Alice uneasily glanced around, trying to pick out any potential threats. There was probably nobody else in Illvaria who had quite the same quantity of Perks and Achievements enhancing her vision and ability to perceive mana, and she fully intended to make use of that. If the Society, in particular, had attacked this village and spirited away the villagers, Alice should be able to find signs of it.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t make out a thing. Part of the issue was because the region was simply incredibly chaotic already. There was so much dimensional mana in the area that it was flooding out a lot of her mana-related vision. Coupled with the ever-present rainbow color of the System mana in her surroundings, trying to pick out any nearby oddities in the mana was difficult. However, Alice didn’t give up, continuously looking around and hoping she could pull out a miracle to tell people where the villagers had gone.

In the background, she heard a few of the [Guards] shuffle around as they scanned the area. However, apart from occasional twitching sound of a spidercrab shuffling around (or getting shot by a [Guard]), there were no other signs that people were still nearby. Even though the villagers had clearly evacuated their village and started trying to get people separated and treated, there was no indicator that they were still here. And there was no sign of whatever had moved them away, either.

Alice felt her uneasiness grow with every passing moment.

Where were the villagers? This had been one of the few times Alice would be able to try to improve the process of a mana baptism without wondering whether she should turn herself over to the ethics committee for a serious investigation.

And now, the whole village was just gone. There were no villagers to treat, no monsters to fight, and no Society members to interrogate. It was like the village was a ghost town.

“Where is everyone? And what in the world is that strange metal… thing?” said Elder Sujia, drawing Alice’s attention out of her thoughts. “Do you think the strange metal object in the middle of the village had something to do with the disappearance of the villagers?”

Alice felt a sudden, incredibly inappropriate urge to laugh. She was almost completely certain that the ‘strange metal thing’ was a car that had just experienced a pretty bad crash. For Elder Sujia to question whether it had somehow been involved in the disappearance of the villagers simply felt absurd. It wasn’t enough to completely alleviate the tension, but Alice felt her increasing anxiety and nervousness start to bleed away as she pondered how to explain that cars weren’t able to make villagers mysteriously disappear.

Ethan eyed the car wreck with a critical eye as well. He frowned, looking at it, before his eyes widened. He turned back towards Alice. “Lady Alice, please come here for a moment.”

Alice quickly shuffled over to Ethan’s position. A moment later, a rainbow bubble flickered into existence around Ethan, as Ethan’s anti-eavesdropping Perk was activated. They could now talk without being overheard by others.

“I’m not sure if I’m mistaken, but… doesn’t that metal thing look kind of like one of the metal carriages from your home world? The ones that can move by themselves? I believe they were called cars? This one looks quite different, of course, since all of the ones you showed me in your memories were intact. But the resemblance is still very strong, even if I’m not 100% sure they’re the same.”

Alice nodded. “It’s almost certainly a car from my home dimension. Cars usually look like this if they collide with something while moving. In fact, the people who make them have explicitly designed them to crumple like this on a high speed impact. It reduces the force of the impact as much as possible for the passengers, thus giving any unfortunate drivers as high a chance of surviving as possible.” Alice gave the random chunk of street that had teleported into the middle of the village a dubious glance. “At home, our streets look like this as well. So whatever brought this car over likely dragged over a chunk of random street, too.” Alice squinted at the car and random chunk of road, but they were too far away for her to make out any details beyond the basics. “I can’t tell if the driver of the car was brought over, though. And I can’t tell what it collided with, either. It doesn’t look like it hit any of the nearby buildings, so I assume it collided with something before getting teleported to Luliv. But whatever the car collided with doesn’t appear to have been teleported over with the car, which leaves me more than slightly confused. I have no idea what teleported over here and what was left on Earth.”

Alice looked over the dimensional flood site again, before frowning.

“Actually, now that I think about it, it’s also quite possible that the villagers were teleported to Earth. I have no idea how dimensional floods work, but it seems like a distinct possibility that they work both ways. I just don’t know enough to say.”

Ethan thought for a moment, before he nodded. “That’s a good point, and one I hadn’t considered before. I’ve never really delved into the study of dimensions, so I wouldn’t really know where to look for information on this topic.” Ethan sighed. “The restrictions placed on the study of dimensions really makes this situation quite frustrating to handle. If only we had a few experts in dimensional mana in the country that I could ask for opinions…”

Ethan squinted at the car, examining it even more carefully as he seemed to search for clues. “At the very least, we know that the car is from your world, though?”

“It’s almost certainly from my home world, yes. Unless the Society has managed to reverse-engineer the machinery from my home world in the last month or two.” Alice paused. “Which, is technically possible, especially since Perks can sometimes accomplish pretty ridiculous things. But I find it pretty unlikely.”

“Do you have any guesses or ideas that might help us figure out if the villagers here have been teleported to Earth sometime after they reported the dimensional flood here? I know that you still don’t have a permit for forming a dimensional seed, and you haven’t really had much chance to study it, but since you’re from another dimension, you’re still one of the leading experts on dimensional mana right now. Sadly.”

Alice shook her head. “I’m not seeing any direct evidence of the village being teleported to my home, at least. But I wouldn’t know what to look for either. Hmm…” Alice trailed off into thought, giving the village another careful look.

“I can think of two possibilities for why this village is empty. First, right after some chunk of my home planet was dropped into this world, all of the people here were teleported back home, dumping them on Earth, as I already mentioned before. I’m not seeing any evidence that it happened, but I also don’t know where I would look for evidence. So it might have happened.

“The other likely option is that the Society has come. I find that option more likely, just because we already know the Society is interested in dimensional floods, and is investigating them even though it is explicitly harming their organization as a whole. Although I’d like to think that they wouldn’t be able to attack a village in broad daylight and spirit away the inhabitants… the Society has proven rather abnormally strong before. It’s hard to guess what those lunatics are up to.”

Ethan nodded thoughtfully.

“Your thoughts mostly match mine. Though, now that you’ve brought up the possibility of the people teleporting from this world back to Earth, I realized that there is another possibility I failed to originally consider. It is rather unlikely, but it would be silly not to consider every possibility until we get more information. Perhaps a monster that we’re unfamiliar with attacked this area and ate all of the villagers before fleeing. Of course, an incredibly powerful monster that had left the mana wastes would basically instantly be on the verge of dying due to mana deprivation. Which would send the monster onto a desperate rampage as it tore through the countryside and tried to gather enough mana to keep itself alive, meaning it would destroy dozens of villages before being put down or dying of mana deprivation. While incredibly rare, it has happened twice in the past three hundred years.” Ethan shrugged. “So it’s probably not the cause here, but we can still at least think about it. If it’s some sort of unknown monster specialized in dimensional magic it could still be behind the incident, even if it’s unlikely to be the cause.” Ethan sighed. “Are you sure you don’t have any ideas for testing whether this area was teleported to Earth?”

“Unfortunately, I really don’t know where to start. I still don’t have a dimensional seed, after all.”

Ethan sighed again, before nodding. “I suppose I should have seen that coming. On the bright side, now that this has happened I should be able to finally get your request for a dimensional seed permit through. If random dimensional fissures are going to kill random chunks of the country and teleport who-knows what into our world, I seriously doubt that dimensional study restrictions will still be incredibly restrictive and stringent in a week or two. I can probably push through your application even faster than I originally expected to in the wake of this incident. But that doesn’t help us now.”

Alice felt a twinge of regret at that thought. The Illvarian bureaucracy, much like bureaucracies at home, was adept at dragging its feet when the occasion arose, and she still didn’t have a license to form a dimensional seed. At the very least, it seemed that her struggles with dimensional seed formation would finally be over after this. But the price of her finally getting permission to study dimensional magic simply felt far too high, if an entire village had disappeared into thin air first.

She took a moment to roll the thought around in her head, before she banished it, and tried to cheer herself up by thinking that she might be able to go home someday, now that she could finally start researching dimensional mana. And the people in the village might still be fine. Even if she seriously doubted it, she could be wrong.

And if she managed to get home, she would truly have a huge variety of benefits she could take with her. Based on what Alice knew about living in areas with no mana, she would be seriously weakened if she lost access to the mana of this world; but all of her Perks should still work if she returned home, and she strongly suspected that she would retain her Immortality if she managed to become an Immortal before returning. She would need to be extra careful about polluting the environment with broken mana if she returned back to Earth, but Alice found herself briefly imagining returning home to see her parents and friends again. Or better yet, perhaps there would be some way to continuously hop back and forth, never fully abandoning either world as she spent some time with her parents and friends. And she would also get to stay in touch with Cecilia, Ethan, and her classmates from her magic academy. She wasn’t sure if that would actually be possible, but it was a nice dream, at least.

Then Alice shook her head. Now wasn’t the time to be fantasizing about the future. Right now they needed to figure out where the villagers had gone, and rescue them if possible.

“Since I have no way to check if these people were teleported to my world, or whether the Society just managed to make it look like the villagers disappeared into thin air, we probably need [Guards] or someone with scouting Perks to check the area. If they find tracks of the Society, or evidence they were here, we can assume the people here were kidnapped by the Society and brought to one of their bases. On the other hand, if there are no tracks or clues, we hope that they got teleported to my world and they’re safe?” Alice shrugged. “It’s my best idea anyway.”

Ethan nodded. “If they teleported to your world, it’s the best we can do. I know of no way to cross from one world to another.” He frowned, as if deep in thought. “If they did enter your world, would they be safe?”

Alice thought for a moment. “Probably? Actually…” Alice paled. “The diseases they brought with them might wipe out my world. That’s a terrifying thought. When the Europeans landed on the new world, small pox wiped out most of the native people who lived there. I have no clue what the heck has developed on this world, since I’m basically immune to disease now, but I seriously doubt my planet is equipped to deal with it. Maybe the diseases of this world die without enough mana? Kind of like monsters?” Alice shuddered. If this world’s diseases didn’t work that way, Alice really hoped that the people of this world hadn’t managed to accidentally arrive on Earth. The consequences for her home world might be catastrophic if that happened.

Alice closed her eyes and breathed in and out, trying to shake off the image of a horrifying, magically enhanced plague ravaging her home world and causing her friends and family to die horrific deaths as their eyes bled and mage cores failed to form inside of their bodies, or some other equally deadly outcome. The doctors of Earth certainly weren’t equipped to handle magically-enhanced diseases, and Alice desperately hoped they wouldn’t have to try. If Alice ever returned home, she would need to find a way to address any diseases she might bring over from Luliv. Perhaps there was something she could do with organic mana?

Meanwhile, Ethan had begun barking orders at the [Guards], particularly the three who actually had scouting Perks. It seemed that the rest of the group didn’t have any Perks that would be in any way helpful for tracking down the missing villagers, and so they were left to essentially twiddle their thumbs and keep Alice safe. Theoretically, they were also there to keep Ethan safe, but if push came to shove Alice seriously doubted they would be protecting Ethan if something went wrong.

The three [Guards] quickly broke off from the rest of the group, accompanied by a few more combat oriented [Guards], and began searching the surrounding area. Alice noticed rainbow Perks start to fly around as [Guards] with a few tracking Perks used whatever Perks they had available to them, and tried to find the missing villagers.

It took less than three hours for the [Guards] to throw up their hands in defeat. Apparently, they had no way to track down the missing villagers at all. Their Perks were too low level, or whatever had spirited the villagers away was simply too different from what their Perks were able to track down. Or they had been teleported to Earth, leaving nothing for the [Guards] to track. Alice was beginning to lean towards the final possibility, just because the sheer variety of Perks the [Guards] used made it seem like they would have found something if the Society had dragged the village away. On the other hand, it was also hard to guess what Perks the Society might have had access to if their higher-level members had participated in an attack against the villagers. The problem was that the group simply lacked too much information, and nobody here had the right skill set to find out more.

“Can I take a closer look at the wrecked car?” She asked Ethan, after a few moments. Alice was getting frustrated by the fact that she didn’t know much about what had happened here, and if she went to inspect the car, she could at least find out something. She wanted to do something useful with her time.

“Sure. If you’re lucky, maybe you can find a friend from home to chat with,” said Ethan, giving her a forced grin.

Alice knew the odds of that were incredibly low. As far as either of them could tell, the village was deserted, and there were no traces of any other would-be {Outworlders}. However, even if the odds were bordering on nonexistent, the idea that maybe someone from home had arrived, and was just… somehow hiding in the area did lift her spirits a little bit. If Alice could actually have someone from home to speak with, somebody who understood her difficulties in adapting to this world…

Alice would be willing to pay almost anything for that. Having someone from home to speak with would be downright heavenly for her. She doubted it would ever happen, but it would be almost as good as being able to actually go home and see her parents again.

Alice sighed, and began making her way towards the village itself. A few of the [Guards] with broken mana resistance Perks began following her, standing just a few meters behind her so that they didn’t intrude on her footsteps, but remained close enough to defend her in case of a surprise attack.

It only took her a few minutes of walking to reach the chunk of Earth-street and the ruined car. Alice took a few more moments to inspect the car itself.

Alice had never been a car person, so she didn’t know much about car makes, and models, and whatnot. However, she was at least able to recognize that the car had, at one point, been from Earth, and looked like one of the cars she would have frequently passed by on the street. It had a black paint job.

There was also a great deal of blood on the inside of the car. Alice took that to mean that the driver had probably suffered serious injuries, although she wasn’t sure whether this happened before they got teleported to this dimension, or afterwards.

The front of the car had been seriously compressed after it had crashed into something, but Alice could, just barely, access the glove compartment. She managed to get it open with some kinetic magic, and then floated the contents out of the compartment to look them over.

Inside, she found a packet of tissues, a screwdriver, and a pair of gloves. Alice had no clue why the owner of the vehicle had felt the need to carry a screwdriver in their car.

The gloves were bright pink, which made Alice suspect that the car belonged to a girl. While some guys wore bright pink clothes, they tended to be in the minority. However, there were no other signs of the car owner in the front of the car. The back seat of the car proved rather empty.

The trunk of the car, however, proved a bit more interesting. Inside of it, Alice found a load of fresh groceries from earth. There were potatoes, carrots, garlic, and a few other vegetables that Alice could easily find on Luliv. However, there were also a few other snacks that Alice hadn’t seen in ages. Chips, cookies, and most interesting of all, a tub of partially melted ice cream, which Alice took a curious look at.

For the first time in ages, Alice activated {Foraging}, out of morbid curiosity to see if it was still edible. Interestingly enough, it was safe to eat. Alice suspected any potential bacteria or germs had been killed off after being exposed to mana, and nothing from this world had managed to get into the ice cream… yet.

Alice requisitioned all of the groceries as ‘investigation materials,’ and then started inspecting the crash site.

She carefully started inspecting the crash site, wishing that she had the Perks to tell her what had happened here. Sadly, she was clueless. As best she could guess from the groceries in the back of the car, the driver had been going home after buying some groceries, crashed into something, and then their car had been teleported to Luliv. Alice had no idea if the driver had ever been teleported to this world, or if they had been teleported to Luliv and then teleported back to Earth, or what. Once again, she ran into a brick wall and just didn’t know enough to make any inferences or learn more.

A few minutes later, she returned to Ethan’s side, carrying her bag of groceries from Earth.

“You have a thermal seed, right?” Asked Alice.

Ethan turned to her, confused. “Yes. Why?”

“Freeze this, please,” said Alice, holding out the tub of ice cream. She hadn’t eaten ice cream in a year, and while she didn’t want to disrupt proceedings, since she wasn’t going to be learning more anytime soon, she might as well preserve the… evidence for later. She felt a little guilty about stealing ice cream from someone who had gotten in a car crash and had unknown whereabouts, but there also wasn’t much she could do about it. And Alice hadn’t eaten ice cream in almost a year.

Ethan gave the tub of ice cream a dubious glance, but still obliged her, drastically lowering the temperature of the frozen treat.

Alice stuck it in her storage Perk, to deal with later. After that, Alice and Ethan sat by the edge of the village, twiddling their thumbs while the [Guards] with scouting Perks investigated their surroundings. Eventually, the first one returned.

“We can’t find any traces of the Society, honored Immortal,” said the [Guard.] “Whatever happened here, we’re either not high enough level to track down the culprits, or something else happened to them.”

Ethan sighed in resignation, before he nodded. “Get a couple of the [Guards] with movement speed Perks or Perks to boost their horses, and then get them to ride to Metsel and bring me some better [Scouts] or [Guards] with investigation Perks. The rest of us will set up camp here, to prevent any potential interference with the investigation,” he said. Then, he turned towards Alice. “In the meantime, since we aren’t going to be able to learn much from this dimensional broken mana, help me start cleaning this area up. We should make sure the [Scouts] and [Guards] with investigation and tracking Perks can move around without going through a baptism. After that, we’ll need to set up in this area and wait for new helpers to arrive.”

Alice winced. It looked like she would be camping in the wilderness for a while.