A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World

After the group dealt with the outriders of the horde, Allira couldn’t sing the ship back into existence because she needed to keep the swamp monsters imprisoned. Alice suspected that once they got to another town or city, Ethan would use magic to ‘permanently’ contain the creatures… but for now, they were being held in place almost exclusively by Allira’s magic. Thus, the group went back to being transported via Ethan’s raw kinetic magic, which was far less comfortable and far less mana-efficient.

Despite the uncomfortable travel method, the group started making good time again. Jonathan was forced to occasionally plant another line of seeds, and Allira frequently reported the swamp monsters trying to catch up with them. But with the fastest members of the horde wiped out, the group was no longer at risk of being trapped in another battle, much to Alice’s relief. Still, as they continued to travel, hour after hour, Alice started to frown.

Just how big was this swamp? After over a day of travel through it, during which time they were mostly flying, they still had yet to reach the end of the swamp. Ethan and Allira had said that it might take a day or two of travel to pass through it, but Alice didn’t think they had originally planned to fly through the swamp, either. She started to wonder if they had somehow been steered off track by the swamp. It was clearly built to mislead people and trap them in the swamp forever. Had they somehow gotten turned around while they were travelling? But that… shouldn’t be possible. With three Immortals in the group, the idea of getting lost seemed absurd. But they were also still stuck in the swamp…

As Alice felt this suspicion start to grow in her heart, she realized that some tiny threads of magic in their surroundings were beginning to stir. Alice stared at these tiny little threads of mana, and noticed that they weren’t directly connected to people. Instead, they looked somewhat similar to the threads of mana that had connected to the monsters they captured, making the creatures seem somewhat similar to puppets or marionettes. After some observation, Alice realized that these threads of mana weren’t actually new. In fact, she had seen similar mana structures before – they just hadn’t been quite so obvious. The reason they were easy to pick out right now was because the Swamp was very… homogenous. Most free-floating mana in the world had a lot of other, smaller types of mana mixed into it, making every single drop of mana hard to break down into smaller components. However, the Swamp was very pure in that it was almost entirely made of swamp-mana. It was like seeing a blue paint in the middle of a tie-dye colored shirt, versus seeing a splotch of blue paint in the middle of white paper.

Alice spent several minutes observing this thread of mana, and then comparing it to the threads of mana extending out from the monsters that the group had captured. Until finally, Alice started to get a rough idea what she was looking at.

These tiny little threads of mana… should probably be her beliefs and suspicions interacting with the mana around them to make her beliefs ‘real.’ At least, that was Alice’s best guess – it could have also been something completely different. Despite looking like a mana structure, the ‘type’ of mana involved was even weirder than System mana. It felt… wrong somehow. Like looking at a color that was beyond the range that human vision could pick up. Alice knew something was there. She knew it was made of mana. But she just… couldn’t figure out what it was or how it worked.

While Alice was mostly guessing what the threads of mana did, it did bring another problem to mind. One that was becoming more important with each passing day. How did the System prevent people’s beliefs from influencing reality? Was it a facet of ‘communication’ mana? Was it a new type of mana entirely? How exactly was this done? Because one thing Alice had realized while they were travelling over the swamp was that this needed to get fixed. It was of higher priority than fixing Achievements. If people’s beliefs kept constantly influencing reality, sooner or later everything would just… snap behind the scenes. And past that point, Alice doubted that the world would remain stable.

She sighed. There was still so much work to do… and at the end of the day, as far as Alice knew, she was the only one who could do it. If she didn’t solve these problems, nobody would. Not for the first time, Alice wished that Ethan or Cecilia had Perks and Achievements similar to hers. Having a full work colleague who had their own, specialized versions of Alice’s toolkit would have made it thousands of times easier to fix all of this. Instead, all she could do was use {Shared Memories} to try to show other people what she had observed, and then theorize together. It was better than nothing, but far from what she wanted.

Alice spent a few minutes getting lost in her thoughts and worries, before she finally realized she was wasting time. If she had time to wish for colleagues, she had time to examine her surroundings and learn more. She started observing the threads of mana in their surroundings, trying to map out what they were and how they worked. Then, after several minutes of observation and a few checks with {Safety Analysis}, Alice started experimenting.

She first tried to use communication mana to cut off the ‘communication’ between humans and mana. Since she theorized the weird non-threads of mana allowed mana to ‘respond’ to human beliefs, she wanted to see if she could just shut down the pathway between humans and mana entirely. This had interesting results, but was nowhere near a total success. The communication mana was, indeed, able to mess with the threads of weird mana – but it was not capable of shutting it down or totally cutting it off. It was more like dampening the ‘volume’ of her beliefs. If Alice used a lot of communication mana to weaken the communication between herself and the threads of mana, it seemed to become less reactive to her – but it still reacted. Just less than before.

At first, Alice thought that she was on the right path. She figured that with a bit more training, or more inventive use of her mana, maybe it was possible to snap off the communication between humans and mana entirely. Or, barring that, perhaps it could be reduced to some sort of ‘extreme minimum’ level of communication, which would be almost the same thing. If she could at least figure out how to minimize communication between humans and mana, she could find a way to get the rest of the population on board. Maybe it would be woven into future ‘class-fixing’ enchantments, or something like that.

But after some experimentation, Alice realized that there was a certain minimum and maximum level of information exchange between humans and mana. Whatever she was doing with communication mana, it would still fail to change these two values. So either she was missing something, or she needed a different kind of mana.

Alice tried using anti-magic mana next, but that didn’t seem to do anything at all, at least not long-term. It worked fine for cutting off the connection between humans and mana… but it also seemed more like it was suppressing the link, rather than fixing the fundamental issue. The moment Alice stopped applying anti-magic mana to the mana threads, they would become very, very active. The longer she suppressed them, the more active they were afterwards. It strongly reminded Alice of the way class levels worked – ever since Alice had gotten her very first level in her Status Screen, it had become impossible for her to lose levels she had earned. Even if she did something in a no-mana zone, she would still get her class levels the moment she got back in contact with mana.

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Alice started trying out new things, but nothing she tried worked. Eventually, she got frustrated and switched focus. If it was impossible for her to figure out the communication between humans and mana right now, she could just focus on Achievements instead. She still needed to finish fleshing out the connection between mana crystals and Achievements, and now was a great time to do so. Alice returned to her {Magic Modelling}, in order to squeeze out information about mana gems.

Hours passed by as Alice sank into her thoughts. Soon, it came time for the group to rest again. Much like the previous night, Allira kept watch while the rest of the group slept. During their slumber, Alice used her dream library to keep working on {Magic Modelling}.

The next day, about six hours after daybreak, the group finally left the swamp. Alice felt a small urge to do a celebratory round of clapping as they finally saw the end of the giant cloud of swamp mana. But before Alice could say anything, a wave of rainbow mana started pouring through the world, like a tidal wave of paint spilled by a careless child.

Unlike the last few times Alice had seen System mana return, however, this time it was… fainter. Fragmented. Alice got the impression that it was broken when she saw it.

But even though it was broken, Alice still did her best to memorize every single thing that she could. For a moment, Alice deeply regretted that {Magic Modelling} was on cooldown right now. If it had been active, Alice could have gotten an image of a perfect chunk of System mana. Not some sort of fragmented, broken down version that was created to serve one and only one purpose, like the ones that she had run into while investigating System enchantments and such. Instead, it would have given her a copy of the ‘mother code’ of the System. It might have saved her weeks of exploration and made her life dozens of times easier.

Sadly, there were no what-ifs in the world. And so Alice instead memorized every single thing she could as the System’s mana rocketed through the world in an unbridled mess of mana. With her photographic memory, she could sort out the details of what she had seen later – right now, she just tried to cram every single speck of data into her memories for future perusal. Moments later, the System mana dissipated again, leaving nothing behind.

However, while Alice didn’t get to investigate much, she had paid very close attention to one thing. She tried to check how the System handled the interaction between beliefs and mana. This was something the System had clearly managed in the past, and after seeing the way the Swamp had expanded due to the influence of human ideas, Alice was clear that this problem needed to be solved. Not in the future, not tomorrow. Now. Every single day that human beliefs warped reality, there was a small threat of everything breaking and ending the world one day.

And in this respect, Alice wasn’t disappointed. As she watched, she saw that some of the threads she had been observing earlier were… eaten by the System.

It didn’t look like the System had suppressed them with some mixture of communication mana and other types of mana. It didn’t look like the System mana had deleted the mana threads, either. It was more like watching a whirlpool swallow a sinking ship. One moment, the little threads of weird mana were present, and the next moment, the System engulfed it and integrated it. Then, it seemed almost as if the little threads of mana were a natural part of the System mana. It was so natural, so obviously part of normal System mana that Alice had a hard time picking out the little threads of mana again, even when she knew what she was looking for.

That was… very interesting. Alice wasn’t quite sure what to make of that yet, but she was sure it was important…

Sadly, before she could gather more data, the whole phenomenon collapsed like a soap bubble in a hurricane. Still, Alice had realized that she was heading in the wrong direction when she had tried to stifle the little threads of mana. Clearly, they weren’t something the System suppressed – instead, they were actively used somehow, as a material rather than a problem. She couldn’t help but wish that she could see exactly how the System worked behind the scenes… but she would have to wait until Murim found the System’s mainframe. Until then, she would just have to keep studying the little pieces of the System she could observe.

While Alice focused on studying the surrounding mana, the group found a nearby village. Alice was surprised to see that the villagers were still present. It didn’t even look like the villagers were getting ready to evacuate – although even from high above the village, she could see the villagers eyeing the swamp nervously. It seemed that they weren’t unaware of the threat of the swamp expanding, but they were simply unwilling to leave their homes and their farms to rot as they fled for the hills. Alice had heard that even back on Earth, some people were unwilling to abandon their homes even when disaster struck. It was probably much worse here, when so much of the average [Farmer] family’s wealth was buried in the ground each season.

“This is a good place to start,” sang Allira, somehow making her totally normal words sound like natural parts of the song she was singing. Alice frowned as she tried to parse the meaning of Allira’s words… before Allira’s previous idea came back to her.

Allira had suggested spreading various stories related to ‘defeating the heart of the swamp.’ Despite the fact that the ‘Heart of the Swamp’ didn’t really exist, if people thought that the expansion of the swamp was slowed or halted, the swamp truly would start to weaken and stop expanding. Alice nodded, and then glanced at the train of cages the group was carrying with them. She grinned.

“We can use the monsters we captured as props,” said Alice. “Hmm… while we’re at it… Allira, do you have a way to make the monsters wriggle around a bit, and perhaps make some odd noises?”

“I… could probably manage that with illusions, but why do you ask?” sang Allira.

“Well, since human belief can influence these monsters, I’m thinking we should also spread a second rumor. We should make people think that the monsters get much weaker outside of the swamp. Right now, it’s entirely possible for the monsters that were created by the swamp to just… stroll out and attack various towns and cities. At least, I think it’s possible. So I’m hoping that you can make it look like the monsters are in pain, it’ll back up that statement.” Alice shrugged. “It seems like a good precaution to add in.”

Allira nodded. “I can add that in pretty easily,” she sang. “While we’re here, could one of you also get some more solid metal cage? I’m getting pretty tired of singing every single sentence!”

“I’ll do it,” said Cecilia. “I could use a restock on some of my enchanting supplies anyway. I used up a bunch of them during the fight with the monsters.”

After Cecilia’s words, the group alighted on the ground, and ceased speaking. Alice saw several villagers start pointing at them in shock and awe. Ethan, Allira, and Jonathan were getting the most looks. Even though most of the villagers weren’t able to tell that they were Immortals on the spot, the unusual dexterity and grace the three carried themselves must have tipped them off that something was unusual about the three.

Allira smiled, and took the lead as she stepped towards the village. Meanwhile, Alice tried not to think about what would happen next. Even if she knew it was rather important to control people’s beliefs right now, lying to people didn’t feel very good. Luckily, most of it would be left to Allira, since Allira was the member of the group with the best grasp of social dynamics and information manipulation. Still, Alice felt a faintly sour taste in her mouth as the group stepped into the village.

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