After Alice finished dealing with all of her upgrades, she visited Boris for the week. Now that she had a more extensive list of ideas and guesses about class seeds, Alice took this visit as an opportunity to observe Boris in greater detail, to see if she could verify any of her guesses about the nature of class seeds. She had already observed that Boris had a huge amount of mana in his body compared to the amount of time he had been working on levelling up, but now that she had more information, perhaps she could learn something new.

Unfortunately, this idea ended up as a dead end. Alice didn’t manage to discover too much or confirm any of her guesses after the visit. However, she did discover that the class seed in Boris’s body wasn’t absorbing any mana, unlike the seed she had seen in her vision. This puzzled Alice, but considering how much she didn’t know about class seeds right now, it wasn’t too surprising that she had missing information right now. Alice couldn’t help but wonder if Boris’s condition would get better the moment he turned six. Perhaps the moment he turned six and turned the right age for a normal status screen, the class seed in his body would instantly eat up all of the extra mana in his body and he would return to normalcy? Or perhaps nothing would happen, or the class seed would start absorbing mana and slowly ‘digest’ the excess mana in Boris’s body bit by bit? Alice wasn’t quite sure, and she didn’t dare to mess with anything right now due to her fear of harming Boris in the process. At the very least, ever since Alice had encouraged Natasha to prevent Boris from farming, his condition hadn’t gotten any worse, so Alice considered that a minor victory for now. Next weekend she could hopefully bring over Professor Feliza and get Boris an enchantment to shut off access to mana in his surroundings, which would work as another countermeasure to prevent Boris’s condition from deteriorating further.

Alice left Natasha’s house in a poor mood. She still didn’t know enough about how class seeds worked to solve the root problem, so she could only sigh, remind Natasha not to let Boris farm or work in the fields, and return to Metsel for the night. On the way out of the village, she couldn’t help but notice that the number of [Guards] around Natasha and Boris had drastically decreased compared to a month ago. There was still one extra [Guard] sticking around Natasha’s village, but considering how many different directions Illvaria’s manpower was getting pulled now, the [Guards] obviously couldn’t afford to devote more people towards an attack that showed no signs of materializing. Alice was starting to think her guess was unfounded – the Society of Starry Eyes might have stumbled across Boris as a result of blind luck, and maybe have just been kidnapping children at random in hopes of getting lucky instead of having some way to actively search for him.

The following day, Alice returned to her magic classes and prepared to learn more about monster biology, self-defense, and attend an extremely exciting, fascinating, and valuable lecture about morals. But before she could get settled in and talk with Samantha for the day before switching back to talking with Luka, Erkki, Laila, and Arsi, she realized that Samantha wasn’t present in the classroom.

Samantha usually arrived to class fairly early.

Alice started to get a bad feeling.

“Do you know where Samantha is?” She asked her four friends in the class.

Luka simply shrugged, and Erkki frowned for a moment before he shook his head. Laila lifted her head towards Alice for a moment, before she yawned and responded with a lazy “I don’t know who that is.”

Arsi gave Alice the most useful response. He turned towards her and then frowned for a moment, before nodding to himself. “I’ve heard one of her friends from an earlier class I share mention that Samantha was sick today. I didn’t pay much attention to it, but I did hear her say that the girl is sick enough for her family to hire an [Organic Mage] to take a look at her. She should be healthy by tomorrow, I guess, assuming Samantha’s family hires a good [Organic Mage].” Arsi shrugged. “If you wait until Wednesday you can probably see her again.”

Alice’s bad feeling intensified as she wondered whether an [Organic Mage] could even find Samantha’s weird and broken kinetic seed. The best thing the healer might be able to accomplish was healing some of Samantha’s symptoms, unless the [Organic Mage] had a very surprising set of Perks and Achievements.

“Do you know where Samantha lives? I’m sure you know that she and I have been talking recently when I have extra time, so I want to go wish her well. Besides, I’ve recently been learning bits and pieces about organic magic, and maybe I can sit by the side and learn something useful,” said Alice. The effort she had been putting in for the past week came in useful, as Arsi simply nodded at her statement. Alice was now known to enjoy speaking with Samantha, and so Arsi didn’t think there was anything unusual about Alice wanting to visit her friend.

“I don’t know anything specifically where she lives. You could probably ask one of her friends for more detailed information. If you’re lucky, she might even be heading there after her classes for the day are finished in order to check up on Samantha. If she is, you can probably just tag along. And even if she doesn’t plan to make a visit, she should know where Samantha lives, so you can still get directions from her.”

“Is that so? I’ll have to ask her later, then. Who should I look for?”

“Look for the girl named Taylie. She has black hair and blue eyes, and she’s a little taller than you. But she walks with a slightly hunched posture, so in practice your height is about the same as hers. She’s a bit more on the nervous side, has slightly below average [Charisma], doesn’t really like people too much, and her mage emblem is made out of copper. She shouldn’t be too hard to identify,” said Arsi, before adding a few description about Taylie’s schedule. “She finishes her classes for the day the same time this class ends, and she doesn’t really stick around the after class. She heads straight out of the building the moment she can leave. I imagine you’ll probably have to rush and catch her by the door if you want to meet with her today. If that doesn’t work, you can always just wait until Wednesday, although you’ll miss the chance to observe a healer with a full certificate in action.”

Alice thanked Arsi for sharing this information with her. Class started right afterwards, so she did her best to turn her attention to class, but had a hard time paying attention. Her thoughts kept turning back to Samantha’s situation. She had been hesitating on what she should do for a while, and Cecilia had also advised her not to put herself in too much danger, and had implied that Alice should look after herself first, even if it meant abandoning Samantha and letting things play out. Alice had originally felt that Cecilia’s words made sense. She would help where she could, but she would look out for herself first.

However, now that Samantha’s condition was getting worse, Alice found that her thoughts were a mess. Could she really just coldly watch on as someone she enjoyed talking with get sick and possibly die, just because she was afraid of the Society of Starry Eyes? Alice wasn’t even sure if the Society would notice Alice treating a slightly weird illness, and she was pretty sure the root cause couldn’t be treated by anyone but her. Alice also felt a little guilty, because she knew for sure that if the person in danger wasn’t Samantha, but was someone like Cecilia, Alice wouldn’t have hesitated at all. Cecilia was her closest friend in this world, and if Cecilia had been the one in danger she would have helped Cecilia first and figured out the consequences later. Even if she wasn’t as close with Samantha, letting her die just didn’t feel right.

Alice shook her head. She decided that she would definitely visit Samantha today, and she would figure out what she wanted to do after that. If need be, she would run back to the academy and try to drag over professor Feliza to ‘help’ her heal Samantha’s illness, especially if the other girl seemed like she was on the verge of death. After a moment, Alice grinned to herself. There was a much easier solution here. Professor Feliza was a well known healer, so if Professor Feliza did a ‘check up’ on Samantha after the [Organic Mage] left and ‘taught’ Alice during the process, Alice could probably heal the problem without arousing Samantha’s curiosity. So long as Samantha was unconscious, she wouldn’t know who broke down her messed up seed, and Professor Feliza probably had more resources and ability to deal with the Society if they came knocking. Alice felt that she could probably convince professor Feliza help her out, given the woman’s strict moral lines and hatred for the Society, and in the best case scenario Samantha had a good chance of keeping her mouth shut and avoiding future problems entirely. She would need to get Professor Feliza’s help, and would need to expose the fact that she could see magic seeds to Professor Feliza, but having a known healer and member of the faculty helping her keep things quiet and helping her from the sidelines would be a huge help for the future. And knowing that Magic Seeds could be formed imperfectly and cause harm to their user would probably help a lot of other Mages and healers in the country to at least start looking in the right direction for medical treatments when it came to weird illnesses like Samantha’s. Best of all, it would be quite normal of Professor Feliza got an Achievement dedicated to helping cure malformed magic seeds if she made the problem public, which would give Alice an excuse to heal other people as long as she was with Professor Feliza. As long as the woman was willing to help her, Alice would be able to open up a route to learning more about the current situation while also setting up ways for other people to start investigating the root problems encountered by the System recently.

All Alice needed to do was go to Samantha’s house to confirm the situation first, then head back to the academy, ask for Professor Feliza’s help, and then put her plan into action.

Now that she had a plan, Alice found it easier to concentrate on Introductory Monster Biology again. After class ended, Alice immediately headed for the class Arsi had mentioned, nearly sprinting down the halls to make sure she wasn’t late. A few moments after arriving, Alice spotted Taylie. Alice grinned. She hadn’t missed her chance to check on Samantha today.

She waited until Taylie had moved a bit farther away from the crowd, and watched as Taylie began walking towards the stairs. Then, Alice took a deep breath to gather her courage before she stepped in front of Taylie.

“Are you Taylie?”

“Yes, I am. Who might you be?” Taylie shuffled nervously as she eyed Alice, taking a small step back as she started to frown.

“I’m Alice, an acquaintance of Samantha’s. I heard she didn’t show up to class today?”

Taylie stopped frowning and relaxed slightly, nodding at Alice. “Ah, so that’s where I’d heard your name before. Samantha mentioned you last Friday while I was talking with her. She was feeling pretty sick this morning when I went to talk to her, and mentioned her family was going to hire an [Organic Mage] to treat her. Since it got bad enough to hire a healer, I was planning on visiting her later to see if she’s recovering well.”

“Could I tag along? I’ve been getting along with Samantha for the past week, and while I don’t know her as well as you do I would like to at least check up on her,” said Alice. “I have a few healing enchantments I can lend to Samantha if it would help, and I don’t want to just sit around while someone I know gets sick.”

“You’re surprisingly nice,” said Taylie, and her shoulders relaxed a little bit. “I don’t mind if you tag along.”

The two set off from the magic university and began walking through Metsel. The two spoke little as they wandered through the streets. Soon, the two began to approach the slums area, which caused Alice to feel both surprised and jumpy. She started paying more attention to the information her Perks were feeding her and scanning everything in her surroundings more carefully, in case something happened. Luckily, the two didn’t actually reach the slums before they reached the area Samantha lived.

“That one is her house,” said Taylie, breaking the silence and pointing out a smaller wooden building off to the side of the street.

Alice quickly realized that Samantha’s family wasn’t very wealthy, which somewhat surprised her. Samantha had mentioned wanting to get into Enchanting instead of Organic Magic, and so she had assumed that Samantha had a fair amount of gold to burn on the learning process. After all, learning Enchanting implied failing quite a bit before succeeding, and without a fairly unusual magic seed it was hard to find a market for low level enchantments because higher level [Enchanters] would take away most sales. Alice had gotten a bit lucky because she had started learning in Cyra, where the competition was low and supplies from the North were inconsistent, but Samantha lived in the capital, one of the areas with the densest mage population in Illvaria.

Then, Alice wondered if perhaps the reason Samantha wanted to get into enchanting was because of the recent price spike for self-defense enchantments, before shaking her head. If Samantha wasn’t already well off financially, just starting to learn enchantments might be cripplingly difficult if she didn’t have a plan. However, that was a matter for Samantha and her family to work out unless Samantha asked her for advice.

As Alice mused over Samantha’s financial situation and future as an [Enchanter], the two approached Samantha’s house, she felt {Sense Hostility} suddenly trigger.

Alice’s thinking ground to a halt as she focused all of her attention on the area around her. {Vastly Improved Kinetic Vision} kicked into overdrive and expanded her vision in all directions, letting her see behind her and to the sides of her in black and white. At the same time, Alice mentally locked on to several objects in the area she could grab with her mana tendrils in a hurry if she needed to.

A moment later, a handsome man in his early twenties walked out of Samantha’s house. He looked to be a little above level 75, and he had a well developed organic magic seed. At the same time, Alice realized that the man was covered in a strange rainbow mana formation she didn’t recognize, and that she felt a strange sense of relaxation as she looked at the man, as well as a sense of mild drowsiness. If she weren’t careful, she felt that she might even begin nodding off soon, and trying to concentrate on her surroundings became increasingly difficult as she felt relaxed and lethargic. Alarm bells started ringing in her head. Something was wrong with this man.

“Good evening,” said the [Organic Mage], giving them a friendly nod as he walked closer. Alice noticed that his gaze settled on the two for a moment, as if he was trying to make a decision, before he took a step closer to them. The alarm bells in Alice’s head grew louder. “May I ask what you’re doing on this fine day?” At the same time, he stretched out his hand towards Taylie’s, as if asking for a handshake. Taylie frowned sluggishly, as if she could also tell that something wasn’t quite right, but she reached out her hand to shake the man’s anyway.

“We’re here to visit our friend,” said Taylie, giving the man a sleepy nod. Alice got a better idea of what was happening as she saw a jolt of rainbow mana reach out of the man’s hand and into Taylie’s arm during the handshake. Taylie’s smile grew more relaxed and lethargic after a few seconds, and without any further explanation or focus, Taylie veered away from the man and kept walking towards Samantha’s house.

At the same time, the [Organic Mage] extended his hand towards Alice for a handshake. Alice started panicking. Should she shake the man’s hand, or immediately open hostilities? The man hadn’t attacked Taylie as she walked by, so he seemed to be uninterested in killing her. If that was the case, Alice might have a better opportunity to open a fight with a surprise attack…

Like a wooden puppet, she extended her hand towards the [Organic Mage] as she started praying that her next idea would work. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched a burst of rainbow mana get injected into her body.

Then, Alice used {Extended Organics} to create a small, needle-sized mana tendril inside of her wrist. {The Science of Mana Deprivation} activated, and the burst of rainbow mana was quickly isolated from the rest of her body, tying up one of her mana tendrils but preventing her from falling asleep.

“I wish you the best of luck checking up on your friend, then,” said the man, giving them an more amiable and warm smile as he walked past Alice, completely ignoring her. Alice did her best to mimic Taylie, veering slightly to the side and sleepily walking towards Samantha’s house.{Sense Hostility} stopped activating, and right after Alice passed by the man, she immediately used {Extended Organics} to create three mana tendrils a few inches away from the man, targeting the front of his clothing. Before he had time to react, Alice used kinetic magic to turn the buttons on his clothes into weapons and shot them directly towards the man’s heart.

The three buttons tore through the man’s skin, but Alice could tell that she hadn’t managed to kill him. He turned around as his flesh regrew, wriggling around in meat tendrils as Perks activated inside of his body. The man’s facial features contorted, before his face melted like putty as twisted as he snarled at her. All of a sudden, the man’s facial features were completely different, and Alice immediately realized the man had somehow used Organic magic to change his own facial features.

“Society attack!” Yelled Alice at the top of her lungs, hoping to call over some [Guards] to help.

The man snarled at her, and then reached down, ripped a cobblestone out of the street with his hands, and threw it at her.

{Adrenaline Rush} activated, and Alice’s perception of time was warped as the world slowed to a crawl. She reached out one tendril of mana to stop the cobblestone flying towards her while simultaneously activating her bracelet and preparing one more cobblestone to use as a projectile. However, when she tried to stop the cobblestone flying towards her, she realized to her shock that the force behind the cobblestone was somehow resistant to her attempts at stopping it. Forced to abandon her plan of counterattacking, Alice instead tried to duck away from the incoming projectile. She quickly realized that also couldn’t get out of the way in time, so she cancelled her other mana tendrils before reforming them with {Extended Organics}. Then, she used her free mana tendrils to grab herself by the clothes and throw herself out of the way.

She barely escaped having her head crushed like a grape as the cobblestone tore through the air, slamming into the wall of a nearby house and tearing a massive hole in the wall. Alice felt her heart beating faster as she imagined what would have happened if she hadn’t gotten out of the way in time, and grew even more afraid of the Society member who was attacking her.

Luckily, the Society member didn’t follow up on his attack. Since he was in the middle of the city and [Guards] might come any minute, he instead strengthened his legs and began running from the scene at full speed. Alice didn’t even concentrate on getting up or healing the bruises from crashing heavily into the ground, as she began firing cobblestones, her consumable bracelet, and random pieces of the surroundings at him. She managed to clip him with a few stones, and almost managed to slice his leg off with a flying piece of roof tile, but the man’s regenerative powers were high enough that he just regrew his flesh and kept fleeing at top speed. Alice chased after him until for a few seconds, until {Adrenaline Rush} ended and she realized she couldn’t stop him from fleeing. Soon, he disappeared into the distance.

Alice swore, staring at the decimated street and giving herself a quick check over. Luckily, it didn’t seem like she had any serious injuries – just some scrapes and bruises from throwing herself around like a rag doll, but those were easy enough to heal.

She turned back to the scene of the brief fight, and noticed Taylie had made it inside of Samantha’s house before collapsing and falling asleep, having managed to completely ignore the brief fight. Since Alice had no ability to chase after the suspected Society member, she cursed again and walked back into Samantha’s house to check on Taylie. Luckily, the girl wasn’t terribly injured. Inside of the house were also an older man and a woman, along with a young girl, all sleeping comfortably on a bed together. If it weren’t for the rainbow mana in their bodies, along with the fact the couple and their daughter had somehow managed to sleep through a wall being demolished a few seconds ago, Alice might have thought that they had simply fallen asleep.

However, Alice felt that something was missing here. This was Samantha’s house, after all. Where was Samantha?

It only took her a few moments to confirm her ominous premonition.

Samantha wasn’t in the house.