Alice spent the next several hours doing her best to ignore the corpse that had previously occupied this room as she worked on other parts of the System’s library. At her request, Doll and Ethan gave the corpse a dignified burial in the corner of the room - but that was about all they could do for him. Due to time constraints, even that had to be sped through.
The good news was that this room wasn’t just a place where the portal to Earth was located. After several hours of reconstruction, Alice was pretty sure that this was, indeed, the System’s core library. The enchantments in this room were like a central database for blueprints, to be precise. The system used this room to get information about how to build other rooms, basically. Alice wasn’t entirely sure how the System’s other components sent information queries to this room, but she could clearly see how this room sent information back after a different part of the System sent a query to the enchantments that had once been located here. There were several enchantments that had once been embedded into the walls that sent information to other parts of the System, in a way that seemed to be inspired by radios, even if it had very little in common with radios from Earth. In any case, the room seemed to be built to deal with two major kinds of query - the first query was likely some kind of ‘central database’ that the System used to make decisions, much like an AI that governed the System’s basic decision-making processes. Alice imagined that this was sent to the central database whenever it tried to make a decision about what should be built where - basically, it was a way to get information about what a room would need to look like before the central AI decided if it should be built, where it should be built, and what resources needed to be allocated for construction. The other query type was probably sent by individual golems themselves, as they constantly checked blueprints to make sure they were building the right thing whenever they engaged in construction.
Alice quickly figured out the basics underlying the information-sending apparatus, and was more than a little delighted to confirm that she now had the blueprints for every part of the System. Once she finished memorizing the blueprints that existed in the {Temporal Snapshot} of this room, she could rebuild every single other room in the System, provided that the monster infestation was dealt with and she had the exact materials and mana types she needed. Of course, Alice would probably need to do some improvising due to practical constraints - but this was like having the answer sheet to the test she had been facing for months. Alice spent a few moments revelling in finally having the answers she needed… before she promptly ignored her discoveries. That wasn’t her priority yet. Right now, she wanted to find the blueprints for one specific room - whatever room the System had built to handle Immortality. Alice was ready to become an Immortal, and she had very high hopes for whatever System rewards she would get for becoming an Immortal. She didn’t have time to pore through the blueprints for the original System.
After a few hours of skimming through enchantments and figuring out what they did, she finally found the blueprints for a room centered around Immortality.
Alice quickly realized that Immortality was a lot more complicated than she had given it credit for being. It took her several more hours to unpack what the room was actually supposed to do and why it was doing it. Fortunately, when paired with Cecilia’s continued translation of the System creator’s diary, the two eventually managed to piece together the basic process for becoming an Immortal.
This had to do with the foundation of Immortality itself, because according to Cecilia’s translation of the old diary, Immortals had not existed when the System was created. It had taken thousands of years after the creation of the System for the first Immortals to appear - and by then, the creator of the System had been long gone.
As far as Alice could tell, much like with any other type of Class mana, when enough people recognized a person’s name and associated it with ‘great actions,’ such as slaying powerful monsters, making incredible research breakthroughs, or healing thousands of people, they would accumulate unique kinds of mana related to their actions. Unlike Class mana, however, these beliefs weren’t similar enough to congregate into a specific Class, unlike actions such as ‘farming’ or ‘organic magic.’ Instead, they created a type of mana specific to that person - such as Alice mana, which Alice had accumulated an uncomfortable amount of during her time without the System.
Just like any other form of Class mana, ‘person’ mana could erode someone’s consciousness and sense of self. Worse, the System had a much harder time handling this problem, because unlike Classes, the System didn’t have anything in its library that was built to deal with the problem. Even worse, every single type of ‘individual’ mana was unique, which meant that the System’s usual process of handling this kind of problem - listening to people in a specific profession and designing Perks around what they wanted and needed, then creating a Class to absorb the new type of mana and tweaking it after a few test runs - wasn’t really feasible. Even more problematic was that the issue of ‘person’ mana got worse and worse as the centuries went by, because humanity as a whole started thriving after the System was created. During the initial creation of the System, there were probably fewer than ten thousand people alive on the planet, and the creator of the System hadn’t anticipated some of the stresses and issues that would come about after human population went from ten thousand to a few hundred million people in this world. With more people, more recognition for ‘great people’ also naturally existed, which meant that the System needed a solution but had no solution in its database.
Surprisingly, while the System didn’t have any kind of solution to the problem in its database, the System’s central decision making enchantment was flexible enough to create a solution to the problem, even if it took quite a bit of data and processing time. Clearly, the creator of the System had anticipated new problems arising after he left, even if he hadn’t figured out exactly what those problems would be.
The System’s solution was simple. Since any form of Class it tried to make would cost too many resources to design, and each ‘class’ would be unique to a specific person, the System instead decided to create a unique Achievement for each Immortal, since Achievements were already kind of the oddballs of the System, as far as internal mechanics went. The System already had blueprints for the mana gems Alice had seen in the brains of people above level 80 - so it repurposed them a bit. These mana gems were built to act as a kind of pressure cooker for person mana, in order to store person mana and constantly grind away at some aspects of person mana - especially the more harmful, personality overriding aspects of person mana. Then, once someone had a high enough density of person mana, and a high enough density of other kinds of mana, the System would try to take almost every strand of mana in a person’s body and turn it all into a big cloud of mana, while preserving the physical shape and personality of the person in question.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
This transitory state from a regular human to an Immortal was actually surprisingly safe, perhaps because by the time the System had gotten around to creating this workaround, people had already firmly believed that higher levels always led to rewards from the System, and belief that the System was a god was also firmly entrenched in a big part of this world’s population. These two beliefs had probably been ‘borrowed’ by the System to make the transition from mortal to Immortal as safe as possible, unlike the creation of a mage core, which was still a highly dangerous and risky action.
The process of transforming from a human to a cloud of solid mana involved several rounds of compression and expansion, in which the System basically compressed parts of mana into a liquid form, then ‘evaporated’ it, then compressed it again as it wove person mana into every single fiber of muscle, bone, and sinew in the target person’s body.
The end result was exactly what Alice had seen in other Immortals, such as Ethan and Allira. Every single second that an immortal existed, they constantly transformed into themselves. This constant state of shapeshifting into themself also rinsed off any mental contamination from other forms of mana, which was something Alice had not been aware of - apparently, it was far more difficult for an Immortal be mentally influenced by their Classes compared to other people. This was also likely why Immortals could regrow their body once per week - they were constantly transforming into themselves, so by ‘using up’ some of the mana in their body, they could rebuild any form of physical damage they suffered, as long as their body didn’t run out of fuel. It took about a week to rebuild the mana reserves after needing to regrow a body from fatal damage, so Immortals could survive fatal injuries once per week.
The form of compression and expansion as mana was converted from gas to liquid repeatedly was what Alice was missing to become an Immortal. If she had wanted to do this without the System’s help, she would have needed to find a way to keep her brain safe while she rebuilt every single part of her body from mana, while weaving Alice mana into the cloud to both deal with the unwanted mental influence of the mana and to ‘stamp’ the whole cloud with her identity, and then she would have needed to find a way to integrate her brain into that cloud of mana so without accidentally wiping out her consciousness or harming herself. Once the cloud got used to her brain, it would constantly ‘heal’ it from the wear and tear most human organs went through over time, which was why Immortals didn’t suffer from things like dementia or brain death as time passed - but it required a few pretty specific steps to get the cloud of mana and her brain integrated back into one functional whole.
It was such a complicated process that Alice suspected she would never have guessed how to do it on her own. She hadn’t seen anyone transform into an Immortal before, so until now, she hadn’t had any idea how to even get the process going. Even if she had understood what she needed to do, she would still probably fail to do this on her own - the ascension process for an Immortal was ridiculously complicated, and Alice would never have the same level of precision and machine-like perfection the System had.
Of course, while Alice eventually figured out what the System was doing in broad strokes, she still struggled with several of the specifics of the process. She seriously doubted she would succeed in becoming an Immortal on her own, even now that she understood the process and roughly understood what needed to happen. Luckily, Alice didn’t need to do on her own. She didn’t even need to build a room that could let her ascend to Immortality from scratch, or build the magic seeds she was missing that the System used to control the entire process.
That was because the System’s golems could rebuild the entire thing from scratch, if they had the materials and the blueprints. While it would be a bit messy, Alice could probably use her brand of coding mana as a substitute for the System’s information storage enchantments, and then just feed the blueprint to the golem assembly line that Doll had gotten up and working again. Then, all Alice had to do was wait for the room to be built, and then stand inside of it while the System did its thing.
Of course, Alice wouldn’t have as much of a detailed understanding of what was going on, which bothered her a little bit. She still wanted to learn every single step of the process for transforming into an Immortal - the compression steps, in particular, were something she had a hard time wrapping her head around. However, time was tight, and according to {Safety Analysis}, her proposed plan for ascending to Immortality was spectacularly unlikely to backfire and harm or kill her. That was going to have to do for now.
The only thing that the group was missing to implement Alice’s new plan was the final set of materials for the System’s base material… or so Alice thought.
However, Doll informed Alice that this wasn’t actually a problem, either. During the battle, Alice still vividly remembered that some of the golems produced by the System had simply abandoned the battle and ran out of the room, before heading into seemingly random directions. While Alice had been a bit miffed by the questionable prioritization from the System’s programming, this did have an unexpected upside - the golems had headed towards the final plants, minerals, and other materials that the System needed to manufacture its base components. Then, those golems had gotten right back to work harvesting those materials, storing them, and preparing for a new round of growth for the more renewable resources. Doll’s golems had tracked a few of these golems, and while several of them got eaten by monsters, several had made it to their destinations, successfully harvested them, and then dragged them to one of the System’s warehouses.
Equally importantly, the golems had processed those materials in plain view of Doll’s golems, meaning she now knew exactly how to process all of them. It was now completely possible for Doll to manufacture the base enchanting materials for the construction of the System without any outside help.
Once all of the steps of the group’s plan was completed, they got to work. Several of Allira’s shadows, as well as Doll’s golems and Ethan, safeguarded the golems and the System warehouse while Doll processed all of the materials. Meanwhile, Alice and Cecilia got familiar with how to feed blueprints to the System’s construction golems. Once the two had figured out how to tell the golems ‘build this type of room in this location, get the materials from this warehouse,’ Alice just needed to feed the blueprints into the golems and designate one of the other empty rooms in the System as a target.
It took six days to build a new Immortality center within the System.
After that, Alice stepped into the center of the newly rebuilt enchantments of the System. She spent a few moments marvelling at the work that their group had done - what they had accomplished. Even if this couldn’t transmit information back outside of the System yet, this piece of the System was now in working order again.
Then, Alice activated the machinery, and let the enchantments get to work.
It was time to finally become an Immortal.
Getting surgery in a couple weeks. Meetings up to and during the week of February 13th, along with the two weeks afterwards, might have schedule disruptions as I constantly go to the surgeon and make sure the surgery side hasn’t started bleeding again, ripped open, or started growing a small army of eldritch horrors. The last one is clearly the most likely, gotta always be on the lookout for eldritch horrors growing in your body.
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