A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World

Alice continued staring at her new Perk for far, far longer than she should have, before she shook herself out of her thoughts. She had one more new Perk to pick, and two Perks to activate. Then… it was time to take her new Perk out for a spin, and see if she could finally make a [Fisherman] Class seed that worked as it was supposed to.

When Alice opened up the options for [Careful Enchanter], there were only three choices. The first Perk improved the precision of her mana control, with a larger boost while enchanting. It didn’t really appeal to her much. At this point, Alice wasn’t as focused on actual enchantments as she was pure mana constructs, and she didn’t think the precision of her mana control was the problem there. She was missing something fundamental to the process, and no amount of mana precision would help her fix that right now. Besides, Alice just didn’t think that this Perk was strong enough to merit being a level 45 Perk. There had to be better options. Thus, this Perk was discarded without much thought.

The other two Perks were much more interesting.

The first Perk would give her the ability to modify enchantments she made without redoing everything.

Construct Modification

Requirements: Careful Enchanter level 45 or higher, interaction with a mana construct, creation of a partially finished mana construct, Rarity 10 Achievementn/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Allows you to modify and manipulate already-created enchantments, especially enchantments made of mana. Works best on things that you created.

At first, Alice wasn’t entirely sure why she would want this Perk. After all, she could already ‘modify’ enchantments, at least to some extent. Sure, modifying an enchantment that already existed wasn’t easy… but it wasn’t impossible. Not to mention, even if she made an enchantment and it didn’t work, her usual go-to method for solving problems was just to start over. It was usually easier to examine a failed enchantment, figure out where she went wrong, and then start a new copy from scratch.

Then, Alice realized that this Perk was far more practical than she was giving it credit for.

She could start over just fine if she ruined one of her projectile bracelets or something… but Alice was currently trying to figure out how to make enchantments inside of human beings. That was, in a sense, what a Class seed was, wasn’t it? An enchantment based on the design principles of both monster cores and magic seeds.

It was much harder to fix a person once they got hurt than it was to replace a bracelet. This Perk made it easier to fix problems she made while minimizing damage to people.

Furthermore, if Alice had some sort of last-minute tweak she needed to make to her already made class-seeds later, this would be useful. That was… very nice, when Alice was trying to make an intricate combination of enchantments that she understood some of the mechanics of, while totally missing others. If she needed to ‘patch’ her class seeds, this would make it less of a pain in the neck.

The other Perk, however, was just as interesting.

Organic Enchantment

Requirements: Careful Enchanter level 45 or higher, attempt to enchant a human being, Rarity 10 Achievement, Enhanced Support from the System as a result of the Outworlder Perk (or similar), Moderate or higher understanding of how the System itself works

You gain a greatly improved ability to use humans as an enchanting material. Human hearts and brains become especially effective at retaining mana without harming the organs in question, and you can tether enchantments to them as appropriate physical anchors.

Alice was actually quite interested in both enchantments. Sadly, she could only take one… and she had a pretty darn good idea what she wanted.

{Organic Enchantment} just lined up with what she wanted far, far too well. She was also a bit interested in the perk description. One of the requirements was that she had to have at least some understanding of how the System itself worked. Since most of Alice’s research was devoted to fixing the System right now, Perks that required her to understand the System were obvious, important clues for her research.

Normally, Alice would still be leery of using other humans as test subjects, but combined with {Safety Analysis} and Jonathan’s ludicrous [Endurance], Alice felt much safer in doing small human experiments. Jonathan wasn’t a fool. If he thought one of Alice’s experiments was a danger, he wouldn’t let her proceed. Alice had no real ability to get through his mana resistance anyway, if he retracted his {Patient’s Consent}. Alice did her best to explain every experiment she did involving him, as well as the risks involved. He was free to say no at any time.

Since Alice had such a good research position to capitalize on {Organic Enchantment}, she decided to pick that one.

After picking her second Perk, Alice turned her attention back towards her two Perks that were off cooldown. For her System seed, Alice immediately added in stabilization mana and density mana. She decided to hang on to the other two ‘additions’ to her compound magic seed, in case she found a new type of mana that she needed or something. She also decided to leave out ‘pulling’ mana, at least for now. She still hadn’t quite figured out how the System’s version of Class seeds pulled in nearby mana, but she was pretty sure pulling mana wasn’t it. She would see if she could find a better alternative, and add it in if she got stuck.

Finally, Alice turned her attention to {Magic Modelling}. She decided to make a model of a fully functioning Class seed. It would take a while for her to ‘fix’ the image, but it was immediately relevant to her current research, and it would be good to have an example from the System. Maybe she could break down more of the intricate components of the model if she was careful and paid attention. Her previous two models had been of mana gems, so Alice was pretty happy with her magic models on that front. It was time to turn her attention to other parts of the System. Even if Alice suspected that she had gone in a slightly different direction from the original System’s design, she could still take inspiration from what she saw and integrate it later on, if she found something useful or necessary.

Then, Alice rushed out of her room and practically sprinted towards Jonathan. She was excited. More than that, she was hopeful. Last time she had tried to make a Class seed, she had run into a few issues, because the Class seed had been incapable of generating the mana needed to work as intended. Now, she had a Perk to fix that problem. Maybe it would work this time?

“Is it time for another test?” asked Jonathan, as he looked up from the chunk of garden he had been tending to. Despite the short time they had been here, Jonathan’s garden was already starting to look like a field right before harvesting season. Fat fruit hung off of trees, and ears of wheat reached towards the skies.

Alice go distracted for a few seconds, thinking about the ridiculous food production of an Immortal [Farmer], before she shook herself out of her thoughts.

“It is,” she said. “I think I might have found a way to properly make a fake Class seed, and {Safety Analysis} says it’s safe to use on you. It also says it’s safe to use on other humans, although I’m still going to start here,” said Alice. She quickly explained her new Perk, and how she hoped it would get the [Fisherman] Class seed working. After her explanation, Jonathan nodded thoughtfully.

“It seems like a reasonable enough test. You can try it,” said Jonathan. “Hopefully it has more effect than the ‘mana helix’ thing you spent so much time on last time.”

Alice nodded, and tried to keep her face straight as she thought of her mana helix. For something she had worked so hard on, it had practically no impact at all. Hopefully, this time would be different.

Alice started setting up all of the needed procedures to get started. She told Jonathan to give her {Patient’s Consent}, activated {Burst of Multitasking}, made sure she was ready to activate {Broken Seed} in case something went wrong, and got started.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

This time, Alice focused on Jonathan’s heart, since {Organic Enchantment} encouraged her to use that spot. She wasn’t sure if it would change the results any, but she still hoped that the seed would work this time.

Alice quickly got her double helix of mana set back up, with half of it comprised of [Fisherman] mana while the other half was comprised of stabilization mana. She started using {Star of Mana} to try to make the magic seed produce ‘stabilization mana’ regularly, since that was one of the problems she had run into last time. The [Fisherman] mana had rapidly outgrown the stabilization mana, and then the whole thing had started to fall apart. After feeding it a ridiculous amount of mana, equaling nearly two thirds of her compound seed’s stockpile, Alice felt the mana helix stop accepting more mana.

Alice waited a few minutes, but didn’t see anything change.

Maybe it was just happening too slowly for her to easily notice? Alice frowned, and started gently feeding it more mana, as she tried to build out more chunks of stabilization mana and grab more chunks of fisherman mana. After a bit, Alice started to feel like the mana core she had created was… struggling. This was a very different sensation from what happened when she tried to force an enchanting material beyond its limits. It was as if Alice could visibly feel Jonathan’s heart struggling to make sense of what she was doing to it. It was almost like last time, Alice had simply been drawing a picture of a sculpture, whereas this time, Alice was trying to actually make a sculpture – while all of her materials struggled against her.

Alice frowned, and slowed down. However, she didn’t get the feeling that things were going wrong yet. She started observing all of the mana in Jonathan’s body, just to make sure she wasn’t at risk of hurting him… but everything seemed fine. She paid close attention as she started working again. When everything still seemed fine after a few minutes, Alice started adding in pulling mana to the mixture.

After that, Jonathan’s heart started to pulse a bit more erratically, which made Alice very nervous. She almost immediately shut off the addition of the third mana type, worried that it would make Jonathan’s heart explode or something.

In practice, Alice supposed that wouldn’t actually be lethal. Jonathan was an Immortal, after all. They could recover from one lethal injury a week. Still, Alice strongly hoped she wouldn’t make her first patient suffer lethal injuries in the first place.

However, right as Alice was about to activate {Broken Seed} and shut the whole thing down, something unusual happened. The mana started to… curl into itself. It wasn’t quite shaped like a proper ‘orb,’ but it started to look more like a very, very lumpy oval. Pieces of the mana helix were collapsing into themselves, at least, near the edges of the whole mess.

Alice frowned, and started throwing questions at {Safety Analysis}. However, even though what she was seeing made her nervous, the Perk claimed everything was still fine. That meant that Jonathan wasn’t in imminent danger, at least. Alice frowned, and started gently feeding the core a bit more pulling mana. The collapse of the mana helix accelerated. Alice kept throwing questions at {Safety Analysis} as she worked, and as she observed everything, she got a new idea.

She tried to activate {Star of Mana} again.

This time, she didn’t hit the same feeling of resistance she previously had. Alice grinned.

It seemed like the double-helix mana structure really was a problem. Now that the whole thing was starting to pull together into a ball, {Star of Mana} was letting her put more mana into the seed again. Alice continued to feed the new magic seed mana, and observed.

The double helix of mana resembled an oval at this point. It hadn’t entirely compacted itself into a ball yet, but Alice could clearly see that it was moving in that direction. She was also noticing just how hungry this little magic seed was – it had now eaten nearly 90% of the mana in her compound seed, and it was still going. However, Alice wasn’t the only source of mana that the seed was devouring. Instead, she was providing all of the ‘stabilization’ mana… but none of the [Fisherman] mana. For some reason, after a certain point, the little ball of mana actively rejected any new [Fisherman] mana that Alice tried to feed it, apart from the mana already in Jonathan’s body.

The magic seed continued to grow denser and denser, and more and more spherical. At the same time, the [Fisherman] mana in the rest of his body started to surge forward, like water being pulled down by gravity. This wasn’t a result of Alice trying to use something like ‘pulling’ mana… it was a result of the magic seed itself starting to drag all of the nearby mana towards it, simply as a function of its existence.

Soon, the little magic seed in Jonathan’s heart became a sphere. A few seconds later, the magic seed flashed with mana for a few seconds, and then fell silent.

Alice observed the rest of Jonathan’s body, and grinned.

All of the [Fisherman] mana in Jonathan’s body had been pulled into the magic seed. The magic seed didn’t show any signs of instability, either. It was constantly producing more stabilization mana, and that stabilization mana was sufficient to keep the [Fisherman] mana from pulling apart and drifting away.

However, Alice noticed that her new ‘magic seed’ didn’t look quite right. There were still several types of mana missing, and Alice wasn’t entirely sure whether the seed was doing its job correctly.

Still, even though the magic seed didn’t look quite right, and there might be problems with it, it was doing something. Alice started tossing more activations of {Safety Analysis} at the magic seed, just to make sure that nothing had gone horribly wrong and started killing Jonathan. But everything seemed fine.

“How do you feel?” asked Alice.

“I feel… fine?” said Jonathan, as he inspected himself. “In fact, I feel a bit different than usual. Ever since you had me start building up the prerequisites to become a [Fisherman], I’ve felt a very small urge to fish, even though it’s not really something I typically enjoy. It’s easy to push away, since I have a very high [Willpower], but I did notice it. However, I feel like that urge has decreased. It’s subtle though, and it might be an illusion.”

Alice tried not to start cackling madly in excitement. A moment later, she failed, and started giving out a full, witchy cackle that reverberated through the air and made Jonathan raise an eyebrow.

“I think it worked! Or at least, I got a partial success this time!” said Alice, so happy that she nearly hugged Jonathan, before deciding she really didn’t want physical contact with another human being today. Still, Alice continued cackling happily as she watched the mana in Jonathan’s body slither towards the newly made class seed.

“Do you have a new Class in your status screen?” asked Alice, in between wheezy cackles.

“Umm… I don’t,” said Jonathan.

Alice finally got her mad giggling back under control, and leaned in closer to Jonathan’s body to see what was going on. It only took her a few seconds to figure out why it wasn’t linked to the rest of Jonathan’s status screen – her newly made class seed didn’t have any display mana, or math mana inside of it. Naturally, that meant that while it was doing its job just fine, it wasn’t producing a result for Jonathan to investigate. Alice quickly used a bit of her remaining compound seed’s mana to manually hook up Jonathan’s [Fisherman] seed with his brain. She tossed a bit of math and display mana towards it to make sure everything showed up properly.

“How about now?” asked Alice.

“Hmm… I do see something. But I have no idea what it says. It looks like it’s in some kind of foreign language that I’ve never heard of before,” said Jonathan. “I think it looks like… there is letter that looks like a big pole, with two little flags sticking out of it? And then it’s followed by a little line that is standing upright, with a dot right on top of it…”

“Oops, one second,” said Alice, as she finally realized the problem. Jonathan didn’t speak English. She added in a bit of meaning mana to translate everything. “How about now?”

Jonathan squinted at the air in front of him, before he nodded. “My status screen now shows a new secondary Class. It’s called [Fisherman]. However, the Status Screen also says has the words (Flawed Seed) written right next to it. It’s also displayed as level 0, instead of level 1. I have never heard of a Class being stuck at level 0. How odd.”

Alice shrugged. She had kind of expected that the new magic seed wouldn’t work perfectly. She was just happy she had produced some kind of functioning result at all. It might not be perfect… but she had finally gotten somewhere. It looked like her magic seed suppressed the unusual personality transformations caused by mana, at least. Alice suspected that her ‘Class Seed’ wouldn’t give people Perks, so it was no wonder the System considered it a half-baked magic seed. Still, she had made a solution for the Class mana problem, at least. There were still several components that her magic seed was missing, and she would have to observe Jonathan for a while and make sure her seed didn’t have problems. However, she was at least half-sure that she had finally made a working Class seed of some sort. She could address the current crisis.

She thanked Jonathan for his assistance and willingness to let her experiment on him, and told him to immediately tell her if anything went wrong. Jonathan told her that he would let her know, and also told her that he would do some fishing to see if anything ‘odd’ happened while he generated more [Fisherman] mana.

Alice spent the rest of the day as a mess of emotions, veering between anticipation, hope, and crushing anxiety that she had missed something that would cause the whole thing to collapse. This continued long after dinner, and that night, Alice tossed and turned on her bed. It had been half a day since she had given Jonathan the new version of her seed, and there hadn’t been any issues so far. Had she really done it? Would her test succeed?

As she lay in bed, thinking about her next steps, and her fears and hopes, she was dragged out of her thoughts by a gentle knocking sound on her door. She got out of bed, made sure her appearance was presentable, and then opened the door. On the other side stood Cecilia.

“Ethan wanted you to know. Allira found the Society base. We’ll raid it in two days,” she said.