On Friday, Alice finally got around to repairing the dice she and Anne had cracked during the last game of The Settlers, and reinforced the dice a bit with some leftover enchanting materials and some scraps of iron. It wasn’t perfect, but it should resist any major Mage-fights more effectively now. On Saturday, She, Cecilia, Anne, and Ezrien got together for another game of The Settlers. Ezrien got acquainted with the magically influenced rule set quickly, and the four of them enjoyed playing another round of the game. Alice was starting to wonder if this would probably become something of a weekly tradition, based on Cecilia and Anne’s newfound enthusiasm for the game. Despite the fact that the rules were totally different from what they had been back on Earth, Alice was still gratified to see that one of her favorite games from home was popular here. Besides, having some small amount of social interaction with her friends was an important way to maintain her social life, and considering how stretched for time she was already this was about all she could manage. Whenever she had more time, she would like to carve a few more board games from home, but that was impossible right now.

After Friday, the weekend began. Much like back on Earth, weekends in the world of Luliv were free from classes, so Alice had enough free time to catch up on her enchanting. This helped restore some of her slowly dwindling funds. Alice did some rough calculations and determined that, if things continued to sell for the same price and at the same rate, she could probably hover somewhere between three and five gold suns per week. It wasn’t exactly financial stability, but it also wasn’t as bad as she had been thinking it would be when she was looking over her finances earlier in the week.

Apart from that, Alice finally picked up the 25th level of Apprentice Enchanter. Because [Apprentice Enchanter] was a Student/Apprentice type class, it maxed out at level 25, meaning Alice had her final Perk in the class, as well as her second opportunity to go through a class Evolution. She chose the Perk fairly quickly, based on her continuously increasing need to increase the number of hours she could spend awake and productive in a day.

Speed-Enchanting

Requirements: Apprentice Enchanter level 25 or higher, Endurance 100 or higher, Intelligence 125 or higher

While working on an enchantment, you may spend more mana to produce the Enchantment more quickly. This effectively allows you to trade mana for time, wasting more mana in exchange for producing the same product more quickly.

In general, Alice spent at least two hours and no more than five hours working on enchantments every night. This was becoming seriously hard to sustain, because she had so many competing objectives to sink time into. This might not exactly be an optimal solution for that problem, but it was about the best she expected to get from an Apprentice class at level 25. It would require her to waste some mana to activate, but it was still less wasteful than doing nothing with the mana at all. Then, Alice turned her attention to her class evolution.

This one only had three options, unlike her first evolution.

Class Evolution: Apprentice Enchanter

Enchanter: An Enchanter that focuses on having a balanced approach to the school of enchanting. They specialize in neither speed nor in rare but incredibly detailed enchantments. A jack of all trades within the enchanting profession, but also the one that holds the most versatility when it comes to selecting Perks.

Unlocked as a result of: Having the Apprentice Enchanter class at level 25

Increases Effect of [Magic] Attribute by 10%. Your ability to assess the effects of Enchantments you have not encountered before increases significantly, and the speed at which you can produce an enchantment is improved by 20%. The quality of items you enchant will receive a small boost, especially when it comes to mana efficiency (other aspects of items will still receive a boost, just a less significant one).

Mass-Enchanter: An enchanter specializing in producing large quantities of enchantments quickly. Mass-Enchanters often specialize in producing consumable enchantments, because that type of enchantment benefits the most from being able to produce multiple items at a time. The Perks of this class reflect this bias, but do not restrict the class. Most suitable for those that wish to produce large numbers of average-quality enchantments, or produce consumable enchantments

Unlocked as a result of: Having [Apprentice Enchanter] class at level 25 or higher, produce at least 10 consumable enchantments, produce more than 20 enchanted items within a week

Increases Effect of [Magic] Attribute by 20%. Your multitasking abilities will become more easily applicable to enchanted items.

Careful Enchanter: An enchanter who specializes in producing very specific, unique enchantments with a great variety of details, often at the cost of producing enchantments quickly. Suitable for those who wish to one day forge Artifacts for Immortals to fight with… or for those who are simply very ambitious when they create new enchantments.

Unlocked as a result of: Spend more than a month working on one specific enchantment or item, [Apprentice Enchanter] class at level 25 or higher, Intelligence at least 150.

Increases the effect of the [Intelligence] Stat by 10% when planning the details of a new item. Your enchanted items will receive a very noticeable boost in quality, but it will become even harder to apply your multitasking abilities to creating different items at once. At the same time, it will become easier to use multitasking abilities when all split focuses are working on producing the same item, and items will receive a further boost in quality for every division of your attention focused on producing an item at once.

After some thinking, Alice decided to take the [Careful Enchanter] class. One of her biggest problems remained the inability to get enough hours in the day to do everything she wanted to, but [Kinetic Manabinder] already seemed like a class that would provide Perks that solved that problem, given enough time and Levels. [Scholar] and [Scientist] also had some Perks that helped her save time or improve the use of what time she had, and so she would just start hoping that the System gave her some options from those classes instead. After all, the System explicitly responded to what people wanted when choosing the Perks people could take every time one of their classes reached the appropriate level, so Alice didn’t feel the need to devote another class to solving this problem when she could already solve it, given enough time and Levels in her other classes.

And instead of churning out mass produced enchantments, Alice felt that it was better to make a smaller quantity of well-made enchantments. One of the reason Cecilia’s shop struggled to make a foothold in Metsel, and the reason both she and Cecilia had a harder time selling some of their work, was that their products just didn’t quite match up to the quality one would expect from a professional Enchanter shop. The two lowered the price of their objects to account for that, but it was still hard to get customers in the door sometimes, according to Cecilia. One of the only reasons Cecilia’s shop still managed to get by was the fact that Alice’s enchantments tended to be based on weird seeds or weird ideas most [Enchanters] didn’t bother building enchantments around, meaning that her enchantments didn’t have much competition in the market. And once customers were already in the door, Cecilia could use her [Merchant] Perks to figure out what customers wanted and how much they were willing to pay, meaning she could usually get customers to buy a few more things once they were already there. However, this wasn’t exactly producing buckets of money. If some sort of enchantment was needed by large numbers of people, [Enchanters] would already be producing it, so the market Cecilia’s shop currently catered to was quite niche. If the two wanted to make enough money to feed themselves, their enchantments needed to get better so that they could expand their customer base.

Besides, Alice also figured that once she finally made a proper System Mana seed, she would want to be able to make enchantments with it. If for no other reason than the sheer curiosity of finding out what she would be able to make, since besides filtering mana Alice wasn’t really sure what else System mana even did. [Careful Enchanter] seemed like it would make that process easier and faster.

Apart from that, Alice got a little bit of progress in her other classes over the weekend, especially in [Explorer of Magic] and [Kinetic Manabinder], as well as a bit of progress in her new [Careful Enchanter] class. Grinding out enchantments wasn’t the fastest way to level, but it was still slowly and steadily getting her some Experience towards levelling her classes.

You have leveled up!

Kinetic Manabinder: 12->14

Explorer of Magic: 51->52

Careful Enchanter: 1->3

Scholar 34-> 36

Admittedly, Alice didn’t absorb very much mana before going from level 51 to 52 in [Explorer of Magic]. She had probably been really close the next level already. But she decided to take her blessings when they came and leave it at that. After picking her [Scholar] Perk, the week continued with little in the way of new and important events.

Scholar of Magic

Requirements: Scholar level 35 or higher, Intelligence 150 or higher, Magic 100 or higher, at least 1 magic seed is at a mana conversion ratio of 150% or higher, at least 3 magic seeds present.

When reading a book, listening to a lecture, or interacting with schoolwork related to a certain kind of magic seed, if you have a correlating magic seed inside of your body at that time you will be able to raise the mana conversion ratio of the seed beyond its limit.

Note: This process is rather slow, and the speed will slow down further the higher the current mana conversion ratio of the related seed is.

Alice took {Scholar of Magic} due to the fact that would help her improve her magic seeds a step further. The value of increasing the mana conversion ratio in her seeds by any amount was huge, since it allowed her to regenerate mana every day. This improved her ability to train her Classes and Skills, make more enchanted items every day, and improve her quality of life and combat ability. Best of all, the Perk would activate as a result of her going about her regular, day to day life. She didn’t need to take time or energy to work on using the Perk, because it would just passively activate in the background as she went around her daily schedule. Even if it was a Perk that was absolutely devoted to ‘long term growth,’ Alice felt it was well worth investing a Perk slot into. She had the safety and financial security to invest a bit in her future right now. And since Alice had 5 Magic Seeds, the value of improving her magic seeds was much higher than the normal value someone might get out of this Perk.

Another week came and went. Alice attended her classes, worked with Ezrien’s team, and enchanted objects to sell at Cecilia’s workshop in the evenings. {Scholar of Magic} started to show its effects, however minor they were, by raising her Organic mana seed by 1%. The speed the Perk worked at left much to be desired, but Alice was still content with the newfound potential for her seeds to keep improving.

About halfway through the second week, Alice got two small surprises.

You have unlocked the class [Student] as a result of spending more than fifty hours in classes in an educational facility. Would you like to make this class a primary class?

You do not have any primary class slots available. Class automatically added to secondary classes.

Alice put aside some of her time in the library to go to the branch of the Church of the System closest to her and check out what the [Student] class actually offered. Unfortunately, it wasn’t particularly exciting. The class mostly offered some boosts to the [Intelligence] and [Willpower] Stats, as well as other miscellaneous buffs such as improvements to memory. Alice already had photographic memory as a result of her other Perks, and already had a fair number of stacking multipliers for her Intelligence and Willpower stats, so the class wasn’t particularly appealing. The only other thing the class offered before evolving that might be considered noteworthy was a couple of boosts to experience points for other classes, as well as some enhancements to how effectively one could cram and some more reductions to the body’s need for sleep. The last of which Alice actually found pretty useful, if she could actually get those Perks.

In any case there was no penalty for having more secondary classes, so she just figured it was a nice smaller boost to her learning abilities and left it at that. Since secondary classes leveled at only 20% of the speed of a primary class, and only counted as half of their level for the purposes of Perks, she doubted she would be seeing any benefits from the class in the near future. Maybe someday it would provide a few useful Perks, or fodder for some post level 75 Perks?

The second small surprise was an Achievement.

Capable Enchanter (Rarity:5)

You have produced 150 enchanted items. Your practice and skills as an [Enchanter] have begun to improve, and your hard work is beginning to pay off.

+5% Effect of the [Magic] Attribute. +15% levelling speed for all Enchanting-related classes. Speed of making enchanted items is very slightly increased.

For a Rarity 5 Achievement, the effects were a bit lacking, but it was still better to have it than not have it.

Apart from that, Alice spent the week focusing on reading the journals of various people who had tried to improve magic seed formation. The majority of people who had tried this tended to create a worse product than just normally forming a seed by concentrating on a subject while dragging in mana, but a few people had found some tips and ideas that could slightly improve Seeds.

However, once Alice discovered a journal detailing one of the more successful ‘innovations’ to seed formation, she was more than a little surprised.

The journal in question was from a mage about eight hundred years in the past. It discussed how, in addition to just concentrating on the concept one wanted to base a magic seed off of, one needed to work on filtering the mana in their surroundings. The author stated that it was best to use a pure mana seed in order to help ‘straighten out’ the mana in their surroundings while forming a mana seed. Specifically, since atmospheric mana was usually mixed with small hints of broken mana here and there, the author proposed that it was best to help filter out all of the little bits of broken mana and use purer mana when forming a mana seed. The journal discussed, in detail, how this would make it easier for the human body to use and adapt to the newly formed seed, and even had a few diagrams helpfully drawn inside of it on how to set up a ‘mana fractal’ that purified the mana in its surroundings.

And Alice had seen parts of this fractal before. In fact, with her photographic memory, she was able to recognize with perfect clarity the fact that some of this fractal was present whenever she tried to form a magic seed with the help of the System. The System version of the purification fractal was vastly more complicated, but it was sort of like looking at a house and then looking at a mansion. Even though the size, complexity, and decorations of a house and a mansion might be utterly and completely different, both were ultimately still buildings people lived in, and there were some similarities in how they were built if you looked closely enough.

This puzzled Alice. If the System already helped people ‘straighten out’ mana, how did someone make a name for themselves doing something that the System was already doing a much better job of? The reason Alice had picked up the book was because one of the other journals she had read had discussed the discoveries made by the author of this one, and how they had revolutionized some of the theory of magic seed creation. But that made no sense at all, since this person was just doing an inferior version of what the System already did for free. Something was wrong here.

Alice started searching through historical records of the time, and was able to find a book from 500 years ago titled ‘Records of major magical innovations and a brief discussion of their effects on society.’ When she looked through it, sure enough, the discussion of ‘filtered mana fractals’ was listed as an important innovation that, for a time, had made a name for the Mage who discovered it. Even though an individual couldn’t use the method in question unless they already had a pure mana seed and the ability to multitask, it was also entirely possible for a fellow Mage to ‘help out’ during the seed formation process. This had, for a while, led to an explosion of popularity for a class known as [Seed-Boosters], a type of class that was solely devoted to helping Mages and soon to be Mages form their magic seeds in exchange for money or other services.

However, this class had died out less than a hundred years after it started to gain popularity. The reason was simple – Mages had started to ‘exhibit signs of assistance from a [Seed-Assister] even if they didn’t purchase the services of one.’ At the time, this had become one of the unsolved mysteries of Mages and the study of Magic, but since the end result was good and it was hard to make any discoveries about why [Seed-Boosters] had become irrelevant, most Mages appeared to have eventually dropped the matter and forgotten about it over the course of the next few centuries. After all, when it came to the study of magic in the world of Luliv, there were always new and interesting topics for [Scholars] to study. An unresolved mystery would only remain in the limelight for so long before people found new topics to research.

Alice frowned when she learned about the history of [Seed Boosters] and mana filtering. Even though it was just a guess right now, her first assumption after doing more research was that the System had ‘copied’ the help a [Seed-Booster] could provide and then just… automated the whole process. Perhaps along the way, it had started to pick up other, more specific tidbits of information that helped it boost the strength of people’s seeds in the process? Or maybe the System had found other, better ways to go about making magic seeds easy to form and stable? Whatever the case, it seemed unlikely that the System had always helped people build seeds the way it did now. Or, perhaps, it had done so in a different way in the past, or… something.

Alice had no way of predicting exactly how the System worked hundreds of years ago when nobody besides her was able to see System mana. The fact that nobody else had even confirmed its existence (as far as she knew) made trying to guess when and how the System did things in the distant past an exercise in frustration and futility, after all. Still, this historical tidbit seemed to strongly suggest that the System was more adaptable than Alice had first thought. And, more importantly, it also gave her a much better idea of what she might be doing wrong when she tried to form magic seeds on her own.

Alice spent extra time poring over the journal, making extra sure to memorize the diagrams and the details of each diagram in as much detail as she could manage. She decided she would try it out this Sunday, when she created another experimental magic seed.

With her Enchanting abilities coming along nicely, and her research on the System coming along nicely, no other major events happened during the week. The following weekend, Alice invited the four classmates she was on good terms with to play The Settlers with her as a way of boosting their friendship. Erkki, Laila, and Asri accepted her offer. Luka stated that he was going to attend a party on that day, but he would come next Saturday if Alice welcomed him.

Another game of totally-not-messed-up Settlers passed by, and Sunday came. After dumping a little over half of her mana on enchanting (as well as most of her morning and afternoon), Alice asked Cecilia to let her use a workshop room as a manaless room again. Alice swallowed nervously after blocking mana entry into the room.

It was about to be her fourth (and fifth) time trying to form a magic seed without the help of the System. Maybe this time she would finally succeed?

Alice first spent almost three hours trying to replicate a working mana filter. She had assumed that the shape and complexities of the mana construct wouldn’t be too hard to control – after all, Alice had the ability to split her attention into four different focuses right now. No matter how complex and detailed the mana filters were, it wouldn’t be hard to control when she could split her attention in four, right?

This assumption turned out to be incorrect. Anytime Alice tried to build a filter, whether inside or outside of the manaless room, she always found that she had messed up a few tiny details when constructing the filter, causing the whole thing to fall apart. However, at the very least, Alice didn’t think that she was totally messing up the whole thing, even though her attempts failed over and over again. It was simply that she was trying something very complicated for the first time, and if she messed up some of the smaller details the entire thing ended up not working. Cecilia, who eventually came by to help look over Alice’s experiment and freeload some XP and Achievements, ended up helping Alice by pointing out a few of the smaller details Alice kept messing up on, once Alice shared her memory of the mana construct she was trying to make and Cecilia inspected Alice’s attempts to replicate the mana construct. The ability to divide her attention into four different focuses wasn’t quite enough to make the filter easily, but once she had the muscle memory for what she was trying to do down, it started to get easier and easier with each failed attempt.

Finally, when Alice was almost completely out of Pure mana, she managed to make a working mana filter with Cecilia’s help. When mana passed through the filter, it looked very subtly different than before. Alice wouldn’t have noticed the subtle difference in mana coloration if she hadn’t been paying close attention, but the mana was easier to command and work with after it had been filtered once.

After that, Alice walked back into the manaless room and tried forming another Electromagnetic magic seed, after going through her usual safety checks and precautions.

The fourth attempt failed, as usual. Something was still off about her electromagnetic seed, and {Safety Analysis} informed her that keeping the seed in her body for an extended period of time would be dangerous. Alice spent an hour looking over the seed, taking note of which parts felt weird to her and comparing those to the Mages with working Electromagnetic Mages she had seen, before she used {Reset} and started her fifth attempt at making a seed without the help of the System.

After making her set of filters, letting some more mana into the room before cutting it off from the outside world again, and preparing to form her magic seed, Alice started drawing in mana again. She put to work her three months of failed attempts at magic seed formation, as well as her renewed understanding of the topic from the library and her now semi-functional mana filter, and started concentrating on what she knew about electromagnetics. Not the fundamental force of Electromagnetics that she was familiar with from back on Earth, but the simple concept of electricity and magnets, as well as the way they worked. Since that was what Electromagnetic seeds were limited to on this world, Alice didn’t want to get too ambitious until she had a few control experiments to work with.

The surrounding mana was filtered by her mana fractal before being absorbed by her body, and it quickly began to compact itself in the extra organ behind her heart. Within a few minutes, Alice’s fifth attempt at making a magic seed independently was formed.

Alice frowned, as she ran {Safety Analysis} on the experiment of ‘keeping the seed inside of her body.’

And, for the first time ever, she got a result indicating that the seed wouldn’t harm her if she kept it inside of her body. Even though Alice’s electromagnetic seed still looked a little wonky, and still seemed to be missing some of the shape and elegance most electromagnetic seeds possessed, it was the first time Alice had made an Electromagnetic Seed that didn’t seem likely to poison her if she held onto it for an extended period of time.

Alice tried to suppress a quiver of excitement as {Safety Analysis} gave her the most promising result she had obtained so far. Then, she reached towards the door of the manaless room and prepared to take a step outside. Had she finally succeeded in making a magic seed without the help of the System?