Alice felt waves of panic cycle through her thoughts as she checked through Samantha’s house again, hoping to find Samantha in a spot she had missed. However, in her heart, Alice already knew she wasn’t going to find her. A heavy feeling of dread weighed down on her as she searched Samantha’s house again and again, before the realization that Samantha was gone finally settled into her mind like the weight of a millstone.

Dazed, she walked out of Samantha’s house and sat down in front of the door. A sense of fear and melancholy appeared as she thought about the fact that Samantha’s safety was now completely impossible to guarantee. After Samantha was kidnapped by the Society, Alice didn’t know what would happen to her – nor did Alice have any ability to interfere at all. Even if Samantha was sliced into pieces by the Society as an experiment, Alice had no way to help her now.

In fact, the Society didn’t need to do anything to kill Samantha. Samantha’s new Kinetic Seed had something seriously wrong with it, and Samantha was getting increasingly ill as time passed. If Samantha wasn’t given an effective treatment in time, the symptoms would probably become fatal. And Alice was the only person that could treat Samantha, at least as far as she knew.

The odds of Samantha surviving felt dishearteningly low when Alice seriously considered the situation. Alice felt a burst of doubt and worry. Had her hesitation in treating Samantha caused this? Was Samantha specifically targeted because of her strange illness? Or had the Society already made up its mind to kidnap a Mage, and Samantha had simply been unlucky? Alice felt a wave of doubts as she wondered whether she had moved too slowly, causing Samantha to get hurt as a result…

Alice closed her eyes, shaking her head as she tried to clear away her guilty thoughts. To the best of her knowledge, the danger represented by the Society hadn’t been significant enough to reach Samantha. For the Society to kidnap a Mage in broad daylight was a massive escalation in their conflict with Illvaria, and one that was sure to net a massive retaliation from the Illvarian crown. Alice had no way of knowing that the Society would be willing to risk so much, and she had been doing her best to set up a way to help Samantha while keeping herself safe. She had actively been using her connections with her [Teacher] to keep her abilities hidden while still allowing he to help people when needed. If the Society hadn’t kidnapped Samantha today, Alice’s would have probably deflected any possible problems towards Professor Feliza, as long as the woman was willing to help out. If today hadn’t happened, Alice felt that she would have been able to save Samantha without risk to herself.

But now, things were changed. Alice didn’t even know if Samantha was targeted because the Society knew something about her magic seeds, or if Samantha was just targeted because she was a Mage and seemed to be vulnerable. She sighed to herself, ignoring her System notifications as her thoughts churned and she tried to understand what she needed to do next.

Before she finished sorting out her thoughts, a [Guard] appeared. The [Guard] was a woman who looked to be in her early thirties, and looked to be around level 45 or 50. She was a person with no outstanding characteristics, but Alice still stood up to greet her anyway, pushing down all of her chaotic thoughts and emotions to focus on the [Guard].

“Excuse me miss, a few minutes ago I and a colleague heard someone yell that a Society member had been spotted. May I ask if that was you?” asked the [Guard], ignoring the caved-in building nearby.

“I … yes. You see – I…” Alice took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down and wishing {Rhetorical Flourish} worked in this case, because she really needed a Perk to help her straighten out her words right now. Alice struggled to put her words together, failed a second time, and finally managed to eke out a coherent explanation on her third attempt. She quickly recounted the situation to the [Guard].

The [Guard] took a closer look at Alice, and out of the corner of her eyes, Alice saw the [Guard’s] gaze linger on Alice’s mage emblem, and then the [Guard’s] posture straightened out quite a bit.

“I’m sorry, you said that an acquaintance of yours was kidnapped? Lady Mage, do you mean to say that a normal acquaintance was kidnapped, or… was a Mage was just kidnapped?”

Even though most of Alice’s attention was still focused on Samantha’s disappearance, she couldn’t help but notice the [Guard’s] change in posture, as well as the fact that the [Guard] was now referring to her as ‘Lady Mage’ instead of ‘Miss.’ She realized with a start that the [Guard] hadn’t noticed she was a Mage at first. She frowned for a moment, before deciding to emphasize the situation as much as possible for Samantha’s sake. If the [Guards] knew that a Mage was the one that had been kidnapped, it was obvious that they would put more emphasis on the case compared to a random tramp getting kidnapped. Alice seriously doubted the [Guards] would be able to track down and rescue Samantha either way, but having more people working on the case and more resources devoted to it would at least improve Samantha’s chances.

“Yes, my friend is named Samantha, an acquaintance from my Magic University. She’s also a Mage. We occasionally chatted before class. I’m quite shocked to see the Society brazen enough to kidnap someone in broad daylight, especially a Mage of high standing.”

Saying Samantha’s standing was high was definitely pushing it a bit, but Mages were legally considered quasi-nobles in Illvaria. Even if Samantha’s family was poor, she still had a higher social and legal status to protect her. For now, Alice was just hoping that the [Guard] would call over more high-level people to deal with Samantha’s kidnapping, even if it requires stretching the truth a bit.

“Just so that I know what I’m dealing with, can you give me any clues about the man’s fighting style? Any estimates for his physical Stats, physical characteristics, Perks or Achievements he used?”

“He was pretty strong. I’m not sure about his physical stats, but I imagine his [Endurance] was at least over 200 after stat effectiveness was factored in. His speed was pretty high, so probably at least above 150 [Dexterity]? I have multiple classes above level 50, and I almost managed to take off one of his legs with a roof tile, but he dodged or ignored most of my attacks even when I threw everything I could at him. I think if he had actually turned around to fight me, I might not have survived, but luckily he was more focused on escaping,” said Alice. Then, as she had more time to process the fight itself, sudden chills lanced their way down her spine. It finally occurred to her just how close she had been to dying during the fight. If the Society member hadn’t decided the threat of [Guards] was more important than fighting her, she might have died during the fight.

The Guard’s eyes widened, and she gave Alice a hesitant glance before she frowned. Then, she gave a self-deprecatory laugh. “If even a Mage with multiple classes above 50 couldn’t stop the guy from running, there’s nothing I could do without a bunch of my colleagues. Let’s wait for the others to come – the [Guard] I was patrolling with went to notify the [Guard] house and get more people to close off this area. When they come, I still doubt we’ll have enough manpower to deal with a trained combat Mage who’s probably above level 65, and might be even higher in level.” The [Guard] shook her head, before sighing.

“Is there anyone in the [Guards] or armed forces of Illvaria you know and you would like me to contact, Lady Mage? If there is, I can let them know about this situation for you. If you have any contacts with high level people, the odds of your friend getting out of this alive are probably much higher, although the higher ups will definitely respond to a Mage getting kidnapped either way.”

Alice only needed to think for a moment to think of someone who might be helpful.

“If he’s available, please contact [Knight] Arin,” said Alice. She felt that [Knight] Arin was strong enough to help in this situation, and would hopefully be interested in the fact a Mage had been kidnapped. Alice hadn’t spoken with him much over the past month, but she felt it was worth contacting him over this.

“I will see if he is available,” said the [Guard] before giving Alice a respectful nod. “Is there anything else about the encounter you remember? What about the person’s physical description?”

“The man originally looked like a fairly handsome [Organic Mage], but after the fight started, his face changed a fair amount. I don’t know if his real face is the one I saw, but it’s obvious he has some sort of Perk to help him change his facial features around. However, at the very least, the face I saw…” Alice quickly began describing the man’s physical characteristics, before and after the fight started, while the [Guard] nodded from time to time.

“Thank you, Lady Mage. For now, I’ll keep an eye on our surroundings in case something else happens. If any of the family members wake up, let me know so I can get the relevant information from them,” said the [Guard]. “I’ll get more detailed questions and information when my colleagues arrive, but this should be good enough for now.” Alice nodded, and the [Guard] carefully moved to a location that gave her a better view, leaving Alice alone with her thoughts again.

Once the [Guard] was gone, Alice sank back into her thoughts, before she came to a decision.

She had felt for a long time that hiding from the Society of Starry Eyes was the right thing to do. They were a powerful organization that lay in the shadows and had the ability to make even a medium sized kingdom like Illvaria feel a headache when trying to clear them out. They had an unknown number of combatants, scattered research bases, no ethical compass that they abided by, and had a powerful organization network. Even now, Alice feared them.

However, her research was starting to hit dead ends. She couldn’t investigate the nature of class seeds past a certain point without testing her theories on other people, and trying to use her Perks on other people without revealing what she was doing was… ethically dubious at best. At the same time, even if Alice wasn’t someone who made as many friends or socialized as much as other people, she still hoped that the people she was acquainted with and her friends would be safe and happy. Whatever was going wrong with the System recently very clearly jeopardized that, and the Society’s actions also jeopardized that.

Most importantly, the Society was going ballistic now. Alice wasn’t sure how much the Society knew, and she wasn’t sure if the Society had caught on to the collapse of the System. However, about a month and a half ago, the Society was still relatively constrained in its actions. It didn’t dare to kidnap people who were ‘too important’ and limited its kidnappings to tramps and people who were easy to miss the disappearance of. Now, they had gone as far as kidnapping a Mage in broad daylight. Even if she did nothing, since the Society was targeting Mages right now, she might still get attacked out of nowhere even if she seemed completely unremarkable. In other words, even pretending to be average wasn’t safe anymore.

And if that was the case, maybe it was better if she stopped hiding all of her abilities to such a great degree. She still wouldn’t reveal the fact that she was an {Outworlder} – after all, Illa had strongly hinted that any mentions of this might make Alice a serious target of the Society. And Alice had no idea what the Church’s stance towards researching the System was, because she had never dared to touch on the subject for fear of kicking a hornet’s nest. However, Alice felt she could at least reveal one of her more unique abilities.

Specifically, Alice decided that she would reveal the ability to see and interact with magic seeds and Mage cores. Experimenting on the System itself was bizarre and outlandish by this world’s reckoning, so Alice felt the need to remain cautious about her true research goals, just in case they were perceived negatively and led to her being persecuted by the church or something. On the other hand, the ability to understand Mage Cores was under no such stigma. Plenty of [Scholars] and [Organic Mages] had tried to understand how Mage Cores worked in the past, and nobody had ever stepped up to condemn them for their research. If anything, most Mages seemed to think it was a shame that they hadn’t succeeded. This indicated that this world had no particular fear of Mages exploring how mana and mage cores worked, as long as they didn’t take their research to extreme levels by harming innocent people in the process. Alice managing to succeed at such a young age would explain her high levels in her Classes, and would also explain many of her weird and unique abilities. It would also cause the country to value her quite a bit more. This had a reasonable chance of putting her into the eyes of the Society, but given how much importance the Illvarian crown was placing on the conflict with the Society, Alice felt that the Crown wouldn’t just leave her exposed to attacks by the Society if she demonstrated useful abilities.

And Alice definitely had a few promising research avenues she could talk about. Being able to see what was happening inside of a Mage Core indicated Alice might find a way to make mana baptisms safer and more successful in the future, something no nation would overlook. Furthermore, Alice could demonstrate the ability to ‘delete’ magic seeds that were messed up – which should be increasingly relevant if her suspicions about the System starting to glitch out were correct. Both of these abilities should be enough to make the Crown value her highly and protect her against potential Society attacks.

Of course, this probably wouldn’t be a long term solution. Alice didn’t want to live life like a caged bird, always under the protection of people who were stronger than her and afraid of stepping outside because the Society would be waiting. However, Alice’s Achievements were excellent, and her leveling speed was far higher than most people’s. As long as the Crown protected her for long enough, Alice was confident that she could simply outlevel most assassination and kidnapping attempts. Even if combat wasn’t her strength, it was hard for anyone to win a one on one fight with an Immortal. If Alice managed to become an Immortal, or even just a really high level person, she would still be able to win most fights just with raw stats and Perks.

Alice took a deep breath, and then let it out. If she really decided to go through with this, she would possibly be racing against time. She would need to hope that she hit a high enough level and gain the ability to protect herself before the Society either made a big move, or the Crown stopped prioritizing her protection. However, it was also one of the only ways Alice would be genuinely free to help people who had malformed seeds, and openly learn as much as possible to fix whatever was going wrong with the System.

It would be risky…

But doing nothing was also risky. Alice didn’t think this was a crisis where she could just sit around and hope things blew over. If that was the case, she would rather take control of her fate with her own hands instead of hoping things turned out for the best.

With her mind made up, Alice finally looked at all of her System level up notifications, ignoring the minor Stat increases for now.

You have leveled up!

Survivor: 51 -> 53, Explorer of Magic 59 -> 63, Kinetic Manabinder 28 -> 31

Alice had two new Perks. She noticed that with the amount of Achievements she now had boosting her levelling speed, the class that was most influenced by her Achievements, [Explorer of Magic], was no longer levelling at the speed of a snail crawling through molasses. It was levelling at about the same speed it had been when the class was below level 50, even.

Alice opened the Perks screen for Kinetic Manabinder first, and quickly grabbed a Perk that seemed related to combat over enchanting. Even though Alice felt Enchanting was better for her economic situation, if she was really planning on putting herself in the open she needed a little more combat power.

Reflection

Requirements: Kinetic Manabinder level 30 or higher, Magic 150 or higher

Three times per day, you can directly change the direction an object is travelling in without changing the amount of momentum it has. To activate this Perk, one of your mana tendrils must first be touching the object. This Perk does not cost mana to activate.

During the last fight, Alice had noticed that she lacked the ability to fully stop an object with enough momentum behind it. This Perk provided the ability to directly reverse the force behind a throw object, and also gave Alice the ability to make the trajectories of some of her projectiles extremely weird and unpredictable so long as they remained in range of {Extended Organics}. It wasn’t a perfect solution to her lacking combat abilities, but it was the best thing she expected to get from a level 30 Perk.

Then, Alice looked over her choices for [Explorer of Magic]. When she looked over the Perk list, Alice noticed something curious – the descriptions she got for when she ‘combined’ a few Perks was somewhat different from the descriptions for combined Perks she had seen when she was at level 55. The descriptions for some of her combined Perk choices had changed, either because Alice wanted more combat ability right now, or simply as a result of reaching a higher level this time. Alice wasn’t sure which, but she made a mental note that the ‘results’ of combining Perks seemed to change sometimes and that she should keep an eye out for more information In the future.

Then, she looked over the two new Perks she could take at level 60. Neither seemed particularly appealing – the first one offered her a new seed slot, which Alice didn’t need right now, and the other Perk choice would give any of her other Magic-related classes a bonus 100% to levelling speed. That wasn’t bad, but the fact that the Perk wouldn’t apply to [Explorer of Magic] made it considerably less useful.

Finally, Alice settled on combining Perks again.

Combat Spellcaster

Requirements: Explorer of magic level 15 or higher, Magic 50 or higher

Living Creatures resist your mana less effectively

Improved Seed

Requirements: Explorer of Magic level 20 or higher

Allows you to improve one magic seed's mana conversion ratio by 10%. This is only effective on magic seeds below 200% mana conversion ratio.

Alice decided to sacrifice these two Perks, because neither of them offered her anything particularly useful anymore. Combat Spellcaster had been useful when she was still living in the woods, because it helped her deal with spidercrabs before they lunged at her and bit something vital. However, at this point, Spidercrabs weren’t a threat anymore, and Alice could just plow through groups of them using random sticks and rocks from her surroundings. The Perk wasn’t particularly useful against bigger creatures either, since even after the Perk reduced their mana resistance, it was still high enough to make doing something like ripping them in half with mana or tearing apart their organs highly impractical. These days, the Perk served little use. Improved Seed had been used to increase her Kinetic Magic seed, and also wasn’t a very big bonus at this point. Her Kinetic Seed was at 146% mana conversion ratio, and her [Magic] stat was much higher than it had been at the time. The bonus from this Perk also wasn’t very useful anymore.

Perk 1: Combat Spellcaster + Perk 2: Improved Seed = ??????

????: You may or may not lose the 10% bonus to your Kinetic Seed’s mana conversion ratio. All kinetic mana from your magic seed will gain two unique properties. First, it will become harder for other mages to interact with objects that have recently been ‘touched’ by your kinetic mana, and second, objects recently ‘touched’ by your kinetic mana will gain some sort of detrimental effect for creatures who are wounded by your projectiles. This detrimental effect’s exact details are hard to predict.

Would you like to combine these two Perks?

Alice quickly hit confirm.

Combat Seed (Tier 2 Perk, level 60 Explorer of Magic) (Level 15 Explorer of magic Perk + Level 20 Explorer of Magic Perk)

Perk Costs: Combat Spellcaster + Improved Seed sacrificed to create this Perk.

You may attach a small extra layer of mana to any object you use your kinetic seed to manipulate. This extra layer of mana has the ability to ‘shred’ other forms of mana it comes into contact with, completely nullifying any attempts to heal wounds or interfere with objects your mana is stuck to until the mana is removed. If an object thrown using this seed ends up embedded in another person, it will fracture into pieces of shrapnel inside of their body if it is possible for the object to do so. These pieces of shrapnel will retain your layer of mana-shredding kinetic mana until another Mage removes it.

Note: Other Mages may remove this extra layer of mana using their own mana, even without specialized Perks. However, doing so will be mentally draining and require careful use of Mana. It will be difficult to do quickly unless they are much stronger than you.

After Alice took these two Perks, she felt that she was much closer to being combat ready. She was still a researcher at heart, and would still probably lose against someone who much higher level than she was. However, she felt… closer to being able to protect herself against the new level of offense she was practically inviting the Society to use against her. In particular, with access to {Combat Seed} she might have been able to at least slow down the guy who had kidnapped Samantha earlier, or even kill him if he didn't have any other surprises in his sleeves. And even if Alice was putting herself in more danger, she didn’t regret her decision. She didn’t want to just stand to the side and hope things turned out for the best. Even if it was more dangerous, she wanted to explore the secrets of this world and help her friends survive whatever was going wrong with the System these days. If taking a little bit of a bigger risk than before was the price for that…

Alice was prepared to pay it. She was a cautious person by nature, and she had no interest in fighting when she could spend that time doing research instead. But if push came to shove, she wouldn’t run away from it if she would be in danger no matter what she did.

After another few minutes, to Alice’s surprise and delight, [Knight] Arin actually came to the scene of Samantha’s kidnapping. Alice took a deep breath, and let it out again to finish calming her nerves.

It was time to make some serious plans for her future, both to see if there was anything she could do to rescue Samantha and to see what kind of protection the Crown might be willing to offer if she exposed her ability to see how Mage Cores worked.