When they arrived at Boris’s house, Natasha warmly greeted Alice, giving her an enthusiastic smile. She also gave Professor Feliza and Immortal Ethan a respectful nod when she saw their Mage emblems, although the two of them got far less enthusiastic greetings than Alice. Alice was more than slightly amused to see that she had been given more respect and attention than an Immortal. However, she also didn’t want Natasha to get in trouble, even if neither Ethan nor Feliza were likely to care about Natasha’s lack of information, so Alice cleared her throat.

“Natasha, thank you for entrusting the treatment of Boris to me. These are two teachers of mine who have helped me greatly. This is Lady Feliza, who teaches Organic Magic. She has a healing license, and so she’s overseeing my treatment of Boris. In fact, she’s the reason I can do this without being worried that I’ll make a mistake and harm Boris, as well as the reason I can do this without getting into legal trouble.” Natasha gave Lady Feliza a much more warm smile after Alice’s introduction.

“Thank you very much for your help, Lady Feliza. Boris and I appreciate your help, and thank you for coming all of this way just to oversee the treatment of my son. It means a lot to me. Really.”

Professor Feliza gave Natasha a light nod.

“It’s no trouble. Boris’s case is unique, and it’s best to learn as much as I can about new and troublesome diseases, in case they become widespread in the future. While I don’t think Boris’s circumstances are likely to be replicated often in the future, helping the people is what a healer should do,” said Professor Feliza.

With Professor Feliza’s introduction finished, Alice turned towards Ethan.

“And this is Honored Immortal Ethan. I got into some… rather chaotic circumstances recently, since the Society of Starry Eyes kidnapped a friend of mine. He’s here to help me with the treatment as well.”

Natasha’s eyes bugged out when she heard Alice mention Immortal Ethan, and she gave Ethan a huge double take, before giving him a very nervous, very deep bow.

“It’s… it’s an honor to see honored Immortal. I…” Natasha looked incredibly out of place, and Alice felt a sudden desire to laugh.

Immortal Ethan didn’t bother restraining a chuckle. “I am not terribly concerned about manners and formalities, Natasha. I simply found that some of Alice’s research interesting, and Boris seems to be at least tangentially related to some of it. In addition, I’ve been more and more concerned about the actions of the Society recently, and since Boris was kidnapped by them in the past, I’m investigating some of their actions more closely. You don’t need to be overly mindful of my presence; just pretend I’m not here.”

Natasha gaped at Immortal Ethan, like a fish out of water, before she finally managed to get some of her bearings in the conversation.

“I… I see, honored Immortal. And… ah… Lady Alice is your apprentice? When…”

“Less than a week ago,” said Alice. “It was quite sudden.”

Natasha’s eyes bugged out even further, before she visibly stopped. She took a few calming deep breaths, and Alice swore that she saw Ethan’s lips curl into a mischievous grin out of the corner of her eyes. Then, after a few moments, his smile vanished, and Natasha looked at Ethan again. The woman finally seemed to recover her bearings, before she managed to squeak out a more coherent sentence.

“Thank you for coming all of this way to look after my son, honored Immortal. Your presence means a lot to Boris and I, and...” Natasha trailed off, and even though she looked more composed than before, Alice could tell the woman was floundering for words.

Ethan gave Natasha a light nod. “I am simply looking after my apprentice. Now, you say your son is ill?” With a topic to latch on to, Natasha recovered.

“Yes, honored Immortal. My son is behaving very strangely, ever since he was kidnapped by the Society, and Lady Alice has hinted that she might have a way to help treat him, or at least slow down how quickly his mind seems to be crumbling. He seems to be a little better this week, but… maybe I’m just imagining things. I don’t know. I’m very hopeful that Lady Alice’s treatment will be effective.”

Boris had gotten a little better this week? Alice was suddenly very interested.

Alice took that as her que to start speaking again. “So, Natasha, about Boris. I’ve been working on an enchantment that I think should halt the progression of Boris’s oddity, as long as he keeps wearing it. With this, even if Boris decides to work in the fields or something, his condition shouldn’t worsen.” Alice paused for a moment. She hadn’t really filled Natasha in on the nature of Boris’s problem, since she was worried it would put her own safety at risk. However, telling Natasha nothing might make it less likely for the woman to help Boris keep his enchanted ring on, and Alice felt she could at least share some information without any problems. She hesitated for a moment, before she continued speaking.

“It seems like Boris’s primary problem is due to absorbing too much mana, coupled with a lot of other environmental factors…” Like unlocking his Status Screen too early, thought Alice. “So this ring is created to regulate how much mana Boris absorbs. It isn’t a perfect solution, since I’m not sure how to remove the excess mana in his body, but it makes it much easier to stop his condition from getting worse. The ring is relatively durable, and as long as Boris wears it you should be able to fuel it with basic spidercrab cores or other low level monster cores. It’ll only last a year or so if you use totally incompatible cores, but I hope to have a more permanent solution available by then. This is just a stopgap measure to keep Boris’s condition from getting worse. Can we see Boris, so that I can do some final checks and give him the ring?”

Natasha nodded gratefully.

After that, Alice and her teachers were quickly shown to the room Boris was currently staying in.

When the three saw Boris, Professor Feliza and Ethan frowned.

The mana inside of Boris’s body was even more odd than it had been the last time Alice had seen him. When Alice had first seen Boris, he had two different conflicting System fractals inside of his body, which had made him look incredibly odd in her eyes. The next time Alice had seen him, the mana in his body had seemingly spiraled out of control. Merely five days after Alice had rescued Boris from the Society, he had somehow acquired as much mana as an average level 15, which was truly ridiculous for five days of farmwork, and the mana in his body had been rather oddly colored.

After that, the mana in Boris’s body had continued to grow denser, and the Boris’s behavior had become increasingly odd and... unresponsive. He had stopped reacting to his environment, and eventually started looking more like a bugged NPC in a video game than a real person. Once Alice had advised Natasha to keep Boris from farming, the amount of mana in Boris’s body hadn’t grown very much anymore. However, if the mana in most people’s body was like a carefully structured building, slowly layered brick by brick to create a useful structure inside of their body, Boris’s mana was more like a virus that had taken over his body.

However, in the week since Alice had last seen him, the mana in Boris’s body had changed again.

Now, the amount of mana in Boris’s body had decreased, in the past week, if only by a very mild amount. Alice had never seen this happen before. She frowned, using {Advanced Mana Measurement} to confirm the amount of mana inside of Boris’s body.

Compared to the last time she had seen him a week ago, the number of Mariums of mana inside of Boris’s body had decreased by about 1%. Which was a very, very minor change. However, the fact that the mana in Boris’s body was decreasing at all was odd. Alice had assumed she would need to manually interact with the mana in Boris’s body if she wanted it to decrease, and she hadn’t been sure if that was the correct solution or not. However, without Alice needing to lift a finger, the mana in his body was decreasing on its own for some reason.

Ethan and Feliza, however, were frowning for a different reason.

“Why is there so much mana in his body? And why does it look so… wrong?” said Professor Feliza. “It’s very uncomfortable, seeing it for myself.”

Ethan didn’t share his thoughts, but Alice suspected he was thinking about the Society’s research logs.

However, Alice didn’t remember the Society’s records mentioning any of the kidnapped children showing a decrease in mana over time. Most of the results of the Society’s experiments had simply documented the increasingly odd and apathetic actions of the children in their experiments. While Alice was willing to attribute part of that to the lack of focus and interest the Society had been giving to the odd children experiments recently, Boris’s situation was still strange.

After a few more minutes of observation, Alice also noticed something she hadn’t immediately noticed before.

Boris’s class seed was brighter than before. It was still a bit weak and messy, but it was more structured and stable than it had been last time she had seen Boris. And unlike before, it seemed to be absorbing mana from Boris’s body. It was doing so at a ridiculously slow rate, but it was, indeed, absorbing mana now, unlike the last time Alice had seen Boris’s class seed.

Alice fell into thought.

Based on what she had seen with {Expanding Comprehension} when she had learned that Classes and magic Seeds were based on the same thing, she had observed that Class Seeds started out much less… active than magic seeds, but they constantly absorbed mana. Specifically, they all absorbed mana related to whatever Class they were based on. [Farmer] Class Seeds absorbed [Farmer] mana, [Fishermen] class seeds absorbed [Fishermen] mana, and so on. Meanwhile, Magic Seeds didn’t seem to naturally absorb mana from their surroundings.

Alice slowly inspected Boris’s body with {Organic Vision}, and her new Perk {Intuitive Mana Modelling} helped her inspect the mana inside of Boris’s body. In particular, {Intuitive Mana Modelling} made it dozens of times easier for her to learn something she hadn’t noticed before.

After closer examination, Alice realized all of the built-up mana in Boris’s body seemed to be [Farmer] mana, and as time passed, his class seed was now slowly sucking it up. It was moving at a glacial pace, but it was absorbing mana now. Was this what the ‘natural process’ of absorption looked like for a Class Seed?

Boris’s class seed seemed to, at least partially, be working now. What had caused it to change? And had it caused Boris’s condition to improve, or get worse? If the reduction of the uncontrolled mana in Boris’s body resulted in his condition improving…

That would have massive implications for Alice’s future treatment plans, as well as her understanding of Class Seeds. If Boris got better as a result of the uncontrolled mana in his body decreasing, it would confirm the idea that [Farmer] mana in Boris’s body was somehow harmful to its host. And if the [Farmer] mana was naturally harmful, that would imply that Class Seeds were explicitly created to absorb this ‘harmful mana’ and turn it into something useful, which would give Alice a huge window into how the System worked. Alice had wondered for a long time why the System rewarded people for taking actions related to its Class. A [Fishermen] getting levels for fishing made sense on the surface, but when one thought about a Magic seed related to ‘fishing magic’ getting bigger because its owner fished a lot, the idea became much more strange. Furthermore, Alice had wondered why, if the System was benevolent, why did it restrict people’s levels so much? Wouldn’t it be better to just give people a bunch of levels for free, to make their lives easier?

However, if the [Fishermen] class seed only absorbed [Fishermen] mana, which was created when somebody went fishing, things started to make a little more sense.

Alice took a deep breath, before she calmed herself down. First, she needed to assess whether Boris had actually gotten better this week, as Natasha claimed. She hadn’t even confirmed Boris’s condition yet.

“Hey Boris. It’s me again. How are you?” Asked Alice, leaning a little closer to the child. As usual, Boris no didn’t give her any vocal response. However, there was something unusual this time.

Boris, who often stared blankly at the wall or tried to farm, blinked a few times in response, before tilting his head vaguely in Alice’s direction. In previous visits, he would have usually just ignored her completely. Even if she waved his hand in front of his face, or checked him for any sort of response, he would just stare blankly at the wall or try to farm. He didn’t really react to other stimuli anymore. Now, there was a response, even if it wasn’t very strong.

She tried shuffling a little to the left, and while Boris’s eyes didn’t quite track her properly, he did seem to at least sort of follow her movement.

Was he getting better? Alice started to feel excited. This was a huge hint about the nature of the System. She had no idea why Boris’s Class Seed was starting to do its job, and she would need to observe Boris more closely in the future, but she was pretty sure she was on the right track with her earlier train of thought.

No wonder breaking Boris’s class seed would have harmed him, according to {Safety Analysis}, thought Alice. If Class Seeds acted as some kind of… purifiers, which worked to absorb harmful mana and convert it into something useful, than breaking Boris’s class seed with {Broken Seed} would have been like snatching the antidote out of Boris’s body while he was dying of poison. Some of her previously confusing results suddenly made a lot more sense.

Though, it did make Alice wonder why removing her own class seeds wouldn’t be harmful. She hadn’t gotten around to breaking down a class seed of her own yet, since she had used her {Broken Seed} Perk to remove Samantha’s corrupted magic seed and the Perk wasn’t off cooldown yet, but {Safety Analysis} didn’t seem to have a problem with her removing her [Fisherwoman] class at all. If her [Fisherwoman] Class was working to purify mana in her body, wouldn’t removing it be a huge issue? Or was it not a problem because it had already done its job?

Alice frowned, before shrugging. She was beginning to narrow down the bits of information about Classes she still didn’t understand, at least. Previously, there had just been too much she didn’t know. But now, she had a pretty good idea what mechanics lay behind Class Seeds in general. Even if Alice couldn’t replicate the actions of the System yet, because there were too many System fractals that altered and purified mana in ways she didn’t understand, she was pretty sure she knew the general idea behind how a Class Seed worked. Even if she was missing some smaller details, she was pretty sure she was on the right track.

After falling into thought for a few minutes, Alice finally recovered. She gave Boris her mana-blocking ring. However, her thoughts were even more focused on Boris’s strangely recovered Class Seed now.

Why did Boris’s class seed not do what it was supposed to until now? If Alice’s speculation was correct, Class Seeds purified and absorbed harmful mana before turning them into something useful. Boris’s class seed was now absorbing mana from his body, but last week, it had just sat there, doing nothing. And now, the rate of mana absorption was awful. If everyone else’s class seeds absorbed mana in seconds, Boris’s class seeds would take months to do the exact same thing. If Alice’s assumptions were correct, the best way to help Boris recover would be to make his class seed speed up. But Alice had no idea how to do that. And Alice still didn’t know why the System locked the Status Screen until people turned six years old, either. Why did it matter so much whether Boris was six years old or not?

Even though Alice had gotten a massive clue about the nature of Class Seeds, there were still a lot of questions left unanswered. Alice frowned for a moment, before she smiled to herself. At the very least, she had more information now.

Professor Feliza and Ethan also observed Boris after he put on the ring. Naturally, nothing happened. Since Boris hadn’t been interacting with the mana around his body before he put on Alice’s mana blocking ring, stopping him from interacting with mana wouldn’t do much immediately. To be honest, this might be a process of observing Boris for a few weeks, rather than ‘treating’ him in a single day.

However, Professor Feliza was more than happy to start analyzing Boris’s condition on her own, now that Alice had given him the ring. Boris didn’t seem to be conscious enough to consent to Professor Feliza’s Perks, which caused her to waste a lot of extra mana while she threw Perks and tendrils of Organic Mana at him, but she seemed more than happy to do everything in her power to see what she could learn about Boris. Immortal Ethan seemed more interested in observing Professor Feliza right now, so Alice started to think about what came next.

If her earlier speculation was correct, than the right way to treat Boris was to make his Class Seed absorb mana faster. But she had no idea how to do that. She didn’t even know why Boris’s Class Seed had barely done anything up until now, and had suddenly started working at a snail’s pace sometime during the last week. She frowned.

Meanwhile, Ethan turned towards her.

“I can see that you spent a while thinking about the ring, as well as Boris’s condition. While Professor Feliza is the one officially overseeing your actions here, do you care to explain what you’re thinking about? It might help me understand what’s happening here, and perhaps think of better ways to help cure this child. I can see that he’s in some sort of… strange stupor. One that he does not seem capable of coming out of.”

Professor Feliza nodded. “I’m also quite curious, Lady Alice. Do you have any current ideas for follow-up treatment? I am fine with checking in on Boris multiple times over the next few months, and I’ve gotten a fair amount of initial information to compare future treatments with. But I want to know if you have any follow up goals.”

Alice frowned. “Right now, I have some ideas, but I’m not sure how to go about making them a reality. Well… hmm… First of all, you can see how much mana is built up in his body, right?”

Professor Feliza nodded.

“I suspect that the best way to treat Boris is to decrease the mana in his body somehow.” Or, more accurately, get his class seed to do its job. “But I don’t know how to do that, especially without possibly harming him,” said Alice.

Professor Feliza frowned. “I have to admit, that’s not something I have familiarity with. I have no idea how you would even start a treatment to drain mana from a patient’s body without harming them. Perhaps using a pure mana seed? Hmm… but the mana would be bonded to his body, meaning you would also need organic magic, and probably a few specific Perks if you want to avoid breaking something… hmm…” both Professor Feliza and Immortal Ethan frowned.

Immortal Ethan seemed even more baffled than Professor Feliza.

“This is… truly a rather odd case,” he said. “I admit, if you want to remove the mana from someone’s body without harming them, I’m not sure... Actually…Hmm. Let me ask a few people I know. Someone else might have a way to drain mana without harming someone.”

Alice nodded. “It would be good to have that information on hand, for possible future treatment, but right now Boris’s body seems to be flushing the mana out of his body on its own. I’m not exactly sure why it suddenly started doing so over the past week, since I can assure you this wasn’t happening before, but his body has started to fix its excessive mana problem. I want to talk to Natasha again, and then I want to observe Boris for a few more weeks to see if his condition starts improving. If the amount of mana in his body keeps decreasing, and Boris gets better all of a sudden, I will at least know that my earlier hypothesis was correct. We might be able to use this as a basis for treating other children with Boris’s problem, if we can find them before the Society does.”

Professor Feliza and Immortal Ethan nodded. It seemed that both of them were content to let Alice take the lead right now.

And so, the three of them headed back towards Natasha to see what had changed in the past week.

However, when they questioned Natasha, the woman claimed that nothing at all had happened. Boris had sat in his room, ignoring his surroundings, and hadn’t moved very much in the past week. Natasha was still feeding him and helping him do basic day to day stuff, since Boris had become nearly comatose, and she had no idea what could have been different in the past week.

Alice was left frustrated, wondering how Boris’s class could be encouraged to work faster, and wondering why his Class Seed had suddenly just… started working, when it clearly hadn’t been doing much up until now. If she could figure out why Boris’s Class seed had started working, she would have a viable treatment, not just for Boris, but for any other children with the same problem.

The three spent a few hours slowly going back over the past week, according to Natasha’s memories, as they tried to figure out what had changed. However, there was nothing at all.

Alice was left frustrated when she realized that the most important puzzle piece behind Class Seeds was still missing. She returned to Metsel in a very strange mood, as she tried to figure out whether she was happy that she had new clues and Boris seemed to get better, or sad that she was still missing important pieces of information on how everything fit together. At the very least, she got a few levels out of the ordeal.

You have leveled up!

Explorer of Magic: 66 -> 68, Scholar: 51 -> 53, Scientist 52 -> 53