts of the day.

Finally, the group reached an area Alice recognized. She turned to the [Travelling Merchant] driving the wagon and nodded at him.

“Stop. Things will get a little complicated here.” The [Travelling Merchant] nodded, and quickly waved his hands at the other two covered wagons nearby. They quickly made some more gestures at the other covered wagons who were travelling around them, and soon the expedition came to a halt. Alice looked around as other [Guards] and mages disembarked from their wagons and began looking around.

“Are your Perks picking up something? Any help guiding us towards the area would be useful,” said Illa, giving Alice a knowing look.

Alice nodded. “I think I know where this place is. Gimme a sec…” she looked around, feeling a strange mixture of frustration and nostalgia as she looked back at the bank of the river. This was the place she had fished before the river had frozen over. She could almost imagine that she had just finished hunting fish or spidercrabs, and was returning to start cooking some sort of dinner for herself. The few months she had spent here had left their mark on her, even if she had returned to civilization.

She knew, with the ease of familiarity, exactly what direction to turn if she wanted to return to her cave. She briefly wondered if Taps was still guarding the cave – she had mostly forgotten about her ‘pet rock,’ and even if she still regarded it mostly as a joke, she couldn’t help but feel a little hint of curiosity. Quietly, she turned back to the expedition, and then looked around.

“I’m not 100% sure what direction we need to go from here, but I think… I think it’s supposed to downriver a little further, and then maybe a little bit in another direction?”

Alice wished that [Enhanced Memory] worked on memories she had from before she picked up the Perk. It would have made this much easier. Sadly, the Perk only worked on memories from after she had grabbed the Perk, which meant that from this point she was relying on her ‘regular’ memory to lead the expedition forward. Her memories of her first few days in this world were a bit hazy, though she still had a rough idea what direction they needed to travel in to get to the broken mana area. After pointing out what she thought was the right direction, Illa nodded, and the expedition continued forward again.

As the Expedition started to get closer, they stopped more frequently, as Alice and a few Mages with specialized Perks tried to figure out what direction the expedition needed to head in order to find the large broken mana area.

After a while, however, even though Alice’s memories were beginning to get fuzzier and fuzzier, she was no longer needed in order to point out the direction they were heading.

That was because there were continuous streams of monsters heading towards a specific direction once they got close enough. Instead of encountering a few monsters every hour before they got mowed down by one of the Mages or [Guards], the number of monsters began to pick up drastically. Soon, they were encountering a pack of spidercrabs or a vinebear every few minutes. The monsters didn’t even bother attacking the humans, seemingly more interested in heading towards a mysterious spot farther away.

Alice couldn’t help but feel curious about this, mostly because it was the first time she had ever seen monsters ignore a human. She had seen them fight each other plenty, and they almost universally tried to eat her whenever they saw her, but right now they were totally uninterested in the humans in the area.

Less than ten minutes after the group began to encounter the increasingly abnormal monster behavior, the [Travelling Merchants] started gesturing at each other, and the wagons stopped moving. Alice hopped off, absently scanning her surroundings to make sure no monsters were too close to her. The other mages were gathering around Illa, so Alice quickly headed over as well. Illa was scanning the surrounding monsters, a pensive expression on her face as she looked at the surroundings.

Illa sighed.

“This is much worse than I thought it would be.” She turned towards Alice, as well as the other mages. “We’re dealing with a very large number of monsters, and if we successfully purify a large amount of mana, it’s likely that the monsters will turn towards us and attack. Right now they’re distracted by the more plentiful food source, but if the massive area of broken mana is dealt with, the results will probably be quite bad. Not dealing with it is also bad – if a few alpha monsters evolve and form a swarm, it might create a big problem for [Adventurers] in the region or lead to an attack on the town. The size of this broken mana bubble must be huge.” Illa frowned, and the other mages were also looking at the unusual monster activity with similar expressions.

“For now, let’s keep everyone together and move all of the wagons closer to each other. Keep a close eye on the monsters nearby – if any of them start showing interest in you, notify the other wagons immediately and get ready to start fighting. Apart from that, keep an eye out for any alphas – the last thing we need to deal with is a real swarm, even if they probably wouldn’t bother us yet. [Guards] without Perks that help protect against mana poisoning, grab one of the rings enchanted to protect you. Stay close and stay safe. Is everyone clear on what we need to do?” Asked Illa, looking at the other Mages. Alice, along with the other mages, nodded, and every returned back to their wagons. The group was increasingly vigilant against the surrounding monsters, but the expedition continued onwards.

Less than half an hour after that, Alice finally saw the broken mana region again. And she finally realized something.

All this time, she had been assuming that mana worked kind of like a gas. It seemed to do so, after all – even though humans and other living creatures could have a mana density dozens or hundreds of times higher than the surrounding air, she had chalked that up to some biological process she didn’t understand yet.

However, the broken mana region in front of them directly threw the idea of mana working like a gas out the window.

The broken mana region was very visible to her Mana-sight perk. It looked like a giant purple wall had been constructed out of clouds and then shattered by a giant, dumping colossal chunks of clouds and debris over the area. Even though the group was still quite a ways away from the broken mana region, that didn’t matter – the area extended dozens of meters above ground, far above what human engineering could reach before the industrial age. Broken chunks of different colors of purple spun and whirled in the sky above the region, with tiny little bits and pieces occasionally being drained towards the ground. However, the amount of mana being dragged towards the ground was miniscule compared to the massive feeding ground. And, as a result of her exceedingly high Perception improving her eyesight, Alice could already make out the extraordinary blur inside of the area.

Just inside of the broken mana region, the monsters suddenly multiplied by dozens of times. They were feasting on the air, occasionally attacking monsters that had so much mana inside of them that they blazed like miniature stars in the sky. However, most of the monsters were simply still, absorbing the plentiful mana and ignoring both the humans and each other. The spidercrabs, vinebears, and other monsters Alice couldn’t identify were co-existing as they fed on the massive cloud of mana directly in front of the expedition. Monsters were sometimes literally stacked in heaps a few meters high, like a junkyard made of living creatures.

Alice stared at the horrifying sight and actually felt a bit dizzy – this was… this was…

“Holy fuck,” she said, staring at the most nauseating sight she had seen since coming to this world.

The expedition had finally reached the broken mana zone.