The moment Alice saw her new language skill, she felt a surge of excitement. The language skill didn’t tell her everything… but it gave her a huge piece of the full story. Finnish was a language primarily spoken in Finland… which was a country that Alice knew existed back on Earth. She had a rough idea what had happened here now - someone else from Earth had come, and had helped build at least part of the System, before leaving for unknown reasons. She even had context for what language the other person from Earth had been writing in, and had a solid idea why she couldn’t understand it.

  Finland was a rather remote Nordic country. That was… about all Alice knew about Finland, besides the fact that it was located in northern Europe, a bit west of Russia. Alice suddenly remembered that when she had gotten the [Russian Language Proficiency] Skill, the System had given her the language proficiency skill immediately… whereas when Alice had first entered this world, the System had needed a few days to figure out what English was and create a new language skill for it. When she thought about that, the geography lined up perfectly. Finland was right next to Russia, so someone from Finland had more potential access to the Russian language versus English. Though, Alice did think that people from Finland learned English as a second language… and there was a photo of a famous English singer in this bedroom. Both of these facts left Alice scratching her head. Maybe the person from Finland was unusual in their unfamiliarity with English? Alice was pretty sure that Finland had a high rate of English speakers, but that still didn’t mean that 100% of the people from Finland spoke English. Perhaps they just listened to English songs without speaking the language?

  Or maybe they hadn’t fed the System their knowledge of the English language for whatever reason. Or maybe Alice was just remembering incorrectly - that was also distinctly possible. She hadn’t been to Earth in a year, and she had never been that familiar with foreign policies and education systems in the first place. It wasn’t like she could just google the information anymore, either.

  Regardless of the System’s strange unfamiliarity with the English language, at the end of the day, it didn’t matter much. Alice finally had a solid clue about the origin of the System, its history, and why this dimension worked and looked the way that it did.

  Alice sighed, and flipped open the first page of the book.

  Of course, with only a level 1 language skill to support her, Alice had absolutely no idea what it said. She could make out the occasional word like ‘the’ or ‘it,’ but that was nowhere near enough information to even get basic context for what the book said.

  “So it’s a book from another language from your home?” asked Cecilia.

  Alice blinked in surprise, and turned her head back towards the rest of the group. She had been so lost in her thoughts that she had honestly forgotten anyone was here with her. How long had she been silently staring at this book, lost in thought? Alice had no idea.

  “Yes. It’s in Finnish. A nation that I recognize from home, although I don’t have much familiarity with their culture or language beyond some basic information,” said Alice.

  “So this book is important?” asked Ethan.

  Alice nodded. “Very. Or at least, it could be. I don’t know what’s in it yet, but in the best case scenario, perhaps there’s a bunch of secret information related to the construction of the System. Admittedly, that might be optimistic of me… but I can hope, at least.”

  “Do you want to learn the language yourself, or do you want to hand it off to someone else?” asked Ethan. “Letting someone else go through the effort of learning this language would save you a lot of time, and as long as they read it in Illvarian, you won’t actually miss much information… unless you have a good reason to want to read it on your own, instead.”

  Alice blinked. She hadn’t even considered giving the book to someone else to translate. A part of her had originally assumed that the one to translate the book would be her, since it was in a language from home. However, Ethan’s proposal to let someone else translate the book actually made quite a bit of sense. Learning a new language was time consuming and difficult. The System and its language skills made this thousands of times easier… but it was still a multi-month endeavor, even in this world. Right now, Alice was still the primary person in charge of figuring out how the System worked. The number of things she needed to work on were enough to fill all twenty four hours of a normal day. Trying to translate this book on top of her other workload would really be a huge time investment that she could ill afford. It did sting a bit to let someone else look through the book when Alice wanted to see what messages her fellow interdimensional traveler might have left for her, but it also didn’t make very much to spend time on the matter when she couldn’t afford that time.

  “I guess someone else should do it,” said Alice. She felt as if she were spitting out each word, but she also felt that this was the most reasonable path forward.

  “I can handle it for now,” said Cecilia. “At least so far, most of my work has been focused on enchantments and smaller tasks, but I don’t have a full schedule each day, the way you do. I can also walk while reading, as long as I don’t need to pay super close attention to our surroundings. Ethan, Allira, Myra? Can the three of you keep me safe and keep me from electrocuting myself or walking into a nest of monsters or something if I devote most of my attention to this book while we move?”

  “Should be simple enough,” said Allira. “I’ll have one of my shadows watch over you and forcibly move you out of the way if you’re about to walk into something dangerous.”

  Cecilia nodded. “Then I’ll get to work grinding up my {Finnish Language Proficiency} skill. Is there anything else we need in this room?”

  Alice scanned the room once more, turned over a few corners, and even checked behind the posters and along the walls for any hidden notes, safes, or other pieces of information. Finally, she confirmed that there really was nothing else in the room. All she could find were a few knockoff comforts from home. There weren’t even very many personal effects in the room - Alice would have expected a normal room to have some traces of personality, or pictures from home, or… something. But the room was spartan and utilitarian, save for what they had already found. Alice wondered if the person who had lived here had packed up their stuff and left long ago. That seemed like the most reasonable explanation for why this room was so bare-bones.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  In fact, now that Alice thought about it, the journal that had been left behind had been placed rather conspicuously in the center of the room, and it had also been preserved with Perks. No regular paper could have survived centuries or millennia without maintenace, but the paper was very intact, as if someone had left it behind yesterday. Perhaps the person who had designed the System had left to return home, or had gone out to explore the world after they finished building the System?

  “I think this book is the only thing of real importance here,” she said. “Let’s get going.”

  As the group stepped into the corridor outside of the room, Alice felt a jolt as a new guess for where the creator(s) of the System had gone appeared in her mind. Anyone who was cut off from home would feel some longing to return. Even if, like Alice, they had also formed connections that they didn’t want to leave behind in this world… they had likely also left people behind on Earth. Alice also wanted to return home, at least for a few visits and to let her family know she was okay. Was there any reason that the creator(s) of the System would be different?

  It was always possible that the creator(s) of the System didn’t want to leave this world… but Alice suspected the odds of that were low, even if they were nowhere near zero. When Alice thought of it like that… she wondered if the creator(s) of the System had done it. Perhaps, after creating the System, they had created a way to return back to Earth. It was just a guess on her part, and Alice was willing to admit that she might be getting her hopes up for nothing… but she found her heart beating faster at the thought that there might be an easy path back to Earth waiting somewhere in the depths of the System for her to find.

  A part of Alice tried to tell herself that she was getting her hopes up to an unreasonable extent. She tried to calm herself down and caution herself against getting too excited without solid evidence of her theory.

  The other half of her mind was too excited to care. A safe, already-created passage back home. A way to visit her parents, let them know that she was okay, and then return to this world with minimal danger, or experimentation, or difficulty. It was an idea too temptng to put into words.

  “If you see anything about returning to Earth… or anything at all about the System, please tell me,” said Alice, as she eyed the book in Cecilia’s hands with renewed fervor. “I don’t know if the book will actually contain information about how to go home, but there might be something.”

  Cecilia looked at Alice, and for a moment, Alice saw a shadow of anxiety appear in Cecilia’s eyes.

  “You won’t… leave us, will you?”

  Alice stared at Cecilia in shock, before Alice shook her head. She realized, with some surprise, that she had never actually discussed her ‘ideal future’ with Cecilia, or any of the other participants in this expedition.

  “I don’t intend to leave behind this world forever… but if I find a way to do so, I want to see my parents again. Maybe I would want to bring them over to this world, too… if they were willing to come, at least. There are also people I used to be friends with that I want to see again. But I also have people that I don’t want to leave behind in this world,” said Alice. “So I don’t intend to leave this world behind permanently, if I can avoid it. My ideal future is one where I can move between this world and my home world frequently.”

  Cecilia’s shoulders relaxed a nearly imperceptible amount.

  “That makes sense. If your parents do end up being willing to cross over… I wouldn’t mind meeting them. I’ve been curious to know what kind of people could raise someone as odd as you.”

  Alice rolled her eyes as Cecilia’s words and made a face at her, but she felt the corners of her lips quirk upwards. It was a thin hope, but Alice was looking forward to seeing her parents again, if things worked out properly.

  After that, the group left the bedroom, and started heading back towards the intersection they had come from. This was when they ran into a problem.

  When they had made their way towards the bedroom, they had passed through some kind of portal. It hadn’t quite run on dimensional mana, but it had been close enough that it was almost the same thing. However, when they made their way back, there was no telltale ripple of mana in the air. Alice didn’t even understand the enchantment that had created the portal in the first place, so she had no idea what the problem was.

  In other words, the group had somehow ended up deeper inside of the System, and had no direct way back.

  Alice frowned.

  “How are we supposed to return?” One of the expedition Mages asked, as she glanced at the spot in the corridor where she remembered a portal being. “The path is gone.”

  “Perhaps there’s some kind of enchantment or device that makes us return to the area?” asked Ethan.

  To Alice’s surprise, Doll was the one that seemed the least worried about their sudden inability to return.

  “It’s unfortunate that the portal is gone, but I think this is also an opportunity,” said Doll. “The System, as far as I can tell, is massive. Trying to find a blueprint room might take several days - or even weeks - of searching. By contrast, I think that the portal that brought us to this living area is interesting, because it implies that there might be other ways to teleport from place to place within the System. We already know that the System was at least partially designed by humans… so perhaps there is some kind of map attached to the enchantment that created this portal? If we can figure it out, and figure out how the portals work, we could navigate through the System with far greater ease than before. We would spend a lot of time getting it working, but we might save much more time overall.”

  Alice thought about Doll’s words for a moment, before she nodded.

  “Doll’s words make sense,” said Alice. “I was originally planning to keep wandering around and hoping we found what we needed… but if we could directly teleport to a blueprint room or something, that would make life much easier and faster.”

  Alice started scanning the area, trying to find anything that might control this dimensional mana. It only took her a few minutes of searching to find what she was looking for - underneath the floor, there was a large, complex set of enchantments, all linked to the System’s variant version of dimensional mana. Alice looked at it, and groaned. She had no idea what half of the enchantments did.

  She sighed, and then glanced at Cecilia, who was working her way through the journal written in Finnish.

  At least we won’t be stalled in progress while I try to figure this out, though Alice, before she leaned closer to the portal controlling enchantment set. It was time to get to work.

  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.

  In other news, I spent five hours today assembling a table and a set of chairs. They were supposed to arrive yesterday, when I had some time scheduled for it. (Grumble grumble grumble). Also, one of the four chairs has a manufacturing flaw where one of the screw holes for assembly is blocked by a bit of metal, so I can’t put the screws into the spot they’re supposed to be in. I guess I have to ask for replacement parts. -_-

  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!)

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