After Alice worked out some more specific details with Natasha, she took a moment to lament how bad her schedule was becoming. Anytime she managed to get a Perk boosting her work speed, it seemed like she immediately spent whatever time she freed up. Then, Alice sighed. After Ezrien’s team finished up their research, or when her one year contract with Ezrien ended, she would take a week or two to relax. The Magic academy took two month-long breaks every year, one at the beginning of winter and one near the end of spring/beginning of summer. The winter break was used as an opportunity to arrange second-semester classes, shuffle schedules, allow [Noble] children to visit their parents and/or territories if needed, and otherwise give students some time away from classes. The summer break was to allow [Students] to graduate, let new [Students] join the academy and get their schedules handled, and allow children to visit their families. If Alice’s enchanting abilities had reached a high enough level by next summer, she would hopefully be able to pay for her own tuition, freeing up one of the portions of her schedule. For now, since she had decided to visit Natasha and Boris about once a week, she would just have to make due with even less time than before. She would also have more free time whenever winter break rolled around, although she would still need to work with Ezrien’s team and work on her enchanting, so her schedule would still be busy.

Then, Alice went to her classes for the day. Alice’s group of [Students] had made a noticeable ruckus yesterday, so everyone knew that something had happened during the trip. However, most of the adults had been busy running around and trying to figure out what the Society was planning and what was going on, meaning that everyone who had been involved in the hunt yesterday had a different version of events that they were convinced was correct. Some said that Alice’s group had awoken a great, sleeping monster in the wilderness and had barely escaped with their lives. Some claimed that the group had been caught in some sort of freak mana accident that ended up involving the [Scout], and claimed that Alice and her friends had escaped consequences because they were already Mages, but the [Knight] guarding them and the [Scout] were either dead or newly baptized. Oddly enough, some otherwise claimed that Alice and her group had wandered into a pocket of broken mana by accident, and Alice and her group had all failed their broken mana baptisms and died.

So when Alice went to her first Tuesday class, she got a big surprise when a couple [Students] that Alice barely knew the names of approached her and asked what had happened yesterday. Alice decided to avoid saying anything in depth on the issue, and redirected her curious classmates towards Erkki, Luka, and Arsi. She did notice that the [Students] who approached her were noticeably more attractive than her other classmates, indicating higher than average [Charisma] scores, and also seemed to have unusual class fractals near their mouths. [Gossips], or some similar class, perhaps? Alice wasn’t entirely sure, but since plenty of weird Perks existed Alice decided to just say as little as possible and let other people deal with it. She didn’t know how to handle these people, and so her solution was to fob them off onto people who could manage the situation more effectively.

However, on Wednesday, a person Alice couldn’t ignore asked Luka, Erkki, Arsi, and Alice about the events on Monday. Unlike the classmates Alice barely knew, she couldn’t just brush this question off.

“Are you guys all right?” asked Laila, nearly the moment she walked into the room. For once, the girl’s characteristic lackadaisical nature was nowhere to be seen. Instead of seeming like she would prefer to take a nap somewhere, she seemed concerned, her gaze almost penetrating straight through the four of them as she sat down. “I heard that you guys got caught up in some sort of accident. Well, I heard the hunting group on Monday got caught up in some sort of accident, but when I asked people from the actual hunt, it seems like the issue hit your group in particular. Are you all right? Are any of you hurt? My family has connections with a few pretty good [Organic Mages], so if you need a healer specialized in something weirdly specific I can help,” said Laila. “I mean, Luka’s family probably has better connections than I do, but if there’s anything I can do to help…” The girl shuffled uncertainly, before giving them all penetrating looks of curiosity. Alice felt a strange mixture of warmth and a desire to laugh. It was nice to see that Laila lost her characteristic laziness when their lives were potentially at risk, but the danger from Monday already seemed to have ended.

“We’re fine. We got into a bit of a scuffle on Monday, but we didn’t get hurt” said Alice. “The [Scout] that was guiding us went through a broken mana baptism and didn’t make it, though.”

“Yeah, we ended up getting caught in a fight with the Society,” said Arsi, shaking his head. “It was awful. We had to fight for a chance to survive, and after the fight ended, we even found a couple of kids they had kidnapped. We managed to get out of it in one piece, but it probably would have ended catastrophically if the [Knight] wasn’t with us. Before the hunt set out, I thought the academy was being ridiculously overprotective, but now, I’m thankful they put in so many safety precautions for the hunt. If they hadn’t, the four of us might not have come back here today.”

Laila shuddered. “The Society? What are they doing in Illvaria? I thought they weren’t very active these days, at least not in the Shil Confederacy. They’ve always seemed more inclined to trade with the Sigmusi and raid the Free Cities and the Nomads, since the Free Cities are pretty weak individually and each individual Nomad clan is also very weak. Their presence here has seemed to be expanding for a few decades, but why the sudden surge of interest from them? Aren’t there other, much softer targets on the Continent?”

“On the Central Continent both churches issued a joint denunciation of slavery pretty recently,” commented Luka. “It’s putting a fair bit of pressure on some of the channels the Sigmusi Imperia usually uses to collect slaves, which in turn cuts off the easiest route for the Society to get test subjects. As for the Nomads and Free Cities…” He shrugged. “I haven’t heard any news on those fronts. Maybe the Society is still targeting them, and they’re just targeting us as well to make up numbers? The Shil Confederacy is one of the softer targets on the Continent, since the member-nations are so disunited. At the end of the day, I don’t know the situation on the Northern part of the Southern Continent in much detail because roads and [Messengers] aren’t as plentiful in those areas.”

Erkki frowned. “The fact they’re targeting Illvaria is pretty scary. I hope the Crown manages to drive those bastards out of the country. Luckily, all five estates are pretty united in hating the Society of Starry Eyes, so if an assembly of the estates is called, they should have a pretty easy time working together to help drive the Society away. Even if only the Crown estate and the Noble estate work on halting the actions of the Society, it should be possible to mount some dedicated searches and defenses against them, though it might be a little troublesome. Those two are the strongest estates, after all, although the Mage estate is a pretty influential one as well. Hopefully they decided to call for an actual assembly, but even if they don’t I doubt anyone will just sit around and hope things blow over.”

Luka nodded. “I already reported what happened on Monday to my family. I’ve been told that the Crown will make a more official announcement at the end of this week or the beginning of next week, after they have more time to investigate, but my family has already nearly doubled the number of patrols from our [Guards] and started strongly encouraging overtime while we try to hire more. The Crown estate is already preparing to counterattack, so I expect they’ll reveal the results of their investigation soon. It’s much harder to kidnap children when everyone is on guard against strange outsiders taking their children away, after all, and if there’s one thing people take seriously is the safety of their kids.”

“Is the problem that serious?” asked Arsi. “In the slums, I always heard stories about the Society and their actions behind the scenes. I always figured they were at least occasionally active. They’re sort of like monsters – a constant fact of life that never quite goes away. Or at least that was the impression I got.”

“The problem is scale,” said Luka. “Finding a couple groups of Society members every year is normal, and there are probably more that manage to avoid being noticed. However, they’re never a big problem because Illvaria’s military is pretty vigilant against them, and so they usually don’t want to set up research bases in our territory because of manpower and money costs. But the army is already taxed on manpower because it’s pacifying the south, dealing with the Sigmusi Colonia doing some sabre rattling at the borders, and cleaning up the leftover messes from the Sigmusi espionage campaign in the south several months ago. And they still need to protect the North, in case the nomads finish whatever they’re doing and start raiding us again. I’ve heard that the questioning of the prisoner we capture yielded some results already, and while the prisoner is apparently unable to remember the location of the base after being captured, whatever Perk he’s using to mess with his thoughts doesn’t let him hide the existence of the research base altogether. So we know that they’re working on constructing an actual research base in the area, or have possibly completed construction if they got some high level people to speed things up, meaning the Society is changing their policy towards us.

“On top of that the Sun Knight will be on vacation during the months of Autumn soon, like usual, meaning the Northern armies will lose a noticeable part of their mobile fighting strength, since the Sun Knight’s Perks make marching much faster and easier. Normally, that’s fine, since the land of the Nomads tends to have more abundant animals and food sources during autumn, making them less likely to raid us, but with how many other things Illvaria is dealing with right now the Sun Knight taking a three month vacation is bad news.” Luka sighed. “Honestly, it’s kind of a mess of lacking manpower and shifting policies. The crown and the noble estate will definitely do their best to keep the Society out of their lands, but we’ll need to see how well things go in practice.”

The group continued to discuss recent events, with Erkki occasionally weaving in stories of the group’s terrifying fight against the Society, until class started.

* * *

On Friday, [Messengers] began standing around the city and announcing the presence of the Society to the people of Metsel. Alice guessed similar [Messengers] were making their way to other cities of Illvaria, working to spread the news, and perhaps some were even making their way east, to announce their news to other member-states of the Shil Confederacy. Along with their announcement, the Crown also began making sweeping statements about doubling the [Guards] in every city, as well as adding in easy avenues for citizens to report suspicious activity to the [Guard], and otherwise all but declaring a crusade against any Society members found within their borders. The pay of average [Guards] increased by about 40%, specialized [Teachers] were called in to boost the average Level and Attributes of new and veteran [Guards], and a variety of money was thrown at [Blacksmiths], [Tailors], and [Enchanters] to start replacing the equipment of the [Guard]. Cecilia told Alice that sales had improved dramatically within a few hours of the announcements being made, though it also made Cecilia wonder if taxes were going to increase soon. The Crown’s budget didn’t come from nowhere, and with how many resources the Crown had sank into the southern recolonization effort they had to be running low on reserves, or at least that was Cecilia’s speculation.

That night, in addition to finishing rebuilding the disposable beads Alice had used during the fight on Monday and replacing mana cores where needed, Alice started making copies of some other kinetic mana-related enchantments to sell in the shop. Even normal people were nervous about potentially coming under attack from the Society, and so the lower quality standards of Cecilia’s shop were suddenly good enough for commoners with lower spending ability, giving Alice a boost in her levelling speed and financial situation. On the downside, enchanting materials also started to go up in price as well, although Alice was still overall profiting from the sudden boom in enchantment purchases.

You have leveled up!

Careful Enchanter: 23 -> 24, Student: 2->3

Of course, Alice only heard about some of this news when chatting with her group of friends before class.

That Saturday, Anna, Luka, and Laila showed up to board game night in a rather more somber mood than usual. Alice and Cecilia ended up strangling Laila’s settlement placement for resources pretty early in the game before Cecilia managed to clean up the game and win, but the battles over dice manipulation were less heated than usual, and the group finished in a somber mood. After lunch, Alice began heading to the village [Knight] Arin had located.

It was time for her first ‘real’ interaction with Natasha and her child, Boris. Alice had prepared a small list of questions she wanted to investigate by observing Boris, such as observing whether or not he had rainbow mana in his body besides the messed up System fractal, and what his physical abilities looked like compared to a normal four year old. Alice had no good way of testing his intellectual abilities, since she was sadly unfamiliar with what a ‘normal’ four year old was able to do, but she could definitely see what his physical abilities looked like much more easily. After all, even average people with access to the System tended to be able to do absurd things like sprint faster than an Olympic athlete and bench press their own weight with minimal difficulty, while children didn’t have access to the System until they turned six. Even if Boris had only had access to the System for a few weeks, the first fifty stats were pretty easy to build up because there were no growth penalties in effect yet. Alice had physical stats of around 50 when she came to this world. If the kid was already as strong as Alice before she came to this world, that would confirm he had a Status Screen. No normal four year old should be able to outperform a fifteen year old girl, even if Alice had been rather disinclined towards exercise back on Earth. If Boris was able to use a Perk, that would be even more interesting, and would also give Alice a bit more information on what to expect if more children with weird System mana cropped up.

After wiping out some spidercrabs en route to the village, she asked a few [Farmers] for directions before they pointed out the direction to Natasha’s house. Alice was more than slightly amused to see that the spidercrabs she bumped into were no longer travelling in packs. Apparently, mating season was coming to an end. After seeing the Mage insignia Alice wore, they were happy to help her get her bearings in the village.

As Alice approached Natasha’s house, she wasn’t surprised to see a few [Guards] sitting around and chatting about the harvest for the day. They were dressed like [Farmers], but after observing them for a few moments Alice was able to pick up on the abnormally fluid motions they made. Farmers also had high [Strength] and [Endurance], but they usually didn’t have high [Dexterity]. Then, Alice frowned. If even she could spot the problem here, the Society would also be able to figure out something was wrong. She would mention this problem to the [Guards] before she left the village.

Finally, Alice reached Natasha’s house. When she knocked on the door, she saw more than two clumps of rainbow mana inside of the house. Alice frowned, quietly readying her combat-related Perks. She had only expected Natasha and her son to be in the house. Why were there more people?

When Natasha opened the door, Alice relaxed again. Inside of Natasha’s house, two [Guards] she vaguely remembered seeing working last time she went to the [Guards] station were inside, this time dressed as [Peddlers].

Natasha nodded at Alice, giving her a friendly smile. “Lady Alice! It is good to see you again. Welcome to my humble abode. I’m glad you decided to come over. Are you perhaps going to take me up on my offer to make you some clothes? I might not have the prettiest or richest materials available to me, but I’d be happy to make you something fit for at least an informal gathering with other [Nobles]. It would at least be enough to make sure they wouldn’t look down on you! Don’t mind these two – they’re my cousins from out of town, and they’re visiting me for a few months. Something disastrous happened to their last trading attempt, so I’m helping them out for a while.”

Alice quickly realized that if she had a lie-detection Perk, it would almost certainly be going off right now. Last Monday, Natasha had no clue who these [Guards] were. There was no way they would just suddenly turn out to be related. However, Alice also decided to play along, even though she didn’t spot any suspicious Mages while she was coming here. Just in case someone was using a [Stealth] Perk or something else that worked around her skill set.

“Indeed, I was glad to hear your offer. I would like some casual clothes. Maybe just a sturdy skirt or pair of pants to walk around in, along with a shirt or something?” said Alice. She was taken a little off-guard by Natasha bringing her offer to make Alice some clothes for free back up, so her answer was a little vague.

“As Lady Alice wishes,” said Natasha.

“How have you and your son been over the past week? Recovering from the recent fright, I hope?”

“It’s a little troublesome, actually,” said Natasha, frowning a bit as she looked at Boris, who was sitting in the corner. “My son isn’t talking as much as he used to, and he isn’t playing with his friends anymore. The kids were asleep when they were kidnapped, so the other kids haven’t been affected too much by the whole incident. It’s only my son that seems to be reacting differently after the incident. I would understand if he got a fright from the whole incident, but from my [Caring Wife] class I have Perks explicitly devoted to helping my kid keep his mental health stable. They just don’t seem to be working anymore. On top of that, recently, he seems to have a strange obsession with farming now. I don’t mind him farming, but he’s not old enough to get a class yet. What’s the point of him wasting all of his time trying to train Skills and Classes? Kids should just play until they turn six, then slowly learn a trade after that.” Natasha frowned.

Alice frowned, taking a closer look at Boris. However, she quickly realized that the rainbow mana in his body was quite different from earlier this week.

On Monday, when Alice had rescued Boris and his friends from the Society, the three kids had some sort of anti-mana bubble surrounding them, while Boris had seriously messed up System mana fractals surrounding him. However, the messy System fractals were gone. Instead, the boy’s body had a single class fractal, located on the right half of his chest. But there was much more oddity to his condition than Alice had expected to find, because his body had a large amount of mana contained inside of it. Far more than anyone should ever be able to acquire in a week. Alice would have found it pretty normal if a level 10 or 15 had that amount of mana, but Boris had no class fractal five days ago. Getting fifteen levels in a class in five days was very unusual without some seriously extenuating circumstances, or some very high quality Achievements boosting leveling speed. Furthermore, the mana wasn’t carefully layered inside of his already existing muscles and bones, the way Alice saw most other people’s mana. After Alice had seen the strange, multilayered mana-based muscles in her organic mana vision trip several days ago, she had begun to look more closely at the mana inside of people’s bodies, and had confirmed that the mana in most people’s bodies had a slightly greenish tint compared to ‘pure’ mana. It was hard to notice, but Alice had taken that as weak evidence that the System mana used to rebuild people’s bodies was probably mixed with at least light amounts of organic mana mixed in. However, the mana in Boris’s body didn’t have that light green tint. It was very… pure. Oddly pure, in fact. And it looked much more random and haphazardly scattered through his arms and body than other people’s mana.

Seeing these abnormalities, Alice felt uneasy. Even though she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking at, Boris’s condition was ringing alarm bells in her head. She had previously assumed that the reason the System didn’t let kids below the age of six get Classes and Attributes was pretty obvious. Classes like [Brawler] or [Swordsman] being placed in the hands of a toddler was a pretty obvious recipe for disaster, and would be about as wise as handing a toddler a fully loaded shotgun. However, Alice suddenly wondered if there was another reason why the System didn’t let kids below the age of six come into contact with large quantities of mana.

After getting Natasha’s permission, Alice used {Lesser Organic Vision} to take a look inside of Boris’s body, but didn’t get a clearer idea of what the System was doing (or failing to do) inside of Boris’s body. Most of what was happening just seemed to be taking place on too microscopic of a scale for Alice to interact with. However, for now at least, Alice memorized everything she could about the mana structures in Boris’s body, as well as throwing everything she could into {Mana Construct Modelling}. The Perk told her that she was currently looking at pure mana, at least from what she could analyze, but Alice wasn’t sure whether that was just because she didn’t have a clear picture of the smaller mana glyphs in Boris’s body or whether everything in his body was actually pure mana. For now, she could only sigh in frustration at how much she didn’t know right now.

After spending a few hours talking with Natasha about Alice’s new set of clothes, as well as Natasha’s increasingly concerned observations about her son over the past week, Alice left for the day. However, mentally, she raised the importance of visiting Boris by quite a bit, as well as the importance of learning to manipulate Organic mana more effectively. She wanted to get a clearer picture of what was going wrong here, if anything. And, if necessary, Alice hoped that she would be able to help Boris avoid getting hurt, if worst came to worst.