That night, Alice successfully formed a pure mana magic seed. The formation of the magic seed itself went well – she formed a 10% mana conversion seed, which was the maximum she could possibly get from her {Three Seeds} Perk. However, Alice’s attempt to observe the process of forming a magic seed was far less successful. The simple reason for this was her inability to divide her attention effectively. In fact, this wasn’t the first time Alice had run into a major problem due to her inability to multitask – when the expedition was ambushed while leaving the town, Alice had, in a limited way, been able to defend herself. For someone who had been formally training as a mage for only a few weeks under Illa, one could even say that she had performed admirably, managing to always stop one person from attacking her at a time. Her mana also wasn’t the problem during the fight – even though she wasted a fair bit, and wouldn’t have had enough mana to fend off all three attackers for an extended period of time, she still had enough mana in her body to put up a reasonable fight. The problem was that right now, she could still only focus on doing one thing at a time. During the fight, she had managed to consistently deal with one attack – the problem was that three people had been attacking her from the very beginning. Similarly, right now, she could form a magic seed or carefully observe the creation of the magic seed – but she wasn’t able to do both. In the future, Alice suspected this would be an even bigger problem – after all, she wanted to observe the process of Enchanting more carefully in the future, since she could probably find all sorts of fascinating nuggets of information about how magic worked from observing the process. However, especially if Alice wanted to experiment with enchanting using weird seeds and also observe the process in detail, she would need to be able to divide her attention properly.

Similarly, while she was forming her magic seed, she hadn’t been able to concentrate on observing the process while also forming the seed correctly – she nearly lost focus and messed up when she tried to do both, and was barely able to rescue the seed and finish forming it. Naturally, her plans of observing how a magic seed was formed in greater deal had to be scrapped.

Alice had a skill that, notably, was supposed to help mages multitask – {Divided Attention}. Unfortunately, this skill wasn’t very high in level yet – even after the battle, and all of the stress and danger Alice had been put under, it remained at a measly level 13. Furthermore, the Skill had significant problems with its upper limits – according to the church’s records, the skill would generally make it easier to multitask, gradually allowing people to split up their attention into two or three parts. However, it would also become more and more taxing on one’s [Intelligence] and [Willpower], requiring both stats to be much higher each time one wished to split their attention into more separate components. While continuously boosting the skill itself would help cut down on these requirements somewhat, the skill would still ultimately struggle to deal with the level of multitasking a [Kinetic Mage] seemed to require. After all, a [Kinetic Mage] had the major weakness of only being able to interact with objects they were touching with a mana tendril. If one wished to stop a barrage of arrows, one needed to be able to ‘touch’ every single arrow at the same time. This was impossible for the human mind to deal with, which ultimately meant that multitasking was a crucial component of staying alive as a [Kinetic Mage].I really need to get a Perk that lets me multitask, thought Alice, grimacing.

Alice sighed as she thought about her Perks and future as a mage. At least, on the bright side, she wasn’t constrained by the number of seeds she could form, especially when it came to experimenting and trying out new things. Her new Perk in [Explorer of Magic] ensured that she would always have a level of flexibility other mages wouldn’t, especially when it came to Enchanting. She could switch around her magic seeds at will – in fact, Alice was already somewhat tempted to break down her organic seed and replace it with something else that suited her needs better. An Organic seed would allow her to pick up a few Perks she wanted, but it blocked a seed slot she might want for other, more important ideas. Worse, if she grabbed the Perks she wanted and then replaced her Organic Seed, she was fairly certain that the Perks she acquired while she had the seed would deactivate, failing to work properly after the seed was lost. While there weren’t actually any cases that Alice knew of where mages replaced their magic seeds, and she wasn’t entirely sure how it would work out, there were plenty of known cases where swapping a primary class to a secondary class caused the higher level Perks to deactivate themselves. For now, Alice assumed that the Organic Seed related Perks would work the same way. If she was willing to spend a year waiting to replace a Perk again, she could test this and then replace a Perk if it turned out to be useless. However, that could only be done once per year, and would require Alice to make a donation to the church as well. Thus, it was clearly a limited resource that she couldn’t just throw around left and right.

Therefore, while on the surface it seemed like Alice could totally swap out her magic seeds left and right, it was still probably a good idea to keep some sort of ‘core seeds’ laying around. It was probably best to use one or two of her seed slots as a sort of ‘flex’ slot that she could swap around when she wanted to experiment or create a new enchantment. Then, she could keep the rest of her seeds the same – after all, even if she could create new seeds with an hour or two of concentration once a month, without the skills and practice to back up a magic seed it wouldn’t be very useful.

The next day, Alice left the inn she had stayed at, quickly meeting up with Cecilia. Without further ado, the two of them marched up to Illa’s manor.

They were quickly ushered into Illa’s study – clearly, Illa had been expecting them to show up.

“I was expecting Alice to come, but I must ask, why are you here, Cecilia?”

“I… have something to report, regarding the strange stone you gave to me for analysis.”

“Is that so? All right then.”

Cecilia began to relay all of the events that had happened when Alice had given her the rock, ending with the rock self-destructing.

“You say that the rock seemed to be man-made?” Asked Illa, her interest piqued after Cecilia had described the full series of events.

“Indeed. My Perks claimed that cutting it would not be a problem, so I thought that perhaps the strange material might be buried inside of the rock. Theoretically, it might have provided a clue to the formation of the giant broken mana zone, or provided some hints – however, the rock no longer exists.”

Illa actually frowned, as if she was deep in thought. Finally, she turned back to Cecilia. “Don’t worry about it – I now suspect that the rock might have other, more… interesting origins.” Illa actually frowned as she drummed her fingers against her desk.

“Anything you can share with me? Right now, I don’t really know what the make of the whole thing,” said Cecilia.

“Right now, I honestly don’t either – my first guess would be that this is some sort of… creation by the Society of Starry Eyes. However, this doesn’t seem to make sense – if it was used as a component of whatever they did to make the broken mana zone, why didn’t they retrieve it afterwards? If there was a great deal of different colors of mana inside of it, the material used to make it must have been expensive. The Society of Starry Eyes does not have unlimited funds – if anything, they often seem rather frugal, opting for cost-efficiency when they do things like hire mercenaries instead of hiring the best. Part of that is due to the fact high-level [Mercenaries] might not be willing to deal with illegal and immortal bastards who deal with human experiments on a daily basis. However, even so, their funding isn’t unlimited.

“My other theory was that it came from Alice’s world, and that was somehow throwing off the Perks used on it. However, Perks used on Alice seem to work fine – in the court room, lie detecting Perks, investigative Perks, and attempts to make a contract all worked just fine. Given the fact that you say it’s manmade… the only thing I’m sure of is that it the rock doesn’t seem to make any sense at all. Which is a good sign something that I believe to be true is not true.” Illa said. She frowned, thinking about it, but eventually sighed. “For now, I’ll keep an eye on it – perhaps Allira will have some more ideas. I will ask her when she returns.”

“Returns? She was here yesterday,” said Cecilia.

“After hearing of our town’s issue with the nearby broken mana region, she offered to help out. Even an Immortal wouldn’t be able to deal with entire horde of monsters there, but Alliria is very good at survival and scouting in addition to her singing. It is where the shadow part of her title comes into play.”

Alice actually frowned as she thought of the woman. She didn’t hate her – she just found the woman’s absence to be a bit sad. She would have been very interested in learning more about Immortals, if Alliria didn’t mind.

“I thought she was mostly a singer of some sort,” said Alice.

“Oh, that’s one of the two classes she almost definitely has. Nobody knows exactly what class she has, but she should have some sort of [Bard] class. However, she reached Immortality during the last war with the Sigmusi Empire – she was one of the original inhabitants of the Illvarian South, before it was razed to the ground by the Sigmusi and swallowed by monsters and wilderness. It’s very, very likely she has the [Survivor] class. Or, at least, had it – at level 100 classes evolve, after all. Anyway, she has said that she will keep an eye on the region for a few days, and give us a better idea of what’s going on – if the monster swarms turn on each other and shred each other to pieces, she will pick off the surviving groups if they are small and weak. If they are strong, she will let us know what is happening, and when, so that we can mount a proper defense.” Illa paused, tapping her fingers against the desk for a moment, before she turned back to the duo. “Anyway, Alice. I’m glad you came here today. There are two things to discuss.”

“Do I still have a job?” Asked Alice. Illa had been both a soldier and a politician, so it was hard to gauge when the woman wanted to take conversation at a slow, measured pace, and when she wanted to get to the point. However, at least as far as Alice could tell, the woman appreciated bluntness and getting to the point most of the time.

“That’s one of the two things that I wanted to speak with you about – I don’t intend to just kick you out, but with Alliria’s presence here, obviously…” Illa looked a bit awkward for a moment, as if she was trying to find a way to rephrase her words. Finally, she simply shrugged. “Frankly, you aren’t anywhere near as useful to me anymore. The crown has rather decisively displayed that it takes the threat to the south very seriously. People with high [Charisma] tend to be quite good at interrogation and getting information, since most people are fairly willing to open up and chat with outrageously beautiful women asking questions about neighbors acting strange. And Alliria has the highest [Charisma] in Illvaria. In short, whatever information channels the Sigmusi have in Cyra, as well as the nearby towns, will probably either flee before they get tracked down and killed, or they will be directly exterminated. Your presence is thus much lower priority.”

Alice felt a cold, sinking feeling in her chest – even though she had known that Illa was a practical woman, it still didn’t feel great to be told upfront that her time with the most competent magic teacher she had access to no longer had any particularly great need for her. Even if Alice could get levels and information from constant practice as time passed, it was obvious that her development would be nowhere near as quick in the future.

“However, first and foremost, I want to discuss your bonus.”

“Bonus?”

“Originally, I hired you based on the assumption that the Sigmusi would probably flee after the assassinations a few towns away – after all, the Crown would obviously respond afterwards, and I didn’t think they would want to stomach any real losses. Therefore, I paid you on the assumption that you might face some verbal harassment from mages who wanted to flee, but it would be nothing severe, and there wouldn’t be any major danger. That assumption was obviously incorrect – we were ambushed outside of Illvaria, and if you hadn’t gotten treatment, you would have died. Furthermore, even though it was unlikely that the situation would take a turn for the worse, you still accepted a job that had some inherent degree of risk in it. Even if you were desperate at the time, and didn’t have much choice, I don’t abandon people that have done a good turn for me. I have two choices for you-“ Illa’s eyes twinkled a little, and Alice felt a small kindling of hope reignite in her chest.

“First, you can take some severance pay. I understand that your funds are rather low, since you don’t have any of this world’s currency, right? Thus, I will give you a nice bonus – 15 golden suns. This can be broken down into any quantity of smaller coins, if you prefer. It would have been equivalent to over a year of your pay, if we don’t factor in other things that you got from our original deal.

“Alternately, you are still missing a lot of fundamental information about magic, as well as access to resources in this world. And, obviously, you are still missing a teacher as well. Thus, you can also take your bonus in the form of continued lessons from me – say, a month and a half of five lessons a week. If you are still interested in having a stable form of employment, I also still need workers to help finish constructing the docks. The pay will be lower, but I will still give you full access to things like my library, in addition to lessons, and a letter of recommendation for a magic school in the north if you want it. I don’t know what your future plans are, but it’s at least worth considering, no? Those with high levels and skills have a fairly easy time getting employed wherever they are, and magic academies have Mages literally devoted to teaching. And even if you don’t go to the north, having a formal magic teacher for another month and a half would boost your skills by a lot and help fill in the gaps in your knowledge as a mage.”

Alice felt the anxiety and nervousness in her heart disappear without a trace. Even though Illa obviously didn’t have much use for Alice as a means of keeping the political situation in town stable, she was still looking after Alice in her own way. Alice couldn’t help but feel an appreciation for the woman.

“Thank you very much,” said Alice. It was at moments like this that she wished she knew more about Illvarian etiquette – she felt that just words weren’t quite sufficient to describe the gratitude welling up from the bottom of her heart.

“It’s not a big deal,” said Illa, though the edges of her lips quirked up slightly. Alice felt that she could actually see the traces of a mischievous grin on Illa’s lips.

“I’d like the second choice – I want to learn more about magic. I still haven’t really made up my mind about whether or not I’m interested in going to a magic academy in the North, but I would love to be your student for another month and a half,” said Alice. Quietly, she also mentally checked the time – Cecilia had said she would be leaving town in a bit less than two months. If Illa gave her lessons for a month and a half, that might mean they would leave at around the same time. Alice had no clue whether or not she would head to the same destination as Cecilia, but it was at least a possibility.

Illa gave Alice a small smile. “Then I’ll be seeing you around.”