Chapter 101: Chapter 97

After the group found Samantha, Ethan wasted no time in turning back towards Alice.

“Is this your friend?”

Alice nodded. Ethan grinned at her.

“Well, in that case, congratulations. At the very least, we aren’t rescuing a corpse, the way I feared we might be. She doesn’t look like she’s in the best condition, but she’s still alive. Mental and physical trauma can be healed, with time and help, but once someone is dead there’s no way to fix it. So I can honestly say I’m very happy with this outcome.” Ethan took a look at Samantha again, before sighing. “I admit, it does look like she’s had a pretty rough time of it. With any luck she might have been unconscious during all of this, but we won’t know until she wakes up. But at least she’s alive.”

 Alice felt a grin tug at her lips as she nodded. Even though Samantha had doubtlessly been through a lot in the past few days, the fact that she was still alive meant recovery was possible. In this world, if there was a class like [Psychiatrist], healing mental trauma would probably be much easier than back on Earth. As long as Alice’s plan to break Samantha’s kinetic seed worked out, Samantha should be able to get her life back on track even after this horrible run-in with the Society.

While the [Archers] kept an eye on the group’s surroundings, Ethan quickly walked over to Samantha and began inspecting her injuries. After that, he used organic seed to heal Samantha’s more egregious injuries. Alice used {Lesser Organic Vision} to watch as Samantha’s mage core grew back. Strands of flesh quickly sprung out of Samantha’s internal organs and wriggled their way into the spot where Samantha’s Mage core was supposed to be, rebuilding the Mage core the Society had cut out as Ethan’s magic tried to make Samantha’s body whole again.

Samantha’s healing treatment seemed to be going well. Her damaged skin and the various sores and cuts on her body began to heal up, and the girl was clearly recovering from the physical injuries she had suffered over the past few days. However, once Samantha’s Mage core was mostly restored, Samantha’s body immediately stopped getting better, and instead began to rapidly deteriorate. Her strange kinetic seed reappeared inside of her body as her mage core finished regenerating, and the process of healing suddenly seemed to reverse completely. Within moments, Samantha’s body began to grow weaker, and even while unconscious Samantha began coughing and shivering. Ethan frowned, then glanced at Alice, who also frowned as she observed Samantha’s body. Ethan turned to Alice again and shook his head.

“How odd. And interesting,” he said. “I’ll have to put fully healing her on hold. Sorry that I can’t fully heal her right now,” he said, giving Alice a regretful frown. At the same time, a tendril of Ethan’s organic mana wormed its way behind Samantha’s heart and destroyed the Mage core he had just regenerated. Within moments, the strange symptoms of illness that had begun spreading through Samantha’s body quickly disappeared, and her condition rapidly improved again.

“It’s not a big deal,” said Alice. “We can look at her more closely after we finish clearing out the Society base,” said Alice. She could tell that as long as Samantha’s Mage core remained missing, her body seemed to be in decent shape after Ethan’s healing. While Samantha definitely needed medical treatment, it wasn’t urgent. Ethan turned to one of the [Archers].

 “There seems to be something wrong with her Mage core. I can’t figure out what it is, and I’ll take a closer look at her later. Take her out of this place and get her to a healer so they can double check my work, but make sure to tell them not to fix her Mage core for now. I’ll treat her later, and maybe I can teach my new apprentice a bit about some of the more interesting interactions between healing and organic mana. Even if she’s mostly battle oriented, it never hurts to know a bit more about healing too, right?” Ethan gave the [Archer] a friendly grin before handing the [Archer] in question Samantha. The [Archer] nodded, before heading back out of the base through the path the group had already taken.

After that, Ethan turned back to Alice, and a rainbow Perk shimmered into existence around the two of them.

“Do you have any thoughts on what the Society was doing to her?” He asked, looking at the two Samantha Mage Cores visible on the table nearby. “Honestly, if you hadn’t given me the hint that her Mage Core had a problem during our first conversation, I wouldn’t have been able to figure out why her condition deteriorated just now. I might have accidentally killed her while trying to heal her. The problems Samantha is experiencing are very unique...”

Alice nodded. She was a bit surprised that Ethan had such a hard time finding the problems with Samantha’s mage core, but without the ability to see magic seeds and Alice’s extensive familiarity with weird and broken magic seeds, it would indeed be hard to find out why Samantha was sick. If anything, she was more surprised by the fact that the Society of Starry Eyes had tracked down Samantha and seemed to be heading in the right direction with their research. “I expect that the Society explicitly targeted Samantha, after seeing all of this. They were probably interested in whatever error cropped up while Samantha was forming her Magic seed, and found the opportunity to kidnap her and study the anomaly,” said Alice, wincing as she looked at Samantha’s Mage cores on the table and imagined what it must have felt like to have them cut out. “I wasn’t sure before, but I can see both of her mage cores have the same weird magic seed problem Samantha originally did, and I can’t think of any other reason why they would so specifically target Samantha and continuously cut out her mage core to study. I’m not sure how they found out that she has a malformed magic seed, but it’s obvious that they were targeting her specifically because of her abnormality.”

Ethan frowned. “Perhaps they’re aware of what a malformed magic seed looks like from other cases, and kidnapped Samantha after learning of her condition? That would indicate that they’ve seen other cases, and have at least a good guess what they’re looking at…” He sighed, shaking his head. “I’ll look through the documents we’ve seized after we return to Metsel. Hopefully they’ll shed more light on what the Society was doing here.” Then, he seemed to focus on Samantha’s plight again, as he turned back to Samantha’s Mage cores on the table.

“Do you have a plan to help her? I can absolutely just leave her with no Mage Core and it seems like that’ll keep her sickness from cropping back up, but it would also mean the end of her future as a Mage. Since her family wasn’t exactly wealthy even with a Mage, they would be pretty hard hit financially, but I can definitely help you cover the issue if you have no ideas…”

Alice shook her head. “I’ve mentioned before that I had the ability to see inside of Mage Cores, but I have a few other weird abilities that come from my Perks and Achievements. One should help fix Samantha’s issue, and also remove any interest the Society might have towards her. I’ll need her permission, though, and I’ll also want your help covering it up.”

You are reading story A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World at novel35.com

“That’s fine. We’ll talk later, once we finish dealing with the rest of the Society base,” said Ethan.

After that, the group continued wandering through the Society base. They found another Society member guarding a larger set of prisoners, this one comprised of a dozen children who were locked up in a room. Ethan almost immediately killed the Society member, before the group rescued the kids. Luckily, the Illvarian army seemed to have gotten there before anything happened to this group of children, so the ones in this room were relatively unscathed so far. After that, the group continued sweeping through the base, rescuing prisoners where they found them, administering first aid where needed, grabbing documents when available, and dealing with the last couple Society members in the base. A few of the Society members weren’t accounted for no matter where the group looked, leading Ethan to believe that they had either hidden themselves very well or had somehow escaped the encirclement of Ethan’s troops and Apprentices. It was unfortunate that a few of them escaped, but there was ultimately nothing that could be done about it. Apart from the groups of people the group rescued, there were also some prisoners who were dead, either having been torn apart or experienced some level of organ failure as a result of the experiments they had been subjected to. The number of corpses and the skeletons of former prisoners in the base numbered a horrifying amount as the group moved from room to room, and Alice also saw some mid-progress experiments she would never forget. Some of the victims of those experiments were still able to be rescued, and some… weren’t.

When they finished sweeping through the base, another hour or two had passed. Ethan quickly regrouped with the rest of the small army outside of the base, which had turned into something of a makeshift medical camp as the Illvarian forces tried to treat and accommodate the people who had been recovered from the Society base and were still alive. Ethan nodded to the [Commander] who had led most of the fight, and a rainbow Perk sprang into existence around the two before they started talking again. A few minutes later, the Perk disappeared, and Alice could hear the two speaking again.

“I’ll do as you say, Honored Immortal,” said the [Commander] with a nod.

“Good. Keep me updated on progress if you find anything new later on,” said Ethan, before nodding. The [Commander] kept around thirty troops as they began to look over the base again. The remainder of the [Soldiers] formed around Ethan, before the group began to regroup around Ethan instead.

With the prisoners rescued, the Society members captured or killed, and Ethan having swiped almost all of the research documents, the group headed back towards Metsel.

* * *

During the walk back to Metsel, Alice finally dealt with all of the System notifications she had been ignoring during the fight and the walk through the Society base.

---