“You said that it doesn’t matter if I get boring results, right?” asked Alice, turning to Ezrien.
“Indeed. It doesn’t matter even if you discover nothing at all. The only requirents for my challenge are that you investigate sothing you find interesting, and that you must not have researched it before. Ah, I say you can’t have researched it before, but it’s fine if it’s directly related to things you have researched before – I just want it to be sothing you don’t already have results for. My apologies if that was confusing,” said Ezrien. Ezrien had a bit of a strange habit of swapping back and forth between formal and informal speech as he spoke, but Alice was starting to get used to it. She nodded, grinning to herself. “Apart from that, if you need materials, I can supply up to three silver crowns of materials – that’s how much I brought with , after deducting the cost for this al and rounding to convenient numbers.”
Alice nodded. “I know what I want to look into, then. I told you that I was looking into the specifics of the nature of mana, as well as perpetual enchantnts and the human body, right? I have recently been aning to see if I can figure out how System Enchantnts work. Specifically, I want to see if I can figure out what’s powering them, or if they need external power sources at all.”
Ezrien thought for a mont before he nodded. “I haven’t heard of anyone investigating that before, but it certainly sounds interesting. I could see the experint being worth investigating, and it could produce interesting results. If you can actually figure sothing out, it could change a lot of how enchantnts work – at least, if it’s cost efficient. At least assuming there’s sothing new to discover in the first place. This would be an acceptable experint,” he said. “That being said, if you fail, or if there’s nothing to discover, don’t worry about it. I just want to see the process of you investigating a problem – not the conclusion of that process.”
Ezrien paid for the food before the two left the restaurant. It took Alice a few minutes of walking before they arrived at their destination – the shop she had seen selling System enchantnts while heading to the eting.
After Alice got Ezrien’s permission, she used three silver suns to purchase an iron necklace. It was a simple braid of leather, ant to be hung around one’s neck, with a small iron disc attached to the cord. The leather itself was irrelevant – the only important part of the necklace was the iron disc at the bottom. To an ordinary passerby, the iron disc would have looked like an ordinary hunk of iron – however, in Alice’s eyes, it was filled with rainbow mana.
After quickly settling the paynt with the shopkeeper, Alice imdiately left the shop. Ezrien continued to watch her the whole ti, curious about how she was going to investigate the item.
Alice moved to the side of the street, out of the way of any stray pedestrians or horses, and then put on the necklace while carefully observing the iron disc. The rainbow mana surged out of the iron disc, worming its way up the leather cord before it began sinking into her neck. While Alice couldn’t see her own neck without a mirror, she was able to see rainbow mana spread throughout her torso and into the rest of her body, connecting to each of her muscles in an extraordinarily intricate pattern. She took a mont to marvel at what she was seeing.
This ‘System Enchantnt’ wasn’t just increasing her strength by two. It was basically doing its best to mimic a human heart – carefully pumping rainbow mana to the muscles around her body in order to strengthen them all equally, providing her body with a very slight increase in strength. While the actual effect was a asly two points in Strength, the process of getting there was fascinating.
At the sa ti, Alice began to feel ever so slightly stronger. Her stance beca sturdier, her grip beca firr, and she felt that she would be able to lift ever so slightly more weight. In other words, it was the standard effect of gaining a few points of [Strength].
The entire process was done entirely with rainbow mana, aning soone without her Achievents wouldn’t be able to see what was happening. However, Alice could clearly see that System mana was now flowing out of the iron ring on the necklace in a neverending trickle.
Absently, Alice noticed a fair amount of mana being filtered by System fractals before entering her body. She was probably getting experience points for [Scholar], [Explorer of Magic] or [Scientist]. Or all three.
Alice checked the shop advertisent for the necklace she had just bought.
“Iron necklaces of 2 strength for sale! Recently, one of the longti smiths of the shop has gotten to level 65 in [Blacksmith]. To celebrate, we’re going to be selling lots of system-enchantnt equipnt for the next month! Custom orders are now available! Up to 15 in any stat! 5 or more requires a custom order. Upon request, up to one level five Perk from a few specific classes may also be attached to an item of your choice, provided the item does not already have a System enchantnt. A detailed list may be accessed in the shop upon request. Buy during our special sale for this month, before prices increase again!”
Alice examined the necklace again, double checking the rainbow mana in the iron disc. Sure enough, even though mana was continuously pouring into her body, there was no noticeable decrease in the disc’s mana reserve. Unlike the enchantnts Alice made, System Enchantnts didn’t seem to chew through any sort of mana reserve as a power source. It just… worked.
“Curious,” said Alice. Absently, she wondered how the necklace figured out when soone was wearing it. If there was one thing she had gotten used to during her ti enchanting, it was the fact that Enchantnts needed pretty specific instructions to work properly. As far as she knew, System enchantnts all needed to be worn by a human in order to work. How did they know when a human was wearing them?
“So what are you planning on doing to test the necklace?” asked Ezrien, interrupting her thoughts. “I’ve never thought about investigating System enchantnts as a way of looking into artifacts and sustainable enchantnts. I always felt that they aren’t really the sa thing, personally.”
Alice felt a grin tugging at her lips as she looked at the iron ring at the center of the necklace. “Sothing I’ve learned as I have advanced my own studies is that ultimately, everything seems to loop back around to mana. Including this necklace. I intend to see what happens if I cut out the mana supply in its surroundings,” said Alice. “I can make a manaless box with so leftover sap pretty quickly, so I’ll try starving it of mana to see what happens. If it turns off the enchantnt, it would an the necklace is powered by ambient mana. If it doesn’t, I start coming up with the next test.”
“What do you expect the results to be?” Ezrien didn’t sound sarcastic. Instead, he seed genuinely curious.
“Honestly? Nothing. I figure that the System enchantnt in this necklace probably works on a similar principle to magic seeds. That is, the mana it needs to keep working probably cos from seemingly nowhere. But I still want to check first and see if starving the necklace of mana shuts off the whole thing. After all, if I build a bunch of other experints on the idea that ‘System Enchantnts work even without mana in their surroundings’ and then I find out halfway through those experints that my base premise is totally wrong, that would be pretty embarrassing. So I will start out by testing that before I go any further.”
Ezrien laughed. “That’s a good philosophy to have towards research. Testing the basic premise of your experint is pretty important. What do you plan to do to test your base idea?”
“I’m thinking of making a smaller version for this experint. So sort of manaless box, or pouch or sothing. The entire necklace is powered by this iron disc, right? So I figure if I just enclose the iron disc in a manaless box or pouch and then wear it, if I still keep getting a 2 [Strength] boost I will know for sure that this thing doesn’t need atmospheric mana to keep working. I can then design further experints from there.”
Ezrien simply looked at her, as if waiting for sothing. Alice had seen the expression on her teachers from Earth from ti to ti – it was the look that said she was forgetting sothing.
Alice frowned, running over the experint. It was a solid way to test whether or not the necklace worked without mana, right? What was she missing?
“Aren’t you forgetting to prove that the enchantnt is fueled by the iron disc? What if the necklace is what makes the whole thing work?” Asked Ezrien, looking at her.
What was the point of proving that? There was only rainbow mana in one of the two-
Ah.
Alice realized once again that most residents of this world didn’t have the ability to see System mana. Without that, the question of where the whole enchantnt ca from was a far more interesting and debatable one.
“First, I will take the necklace and the iron disc apart and try connecting each one to a totally unenchanted, but otherwise similar item and verify which one gives the 2 [Strength] enhancent. Would that work?” asked Alice. Since it was her first ti ssing with System enchantnts, she was honestly unsure of whether this would break so part of the necklace. Even though the iron disc was the only thing with rainbow mana in it, she didn’t want to break this necklace. Even if it wasn’t very expensive, Alice was broke right now.
Ezrien nodded. “System enchantnts are able to keep working if you replace the unimportant stuff with copies. Still, you should keep in mind that whenever you’re doing a formal experint, you need to verify how the components of your experint work. People all have different Perks, and that ans whenever you use objects created by other people, you need to first verify what their Perks change. The shop’s advertisent claims that the System enchantnt is made by a level 65 [Blacksmith]. Now, all crafting classes have the option to start taking Perks that make System Enchantnts the mont they start getting post 50 Perks. In other words, starting at level 55 their items might have System Enchantnts. However, how do you know he doesn’t have an extra set of post-55 Perks in [Leatherworker]? You need to keep in mind that absolute standardization is often impossible to achieve, and so you need to make adjustnts and double check how those adjustnts work before you get into the serious business. This is sothing you need to do every ti you start an experint, all right?”
Alice frowned. That philosophy went… VERY heavily against what she rembered from Earth. On Earth, if two people conducted an experint and got different results, it either ant soone was about to discover a weird exception to a rule that might make them famous, or, much more likely, one of the two fucked up and needed to figure out how they fucked up. Or keep going down the wrong path, inform the newspaper of their mysterious finding, and make a sensation buzz about the fact that they ssed up their experint, tricking guillible people into following a neverending feed of bad science because newspapers usually didn’t know how to fact check science experints.
Alice was only slightly bitter about this.
The point was, this world’s philosophy towards scientific exploration seed very odd to her. On further reflection, Alice could understand why this philosophy existed. After all, in this world everyone had an ever-so slightly different set of Perks, from [Farrs] to [Guards] to [Blacksmiths] to [Scholars]. Getting exact uniformity in items and tehcniques used for scientific exploration was probably a pipe dream for people in this world. So the best they could do was track possible changes in items, try to account for those oddities in their thodology, and hope they were getting useful results from their experints. At least the System explained most changes it made, so it was possible to track down and understand what Perks might be influencing an item or experint. Still, it seed like a nightmare to deal with a quagmire of uncertainties every ti soone started an experint in this world.
“Do you have leather cords and iron discs available, or do I need to grab those as well?”
“We’ll need to grab a few,” said Ezrien.
Alice nodded, turned around, and walked right back into the blacksmith shop. The clerk seed more than a little bemused to see her again less than a minute after she had exited the store, but fulfilled her request quickly after she made her order. Since this ti she was just asking for ordinary materials, the price ca out to three copper artisans and a few copper paupers.
Having acquired the materials she needed for her experint, Alice packed up the two strings and two tal discs before Ezrien led her to a more well-built building in the center of the middle-class section of town.
Inside of the building, Alice saw three other people – two females and one male. The male and one of the females looked to be in their late twenties, and had ordinary levels of mana in their body. Since Alice could faintly see kinetic magic seeds stored behind their hearts, she quickly confird that they were Mages.
The second female appeared to be in her early twenties – however, the amount of mana in her body was much denser than her colleagues, making Alice suspect she might be the sa age as the rest of them and just had a higher level than her team mbers. She was also a Mage, but had a Thermal and an Electromagnetic seed instead of a Kinetic one. She was one of the only Mages Alice had seen besides herself and Cecilia that had bothered picking up a second magic seed.
“Hey, team leader!” said the high-level and young-looking female mage, giving Ezrien a cheerful wave before turning back to her work. The woman looked rather cute, making Alice guess that she had a [Charisma] of around 130 or so. The highest of anyone in the room, including Alice.
The other two Mages ignored Alice and Ezrien entirely, too focused on taking asurents for a flat tal disc that Alice had a hard ti guessing the purpose of. It was covered in Kinetic Energy, and Alice could tell that it was supposed to move objects in its surroundings under specific circumstances. However, she couldn’t figure out what the conditions to activate it were, or what purpose the enchantnt had without taking a closer look.
“Good afternoon, Anne. I’m surprised to see you here today. Isn’t it your day off?”
“I figured I would stop by and chat for a while. Besides, you can’t get levels by slacking off, you know? It’s important to be as diligent as possible if you want to lead a long and healthy life!” She gave Ezrien a cheeky grin, before turning to Alice. “Who are you? I don’t think I’ve seen you here before. Nice to et you! I’m Anne!” She said, holding out her hand for Alice to shake.
“I’m… basically auditioning to be part of your research team, I suppose? In the capacity of an [Assistant] if I’m not mistaken?” said Alice, after a few monts.
“Oh, is that so?” Asked Anne, turning to Ezrien. “Are you finally replacing Geralt?” Anne’s face wrinkled as she ntioned Geralt’s na, completely overturning her originally cheery vibe. Considering how friendly Anne seed so far, Alice had to wonder just what Geralt had done to get such a bad response from the woman.
“Hopefully,” said Ezrien, uneasily. “I’m thinking of acting as a patron for her to pursue ti in a magic academy. I’m mostly planning on delegating so of the administrative stuff to her in exchange for 15 gold suns, paid up front in exchange for the next year of labor. And acting as patron for twenty coins, in hopes of furthering my research topics of passion in the future. The twenty coins are coming from my own savings, so don’t worry about those.”
“Isn’t 20 crowns a little too harsh for her? I an, it’s a fair price for her labor for a year, but if she’s acting as a student, she’s already losing a lot of ti every day. Assuming she works for us as assistant, that chews through most of her spare ti. She still needs to co up with five gold coins on her own, plus food, room, and board for herself for a year. I know academies usually give out uniforms, and if you’re signed up for the military program they usually provide way more, but it doesn’t sound like she’s going into the military program if she needs a sponsor. Just keeping herself afloat might be difficult, don’t you think?” said Anne, giving Ezrien a dubious look.
“I already have another part ti job of sorts lined up,” said Alice. “A friend of mine runs an enchanting shop, and I have a penchant for picking weird magic seeds. So I can dump my mana into enchanting every day and turn that into my living expenses – at least, that’s my current plan. It’s not ideal, since a lot of my enchantnts are a bit sub-par right now – but my classes are also pretty low level right now, so it’s easy to boost them higher. As I pick up Perks my classes will get better, and I figure it’ll be easier and easier to get. I just need to push through the hard part which is… now. It probably won’t be pleasant, but I can do it.”
“Hmm…” Anne tapped her finger on her lips, as if deep in thought, before slowly nodding. “If you’ve thought it through and that’s what you want to do, I won’t stop you, I guess. Pushing yourself can break so people, but it can also give you more levels and Stats than anything else. Just be careful not to push yourself so hard you shatter, all right?” she said. Alice noticed that Anne’s look towards her had beco more respectful than before. It wasn’t by much, but the difference in attitude still made Alice feel a bit better about her plans.
Ezrien simply smiled at Anne, before giving Alice a friendly nod. “Anne is the group mom. If things work out, be nice to her – it’s pretty hard to piss her off.”
“How did Geralt did it then?”
“Geralt is a total asshole,” said Anne. “He’s competent enough, but he ca to work drunk three tis so far. Then he rants about how he’s a better worker than the rest of us, and how it isn’t fair his level is lower than mine. Excuse ?” Anne snorted. “He’s said so nasty stuff to two of the others as well, so the team is getting kind of sick of his antics. He’s both unprofessional and a jerk.”
Alice turned to Ezrien, who was making a strained smile. Alice took that as light confirmation of Anne’s words, and decided not to delve deeper into the topic.
“Anyway, good luck on your test, new girl! I hope you join the team.”
The other two researchers who were present simply ignored what was going on, continuing to take asurents while ssing with the flat tal disc.
Ezrien nodded, and took Alice into a separate room to begin her test.
Reviews
All reviews (0)