“You said that it doesn’t matter if I get boring results, right?” asked Alice, turning to Ezrien.

“Indeed. It doesn’t matter even if you discover nothing at all. The only requirements for my challenge are that you investigate something you find interesting, and that you must not have researched it before. Ah, I say you can’t have researched it before, but it’s fine if it’s directly related to things you have researched before – I just want it to be something you don’t already have results for. My apologies if that was confusing,” said Ezrien. Ezrien had a bit of a strange habit of swapping back and forth between formal and informal speech as he spoke, but Alice was starting to get used to it. She nodded, grinning to herself. “Apart from that, if you need materials, I can supply up to three silver crowns of materials – that’s how much I brought with me, after deducting the cost for this meal and rounding to convenient numbers.”

Alice nodded. “I know what I want to look into, then. I told you that I was looking into the specifics of the nature of mana, as well as perpetual enchantments and the human body, right? I have recently been meaning to see if I can figure out how System Enchantments work. Specifically, I want to see if I can figure out what’s powering them, or if they need external power sources at all.”

Ezrien thought for a moment before he nodded. “I haven’t heard of anyone investigating that before, but it certainly sounds interesting. I could see the experiment being worth investigating, and it could produce interesting results. If you can actually figure something out, it could change a lot of how enchantments work – at least, if it’s cost efficient. At least assuming there’s something new to discover in the first place. This would be an acceptable experiment,” he said. “That being said, if you fail, or if there’s nothing to discover, don’t worry about it. I just want to see the process of you investigating a problem – not the conclusion of that process.”

Ezrien paid for the food before the two left the restaurant. It took Alice a few minutes of walking before they arrived at their destination – the shop she had seen selling System enchantments while heading to the meeting.

After Alice got Ezrien’s permission, she used three silver suns to purchase an iron necklace. It was a simple braid of leather, meant to be hung around one’s neck, with a small iron disc attached to the cord. The leather itself was irrelevant – the only important part of the necklace was the iron disc at the bottom. To an ordinary passerby, the iron disc would have looked like an ordinary hunk of iron – however, in Alice’s eyes, it was filled with rainbow mana.

After quickly settling the payment with the shopkeeper, Alice immediately left the shop. Ezrien continued to watch her the whole time, curious about how she was going to investigate the item.

Alice moved to the side of the street, out of the way of any stray pedestrians or horses, and then put on the necklace while carefully observing the iron disc. The rainbow mana surged out of the iron disc, worming its way up the leather cord before it began sinking into her neck. While Alice couldn’t see her own neck without a mirror, she was able to see rainbow mana spread throughout her torso and into the rest of her body, connecting to each of her muscles in an extraordinarily intricate pattern. She took a moment to marvel at what she was seeing.

This ‘System Enchantment’ wasn’t just increasing her strength by two. It was basically doing its best to mimic a human heart – carefully pumping rainbow mana to the muscles around her body in order to strengthen them all equally, providing her body with a very slight increase in strength. While the actual effect was a measly two points in Strength, the process of getting there was fascinating.

At the same time, Alice began to feel ever so slightly stronger. Her stance became sturdier, her grip became firmer, and she felt that she would be able to lift ever so slightly more weight. In other words, it was the standard effect of gaining a few points of [Strength].

The entire process was done entirely with rainbow mana, meaning someone without her Achievements wouldn’t be able to see what was happening. However, Alice could clearly see that System mana was now flowing out of the ring in a neverending trickle.

Absently, Alice noticed a fair amount of mana being filtered by System fractals before entering her body. She was probably getting experience points for [Scholar], [Explorer of Magic] or [Scientist]. Or all three.

Alice checked the shop advertisement for the ring she had just bought.

“Iron necklaces of +2 strength for sale! Recently, one of the longtime smiths of the shop has gotten to level 65 in [Blacksmith]. To celebrate, we’re going to be selling lots of system-enchantment equipment for the next month! Custom orders are now available! Up to +15 in any stat! +5 or more requires a custom order. Upon request, up to one level five Perk from a few specific classes may also be attached to an item of your choice, provided the item does not already have a System enchantment. A detailed list may be accessed in the shop upon request. Buy during our special sale for this month, before prices increase again!”

Alice examined the ring again, double checking the rainbow mana in the iron disc. Sure enough, even though mana was continuously pouring into her body, there was no noticeable decrease in the disc’s mana reserve. Unlike the enchantments Alice made, System Enchantments didn’t seem to chew through any sort of mana reserve as a power source. It just… worked.

“Curious,” said Alice. Absently, she wondered how the necklace figured out when someone was wearing it. If there was one thing she had gotten used to during her time enchanting, it was the fact that Enchantments needed pretty specific instructions to work properly. As far as she knew, System enchantments all needed to be worn by a human in order to work. How did they know when a human was wearing them?

“So what are you planning on doing to test the necklace?” asked Ezrien, interrupting her thoughts. “I’ve never thought about investigating System enchantments as a way of looking into artifacts and sustainable enchantments. I always felt that they aren’t really the same thing, personally.”

Alice felt a grin tugging at her lips as she looked at the ring. “Something I’ve learned as I have advanced my own studies is that ultimately, everything seems to loop back around to mana. Including this necklace. I intend to see what happens if I cut out the mana supply in its surroundings,” said Alice. “I can make a manaless box with some leftover sap pretty quickly, so I’ll try starving it of mana to see what happens. If it turns off the enchantment, it would mean the necklace is powered by ambient mana. If it doesn’t, I start coming up with the next test.”

“What do you expect the results to be?” Ezrien didn’t sound sarcastic. Instead, he seemed genuinely curious.

“Honestly? Nothing. I figure that the System enchantment in this ring probably works on a similar principle to magic seeds. That is, the mana it needs to keep working probably comes from seemingly nowhere. But I still want to check first and see if starving the necklace of mana shuts off the whole thing. After all, if I build a bunch of other experiments on the idea that ‘System Enchantments work even without mana in their surroundings’ and then I find out halfway through those experiments that my base premise is totally wrong, that would be pretty embarrassing. So I will start out by testing that before I go any further.”

Ezrien laughed. “That’s a good philosophy to have towards research. Testing the basic premise of your experiment is pretty important. What do you plan to do to test your base idea?”

“I’m thinking of making a smaller version for this experiment. Some sort of manaless box, or pouch or something. The entire necklace is powered by this iron disc, right? So I figure if I just enclose the iron disc in a manaless box or pouch and then wear it, if I still keep getting a +2 [Strength] boost I will know for sure that this thing doesn’t need atmospheric mana to keep working. I can then design further experiments from there.”

Ezrien simply looked at her, as if waiting for something. Alice had seen the expression on her teachers from Earth from time to time – it was the look that said she was forgetting something.

Alice frowned, running over the experiment. It was a solid way to test whether or not the necklace worked without mana, right? What was she missing?

“Aren’t you forgetting to prove that the enchantment is fueled by the iron disc? What if the necklace is what makes the whole thing work?” Asked Ezrien, looking at her.

What was the point of proving that? There was only rainbow mana in one of the two-

Ah.

Alice realized once again that most residents of this world didn’t have the ability to see System mana. Without that, the question of where the whole enchantment came from was a far more interesting and debatable one.

“First, I will take the necklace and the iron disc apart and try connecting each one to a totally unenchanted, but otherwise similar item and verify which one gives me the +2 [Strength] enhancement. Would that work?” asked Alice. Since it was her first time messing with System enchantments, she was honestly unsure of whether this would break some part of the necklace. Even though the iron disc was the only thing with rainbow mana in it, she didn’t want to break this necklace. Even if it wasn’t very expensive, Alice was broke right now.

Ezrien nodded. “System enchantments are able to keep working if you replace the unimportant stuff with copies. Still, you should keep in mind that whenever you’re doing a formal experiment, you need to verify how the components of your experiment work. People all have different Perks, and that means whenever you use objects created by other people, you need to first verify what their Perks change. The shop’s advertisement claims that the System enchantment is made by a level 65 [Blacksmith]. Now, all crafting classes have the option to start taking Perks that make System Enchantments the moment they start getting post 50 Perks. In other words, starting at level 55 their items might have System Enchantments. However, how do you know he doesn’t have an extra set of post-55 Perks in [Leatherworker]? You need to keep in mind that absolute standardization is often impossible to achieve, and so you need to make adjustments and double check how those adjustments work before you get into the serious business. This is something you need to do every time you start an experiment, all right?”

Alice frowned. That philosophy went… VERY heavily against what she remembered from Earth. On Earth, if two people conducted an experiment and got different results, it either meant someone was about to discover a weird exception to a rule that might make them famous, or, much more likely, one of the two fucked up and needed to figure out how they fucked up. Or keep going down the wrong path, inform the newspaper of their mysterious finding, and make a sensation buzz about the fact that they messed up their experiment, tricking guillible people into following a neverending feed of bad science because newspapers usually didn’t know how to fact check science experiments.

Alice was only slightly bitter about this.

The point was, this world’s philosophy towards scientific exploration seemed very odd to her. On further reflection, Alice could understand why this philosophy existed. After all, in this world everyone had an ever-so slightly different set of Perks, from [Farmers] to [Guards] to [Blacksmiths] to [Scholars]. Getting exact uniformity in items and tehcniques used for scientific exploration was probably a pipe dream for people in this world. So the best they could do was track possible changes in items, try to account for those oddities in their methodology, and hope they were getting useful results from their experiments. At least the System explained most changes it made, so it was possible to track down and understand what Perks might be influencing an item or experiment. Still, it seemed like a nightmare to deal with a quagmire of uncertainties every time someone started an experiment in this world.

“Do you have leather cords and iron discs available, or do I need to grab those as well?”

“We’ll need to grab a few,” said Ezrien.

Alice nodded, turned around, and walked right back into the blacksmith shop. The clerk seemed more than a little bemused to see her again less than a minute after she had exited the store, but fulfilled her request quickly after she made her order. Since this time she was just asking for ordinary materials, the price came out to three copper artisans and a few copper paupers.

Having acquired the materials she needed for her experiment, Alice packed up the two strings and two metal discs before Ezrien led her to a more well-built building in the center of the middle-class section of town.

Inside of the building, Alice saw three other people – two females and one male. The male and one of the females looked to be in their late twenties, and had ordinary levels of mana in their body. Since Alice could faintly see kinetic magic seeds stored behind their hearts, she quickly confirmed that they were Mages.

The second female appeared to be in her early twenties – however, the amount of mana in her body was much denser than her colleagues, making Alice suspect she might be the same age as the rest of them and just had a higher level than her team members. She was also a Mage, but had a Thermal and an Electromagnetic seed instead of a Kinetic one. She was one of the only Mages Alice had seen besides herself and Cecilia that had bothered picking up a second magic seed.

“Hey, team leader!” said the high-level and young-looking female mage, giving Ezrien a cheerful wave before turning back to her work. The woman looked rather cute, making Alice guess that she had a [Charisma] of around 130 or so. The highest of anyone in the room, including Alice.

The other two Mages ignored Alice and Ezrien entirely, too focused on taking measurements for a flat metal disc that Alice had a hard time guessing the purpose of. It was covered in Kinetic Energy, and Alice could tell that it was supposed to move objects in its surroundings under specific circumstances. However, she couldn’t figure out what the conditions to activate it were, or what purpose the enchantment had without taking a closer look.

“Good afternoon, Anne. I’m surprised to see you here today. Isn’t it your day off?”

“I figured I would stop by and chat for a while. Besides, you can’t get levels by slacking off, you know? It’s important to be as diligent as possible if you want to lead a long and healthy life!” She gave Ezrien a cheeky grin, before turning to Alice. “Who are you? I don’t think I’ve seen you here before. Nice to meet you! I’m Anne!” She said, holding out her hand for Alice to shake.

“I’m… basically auditioning to be part of your research team, I suppose? In the capacity of an [Assistant] if I’m not mistaken?” said Alice, after a few moments.

“Oh, is that so?” Asked Anne, turning to Ezrien. “Are you finally replacing Geralt?” Anne’s face wrinkled as she mentioned Geralt’s name, completely overturning her originally cheery vibe. Considering how friendly Anne seemed so far, Alice had to wonder just what Geralt had done to get such a bad response from the woman.

“Hopefully,” said Ezrien, uneasily. “I’m thinking of acting as a patron for her to pursue time in a magic academy. I’m mostly planning on delegating some of the administrative stuff to her in exchange for 15 gold suns, paid up front in exchange for the next year of labor. And acting as patron for twenty coins, in hopes of furthering my research topics of passion in the future. The twenty coins are coming from my own savings, so don’t worry about those.”

“Isn’t 20 crowns a little too harsh for her? I mean, it’s a fair price for her labor for a year, but if she’s acting as a student, she’s already losing a lot of time every day. Assuming she works for us as assistant, that chews through most of her spare time. She still needs to come up with five gold coins on her own, plus food, room, and board for herself for a year. I know academies usually give out uniforms, and if you’re signed up for the military program they usually provide way more, but it doesn’t sound like she’s going into the military program if she needs a sponsor. Just keeping herself afloat might be difficult, don’t you think?” said Anne, giving Ezrien a dubious look.

“I already have another part time job of sorts lined up,” said Alice. “A friend of mine runs an enchanting shop, and I have a penchant for picking weird magic seeds. So I can dump my mana into enchanting every day and turn that into my living expenses – at least, that’s my current plan. It’s not ideal, since a lot of my enchantments are a bit sub-par right now – but my classes are also pretty low level right now, so it’s easy to boost them higher. As I pick up Perks my classes will get better, and I figure it’ll be easier and easier to get. I just need to push through the hard part which is… now. It probably won’t be pleasant, but I can do it.”

“Hmm…” Anne tapped her finger on her lips, as if deep in thought, before slowly nodding. “If you’ve thought it through and that’s what you want to do, I won’t stop you, I guess. Pushing yourself can break some people, but it can also give you more levels and Stats than anything else. Just be careful not to push yourself so hard you shatter, all right?” she said. Alice noticed that Anne’s look towards her had become more respectful than before. It wasn’t by much, but the difference in attitude still made Alice feel a bit better about her plans.

Ezrien simply smiled at Anne, before giving Alice a friendly nod. “Anne is the group mom. If things work out, be nice to her – it’s pretty hard to piss her off.”

“How did Geralt did it then?”

“Geralt is a total asshole,” said Anne. “He’s competent enough, but he came to work drunk three times so far. Then he rants about how he’s a better worker than the rest of us, and how it isn’t fair his level is lower than mine. Excuse me?” Anne snorted. “He’s said some nasty stuff to two of the others as well, so the team is getting kind of sick of his antics. He’s both unprofessional and a jerk.”

Alice turned to Ezrien, who was making a strained smile. Alice took that as light confirmation of Anne’s words, and decided not to delve deeper into the topic.

“Anyway, good luck on your test, new girl! I hope you join the team.”

The other two researchers who were present simply ignored what was going on, continuing to take measurements while messing with the flat metal disc.

Ezrien nodded, and took Alice into a separate room to begin her test.