Alice spent the next week practicing her healing skills, before finally reaching a point where she could heal a small cut in the practical test for her healing license. Her organic magic skills were still far from good enough to use when she could just activate {Moderate Tissue Regeneration} or one of her enchanted rings, but she was at least good enough at healing that she no longer left permanent side effects behind. It was good enough to get her license at least, and also good enough to heal other people with far more control and vastly better mana efficiency than her healing mana seed could provide. Since her memory was excellent now, she should have a pretty easy time passing the written part of the exam, so she quietly scheduled and took the test that Friday after finishing her classes for the day. The examiner noted that she had barely squeaked by on the practical, but at the end of the day, Alice had an apprentice healing license.

During the week, she also picked up a new Perk and a few new levels.

You have leveled up!

Kinetic Manabinder : 27 -> 28, Careful Enchanter : 19 -> 20, Student : 6 -> 7

Pride of a Craftswoman

Requirements: Careful Enchanter level 20 or greater

The efficiency of mana manipulation in your finished enchanted products is drastically increased.

With {Pride of a Craftswoman}, Alice’s finished enchantments were finally almost on par with a fully developed [Enchanter]’s finished products. Alice didn’t have quite the levels fully grown [Enchanters] might have, and she also had zero Perks that boosted her ability to make consumable enchantments. She was also still a little slower in actually making an enchantment, but the difference wasn’t huge anymore. At this point, the only thing she was missing to compete with a more well-established enchanting shop was the money to buy better enchanting materials, as well as the ability to branch out her enchantments into different kinds of Enchantment beyond just traditional enchanting.

Alice couldn’t help but feel a bit of pride when she looked at her Status Screen. She now had a slightly above average stat line even compared to most normal adults in this world, her highest level classes could basically match an average adult’s levels, and her Achievements were well beyond what a normal adult’s Achievements looked like as well. In short, Alice had finally achieved a measure of financial and physical security for herself, even in this world of incredibly strong and resilient people. Instead of only being able to compete with those in her age group, Alice was now able to compete with an average adult here, and Alice still had at least four years before she turned twenty and lost the boost in levelling speed and Attribute Growth all humans had between the ages of 12 and 20 years old. Given her current Levels, the fact that she was a Mage, and the rarity of her Achievements, Alice was also aging slower than other people, although she didn’t know how big the difference was. That meant she might spend quite a bit longer than four years being under twenty. For somebody who had arrived in this world less than a year ago and had started so far behind everyone else, Alice felt happy that she had finally caught up, and even surpassed average people.

After Alice finished pondering her gains for the week, she turned her head to Cecilia, who was helping her clean up board game night for the week. Erkki and Anna had already left, and since Cecilia’s shop was usually where the group met for board games, Cecilia and Alice were the ones tasked with cleaning up the cards, board game pieces, and so on whenever the group finished up. This also gave Alice the opportunity to discuss some things with Cecilia privately.

“What do you think about all of this?” asked Alice. “Recently, I’ve been seeing more and more strange things. Boris, Samantha … what’s your take on all of this?”

Cecilia fell into thought. “It’s a little hard to say right now, since I haven’t seen Samantha’s weird seed, and that makes it a little hard for me to form an opinion. However, based on the previous experiments concerning the relationship between mana and the System, as well as the way the System helps people form magic seeds… is there something wrong the System?” As she said it, Cecilia’s face had a rather strange expression on it. Alice could see that the other girl was wrestling with her own statement, trying to make sense of something that seemed absurd to her. Just five months ago, Alice knew that Cecilia had at least vaguely believed that the System was some sort of deity. Cecilia may not have been a devout believer of the Church of the System, but it was the dominant religion in Illvaria, and it was inevitable that Cecilia’s thoughts would be influenced by the people around her as she grew up. Even though her experiments with Alice had somewhat dispelled the ‘divine halo,’ most people believed the System had, it would still be hard for the other girl to accept the idea that the System might malfunction. The fact that Cecilia could see the problems with the System right now was proof of how far the girl had grown in being able to challenge her mindset.

Alice sighed, before nodding. “I also think something is up with the System. I feel strange saying it, because the System has clearly functioned just fine for hundreds, or possibly thousands of years with no issues, but…” Alice sighed. “I don’t know what else to think, honestly. Something seems wrong with the System recently.” After that, Alice paused, sinking into her thoughts for a moment before she refocused on the conversation. “Here, do you want to see Samantha’s weird seed? I can use {Shared Memory} if you want to take a look. I think it’s quite interesting.”

“Sure.”

Alice stepped closer to Cecilia and used {Shared Memory}, showing Cecilia Samantha’s strange kinetic seed.

“Hmm…” Cecilia sank into thought as well.

“Doesn’t this just look strange? It’s not quite like the seeds we formed without the help of the System, but it’s still definitely messed up.”

Cecilia opened her eyes, before nodding. “It has been a week since she formed the seed now, right? Is she sick?”

“A little bit, but not as much as I might have expected,” said Alice. “I’ve been keeping an eye on her for the past week now, and I spend a few minutes chatting with her every morning we share a class, but she doesn’t seem seriously ill right now. I do notice that she occasionally coughs every so often, but it’s nowhere near a serious illness. And frankly, her symptoms are practically nothing compared to the seeds I made with no System assistance whatsoever. Those were very noticeably messed up, and I started feeling sick within a few hours. Her symptoms are very mild compared to my first failed attempt at making a seed by myself. Her symptoms are so different that I seriously wonder if she just has a cold or something.”

Cecilia paused, before shaking her head. “In the first place, it isn’t that common to get sick in this world. It still happens, especially to young children and people who don’t have high [Endurance] stats, but I think you’re underestimating how uncommon illness is here. You’ve mentioned a few times that the study of illness was a lot more advanced in your world, and you said that was probably because your technology at home was more advanced. I agree, but I think a big part of the reason Luliv’s study of the microscopic world has stagnated is because nobody needs to bother studying it in the first place. An adult might get sick once a decade here. Immortals are literally never ill, at least to the best of my knowledge, and even children don’t get sick too often either. I don’t know how often kids get sick on your world, but at least here, diseases are rare. And even if someone gets sick, it’s not that hard to get treated. Perks can deal with smaller infections in most cases, and specialized [Doctors] or [Organic Mages] can clean up other problems with the body even without the base of knowledge you had at home. Since it’s already a ‘solved problem,’ nobody bothers spending time and money researching it when they could put those resources into something useful. Why bother spending time and money solving a problem that’s already solved?” Cecilia shrugged. “At least, that’s my take on it. But the point is, her getting sick and staying sick for a week is unusual.”

“Even children don’t get sick here?” Alice was taken aback for a moment, before frowning. Now that she thought about it, if most adults in this world were close to immune to most diseases, it made sense that diseases here wouldn’t evolve to be able to infect humans. After all, most humans here were very resistant to the diseases as a result of their high [Endurance] stats and good physiques, which meant that diseases naturally wouldn’t be able to use those people to continue reproducing and infecting more people. This probably gave the inhabitants of this world a completely accidental herd immunity to most diseases, even if it didn’t quite remove diseases from the ecosystem entirely. There were still plenty of diseases running around, but Alice realized that this world was nowhere near the plague festival the Middle Ages on Earth had been. After realizing that, Alice nodded to herself. “That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought that before now… anyway, what do you think I should do? She is getting sicker. She doesn’t seem to be a bad person, either, or I wouldn’t bother thinking about it. If her magic seed is what’s causing her to get sick, I can fix it with {Broken Seed}. But I can’t think of a way to use a lot of my abilities in public without putting myself in danger, at least for now.”

“You said that you were planning on making a small name for yourself by publishing some studies on the way mana and human bodies interact right? In that case, if you wait until you get a little bit more of a name for yourself, people will be less likely to question the origin of your abilities. Most people that make weird and important discoveries get high rarity Achievements that do weird stuff. If you wait until then, and after that you say that Samantha’s body has some sort of unusual problem that involves the way she interacts with mana, you can probably skirt by a lot of scrutiny and potential problems that lie detection Perks might bring up. Although… hmm… I don’t know how much the Society would value the ability to break magic seeds. If they thought the ability was extremely unique and interesting, maybe they would hyperfocus on you after learning about this ability of yours? To be honest, I don’t know what those lunatics are thinking, so it’s hard to say. But Samantha’s case doesn’t seem that urgent right now, so you can wait a little and see how things go as well. Maybe tomorrow the Society will give up on their attacks on Illvaria, and go look for a softer target to attack. In that case, you would be much safer, at least, even if you revealed some unusual abilities. And if you can display something that makes other people value your abilities and presence, you would be qualified to get higher level protection as well, if you don’t mind working for the Crown or something. But Samantha’s illness isn’t urgent, and it seems like you can solve Boris’s problems without revealing anything too unusual, so waiting is probably your best choice for now.”

“That’s a good point. Thanks for sharing your thoughts,” said Alice, smiling at her friend.

“So what other plans do you have?” asked Cecilia, turning to Alice.

“If I can’t use my {Broken Seed} Perk on Samantha in the near future, I think it’s finally time to start working on a System magic seed?” said Alice, after some thought. “My Perk is off cooldown next weekend, and if possible I would love to get a System seed set up so that I can start throwing {Expanding Comprehension} into it. Apart from that, I need to start writing up my experiments on mana and publish some of them, so that I can start building a reputation.”

“Makes sense,” said Cecilia, nodding at Alice. “Stay safe, though. You’re a smart girl – don’t get hurt, okay?”

Alice grinned. “I’ll be careful. I want to help where I can, but I value my own life first and foremost.”

* * *

The next few days passed as Alice gradually burned through some of her recently recovering finances, buying writing equipment and copying all of her memories related to her early mana experiments that she felt were relevant. She edited a few parts out to avoid revealing any of her unique nature as an {Outsider}, and completely avoided any mention of System mana, since that was a secret she definitely didn’t want to expose until she had a better idea what kind of hornet’s nest she might be poking with that information. Apart from that, she took care of some of the paperwork needed to start handling publishing some experiment papers. Finally, on Tuesday, she published a record of her first scientific experiment and a few follow up experiments, with the paper titled ‘A Discussion on Mana Deprivation and its non-Lethal Results.’

In it, Alice listed her observations about how humans could remain in a room with no mana for an extended period of time with no harm, but noted the fact that their body seemed to get weaker if they spent a long period of time inside of such an environment. She studiously avoided phrasing the idea as ‘Stats dropping,’ and instead simply talked about how one’s physical abilities seemed to drop in a manaless environment, as well as how those who were already ill or weak may genuinely experience severe harm or death as a result of the experiments, but in other cases, entering an environment with no mana was an unpleasant but otherwise harmless experience.

Attached to Alice’s thoughts that she wrote into the paper, she also discussed the methodology for her first few experiments on manaless rooms. After publishing the paper, Alice even picked up a level in [Scholar], going to level 44. [Scientist] seemed to get nothing at all from publishing the paper, but her [Scholar] class clearly got some extra experience after she wrote down her experiences and made them available for others to study.

On Thursday, however, something that took Alice totally off guard happened. As she was going to her Introductory Organic Magic class, professor Feliza pulled her aside after the class and began talking to her.

“Lady Alice, I see that you’ve applied for an apprentice healing license, and that you’ve also submitted a research and discussion paper recently?” Asked Professor Feliza, squinting her eyes at Alice. For some reason, {Sense Hostility}, the Perk Alice barely used from her [Survivor] that let her detect other humans who felt hostile towards her, started ringing a very light alarm at her. It didn’t feel like Feliza was very hostile to her, but Alice could definitely feel a trace of danger from her gaze. At the same time, Alice noticed rainbow mana creep into her [Teacher]’s eyes, which usually meant a lie-detection Perk was being activated. Alice had no clue what class professor Feliza might have that gave her a lie-detection Perk, but she was much more confused about why her professor might feel hostility towards her. She quietly started preparing for a fight, slightly adjusting her body posture and making it easy to access her enchanted items if needed.

“Indeed, Professor Feliza. I did a few experiments on myself after my mana baptism, and I felt that I could probably share my interesting results with the magic community. A lot of people have always held to the belief that mana deprivation is lethal, and I can see why that belief would form, but after testing it on myself it seems to be a false assumption. While it isn’t a big deal in and of itself, since there are no naturally occurring manaless environments in this world, small misconceptions about the nature of reality can build themselves into much bigger problems if we aren’t careful, so I was hoping some other people would take my conclusions and lead them into new and more interesting experiments and realms of information. I want to know the truth, and I probably won’t be able to finish all of the experiments I want to on my own in the near future, and I definitely won’t think of every direction I can take my results. So I wanted to see what other people made of it.”

“Can you swear that you have never taken part in or planned an unethical experiment?” asked professor Feliza.

Alice finally realized why {Sense Hostility} was pinging at her. Professor Feliza had discussed in detail how much she hated unethical Mages on the first day of class, and had even stated outright that if any of her [Students] used what she taught them to join the Society of Starry Eyes she would kill them. She had also strongly hinted she had followed through on this threat a few times in the past. It had certainly been one of the more memorable first classes Alice had taken part in.

“To the best of my knowledge, I have never placed anyone in danger as a result of my experiments except for me. I do not mind people calling me reckless, but I have never harmed other people in my pursuit of knowledge and have no plans of ever doing so,” said Alice.

{Sense Hostility} stopped activating, and Alice subconsciously relaxed.

“Good. I didn’t think anyone would be brainless enough to submit research findings to the library that were obtained through unethical experiments, but it’s always best to double check. Sometimes even with high [Intelligence] people can take some truly baffling actions,” said professor Feliza, now grinning broadly at Alice.

Alice was reminded of Boris, since she had hoped to get this professional healer to boost her treatment of Boris along. After a moment of hesitation, she decided that now was a good time to at least bring it up.

“By the way, recently, I’ve discovered someone who seems to be a bit… ill. As a four year old, he has a much heavier density of mana inside of his body than any four year old has a right to have, and as the mana density grows, his behavior is becoming increasingly strange. I have been wondering if these two things are related, so I’ve been wondering if you had any thoughts…”

Alice didn’t discuss System mana with professor Feliza, but she did describe Boris’s odd behavior in broad strokes. Professor Feliza also frowned as Alice discussed the oddities she had encountered during the process of observing Boris, before finally, she began discussing her thoughts with Alice. It wasn’t particularly in-depth, since professor Feliza had never seen Boris in person, but Alice could at least tell that the other woman was interested in the issue. Even if the woman didn’t promise to investigate the case further, Alice could tell that professor Feliza had quite a bit more interest in Alice than she had shown a week ago. Which was exactly what Alice was hoping for. By arousing some amount of interest as a ‘good [Scientist]’ she would hopefully acquire the social capital needed to treat Boris without legal issues, and she would hopefully be able to use that as a springboard for learning and understanding more about the world around her. It would take more time to build up Professor Feliza’s interest and expectations in her, and to bring up the issues Boris seemed to be experiencing, but Boris’s situation didn’t seem urgent. Besides, Professor Feliza was an old hand at healing and organic magic. There was an entirely reasonable chance Alice had missed something, and professor Feliza might spot it and help Alice administer treatment.

For now, Alice was content to keep working on preparing what she needed to actually treat Boris. It might take another few weeks before she could finish laying out all of her plans, but she was steadily making progress towards her new list of goals. As Alice went back home for the day, she couldn’t help but smile to herself as she walked back. Although progress might be a bit slower than she hoped it would be, Boris’s problem was unlikely to kill him within a few weeks, and hopefully Samantha’s weird kinetic seed wouldn’t either. At the very least, Alice was starting to build up the trust and credibility she would need if she wanted to start interfering with these cases. Slowly but surely, she was moving out of the strange limbo her experiments had previously existed in and was stepping towards achieving recognition and the ability she would need to get to the bottom of whatever had changed with the System recently.

She just hoped that it wouldn’t be too late.