Chapter 109
<strong>You have leveled up!</strong>
<strong>Explorer of Magic: 69 -> 71, Student of Organic Magic 3 -> 11, Schr: 53 -> 54, Scientist 53 -> 55</strong>
<strong>Scientific Discoveries (Rarity: N/A)</strong>
<strong>An Achievement Created by the ‘For Science!’ perk. It currently has one -> Two sessful experiment catalogued. Upon reaching five experiments, this Achievement will receive a beneficial upgrade.</strong>
<strong>An Achievement Created by the ‘For Science!’ perk. It currently has one -> Two sessful experiments catalogued. Upon reaching five experiments, this Achievement will receive a beneficial upgrade.</strong>
<strong>+20% -> 40% ss experience for all research rted sses, +5% -> 10% bonus to mental attribute growth</strong>
Alice looked over the first of her System notifications, and then grinned. Technically, Alice hadn’t actually done an experiment. She had only started the process for learning how to make mana baptisms safer. So she was quite happy with the number of levels she had gotten for a simple observation experiment. Three new Perks wasn’t bad at all.
Though, she did find the fact that this observation experiment counted as a sessful experiment for the ‘For Science’ Perk to be quite strange.
She went back to examining her other improvements. Perhaps because the experiment was heavily rted to how the human body worked, she had gained arge number of levels in {Student of Organic Magic}, and a fair amount of levels in a few relevant Skills as well.
With some amusement, Alice also realized that this was the first time she had ever gotten a Perk from a secondary ss. {Student} was creeping closer to level 10 as time passed, but the ss just didn’t gain levels very quickly. By contrast, since {Student of Organic Magic} had a huge number of high Rarity Achievements boosting its growth speed, even after its growth was dropped to 20% of its normal growth value it still grew faster than most people’s main sses did. Which was more than slightly ridiculous, but Alice was d that she had more Perks to mess with. Sadly, she would only get a level 5 Perk from the ss, even though it had reached level 10. But any Perk was better than no Perk. However, she decided to focus on {Explorer of Magic} first. It was her highest level ss, after all.
She looked over her older Perks, hesitating as she considered her options for her new Perk.
Should shebine some Perks or get a new Perk? She had four Perks that she could stillbine with each other to make new Perks, but Alice was unwilling to touch the {Broken Seed} Perk. That Perk was just way too critical to her studies and experiments, and losing it might cripple her ability to experiment with System mana in the future. Therefore, she could only mess with {Enhanced Regeneration}, {Seeds of Magic}, and {Three Seeds}. {Seeds of Magic} was basically just a generic Mana Conversion Ratio enhancement, which she had used on her Kic Mana Seed back when she was still struggling to survive. {Three Seeds} gave her three seed slots which was quite useful. Alice was chronically short of seed slots, so upgrading {Three Seeds} might not be a bad idea if she could find something tobine it with. {Enhanced Regeneration} boosted her mana regeneration rate, which wasn’t really critical for anything. It had originally been incredibly useful, since Stats grew from using them, and so regenerating mana faster meant that she could practice Magic more, thus boosting her Magic Stat and increasing how much magic she could do per day. However, Alice’s mana pool was already fairly high now, so the Perk was much less important than it had been in the past.
She frowned, wondering if anybination of the three Perks gave her anything she actually needed or wanted.
The list of oues forbining Perks HAD refreshed again, now that she had reached a new level threshold, and that meant that each Perkbination gave a slightly different oue than before. But they were still at least somewhat based on which Perks she wasbining, and Alice just wasn’t seeing how any of thebined results would actually help her.
Alice sighed, before turning her attention to new Perk choices. It had been a while since she gotten somethingpletely new from her [Explorer of Magic] ss. Perhaps it was time to get a new Perk? Alice could alwaysbine it with another Perk at level 75. {Three Seeds} beingbined with another Perk that increased her magic seed count might not be a bad idea. Right now, Alice didn’t have another Perk from the [Explorer of Magic] ss that gave her more magic seeds, so she could just pick one up and thenbine it next time. She started looking through her new Perk options. After scanning her new options, she found a rather appealing choice.
Seedy Ambitions
Requirements: Explorer of Magic ss at level 70 or Greater, Intelligence 150 or higher, Magic 150 or higher, At least 5 Magic Seeds, At least 3 Perks rted to studying and interacting with Magic seeds
With enough study, you can create an inferior magic seed for ANY subject of study you are interacting with. This requires you to have a strong understanding of the subject, and only one seed can be created this way per month.
These inferior seeds will NOT count towards your magic seed limit. Inferior Seeds are limited to 25% Mana Conversion ratio. They cannot be upgraded via Achievements, but other Perks may interact with them.
{Seedy Ambitions} was much better than her other two options for new Perks, both of which were instead focused on upgrading the seeds she currently had.
The ability to create one new magic seed a month that wasn’t confined to her seed limits gave Alice a few new and interesting options for future experiments. For example, given what she had learned about sses and Magic Seeds recently, Alice absently wondered if she could create a magic seed that was actually a ss. If Magic Seeds and sses were the same thing, what would happen if she created a [Fishermen] Magic seed? How would itpare to her [Fishermen] ss?
Of course, only one seed a month wasn’t particrly impressive. For most Mages, that mightpletely change how they thought about their Seeds, but given how many Magic Seeds Alice cycled through a month, adding one new magic seed a month had surprisingly little impact. Alice figured thatbining the Perk with {Three Seeds} might triple the speed she generated new Seeds, or something like that, which would make it pretty useful by level 75. While she might be misunderstanding how Perkbination worked, she thought it was a reasonable assumption for how the two Perks wouldbine together. And if she turned out to be wrong, she would at least learn a little more about how the System worked behind the scenes.
Of course, Alice was also still interested in seeing what happened if she used {Broken Seed} on a ss, and maybe seeing what happened if she made a [Fisherman] Magic seed and then broke it. There were simply too many unusual experiments she wanted to try, but most of them required that she have even more leeway to experiment with weird seeds and have more open seed slots. {Seedy Ambitions}, and whatever she got afterbining it with another Perk at level 75, would hopefully help with that.
After that, Alice looked at her [Organic Mage] Perk next. Since this would only be a level 5 Perk, Alice wasn’t expecting much. She spent a few minutes looking over her options, before making another choice.
<strong>Improved Organic Maniption</strong>
<strong>Requirements: Organic Mage level 5 or greater</strong>
<strong>Unless you are explicitly trying to cause harm, while using Organic Magic to heal a patient you are less likely to make mistakes that will harm the patient in question.</strong>
After giving herself a very minor papercut and testing the result, Alice confirmed that the improvement was rather minor. It helped, certainly, but she still didn’t trust herself to heal any truly dangerous injuries without causing a lot of long-term harm. Alice would probably need to pick up a better Perk that did the same thing in the future. Maybe it would turn into something useful if shebined it with another Perk someday? Alice shrugged. Her first Perk from a secondary ss was rather… underwhelming.
Alice then turned her attention to her [Scientist] ss. What was still useful? What could be cut with little cost? What was kind of useful, but needed a bit of an upgrade?
After some hesitation, Alice eventually decided tobine {Researcher’s Speed} and {Timer}. After looking over her perks list, and the results forbining Perks, Alice was pretty sure thatbining the two Perks would improve upon both Perks in a very interesting way. {Researcher’s Speed}, in particr, was somewhat helpful, but as Alice’s Stats and other sses improved, she was already starting to be able to do things faster and more effectively. The original reason Alice had taken {Researcher’s Speed} was because she didn’t have enough hours in a day, and being able to think, process, and analyze information faster had boosted the speed she could do research. But Alice was also bing less stretched for time after Ethan had helped solve some of her financial problems. She no longer needed to make every single Marium of mana turn into money and scrape out every second she could for her experiments. With that in mind, Perks devoted to saving time or maximizing the use of time seemed less important now.
And {Timer}, well… not many of Alice’s experiments had been rted to specific timing recently. Sure, knowing exactly how many seconds passed as Alice tried and failed to form a weird magic System wasn’t <em>bad </em>information to have, but… in all honesty, the Perk’s relevance had been slowly fading away for quite a while. Not to mention, these days Alice could actually afford a clock if she needed to keep track of time. They were expensive, since they required a lot of enchantments to be urate, but with how much Ethan was paying her, Alice didn’t need to use Perks topensate for her poverty anymore.
Thus, Alice took one final, hesitant look at the two Perks she was about to sacrifice, and then started thebination process.
<strong>Researcher’s Speed</strong>
<strong>Requirements: Scientist level 40 or greater</strong>
When you are working on an experiment, the pace at which you think, process information, and work will increase by a significant amount, allowing you to conduct experiments notably faster than before.
<strong>Timer</strong>
<strong>Requirements: Scientist level 15 or higher, Intelligence 150 or higher, Perception 100 or higher</strong>
You may always tell what time it is down to the hundredth of a second. You may also attach a ''timer'' to a specific object or area and measure the amount of time it takes for one condition of your choice to be met. (For example, you may attach a ''timer'' to a rock before throwing it off of a building and set the start and stop conditions to ''touching no physical objects'' and '' hitting the ground,'' giving you the exact number of seconds that it takes for the rock to fall). Timers cost a small amount of mana to create (payable from any seed) and cannotst longer than 2 hours.
<strong>Speed Experimentation (Tier 2 Perk, Level 55 Scientist) (Level 15 Scientist Perk + Level 40 Scientist Perk)</strong>
<strong>Perk Costs: Timer + Researcher’s Speed sacrificed to create this Perk</strong>
While doing an experiment, you may force time to pass more quickly for yourself and all variables rted to the experiment. These variables MUST be contained with an area no greater than 10 meters by 10 meters by 5 meters. (note: If used upon another living being above a certain level of intelligence, permission must be obtained first).
This will ce a significant amount of strain on your mind, and will also require some amount of mana to keep going (mana can be paid from any kind of magic seed, though the more rted to time said magic seed is, the less broken mana will be produced, and the more efficient the conversion).
After forming the Perk, Alice realized that she had gotten a very different Perk than she had expected to get. And it was absolutely amazing.
She had a freaking time maniption Perk now.
It was a very limited time maniption Perk, and had all sorts of conditions required to function. But she had just gotten a freaking time maniption Perk. No matter how limited, specific, or difficult it was to activate the Perk, she could now manipte time. She had no idea how <em>much </em>she could speed up the passage of time, but she could apparently speed it up now.
Absently, Alice wondered what counted as an ‘Experiment’ for the purposes of the Perk. If she was in a battle, could she decide that she was ‘experimenting’ with how fast an object moved if she applied a certain amount of kic mana to it? If she was in the middle of trying to form a system seed, did that count as an experiment?
There were a lot of possibilities, but no matter what, Alice was excited. It wasn’t every day that one gained the ability to manipte time itself.
Especially since it implied that time maniption was possible using normal magic as well. The System still worked on the basic principles that the rest of reality worked off of, which meant that anything the System did was theoretically possible, even if the System didn’t exist. In other words, time maniption was a possibility for magic.
Alice frowned. She could have sworn that she had tried to form a Magic Seed from Earth physics that was rted to time, back when she had still been living in Cyra and had nearly melted herself. It took a moment for her Memory-rted Perks to bring the memory back to her, but she was pretty sure forming a spacetime seed had failed. What did a ‘sessful’ time-rted magic seed look like here?
Alice turned towards Ethan, her eyes alight with curiosity.
“Ethan! Are there time magic seeds? Or anything that rted to the maniption of time?”
Ethan stared with a baffled expression, before he nodded. “They are terribly inefficient, and not very powerful. But they do exist. I believe most estimates im that they lose around 70% of their mana as broken mana, which means it’s <em>ridiculously </em>wasteful. It’s also not like you can travel <em>backwards </em>in time with them, although I know many fictional stories written for entertainment involve travelling back into the past to make up for a regret or somesuch.” Ethan shrugged. “Sadly, this isn’t possible. Though I suspect such stories have led many a hopeful Mage into forming a time magic seed. But for reasons nobody seems to quite understand, time can only ever pass forward, not backwards. I don’t rmend you waste a seed slot on time maniption, if that’s what you were considering.”
Alice shook her head. “I was just wondering. The description for one of my new Perks made me think about it, but I wasn’t considering spending a seed slot on it.” <em>Unless it seemed interesting, </em>thought Alice.
Then, she turned her attention back to her Status Screen. For the first time in a while, she opened up her full Status Screen, to see what changes had happened in the past few weeks.
Name: Alice Verianna
Age: 16
Strength: 113 -> 115 (122%)
Perception: 135 -> 137 (165%)
Dexterity: 115 -> 118 (124%)
Intelligence: 167 (128%)
Endurance: 127 -> 130 (121%)
Willpower: 147 -> 148 (108%)
Charisma: 129 -> 130 (107%)
Magic: 159 -> 161 (122%)
Primary sses: 6/6
Survivor: 53 -> 54
Explorer of Magic: 63 -> 71
Schr: 51 -> 54
Scientist: 52 -> 55
Kic Manabinder: 31 -> 41
Careful Enchanter: 20 -> 27
Evolved sses: 2
Student of Kic Magic: 25
(Apprentice) Enchanter: 25
Secondary sses: 2
Fisherwoman: 3
Student: 7 -> 8
Student of Organic Magic: 1 -> 11
Perks:
<strong>Survivor Perks:</strong>
Foraging (Survivor 5)
Microbe Resistance (Survivor 10)
Extremophile (Survivor 15)
Camouged (Survivor 20)
Sixth Sense (Survivor 25)
Enhanced Training (Survivor 30)
Sense Hostility (Survivor 35)
Moderate Tissue Regeneration (Survivor 40)
Adrenaline Rush (Survivor 45)
Extended Organics (Survivor 50)
<strong>Explorer of Magic Perks:</strong>
Enhanced Regeneration (Explorer of Magic 10)
Seeds of Magic (Explorer of Magic 25)
Three Seeds (Explorer of Magic 30)
Broken Seed (Upgraded) (Explorer of Magic 35)
Expanding Comprehension<em> (Tier 2)</em> (Explorer of Magic 55)
<strong>Combat Seed (Tier 2) (Explorer of Magic 60)</strong>
<strong>Intuitive Magic Modelling (Tier 2) (Explorer of Magic 65)</strong>
<strong>Seedy Ambitions (Explorer of Magic 70)</strong>
<strong>Schr Perks:</strong>
Enhanced Memory (Schr 5)
Lesser Reduced Sleep Requirement (Schr 10)
elerated Thinking (Schr level 15 (-5))
Rhetorical Flourish (Schr level 20)
Photographic Memory (Schr level 25)
Improved Multitasking (Schr level 30)
Schr of Magic (Schr level 35)
Lesser Organic Vision (Schr 40)
Super speed reading (Schr 45)
Delve into the Arcane (Schr 50)
<strong>Scientist Perks:</strong>
Precise mana Measurement (Scientist level 5)
Sample Collection (Scientist level 10)
Safety Analysis (Scientist Level 20)
Shared Memory (Scientist Level 25)
Advanced Mana Measurement (Scientist Level 30)
Degraded Seed Slot (Scientist 35)
<strong>For Science! (Scientist 45)</strong>
<strong>The Science of Mana Deprivation (Scientist 50)</strong>
<strong>Speed Experimentation (Tier 2) (Scientist 55)</strong>
<strong>Kic Mage Perks:</strong>
Object Control (Student of Kic Magic 5)
Above Average Mana Sight (Student of Kic Magic 10)
Folds of Magic (Student of Kic Magic 15)
Split Mind (Student of Kic Magic 20)
Improved Object Control (Sensory Enhancement) (Student of Kic Magic 25)
Mana''s Binding (Kic Manabinder 5)
Enhanced Focus (Kic Manabinder 10)
Vastly Improved Kic Vision (Kic Manabinder 15)
Overclock (Kic Manabinder 20)
<strong>Kic Enchanting (Kic Manabinder 25)</strong>
<strong>Reflection (Kic Manabinder 30)</strong>
<strong>Kic Tendrils (Kic Manabinder 35)</strong>
<strong>Speed Analysis (Kic Manabinder 40)</strong>
<strong>Enchanter Perks:</strong>
Enchanter''s Vision (Apprentice Enchanter 5)
Monstrous Enchanting (Apprentice Enchanter 10)
Faster Enchanting (Apprentice Enchanter 15)
Faster Mana Regeneration (Apprentice Enchanter 20)
<strong>Speed Enchanting (Apprentice Enchanter 25)</strong>
<strong>Repurposing (Careful Enchanter level 5)</strong>
<strong>Blueprint (Careful Enchanter level 10)</strong>
<strong>Enchanter''s Basic Magic Seed (Careful Enchanter level 15)</strong>
<strong>Pride of a Craftswoman (Careful Enchanter 20)</strong>
<strong>Enchanter''s Armory (Careful Enchanter 25)</strong>
<strong></strong>
<strong>Organic Mage Perks:</strong>
<strong>Improved Organic Maniption (Organic Mage 5)</strong>
Skills
<strong>Academic Skills:</strong>
English (Language Proficiency): 100
Illvarian (Language Proficiency): 100
Sigmusi (Language Proficiency): 7
Russian (Language Proficiency): 1
Basic Mathematics: 122 -> 123
Intermediate Mathematics: 78 -> 79
Advanced Mathematics: 18 -> 19
Basic Human Biology: 33 -> 38
Mana-biology: 2 -> 11
<strong>Magic Skills:</strong>
Kic Maniption: 68 -> 70
Mana Control: 50 -> 52
Mana Precision: 50 -> 53
Kic Force: 47 -> 51
Projectile Awareness : 29 -> 32
Divided Attention: 31 -> 34
Basic Enchanting: 29 -> 31
Broken Mana Purification: 18
Mana Filtering: 22 -> 24
Seed Formation: 16 -> 19
<strong>Crafting Skills:</strong>
Weaving: 27
Woodworking: 28
Cooking: 12
Stoneworking: 11
<strong>Physical Skills: </strong>
Dodge: 28 -> 31
Spearmanship: 19
Sprinting: 21 -> 22
Climbing: 9
Fishing: 9
Digging: 8
Stealth: 4
Basic Medicine: 3
Magic Seed: 5/6
(unused seed has 15% conversion rat. Max)
(Note to self: The electromaic magic seed is {Degraded Seed Slot}. For that seed, Perks = no, Achievements = yes).
(Final Slot is one where Alice keeps trying and failing to make a System Seed)
Kic Seed (145%) -> 147%
Organic Seed (25%) -> 68% (6% from expanding Comp.)
Pure mana Seed (21%) -> 36% (8% from Expanding Comp.)
Healing mana seed (23%) -> 55%
Electromaic Seed (15%)
Achievements:
Outworlder (Rarity: 10)
Seeker of Truth (III -> IV) (Rarity: 9 -> 10)
Baptized by Broken Mana (Rarity: 6)
Survivor of Winter (Rarity: 3)
Monstrous Encounter (Rarity: 1)
Monster yer (III) (Rarity: 2)
Well Trained (Rarity: 4)
Murderer (Rarity: 4)
Bookworm (Rarity: 3)
Kic Manabinder (Rarity N/A)
Careful Enchanter (Rarity N/A)
Capable Enchanter (Rarity: 5)
Seed Creator (Rarity: 8)
Scientific Discoviers (I -> II) (Rarity N/A)
<strong>Immortal''s Apprentice at the battle against the Society (Rarity: 4)</strong>
<strong>Legendary Healer (Rarity: 7)</strong>
Her improvements had been pretty good over the past few weeks. She felt more than a little happy with her gains. She decided that the first thing she wanted to do was test out how {Speed Experimentation} worked. She hadn’t ever seen a temporal maniption Perk before, and she was very interested in seeing how it worked. At the same time, she wanted to test how limited the Perk actually was. It was both incredibly useful for making sure that she could perform experiments as quickly as possible, and also potentially useful in battle. She also had a few Perks that hade off of cooldown that she wanted to use, now that she had time. {Expanding Comprehension} was ready to use, and {Broken Seed} had been off of cooldown for a few days already. She also wanted to try using {Seedy Ambitions} and see if she could make a Math mana seed; if she wanted to form a System seed, she would probably need tobine several kinds of mana together, and while Alice didn’t think she <em>needed </em>to have a magic seed for every mana type during the formation process, they would probably help.
Alice turned back towards Ethan, who was giving her a curious look, before frowning to herself as she thought over Tavi’s observation experiment onest time. While she had gained a fair amount of information on how the System tried to help people during their mana baptisms, she still had a lot of questions left unresolved. She wasn’t even sure if her ideas on how to make them safer were correct, and testing some of them seemed… hical. Alice felt a slight headache.
She couldn’t help but wonder if there was some sort of Perkbination that could solve this problem. Perhaps a way to simte experimental results without actually performing an experiment?
On the other hand, if such a Perk was easy to ess, the Society of Starry Eyes probably wouldn’t exist. Alice sighed, before frowning. At the end of the day, there were always more things she was missing, and always more pieces of information she wished she had. At least she had {Safety Analysis} to help figure out when something was a bad idea. She could use that to make some informed guesses about which of her ideas she could test without hurting someone else, and develop a more informed course of action based on that information.
Alice thanked Ethan for helping her set up the experiment, before promising Ethan she would write a more proper report on what she had learned from the experimentter, after she had some more time to think.
Then, Alice made her way to her room in Ethan’s mansion and began preparing to experiment with time maniption.