A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World

Alice’s new plan was simple. She knew for a fact that the System was somehow helping people create artificial magic seeds. She couldn’t imagine any other way that Class Seeds could have plausibly come into existence. Furthermore, unless she was seriously misinformed about the rarity of materials, there was no freaking way the System used them for class seeds. Not only had Alice seen zero evidence of core materials being used, and it made no logistical sense at all. The System had a workaround.

After using this idea to develop stabilization mana and failing, Alice had also realized that ‘stabilization’ mana alone wasn’t enough. Compressing the mana seemed to help… but it didn’t seem to resolve the fundamental issue she was running into. The mana needed something to keep it structured. Otherwise, the whole thing fell apart, like a puff of air blown away by the wind.

Stabilization mana didn’t work. Compressing that mana also didn’t fix the problem, at least not completely. So how did the System create Class seeds?

Alice was hoping that it used ‘class mana’ as a binding agent. That would make class seeds a bit different from her original ‘image’ of how they worked… but Alice could at least imagine how it might fit together. Alice had set out to repair the System, or find a replacement for it, before everyone on this planet died. While Alice had mostly been working towards ‘repair’ so far, she had no problem finding a different solution. As long as it worked, and helped people, that was good enough.

“What do you need me to do?” Jonathan asked, as he laid down on the table Alice had prepared for him..

“Just lay down. Oh, and could you give me {Patient’s Consent}?” asked Alice, after a moment of thought.

“Of course. If you need to send mana into my body for the purpose of this experiment, you can do so, provided that you believe it is likely to work and unlikely to endanger my life. I’m sturdy, but I’d still prefer some amount of caution,” said Jonathan.

“Thank you,” said Alice, as she saw the rainbow mana for {Patient’s Consent} light. Then, she got to work.

She started out by trying to drill a bit of mana into Jonathan’s chest. Her first idea was just to try mixing a bit of stabilization mana together with the unbound [Fisherman] mana that was stuck floating around Jonathan’s body. Once she saw how stabilization mana and [Fisherman] mana interacted with each other, she would have a better idea how to proceed further.

Immortal Jonathan’s body was incredibly resistant to foreign mana. Even after Alice obtained {Patient’s Consent}, and used only organic mana, she still felt like she had slammed her mana into a steel wall. It didn’t even feel like there was any ‘give’ to Jonathan’s mana at all. With {Patient’s Consent}, and Alice’s entire mana pool, she still doubted she would make any progress in pushing her mana into Jonathan’s body.

How was she supposed to solve this problem? It was a problem that Alice had forgotten to take into account. Most [Organic Mages] just relied on {Patient’s Consent} or some variation of the Perk to let them freely operate on patients. After all, most people weren’t Immortals. However, it was obvious that wouldn’t work here. Alice felt a headache start to form as she tried to find a solution to this problem. Was there a way to sidestep the innate mana resistance all living beings had towards foreign mana?

What was mana resistance?

People resisted external mana based on how much mana was already in their body. Every single level was essentially mana. In other words… Immortals were almost impossible to influence externally. {Patient’s Consent} would definitely help with that, but it was nowhere near enough to let Alice push through the most mana-resistant type of human on the planet.

Alice spent a few seconds thinking, before she sighed. If there was an easy way around mana resistance, wouldn’t people already be using it left and right? It would let [Organic Mages] heal dozens of times more people per day. It would also let [Organic Mages] become truly horrifying monsters on the battlefield. Right now, [Organic Mages] tended to act as healers or incredibly strong melee fighters on a battlefield. If they could sidestep mana resistance, they wouldn’t need to screw around with weapons. They would just turn the brains of hostile combatants into nutrient slurries, and that would end battles instantly. Alice couldn’t think of a single way her odd Perks and assorted other abilities would let her solve this problem.

In short, she was stuck.

“Do you know of a way to let my mana infiltrate your body a bit more easily? Your resistance to external mana is just too high,” said Alice. She didn’t really think Jonathan had a solution, but she was hoping for one anyway. At the same time, Alice started to wonder how the System solved this problem. Did the System just brute-force it using mana quantity?

Unlike core materials, Alice had little problem believing that the System actually could brute force this problem. Before it had collapsed, the System had emitted so much rainbow mana onto the planet that it had filled every single square centimeter of the globe. At its height, it had probably commanded millions of Mariums of mana… or maybe far more than that. If it wanted to brute force something, it probably could. But that didn’t help Alice.

Jonathan frowned. “Do you not have a way to do so with your Perks?”

“I thought {Patient’s Consent} would be enough,” said Alice, resisting a wave of embarrassment.

Jonathan frowned. “Ask Ethan. He might have a way to fix the problem… or possibly a way to brute-force the situation somehow.” Jonathan sounded both relieved and worried. Alice didn’t find that odd – even if Jonathan loved his family enough to put his life on the line for them, being used as a guinea pig probably didn’t feel great. Alice nodded, before an idea struck her. She hadn’t actually messed with her levels in a while – she had gotten wrapped up in her experiment, and thus hadn’t purified her mana. But even though she hadn’t succeeded in her experiment… the process of doing research should have still netted her a few levels. Maybe a new Perk would help fix this problem?

“Hold on a second,” said Alice. “I’m going to see if I have any perks waiting for me. I haven’t bothered looking at my System notifications since I started this line of experiments. There might be something useful.”

“Sure. Let me know when you’re done looking, and we can make plans from there.”

After converting all of her mana to the appropriate mana types, Alice poked through her level up notifications.

You have leveled up!

Explorer of Magic: 88 -> 89, Scholar 68 -> 70, Scientist 70 -> 72, Careful Enchanter 38 -> 40, Student 9 -> 10

After seeing her new level up rewards, Alice relaxed.

She had three new Perks waiting for her. Since the System was more likely to give people Perks they wanted, Alice thought she had a decent shot at finding something relevant for her situation. ɽÃɴỔＢЁš

The first Perk Alice decided to take a look at was her [Student] perks. Alice had already looked up the rewards for the [Student] Class, and wasn’t really expecting much from the Perks for it. [Student] was a class that excelled at learning things… which basically meant that it increased levelling speed for other classes, increased [Intelligence], and helped one remember information from teachers. All of those things were useful, but none of them would help her with her current situation. In fact, Alice was pretty unimpressed with the [Student] Class in general. The Perks were basically minor passive abilities with very limited effects.

Indeed, the selection of Perks she had was disappointing. The first Perk she saw was a 3% boost to [Intelligence], which Alice ignored without a second thought. 3% of her [Intelligence] was a rather unimpressive use of a Perk slot. The second Perk let her remember lectures from teachers more easily. Since Alice now had Perfect memory, thanks to her other Perks, this Perk was absolutely useless. Alice was a bit baffled that the System had even showed her the Perk to begin with. The third Perk wasn’t particularly impressive either, but at least it was more useful than the other two.

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Student’s Mastery

Requirements: Student Class at level 5 or greater, Intelligence greater than 150

Class Experience for all other Classes is increased by 5%. Experience for the Student Class is increased by 10%.

A 5% Experience point growth boost was… honestly, not great. The only thing Alice could really say about the Perk was that it was, technically, better to have it instead of not having it. Alice shrugged. Either way, it didn’t hurt to have it. Even if it was unimpressive, it was better than nothing. She selected the new Perk, and then moved on to her [Scholar] Perks. She had much higher hopes for this one.

At first, Alice wasn’t really sure whether to grab a new Perk, or combine two old ones. After combining {Scholar of Magic} and {Accelerated Thinking} last level, Alice wasn’t sure if she was going to grab a new Perk to combine at level 75, or just slam together two final Perks. However, after Alice tried taking a look at the result of combining two Perks, she decided to do a perk combination. That was because one of the projected results of her Perk combination was very relevant to her current situation.

Of course, sometimes a Perk combination didn’t go perfectly, giving her a slightly different result than the one she expected, but they were usually close. Alice was a bit uneasy at the thought of giving up two of her old Perks that she still used all the time, but with the collapse of the System, she needed to move faster. People were dying every minute, and Alice didn’t have time to dither around and wait for more levels. So, she gritted her teeth and decided to give up her old Perks.

Improved Multitasking

Requirements: you must be at least 50% of the way to commanding a third mana tendril and control no more than two mana tendrils, {Divided Attention} Skill 10 or higher, Scholar level 30 or higher, Magic 100 or greater

You gain the ability to concentrate on four different tasks at once. You may ‘amp up’ your focus once per day, increasing the ability to multitask by an extra one task for ten minutes. (Note – this process may feel disconcerting if you are unfamiliar with it, and will also require increased nutrients for the day.)

Alice had to admit, she was less sad to lose {Improved Multitasking}. That was, essentially, one and a half magic tendrils that she was losing. Alice had frequently felt that the number of magic tendrils she had during fights wasn’t enough already, but losing one and a half magic tendrils wasn’t the end of the world, either. With Ethan around, Alice would probably have enough time to rebuild her combat prowess before something popped out and killed her. Thus, she would sacrifice a bit of her combat abilities, in order to fight for a better chance to save people’s lives.

Lesser Organic Vision

Requirements: Scholar level 40 or higher, Perception 125 or higher, Magic 100 or higher, Organic Magic seed present

You gain the ability to spend some organic mana to temporarily look inside of people's bodies, assuming they give you permission or are unconscious. The level of detail may vary.

The other Perk that Alice chose to give up was far less clear cut. {Lesser Organic Vision} was crucial to many of her experiments, since Alice needed ways to keep track of people’s bodies and organs during experiments. {Lesser Organic Vision} was the Perk she had relied on to do that. It wasn’t always relevant to her experiments, but when it was, not having a Perk like this would be catastrophic. Thus, Alice hesitated a lot more. But since she knew that her willpower influenced the outcome of Perks, she was hopeful that she would keep this ability in some form.

The result didn’t disappoint her.

Burst of Multitasking (Tier 2 Scholar Perk) (Level 30 + Level 40 Perk)

Perk Costs: Lesser Organic Vision + Improved Multitasking

For one hour, you may increase the number of magic tendrils you can control by 5. If you have the permission of the other party, you may send these tendrils inside of someone else’s body with a dramatically reduced mana cost. You will also have proper ‘vision’ of any organic matter that these magic tendrils come into contact with.

This Perk consumes mana in order to sustain itself at a high rate. Mana from any magic seed can be paid to maintain it. Overuse without rest time may cause major headaches, migraines, and eventually far more severe problems if you continue past these problems.

Alice grinned after she saw her new Perk. This did everything she had been hoping it would.

She had still lost a few Magic tendrils from her ‘base’ combat abilities… but in exchange, she could summon an extra five when she wanted to. Furthermore, those magic tendrils were able to function as a new sort of ‘organic vision,’ and they also let her penetrate mana resistance better if she had {Patient’s Consent}. Of course, in exchange, Alice could now only use her organic vision and the other extra abilities while paying a hefty cost. Furthermore, anytime she summoned her ‘extra’ five mana tendrils, they sounded like they would eat through her mana pool and give her a lasting headache. Still, Alice thought it was a fairly useful new Perk. Oftentimes, fights happened fast enough that she didn’t have the time to use the single extra mana tendril from {Improved Multitasking}, and after enough time had passed, she had started to forget she could even summon it. It just wasn’t a relevant enough part of battle to factor in to things in most cases. But with five extra mana tendrils, it would be much more useful. Not to mention, while ‘losing lots of mana’ would be devastating for many combatants, Alice was building a knockoff System magic seed. The amount of mana stored in that magic seed was already becoming ridiculous, and it would only grow more and more absurd the longer she lived. Alice wasn’t short of the mana needed to sustain this kind of effect. Potential headaches, migraines, and more serious effects were more of a concern, but as long as she could use the Perk for a decent amount of time, it wouldn’t be a big problem.

She smiled as she looked at the new Perk, and then eyed Jonathan again.

With her new Perk, she would certainly have a way to actually do what she wanted to do.

“Find something useful?” asked Jonathan.

“Yeah. I found something that should work just fine,” said Alice. “Let me look at my last Perk first, and then we’ll get back to the [Fisherman] experiment.”

After that, Alice took a look at her last Perk choice.

This one was for [Careful Enchanter]. At first glance, Alice wasn’t actually sure why she had gotten levels for this class. After all, she hadn’t made a single ‘enchantment’ recently.

But it only took her a few seconds to realize that she had spent several days studying how to make enchantments under an Immortal [Enchanter]. There was probably nothing that was more ‘enchanter-y’ in the world than that. It made perfect sense for her to get levels for studying under Demor. In fact, that was probably where her [Student] level had come from, as well.

Since [Careful Enchanter] hadn’t reached past level 50 yet, there was no complicated thinking involved in her Perk choice. Alice didn’t have any ability to do a perk combination for the Class yet, so she went straight to the Perk selection screen. Since Alice had gotten what she wanted from her second Perk choice, she wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for from her final Perk selection. However, when Alice saw her Perk choices, she grinned. The System had given her the best thing that she hadn’t realized she wanted.

Alice spent a few seconds scanning her other two Perk options, before she completely ignored them. One of them let her spend a huge amount of mana to remove ‘lesser flaws’ from her enchantments, whatever that meant. The other choice would highlight any errors in her enchantments if she concentrated on them – sort of like a teacher going over a test paper and outlining the mistakes in red ink. Normally, Alice might have been interested in the second Perk… but the third option she saw was just so much better that it wasn’t a consideration.

Raw Mana Enchanting

Requirements: Careful Enchanter level 40 or higher, Have Experimented with some form of construct derived entirely of pure mana and understood its nature, have access to at least 10 different types of mana at the same time, Magic 150 or higher, Pure Mana Seed available, at least 1 Rarity 10 Achievement

You gain the ability to ‘stabilize’ constructs made of pure mana, at a significant mana cost. A stabilized mana construct will dissipate far more slowly, and will exhibit some resilience against wear and tear from its surroundings and natural dissipation.

This Perk was simple, but also perfectly fit what Alice was trying to do. Of course, the Perk indicated that a stabilized mana construct only exhibited ‘some’ resilience against wear and tear. It wouldn’t totally fix mana construct deterioration. But it highlighted a problem Alice hadn’t thought of – artificial magic seeds getting impacted by external mana and then collapsing. Right after highlighting that problem, it offered her a solution, and a way to study how the System ‘solved’ that issue. With any luck, that would give her a research direction to improve her own abilities further. It was exactly what she needed right now.

It also implied that a ‘pure mana construct’ counted as something related to Enchanting. Alice was more than a little amused by that, since enchanting was usually the process of adding mana to an already-existing physical material… but if it counted, it was good for her. Since she was seeing this Perk, it probably meant that her experiments with pure mana constructs still counted for class levels. It wasn’t like it changed her plans either way, but it was nice to know she would keep getting rewards as she worked.

Alice glanced over her two new Perks, and then turned back towards Jonathan. Now that the mana resistance problem was solved, it was time to take another crack at artificial magic seeds. This time, she didn’t intend to get stuck at the very first step.