Chapter 118: Chapter 114

The next few hours were spent in a strange mixture of tension and boredom. Nobody quite knew where the villagers had gone, and nobody really had a good way to find out, either. Which meant that the group was stuck in a place with unknown dangers possibly lurking nearby.

However, it was difficult to remain tense and ready for an unknown danger to appear for hours on end, especially when nothing happened during that time period. While a few of the [Guards] appeared to be using some sort of Perk that kept their boredom at bay, most people began to slowly simmer down. It was becoming obvious that whatever problems existed in this area, the group was unlikely to run into it in the near future.

Finally, the two [Organic Mages] got to work at removing chunks of broken mana. Alice noticed, with some interest, that a few smaller spidercrabs that crept into the area and started slurping away at the mana cloud were ignored instead of being instantly exterminated, as long as they didn’t get too close to the group. The spidercrabs seemed more than content to simply gnaw away at the cloud of broken mana, and the Mages seemed to welcome the unintentional help in cleaning up the area.

Alice decided to help out, since she was one of the five Mages in the group and had nothing better to do with her time. While she could hold her own in a fight, she felt it was better to reduce the workload on the other Mages now so that they could help if an actual problem came up. However, the people in the area really didn’t have a job right now besides looking out for the Society or other enemies in the area. Ethan and elder Sujia acknowledged the work Alice and the other two Mages were putting in to clearing out the area, but opted to remain with the [Guards] in case a new threat materialized.

However, Alice and the [Organic Mages] found themselves bored as well. Cleaning out huge clouds of broken mana was neither dangerous nor particularly mentally taxing, especially since all of the Mages here were immune to broken mana poisoning. The only real benefit Alice got out of the cleaning session was a couple points in the {Broken Mana Purification} Skill, bringing her from 24 to 28 in the Skill. Which was… better than nothing, but not a very exciting or useful upgrade.

Finally, after hours of mind-numbing repetition, the group finished cleaning up for the day, wiped out the spidercrabs in the area, and settled down to rest for the night. The cloud of broken mana was noticeably smaller than it had been when Alice and the two [Organic Mages] had started cleaning up, but it would probably take a few days to finish purifying the area, especially if they didn’t have any more Mages to help out.

Alice settled down to rest for the night, but her thoughts raced as she laid down to rest. The idea that a human from home might have been here, even if Alice couldn’t figure out where they had gone, made it nearly impossible to rest now that she didn’t have to worry about cleaning up Broken Mana.

Hesitantly, Alice took the tub of ice cream out of her storage Perk, and then took a spoon out as well and began eating. If she were still at home, she would have properly gotten a bowl out first, and perhaps added a few extras to her ice cream. She had personally been a fan of chocolate syrup on top of her ice cream, although she sometimes added other things to change the flavor.

The food reminded her of home. As Alice stuck another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth, Alice felt the strangest mixture of excitement, again. She had spent the longest time thinking that she was alone on this planet, and that she would never see another person from home unless she found a way to return to Earth. And even though she didn’t know what had happened to the other {Outworlder}, if there were two people from Earth on this planet, that was a good indicator that there might be more.

Then, Alice’s hopes started to dim.

No matter what had happened to the other {Outworlder}, she probably wouldn’t be able to meet the one that had arrived here in the ruined car.

If they had been kidnapped by the Society, they were probably being subjected to experiments that may or may not leave them dead or insane afterwards.

If they had teleported back to Earth, Alice obviously wouldn’t be able to talk to them.

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If they had been eaten by a monster, there was no way Alice knew of to resurrect them in this world. Even Immortals couldn’t return from the dead if their brain was destroyed, much less a random civilian from Earth.

And Alice couldn’t think of any other reason the car owner, along with all of the villagers here, could have vanished.

Alice angrily shoved another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth, before she started to feel full and stuffed the ice cream back into {Sample Collection}. Then, unable to keep her thoughts from wandering in depressed circles, she got out of her tent and decided to be a little productive. Since she couldn’t sleep, she might as well gather new information about her experiments.

Alice decided to continue some leftovers from her previous experiment. Before Ethan had dragged her over to this village to observe the nonexistent villagers of this area, she had been experimenting with how classes and magic seeds worked. Now that she had the opportunity, Alice had a follow-up experiment she had meant to do concerning how deleted classes worked. Thus, Alice started preparing to fish.

In her previous experiment, she had tried deleting her [Fisherwoman] secondary class seed, because she had been curious to know what would happen if she deleted a seed. And now, Alice was trying to reform it, because she was curious to know what happened if she reformed a class seed that had been deleted.

Alice made use of the nearby trees and quickly shaved a couple of wooden tree branches into wooden spears using her kinetic magic. Then, Alice quickly moved to the nearby river, giving the [Guard] a quick wave to let him know she was doing a bit of fishing and that he didn’t need to sound the alarm.

The [Guard] seemed more than slightly baffled by the fact that she had started randomly fishing in the middle of the night, but after confirming her identity, the [Guard] simply went back to his patrol while muttering something about eccentric Mages.

Alice pointedly ignored him.

Half an hour later, Alice had successfully speared a few more fish using her kinetic magic and her wooden spears. They would be welcome additions to the camp’s rations, but that wasn’t Alice’s focus right now.

After her second fish she had caught, Alice got her first relevant System notification.

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