Alice knocked on the door to Ethan’s study, trying to quell the thrill of nervousness that ran down her spine as she thought about revealing her status as an {Outworlder}. However, since she had made up her mind, she would follow her intentions through.

“Yes?” asked Ethan. “You can come in.”

Alice opened to the door to Ethan’s study and walked in. As usual, there was a small mountain of paperwork in front of Ethan, as well as a few letters laying in front of him. Ethan gave Alice a nod, then gestured for her to wait a moment he finished scanning a letter in front of him. Several seconds later, he folded the piece of paper and placed it in the corner of his desk, before he turned back towards her and gave her a friendly grin.

“It’s rare to see you come to my study. Is there something you wanted to discuss?”

“I’ve decided that I want to speak with you about something,” said Alice, pushing aside her hesitation.

“Oh?” Ethan raised an eyebrow.

Alice took a deep breath, feeling her nerves and anxiety reach a peak, before she let out her breath.

“I’m not from Luliv. I was born on a planet called Earth, and I was dumped here while I was asleep. I think it might be related to the dimensional floods the Society of Starry Eyes has been recording recently, though I’m not 100% sure that’s the case.”

Immortal Ethan paused, his eyes widening in surprise, before he took a closer look at Alice and frowned.

“Is that so? I… ah, so that’s what it was. I knew there were a lot of weird parts about your past, so I was trying to figure out what was wrong.” Ethan chuckled. “I was originally hung up on the fact that none of my agents could find a trace of you before you showed up in Cyra last year. And Illa was quite reluctant to say anything, although she did say your past wasn’t harmful to the country or myself. I thought perhaps you had grown up in the wilderness or something, which would also explain why you seemed to have no past, but your Classes and Perks are just not built for wilderness survival.” Ethan thoughtfully nodded. “I guess this information does finally resolve all of my questions.” Then, Ethan suddenly towards Alice, and then frowned at her. “It’s good that you waited a while to tell me this, but shouldn’t you have waited longer to verify my intentions and what kind of person I am? It would be very difficult for me to discover the truth about your past without your help, and logically speaking, I’m someone who could pose a threat to you,” said Ethan, his frown beginning to deepen.

“If you decided to just take a huge risk without verifying more information about me as a person, I’ll be angry. I’m a Mage with a permit to study dimensional magic, and I have a much higher social position than you do. If I sent you on a ‘training mission’ for a while, people probably wouldn’t question it. I have no intention of doing so, but you had no way of knowing that beforehand, and I’m probably the person best situation in all of Illvaria to make you disappear. Why did you tell me information that might put you in danger?”

Alice felt more than a little amused by the thought of Ethan being upset that she had shared more information with him. However, in light of Illa’s discussion about Immortal loneliness, a lot of Ethan’s actions made more sense. He wasn’t just thinking about doing the ‘bare minimum’ to get Alice to Immortality, or to create an asset to Illvaria. Instead, he seemed to be trying to ensure that Alice would survive as long as humanly possible even after she became an Immortal; in other words, while a lot of his words seemed to reprimand her, he was also lecturing her on ways to help her survive in the long term.

“I didn’t share this information on a whim,” said Alice, wondering if she should discuss how much information she received from Illa via letter. After a few moments, she decided that Immortal Ethan probably wouldn’t be angry that Alice had asked for information about him, and would probably approve of her actions.

“I first asked Illa what her impression of you was. I thought that she would understand what I wanted to know from that question, since she’s aware of my… situation.” Out of the corner of her eye, Alice saw Ethan’s eye start twitching for a few moments. She pretended not to see it. “After I got information from Illa regarding you, I decided that telling you about my history as an {Outworlder} would increase my safety, since you’re more likely to help me than harm me, based on the information currently available to me. Besides, the Society is in a good place to put together how weird my past is, once they gather enough information, and while I don’t think they know, it’s entirely possible they’ll figure it out in the future. Since that’s true, informing you in advance is one of the better ways to improve my safety and help prepare against a possible fight with the Society. The longer I can put it off, the safer I’ll be.”

Ethan’s frown slowly eased, before he gave Alice a more curious look.

“I’m glad you at least put a reasonable amount of thought and assessment into it first. Hmm… Another world, huh…” Ethan drifted off as he looked more closely at Alice. “What was your home world like?” Unlike before, he no longer sounded critical of Alice’s choices. He just seemed curious.

Alice frowned for a moment, before she shrugged. She didn’t mind talking about Earth. She wasn’t used to talking about it with people besides Cecilia, and Illa when she had lived in Cyra, but it wasn’t a terrible idea to talk about home.

“The world I lived in was one where there was no such thing as mana or magic. There was also no such thing as the System.” Ethan’s eyes widened in shock as Alice spoke. “Instead, there was an awful lot of… You know, I’m not quite sure how to describe what a machine is,” said Alice. When she tried to use her Illvarian Language skill to translate it, the result she got was ‘extraordinary metal contraption enchantment which is not an enchantment,’ which was… hard to explain. Thus, Alice ended up using the English word for ‘machine’ instead.

“Sorry, back up a moment, there was no System at home?” Said Ethan, staring at her.

“Yeah. Why?”

“So you got to this point in less than a year?” Said Ethan, his voice climbing at least an octave.

“Yeah. I got a small bonus to levelling speed from {Outworlder}, but I also have a pretty weird perspective on how mana and biology should work, and I’ve gotten a lot of Achievements and stuff from trying to figure out how much of my original worldview is correct and how much of it is wrong. I also have a pretty good work ethic…”

Ethan’s eyes widened in surprised for a few more moments, before he cleared his throat, and his facial muscles relaxed. His voice returned to its regular volume.

“I’m sorry. Continue. What is a machine?” he said, as if he was trying to change the subject. Alice continued with her original explanation.

“It’s kind of like an enchantment, but made out of metal, and without any magic involved… I guess?” Alice frowned. There was a reason her language skill had given her a garbled mess. Explaining machinery was hard to a world reliant on Magic and Perks. When she had spoken with Illa, she had mostly talked about political and economic systems that existed within her former country, as well as what she knew of other countries. She hadn’t gotten into the specific, day to day mundanities of life on Earth, and so she hadn’t really figured out how to broach the topic of machines, either. She had spoken with Cecilia about their existence, but by this point Cecilia knew enough about Earth that Alice didn’t really need to work hard to introduce concepts from home to her. Especially due to Alice’s use of her {Shared Memory} Perk, Alice had been able to directly show Cecilia snippets of her memories of Earth.

“An enchantment made of metal, but without mana?” Ethan looked completely baffled as he stared at Alice. Even {Rhetorical Flourish} couldn’t save her when she was having such a hard time explaining an idea in Illvarian.

“Umm… All right, so in my world, there was no magic or mana, right?”

“I understand so far. I would have found the idea of life without any mana to be totally impossible a few weeks ago, but after my experience in the manaless room, I have a better idea how that might work. In fact, now that I think about it, the whole reason you suspected that mana wasn’t necessary for life was probably because there was no mana on your former world, yes? Given your background, it’s a really easy experiment to think of once you start familiarizing yourself with the scholarly studies of this world. But anyway, your former world had no magic.”

“Well, since we had no magic, we also had no enchantments, right?”

“Right, right. Hmm… since I suppose you had no access to the System, you didn’t even have System Enchantments, yes?”

Alice nodded. “No magic or enchantments at all.”

Ethan frowned, as if suddenly realizing something.

“If you had no Mages or access to Perks, How did you deal with monst-ah. No mana. I’ve just gotten used to the idea of mana deprivation not being lethal, but monsters still die without mana. And since there was no mana, there were no monsters to deal with either. But if you don’t have access to the System, you can’t get stronger either. If you don’t have the ability to Level up, or increase your Stats, how do you improve? Was everyone on your former planet just… really weak?”

Alice felt her eye twitch this time.

“Yes. Everyone on my former planet was really weak. That’s not the point here. The point is that we had no mana and no magic, but that doesn’t mean we had no way to create interesting or powerful objects. Since we had no mana, we instead used very, very clever bits of machinery, chemical reactions, and so on to create our own version of enchanted items. They took a long time to develop, and needed lots of trial and error before they were made, but the people of my home planet eventually made a lot of unique and interesting objects, even without Magic. And they’re much easier to mass-produce, since we don’t need specific Perks or Mages to make everything.”

Ethan looked thoughtful. “Like what? If you don’t have mana, what can you create that resembles an enchantment?”

“Do you want to see? I have {Shared Memory}, so I can just directly share images and memories of my home with you, if you’re interested. I’m not sure how to even start explaining how some of the things from home worked, and showing you would be much easier.”

Ethan thought for a moment, before he nodded. “You can show me.”

Alice reached out a hand, before she made contact with Ethan’s arm. After that, she used {Shared Memory}, before she decided to show Ethan an image of a car. It was easy to use as a comparison point, since horses and carriages were everywhere on this planet, and so Ethan should be able to quickly figure out what it was and what its purpose was.

As Alice showed Ethan images of cars, she also replayed a few of her own memories of riding around in a car, as well as the speeds a car could reach on a highway. Embedded within the memory were chunks of other information; such as the highway network Alice’s previous world had constructed to service cars, and the size cities could reach in her previous life.

At the end of Alice’s introductory memory montage on the nature of cars, Ethan quietly removed his arm, before nodding thoughtfully.

“Interesting. I’ve never seen anything like these… cars, were they called? Your memories didn’t include much talking, but I think I heard that term thrown around a few times.”

Alice was rather surprised for a moment, because Ethan hadn’t spoken in Illvarian when he used the term ‘car.’ He had spoken in English. It was a language Alice didn’t really hear spoken in this world, and it felt like it had been years since she last spoke in her native language. She had gotten used to speaking Illvarian, but hearing someone talk in English felt strangely nostalgic.

Heedless of Alice’s sudden nostalgia, Ethan continued speaking, a mixture of wonder and curiosity evident on his face.

“I’m quite surprised. Despite having no access to magic or Perks, cars do seem quite a bit better than horses or a carriage, unless they’re boosted by several Perks. I mean, if an Immortal threw a bunch of Perks together to boost the speed of a horse, they could still outrun a car quite easily. However, the majority of the country simply doesn’t have access to that level of Perk. Even if cars are inferior to the upper limit a Perk can reach, your memories don’t make it seem like cars are rare. If every single person in Illvaria used cars, instead of horses or their feet, I imagine news and goods would flow much more quickly around the country. Fascinating.” Immortal Ethan nodded. “So are cars the ‘machines’ you were referring to?”

“It’s an example of a machine that we created at home, yes. There are a lot more machines than just cars, but most of them are harder to describe. My homeland focused a lot on making these sorts of metal contraptions, in order to compensate for all of the things we lacked since we didn’t have access to Perks and Enchantments. In the process, our machines reached a point where they probably match someone with Perks at level 80 or 90. Though, admittedly, that also varies a lot from one category of machine to another. While we had machines that helped us with medicine at home, for example, there’s no way we could just help someone regrow a limb in a few minutes back on Earth. I would say the medical treatments of this world are probably superior to those on Earth, even though this world’s understanding of what’s actually happening at a microscopic level is much worse,” said Alice. When she had first arrived in this world, she had thought the treatments of this world were only on par with Earth’s, but after seeing people routinely regrow limbs and instantly heal lethal injuries, she had been forced to revise her opinion. “It’s actually pretty interesting to see how some things are much worse here on Luliv, but there are also some categories of technology and medicine that are oddly superior. But cars are the kind of thing I would see all the time at home.”

Ethan nodded thoughtfully, before his eyes darted back towards the mountain of paperwork on his desk. “Since you appear to have put a decent amount of thought into whether or not to tell me about your status as an {Outworlder}, and even went as far as contacting Illa and verifying information about me beforehand, I’ll acknowledge the planning and thought that went into this. Thank you for being willing to share this information. I will also tell you that if the Society learns of this, they will probably hound you to the ends of the planet, so I very highly recommend you not tell anyone else, no matter what.” Alice thought guiltily of Cecilia, before deciding not to mention it. She trusted Cecilia not to reveal her status as an {Outworlder}, and she wanted to continue trusting her friends. “I’ll do my best to help create a ‘fake past’ for you as well. Something a little obscure, so it would make sense that it didn’t come to light, but something that can be found after a little bit of digging. Hmm… perhaps you could be an escaped Sigmusi slave? It would be a little difficult to interfere with any records the Sigmusi have, since relations between Illvaria and the Sigmusi are practically only a step away from war, but I can probably slip a [Spy] or two over the border to meddle with some documents. If it’s obscure enough, it might work as a method of covering up your past for a while longer… If you worked to learn Sigmusi, it might help as well. Up to you, though, since this ruse will also fall apart sooner or later. It’s just a question of buying time.” Ethan trailed off for a moment, before nodding to himself. He turned towards Alice. “Rest assured that I will do my best to keep you safe for as long as you remain my apprentice, and I will take appropriate steps to deal with this information. But also keep in mind that the Society will probably come for you sooner or later. Before that happens, you should strive to level up and grow stronger as quickly as possible, or your future might be very bleak.”

Alice nodded. She had always been aware of the looming threat of the Society; otherwise, she wouldn’t work so hard to grow. Ethan’s eyes darted towards his pile of paperwork once more, and Alice took that as a cue she should leave. She gave Immortal Ethan a respectful nod, and after a few parting words, she left Ethan’s study.

* * *

The next day was Saturday, which meant that it was board game day. As usual, Alice went to Cecilia’s workshop, where Cecilia was already setting up a table in one of the rooms and pulling over chairs. Since everyone had gotten tired of the previous board game Alice had recently made another popular board game from home, this one titled ‘Terraforming the Western Continent.’ The original board game was based on terraforming and colonizing Mars, but since Alice figured it probably wouldn’t make much sense to the people of this planet, she had made a few changes to the game to make sure everything made more sense to the inhabitants of Luliv. Instead of terraforming a planet, for example, Alice found the best map of the Western Continent she could find (it was very, very dubious), filled in the blanks with geography she thought probably made sense, and then made the game instead focused on colonizing the Western Continent. Some game mechanics also got slightly changed or reworked, as well. For example, instead of raising Oxygen levels, players of the game worked to lower monster population in the area, and instead of managing the temperature of the planet, people instead worked to manage the mana level of the area by using enchantments that lowered or raised the quantity of mana and broken mana in the region. It wasn’t exactly a perfect rendition of the original game, but Alice felt it worked well enough, and the gameplay made much more sense to the inhabitants of this world, according to Cecilia. Which was what mattered to her.

Like every other morning Alice ran a board game group, it didn’t take long for a few other people to show up. Ezrien’s team of researchers sometimes came to board game day, and sometimes they didn’t, and this week it seemed like they weren’t planning to show up. Erkki, Arsi, and Laila came, while Luka was apparently dealing with some sort of party his noble family wanted him to host. Alice figured nobody else was coming, and so she started explaining the rules of the new game, as well as the general background of it. However, partway through her explanation, there was another knock at the door of Cecilia’s workshop.

“I got it,” said Cecilia, frowning. These days, Cecilia was doing well enough financially that she closed the store on Saturday mornings so that she could enjoy herself playing board games with everyone else. However, sometimes customers ignored the ‘closed’ sign and request new enchantments anyway. Alice shrugged, and resumed her explanation of the new board game, before she heard something crash into the ground a few moments later.

Wondering if the Society had come for her, Alice prepared for a fight as she opened the door, only to be surprised in a different way.

Cecilia had knocked over a small crate of enchanting supplies. And standing at the door was Immortal Ethan, who gave Alice and Cecilia curious glances.

“Excuse me, but I heard my apprentice runs something called a ‘board game night’ every Saturday here? Despite this clearly not being night? Do you have an extra seat?” Asked Ethan.