That night, Alice went back to sleeping in Illa’s mansion – she felt nowhere near as nervous about doing so as she had last night, so she didn’t mind taking advantage of Illa’s generosity for a few more days. That night, Illa’s maid quietly hinted that Alice should start looking for lodgings on her own. Alice had taken this in stride. Since Illa no longer needed Alice to keep a lid on the situation in town, it made sense that she wouldn’t give Alice a separate room inside of her mansion anymore. Once Alice was a more ‘ordinary’ worker in Cyra, it was natural that she wouldn’t receive special benefits anymore. It was a bit unfortunate, but Alice had already expected something of the sort. This was a world where worker’s rights didn’t actually exist, after all – for Illa to still be quietly offering Alice some assistance for exposing her to unexpected danger was already above and beyond what she was ‘required’ to do.

The next morning, Illa’s maid brought Alice breakfast. She ate in her room for the final time, trying to figure out what she would do next. Absently, she spooned mouthfuls of some sort of monster meat fried like bacon and combined with some sort of lettuce-like plant into her mouth. She had no idea what she was eating, but it tasted… all right. A bit strange, as far as breakfast food went, but Alice was growing used to this world’s lack of breakfast culture. What was more important to her were her thoughts and plans for the future.

The inn she had stayed at last night was relatively cheap, only costing 3 copper artisans a night. It would only take another few copper artisans to pay for meals for a day. If she looked only at room and board, plus food and minor daily necessities, her daily expenses amounted to about two silver suns a day. Alice wasn’t actually sure how much money Illa was offering her for dock work, but Alice had finally learned more about the demographics of the town she lived in.

Apparently, the reason there were so many males in town was because most people in this town were temporary workers – they were hired to work on the docks, construction of new buildings, and the other miscellaneous tasks a town under construction needed in order to function and grow. While there were some female workers that had the levels to match their male counterparts, this world still tended to expect males to be the breadwinners of the family. This world still prioritized levels and attributes as the ‘primary evaluation’ of a worker, but men tended to be the ones expected to gain those levels. It was simply that most employers wouldn’t care much about the gender of a worker as long as they had the right skills, meaning that women who wanted to work could certainly do so. Most of the workers in town were temporary workers who sent back money to their families in the north each month.

Alice took that to be a mostly positive sign. If working conditions were good enough that people were willing to work here, it must mean that the pay was fairly good. In fact, if Alice didn’t take into account the fact that she would have to pay for her own room and board, and her meal and room quality were about to take a major drop in quality, she might actually end up making more money a week working on the docks compared to her previous deal with Illa. While her room and her food were valuable, at this point levels in [Enchanter] and research materials were more valuable to her. In the short term, at least, Alice should be able to manage.

She had a plan for the next month and a half, at least. What Alice needed now was a long term goal. What would happen in a month and a half? At that time, her lessons with Illa would have run out, and Cecilia would also move out of town. As Alice saw it, that left her with two major options for what to do next.

First, she could try to stay in Cyra. It was a small town, and it desperately needed mages. Alice would probably be able to make a living safely if she stayed here – especially after Cecilia left, Alice would be the only enchanter in town. If she could make even half-decent enchantments by then, she would be able to make a living off that. It would probably take her some time to get used to dealing with buying materials from Adventurers, figuring out how to manage expenditures, and generally improving her classes and skills to manageable levels. It might be rough at the beginning, but it was probably a safe and stable path overall. At the end of the day, Alice imagined it wouldn’t be too hard for her to own a shop and make a reasonable living here.

While the skirmishing between Illvaria and the Sigmusi Colonia left her slightly uneasy, but it was also unlikely that there would be a repeat of Alice’s near death experience during the Expedition. The roads and rivers, the arteries of travel between Northern and Southern Illvaria, had unthawed. That meant moving troops and agents around would be much easier. After the assassinations and chaos the southern towns had experienced over the winter, the crown would definitely take drastic measures to weed out Imperial spies. The Sigmusi weren’t stupid, so they had probably already moved their important personnel back home, leaving only a few dregs behind to make themselves a nuisance for a few more months.

However, while staying in Cyra seemed safe and stable, Alice had her doubts about it. It wasn’t because of her safety, but her ability to perform experiments and learn here. Alice still hadn’t forgotten her new goal in life – to explore the nature of the System and magic. It might seem a bit insane for a teenager to dream of learning everything about the System and Magic, but Alice firmly believed that having big dreams was the best way to stay motivated and keep moving forward in life. She didn’t want to give up on her dream of learning and growing.

Staying in Cyra would, at the very least, seriously hinder her progress. She would lose access to Cecilia, her partner in this journey that Alice had managed to rope in. Furthermore, Cyra was far away from established bases of scholarly research. The Illvarian South was a land scarce in mages and rich in opportunities. While it was easy to make a living here as a mage, Alice had a very hard time getting books about studies she wanted. It was also very hard for Alice to get enchanted items she wanted for experiments.

The very fact that Alice had to make a manaless room on her own was a good indicator of how many problems Alice would probably face in the future if she stayed here. In the North she would at least be able to ask an enchanter to help her design or make one if she had enough money. In Cyra, Alice didn’t even have that option. The only [Enchanter] in town was Cecilia, and since Cecilia didn’t have a seed related to mana, Alice could either make it herself or do without. This problem would probably only get worse in the future. Shipping enchanted objects from the North was possible, but would cost an exorbitant fee each time, and Alice would never be able to sustain any reasonable experiment pace unless a wealthy merchant suddenly gave her their entire fortune for no reason. In short, opportunities to grow and experiment here would be limited.

The second option was to go to one of the Magic Academies in the North. This one had the most obvious pros – she would be travelling directly to one of the centers of the magical world. Illvaria was renowned as the most ‘magical’ country in the Shil Confederation, and while it might not be the best in the entire Southern Continent, it was at least able to compete for the spot. The country of Illvaria was a center of magical research, and moving to Northern Illvaria meant that Alice would be at the center of magical research and discoveries. Cecilia had also mentioned that she was moving North, meaning that Alice would still have access to her only true ‘friend’ and co-researcher, making it easy to coordinate things.

However, it also had some notable downsides – if Alice was smack in the center of the Northern Illvaria, there was no guarantee she would be able to make a living. Without any materials, she wouldn’t be able to conduct experiments. After all, Northern Illvaria was saturated with mages from the academies, and most of them were desperately scrabbling to make pocket change during their time as a student. Thus, plenty of them turned to doing more mundane jobs for some money on the side. It was one of the few places on the entire Southern Continent where there might actually be too many mages compared to the economic niche for magic.

If Alice wanted to attend a magic academy, it was expensive as heck. Illa had mentioned that she would provide a letter of recommendation, but Alice had absolutely no idea how she might come up with the money to attend an academy. The way most poor mages paid for their education was to join the military for some time and go fight nomads in the north or skirmish with the Sigmusi for a decade, but Alice was absolutely sure that she didn’t want to join the military. Regardless of what else happened, Alice wanted to avoid that at all costs. Even if she was learning how to defend herself with magic, Alice had no interest in going somewhere people were likely to shoot arrows at her on a daily basis. That meant she needed to find a way to actually pay for her education. She would need to come up with dozens of gold suns, and while Illa’s maid HAD given Alice a small pouch of money as a ‘bonus’ this morning, Alice still had a little under two golden suns right now. She probably didn’t even have enough to pay for a day of lessons, much less a full education.

Alice did also have a bit of an outside third option. If she felt particularly daring, she could leave the country entirely. The Southern Continent was underdeveloped as a whole, and the Shil Confederacy and the Sigmusi Colonia seemed locked into a continuous cycle of skirmishing and espionage, with the occasional war breaking out. If Alice wanted to, she could try to avoid the mess here entirely. The Corellion Empire to the East was geographically isolated, stable, and prosperous. If she moved there, it would be much safer.

However, Alice was certain that moving would be both expensive and potentially dangerous – no matter which direction she traveled in, there wasn’t an actual ‘safe’ region she could travel through. The Shil Confederacy’s smaller nations lay between her and the Corellion Empire. They were locked into a variety of smaller wars that they would only put aside if the Sigmusi Colonia actually showed signs of invading. This meant Alice would have to travel through potential warzones if she wanted to reach the Corellion Empire. If she travelled North and tried to avoid the region, she would be travelling through a barren wasteland filled with nomadic raiders. If she travelled South, there was nothing but monsters and unexplored territory. People who tried to go farther south than Cyra didn’t often return alive.

After a brief amount of hesitation, Alice put aside her third idea – it hadn’t been a major consideration for her. Even though the Corellion Empire as a whole was stable and safe, it also didn’t have the magical resources she was looking for. It faced the same problems Alice would have if she stayed in Cyra, with the added problem of getting there alive. She also wouldn’t have access to a stable job market the way she would in Cyra, since the country didn’t put a huge emphasis on Mages. It still employed them, of course, but it had nowhere near the zeal towards magical research and mages Illvaria did. They tended to mostly focus on producing and selling dyes and exotic crops instead.

After some more hesitation, Alice finally decided that she would probably leave Cyra at the end of her final month and a half of lessons with Illa. She had spent a lot of time here, and she had learned a lot. While much of Alice’s time here had been spent training, she had learned a lot here as well.

She was surprised to find out that, once she realized she would be leaving here soon, she felt a little nostalgic as well. She had met some good people here. Illa had never treated Alice poorly, despite the fact that Alice was an Outworlder that Illa could have certainly taken advantage of if she had wanted to. Milo was a decent enough person, and Alice wouldn’t have minded getting to know him better. She would miss father Friedheim as well – spending time learning about the System and the church had been surprisingly enlightening, and the middle-aged priest had always been willing to talk with Alice about faith and the new world she found herself in. Even though Alice would get to keep seeing Cecilia, she would probably wave goodbye to the rest of these people. Even exchanging letters might be difficult, considering the cost of paper and ink.

Alice took the final bite of her monster meat breakfast, and quietly set the plate down. Now that she had made up her mind, there were things to arrange. She needed to tell Illa, father Friedheim, and Milo. Apart from that, she needed to figure out where Cecilia was going, and get a better idea what the north looked like. She would need to think about whether or not she was going to join a magic academy, and if she did so, she needed to figure out how on earth she was going to put together the money to attend one. Enchanting might help with that, but right now Alice had no levels in [Enchanter], and her proficiency in the subject was also very low. She would need to study hard for that if she wanted to rely on it to attend a magic academy, and she would also need to look into other options.

Now that she had made up her mind, there was a lot to do. Levels and Skills to grind, things to learn, and people to say goodbye to. She also needed to ask Illa if she had any information about the North – Alice didn’t think Illa would mind sharing some information about what the situation looked like up North, and it would be a good place to go before making any further plans.

Apart from that, Alice wanted to see if she could finish the manaless room experiments before she left Cyra. That would be another massive time sink, but one that Alice wanted to prioritize if possible. After all, it would give her a lot more information to work with, and a better idea of what follow-up experiments she could work on.

She quietly handed the plate to a different maid, as she began calculating and planning. There was much to do.

* * *

Far away, in another location, stood a man. He was easy to overlook – abnormally so, given his exceptionally handsome features. If an observer looked at him, they would find that their gaze seemed to slide away whenever they tried to focus. If they tried to force themselves to observe the man’s presence, they might end up with a headache, unless their Stats and Levels were high enough to observe the man.

He stood over a map. On it, the three continents were all displayed in full detail – the heavily populated central continent, the developing southern continent, and the uninhabited wasteland on the western continent.

Most notable, however, was a massive network of blinking dots on the map. They seemed to cover every single inch of the map, like a massive spiderweb of tiny dots. The dots came in two colors – the vast majority of them were black, creating a strange contrast with the white map. However, perhaps one in four of them were white instead. As the man watched, one of the white lights suddenly turned red. Two minutes later, the light turned blue, before winking out of existence.

“Mmm? A bit faster than expected,” said the man as he stared at the spot where the light had disappeared.

“Master? Have you located any of them?” A strange creature walked into the room. It looked like a poor imitation of a human, if half of a human’s body had been replaced with metal. The rest of its body seemed to be cobbled together from a variety of parts – organic chunks of monsters, wood, clay, and a variety of other materials welded together to create a facsimile of a human body. In the man’s eyes, the creature glowed brightly with mana – it contained almost as much mana as an average Immortal, with only a small chunk of its body still being made of physical materials.

“Maybe. Tell me, do you remember if there are any towns, cities, or other populated locations here?” Asked the man, pointing to the spot on the map where the white light had disappeared.

“There seems to be a newly established town there – one by the name of Cyra,” said the creature, after a few moments. “Would you like further details on its history and establishment?”

“Just give me a quick overview.”

“Very well. It was established as part of the Illvarian King’s plan to reclaim the south by a mage named Illa. It is primarily funded via the mercantile practices of her husband.”

“Relative power? Levels?”

“Low. Illa is estimated to be between level 70 and level 85, probably closer to 75. She has displayed no signs of having a Perk above level 75, though she might have picked a passive one or she may have simply never been forced to use it. However, based on her history and assumed Achievements and pseudo-Achievements, she cannot be higher than 85 at most.”

“Hmm.” The man seemed to think for a while, before he sighed. “What do you think? Is there any hope of finding one of the Society’s bases from it?”

“Unlikely. I don’t know why someone in the town would have picked up one of the probes, but I doubt the town has any connection at all with the Society of Starry Eyes. If you wish to find one of their bases, this is unlikely to yield anything.”

“A shame.” Said the man, after pausing for a minute to think. “I suppose going there would have no value then.”

“Correct.”

“Send in another one. We’ll get lucky at some point, right?”

“It is neither highly likely nor highly unlikely. The first surveillance web is more likely to catch them.”

The man simply nodded, before turning back to the map. “I really would like to see more of their research. It will be the best way for me to accomplish my goal. Oh well,” said the man, with a mild shrug. “They can’t keep getting lucky forever. Sooner or later, I’ll find them. Their research should be the last key to the puzzle.” The man sensed no more changes in the mana of the map, so he picked up a small object from the side of the room. If Alice had been there, she would have recognized it – it looked startlingly similar to the strange rock Cecilia had accidentally destroyed in the enchanting room.

The man tapped the rock twice, and then began manipulating his mana, flooding the rock over and over again as he began encoding a new set of instructions. Afterwards, another tendril of mana extended out from his body and touched the map, before a connection between the map and the rock began to form. Several minutes later, the connection seemed to be complete – and then it became almost impossible to notice. Just like the man himself, it was now incredibly difficult to focus on. Anytime one saw it, their attention would begin to slide away, without them even realizing that they were failing to see something right in front of their eyes. The man nodded happily, satisfied with his work, and threw an outrageous amount of mana into the seemingly ordinary rock. The object began to slow drift out of the room, as if it was floating, before it sped up. In a few moments, it faded into the distance, vanishing without a trace.