Chapter 28: Chapter 27

The next day, Alice headed to the Church, in order to sit down and verify her thoughts on Mana and attributes. Alice got Priest Friedheim’s permission to sit in on his lesson with the children of the town relatively easily – it seemed the man did not mind her sitting on the edge of the lesson, so long as she was not disruptive. She spent a few minutes getting permission from the kids to ask them if she was correct in playing a ‘guessing game’ about when they gained an Attribute, much to Friedheim’s bafflement. The Priest did, however, promise to use his lie – detection Perk to double check whenever Alice was checking whether someone had gained an Attribute point or not.

 She found out that, exactly the same way she had drawn in mana when she gained an Attribute, so did the children in Priest Friedheim’s classes. She had gotten permission from some of the children to ‘guess’ whether or not they had gotten an Attribute level, and after a bit of practice, Alice could guess with near perfect accuracy when a kid got an Attribute point. She couldn’t always tell which kind of attribute, especially because all of the mental stats involved mana rushing into the brain, and distinguishing which part of the brain was fairly difficult. However, Alice could, at the very least, always tell when someone got SOME sort of System notification.

However, it seemed that her testing method did not work JUST for Attributes – while lesser, it seemed that she would also pick up on any time someone gained a level in a Skill. Alice also once picked up on someone getting a level – and it was accompanied by exactly the same surge of mana that accompanied a Skill or Attribute increasing, at least the one time that one of the children had leveled up. Unlike when someone got a Skill or Attribute, however, the surge of mana split in two immediately, half of it moving towards the heart and the other half moving towards the brain.

It seemed like whatever the System was doing, it was much more closely related to Mana than Alice had first assumed. Alice was actually quite curious to know if the two were actually separate entities – it seemed like the System and Mana were always working together somehow, after all. Yet another thing to test.

As the lesson progressed, and Alice’s accuracy in ‘guessing’ each Attribute and Skill notification was fully displayed, Priest Friedheim looked very interested in what she was doing. Alice managed to brush him off by giving him a similar, if somewhat abbreviated, version of the explanation she had given Illa – she was experimenting with whether or not mana played some role in physical or mental growth, because people on this world were stronger than her home world.

Priest Friedheim still looked very interested, and Alice had the feeling she would need to explain her experiment more thoroughly in the future, but for now, at least, she had a bit more time to think. Or avoid the question, which was what Alice was beginning to recognize she was actually doing. Still, she had enough on her plate already, with magic training, the upcoming expedition, and her experiments. She would discuss Mana and the System with the [Priest]… eventually.

Alice thanked Priest Friedheim for allowing her to sit in on the kids as they learned, and then moved on. For the rest of the day, she wondered why no one else had gotten the {Seeker of Truth} Achievement. It seemed so… easy. No one had stumbled onto this in hundreds of years? Why? Surely someone with basic mana sight would have noticed a surge of mana when people gained Stats and Levels, regardless of how much people believed that mana was some sort of Oxygen-equivalent… right? And once someone had the Achievement, they would obviously know there was more to the story. So why had no one stumbled onto this yet? Alice might have overestimated how easy it was to stumble onto this, but even so, it seemed strange to her.

Another thing to think about.

She went to sleep for the night troubled and confused, but with a budding sense of excitement as she thought about what else she could discover. However, even her excitement at making new discoveries couldn’t dampen her dread at the thought of the upcoming meeting with Cecilia, Erik’s daughter. Tomorrow, she would have to face her.

* * *

Alice found herself outside of a beat-down sign. It read “Level 39 Enchanter/Level 52 Blacksmith. Light System Enchanting, All Traditional Enchanting, and some Consumable Enchanting available. The best stop for adventurers!”

Alice thought back to when she had first entered this town, almost a week and a half ago. At that time, she had seen this sign, hadn’t she? Even back then, she had thought that the sign seemed a bit run-down, but she hadn’t thought about it further. However, now that she was looking at the sign and knew the story behind it, everything made more sense. If the main [Enchanter] in the shop was Erik, and he was dead, obviously the shop would begin to struggle financially, especially if the only person helming the shop was a girl around the same age as her.

Alice took a deep breath, trying to work up her nerves. Then, she knocked on the door.

Just doing so gave her a point in Willpower. It took her an extra few moments to realize that this shop was still a shop, and so there was probably no point in knocking – she could have just walked in and asked to see the shop owner. Instead, she was treating this shop as if it were Cecilia’s house instead. Come to think of it, did people on this world even knock on people’s houses? Alice wasn’t sure.

The shop was silent for several seconds. She stood in front of the door, awkwardly shuffling. Should she knock again? Should she just go in? As she was hesitating, finally, the door opened.

The girl Alice remembered seeing from the trial, Cecilia, stood in the doorway. She looked different from when Alice had last seen her. Stable. Her blond hair and green eyes looked a bit brighter than they had during the trial, although she hadn’t gotten that good of a look at Cecilia with all of the other things happening back then. However, the taller girl seemed to at least be adjusting to her grief well.

At least, on the surface.

The girl’s eyes were a bit more red than Alice thought was normal. Her face was also… focused. Not in a good way. It was more like she had the eyes of someone trying to avoid thinking too much, and so they hyper-focused on whatever task was put in front of them and threw themselves into it.

Alice shuffled awkwardly, before she managed to give out a smile. It was closer to a grimace, but at least it somewhat resembled a smile.

“Hey.”

“Oh. You’re the {Out -}… the girl from another area.” The girl’s speech was toneless. It wasn’t angry or happy, or even sad. It was just… empty. Alice took a deep breath.

“I just wanted to come and say that I was sorry. About your father, I mean. I… I would understand if you didn’t want to see me, since I’m the one that more or less confirmed his death, and while I didn’t know it belonged to a corpse at the time, I did steal the book from his body, and I sold it because I needed the money…” Alice trailed off, unsure where she had been intending to take the conversation.

“Were you the one that killed him?” Asked Cecilia. For a brief moment, Alice saw a spark of anger in the other girl’s eyes. It wasn’t directed at her, but there was a raw fury in the other girl’s expression that was easy to make out.

“No. I just found his body.”

“Then you have nothing to be sorry for. At the very least, I prefer knowing what happened instead of spending the rest of my life wondering.” Said Cecilia, although it was closer to a hiss. “The bastards that should be sorry are those fuckers in the Sigmusi Colonia who set the damned bounty, or the fuckers who killed my father because they wanted the money.” Cecilia glared at nothing for a moment, before she refocused on Alice. Slowly, her tense expression relaxed, and in moments she visibly calmed down. Alice wasn’t sure whether Cecilia had such natural level of control over her emotions, or whether there was a Perk involved.

“You wouldn’t have come here if that was all, would you? I understand you sold the book because you needed to. You don’t have to feel bad about it. If anything, I’m glad it returned to somewhere it would be of use. Most people who hunt mages ditch the valuables because they’re more likely to get hit by Perks from {Guards} and get traced back to them, especially if they’re bulky or hard to hide. However, I doubt you just came to apologize.” Cecilia’s expression was flat, but her tone was calmer now, and more analytical. The girl seemed all too eager to throw herself into a different topic, regardless of what it might be.

“Yeah. I… I wanted to know if you would be willing to teach me enchanting?” Alice felt like there was probably a much better way she could have broached this topic. However, while Cecilia seemed to very much be upset, she also seemed like someone who preferred getting to the point sooner rather than later.

Cecilia gave Alice a simple, flat gaze, seemingly thinking it over. Finally, she sighed.

“I am not opposed to the idea. I expect you to pay for tuition, however, either in labor or in gold. Furthermore, I expect you to either provide or pay for the enchanting materials you are going to ruin.” Cecilia’s face remained flat. Alice had, at first, attributed the certain… lack of facial expressions as a result of Cecilia being in grief. However, her tone remained quite neutral, even now. Alice briefly thought back to the Cecilia she had seen at the courtroom, crying and hugging the older mage while mumbling something about her father. Perhaps that was an unusually high level of expressiveness for the girl?

“Of course! I was ready to pay for my tuition. And my enchanting materials. How much would it cost?” Said Alice, trying to avoid stuttering.

“In that case… Hmm…” Cecilia seemed to be doing some math. A moment later, she nodded. “I’ll want one gold sun per lesson, separate from material costs. For as long as I’m in town, at least - please keep in mind that while I should be here for another two months, since I need time to finish packing everything up, saying goodbye, and waiting for a reliable escort team to come here and pick me up, I will be leaving soon. Also, I’m only willing to do up to eight lessons a month - I have other things I need to do as well, after all. However, that should be enough time for you to pick some enchanting up and at least start making some money back, even if your levels will be pretty low and you won’t be that good at it.”

Alice winced. Paying for this would cost more than she made every month. She was, once again, made aware of how good of a deal she actually had with Illa. Let’s see… my salary and Illa’s payment for my education combined comes up quite a bit short if I want to get all eight lessons this month. Maybe I can make up the change in other ways? Alice frowned. A moment later, she remembered that Cecilia had originally mentioned she was willing to allow Alice to pay with labor instead.

“What would it look like if I paid you in labor?”

“I would expect you to spend a lot of the mana from your Kinetic magic seed assisting me in trying to get the blast Crystal formula correct. They are a certain type of consumable enchantment I have been trying to get right, because they’re quite popular in mining operations in the North. My kinetic seed is pretty low, so I don’t have much mana to test out every day, but I have a Perk that lets me ‘borrow’ mana from people who are willingly helping me and have a seed. At a terrible efficiency ratio, but still. You would be serving as the one who does the mana, while I would be the one actually doing the enchanting.”

“How would that work out, money-wise?”

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“I would pay you… Two copper artisans per five Mariums of Kinetic Energy - based mana, and however many lessons that would give you is how many you get a month? I have a Perk that lets me measure things correct to the nearest Marium, and if you have any Perks to double check the quantity of mana or my truthfulness, I don’t mind you using them if need be.”

Alice did some math. One Marium was the amount of mana one point in the Magic stat produced when it was in a seed with 100% mana conversion ratio. She had… 104 Magic right now, and a total multiplier of 102% effect of the magic stat for a total of 106 or so. Then, her Kinetic Seed had a mana conversion ratio of 135%, so multiply the 106 by 1.35 for a total of 143 or so mariums of Kinetic Energy based mana? And it took her 40 hours to regenerate right now? If she rounded that to ‘two days’ to make the math easier, that meant she would be producing… around 7 silver crowns every two days, give or take a bit, right? Suddenly, Alice wished she had a Perk to help with math. She would hopefully pick one up from one of her two research-based classes soon, but she should also see if there was some sort of ‘advanced math’ skill or something that she hadn’t met the requirements for yet. It would be helpful.

Math aside, Alice needed to keep a lot of her mana to do Illa’s lessons, and whatever work Illa wanted her to do around town as well. However, Alice would definitely need to pay part of the cost in Mana and labor instead. Still, Alice thought she should be able to do it.

“I want to pay in a mixture of gold coins and labor, as my time and mana permits.”

“That’s fine. Honestly, I figured you were probably going to pay in labor, since you seem kind of short on cash,” said Cecilia as she began absently twining her fingers, fiddling with a small purple… something that Alice hadn’t noticed she was holding. “Are you just going to stand in the doorway? Come in so we can discuss this inside.”

Alice realized that she had, in fact, been standing half in the shop and half out of the shop for the entirety of this conversation. She stepped into the shop.

Her first impression of the entire workspace was clutter. Alice looked around the room, trying to figure out what half of the materials were. At least half of them looked like the strange object Cecilia was holding. The rest were more scattered and random - weird plants, metals that Alice didn’t recognize, along with various colored chunks of rocks that looked as if they were partially made of glass, rather than made of pure mineral. At least, that was Alice’s first impression - since Cecilia was an [Enchanter], Alice was willing to bet most or all of the materials were magical in nature, and Alice had no clue what that meant when it came to how physical objects were supposed to look. 

On the other side of the wall, there were also several crates. Some of them were closed already, but several of them were still open and unfilled.

“So, you’re going to be my student, huh?” Asked Cecilia, looking at Alice. “I don’t mind giving you a quick rundown of Enchanting for today, to get you to specify what you’re interested in learning. How familiar are you with enchanting as a whole? I’ll need to know what you want to learn so that I can make a more detailed lesson plan, after all.”

“I admit that I didn’t really have a solid plan beyond the idea I should learn enchanting,” said Alice, after some thought. “I know that there are three kinds of enchanting, and that one of them is System enchanting. The other two are Consumable and Traditional, right? I don’t know what either of those mean though.”

“Technically, there are four kind of Enchanting – it’s just that the fourth kind is artifact creation, and is basically only used by Immortals. I don’t actually know much about that branch of Enchanting, honestly, and even if I did I would have no use for it right now. But sure. You need a rundown on the two variations on magical enchanting.

“I mostly specialize in consumable enchantments. Papa does - did the Traditional enchantments. However, I can do both, just with different levels of proficiency.”

Alice winced a bit internally, as the girl’s expression started to twist for a moment. Then her control was back, and Cecilia looked back at Alice, still fiddling with the object in her hands.

“Traditional enchanting is what most people are referring to when they talk about ‘magic enchantments.’ That kind of enchantment is very different from System enchantments because System enchanting is limited to buffing whoever wears an enchanted item, giving them some sort of Stat or Perk or Skill advantage, but can’t do anything to more directly affect the world. However, the upside is that they also require no fuel source.

“For traditional enchanting, an item is able to be used over and over again, but it needs a power source to keep it working. Usually Monster cores. However, it can do much more than just buff the wearer. Like… hmm.” Cecilia moved towards one of the crates, and began rooting around inside of the crate. After several moments of digging around, Cecilia pulled out a simple ring.

“You’ve got a kinetic seed, right? Shoot something at me.”

Alice hesitated for a moment, not expecting to have the other girl suddenly demand that she attack her. She looked around, trying to find an object that she could use as a projectile.

“Here. Use this,” said Cecilia, after noticing Alice’s problem. She chucked a small iron disc at Alice. Alice managed to catch it with her magic, her training with Illa finally paying off as she caught it without dropping or deflecting it, and then she looked back towards Cecilia. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah. Shoot away.”

“All right,” said Alice. She flung the weighted piece of iron at Cecilia, carefully aiming to the left of the girl in case something went wrong.

A pulse of mana extended outwards from the ring, locking directly onto the piece of iron. The moment it got within three meters of Cecilia, the pulse of mana locked onto it, and the piece of iron stopped dead in its tracks. Curious, Alice tried to apply some more force to the item, trying to push it forward. The tendril of mana that now extended outward from the ring flashed with another pulse of mana every time she tried to move it. Even though Alice was fighting the ring and trying to move the piece of iron around, physically, nothing was happening except Alice’s piece of iron was floating in midair. Finally, fed up, Alice tried to drag the item back towards her. The ring fought her over that as well, and she was unable to make the object move another centimeter forwards or backwards. Finally, the tendril of mana from within Cecilia’s ring seemed to deflate, collapsing into nothing. Alice gave the object a final tug, and the object was suddenly freed from its restraints. It shot back towards her, and Alice barely managed to catch it with another tendril of mana before it hit her in the face.

Cecilia very slightly grinned at the sight, before she launched back into her explanation.

“As you can see, this ring was enchanted using a Kinetic Seed to prevent any movement that surpassed a certain speed as long as the ring still had fuel. However, it eats through energy fairly quickly.” Said Cecilia. “It was one of the first things I ever enchanted. Its fuel efficiency is… very bad. But you get the idea. Traditional enchanting is the art of making an object take on some sort of magical property, similar to a mage actually taking action. Of course, it also needs fuel to do so. Generally speaking, monster cores are the fuel of choice, with most objects needing cores from a monster using magic somewhat similar to whatever the enchantment is doing. Better match means better compatibility, meaning less waste. Of course, anything can still theoretically work - if you don’t care about keeping the enchantment in good shape, the fact that you’ll eat through a huge amount of monster cores for very little fuel, you can slap a Spidercrab core into just about anything and it’ll work. Not that most people who can actually afford enchanting would do so, of course,” said Cecilia.

“Now, by contrast, Consumable Enchantments are one use only. They are made with monster cores as the base, rather than just as a power source.” Cecilia closed her eyes for a moment, and then dropped the thing in her hands. For a moment, it glowed, and then Alice felt a wave of weak force expand outwards from the stone. Most of it turned into a very light breeze, although Alice could see a few objects also shiver in the surrounding radius, before things returned to the exact same state they had previously been in. Most interestingly, the mana she was expecting to come along with the pulse of force was strangely absent - it appeared that, rather than the consumable object using mana every second it was running, there was only one second where the mana in the object flared up, and then it was completely empty. It took Alice a moment to realize that the reason was because all of the mana had been converted into physical force, meaning there was no mana to observe. The object itself also crumbled away, collapsing into dust moments after it was used.

“Of course, this one was also rather poorly made - the well-made ones are quite valued in mining recently, or so I hear, since they can somehow blast away chunks of rock and ore. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get it right, but thus far, all of the cores I’ve created seem more interested in creating a light breeze than a blast of force useful for mining. It looks like this one is just another failed experiment.” Cecilia shrugged. “Anway, the upside of consumable enchanting is that you can get a lot more mana put towards a specific task at once. The ratio of mana to wasted mana tends to get worse as well, but it’s still usually within manageable limits. And, of course, both are better than System Enchanting in most cases.”

“Thank you!” Said Alice, surprised by what she had seen so far.

“Where do your interests lie? Does either kind of Enchanting… speak to you? Or do you want to learn both? Most [Enchanters] specialize in one, but most [Enchanters] have at least basic proficiency in both. Up to you.”

“I want to learn both - both are related to magic, and I want to learn both categories if I can. However, maybe I would prefer a focus on Consumable first?” After all, it was Cecilia’s specialty, and Alice doubted she would be able to pick up everything the girl knew in just sixteen lessons, which was the most optimistic scenario. It probably made more sense to learn what Cecilia was best at, since Alice would probably need another teacher eventually.

“That’s fine. In that case, I’ll expect you soon,” said Cecilia with a very small grin.

Alice wondered just how poor she was going to be when Cecilia left Cyra. She had known that she wasn’t making much compared to a regular mage, since she was mostly being paid in education, food, and room and board. Still… Damn. 1 gold sun a lesson.

Still, she needed to learn enchanting, both for her research and for her income. She just needed to keep in mind that, in the future, she would be able to also make absurd amounts of money if she kept at it. All she needed to do to confirm that was a quick glance around the shop, where most items were priced in Silver Crowns, some were priced in golden suns, at the least and a few items cost GOLD Crowns. If she had been doubtful of the idea that enchanters made money before, this was a pretty good sample of what a good enchanter could make. With a final, envious glance at the absurd prices in the enchanting shop, Alice thanked Cecilia for her time and left. She was already mostly out of mana from Illa’s training today, and emotionally drained as well, but she would be back tomorrow to start working on paying for her lessons. And Alice needed to report what had happened back to Illa, to report that Cecilia was willing to help her learn enchanting. 

Still, she had faced her fear of confronting Cecilia. And it turned out to be… not so bad either. Alice was starting to notice a trend here – if she tried to actually talk about her concerns and fears with people, it usually didn’t turn out too poorly, at least here in Cyra. By contrast, things turned out much worse a lot of the time if she tried to hide away from danger.

Hopefully this trend would continue when the Expedition started. It was only four days away, now.