Chapter 54 - A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World

A few hours later, the [Innkeeper] politely rapped on Alice’s door a few times. With the help of some sort of noise-enhancing Perk, Alice woke up.

Only to find that the world looked a rainbow cloud had fallen over it. For a brief moment, she wondered if she had somehow wandered into the Aurora Borealis back on Earth. Every single inch of air, floor, and wall was covered with color and lights. The lights were not static, however – instead, it seemed as though every single inch of the air was rippling and vibrating with color every second.

“Lady Mage? As per your request, I am trying to wake you up an hour and a half past morning bell. Can I receive an acknowledgement that it has succeeded?” came the Innkeeper’s voice from outside of her door.

Alice looked at the swirling lights, which were moving enough that she was starting to feel motion-sick. The entire world was suddenly swimming and rippling with swirling color every second, and there was nowhere Alice could move her eyes to avoid seeing more of the dancing colors.

“I… I am awake. Thank you, Innkeeper.”

“It is my pleasure to be of service to a Mage,” said the Innkeeper. Alice heard the man begin to move away from her room, giving her more time to examine… whatever the heck was going on with her vision.

This was something Alice had never experienced before. It certainly hadn’t been there when she had gone to sleep earlier. Even if she had been tired from the experiment she and Cecilia had finished yesterday, she was still sure she would have noticed the entire world starting to look like a confused unicorn’s rainbow puke.

She looked blearily at the walls of her room, before she shook her head and closed her eyes. She rubbed at her eyelids for a moment, trying to figure out if she was seeing things.

Maybe she was still sleepy? She had only gotten a few hours of sleep before waking up.

She opened her eyes again. The rainbow colors had not disappeared. They were just as prevalent and vibrant as before, distorting the air and making it hard for Alice to see her surroundings clearly.

She looked at her hands, only to see that even underneath her skin, the rivulets of rainbow lights were still present.

She closed and opened her eyes a few times while focusing on a specific point in her inn room, giving her eyes and brain some time to adjust to the perpetual motion in her vision. After a few minutes, her motion sickness was starting to clear and she was getting used to it. Even though she still found the constant shifting and moving in her vision to be obnoxious, it was no longer making her feel ill, at least.

“What in the world am I looking at?” She asked, watching as the streams of color whirled and danced underneath her skin. The colors were inside of her skin, her flesh, her bones… Everything.

As she watched, Alice started to feel a sense of familiarity with the lights. Hadn’t she seen something like this before?

After a few moments, she finally figured out why the streams of light looked familiar.

Didn’t this look kind of like that incredibly complex flood of mana that had appeared when she nearly melted herself? She tried not to think about the time when she had tried, and failed, to form a wide variety of modern physics-based seeds, only to end up failing each and every time before she nearly melted both her room and herself. However, even though she tried not to remember that day…

The swirling fractals of lights in midair reminded her of that day quite a bit.

The difference was scale.

The swirling fractals of light she had seen on that day had mostly been focused. They had been limited in scope, appearing mostly around her body and the air directly surrounding her. She hadn’t been able to see much else as far as the light fractals went outside of that specific, limited space.

The light fractal she was seeing now was everywhere. It was a rainbow fog that obstructed her vision of her surroundings.

She reached out one of her hands towards the floating lights in midair. As expected, her hand passed directly through it.

Alice had a sneaking suspicion that she knew what she was looking at, or that she at least had a guess. She focused on her Pure Mana magic seed before she extended a tendril out towards the air in front of her and tried to mess with the dancing lights.

The lights shifted away, continuously remolding and reshaping themselves into new patterns and fractals as they avoided her mana tendril. The lights also avoided any mana or broken mana that Alice pushed out of her pure mana seed for a few seconds, before the lights seemed to ‘ignore’ the mana that had originated from her. She tried a few more times, before confirming something.

The lightshow was avoiding her mana. Any mana made from her would be avoided by the light fractals, regardless of what seed it came from.

And similarly, the lights that Alice observed looked like the ones she had seen during the failed seed construction day.

Curious, thought Alice as she stared at the swirling lights.

She took another look at the lights inside of her body, searching. If her speculation was correct…

There might be some sort of link between magic seeds and classes. At least, after a few hours of sleep, that was her best guess about what her vision trip yesterday meant.

For now, Alice decided to ignore the swirling lights as best she could. She would experiment more with this when she had more ideas for how to actually interact with the swirling lights. However, right now, they were (seemingly) avoiding her attempts to interact with them. Quite efficiently, in fact. No matter what she tried to do to mess with the light fractals in midair, she consistently failed to get an interesting reaction. The one, and only, result that she had encountered so far was that the light fractals would avoid her and her mana, intelligently wriggling, writhing, and squirming around to avoid being cornered or trapped no matter what she tried.

She opened the door to her room in the inn, before gazing around. A few people were eating breakfast here and there. The [Innkeeper] was chatting with a few people in the corner, occasionally making exaggerated gestures with his arms as he laughed along with a story one of the guests was telling.

And, of course, all of it was still surrounded by light fractals. Every single centimeter of air, every single surface of the inn, was plastered with them. Alice, who was getting used to the new and bizarre world of living in a rainbow, did her best to examine the other guests in the inn.

Most people had huge clusters of rainbows hidden inside of their skin. However, there was also one thing that Alice hadn’t seen before.

Each and every person she saw had a few far more densely packed fractals inside of their skull somewhere. Usually, it was near the forehead, but the dense fractals could be found just about everywhere inside of the people around her.

Each and every person she saw had five of them.

Apart from the five super dense and bright clusters of light, most people also had a few smaller clusters of light. However, these ones looked… deformed, for lack of a better term. It was like the difference between looking at a healthy adult and looking at a survivor from a village on the verge of starvation.

Alice observed these clusters of light, before she made another mental note to herself.

Five clusters of light. People usually have five classes.

I might be literally looking at the System now? Light show needs further investigation.

For now, after Alice had her fill looking around, she also got breakfast and then headed to the docks. She couldn’t investigate this in greater detail yet, but when she had another day free, she was definitely going to check this over with Sallia. For now, however, she still had other problems and questions to look into. Milo’s participation in her research being one of them.

* * *

“So you want me to help you verify a few things as a test subject?” Asked Milo, giving Alice a curious glance. “I thought you mentioned the experiments would need to be put on hold, or involve fewer people, since they might be dangerous?”

“I got a Perk that obviates a lot of that issue now,” said Alice. She had used {Safety Analysis} on Milo earlier, and had confirmed that sticking Milo in her manaless room wouldn’t actually be harmful to him. With her primary concern addressed, Alice no longer felt any hesitation in asking Milo if he was willing to help her out.

After all, Milo and Cecilia were natives of this world, unlike her. If she wanted to wrap her head around how the System worked, having her only object of research be someone who was seriously likely to violate the norm was a terrible idea.

After all, science that couldn’t be replicated wasn’t science – just an interesting anecdote. Or one of those terrible science papers the news occasionally reported on despite the paper having little research value, because the methodology was messed up or there was some serious flaw in the research and the news wanted some ‘attention-grabbing headline.’ Alice had no plans to create anecdotes or bad research if she could avoid it. She wanted to know the truth.

Milo scratched his head as he lifted a wooden beam into place with his mana.

“I guess I’m up for it. I usually relax on my weekends and hang out at the tavern since they have decent level [Bards] there. Anyway, I can take a day or two to help out if you need something on one of the weekends. What did you have in mind?”

Alice cleared her throat, before she started getting into a more detailed analysis of her experiments.

“Cecilia and I have been trying to figure out how mana works, and how mana influences a lot of other things,” said Alice. “We found a few interesting results, but we want to verify them. After all, one person isn’t a very good representation of everyone in the world, and I have a few Achievements that might screw with the results a bit.” Such as {Outworlder.} Alice still had no clue what “Increased Support from the System” meant, and for all she knew that might throw all of her experiments out of whack.

“Anyway, we need a little more data… if that’s all right with you. I have a Perk to detect how dangerous an experiment might be, and it looks like it’ll be safe for you. There shouldn’t be any danger, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Said Alice.

“Mana levels and their effects? Hmm… I think you might be best served by messing with some Spidercrabs, if you haven’t done that already. Even if it isn’t usually what they focus on, most [Adventurers] would probably be willing to help you catch a few alive for a few silver suns. Heck, if you wanted to save money, you could probably do so yourself. At this point I seriously doubt an average spidercrab pack poses any threat to you, and you could probably demolish a pack, grab a few alive, and then drag them back for research. Just make sure to wear thick padding. There are even a few loons who try to raise them like farm animals in some areas where the ground is too barren to grow regular crops or fodder for animals. I seriously doubt they would be hard or time consuming to get ahold of.”

“The issue is that I want to look at how Mana and Stats interact. Monsters don’t have access to the System, so there’s nothing to test there.”

“Wait, testing the System?” Milo gave Alice a strange look. “Umm… like, to see what the almighty System deems proper?”

“Ermm… I want to see how the Almighty System makes decisions, and how its blessings work,” said Alice. “I just figure that there has to be some underlying mechanic behind how the System’s blessings work out in practice, and I want to see what those mean for the world in general.”

Milo, thankfully, didn’t immediately decide she was a heretic and start yelling, or anything of the sort. Instead, he pursed his lips, seriously thinking it over. Finally, he nodded.

“How long would it take, and what exactly do you want from me?” said Milo, after a few moments of thought. “At least, I trust you enough to know you wouldn’t lie to me about my safety, and I don’t mind helping you out.”

Alice felt a smile tug at her lips. “I’m just asking you to sit in a special room for a while and test your physical strength. I have also undergone the same experiment with no harm coming to me, and Cecilia will be doing the experiment with you,” said Alice.

“Testing my strength in a room? All right, I can see it sort of making sense. Are you planning on messing with mana quantity by changing it over the course of the experiment?” Milo mulled it over for a few moments. Finally, he nodded. “I don’t particularly mind, I guess.”

Alice felt her smile grow wider. “Great! Thanks, Milo! I’m glad that you’re willing to help out. I’ll get more bags ready for the manaless room.”

Milo paused, and his expression turned to complete bewilderment.

“I’m sorry, WHAT? Manaless room? As in… a room with no mana in it?”

“Yes?”

Milo gave Alice a blank stare.

“What exactly is the wording for this Perk that claims no harm will befall the subject? Didn’t you say – wait, you already did this? To yourself?”

“It’s why I think I found something big,” Said Alice. “I have gone through the process of sitting in a manaless room for about half an hour. During this period of time, I experienced some reductions in my stats and my Perks became weaker, but none of them were life-threatening, and as long as you are not sick or seriously injured, none of them will place your life at risk either. Since it’s common knowledge that lack of mana is lethal, and it clearly isn’t for me, I want to see what happens if other people try it. My Perk claims it isn’t lethal for other people either, so I want to know what actually happens if people sit in a manaless room for extended periods of time. Do other people also lose stats? Is the stat loss consistent? There are a lot of other finicky things I want to experiment with, but since everyone’s Perks are so different, I need bigger sample sizes if I want to really figure out what’s going on here.”

“Being perfectly honest, this seems more than slightly insane. Alice, that’s an environment with no mana! You can suffocate monsters just by dropping the mana in an area low enough! It’s the main reason human civilization can thrive at all – stronger monsters can’t wander out of their high mana environments without dying off in droves. They stick to the mana-rich, wild parts of the world, and humans inhabit the mana-thin regions. To hear someone say that lack of mana isn’t lethal just sounds… I trust you, but it sounds totally nutty.” Milo’s expression kept changing, warping between shock, and confusion, and anger.

Alice took a deep breath, feeling {Rhetorical Flourish} kick in and help her select her words more accurately.

“Milo, there is a difference between monsters and humans. Monsters need mana to survive, but there isn’t enough evidence to conclude that humans do, right? In the first place, monsters don’t even strictly need to eat in the first place, if the environment has enough mana. By contrast, humans starve to death, or get the {Malnourished} Achievement if they don’t get enough food in their bellies. This happens regardless of how much mana there is inside of the food, right?” Alice couldn’t help but think about her and Cecilia’s mana-influenced diet, and how little the amount of mana inside of food seemed to influence mages. “Monsters get stronger in environments with high mana density, too. Humans don’t. Similarly, mana deprivation doesn’t necessarily have to be lethal for humans, even if it’s universally lethal for monsters, right?”

“This is crazy.” Milo sighed. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this. All right, I don’t mind. You can use me as a test subject. But let the record show that even if this experiment works out, this is insane. The fact that you tested this on yourself is insane. Remind me at the end of the week to help out.”

Alice felt a huge grin tug at her lips. “Thanks, Milo!”

“Don’t mention it. I might have a nervous breakdown if I think about it in further detail.”

Author’s note:

After much screwdriver-ing (that’s a technical term that I just made up) the new computer is finally working. If I see another screw or screwdriver in the next month I am going to cry.

I also had a few people offer to help me troubleshoot the computer a bit and was waiting for their reply, but failed to properly enable the relevant website(s) to shoot me emails if people replied back to me. After returning, I found a few things that would have saved me half an hour here or there. Indeed, my greatest enemy… is enabling the wrong buttons! I can’t even be mad at anyone but myself this time since it was completely my fault.

After the hardware issues were resolved over another two days, during which I needed to power off the computer to avoid electrocuting myself or the people helping me out while we replaced crap over and over again and scratched our heads… there were more problems! Of course there were…

Luckily, those were software issues, so they were easier to troubleshoot via discord calls and screensharing. It still took a lot of time to figure out how to make a few pieces of rebellious software communicate with each other properly and stop making my new computer lag to oblivion and bag anytime I try to run anything more difficult than a program your average toaster can process, but finally, this computer seems to be up and running. I think. Fingers crossed.

Hallelujah.

That aside, thanks a lot for everyone who reached out to help a little bit, or even just those of you who have kept reading this far. I appreciate how much people were willing to help out while I was banging my head against circuitry.

Patreon/Chapter Specific:

I’ve seen a lot of people say that I spend too much time inside of Alice’s head in this story. Which, honestly, I agree with. I have never quite gotten the right… tempo for when the character discovers new information and processes it, for lack of a better term. In this chapter, I tried experimenting a little bit  to see how it feels to have an ‘interesting point’ mentioned without having Alice spend a few paragraphs delving into what she thinks it means. Not entirely sure how I feel about it, but I’ll see how I and others feel about it, since there were some notable discoveries last chapter that I normally would have had Alice spend some time thinking them. I almost feel as if Alice is brushing over it a bit too much instead now, but that might be because I’m used to having my main character spend a fair bit of time delving into her thoughts and possible implications of discoveries. So it could totally just be me.

At any rate, the root of improvement is experimentation. I’ll tinker with how I write this sort of thing until I feel like I’ve gotten it right.

Schedule wise/most important:

I intend to take a break at the end of this month. Christmas is approaching (or whatever variety of other winter-themed holiday(s) you may celebrate, if any) I think I will take Christmas, and possibly New Year’s off. I would like to spend some time with my friends and family, ne? I do apologize for how spotty chapters have been over the past few weeks. Getting this bloody computer to work has been… a process. The first two computers I built, long ago, ended up working just fine and served for a good number of years each, so I didn’t really think too much about building this one… and now I’m done with fiddling with electronics for a while. Nope. Someone else can do that. Whenever this computer dies I’ll think about whether or not a possibility of this madness happening again is worth the upsides, but troubleshooting hardware that doesn’t want to listen to other hardware is just… a trial. Anyway, I hope all of you have a lovely rest of the year, and hopefully starting next January I run into fewer technical difficulties that make me want to punt my computer out the window. Even if it wouldn’t be particularly productive, it would certainly be cathartic. I hope you have a lovely rest of the month, and hopefully in January when we pick back up, I’ll be able to write with fewer minor and major personal disasters, sudden surprises that occupy my time, and technical difficulties. We can all hope for less disasters and technical difficulties, ne?