Alice stepped out of the manaless room, and Cecilia, who had been waiting outside, looked at her with hints of anticipation in her expression. Mana started rushing towards Alice, but for now, she ignored all of the System notifications that were popping up. She would deal with them when she was done with the experiment.

Alice tried to extend a tendril from her newest seed, before frowning. In her excitement, she had completely forgotten that new magic seeds tended to start out pretty empty of mana. Right now, her newly made electromagnetic seed only had a 5% conversion ratio from her Magic Stat.

My magic stat is currently 142, multiplied by 1.22 because the effectiveness of my magic stat is 122%. Since my electromagnetic seed gets 5% of that… This thing has an absolute maximum of about eight and a half Mariums? Suddenly, Alice felt a small headache. It seemed… surprisingly difficult to test her seed right now. She only regenerated 2.7% of her maximum mana every hour, and she would need at least a Marium or two to start messing with metal objects in her surroundings if she wanted to get a good read on how well her new seed was working. Previously, Alice hadn’t gotten this far in her seed production experiments. After all, the normal process of forming a seed without the System was ‘form seed->realize something is wrong with it-> mess with it for a bit before breaking it with {Broken Seed}.’ Since this was Alice’s first potential success, she wanted to try it out. But since her seed was so ridiculously inefficient, it would take around four hours to get a Marium of mana. Assuming this seed regenerated mana as effectively as a normal seed, which was probably a pipe dream.

Alice sighed. It seemed like she would need to wait for a while before she could test her new seed out.

“Did it work?” asked Cecilia, seeing that Alice was finally done thinking and musing to herself.

“I don’t know!” said Alice, grimacing. “I want to test it, but I don’t have any mana inside of the seed to try it.”

“But is the seed dangerous like usual? Most of the ones you form make you sick if they stick around in your body for extended periods of time. Did this one finally fix that problem?”

“It seems that I can keep the Electromagnetic seed without hurting myself,” said Alice, nodding. “At the very least, {Safety Analysis} isn’t giving me any warnings at all about this one, so I should be safe. If nothing else, that’s a huge step up in quality from previous attempts. I just don’t know if the seed actually does anything yet.”

“That’s disappointing,” said Cecilia, frowning. “How long do we have to wait until you can test it?” she asked, impatiently shuffling from side to side as she looked at the mana in their surroundings.

“By my very rough math, about four hours,” said Alice. “But that’s assuming the seed regenerates mana at the same rate as a normal magic seed. It’s entirely plausible that I made a seed that doesn’t hurt me, but doesn’t work at all, or that the seed is super inefficient at regenerating mana. Or has some other flaw like being unable to make mana tendrils or something. Who knows whether this thing works or not?”

“That makes sense,” said Cecilia, sighing. “The last couple seeds you formed without the help of the System were all pretty messy, and most of them were downright dangerous. We don’t know how many different ways there are to form a magic seed incorrectly, but I’m betting there are quite a few ways to mess up. Just because it’s not dangerous this time doesn’t mean it’s functioning.”

Alice sighed, wishing time would pass more quickly. Since there was nothing the two could do for a bit, Alice decided to check on her System notifications and see if the System had anything to say about her new Magic Seed. She ignored the Level, Skill, and Stat notifications for now because she could deal with them later.

You have gained an Achievement!

Seed Creator (Rarity: 8)

You have taken steps to create a magic seed on your own, without the assistance of the System. While some may argue that this is a waste of time, due to the fact the results are directly inferior to making a seed normally, it cannot be denied that a great deal of time, effort, and research were put into this moment.

+75% class experience for all magic-related classes. +50% for all research-related classes. The cooldown time for {Broken Seed} or its evolved Perks are reduced by 50%. You may now use the Perk on other people if you make physical contact with them. (Note – you cannot break the magic seeds others without their consent. They must knowingly and intentionally allow you to break down their magic seed.)

All magic seeds in your body (Both current and future ones) gain 10% to mana conversion ratio.

For a rarity eight Achievement, the rewards seemed to be quite good, perhaps due to how difficult it was to actually acquire this Perk. Alice grinned to herself as she looked over the Achievement, not just because of the rewards for this experiment, but because the System seemed to be confirming her experiment had been a success.

She had, indeed, formed a proper magic seed without help from the System! Even though her math was obviously wrong now, because the Electromagnetic seed now had a mana conversion ratio of 15% and not 5%, Alice was more than happy with the results of her experiment and the Achievement. Instead of waiting around 4 hours, they would only need to wait… somewhere between one and two hours now? Alice’s math was getting a bit fuzzy, but she was pretty sure it was around one to two hours before she could spend exactly one Marium of electromagnetic mana on a test. She made a mental note to start keeping track of her new seed’s mana available using {Advanced Mana Measurement}.

“It looks like I got credit from the System for forming a new magic seed without the System’s help,” said Alice. “That’s a pretty good sign. I should have managed to accomplish something here, at least.”

“That’s great!” said Cecilia. “If you actually managed to form a seed without help, it confirms that it’s possible. And it also gives us a lot more insight into what the System is actually doing behind the scenes, which is critical if we want to keep investigating it in detail. Does the Achievement give any good benefits?”

“I can use broken seed on other people if they let me, and the cooldown for {Broken Seed} got reduced to once every two weeks instead of once a month. Apart from that, something vaguely combat related, so I won’t talk about that benefit, and there are some Experience buffs. The important part here is that I can run three tests a month instead of two now.” Alice suddenly felt thoughtful, as she looked at Cecilia. “Do you have any magic seeds that you want to swap around, actually? I didn’t ask you before, since I could only use my Perk on myself. But now, if you want to switch a magic seed around, just let me know. I’m willing to help you make a new one if you want.”

“Hmm…” Cecilia sank into thought. “I wouldn’t mind trying to form a magic seed of my own without the help of the System, actually. I doubt I would get the same Achievement you did, I’d probably still get something for trying and succeeding. Also, if I can switch them back around later, I might not mind having a few slightly more fringe magic seeds for a while. It’s not something I had to think about when my… my father and I moved to Cyra, because there weren’t any other [Enchanters] there and so there was no competition in the market. But now that there are a bunch of other enchanting shops in the city, it’s pretty hard to compete with the well-established, high level enchanters. Having some weird magic seeds to make enchantments with would probably make it easier to sell stuff until I get more levels behind me. If I can swap them back once I have a more competitive level, it would probably be fine.”

Alice nodded. “That would probably make it easier to keep the store running, yeah. I can do that for you. I haven’t used {Reset} this month because I don’t seem to need to break my new seed. I intend to keep the Perk on standby for a week or two, in case the seed has some sort of delayed problem I need to get rid of, but if two weeks pass and I haven’t used {Reset} to activate {Broken Seed} again I’m willing to help you make a seed without the System’s help, and help you swap around some of your other seeds if you want to. Just let me know what you’re looking to change.” Cecilia grinned, and the two began to chat about more mundane things while they waited for Alice’s mana to regenerate. Even if Alice seemed to have confirmed her new seed worked, she still wanted to test it out.

Finally, the Electromagnetic seed had some mana laying around after two and a half hours. Alice had divided some of her attention into keeping track of the Electromagnetic seed’s mana regeneration, and she now completely sure it was regenerating less than 2.7% of its maximum mana every hour. Which was a pretty good indicator of how much worse Alice’s magic seed was than a System-manufactured magic seed. Still, even though she knew it was inferior, Alice was still excited to test it out.

Alice dug out two silver suns she had in {Sample Storage} and began to stretch out a mana tendril towards each of them, with the intent of making them repel each other.

The mana tendrils Alice extended out of her body didn’t quite look the same as the tendrils made from her other seeds. If the other ones had a certain sleek beauty to them, these ones looked… lumpy. Furthermore, some of the ‘lumps’ in the mana tendrils oozed out broken mana as she tried to force her mana into the coins.

Only half of her Marium of mana made it to the coins, with the other half leaking out as broken mana. When Alice used her Kinetic magic seed, she lost less than five percent of her mana as broken mana, so losing almost 50% was a massive difference in quality. Furthermore, the mana traveled far more slowly through the mana tendrils made with her new seed than they did when she used her other magic seeds. Alice winced slightly as she watched the mana wobble their way towards the coins she had set on the table.

0.25 Mariums of electromagnetic mana entered each coin, before they pushed away from each other. The coins slid off the table before falling to the ground, with about as much force as Alice normally flipping a coin. The result of two and a half hours of regeneration was seriously unimpressive compared to her kinetic magic seed.

But despite the disappointing results of her magic seed, Alice couldn’t help but madly grin as she watched the coin clatter to the ground.

Even though this seed seemed pathetic, it was a magic seed. One that Alice had formed without the System’s help! She had already known her experiment had probably succeeded once she got her Achievement, but it was different from seeing her seed work with her own eyes.

Even if the results were obviously inferior to the System-produced seeds in almost every way, the fact remained that Alice had successfully made a seed without the help of the system. For Alice, it was like a miracle. A reward for all of the work, time, and research Alice had put into making a magic seed without the help of the System. And a very important point of data, because she was getting more and more familiar with how the System worked to help people form magic seeds. Even if she could barely keep track of what the System’s mana-constructs meant and how they worked to help people form things like Classes and let people Level up, she had cracked a very small, important part of the puzzle. From here, she could start slowly working out more and more of what each System fractal did, and use that to infer and copy more and more of the System’s abilities and actions. It would be a slow process, but Alice had taken her first step forward.

Cecilia watched the two coins clatter to the ground before she gave Alice a celebratory hug. “It really worked! It’s the worst magic seed I’ve ever seen someone use, but it works!” Alice tried her best not to break into a happy giggling fit of her own, giving Cecilia a brief hug back. After the two separated, she took another look at the broken mana that had leaked out of her new magic seed’s tendrils. Sadly, there didn’t seem to be anything particularly unique about it, so Alice simply cleaned it up before finally checking her other System notifications.

You have leveled up!

Explorer of Magic: 52->54, Scholar: 36-> 38, Scientist 38-> 43, Survivor 44->46

Through training, you have increased a skill!

Broken Mana Purification: 13-> 14, Mana Filtering 0->8, Seed Formation 0->12

Through Training, you have increased an attribute!

Magic 142-> 144, Willpower 144-> 145, Endurance 121->122

Now that her experiment was over, Alice took more time to process her new Achievement and levels as she felt even more excitement start to bubble up in her thoughts. Even the seemingly unimportant Exp bonus from {Seed Creator} gave her a sizable boost to growth speed. She had 3 magic-related classes: her [Enchanter] class, [Kinetic Manabinder], and [Explorer of Magic]. She also had 4 research-related classes: [Explorer of Magic], [Scholar], [Kinetic Manabinder] and [Scientist]. These got a 75% boost to Exp and a 50% boost to XP, respectively. Alice recalled seeing the Holy Church of the Almighty System’s holy book mention that most people who reached immortality had experience bonuses of at least 1000% on the lower end, and often more than 1100% or 1200% of an XP boost to their highest-level class. Having a 125% experience bonus from her new Achievement applying to [Explorer of Magic], coupled with her other experience-boosting Achievements like {Seeker of Truth} and {Baptized by Broken Mana} helped to really cement her class growth. Alice originally hadn’t been sure if she would ever reach Immortality, but the closer she got to having the needed XP bonuses to counteract growth penalties, the more she felt her small dream of becoming an Immortal materialize. If she had the choice, she would be more than happy to avoid dying of old age. She wasn’t sure if she would actually reach this goal or not, but it had slowly changed from a completely impossibility to something actually achievable for her.

She took a brief moment to look back through her Status Screen, trying to total up all of her experience bonuses to [Explorer of Magic]

Let’s see… Bookworm gives a 10% bonus to research-related classes… then another 200% from {Seeker of Truth}. Then another 125% total bonus from {Seed Creation}. I still don’t know what ‘increased support from the System’ means from the {Outworlder} Perk, but the rest of the bonuses from that Achievement have started to fall off because they lose effect at level 50 for each class. {Baptized by Broken Mana} gives me another 30% bonus XP to magic-related classes… the other Achievements I have don’t seem to be useful, at least for XP gain related to [Explorer of Magic]. Finally, there should be a 10% bonus from Kinetic Manabinder for all classes related to magic? This class isn’t related to enchanting, so none of the enchanting xp bonuses count. That brings up a total of 375% Xp bonus for [Explorer of Magic]? So I’m over a third of the way there. Most of that number is coming from two Achievements, while the more common Achievements provide almost no XP bonuses. Having the ability to see and experiment with System Mana while no one else can really gives me a huge leg up when it comes to getting Achievements… Alice shook her head as she grinned to herself, before she moved on to Perk selection.

Sadly, [Explorer of Magic] had yet to reach level 55, so she couldn’t see her first Perk fusion yet. However, [Scientist] and [Survivor] all had a new Perk choice available.

Adrenaline Rush

Requirements: Survivor level 45 or higher, 2 or more perks related to perceiving the world around you have already been taken within the [Survivor] class at an earlier level, Perception 125 or higher, Magic 100 or higher

At any point in time, if you are highly likely to die or potentially die within the next five seconds, your perception of time will speed up significantly for five seconds. Your Dexterity, Endurance, Magic, and Perception stats will have their effectiveness increased by 100% for these five seconds. This skill may only be used once per week.

Note: This Perk consumes a fair amount of calories to activate. It is advised to eat a large meal whenever it is used.

Alice grabbed this Perk because it seemed like a way to save her life if things went horribly wrong. Coupled with {Moderate Tissue Regeneration}, Alice had the ability to dodge or heal from most injuries if they didn’t kill her instantly. Even though this Perk could only activate once per week, it worked as a final round of insurance for the combat against monsters she would be taking part in next week, as well as another round of defense against surprise attacks from the Society of Starry Eyes. The Perk didn’t specify that she had to notice the danger first, after all, and so if Alice wasn’t misunderstanding how the Perk worked it would activate even if she was taken by surprise. She hoped that the Perk would never be necessary, but it was never bad to have a plan B.

Not to mention, recently, Alice had been feeling… odd. She had a strange gut feeling that soon, things were about to go terribly wrong. She wasn’t actually sure if that gut feeling was correct, and she suspected she was just nervous because the class’s battle practice outside of the classroom would start in about two weeks. However, she decided to work with a mentality of ‘better safe than sorry,’ just in case something actually went wrong.

Researcher’s Speed

Requirements: Scientist level 40 or greater

When you are working on an experiment, the pace at which you think, process information, and work will increase by a significant amount, allowing you to conduct experiments notably faster than before.

There wasn’t much to say about {Researcher’s Speed}. It helped solve her problem of never having enough hours in a day, because it should boost her work efficiency while working on her personal projects and when working with Ezrien’s team. It wasn’t exciting, but it addressed her needs well enough that she was happy with it. She would need a bit more time to assess how much work the Perk was actually doing, of course, but at this point any Perk that helped her save time was a Perk she desperately wanted.

Alice grinned to herself, finishing her Perk selections for this experiment. While the number of Perks this time had been rather low, the real prize was clearly the Achievement.

“Any thoughts on why your seed seems so much weaker than the System version?” asked Cecilia, bringing Alice back out of her thoughts.

“I have a few ideas. First, the structure for my electromagnetic seed still seems off compared to a normal one. Now that I’ve managed to get a working model for an Electromagnetic seed, I think I should start to copy more of the System’s ‘final products.’ I’ll see if I can invite some friends or pay some people to let me inspect their seeds for a while, and see if that gives me any ideas what specifically I need to look out for. Besides that, maybe I can try forming an electromagnetic seed with the System’s help next month? That would help me get a better idea of what the System is doing when it helps someone form a seed. I still don’t know what the Organic and System mana is used for in most System constructs, and those are obviously important parts of the final product. And I’m pretty sure I’ve only copied around a third or a fourth of the pure mana fractals the System makes for most seed formations, so I’ve still got a lot left to explore in that department as well. So there are a bunch of avenues of improvement to pursue from here. Which reminds me, I still want to make a System magic seed, and I still want to see if I can link everything to permanent enchantments as well. It would, finally, turn my research into something of practical value,” said Alice, chuckling a bit. “I figure that one will probably require me to learn a lot more, since right now I’m not even 100% sure what I would need to learn to make a permanent enchantment possible. Well, basically, there are lots of things I need to do better to make a better magic seed. But I’m just happy I got it working, finally. I’ve been tinkering with this for three months now, and finally having a working magic seed is a huge relief.” Alice gave Cecilia a grin, and the other girl smiled back at her.

The two began to go over the more specific details of the seed-forming process, trying to see if they could spot any other problems or weaknesses that Alice could fix to improve the next generation of Magic Seed. Alice also began to put {Shared Memory} to work, letting Cecilia look over Alice’s memories of Magic Seed Formation with the help of the System, as well as Alice’s memories of forming her own seed without the help of the System. The Perk was finally pulling its weight in a research setting.

At the end of the discussion, Alice had a few ideas for smaller improvements she could make to her mana filtration fractal, as well as a few other ideas of what might be wrong with her magic seeds compared to ‘standard’ electromagnetic magic seeds. It would take a lot more practice to make a ‘high quality’ magic seed, but she was finally on the right track. Which meant that soon, Alice would need to find another magic seed slot, for when she started trying to make a System magic seed. After all, she intended to do a lot of experimentation with that seed, and 15% mana conversion just wasn’t going to cut it at that point.

Still, that was a problem to be solved in the future. For now, Alice intended to spend the next two weeks making some defensive items for herself, just to appease the gnawing uneasiness in her gut, as well as help Cecilia start working towards whatever watered-down version of {Seed Creation} she was able to get with Alice’s help in two weeks, if nothing went wrong. After that, the class’s first battle exercise would start.