On Friday, Professor Feliza requested for Alice to join her during her office hours after Alice’s classes. After some deliberation, Alice accepted Professor Feliza’s offer, and found herself in the steely woman’s office again the following day. When Alice entered the [Teacher]’s office, she barely had time to find a chair before professor Feliza got straight to the point.

“After careful consideration, I think your research has some promise to it,” said professor Feliza. “I spoke with your Theory of Mana professor, and he said that you have a lot of unique takes on broken mana as well. Is that true?”

“Yes, it is. I wouldn’t say I’ve focused much of my research on it – after all, my primary interest is in a different area. However, broken mana is at least tangentially related to a lot of my other interests, so I do end up picking up bits of data and ideas about broken mana that I sometimes delve further into,” said Alice, shrugging.

Professor Feliza nodded after some thinking.

“In that case, it seems like you have a lot of interest in mana and broken mana. Can I ask what direction you yourself see your research leading towards?”

“I intend to do a lot of things with my research when it gets more advanced. I want to see if there’s any way I can apply my research to enchanting, for example, and while I don’t really have the funds right now, I suspect that my research will eventually intersect with my work as an [Enchanter]. I originally didn’t have any other solid ideas where my research would lead, because while it could lead to a variety of unique conclusions it could also very well lead to nothing in particular. However, as I mentioned yesterday, Boris’s case seems at least vaguely tied to my research on how mana works. If other children are also suffering from similar problems recently, I think my research could shine some light on whatever is causing them to behave strangely, and perhaps might help them.”

Professor Feliza looked even more thoughtful for a few moments, before she actually smiled. “Learning to treat new and interesting diseases before they appear is definitely something I admire. Just don’t recklessly try to apply your treatments without consulting a medical professional first.” Alice nodded wordlessly.

“In your paper, you also stated that you’ve done the experiment regarding mana deprivation on yourself?”

“Yes. Multiple times, in fact. I even use manaless rooms regularly as the basis for some other experiments I’m running, and sometimes need sit inside of a manaless room for several minutes or even a few hours. Apart from the stated reduction in my Endurance Stat after mana deprivation starts to set in, I have yet to experience any further side effects. The effects seem to ‘cap out’ around fifteen minutes, and after that I notice no further loss of Stats. I eventually allowed some of my acquaintances into the manaless room as well, but only after I was fairly certain it was safe. I got a very good Achievement from my manaless room experiments, and after I mentioned the benefits I obtained from finishing my experiment, a few other people expressed some interest in my experiments as well,” said Alice.

“Any chance you can tell me what the Achievement does?” Professor Feliza seemed curious, rather than aggressive.

“I’m afraid not – some of its weirder effects are directly related to my combat ability,” said Alice. “However, I will say that it gave me a rarity eight Achievement, and the Achievement’s rarity was upgradeable. It’s an excellent Achievement, even if I’m unwilling to discuss its specific details.”

Professor Feliza seemed to sink back into thought, before finally, she nodded. “I’ve decided. I’ll try running a manaless room experiment of my own this weekend to see what happens. Come back to my office next week, so that we can discuss in further detail what I find,” she said.

So fast? Alice was surprised by how decisive professor Feliza was. She hadn’t expected Professor Feliza to be willing to test the experiment merely a few days after reading over Alice’s research paper. Even if this world had lie detection Perks and Professor Feliza knew that Alice’s experiment results were accurate records of the past, wasn’t she afraid that Alice had made a mistake somewhere in the methodology, or that Alice had some weird Perk or Achievement interaction that made her results different from other people? Alice certainly took most studies from this world with a grain of salt just because of how much variance there was to this world’s academic studies. And how well connected was Professor Feliza that she was able to set up a manaless room in only a day or two?

Alice suppressed her wandering thoughts and continued conversing with Professor Feliza. Since Alice’s study had apparently piqued the woman’s interest, professor Feliza was more than happy to discuss Alice’s ideas about mana deprivation and what it might mean for the human body. Professor Feliza admitted that she had never considered the idea of mana deprivation being nonlethal – after all, in this world mana was regarded as something vital to life, and nobody tended to question the result in the same way nobody questioned how useful oxygen was. However, Professor Feliza admitted that while Alice’s study of mana deprivation seemed rather useless on the surface, it could change a lot of the background information other academic studies used as a framework. The only reason Alice’s study was fairly worthless and theoretical was because, at least in this world, there was no naturally occurring area without mana present.

Professor Feliza also let slip the reason that she had learned about Alice’s research paper so quickly – apparently, the library had a sort of automated system that let professors know when one of their students submitted a paper to the Library, since one of the requirements for graduating from this particular magic university, in addition to being level 35 in one’s main class, was to submit a research paper and defend their findings against a set of randomly chosen academic teachers with relevant credentials. The [Teachers] were thus made aware of any studies submitted by their [Students] so that they could set up the relevant follow-up procedures for a thesis defense.

Once Alice learned about this, she couldn’t help but chuckle. She had intended to use the papers as a way to accumulate some amount of prestige and trust, but she had honestly expected to need to do more legwork to get things moving. Now that the library was essentially promoting her paper to her professors for free, that might help speed things along a little more. Best of all, it required zero effort or funding on her part.

Putting aside the good news given to her by professor Feliza, Alice took the rest of the conversation as an opportunity to get to know Professor Feliza herself a little bit better. The more Alice interacted with professor Feliza, the more she found the woman to be both difficult and easy to get along with. Professor Feliza was a woman who stuck by her principles no matter what, as evidenced by the number of her own [Students] she had cut down in the past after they had joined the Society or gone down an unethical path. She was also someone oddly enthusiastic about saving lives and the progress of healing and research, and as far as Alice could tell she seemed to think Alice was enthusiastic about the subject. During the conversation she also dropped interesting tidbits about human biology and her experience as a healer into the conversation, giving Alice new insights about this world’s understanding of human biology and the way [Organic Mages] handled the business of healing people.

Finally, near the end of Professor Feliza’s office hours, she smiled at Alice.

“I’ve decided I intend to look into the way mana deprivation works this weekend. After I finish verifying your results, I don’t mind looking into Boris’s situation a little more. You’ve mentioned him a few times, so it seems like his case is weighing heavily on you. In a week or two I should be free to visit him with you. I had something else originally planned, but I can cancel my meetings and shift my schedule around.”

Alice fought the urge to grin madly. This had been exactly what she was hoping for when she starting publishing her research results – the ability to heal Boris freely, without any legal obstructions. Alice wanted to see what she could discover about the nature of the System from Boris’s case, and she also wanted to help Natasha and Boris out.

Besides, maybe Boris’s case would provide a breakthrough point for her to figure out more about whatever was going on recently.

* * *

Sunday afternoon, Alice’s Perks were finally off of cooldown. Which meant that, at long last, it was time for Alice to try some new experiments. She decided to start out with something she had been afraid to try again.

Alice took a deep breath, before walking outside of her manaless room. She wanted to see how the System reacted to her actions in this experiment, and honestly, she wasn’t sure if she was ever going to try this experiment inside of a manaless room. After that, Alice inspected her empty seed slot, before she took a shaky breath. She started thinking about the physics she remembered from Earth. Black holes, gravity, photons, electrons, atoms…

Her hands started shaking as she stood in the hall of Cecilia’s workshop, as much as she tried to keep her hands still. Her first attempt at trying this experiment had nearly melted her body into putty, back when she had barely known what she was doing. As much as she tried to control her nerves, part of her still found the idea of repeating this experiment to be suicidal, and her nerves were frayed to the point where she felt tempted to call the whole thing of. Alice took another deep breath, before she used {Safety Analysis} to check the experiment over. The Perk told her that failing to form more than one seed from Earth today would be dangerous, but failing to form one seed should be safe.

Then, Alice used {Safety Analysis} six more times. Just to make sure she hadn’t misinterpreted the results of the first Perk usage, of course. Finally, after using the Perk enough times that she was starting to get a headache, she forced herself to take the next step in her experiment.

Alice took another deep breath, before she found a chair and sat down. Then, she started pulling in mana and focusing on the concept of photons. She carefully kept her eyes open, using every sense she had available to her to keep an eye on how the atmospheric mana and System mana in her surroundings reacted to her attempt.

Mana was pulled in towards her mage core, her body hungrily pulling in mana like a starving man seeing bread. At the same time, Alice noticed a broken, messed up seed starting to form inside of her mana core. It looked like somebody had taken a regular magic seed and then jammed it into a wood chipper.

Less than five seconds later, the System mana went crazy. It started out by trying to help Alice filter mana and do whatever else System mana did to help a magic seed form, as usual. Alice took a moment to note that several of the fractals she had never managed to identify still formed around her, but a few seconds later, they were discarded. In fact, apart from mana filtering, the System mana seemed to have no clue what to do. It tried to form multiple different glyphs at the same time, but each of them failed and shattered into pieces seconds later. The System tried again, but before it made a single functioning fractal, it shattered again. After six cycles of forming and then breaking mana fractals over the course of about a minute, the System finally seemed to give up. Instead, it drew closer to her mage core, as if it were trying to inspect the new magic seed Alice was trying to form.

At the same time, the seed in Alice’s core was slowly taking shape. The broken, messed up nature of the seed was also getting worse and worse, letting her know that something was very wrong with this seed. It bore many resemblances to Alice’s failed attempts at making an electromagnetic seed, but it was dozens of times worse than her unsuccessful electromagnetic seeds.

Finally, the System seemed to realize the seed was a failure. It moved closer to her core, and then carefully disentangled all of the chunks of mana Alice had gathered from her surroundings, before gently extracting them from her body. Random chunks of mana were still left over, even after the failed seed was removed from her mage core, and the System spent several minutes hunting down the stray bits of discolored mana and purging them. Alice’s attempt at forming a photon magic seed failed yet again.

Alice’s jittery nerves finally settled down, after a few minutes of taking deep breaths and waiting for something to go wrong. Then, with her frame of mind starting to stabilize again, she took a few moments to go over her memories of the experiment and figure out what she had observed.

The magic seed looks much worse than my first attempt at forming an electromagnetic seed, even though this time I let the System help me, and I also have much more experience forming magic seeds now. Is it because the System kept discarding some of the unidentified fractals every couple seconds? Alice frowned, wondering what would happen if she tried this experiment in a manaless room, before she shook her head. {Safety Analysis} told her that trying this experiment in a manaless room would be much more dangerous than trying it outside of one. She had no clue why – according to her first guess, part of the reason the magic seed had become so messed up was because of the System trying and failing to help. However, apparently the danger of this experiment became much, much worse if she tried it without access to the System, and Alice had no idea why.

After thinking it over for a few seconds, Alice simply sighed and shook her head. Even if she wasn’t sure why this experiment would be more dangerous in a manaless room, she wasn’t willing to try out the experiment and see what happened. She would just have to leave this mystery unsolved for now.

But even though this experiment left a minor point of confusion behind, she had gained a lot of ideas from this experiment. She now had a pretty good guess about why her first attempts at making a magic seed based on the physics of Earth failed. The System had clearly tried to help Alice form a magic seed, but seemed to have no clue how to help. It kept forming other mana fractals with the intent of ‘helping out,’ but every few seconds it discarded those fractals, resulting in a bunch of failed assistance attempts. Meanwhile, when Alice tried to form a more ‘normal’ magic seed, like a kinetic seed or an organic seed, the System’s fractals were clear, easy to observe, and Alice could usually at least understand some of the functions of the easier to comprehend fractals.

From that, Alice guessed that the System probably had a few ‘templates’ it used to help people make magic seeds. That was her best guess for why the System struggled to help people form new magic seeds, but had an easy time helping people form popular magic seeds over and over again. If the System had some sort of library or database it used to record magic seeds, and then had some sort of list of mana fractals it needed to make to help someone form those seeds, it made perfect sense that the System struggled to adapt to weird and off the wall magic seeds. It would also explain why the System kept making fractals and then tossing them out the window – the System was probably trying to find the right ‘template’ to use before scrapping each set of mana fractals because they didn’t fit correctly. It also gave Alice a much better guess at what the unidentified mana fractals she often saw did. If her theory was correct, the mana fractals she had yet to understand were probably supposed to help her form one specific kind of magic seed.

Alice was satisfied with her first experiment for the day, so she put aside her thoughts about the magic seeds from Earth, and focused on her second experiment for the day – trying to form a System magic seed.

For this experiment, Alice moved into the manaless room and emptied the room of mana, before using her pure mana seed to replace the atmospheric mana she needed. Alice began filtering mana while focusing on what she knew about the System, before she tried forming a seed.

As usual, mana began drawing towards Alice as she focused on the process of condensing her ideas and mana together to form a seed. A few seconds passed by, as she struggled to put those two things together and pack them into her mana core… before the two fell apart. She frowned, before trying again.

This time, the mana and ideas stuck together as a magic seed, but in a way that was seriously imperfect. The rainbow color of System mana was nowhere to be found in the magic seed – instead, not only did it look like it had been run through a shredder and then run over by a train, it was also grey, green, and red, without any of the other colors Alice was used to associating with System mana. She frowned, trying to figure out what each of those colors represented, before she gave up. Whatever she had done this time, it was so far off base that she wasn’t even close to making a functioning System seed. She would just have to keep trying and failing before she nailed down what parts of this process she was getting wrong.

However, after observing her new, messed up magic seed that looked even worse than the photon magic seed, Alice realized a few more things.

First, System seeds were very unusual, even by the standards of the other magic seeds she had tried to form based on Earth physics. This was in line with Alice’s expectations. Considering how powerful and complicated the System was, she would have been pretty surprised if it was easy to form a System magic seed. However, getting several of the colors wrong wasn’t something she had expected – all of her other failed magic seeds had at least had the same color as a successful one, but this one was missing most of the colors proper System mana had.

Second, Alice learned that using {Expanding Comprehension} on a messed up magic seed was dangerous. She had been about to use her Perk to see what she could learn, since she had been expecting to destroy the seed later anyway. Luckily, right before she activated {Expanding Comprehension} she thought to use {Safety Analysis}, which told her that her current plan was a very bad idea. Alice once again had no clue why the experiment was dangerous, which finally revealed one of the major weaknesses of the {Safety Analysis} Perk. Even if she knew whether something was harmful or not, she had no context for why it was harmful, making it hard to mitigate danger or change the experiment to remove the problem. Her head was already starting to hurt from overusing her mental Perks, so she decided it was a problem for next time.

Thus, Alice put her plans to the side for now. After that, Alice cleaned up her failed magic seed with {Broken Seed}, before she threw {Expanding Comprehension} at her pure mana seed again. The mana conversion ratio for her pure mana seed was already high enough to provide her with financial stability, but Alice wanted to get a little bit of extra money laying around before she started focusing on other seeds. The only exception she would make was if she formed her System seed properly, but that looked like it would take more trial and error.

Alice drifted into a whirling mass of thoughts and images concerning pure mana, as usual.

But during her vision trip, Alice saw something more than what she usually did.

Her vision trip started out by showing Alice a variety of forms of pure mana and the ways it could transform into other things. Kinetic mana, kinetic energy, heat, and so on were things she was quite used to seeing at this point. However, near the end of her vision trip, Alice watched as pure mana once again condensed itself into two different things.

First, Alice saw pure mana condense itself into a magic seed. This was a very familiar looking kinetic seed, and looked very close to the one located inside of her mage core. She had seen plenty of kinetic mages walking around with a similar seed inside of their body by now, and at this point she didn’t think of this kind of seed as being very remarkable. However, now that Alice got to observe the process of a magic seed forming up close, she noticed a few things that she hadn’t before.

When the mana and ‘idea’ of a magic seed reached a certain level of density, the loose mana changed in a way that was hard for her to understand. It gained a certain amount of color it hadn’t had before, and the color gained a certain richness to it. This extra color started to become more muted over the next few seconds, and the difference was so subtle it was hard to spot if she wasn’t paying very close attention to it. However, she could still sense that the compacted mana had a very different nature than it had moments ago. With {Expanding Comprehension} feeding her bits of information, Alice knew that the seed was now ‘activated,’ in a way it hadn’t been before. She even began to suspect that this brief moment of rich color was what made a magic seed a magic seed. Once it was formed, it started to produce mana inside of itself, creating energy from nothing and allowing its user to perform magic.

The second thing she saw, however, was far more baffling. Alice watched step by step, as mana began compacting itself into a dense set of lines, much like the magic seed she had seen form earlier. These lines were comprised of System mana, organic mana, and pure mana, but when they were all put together, they looked just like a class fractal Alice was used to seeing. Much like the magic seed she had just seen formed, for a brief moment, it gained a rich new color, before it started to fade away. However, this ‘seed’ behaved very differently from a magic seed.

Instead of producing mana, it started to vacuum up the mana in its surroundings, like a black hole. It didn’t absorb all of the mana around it – it absorbed very small amounts of pure mana, but it also absorbed mana that seemed less ‘pure’ than other atmospheric mana. It took a moment for Alice to put her finger on what the difference was.

The second ‘magic seed’ she was looking at was comprised of ‘fishermen’ mana. And it absorbed other mana that was relating to the idea of fishing. And the ‘magic seed’ now looked exactly like a class fractal.

Alice felt her head spinning as the implications of what she had seen finally started settling in her brain.

Alice realized that just like magic seeds, class fractals resided inside of human bodies, often near the brain or heart. And both class fractals and magic seeds required huge amounts of atmospheric mana to form, and also consumed mana to improve with the System’s help. Both class fractals and magic seeds gave people supernatural abilities which were impossible to find on Earth. Classes were much worse at giving people supernatural abilities than a magic seed, of course. A kinetic mage, for example, could shift the trajectories of arrows around them even at level zero, the instant they had a working magic seed and a basic grasp of their powers. However, a high level [Archer] could also shift the trajectories of arrows they fired. There was no way someone on Earth could ever do either of those things without technology assisting them, and at a high enough level, class seeds did an awful lot of things Mages could do as well…

Alice thought about Class fractals, and then about magic seeds. Class fractals… no, class seeds. After using this Perk, Alice felt that one of her vague suspicions that she had never had precise details or guesses about was nearly confirmed. Was her Perk telling her that classes were some sort of drastically weakened magic seed?