Chapter 100: Chapter 96

The Society members who had survived the first engagement with Illvarian troops gritted their teeth, looking at the troops that had crept up behind them as they tried to assess their current situation. After the chaotic melee with the Illvarian front lines, as well as the losses from the ranged battle earlier, perhaps twenty of the original sixty five Society Mages had died, and several more were sporting injuries that were in the process of healing. The Society’s [Organic Mages] looked tired, and the [Kinetic Mages] looked like they were starting to run out of mana. The Illvarian soldiers were more tired, since most of them relied on Perks instead of Magic, but they had sustained far fewer casualties than the Society. Only seven or eight [Soldiers] had died, and with the high [Endurance] most [Soldiers] had they were still able to push on if the fight continued. While Alice didn’t let her guard down, she started to realize that the outcome of the battle was a foregone conclusion. The Society Mages were better individual fighters due to their Magic, but they had no competent commander and much less battle experience, and now that they were starting to run out of mana their only major advantage would soon disappear.

The Society Mages seemed to realize the same thing. They looked behind them, at the detachment of Illvarian troops flanking them from the rear, and then back at the troops led by Ethan. Alice could see some of them beginning to despair, growing frantic and desperate as they realized they were surrounded and had no way to win the fight.

Then, the [Kinetic Mages] from the Society jumped off the side of the roof, before trying to use their kinetic mana to push themselves up in midair and soften the pull of gravity. The [Kinetic Mages] landed on the grass, with several of them breaking bones on impact as they mismanaged their Kinetic Magic. However, the [Organic Mages] quickly healed them, and apart from the [Kinetic Mage] who landed poorly and died, the others were back in fighting shape within moments.

Alice started to get a bad feeling as she saw the Society rally for a last, desperate struggle. Then, the [Kinetic Mages] quickly folded themselves into the [Organic Mages] on the ground, and yelled something Alice couldn’t make out.

As one, the remaining Society Mages arrayed themselves into a desperate, ragged formation and began charging straight towards the flank where Alice was located.

“Fuck! They’re making a break for it!” Yelled one of the nearby [Soldiers], as everyone rallied around the nearby Mages for one last struggle. Alice quickly examined what mana reserves she had left, before realizing she had maybe 20% of her mana remaining. It wasn’t much, but it should see her through the rest of the fight. She grabbed some nearby arrows and peppered the Society with another round of attacks, followed  by the other [Archers] and [Kinetic Mages] near her.

Unlike before, the Society’s [Kinetic Mages] were positioned to defend their [Organic Mages] this time. They halted the spray of arrows, before returning a volley that Alice and the others were hard pressed to stop. Luckily, Ethan intervened again, and stopped the rest of the volley before it could kill more Illvarian troops. Ethan followed up by throwing another round of boulders at the Society, along with a massive spray of arrows, downing several Society Mages before they reached the Illvarian flank.

Then, the Society met the [Soldiers] again, cutting down [Soldiers] as they tried to find a way out. Alice grabbed arrows, pebbles, globs of dirt, and anything she could get ahold of as she threw everything she had left at the Society. Ethan flew above the battlefield like a miniature god, giving himself a full view of the battlefield as he began fully participating in the battle. He quickly began establishing aerial dominance, raining down waves of arrows, pebbles, and boulders on any Society Mage that lost focus on him. Two of the remaining Society [Kinetic Mages], in their desperation, launched a projectile attack on Ethan, which he easily halted in midair, before the Mages were torn down by fragments of stone. Meanwhile, the remaining Society Mages found themselves halted by the Illvarian front line. They madly tried to punch through the shield wall again, but with most of their mana drained they didn’t tear through the shield wall the way they had earlier. As the other groups of Illvarian troops closed in on them, their struggles began more and more desperate, and more and more Society Mages fell.

Finally, when half of the would-be escapees had fallen, the Society Mages realized that there was no escape. One of the [Organic Mages] threw down her weapons, raised her hands above her head, and knelt on the ground. The Illvarian [Soldiers] near her didn’t totally lose their wariness, since a Mage was always a threat if they had mana, but they didn’t kill her on the spot. Instead, the [Soldiers] surrounded her, warily eying her while waiting for someone else to deal with her. Seeing that one Society member had surrendered and lived, the other Society Members rapidly began to surrender, throwing down their weapons one after another. Alice heaved a mental sigh of relief, as she checked her mana seeds and realized she only had a few Mariums of kinetic mana left. If the Society had kept fighting, Alice would have probably become dead weight in less than a minute.

Ethan, unlike Alice, was nowhere near out of mana. He strode to the first Society Mage who had surrendered with a relaxed and confident gait. He called for one of his apprentices, before speaking loudly enough for the Illvarian [Soldiers] and surviving Society Mages to easily hear him.

“Cut out their Mage Cores, then heal them up. We’ll take them back to Metsel where we can run them through the court system.”

After the [Organic Mage] acknowledge Ethan’s words, he took a dagger from a nearby [Soldier], and, while the entire Illvarian army remained tense and kept their weapons at the ready, he began slicing out one Mage Core after another. The Society Mages quivered and shuddered, sometimes twisting in pain and screaming as their Mage Cores were removed, but after hearing they might have a chance to survive in the court system and seeing they had no way to survive if they fought back, they allowed their Mage cores to be cut out. After the Society Mages had their Mage cores cut out, they were tied up and placed under guard.

Alice breathed a small sigh of relief once she saw the last Society member’s Mage core removed. The amount of pressure she had been under during this battle had been massive, and during the fight she had directly been responsible for keeping a dozen men alive. Even if Ethan probably would have corrected her mistakes, Alice had done her best to make sure she didn’t need Ethan’s help. She looked over the Illvarian troops again, taking a last look at the final casualty count. She could see that eleven Illvarian [Soldiers] had died during this battle, mostly during the two melee engagements. Several more had been seriously injured, but the Illvarian [Organic Mages] were nowhere near as drained of mana as the [Kinetic Mages] and thus had promptly healed their injures. Alice sighed, thinking about the troops that had died.

Even though Ethan and his Apprentices had made it possible for an army of non-Mages to fight a large number of Mages, the battlefield was filled with unpredictable Perks, skillsets, and strategies. The fact that eleven [Soldiers] had died was a reminder that, for all of their power and influence, an Immortal wasn’t a god. They were dozens of times stronger than an ordinary troop, and could swing small battles in their favor with their presence – but they couldn’t completely control a battle, and they also couldn’t completely prevent their side from sustaining casualties. If Alice succeeded in becoming an Immortal, she would need to keep this lesson firmly in her mind at all times.

After the Society Members were dealt with, Ethan walked up to Alice and gave her a grin. “Well done, kid. You survived. And you didn’t rely on just your limited use Perks – you managed to keep your group of [Soldiers] alive with only your baseline abilities as a [Kinetic Mage]. I admit, I thought I would need to intervene much more in your area, but you did well. Is this your first time in a battle?”

Alice nodded. “There was one time in Cyra where I joined Illa’s expedition to a broken mana zone, and some people from the Sigmusi Colonia ambushed us. But that was much smaller in scale. This is my first time being in a battle of this size.”

He listened to Alice’s words for a few moments, sinking into thought, before he turned back towards her . “There are some parts you could have done better, but I don’t think now is the time to go over them. We’ll go over more specific details in a few days, when we finish dealing with this base and you’ve had a few days to cool off and relax. What I want you to do for now is focus on what you think you did well and what you did poorly during the battle, since doing some self reflection before I share my thoughts tends to be more helpful. But even though I have some criticisms, you did well, and I don’t want you to get the impression you didn’t. The point where you got rid of the dimensional Mage on the other side of the battlefield also displayed decent battlefield awareness, since you got rid of the biggest threat and survived the counterattack. It wasn’t perfect, but I’m pleasantly surprised by your performance this time.” Then, Ethan gave her another friendly grin before leaving her with her thoughts.

Alice fell silent, as she thought back to people screaming and dying mere minutes ago, as well as the lack of control she had felt when the front lines of both sides collided and both sides started to mix together. The difficulty of hitting enemies without hitting friendly [Soldiers] had been beyond her expectations, and if someone tried to assassinate her in public she would face a similar problem while trying to keep bystanders from getting hurt. She also realized that, for all of her perception-based Perks and boosts to her reaction speed, she didn’t have a good enough ability to distinguish potential threats in her surroundings. She had always felt that her perception was good enough, because she could always track people around her with {Vastly Improved Kinetic Vision}, but while {Vastly Improved Kinetic Vision} let her see in all directions, she could only observe mana with her physical eyes, meaning she still had a partial blind spot in other directions. Furthermore, the fact that she only had four mana tendrils was a major weakness. After seeing both Ethan and Elder Sujia, Alice realized that the number of tendrils a Kinetic Mage could control at once was a major factor in their ability to fight and win a battle. Having only four at her level was starting to feel rather low, and if she had six or eight she would have much better control over her surroundings.

Meanwhile, Ethan began reorganizing the rest of the troops, assigned [Organic Mages] to double check for injured Illvarians, and otherwise reorganized the Illvarian [Soldiers] as needed.

By the time Alice was done thinking, Ethan had organized most of the troops outside of the base and dealt with the most urgent organizational and medical issues of the Illvarian army. Finally, he turned to her and nodded again.

“All right, now it’s time for part two.”

“Part two?”

“There should have been 70 to 80 Mages here, and I only count around sixty five from the frontal battle. The other five to fifteen might have escaped if we missed something, or they might still be in the base. We’re going to take smaller squads of higher level troops and sweep through the insides of the base. And, with any luck, we’ll also find your friend – or what remains of her, if she’s dead.”

Alice frowned, thinking about her dwindling mana reserves, before Ethan grinned at her. “You’ve already gotten a lot of what I wanted you to learn out of this experience, so just stick next to me for the rest of it. I doubt your mana reserves are high at this point, right? You’ll still get something out of observing how I deal with potential threats, even if it won’t be anywhere near as useful as experiencing it yourself, but you don’t seem like you have the mental or physical stamina to keep fighting right now.”

Alice nodded. With that, Ethan quickly selected a few of the higher level [Soldiers], the two apprentices who had flanked the Society and thus hadn’t spent much mana, and a few [Archers] with specialized Perks before leading the group towards the Society base.

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“Remember, there should still be at least a few Society members kicking around inside, looking over experiments that can’t be left unattended or guarding [Test Subjects],” said Ethan, speaking to the [Soldiers] instead of Alice this time. “There’s a small chance they might have escaped if we missed something, but odds are pretty high that they’re still there. They’ll probably surrender once they realize we’ve dealt with the majority of the members outside, but there’s a chance they’ll put up a last, desperate struggle against being captured or killed. Stick together and don’t let your guard down, or you might die here.” The [Soldiers] and Ethan’s apprentices nodded. Alice tried to think over why Ethan emphasized being careful so much. Alice was more than a little surprised to see how cautious Ethan was suddenly being, despite the fact that he was an Immortal. Perhaps this level of caution was required in order to survive to Immortality in the first place? Alice frowned, wondering if Ethan was trying to emphasize the fact that Immortals could still become vulnerable if they were overconfident and weren’t paying attention.

As Alice mused over questions of Immortals, the group stopped just outside the entrance to the Society base. The [Archers] with specialized Perks went first, scouting for traps, Society members, prisoners, or anything else of interest. They quickly returned, reporting that the first few hallways were clear, and so the group entered the Society base.

Alice’s first impression of the inner halls of the Society base was symmetry. Every single stone in the hallway was orderly, every single slat of wood making up the floor was even in length, and every single enchantment in the hallways that provided light was exactly symmetrical on both sides of the walkway. It was as if someone with OCD had gone completely nuts while poring over every single detail of the building. The enchantments providing light were even paired with each other, ensuring that if one went out, the light it was linked to would also go out. It was the most pointlessly impressive enchantment Alice had seen so far.

However, the things fueling the enchantments were… disturbing. Alice was very used to using monster cores as enchanting materials these days, and hardly even registered the fact that they were technically organs of other creatures at this point. However, Alice was very sure that the power sources in this building weren’t monster cores at all. They looked decidedly more… human.

Ethan frowned in disgust as he saw them, before he spoke.

“Mage Cores,” he said.

“Mage cores? All of them?” Alice asked. She had thought the enchantment supplies looked decidedly human, but she had no idea how the Society could have acquired so many Mage Cores.

“It’s highly illegal to use Mage cores as an enchanting material in Illvaria,” said Ethan. “After all, the country is trying its hardest to encourage Mages to migrate here, and most Mages are pretty uncomfortable with the knowledge that behind their heart is another enchanting material. Since most Mages don’t like it, and it also encourages criminals to hunt Mages where they can, Illvaria bans any experimentation or use of Mage cores as an enchanting material. In fact, most governments ban the use of Mage cores as an enchanting material, because the potential gains from this field of research don’t outweigh the downside of pissing off most of the Mages inside of the country. Of course, the Society has no such limitation on their experiments, since their entire organization is founded on illegal experimentation.”

Then, Ethan pointed to one group of Mage cores, redirecting her attention to it. “It’s a disgusting way of fueling enchantments, but the Society does have a sort of twisted rationale to their actions. If you look at the cores there, many of them look very similar, don’t they?”

Alice didn’t want to look more closely at the cores, but since Ethan wanted her to analyze them, she unwillingly redirected her gaze towards the enchanting materials.

“Human cores, like monster cores, run out of mana after a while. In order for a mage core to provide mana, the human mage it’s taken from must first have a sufficient amount of mana stored in their magic seeds. However, if a human is kept sedated and has their mage core continuously cut out and regrown, they can keep providing mage cores once every day or two. An [Organic Mage] may not be able to help someone survive a mana baptism, but once someone has grown a Mage core once, all they need is an infusion of Organic Mana and the right Perks help to regrow their Core. The Society makes full use of this to exploit captive Mages, apparently."

Alice felt a strange sense of morbid curiosity surface, as she examined the Mage cores in the building. It was gross and made her uncomfortable, but in a horrifying sort of way it was also an incredibly creative solution to the problem of enchanting material shortages.

“If that’s the case, can a similar method be used to harm monster cores?”

“Sort of? Monsters die almost the moment you cut their core out of their body, unlike human Mages. However, while monsters clearly rely much more on their cores than humans do, you can still sort of get around this problem by rearing monsters. Some people have tried to set up farms where they rear monsters, in order to ‘harvest’ their cores when the monster finishes maturing and reproducing. However, it’s also important to keep in mind that most monsters have magic abilities of some sort, and only a few species like spidercrabs have no real ability to threaten people. If one doesn’t have a good way to keep the monsters in the farm from breaking out and killing and eating the owner, as well as nearby [Farmers] and such, monster farms tend to end up going catastrophically wrong sooner or later. But a few farms dedicated to farming monsters have found some limited form of success. It’s dangerous and needs to be dealt with properly, but as a field of economic growth, it does have some potential. It’s too risky to just let people set up monster farms without regulation and permits, but I have hopes for the field developing sometime within the next century or two.” Ethan shrugged. “But others aren’t quite as interested in the field as I am, and cite the potential risks in expanding monster farms throughout the country.”

Having said his piece, the team continued to make their way through empty room after empty room in the base. With the [Archers] scouting the way, the main group didn’t need to be too cautious of their surroundings, even though a certain level of tension remained as they scouted room after room of records. Ethan immediately grabbed any form of writing the group came across, before sticking into a storage Perk and moving on. Luckily, the group hadn’t found any of the actual experimentation rooms or remaining Society Mages yet, and the Society hadn’t set up any traps inside of the building, so the danger level remained low throughout the group’s exploration.

Finally, after checking several rooms, one of the [Archers] called out to the others.

“We found a prisoner.”

Alice and Ethan waited for the [Archers] to ensure there were no traps in the area, before they stepped into a room.

There, Alice finally found Samantha. Thankfully, she was still alive. However, while she was still alive, that was the only positive thing about her condition.

Sitting next to Samantha on a table were two Mage Cores, both of which seemed to contain the same broken kinetic seed Samantha had formed. One of them still had chunks of spine attached to it, probably from when the core had been ripped out of Samantha’s body. The table she was tied to had bloodstains and human waste on parts of it, but nobody had bothered cleaning it up, leaving Samantha laying sedated on the table. Her body currently didn’t seem to have a Mage core inside of it, and while there wasn’t other evidence of Samantha being abused or tortured, she looked rather thin and dehydrated. Alice shuddered as she took in the scene, before she slowly calmed herself down. At the very least, no matter what she had been through, Samantha was still alive.