After Alice returned to Metsel, she began to work on a few new projects, in hopes of figuring out what was going on with the recent decline in successful mana baptisms and Boris’s increasingly strange behavior.

First, Alice continued combing through the library in hopes of learning more about magic seeds and the System, as a form of preparation for forming a System mana seed. She had a sneaking suspicion that it would extremely useful in the future, and might be the key to fixing some of these problems long-term.

Second, Alice started looking up the requirements to publish academic papers related to research. For a long time, Alice’s research had drifted in a kind of strange limbo, where she shared it with Cecilia so that the other girl could get Achievements, and occasionally Illa and Milo when she was still in Cyra. Otherwise, her research was more for the sake of her own curiosity, and she had never felt that it was particularly important for the rest of the world to know or pay attention to. She never talked with people about her research discoveries, or connected them to the wider community of [Scholars] and Mages that existed in Illvaria. However, now that a problem was starting to crop up on a larger scale, Alice was beginning to suspect she might need to start sharing her findings as well. She had done her best to avoid putting herself in the eyes of the Society, but Alice seriously doubted Boris was the only kid who was starting to suffer from weird mana buildup and early access to a Status Screen. If Alice’s findings could legitimately help people treat the issue, she felt it was worth sharing, and it could also build up some of her credentials as a [Scholar] and maybe give her a few levels along the way. Considering how active the Society was these days, Alice did have reason to be more afraid of them – however, Illvarian countermeasures against the Society were also becoming harsher and more effective as the Illvarian government learned to deal with the increased activity of the Society. Overall, Alice felt she could publish at least some of her findings once she knew a bit more about the process.

In the library, Alice discovered that she actually already had the minimum qualification to publish an academic research paper as long as she remained a [Student] of the magic academy. However, it needed to be reviewed by one of her professors, and then would be submitted to one of the Academy [Librarians], who would review it again. From that point onwards, with the help of some Lie Detection to make sure her results were based on real experiments, and some followup paperwork to clean up any final details, Alice would be allowed to place a research document detailing her findings into the library. If any of the academic journals popular in Illvaria took a fancy to her paper, they might pay her to put some copies of her research into that month’s edition. If they didn’t, her paper would still be available in the library for others to read and learn from. [Merchants] might also find something interesting in her paper and wish to speak with her further on the topic, and Alice would automatically be granted a patent on any material gains related to her research for five years after her paper was published.

With that in mind, Alice began thinking about publishing her findings related to mana and mana filtration. The idea that mana deprivation might not be lethal was pretty new from an academic standpoint, but it would potentially help ground some other academic theories in the future that would be relevant if something really was going wrong with the System. More importantly, this also had some potential of helping Alice treat Boris without legal troubles.

She didn’t know why Boris getting a Status Screen two years early was causing his behavior to change so radically, or how to solve the situation permanently. However, she had a sort of band-aid solution she thought might work, even if it didn’t really address the root of the problem.

Boris’s primary problem seemed to be the fact that he was unlocking a class and absorbing mana well before he should be able to. Alice didn’t know why this was a problem, and also wasn’t sure what a more detailed solution to Boris’s problem might look like. However, that didn’t mean it was untreatable. Alice currently thought that, even if it wouldn’t help long term, stopping Boris from absorbing mana from his surroundings might prevent the problem from getting worse. Alice had already tested whether or not mana deprivation was lethal multiple times in her experiments from several months ago, and had determined that while it lowered one’s [Endurance] stat, it wasn’t likely to kill someone that wasn’t already sick or in a weakened state. Alice also knew as a result of her experiences with her manaless room that one couldn’t level up without mana. Instead, everyone’s body seemed to sort of ‘remember’ how many levels they were supposed to gain and then just pick the levels up whenever they had access to mana again. If Boris levelling up was the problem, then stopping him from levelling up should solve the problem for now, right?

That was the idea, at least. {Safety Analysis} had at least informed her that her test wouldn’t harm Boris, even if she had no clue whether it would help or not. It was worth a try, right? It wouldn’t work long term, of course, because Levels were practically a requirement to function in this world. However, maybe once Boris turned six the issue would solve itself? In any case, Alice felt that it wouldn’t hurt to try.

As a third project, Alice began investigating the requirements for a healer’s license. If she published a paper on mana deprivation, and then found a way to link it to Boris’s case in a more concrete fashion, then coupled with an Apprentice Healer’s license Alice would probably have a pretty solid case for treating Boris with only minor legal penalties. If Alice could get one of her professors such as Professor Felissa interested in her research, she could probably even ask them to watch over her treatment of Boris. This would remove any legal problems completely.

The requirements to get an apprentice healing license were less annoying than she expected them to be. It had a total of three requirements. First, one needed proof of being under mentorship with someone who had a license. Alice already had that, since she was enrolled in Introductory Organic Mana through the academy. The magic academy pretty explicitly required that the teachers of Organic Mana courses were licensed healers, since most [Organic Mages] wanted to be healers. Therefore, as long as Alice showed up with her student id and a copy of her schedule, she would pass this requirement.

Second, one needed to pay a registration fee of one golden sun. Losing one golden sun was a bit painful, but Alice’s income was improving enough that she could handle a minor fee without financial strain now.

Finally, one needed to take an exam. Since it was just an Apprentice license, the requirements weren’t too strict. One needed to pass a written test, related to the infrastructure of the human body, and then needed to pass a practical exam. For the practical exam, a high level [Organic Mage] would give themselves some sort of minor injury, such as a slight cut on their hand or a minor bruise, and then tell the [Student] to heal it. The [Student] did not need to heal the injury perfectly – they just needed to help the injury recover by some amount without making any catastrophic mistakes along the way. Since the license examiners were high-level [Organic Mages], they could pretty quickly fix any problems that popped up if the [Student] actually made a mistake. However, frankly, the practical exam was pretty lenient – after all, the apprentice license was just to ensure people were seriously learning how to treat people before they started more difficult work.

Of course, if one wasn’t a Mage, the practical exam was different. While [Organic Mages] were the most well regarded healers, [Doctors] and such also existed in this world. However, Alice didn’t bother looking too closely at the alternate exams, since she intended to get an apprentice healer’s license for a Mage.

The practical exam could prove to be a bit awkward for Alice, since she didn’t have the [Organic Mage] class at all. As of right now, she still hadn’t met the minimum requirement to pick up the class, which was to get her mana conversion ratio for her organic seed up to 40%. In other words, Alice was going to need to do the test entirely without Perks, which would make it far more difficult. Perks for an [Organic Mage] were more important than for a lot of other classes, because it was very easy to mess up and break something while healing people. Perks fixed that problem quite neatly, and most [Organic Mages] threw at least three Perks into stopping themselves from making big mistakes during the healing process. A test could be scheduled at any time through the academy, or by directly going to one of the offices of the Mage estate scattered throughout Metsel.

After learning all of this, Alice returned to the inn for the night. After that, Alice started practicing on herself, giving herself minor cuts with a dagger and trying to heal them. Healing a minor cut with Organic Magic rather than with {Moderate Tissue Regeneration} was slow, difficult, and time consuming. Alice’s first attempt would have certainly left a strange, lumpy scar on her finger if she didn’t have her [Survivor] Perks to patch up her mistake, and probably would have resulted in a fail if she took the test. However, Alice kept working on healing small scratches and bruises until she ran out of mana for the day. She would look more closely into starting the process for publishing her research results near the end of the week, but she felt that she could probably publish a smaller research paper with a bit of legwork, some time, and some energy. It would be a start towards fixing Boris’s issue, and also getting Alice’s name as a [Scholar] out there.

It made Alice nervous, to finally start showing some of the results of her hard work over the months to other people. But at the same time, she couldn’t help but feel a little excited. For a long period of time she had buried her results in her thoughts, and she would finally be able to have her discoveries examined by other people. That meant others could use her research as a reference for future research, which might cause totally new and unique ideas about the nature of mana to crop up. Alice was looking forward to seeing the results of her work after others used her findings to learn even more, even if the Society’s presence still made her nervous.

* * *

On Monday, when Alice returned to her classes, she found something else unusual. For the first time ever, Alice saw a seriously broken looking kinetic seed.

Most Kinetic Magic seeds looked pretty similar to each other. Alice theorized this was because the System helped people form Kinetic Magic seeds. Since an automated System was helping them in the construction process, it made sense that the final products all looked pretty similar.

However, the Kinetic Magic seed inside of the girl who sat at the back of the classroom just looked off to Alice. She frowned, before scooting to the back of the classroom. Laila, Luka, Erkki, and Arsi would just need to talk without her today – what Alice was seeing troubled her far more.

Alice decided to sit next to the girl, as she struggled to remember the girl’s name. Finally, she recalled that the girl’s name was Samantha. She was a somewhat gossipy girl who drifted from group to group when talking to people before class.

“How are you?” asked Alice, fumbling for a way to start up the conversation. Since the girl had a strange mana seed, Alice was suddenly interested in knowing more about the situation.

Samantha gave Alice an interested look. “Oh hey, you’re the girl that got caught up in that mess last month, aren’t you? Along with the rest of your group during the first hunting trip?”

“Yeah, that was me,” said Alice, wincing. She would rather that not be the first thing people thought of when talking to her, but it couldn’t be helped. After the disaster of the first hunting trip, the Illvarian crown had more or less begun openly waging war on the Society of Starry Eyes. As a result, it no longer had the manpower laying around to babysit [Students] anymore, even if that manpower investment would help it solve its manpower crisis after the [Students] were a little more grown up. Almost everyone associated with the military was now hunting around for members of the Society of Starry Eyes, if they weren’t stationed on one of the borders or cleaning up monsters in the South. The Sun Knight had even apparently been forced to cancel his vacation for the year, and was working overtime instead.

“I heard from Luka that things got pretty dangerous for a while. I’m glad that nobody from our class got hurt,” said the girl, nodding at Alice as she dismissed the death of the [Scout] during the excursion. “I heard that incident was what tipped off the Illvarian government about the presence of the Society, right? What was the actual fight like?”

Alice wasn’t usually very talkative when interacting with people she didn’t know well, but right now, she was glad to have a way to start a conversation with Samantha. After telling Samantha the story about the fight with the Society of Starry Eyes, Alice eventually found a way to turn the topic towards Samantha herself. Alice didn’t learn much about the girl’s background, mostly because while the girl was a chatterbox, she was also prone to distraction and got easily sidetracked. However, Alice did eventually manage to steer the topic towards mana seeds, which was the real reason she had come to talk to this girl in the first place.

“You know, I recently formed a new magic seed,” said Samantha, grinning. “I’ve been thinking about branching out into enchantments for a while, since it’s a pretty good career choice. My parents are wealthy enough to pay for most of my education here, but we’re not super wealthy, you know? I don’t really want to join the military, and so I was originally planning on using my organic seed to become a healer. But…” Samantha sighed. “Honestly, I don’t think I have the right aptitude for it. I’ve never been that good at studying human biology, and my {Basic Human Biology} Skill is only at 41 even after spending almost two years on it. Recently I’ve been thinking it might be a better fit for me if I swap around my studies a little next semester. I think that enchanters make decent money, right? Also, Enchanting is more interesting in my opinion, and there’s a lot less pressure if you mess up since you won’t kill someone. Speaking of which, I recently heard that the prices of enchanting materials are starting to rise up again because of the Society. Do you think the Society might actually attack us? The fact that they’re concentrating on this region is really scary. My parents have a few connections with some wealthier [Merchants], and I hear that they’re scrambling to hire better [Guards] to keep themselves safe. Say, that reminds me of a story I heard two weeks ago, where a Merchant tried to hire [Guards] only for a [Thief] to steal the money from him during a negotiation with a [Guard]. The Merchant couldn’t pay for the contract right after he finished signing it, so the deal fell through and [Guard] got super pissed off. But if he couldn’t even spot a pickpocket robbing the [Merchant] during the negotiation, isn’t his level a bit too low? He doesn’t seem like a very good [Guard],” said Samantha, laughing.

Trying to get detailed information about one topic from the girl was like trying pull teeth. Alice wondered if the girl would be able to enchant things properly, if she was this easily distracted, before she started to redirect the conversation again.

“What kind of experience did you have forming the magic seed?” Asked Alice, once she managed to wrangle Samantha back towards the topic of magic. “I’ve been looking into a few topics of my own, just because I’m curious. How would you describe the process of seed formation?”

“Hmm… I’d say it was a little weird. I felt like I missed something near the end of the seed formation,” said Samantha, frowning a bit. “I’m a bit fuzzy on my first magic seed formation experience though, since it was years ago and I never picked up any mental Perks to boost my memory. Maybe I’m just overthinking it? It’s probably fine though.” Samantha shrugged, before she began to distract herself again and started talking about the recent prices for enchanted objects, and how much she wished she was a qualified [Enchanter] so that she could make a quick couple silver crowns. This led her into a rant about how her parents had decreased her allowance recently, since they apparently disagreed with the girl’s plans to learn enchanting. Alice kept talking with the girl, aimlessly drifting from topic to topic until class started, but at the same time she was rapidly making mental notes for herself.

Alice had already heard that the rate of mana baptisms was starting to drop recently, but that could also be attributed to statistical flukes or the nature of rumors. After all, most people that tried for a mana baptism were people who were in dire economic straits, and desperate enough to gamble their lives on surviving a four percent chance of becoming a Mage and changing their life. Naturally, these people were usually invisible before their baptism – they were the kind of people who were hard to notice the disappearance of. That factor alone made it hard to get concrete numbers about sudden increases or decreases in the success of mana baptisms, and so even though rumors were flying around that more people than usual were failing, there was nothing concrete.

However, the messed up Kinetic Seed near Samantha’s heart was a different matter altogether. With her own eyes, Alice could see that something was off about Samantha’s kinetic seed. For now, Alice decided to regard this as yet another weird case study of something that probably shouldn’t happen.

Alice also decided to get a better feel for Samantha’s personality and keep an eye on future developments. If Samantha looked like she would get seriously hurt as a result of her weird kinetic seed, or Alice and the other girl established enough trust with each other, Alice would help the other girl remove the weird kinetic seed and form a functioning one if Samantha wanted help. If the problems caused by the seed weren’t severe enough to notice, or if Alice felt talking more about her secrets with Samantha would put her life at risk, she would pretend she didn’t see anything and just observe from the side. While Alice was happy to help people where she could, she didn’t want to die as a result of her actions, so she would still put her own safety first.

However, after seeing Samantha’s weird Kinetic Seed and confirming that the girl hadn’t done anything particularly unusual during her magic seed formation, Alice was growing increasingly nervous. From Boris’s peculiar case, to the increased activity of the Society, to Samantha’s weirdly broken seed…

Alice wasn’t sure what was going on, but her half-baked suspicions were starting to grow more and more solid.

Whatever had gone wrong recently was getting worse.