After Ethan finished healing Alice and the other mages, Alice took a few moments to filter through her accumulated class mana. She hadn’t been as diligent about doing that recently, because the sights and knowledge within the System were distracting and of critical importance to her. However, Alice still realized that more levels would always be a way to solidify and strengthen herself in case she met danger.
Before she dealt with her own mana, though, she first dealt with the unfiltered class mana of the other members of the group, to make sure everyone was in top shape for whatever future challenges they encountered. A few of the accompanying Mages actually hit another Perk or two, which was nice, and Cecilia reached level 75 as an [Enchanter]. Interestingly enough, Cecilia noted that she hadn’t been very close to level 75 before this - and while some of that could be attributed to a few new Achievements Cecilia had gotten, that wasn’t the whole story. It only took Alice a few minutes to realize that Cecilia wasn’t just benefitting from her new Achievements. Cecilia was also studying the personal diary of someone who had created the most complex and important enchantments in the world, and it contained information about how and why they had created it.
Of course it would give the reader levels in [Enchanter]. Alice was glad that she had left the journal for Cecilia - it had given Cecilia access to a few new Achievements, and a proper chance to keep boosting her level. Alice was already pretty sure she would hit Immortality on her own, as long as she resolved whatever lingering issues were caused by the System not being around to help her take that final step. Therefore, Cecilia boosting her primary Class made her odds of reaching Immortality far better than before.
After dealing with everyone else’s Class mana, Alice finally processed her own.
She hadn’t done that much during the actual fight this time - it had mostly been handled by the Immortals, due to the high danger level. After all, these weren’t like earlier combat experiences, where Ethan and the other Immortals had a comfortable margin of error they could use to let Alice and the others grow and improve. This had been a real, desperate life struggle where every Immortal had used several powerful Perks. There had been at least a moderate risk of death for the combatants in the fight. Still, her multiple days of studying the enchantments, combined with the fight, had still given her a couple levels.
Actually, Alice was surprised by how many pending levels she had, once she finally stopped to filter her Class mana. [Careful Enchanter] had probably gained a few levels from studying the inner workings of the System. [Scientist] and [Scholar] had probably progressed as a result of studying the System as well. [Reality Mage] was a bit harder to understand, since the Class was far more focused on belief mana than exploration of mana, meaning it was notably harder to level up. Alice wasn’t quite sure why that Class had gained a level. Perhaps it was due to her study of the System? Or her observations on how reality mana and dimensional mana interacted with each other? She had no idea.
The least surprising Class levels were the ones for [Survivor]. After all, Alice had just fought a monster that was far beyond people’s usual understanding and comprehension and survived. Even if she had barely participated in the battle, she had still survived a terrifying battle.
She was a bit more surprised to see not one, but two new Achievements appear as well.
Alice could only scratch her head in confusion at this Achievement. She had never set foot on the Western Continent, so why in the world had she gotten an Achievement for exploring the Western Continent?
Of course, knowing what she did about the inner workings of human belief, the System, and the western continent, Alice could put together the puzzle pieces quickly. People knew that the Western Continent was the last totally unexplored region of this world, and they also knew that the monsters there were on a totally different level compared to normal monsters. It wouldn’t surprise Alice at all if there were monsters on the Western Continent that had evolved beyond the monster alpha stage of evolution - in fact, it was probably the only place in the world where one could find such monsters naturally, at least excluding the System, where mana was also incredibly high. This belief was probably the reason why Alice had just gotten a reward for exploring the western continent, despite never having done so.
Of course, the rewards were all right, even after Alice realized that most of the rewards were useless for her. The 100% growth rate boost to all of her Classes wasn’t bad, and the 40% attribute boost when fighting a powerful monster was welcome. However, the rewards were obviously tailored towards people with [Explorer] related Classes. Murim would have probably danced with joy if he had received two extra Perks in his main Class. Sadly, Alice wasn’t even interested in acquiring an [Explorer] related Class seed - after she finished fixing the System, Alice was going to find a home and not leave for at least a decade. Adventuring was terrifying and dangerous, and after all of the chaos she had seen inside the depths of the System, she was starting to develop a healthy fear of leaving her house. After fixing the System, Alice wanted to adopt the Doll lifestyle for at least a few years.
That also put the danger of the Western continent in a completely new light. Fortunately, the Western Continent had little relevance for her task, so Alice could leave the horrors of the west to some other future [Explorer]. In any case, it wasn’t her problem.
The second Achievement Alice had received was a bit more odd, but clearly useful.
Even though the second Achievement only had one effect, Alice found that single effect to be quite exciting. This was a Perk that let her do something she had never seen before. As far as Alice knew, there wasn’t a way for humans to directly absorb mana from their environment and utilize it. The one and only way to restore mana was to wait for one’s magic seed to produce more from the entropy-breaking nonsense magic seeds were built from.
Now, an Achievement had created a way for her to steal mana from the System. Alice decided to give her new Achievement a try. She reached out her hand to the power line, which now had a very thin trickle of mana coming through it. She found that she could now actively use her magic tendrils like straws - not only could she push mana out of them, but she could also drag mana into them. She also realized that her ability to ‘steal’ mana from the System was far more limited than she had expected. The Achievement in the magic gem in her brain let her absorb a bit of mana for her own use, but it could only filter so much System mana into her chosen type of mana at a time before it got overloaded and forced her to stop.
Alice did some more testing and calculations, and confirmed that she could, at maximum, benefit from two magic tendrils devouring System mana at once. Three magic tendrils would be pointless, because she would take more mana than her Achievement could convert into her own mana.
The second thing Alice confirmed was that this System mana could be converted into any other kind of mana. By taking external mana and introducing it inside of her body, Alice would suffer from moderate amounts of pain and health risks if she didn’t convert it. Her Achievement could, in total, produce one Marium of mana every minute, if she spent two magic tendrils on slurping up System mana.
Alice decided this Achievement probably wasn’t very useful for combat. One Marium per minute would not be enough to impact most battles, because battles ended too fast for an extra couple Mariums to matter. However, it was great for refueling after a battle, or if the group got caught in an extended siege, when wave after wave of weaker monsters attacked them. However, the primary use of this Achievement was probably to keep her fueled during research and experiments. One marium of her chosen type of mana every minute would keep her topped up during lighter experiments, and would make it far easier for her to do more mana-intensive experiments. Of course, mana wasn’t the biggest limitation on her ability to learn and experiment, but it was certainly a constraint. Alice was still happy to remove a potential limitation on her growth speed and ability to learn more.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
After that, Alice turned her attention to her new Perks. She had three new Perks to choose - one [Scientist] Perk, one [Survivor], and one [Scholar].
Alice decided to focus on [Survivor] first. Since greater dangers might lurk within the depths of the System, Alice wanted to boost her fighting ability a bit more, and [Survivor] was the class with the highest direct relationship to combat strength.
The Class had offered her four new Perk options in total, as well as the potential for a few Perk fusions. Alice started by looking at the new Perks, to see if there was anything she didn’t want to pass up. The first first two were quite unimpressive - the first one was a raw stat boost to her physical stats, and Alice didn’t use her physical stats for combat. The second gave her a wide variety of useful boosts to her outdoors survival abilities - which Alice found largely irrelevant to her current lifestyle. The other two new Perks were much more interesting.
This Perk had immediate, obvious relevance to the potential dangers they might encounter deeper in the System. Alice had been thinking that they were likely to run into a more powerful monster in the future, and now she had found a Perk that would directly let her contribute more to a fight against a monster. This Perk sounded like it was a type of curse-esque ability that would only target monsters, while leaving her own allies unscathed. It would also allow Alice to outright demolish weaker waves of monsters, and slightly weaken even a fourth-evolution monster, if the perk worked the way she thought it did.
The Perk was very narrow, since it only worked against monsters, but that was the primary threat they were facing anyway, so Alice didn't think that was a bad thing. After this mess was over, she could always switch to another Perk if she didn’t like it, and she had big problems to deal with right now.
The other Perk was a bit more in line with her other abilities and needs.
This Perk was very much in line with the way Alice fought already. She currently had 13 magic tendrils, assuming she didn’t use {Burst of Multitasking} to give herself an extra boost. This Perk would boost that number to 23, which was exceptional, and would even boost her mana reserve for kinetic mana by a little bit. It was simple, valuable, and enhanced her strengths as a [Kinetic Mage] by a massive amount. It was a no-nonsense boost to what she could already do.
Alice thought about it for a moment, before she decided to take {Kinetic Combat} over [Monster Massacre] or any of her Perk fusion options. {Monster Massacre} was interesting, but it seemed like it might struggle to make itself useful in higher level fights. Depending on the travel speed of the anti-monster mana, stronger monsters might be able to dodge the wave of anti-monster mana. Alice didn’t want to pick a Perk that might not be useful in higher level fights.
By contrast, [Kinetic Combat] was more reliable. Alice might still struggle to make an impact on higher level fights, but she should at least be better equipped to handle the edges of a battlefield with this Perk, and keep herself safe from assassination. She was also interested in fusing a Perk, but ten more magic tendrils was just too good to pass up. Even fusing two Perks would struggle to match the sheer boost to combat strength that ten more magic tendrils and a small boost to her kinetic magic reserves would offer her. Of course, the fact that the magic tendrils would slowly disappear over the course of a fight was a notable weakness… but Alice had been in plenty of fights by now, and didn’t think this was a huge drawback. Many fights ended in less than a minute. Losing a magic tendril or two in that time wouldn’t greatly impact her combat strength. The downside of this Perk was manageable.
The next Class Alice focused on was [Scholar].
In this case, she started out by looking at the new Perks, to see if there was anything she wanted to prioritize grabbing over Perk combination. The first one was another boost to her reading speed - which Alice wasn’t that worried about at this point, considering how many other ways she had to boost her speed reading abilities. The second Perk was a bit more interesting, since it would give her a few more magic seed slots. However, since Alice already had {System’s Ambition}, she saw no reason to take a Perk that gave her more magic seed slots. However, the third Perk was far more interesting, in Alice’s eyes.
This Perk was rather similar to Alice’s magic seed which allowed her to create any type of mana, so long as she understood it. This one, however, skipped the need for waiting for mana regeneration, as long as Alice understood a type of mana. With this Perk, her new {Power Supply Achievement}, and her access to {Experimental Magic}, Alice should have no more problems creating whatever kind of mana she needed at a moment’s notice. That would remove any barriers between Alice understanding something and being able to translate it into a proper System repair - meaning the only thing Alice had left to do was fully understand the System. With all of these changes, she would basically be able to implement anything she understood at an incredibly fast speed.
The final Perk that Alice grabbed was from [Scientist]. This time, Alice decided to combine two Perks together, since none of the new Perks stood out to her. She thought about it for a moment, before she decided to combine {Experimental Seed} with {Anti-Magic}, since those two Perks stood out as useful, and the results seemed promising - especially considering Alice’s new worries about an incredibly powerful monster lurking in the depths of the System.
This Perk had all sorts of potential utility. It would allow Alice to instantly convert all of her mana into a new, useful mana type on demand - including more anti-magic mana, which Alice had already found all sorts of uses for. She could now also use mana from her experimental seed to basically counterspell most other magic types from Mages and monsters, by sticking a magic tendril into their magic tendril and then twisting their mana into something undirected and useless. If Alice could hit their magic tendrils or enchanted items fast enough, she could convert half of their mana directly into hope mana, or something equally useless in a fight. It was an easy way to counter other Mages. Of course, since the cost of doing this scaled based on several factors, Alice suspected this might not work very often in practice… but it was still something. Alice was far more interested in being able to instantly convert part of her mana pool into any other kind of mana on-demand, especially since she could refuel five mariums of mana pretty fast with her new {Power Supply} Achievement.
With her new Perks chosen, Alice grinned. She was ready for the next phase of System exploration.
Scheduling Notice for the rest of the year: Those of you who have been around for a while probably already know this, but I take the last week of each year and the first week of each new year off as vacation time. Basically, the week of Christmas and the week of New Year’s. This year I intend to do the same thing as usual. I will also be taking the day of Thanksgiving off, since I live in the US and I’d like to spend some time with my family and eat some turkey. As a result:
On November 27th, there will be no Markets chapter, for those of you reading my other story. Expect two chapters for that week, not three. For those of you who only read Budding Scientist, expect little change that week.
Then, from December 19th to January 5th, I will be on vacation for the year. First Budding Scientist chapter for next year will probably be up on January 9th, unless I see a reason to make some kind of scheduling change to what days of the week I release chapters. I currently tend to release chapters on Friday, but I might swap this date if I feel a need to do so. I don’t think I will, but just as a forewarning - I do sometimes make changes to how I schedule things or arrange my schedule during my vacation. Vacation is a good time to look at my schedule, my plotlines for each story, and spend some time thinking about what I need and what my stories need without the time pressure of ‘gotta release another chapter soon.’ I have no idea whether I’ll actually implement any changes, just noting that some might happen. Anyway, you get the general idea.
Join my ! (I’m at least sometimes active there, while I admit that I don’t generally check the comments section. I’m not very active anywhere, though - writers are antisocial people, okay!)
Shameless plug - you can read up to 3 chapters ahead on Patreon for $3!
