Chapter 165
After the conversation with Murim ended, Alice and Ethan returned to the manor. Alice started looking over her Status Screen as she took stock of the situation.
The [Kings] Achievement had given her a rough idea where the System might be, but Alice couldnt take advantage of that information yet. Murim was her only chance to narrow down the physical location of the System, but it was uncertain whether Murim would successfully locate it. He might return empty handed, or duck out if the Sigmusi started hunting him down. In other words, Alice had done everything she could with the Systems physical mainframe for now.
Alices other attempts to quell the chaos of the collapse were going better. Alices enchantments were on track to handle mana forcibly changing peoples personalities, and Cecilias [Enchanters] were successfully forming new magic seeds. The first few batches of materials from Cyra had arrived recently, and Cecilias [Enchanters] had successfully made a few rings without Alices supervision. Cecilias [Enchanters] had even given her a proposal for expanding the group recently. Alice didnt think that things were moving fast enough on that front, but things were still progressing on that front.
Now it was time to think about what to do next.
There were still several problems to solve. Alice mana was a potential threat to Alice that she didnt know how to solve yet. Achievements were still broken. Intelligent monster swarms were starting to devastate smaller towns around the country. The timer before even stronger willed people started losing their sanity from class mana was ticking down, and Alices solutions werent propagating quickly enough to handle that. The recent actions of the Sigmusi and the Society were also worrying. They both seemed dead set on targeting Alice, and Alice didnt have the tools to defend herself properly. Finally, there needed to be some way to create new class seeds, and Alice hadnt the faintest idea how to do that right now. The creation of a new class seed seemed like the most important function of the System, but it was also the most complicated, and Alice wasnt sure how to even start yet.
Alice massaged her forehead as she sat on her bed, thinking. What problem should she tackle next? What problems could she tackle? Right now, Alice had no idea how to speed up production of enchanted rings that cured mana-related problems. The biggest problem was production capacity, and Alice was more of a researcher than a [Merchant]. Monster armies really werent a problem Alice understood how to tackle. Alices knowledge of military tactics was nonexistent, and although Alice was no longer a slouch when it came to personal combat, Alice was pretty sure that someone like Ethan or the Sun Knight was in a much better place to handle monster armies. Ethan had hinted that his father was dealing with the matter somehow, so Alice decided to ignore it. Similarly, Alice just wasnt able to grow quickly enough to meet the threat of the Society and the Sigmusi. While she definitely wanted to learn how to defend herself eventually, she was stuck relying on Ethan and her [Guards] for now, and that wasnt going to change anytime soon.
That left Alice mana and broken Achievements. Alice mana was clearly the bigger problem, so Alice decided to focus on it first.
Unfortunately, Alice wasnt quite sure how to advance that problem. Realistically, Alice needed to be level 85 to look at Alice mana. That was when she would be able to fuse {Expanding Comprehension} and {Intuitive Magic Modelling}. That meant Alice needed to get four levels in [Explorer of Magic].
How was she supposed to get four more levels in [Explorer of Magic]?
Alice thought about it, before she sighed.
Just a few days ago, she had been thinking about what mana types must be part of System mana. She had made a list of magic types she could create. She hadnt used three of her four magic seed creations for the month yet, because Alice had been hoping for a bigger hint about what she needed next. The moment Alice used the first magic seed combination, she had felt the Perk start ticking towards its cooldown, so she hadnt wasted any of her Perk uses. Unfortunately, the meeting with the [King], as well as her discussion with Ethan, hadnt really shed any light on what kinds of mana it would be best to integrate into her magic seed next.
Alice needed levels now, so it was time to finish using her three magic seed creations for the month.
She needed pure mana, organic mana, meaning mana, and possibly some sort of core mana that held the System together. But Alice already knew three types of mana she needed to integrate into her System seed, so she might as well get on with it.
First, Alice started creating meaning mana. It was the type of mana Alice understood the least, but Alice was hoping that maybe it would fix all of the broken grammar in her System messages.
Alice spent several minutes running various questions through {Safety Analysis}, before she finally got started.
The process for creating a meaning mana magic seed was interesting. Alice didnt perfectly understand the type of mana she was trying to create, which made it much harder for her to create the new magic seed than usual.
It ended up taking several more minutes to get the magic seed correctly constructed, and once it was built, Alice felt that she might botched the construction a bit. The magic seed would probably leak a crazy amount of broken mana whenever she used it. Not the end of the world, but Alice was still rather dissatisfied with her work.
But even though it wasnt perfect, it wasnt a safety hazard. Even though Alice was tempted to destroy it with {Broken Seed} and start over, after a few moments, she sighed, and decided to leave it. She had very limited uses of her seed-creation Perk, and she couldnt waste them. Instead, she activated the second component of her Perk. The newly constructed meaning magic seed was absorbed and integrated into her System magic seed moments later.
Alice spent a few more seconds going over the changes in her System seed, trying to see if anything felt different than before. She distinctly remembered that after she had created a math magic seed, she had felt like her integrated magic seed had gained something more. Something crucial to what the System was.
This time, she didnt get the same sensation.
Alice frowned.
She had been hoping for that sensation to return, because it might have given her more hints about what it meant. She had been hoping for something new to explore so that she could level up her class further. Unfortunately, her hope ended up fruitless.
Alice sighed, and decided to try again with another magic seed once she tested out her new mana type. If at first she didnt succeed, she just needed to keep trying. She used some of her newly made meaning mana, along with her Display mana, to look at one of her Perks, and see if the translation of the System message changed.
Perk Naaaame: Delve _ Memories
Perk Costs: Delve into the Arcane + Improved Memory
Perk _ Synergy detected: Sleep Reading
Vastly improved understanding while using remembering. Can level, analyze, and improve magic better.
While {Sleep Reading}, can use objects you remember. Levelling speed improved by Get_Number while sleep reading. Experiments and Enchantments very accurate while sleep.
Before Alice used her newly constructed magic seed, the description for {Delve Memories} had looked like a mess. It had been a bit hard to figure out what in the world the Perk was actually doing, and Alice had spent some time translating the Perk after its creation..
With the addition of Meaning mana, the Perk looked a lot like System messages from before the collapse.
Memory Experimentation (Tier 2 Perk, level 60 Scholar of Magic)
Perk Costs: Delve into the Arcane + Improved Memory sacrificed to create this Perk.
Perk Synergizes with {Sleep Reading}
Your ability to understand things is drastically improved if you are analyzing a memory. Your Magic stat and all associated Skills improve 20% faster.
While {Sleep Reading}, you can experiment with objects that you remember the existence of and which you have recently been in contact with. (Contact can take place either physically or through any of your Perks/magic). Any experiments you conduct while using {Sleep Reading} will obtain accurate results, as if they were real objects. You can experiment with mana and objects while {Sleep Reading} freely (especially for enchanting purposes).
Warning: You cannot subject items to experiments which you are incapable of recreating in the real world. For example, if you want to see what would happen to an item if you threw it into a black hole, you must have the object in real life, and have a way of throwing said item into a black hole in real life.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Alice grinned.
Ever since the System had collapsed, every single System message that Alice had seen had been in Illvarian. That was fine Alice was now just as fluent in Illvarian as a native speaker. But she couldnt help but feel glad that the System was back in English, and had proper grammar again. It felt comforting. As if it was showing Alice that everything could be fixed if she just worked hard enough.
Still, Alice was disappointed that she hadnt gotten any clues about the weird sensation she had felt when creating math mana. She spent a few minutes filtering [Explorer of Magic] mana, but didnt get a level out of it. Based on how much mana it had taken to reach level 81, Alice guessed that she had gotten about a quarter of a level. There was a lot of work left to be done.
Alice sighed, and kept going.
The next magic seed she decided to create was pure mana. Since the System was so involved in mana filtration, Alice thought that pure mana might be pretty important to the System. That made it a reasonable priority.
Not to mention, Alice had a lot of experience interfering with and utilizing pure mana. Some of her earliest enchantments that made money had been made using pure mana. It would be very easy to create another copy of the magic seed and integrate it into her System mana.
Alice got to work, and in under a minute, she had another pure magic seed. She activated her Perk, and her System magic seed ate the newly minted pure mana magic seed.
And Alice grinned.
Just like when she had created and integrated her math magic seed, Alice felt as if the System seed in her body had gained something more. Something integral to its existence.
This time, Alice got a clearer idea of what exactly had changed.
The System seed in her body was more communicative than before.
The System did a lot of different things and most of those things involved multiple kinds of mana. For example, in the process of helping someone survive a mana baptism, the System needed to help filter mana in the baptees surroundings, heal the disconnected nerves and chunks of flesh, and help the person put their newly-forming mage core into the correct spot. And that was just the surface of what was happening whenever the System helped someone survive a baptism.
How did the System know where each organ was supposed to go? How did the System know what type of mana the baptee needed? How did the System even know hey, theres a person undergoing a mana baptism right here! I need to do something!
Alice now had a rough idea.
Pure mana, math mana, and a few other types of mana were responsible for acting as the core of System mana. They did something that other parts of the System didnt handle they input information into the System. Pure mana and math mana had other functions, but one of the most critical parts of the System was that these types of mana acted as eyes for the System. Pure mana was able to sense mana fluctuations around the world, and tell the System hey, this person is forming a [Farmer] seed and other important things. Without Pure mana to feed this information to the System, it would have no way of detecting what kind of class mana someone had in their body. Which also meant that the System would have no way of figuring out when it needed to help someone form a class seed, or which class seed said person might want.
Math mana was responsible for backing up this information, serving as a kind of double check for various things the System needed to be aware of. For example, [Farmer] magic seeds were always located next to peoples hearts. Math mana seemed to be responsible for figuring out where is this persons heart and then telling the rest of the System where all of the mana filtration and other stuff was supposed to happen. It also seemed to evaluate any information given by pure mana. For example, if only one-thousandth of a Marium of [Farmer] mana was present in someones body, it obviously didnt make sense to build a [Farmer] magic seed for them. Math mana was responsible for figuring out when a number was too small to bother handling, basically.
Alice was probably missing a lot of information, but that was what she had managed to glean from the faint feeling of completion in her System magic seed. It gave Alice a much better idea of how to proceed.
As it turned out, one of Alices earlier assumptions was correct. She had mostly been speculating earlier, but when she had formed her first magic seed, she had assumed that there was some sort of core type of mana that helped the System actually work. Alice just hadnt realized that here wasnt only one type of core mana instead, several different types of mana worked together as a core framework to get clouds of non-sapient mana to do what they were supposed to do.
It was a clever solution to the inherent stupidity of non-sapient objects.
Alice checked her experience again, and was sad to see that she still hadnt gotten to level 82 in [Explorer of Magic] yet. She was probably close, but apparently her actions so far simply werent enough to push her over the edge.
She had one more magic seed formation left.
Alice spent several minutes thinking about what she wanted.
Now that Alice knew that a variety of different types of mana needed to serve as the core of System mana, Alice wasnt entirely sure what those mana types needed to be.
Her thoughts drifted towards {Expanding Comprehension}, but {Safety Analysis} told her that trying to delve into the nature of System mana using her half-baked seed would be a bit dangerous right now.
Alice wasnt sure why. Perhaps the System had once protected her mind from whatever sort of damage delving into the secrets of the System might create. Perhaps trying to analyze an incomplete magic seed would be dangerous. Perhaps there was a completely different problem that needed to be solved. Since {Safety Analysis} didnt tell Alice why things were dangerous, Alice was left to guess what the problem might be. And she had no idea.
If {Expanding Comprehension} cant tell me what I need to know, I can only guess things and then run them through {Safety Analysis} until I find something simple. I could also make another Organic Magic seed and then feed it to the System seed but Im not sure if thats really the best option. There must be something more useful I can make. Organic magic being integrated into my System seed would probably help me make mana-flesh, among other things but right now, Stats seem to be working well enough, even without the input of the System. Best to put out the immediate fires and focus on actual problems.
Alice started thinking about the most outlandish ideas she could think of involving System mana, just to see if she found any new mana types that would be helpful and that she needed.
Artificial Intelligence mana was tossed right out by {Safety Analysis}. Alice was pretty sure it wasnt part of System mana, but it had seemed worth checking. Coding mana didnt work either. Intelligence mana was also ruled out by her Perk. After going through a few dozen variations on intelligence or programming to figure out some of the missing components of the core of System mana, Alice finally found a hit.
Communication mana.
During her brainstorming session, Alice had started to wonder what let math mana give information to pure mana. There must be something that let math mana actually relay its findings to other parts of the System. Right now, her magic seed was trying to communicate with itself, but it felt like the communication was very slow and clumsy. Having another type of mana integrated into the seed would help facilitate communication and make it much more efficient. {Safety Analysis} gave her the green light when she thought about integrating it into her System seed, so Alice decided to go for it.
Alice grinned, and started forming her final magic seed for the month.
After several minutes of hard work, she created a communication mana magic seed. Just like Alice had expected, her System seed felt much more complete now. The previously slow and clumsy communication between math mana and pure mana started to feel very efficient and clean.
Alice activated her System seed and extended a tendril outward, before placing it against a big copper coin she had laying around in her storage Perk. Then, she waited to see what happened.
A few moments later, as mana funneled through her tendril, she noticed that the different kinds of mana in her tendril were all bouncing off of each other and interacting with each other.
The math mana in her magic seed was giving Alice random numbers, which the display mana and meaning mana translated those numbers into something that was actually useful.
Alice was bombarded by a wave of information.
Suddenly, Alice had a very accurate understanding of the mana inside of the copper coin. Her Perks usually gave her good information about things after all, Alice still had {Advanced Mana Measurement} to give her numbers when she wanted to know the number of mariums in a given object or area. But now, Alice was getting far more detailed information than {Advanced Mana Measurement} had ever given her. She knew exactly how the mana distribution in the copper coin looked. She could tell that near the center of the coin, the mana was slightly more compact and concentrated. Alice watched, in fascination, as the mana swirled around inside of the coin. She was intimately aware of where each fraction of a marium of mana was, and could even see as the concentration of mana in the coin slowly changed, swirling around in an endless dancing cloud of mana each second.
Her math mana worked with her pure mana to analyze and measure every single marium of mana in her view. Her communication mana fed that information to her display mana and meaning mana. Those two kinds of mana then worked together to create a packet of information and sent it to Alices brain. Alices brain unpacked that information and translated it. It was a coherent set of systems layered on top of each other to create a useful string of information. And it happened without any input from Perks or external measuring devices. Alice smiled, as she finally confirmed that she had made exceptional progress.
And then, Alice shut the mana tendril off as a massive headache began to form right behind her eyes.
Unlike the mainframe of the System, Alice had a regular, human brain. She had gained a lot of points in Intelligence since coming to this world, and so she could process way more information per second than a normal human being should be able to but there was still a limit.
The amount of information her new magic seed was feeding her was probably dozens of times higher than the amount of information her brain was able to process. Alice suspected that if she didnt shut the magic seed off immediately, her head might explode.
I need to create some sort of filter for information, thought Alice, grimacing as she rubbed her forehead. Sadly, she hadnt thought about this when creating her filtration magic seed, so her filtration seed was entirely concentrated on filtering mana. Perhaps she needed an information filtration magic seed? Or something like that? Something to think about next month.
Alice sighed, and then grinned as her headache started to go away. After filtering a few different chunks of mana into [Explorer of Magic] mana, she checked her levels.
You have leveled up!
Explorer of Magic : 81 -> 83
She had been very close to level 82 before she started her experiment, but finally figuring out how the core of System mana worked had clearly been worth quite a bit of experience. She hadnt quite hit level 85 yet, but she had still gotten quite a bit from this. Alice also suspected that once she had some sort of information filter installed in her new magic seed, she might be able to figure out what part of her mana crystal was broken, even without reaching level 85. Of course, hitting level 85 would probably make the process much easier, so Alice would have to see what happened. But she had definite options for how to start making real solutions for her problems.
Alice went to sleep that night satisfied with her progress.
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