“Illa, servant of the crown, greets Allira, immortal of song and shadow,” Illa said, her voice falling upon the area surrounding the town’s entrance gate. It was a strange sight for Alice, to see Illa bowing her head and greeting someone outside of her own city.

“It has been a while, hasn’t it? How have you been, little Illa? Are you surprised to see me?” The beautiful woman gave Illa a smile, and for a moment, it was like all of the light in the world shone upon her face, highlighting her features. However, even though Alice could tell that the woman was beautiful, the way the shadows around the girl jumped made the entire scene give Alice an uneasy feeling, even if it was largely suppressed.

“Indeed. I was not expecting honored Immortal to come – I was thinking troops would be coming. And much… later,” said Illa. There was a hint of familiarity in her eyes as she looked at Allira. Alice could tell that it was not there first meeting, though Alice found it difficult to concentrate on the conversation. The woman was so distractingly beautiful – Alice had no clue what her Charisma stat was, but it made everyone else’s Charisma seem like nothing. The raw distraction of her presence was nearly overwhelming. Alice closed her eyes, finding it easier to dodge the distraction of the woman’s presence for a while.

After she closed her eyes, the distraction of the woman’s presence was gone.

Alice felt a sense of nervousness as she started to parse through what was happening in front of her. This was an Immortal – someone who had stopped aging due to having a high enough level. They were also the basis for one of Alice’s guesses, which was that mana somehow slowed down the aging process. During the expedition, she had even further wondered what exactly mana was, since it seemed to cause all sorts of strange effects on animals that came in contact with it. However, the Immortal in front of her seemed like far more than that – she almost seemed as if she was mana. Was… mana?

During the time in the broken mana zone, the group had seen what seemed to be a living clump of mana, hadn’t they? It had been a monster even Illa was wary of – the group had made a huge detour around it. Alice hadn’t been able to see the creature with her ‘normal’ vision either – it had been visible with only her mana vision. Even though Allira was still very clearly human, despite her mildly inhuman features, Alice couldn’t help but feel that there was also a similarity between Allira and the strange monster the expedition had seen from afar. Were Immortals just… clumps of mana, then? Wait, could mana even have a solid form? Alice had gotten very used to seeing Mana act mostly as a gas, even though it seemed to behave strangely when it came to density and spreading out in some cases. However, if Allira – no, if Immortal in general were something closer to solidified clumps of mana, that would be a good way to test the properties of mana, and…

And to test it, Alice would need to have an Immortal willing to cooperate with her studies. There was no way that would work out. Alice sighed in disappointment at the thought. Well, if I become an Immortal I can at least run tests on myself. Just need to overcome a nearly impossible hurdle first. Though, the benefit of never dying of age is certainly appealing…

“Quiet, aren’t you?” Asked the woman. Alice still had her eyes closed, but she could still feel the Immortal looking at her, the woman’s very presence radiated outwards, demanding to be acknowledged.

“My apologies your – uh… Immortal…ship?”

“The correct address is usually to refer to me by ‘honored Immortal,’ sometimes followed by my title – in this case, the Immortal of Song and Shadow. Though people who know me are permitted to refer to me as Allira, or Alli. The current king just calls me Alli, usually.”

Alice also couldn’t help but notice that Allira referred to the king, not with the greatly respectful tone she had expected, but with a more neutral, bland tone. And she used the term ‘the current king’ instead of something along the lines of ‘his majesty.’ However, after a moment of thought, she realized she was speaking with someone who was literally unaging – depending on how old Allira was, kings might seem to be more or less like the weather – give it enough time, and it would change again. The woman was also surprisingly relaxed. Even though her status and personal power were probably hard for Alice to even imagine, she didn’t seem to particularly care.

“So, Illa and you are acquainted, honored Immortal?”

“A decade ago, Illa was considered to be one of the people most likely to join our little community of Immortals, so I spent some time getting to know her. Unfortunately, she chose to get married and found a town instead, so it’s unlikely that will happen now. Or, at least, it will be significantly harder, since what matters the most when it comes to slowing down aging is the highest level among your classes. It’s more important to have one level 30 class than 3 level 25 classes, at least when it comes to aging purposes. All of the Achievements Illa have, as far as I’m aware, boost her Magic-related classes.”

Alice opened her eyes for a moment and looked at Illa, wondering if she would be angry at Allira discussing her odds of dying of old age so frankly. However, Illa simply seemed to acknowledge the statement with a mundane shrug, as if the person Allira was talking about wasn’t her at all, but someone else. Alice felt her eyes getting inevitably dragged back towards Allira, so she closed her eyes again.

Through Training, you have increased an attribute!

Willpower +1

It had been a while since Alice had last gained a stat so simply. To see a point in Willpower just from closer her eyes felt ridiculous, and also put Allira’s very existence in a greater context. Alice tried not to frown, before she redirected her attention back towards things she had more control over. Gathering information from someone who was likely at least decades older than her and had more knowledge of the world had to be an opportunity as well, right? If Allira was willing to talk, at least.

Would asking lots of questions was considered disrespectful? But the woman didn’t seem to mind, and Alice was suddenly burning with curiosity. Maybe the woman wouldn’t mind Alice trying to investigate a little about Immortals in general?

“You went to meet with Illa because of her potential to become an Immortal, then?”

“Of course! Friends and family is what makes eternity worth living, and right now there are only six of us in Illvaria. Three of them are the Sun Knight, his wife, and his only surviving son, so it’s natural that if someone seems likely to become an Immortal we would want to get to know them, right? Well, the King is trying to reach Immortality, but I think this one is also growing old more quickly than he’s levelling up.” Allira… sounded both curious and indifferent. “But hey, we’ll see. The one that tried to enchant the main river of southern Illvaria back when this area was still part of the country got pretty close, or so I hear. Then again, while this king’s chances aren’t optimistic, if the recolonization effort is successful, it should be worth a huge amount of levels, so maybe it’ll be enough. We’ll see.” Alice couldn’t see the woman right now, but she could still imagine the woman shrugging, her face a mixture of curiosity and indifference as she thought about the topic.

“So, in that case, I take it you are the Crown’s response for rooting out the Sigmusi?” Asked Illa, redirecting the conversation before Alice could find a good way to inquire about the relationship between Immortals and mana.

“The first, yes. There are actual troops on the way as well, but you can expect them to come much later. However, I have already cleaned up most of the spies in the area, at least – I chatted with them, and most of them gave themselves away before long. Then, I got to kill them all,” said Allira. Something about the way Allira said kill them all set Alice’s teeth on edge – there was a mixture of emotions in Allira’s words. It sounded like hatred. Not just the hate most people in Illvaria seemed to have for their western neighbors – it sounded far, far more personal. Alice noted that for however long she interacted with Allira, she should avoid mentioning the Sigmusi – it seemed like a sensitive topic.

While Alice was considering all of this, Illa and Alliria continued discussing troop arrangements, spy removal, and the Crown’s response. Alice didn’t have the context to piece together a lot of what they were talking about, since Alice had no clue who the noble families of Illvaria were, but she could at least tell that the Crown was taking the Sigmusi Colonia’s interference seriously and intended to intervene

“I am glad that you are here,” said Illa, revealing a faint trace of a smile. “It is good to know that the crown takes this issue so seriously.”

“There will be actual troops coming to reinforce the south soon, so you don’t need to worry. The northern nomads have been even quieter this year than the last. It seems they are busy fighting themselves,” said Alliria, with a hint of dryness in her tone. The shadows in the area seemed to ripple in response to the woman’s emotions, flickering madly like the light and shadow thrown off of a candle. “Might I ask what precisely this expedition was about? To be leaving town in the middle of the Sigmusi Colonia making movements seems… odd.” Allira practically spat out the word Sigmusi.

“There is a broken mana region that appeared near the town, and we were going to investigate it. While I originally thought of hiring some adventurers to take a look, they don’t tend to have very… reliable results. I also had some thought of cleaning up the area, but the monster density was much greater than I anticipated. Thus, we could only investigate from afar and leave. It was very frustrating.”

“I’ll take a look while I’m in the area. I don’t have any Mage classes, but I can still probably do something about it,” said Allira. Alice frowned. Weren’t Mage classes the only way to get to see mana? If Allira wasn’t a mage, how was she able to interact with mana? Was it some property of Immortals, or did she have a Perk? Or was it something else entirely?

“My thanks to honored Immortal, then.”

“I will take my leave. Goodbye!” The last of Allira’s words were oddly cheery and informal, making it even harder for Alice to guess at the woman’s personality. She was informal sometimes, formal sometimes. She seemed to hate the Sigmusi, far more than the usual cursing and grumbling, but the rest of the woman’s actions seemed to contradict each other at times while she was speaking.

Alice counted to thirty and then opened her eyes. Allira was gone, and the rest of the expedition was simply standing outside of the gates.

“Alice, go to Cecilia’s workshop and investigate the rock. I want to see if you can figure out if it has any relationship with the broken mana region, or any of the Society’s actions. After that, come to my manor – we’ll discuss a bonus, as well as what we’re doing in the future.” The future? Suddenly, Alice wondered if her presence here was still needed. Originally, she had been used as a way for Illa to encourage mages to stay in Cyra until the crown cleaned up the South. However, Allira’s presence already showed exactly how seriously the Crown was taking possible threats against the recolonization effort, and she was months earlier than the expected first reinforcements. In that case, was Alice’s presence actually still needed? Granted, her presence during the Expedition might have helped a little bit, but Alice suddenly felt like she might not have paid off Illa’s investment in her. She felt more than a little guilty at the thought, as well as uneasy. If she had no use for Illa, what was she supposed to do now?

“Got it. I’ll head there immediately.” Alice put those thoughts away. For now, she should focus on the stone, and focus on things she could control.

The expedition quickly dispersed once they were back inside of the city walls, Alice headed directly towards Cecilia’s shop.

Cecilia’s shop was as desolate as before. While the business couldn’t be said to be nonexistent, the feeling of disuse and decay was even stronger than it had been before. Alice knocked on the door.

“Coming!” Said Cecilia. A moment later, the shop door opened and Cecilia looked at Alice. “The Expedition is back? I thought it might take a little longer.”

“We ran into a much higher monster density than anticipated, so we couldn’t do any cleaning there.” Alice sighed. She still didn’t even know how to clean up Broken Mana… She had originally expected Illa might teach her during the Expedition, but unexpectedly, the Expedition hadn’t been able to clean up the area at all before fleeing the potential showdown between several alphas and monster swarms.

“Well, in that case, it’s good that you came back safely. If all of you died it would be a huge problem for the town’s safety,” said Cecilia.

“It got a bit tricky. We were ambushed by people who were probably from the Sigmusi Colonia along the way. Luckily, Illa managed to drive off the main force, and in my section, we survived.” Unbidden, the feeling of an arrow piercing through her stomach surfaced in Alice’s memories. “Barely.” She suppressed a shudder.

“Oof.” Cecilia winced. “So what are you here for? I haven’t heard news about the Expedition returning, so you guys must have just gotten back. I have the results for the mana and food experiment, but I don’t think it’s THAT urgent. Are you here for something else?”

“Yeah.” Alice pulled the strange rock out and held it out towards Cecilia. “We found a strange rock floating in midair while we were there, but nobody’s Perks can turn up anything about it. If it weren’t for the fact that it was floating in midair, we wouldn’t have thought much of it, but the fact nothing we try can turn up ANY information on it is bizarre.” Cecilia frowned, before she took out a pair of cloth gloves and put them over her hands. They lit up with mana, before Cecilia finally grabbed the rock.

“Hmm…” Cecilia began squinting at the rock, and her expression began changing. Alice quickly realized she was using Perks, and stepped back. Cecilia’s face, however, slowly began to show more and more signs of confusion.

“Nothing. It’s like I’m trying to look at a piece of thin air. No mana. No potential as an Enchanting material. It’s just… nothing. But there’s clearly something there!”

Cecilia frowned. “Hold on a second. Let me try…” She disappeared into the back room of the shop. After a few minutes, she reappeared with several strange-looking tools, as well as a long, thin wire. Alice could detect a great deal of mana coming from the wire, showing that it was actually some sort of enchanted tool. The other tools also emitted mana.

“This is a mana reader. It should be able to detect if the object in question has any mana, as well as doing some basic investigation. It’ll light up to let us know how much mana is contained inside of it, and it’s better than my Perks for detecting things that might somehow retain mana inside of them.” said Cecilia, placing it over the rock. “After all, Mages don’t actually see mana perfectly, even with Perks. Instead, what we usually see is whatever mana ‘leaks’ out of something. There might be some sort of material that doesn’t leak anything at all, and if that’s the case, this should be able to detect it…”

The object did nothing. The rock simply laid on the table, unmoving.

“Nothing?” Cecilia frowned. Maybe I’ll try taking away a smaller piece of it. If there’s something inside of the rock that’s changing the way it reacts to external observation, maybe that would somehow explain what the object is? If that’s the case, it would be good to rub or remove the outer shell of the object, so that we can get a better look at whatever is actually causing the problem here.” Cecilia grabbed the wire, and began winding it around her fingers. She also stabilized the rock’s position with a few clamps, ensuring that it wouldn’t move around. Finally, Cecilia brushed her hands along the bracelets on her wrists, which began to light up with mana. Before long, a thin coat of mana spread across Cecilia’s skin. Several tendrils of mana also began to spread along the surface of the table, as well as the area directly surrounding the table.

“As an [Enchanter], you need to careful with unknown objects. Always make sure you have a few rings protecting you from potential harm. I’ll go into more detail about safety when I actually start teaching you, but remember that you always need to keep your safety equipment up, especially if you’re about to start a more destructive process with an unknown material. Most equipment to measure and analyze things are relatively harmless. However, it’s always good to be careful. This table has some other safety precautions,” said Cecilia, almost absentmindedly.

Cecilia took the wire and wound it around two of her fingers, almost as if it were floss. Then, she slowly began pressing it against the top corner of the rock. She very, very carefully began to slice away a very small fragment of the rock. The wire didn’t successfully sink into the rock at all – it was as if Cecilia was trying to cut a block of pure steel. Cecilia grabbed several monster cores and touched the wire, and Alice saw most of the mana inside of those cores suddenly began to drain out of them and into the wire. The wire began to glow more brightly in her mana-vision, and the monster cores became dimmer and dimmer. Then Cecilia tried again. This time, the wire managed to, just barely, nick the tip of the rock.

The moment the tip of the rock was nicked away, Alice saw something completely different. It was like she was looking at a circuit board – however, instead of being made of metals and wires, this was a circuit board formed purely of mana. It was staggeringly complex – it wasn’t on par with the fractal Alice had seen when she had nearly overloaded herself with mana a few weeks ago, but it was still a world of difference compared to even the most complicated enchanted items Alice had seen so far. And unlike the System’s mana intervention fractal, which had been so staggeringly complex that Alice was sure no human could possibly create it, this one felt like it could certainly be man-made. It was filled with straight lines, nodes of mana, and a whirlpool of colors that mixed and blended together.

Several of the nodes of mana shifted to a variety of different colors. Then, seconds later, the rock collapsed completely. It didn’t explode, or pop, or emit light that was visible. Instead, it was like all of the mana inside of the rock simply disappeared the moment it detected that it was being observed. Then, the entire rock collapsed into a pile of gravel, as if it were a dandelion met with a hurricane.

Alice stared at the rock, stunned, while Cecilia also stared at the pile of rubble. What?

However, as Alice stared at the pile of seemingly ordinary rock detritus, she felt a sneaking suspicion in her mind.

As far as she knew, there was no such thing as a naturally-occurring enchantment in this world. Sure, there were plenty of unusual phenomena that could occur wherever mana was. However, the circuit board of lights and mana hadn’t looked like it could be, in any way, shape, or form, naturally-occurring. It had looked detailed. Structured. Intended.

And despite all of that, nobody’s Perks had picked up anything when they were used on the object.

Someone had created a strange object for unknown reasons, and it had somehow ended up in the broken mana zone. And that someone hadn’t liked their object being observed, adding in some sort of self-destruct mechanism into it. And, most importantly of all, somehow that object had fooled the System.