A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World

With her mana penetration improved, Alice got back to work. After giving her new Perks one final read-through to make sure she wasn’t missing anything, she activated her new Perk. In an instant,{Burst of Multitasking} created five new magic tendrils.

Contrary to her expectations, Alice didn’t ‘see’ things through her new magic tendrils. Instead, any time her new magic tendrils touched a bit of organic matter, Alice got a strange mixture of sensations from them. It was more like she was touching, smelling, and looking at any piece of organic matter the tendrils touched. They also felt very different from her normal magic tendrils. It was a bizarre collage of sensations that Alice didn’t quite know how to parse.

Of course, this was a bit more limited than the wording of the Perk implied. Alice couldn’t see anything on the level of microbes. She couldn’t see viruses, or bacteria, or any of the truly microscopic types of organic matter. However, if she focused, she absolutely could see individual muscle fibers, especially the blocks of solidified mana-muscles that the System favored when people increased the physical stats. In short, she could see tissues, but nothing smaller than that. Alice was a bit disappointed by this, but not very surprised. People in this world had general knowledge of how diseases worked, but seemed to have no intimate knowledge of things like the size difference between bacteria and viruses. If a mere level 70 Perk could let people observe the microscopic world, it probably wouldn’t be a mystery to the people in this world right now. So even though Alice wished that her Perk would let her observe more, she wasn’t surprised that it didn’t.

That wasn’t the only unexpected side of the Perk. The mana cost of the Perk rather hefty. Even though Alice had a compound System seed with around 600 Mariums of mana inside of it, she still suspected that she could only keep the Perk running for about 5 minutes, if she were to use her System seed to keep the thing fueled. In other words, the seed was chewing through about 2 Mariums of mana per minute. That level of consumption might pose some problems if she was using the Perk solely for its organic vision-related abilities. After all, sometimes Alice needed to observe an experiment for an extended period of time. However, the level of detail and information Alice was getting from her Perk was also much higher than before, so it wasn’t entirely a loss. Not to mention, this Perk was actually very useful in combat, and would be much more valuable in quick fights than the two Perks she had lost.

The mental strain of the Perk was another matter. Even with nearly 200 [Intelligence], Alice felt like her mind was being strained even if she only activated the Perk for a few seconds. With the mental strain of the Perk added in, Alice suspected that she might only be able to keep the Perk running for a total of three minutes right now. Past that point, and it would start to become a painful and unwelcome distraction. That was far less time than she had been hoping for. This new Perk had a great deal of useful sides, but it was also an endless black hole for her mana and mental energy.

Alice sighed, before she focused. She needed to focus on the [Fisherman] mana in Jonathan. If she only had 3 minutes before she needed to take a break, she couldn’t waste them sighing and thinking. She still had Jonathan’s permission to interact with his body, so she pushed her mana tendrils right back into his stomach, to see if her new Perk would fix her previous problem.

This time, Alice didn’t feel like she had rammed her magic tendrils into a steel wall. She still felt Jonathan’s body resisting her intrusion – after all, Immortals had ludicrously dense mana in their bodies. However, it was at least at a manageable level now. If before she was trying to punch through solid steel, now it felt like she was trying to push through hard wood with a few small holes drilled into it. Alice still wasn’t making great progress. The ‘holes’ in Jonathan’s defenses were too small for her to perfectly exploit. However, she could do something, at least. It was still much harder and more expensive than a regular patient, but she could work through it, if barely.

Alice started looking at Jonathan’s body again, and planned her next move. She wanted to build Jonathan’s [Fisherman] mana into a knockoff class seed. Of course, Alice didn’t know much about the construction of a proper Class seed, so she had to improvise a bit. For now, Alice’s plan was simple – she would tie a ‘string’ of stabilization mana around a bit of Fisherman mana, and then try condensing it. From there… Alice would see what happened. At the very least, {Safety Analysis} wasn’t ringing any warning bells at her, so Alice thought it was a safe enough experiment to run. However, just to make sure, she decided to only interact with the mana in Jonathan’s left pinky toe. Alice knew that the System placed class seeds in other locations – mostly near the heart or the brain. There was probably a reason for that… but Alice didn’t know what it was. Therefore, for now, Alice decided to experiment with mana only in the least vital areas of the body. That way, if something went wrong, the lowest possible amount of damage would be inflicted. Furthermore, if something went truly wrong, Alice could always chop off Jonathan’s pinky toe before the damage spread. In this world, it wasn’t very difficult to restore missing limbs with the help of an [Organic Mage]. Losing a toe wasn’t a big deal.

Then, Alice frowned. How was she supposed to cut through the flesh of an Immortal with a crazy [Endurance] stat? She had Jonathan wait while she went back to the manor. Luckily, Ethan was in right now, so Alice dragged him over. Alice didn’t think Ethan could help much with her actual experiment, but he could probably cut off Jonathan’s toe if needed. Besides, he was also an experienced Immortal with centuries of practice as a healer. Even if it wasn’t his main focus, it was probably good enough to handle the current situation.

After that, Alice went over her plans with Jonathan. After all, it was important to make sure he was all right with her plans before she got started. After Jonathan gave her the green light, Alice finally got to work. She pushed her mana tendrils into Jonathan’s pinky toe, and started trying to influence Jonathan’s [Fisherman] mana.

Alice felt beads of sweat start to form on her a moment later. Even with her new Perk, it was slow and difficult. However, after nearly a minute of strain, Alice sagged in relief.

She had managed to tie a string of [Fisherman] mana and stabilization mana together, and then condense it. For a good measure, she had even thrown {Raw Mana Enchanting} at the little helix of mana, just to make sure it wouldn’t fall apart before she could observe what was happening. Then, Alice relaxed, turned off her extra magic tendrils, and focused on her mana vision.

The thread of [Fisherman] mana and stabilization mana didn’t look anything like the class seeds that Alice was used to seeing. It looked more like one of the DNA models that Alice had seen in biology class – it was like a helix of mana. However, unlike a DNA model, this one looked like someone had tried to crush it after making it. One end of the model was a little bit squashed, giving it a rather ugly appearance. However, Alice felt a grin start to form on her lips as she watched the double helix of mana.

It… wasn’t collapsing. At least, not immediately. There weren’t even obvious signs that it was fraying around the edges, or anything like that. Sure, the mana helix was also doing literally none of the jobs that a Class seed was supposed to do – but at the very least, the whole mess wasn’t collapsing in on itself.

Alice pulled her magic tendrils out of Jonathan’s body, and then carefully observed the threads of mana as they sat around inside of his left pinky toe.

“Is anything happening?” asked Jonathan.

“Maybe. Do you feel… any changes in your thoughts or body? Particularly those related to fishing?” Asked Alice. “Or did anything new appear in your Status Screen?”

Jonathan frowned.

“I notice no changes to my Status Screen at all. As for changes in my thoughts or body… I have to admit… I don’t feel much difference. Maybe I feel slightly less interested in fishing than before? I have felt for a week or two that I am a bit more interested in fishing than usual, which I thought was rather unusual. I’ve never liked fish much. I don’t hate it either, and I’ve had a few good meals made of seafood. But I’ve never really liked fish before a [Chef] finishes processing them. They’re kind of slimy and unpleasant to look at.” Jonathan grimaced. “So I did think the small desire to fish was pretty unusual, even if it was easy to push aside.”

Alice nodded. If Jonathan didn’t notice any big difference, Alice decided to chalk that up as something more akin to a placebo effect than a proper cure. She had also only tied up a very small string of [Fisherman] mana in his body. It was hard to say whether she had removed the mental influence of mana from Jonathan at all. Alice sighed, and rubbed her temples in frustration. Since so much of mana relied on perception and belief, rather than proper, rigid numbers, getting information about how her experiment was going proved surprisingly difficult and annoying.

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At the very least, Alice didn’t notice anything going immediately wrong with Jonathan’s body after trying her mana helix experiment. She turned towards Ethan.

“Ethan, do you notice any sort of problem that my experiment could have introduced into his body?”

Since Alice’s ability to peek inside of people’s bodies was now limited by mana and concentration, she decided to just ask Ethan. Ethan’s eyes flashed rainbow for a moment, before he shook his head.

“I don’t notice anything unusual. The mana density in his pinky toe is now a bit higher than before, but I notice zero problems with his organs, flesh, or anything else. He seems just as healthy as before.” 𝐫

Alice nodded. Her helix might not have done anything helpful, but it also hadn’t placed Jonathan into a healer’s room or killed him. Alice observed the mana helix for several more minutes, to see if it started disintegrating or creating other problems, but nothing really changed. It seemed like the structure was stable, but wasn’t doing anything at all. That was… a start.

Alice got to work on the next step. A class seed that didn’t do anything was a terrible replacement for real Class seeds. What did she need to do to make her mana construct actually useful? Alice frowned as she thought about that question, before she sank into thought.

What did Class seeds do?

At the end of the day, Class seeds seemed to be responsible for one thing. They took problematic mana of a specific ‘type,’ and then absorbed it all. Then, Class seeds turned that mana into a variety of useful Perks.

How did Class seeds normally absorb the problematic mana?

Alice scanned through her memories, and couldn’t’ seem to find any instance of class mana doing anything specific to absorb mana. It was almost like it… just slowly flowed towards the class seed? In the same way a marble would gradually make its way down a gentle slope, mana seemed to just… flow towards the appropriate class seed. When Alice had been working to help Boris, she remembered that mana had sort of just… slowly disappeared in his body, once his class seed started to do its job. However slow and un-optimized his Class seed had been, it just sort of… digested mana as time passed.

Alice looked at the mana helix in Jonathan’s pinky toe. The nearby [Fisherman] mana was definitely not moving towards it.

What was she missing?

Furthermore, Alice wasn’t quite sure how to make her ‘class seed’ turn mana into Perks, either. The construction of a single Perk was something that Alice was still clueless about. As far as she could tell, her class seed absorbed mana, and then, somehow, the class seed just… granted people magic abilities afterward. There didn’t seem to be any sort of major change in a Class seed in between these two things, or at least not one that she could track. Mana quantity increased, as did density, but there weren’t any major structural changes that she had noticed.

Alice felt a headache start to form, and this time, it had nothing to do with her new Perk. However, this time, it only took her a few minutes to alight upon a new idea.

The ‘base’ type of mana. That must be it. [Fisherman] mana was a problem for people. It interfered with their mind and created all sorts of problematic effects. But all types of mana could influence things related to that mana. Kinetic mana could be used to make objects move around. Organic mana could be used to manipulate organic matter. Some types of mana were less efficient, so they created far more broken mana in the process… but at the very least, all types of mana could manipulate things related to them.

So, why wouldn’t [Fisherman] mana be able to help people fish better? As long as the mana in a Class Seed had some sort of ‘instruction’ for what it was supposed to do, it could probably handle the rest. All that was needed was a way to get the Class mana to accept a certain set of instructions for what it needed to do, and a way to handle the resulting broken mana.

People’s perception of what a ‘class’ was supposed to do would shape the limitations and abilities of each type of magic afterwards. Alice just needed to make sure her knockoff class seed gave the correct instructions, absorbed the correct type of mana, and handled waste disposal. As long as those three things were accomplished, and any hidden medical dangers were resolved, the class seed would be functional. Alice suspected there was a bit more to it than that – after all, she wasn’t sure how people got a ‘choice’ about what type of ‘Perk’ they wanted whenever they had a Perk choice. But she could worry about that later. It was far, far lower on the priority list than the other stuff.

Alice grimaced, and then reactivated {Burst of Multitasking}. Her headache started to grow again, and Jonathan’s mana resistance proved to be a massive pain in the neck as she went back to interfering with his body. Alice was expecting it this time, and gritted her teeth as she powered through it. She used a bit of pure mana to start pushing around the other mana in Jonathan’s body, specifically focusing on the [Fisherman] mana in the rest of his foot. Alice kept shoving it towards her double helix of mana. Her helix of mana didn’t seem to drag other mana towards it… but did it at least trap mana that it came into contact with?

After a few minutes of trial and error, Alice confirmed her slim hope. The [Fisherman] mana didn’t leave the double helix once it touched it. It was like the [Fisherman] mana was a layer of sticky tarp – it didn’t actively drag other things towards it, but once something touched it, it would keep it there. It was far from ideal, but at least it wasn’t completely useless.

Of course, Alice also noticed that as more [Fisherman] mana accumulated in the double helix of mana, the double helix started to grow less stable. The density of the artificial magic seed was compromised, because the magic seed wasn’t naturally condensing the mana it was coming into contact with. In addition, the quantity of [Fisherman] mana started to become much higher in comparison to the quantity of stabilization mana. The magic helix didn’t fall apart on the spot, but Alice seriously doubted the mana helix would remain stable under these conditions. Worse, it was pulling in other types of mana besides [Fisherman] mana. Those types of mana didn’t get incorporated into the helix at all – they just got stuck.

Alice grimaced. There were a lot of problems she needed to fix. System-made Class seeds had none of these problems. How did the System fix the mana ratio problem? Not to mention, she still needed to find any hidden medical problems and deal with all of the other ‘missing components’ from her version of a Class Seed. And she had to find a solution quickly, because every hour she wasted was an hour the planet teetered closer to the brink of collapse.

Alice took a deep breath, and tried to shove her anxiety down. People would be dying for every second that she failed to fix all of this… but if she gave people a faulty cure, that would do far more damage than taking a few more days to make sure her solution to the crisis was safe. If she distributed a problematic cure, people would grow wary of any future cures. Not to mention, anyone unlucky enough to receive a faulty cure might have their life irreparably harmed. She was practically bursting with the need to move faster, to do better… but she still needed to make sure her cure was perfect. At the very least, it needed to fix the obvious problems people were running into, and have no hidden side effects.

She sighed. There was still so much about Class seeds she didn’t understand. Despite the fact that she was missing so much information, she had to develop a replacement as quickly as possible, or people would keep dying. The situation felt truly absurd to her.

She glanced at her magic seeds, and decided that she had enough mana, mental energy, and Perk usage time remaining for one more experiment. In practice, she had enough for a bit more… but she wanted to leave some mana aside. That way, if an emergency happened, she had the mana to immediately break down everything that she had been experimenting with in Jonathan’s body and handle any complications.

Alice decided to try addressing one of the bigger problems her ‘class seed’ had. She couldn’t try to fix everything this time, but at the very least, she could try to get it to absorb nearby mana. That was because Alice had thought of a possible solution for that problem. She didn’t know if it was the ‘correct’ solution, but she at least had an idea. {Safety Analysis} didn’t warn her against trying it, so Alice was willing to give it a shot.

Alice spent a minute switching her focus back towards her {Experimental Magic} seed, and tried making a new type of mana. Alice had no idea if this type of mana was used by the System, but she was already getting ‘creative’ with her problem solving. As long as it worked, that would be good enough for her.

Alice decided to create what she called ‘pulling’ mana. This type of mana was meant to pull ALL types of mana towards itself – just at a ridiculously slow rate. Alice didn’t want to drag in a bunch of nearby mana, and then have something go wrong and kill Jonathan. Thus, she needed a type of mana that would work, but wouldn’t do anything quickly and create an unsolvable mess.

She produced a tiny, tiny speck of this mana using her {Experimental Magic} seed, since that was all she could generate in a few minutes, and then, to simulate ‘normal’ conditions, she used her pure mana to move a bunch of other [Fisherman] mana near the seed.

Then, she used her tiny little speck of ‘pulling’ mana, and was gratified to see a few wisps of [Fisherman] mana get sucked into her mana helix.

Then, Alice ran out of mana. More importantly, her headache from using {Burst of Multitasking} started to reach a point where she couldn’t focus anymore. But at the very least, she had found a solution to her problem. She needed to find a way to make her mana helix generate that type of mana and use it on its own, but… that was a problem that could wait until her headache was gone.

It was still far from a complete solution… but she was finally making progress. She had confirmed that it was possible to make a stable mana structure using stabilization mana and class mana, and found a way to get that mana structure to absorb other, nearby mana. There were a bunch of problems left to solve, but Alice had at least confirmed that she had the start of a solution.

She just hoped it wouldn’t be too little, too late when she finished.

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