“Now that we’ve dealt with the biggest threat in the power supply, we should probably focus on clearing out the rest of the nest,” said Myra, as the group rested after the fight.

  “Shouldn’t we wait for your extra life to regenerate? Going into a fight without being at full strength is risky, especially since we have no idea what other kinds of horrors lurk in the area. The System has already proven several times that the dangers inside are far greater than they’re supposed to be. For all we know, killing this nest might involve a surprise attack from an even stronger monster that has weaker perception or something,” said Doll.

  “At least for this nest, I don’t think I need my second life. Allira’s shadows are pretty close to the same ‘core concept’ as the one driving these spiders, at least based on my understanding of Alice’s theories and monster biology. If there were any stronger monsters, they should have come out to attack us right after Allira’s shadows scouted the way. Not to mention, that fight was still quite far from pushing us to our limits - I simply spent a few resources that I deemed of lower value than my best Perks. Based on everything we know, the biggest threat has already been dealt with, we now know what the weaker monsters can do, and we have tools that we know are useful against the enemy. Clearing out this nest should be a breeze from here.”

  Doll looked thoughtful, but Ethan seemed more than slightly disapproving.

  “Mother, if father were here right now he would chew you out for taking unnecessary risks. Going into a fight without full control over the situation is foolishness if it isn’t an emergency.”

  “Your father also goes into fights without all of his perks available to him all of the time. He’s one to talk. There was one time where that idiot rushed a damn line of [Raiders] with nearly two thirds of his Perks down. The troops backed him up and he won, but he was one unlucky arrow away from becoming part of history books instead of the present.” Myra snorted.

  “Yes, but father is also one of the strongest combat-oriented Immortals in the Shil confederacy. Even though he takes big risks, he also has the Perks and levels to bail him out of his riskier decisions.” Ethan sighed, and then gave his mother a brief, but crushing hug. “I don’t want you to get hurt. You don’t have your second life active right now, so I’m not sure if I feel comfortable with you taking big risks.”

  “I also think we should at least wait until tomorrow,” said Allira. “I’ve burned through a lot of my Perks and mental energy, and I’m sure plenty of you have also used up Perks that you would like to have access to again. However, I do think that waiting another week is a poor choice. In that time, another monster might reach the same level as the one we just fought, effectively putting us back to square one.”

  “Even if another monster does reach the same heights as the one we just fought, we would still be in a much better position. We have a better understanding of what these hyper-evolved monsters can do now, which means that there will be far fewer risks next time,” said Myra. “That’s one of the reasons I want to push our speed. The longer we give the monsters, the more time they have to eat mana, evolve, and grow stronger. They grow much faster than we do, if they have enough mana.”

  Ethan paused, and looked down the hallway towards where they had fought the giant spider. He sighed. “I wish I had a counterargument, but that’s honestly a good point. Fine. Let’s at least rest first, though. We can at least restore Allira’s mental energy and any other once-per-day Perks for use in an emergency.”

  The group retreated to the living quarters of the creator of the System, before they rested for the night. The group half-forced Alice to take the one and only bed in the room, while everyone else slept on the floor. Alice was a bit reluctant to be the only one who slept in a comfortable mattress, but Ethan made the argument that Alice was still the real center of this expedition. The others were mostly there to provide manual labor and combat support - neither of which used quite as much brainpower as Alice’s job. If Alice couldn’t concentrated on something because she was too tired, the entire expedition might get delayed or fail. That was not true for anyone else in the group.

  Alice still felt a bit bad about it, but she ended up taking the bed.

  The next morning, when Alice awoke, most of the other mages and Immortals were all ready to go. The only exception was Doll, who looked quite groggy and out of it. She had a rather extreme case of bed-head that made her hair look like a rat’s nest. After Doll woke up and the group had breakfast from Ethan’s storage Perk, the preparations for the next battle started.

  This time, Doll had a much better idea what kinds of weapons the group needed to fight the shadowy monsters with the maximum level of safety, so she spent the next two hours designing something that reminded Alice of a laser pointer from back on Earth. Doll had a different name for it, of course, and it didn’t run on electricity… but even so, the result looked an awful lot like a laser pointer with a bulb on the end.

  “So this is the item you want to use for the next fight?” asked Ethan, as he inspected the fist-sized steel ball with a little nozzle at the end. He squeezed the ball of metal experimentally, and a beam of light shot out of the nozzle. Alice revised her opinion. The item didn’t just look like a laser pointer - it worked like one too. Of course, the light coming out of Doll’s laser pointer was far brighter than a laser pointer from earth - it looked more like a searchlight. The light even spread out a little bit, although Alice had no idea how Doll had accomplished that without compromising the brightness of the light. The little block of metal was illuminating nearly half of the corridor with blinding light.

  “Yup! The monster did seem to react to light in a negative way. I think that the monsters past a certain point of evolution start to become a lot more conceptual than physical in biology, especially given what Alice has discovered about the true nature of mana and reality. So I tried my best to create something that dispels all shadows nearby, since the spiders seem to be tied to the idea of shadows more than anything else. I don’t think this will do much against weaker spider monsters, because they aren’t that deeply tied to shadows yet and so blasting them with light won’t bother them. Really strong monsters might also have ways to counteract this. However, third evolution monsters and second evolution monsters will probably suffer if I just turn this on and shine it on them? We shouldn’t see anything stronger than that in this nest, and the stuff that survives should be easy to wipe out with a surprise volley of lightning bolts and kinetic mage attacks.”

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  Ethan eyed the little cylinder appreciatively. Alice thought about Doll’s words, and wondered if there was a way she could expand upon it. A few moments later, she grinned.

  She had just rejected a Perk that would let her release a wave of ‘anti-monster mana’, which meant that, in theory, she would have a harder time contributing to fights against monsters.

  However, that didn’t mean there was nothing Alice could do.

  Due to her [Reality mage] Class, Alice could warp the way that beliefs and reality interacted with each other, especially if she wanted to amplify the interaction between reality and a certain subset of beliefs.

  That got Alice thinking. The group of people here was small, but everyone knew for a fact that light was harmful to the spider monsters if they were strong enough. This wasn’t even a case of belief mana causing some sort of runaway, chaotic reaction - the monsters were, in and of themselves, somehow tied to the concept of shadows and darkness. Light being able to weaken, harm, and potentially kill the spiders was simply a logical result of that fact. Could Alice somehow amplify that reaction using belief mana?

  Especially once Alice took into consideration her ability to influence and amplify the impact of mana on the laws of physics… she didn’t see why she wouldn’t be able to do that.

  Alice took a deep breath, before she turned to the rest of the group. “I have an idea for how to use one of my Perks. If it works, it should make clearing out the rest of the spider nest much safer. Doll, right after the battle starts, could you activate your new light-based weapon? I might be able to rip apart some of the spiders on the spot, or at least seriously injure them. It should amplify what your item is already meant to do.”

  “I can do that,” said Doll. “Do you need me to do anything else?”

  “No. Just activate the weapon and let me give it a try. I’m reasonably confident it’ll work. Ethan and the other mages should hopefully be able to mop up the survivors afterwards.”

  “Got it,” said Doll. A moment later, Ethan also acknowledged Alice’s words.

  The group started making their way through the corridors towards the spot where they had fought the third-evolution monster the day before. Just like the previous day, Allira used her shadows to scout out the monster nest, just to make sure no new third-evolution monsters had appeared while they were recovering.

  “We’re good to go,” said Allira. “There are no third evolution spiders left, and I don’t see anything stronger, either. There are a couple second evolution monsters, but we should be able to deal with them.”

  “Got it,” said Alice.

  The group continued moving through the corridors of the System for several more minutes as they carefully maneuvered through the corridors and the traps that were still intact. Finally, they came to a stop in the hallway leading into the place where the monster nest was located.

  After the group arrived, Alice did her own analysis of the area using her various forms of mana-sight. True to Allira’s words, she couldn’t find any traces of more powerful monsters left in the monster nest. There were still multiple second-evolution monsters in the nest, but with Alice’s belief mana supercharging Doll’s new item, perhaps the fight could still be managed safely. Even if she failed, there were four Immortals ready to back her up.

  The only point of concern Alice noticed were four monsters that had Perks. One of them had a rather potent-looking perk, although Alice couldn’t identify what the Perk was supposed to do. It looked like an active Perk that boosted the monster somehow though, and that was the greatest threat on this kind of battlefield - a variable with high power and unknown effects. The other three Perks looked much smaller, so they probably wouldn’t impact the battlefield much. They were also attached to weaker spider monsters, unlike the most mana-heavy Perk, which was attached to a second-evolution spider.

  “Doll, aim for that spider near the edge of the group,” said Alice. “Here, I’ll pinpoint it by showing you what I’m looking at using {Shared Memories}.” Alice waited for Doll to extend her hand, and then grabbed Doll’s wrist and activated her Perk. A moment later, Doll grunted in acknowledgement.

  “I see it. Ready when you are,” said Doll.

  Alice concentrated on the new senses granted by [Reality Mage]. “Ready,” said Alice.

  Doll turned on her new contraption.

  Perks and System mana made the laser-pointer esque weapon light up like a christmas tree. A moment later, right as the lights at the end of the laser pointer started to activate, Alice reached out towards the strands of belief mana she could feel in the environment.

  There were two strands of beliefs that she managed to locate. The first strand of beliefs was based on the experiences the group already had - the knowledge and certainty that light could weaken the shadowy spider monsters and harm them. This had been witnessed by everyone in the last battle, and while a group of twenty or thirty people couldn’t contribute very much weight to a belief and its impact on reality under normal circumstances, Alice’s Class could supercharge that impact.

  The second strand of belief mana, interestingly enough, was the group’s faith in Alice herself. Ethan had a particularly strong belief that Alice would succeed - perhaps because he had gotten used to seeing her successful experiments and advancements in the field of magical research. Cecilia had an equally strong belief in Alice - after all, Cecilia had been with Alice as a friend since almost the beginning of Alice’s time in this dimension. The rest of the group had weaker belief in Alice’s ability to produce results - but the time they had spent working as a team hadn’t been for nothing. The rest of the group had at least some faith that Alice could succeed when she put her mind to it.

  Alice pushed both of those beliefs to an extreme, exaggerating their impact on reality.

  Doll’s knockoff laser pointer activated.

  The result was like a miniature explosion of light. Three of the four second-evolution spiders turned into ashes on the spot before they had time to react, including the spider with a powerful looking Perk. The fourth second-evolution spider was still alive, but barely.

  Alice’s mouth gaped open in surprise as the spiders were torn to pieces. That was far more than she had expected. She had hoped to knock the spiders out of the fray for a bit, or injure them - not fry them immediately.

  Ethan and the other mages followed up with a volley of lightning and projectiles, instantly wiping out the last second-evolution spider and several spider alphas. A moment later, a massive, eldritch shadowy maw snapped shut over several more of the spiders, courtesy of Allira. Several of the spiders tried to speed towards them, but the massive burst of light empowered by Alice’s belief mana machinations seemed to have some kind of suppressing effect on them, too. They were still dangerous, but they were slower than usual.

  When an organized group of mages was targeting the survivors, being slowed down was basically a death sentence. The spiders couldn’t dodge out of the way quickly enough to survive, and the group had a major advantage in range. Before the spiders even managed to reach them, the fourth wave of projectiles finished off the last survivors of the spider nest.

  “That was quite a bit more effective than I thought it would be,” said Alice.

  The others eyed her, but said nothing. Meanwhile, Alice inspected the power supply, and then smiled.

  The monster nest was gone. It was finally time to get the portals back online and start teleporting around the System.

  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.

  As a result, 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.

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