A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World

After the battle finished, Alice took one look at the people who were still alive on the boat, and grimaced to herself.

Less people had survived than she had thought.

Maybe a third of the [Guards] and Mages who were combat oriented had died, and as well as one of Cecilia’s [Enchanters]. Luckily, it wasn’t one of the ones that had gained a new magic seed, but it was still a painful loss.

Alice felt very guilty about it, but she was glad that the person who had died wasn’t Cecilia. That isn’t to say that she didn’t mourn the man who had died. But she was also glad that it was someone whose name she barely knew, rather than Cecilia, her best friend in this world. Alice wasn’t sure if feeling glad about that fact made her a bad person or not.

After that, Alice decided to do what little healing she could with her organic mana. She wasn’t an experienced enough healer to heal large wounds, but with a mix of the passive healing aura from {Extended Tissues} and Alice’s ability to repair simple wounds, she was able to help stabilize some of the wounded [Guards] and keep any more people from dying – at least until other, more experienced Mages, such as Ethan, got around to healing them.

Once the injured were taken care of, Alice took one look at the mana built up around her Class seeds, looked at all of the various System notifications she had gotten during the battle, and firmly decided that it could all wait until tomorrow.

With that, Alice returned to her quarters and passed out. Even {Sleep Reading} didn’t manage to rouse her mind as she slept.

* * *

The next day, Alice was in a much better mental state, so after purifying all of the mana stuck to her class seeds, Alice finally got around to looking at her System notifications.

And there were a lot of them.

The first, and most prominent notification, was an Achievement that Alice felt had very high potential. It was one of the highest tier Achievements Alice had seen so far, nearly rivalling the rarity of {Outworlder}.

Achievement Acquired!

Battle with an Immortal (Rarity: 9)

You have fought against an Immortal and successfully weakened them ___#@$___ dying.

+50% growth speed Combat_Classes, +20% Effect of Magic, Dexterity, and Endurance Stats

+200% boost to [Survivor] Class level speed.

The next time you get a Perk from the [Survivor] Class, you may choose an EXTRA Perk, equal to a level 50 Survivor Perk.

Alice studied the text of her newest Achievement, and grinned to herself.

The fight with Emilia and the Society near-Immortals had been… terrifying. She had been sure that she would die, or get dragged away, multiple times.

But at the very least, the Achievement she had gotten after the fight was excellent for helping Alice defend herself against future attacks. The Achievement not only boosted the levelling speed of Alice’s only combat Class, [Survivor] by 250% total, but it also gave her an extra Perk from the [Survivor] Class.

Alice definitely wasn’t going to complain about getting an extra [Survivor] Perk from her Acheivement. It definitely felt like the Class would be vital to her in the future, if she wanted to be able to fend off future attacks like this one. Alice had seen Ethan get hurt for the first time during the battle, and that sight had convinced Alice that there was never enough preparation. Even Immortals could get hurt or die if they weren’t prepared.

Emilia had nearly been killed by Ethan, and only the revival ability most Immortals shared had kept her from actually dying after Ethan had snapped her spine. Similarly, while Alice had thought that Ethan was containing Emilia’s poison fairly well, Ethan clearly hadn’t felt the same way. He had beheaded himself just to get rid of whatever poison enchantment was in Emilia’s daggers – which was an incredibly extreme method of poison removal. Both Emilia and Ethan had been forced to use their extra lives to get out of the fight alive – and while Ethan had said that the ‘extra life’ of most Immortals was often useless, right now Alice was still thinking about just how close the fight had been for both parties.

If Alice didn’t want to get assassinated after she became an Immortal, she would need to be aware of potential dangers that could still threaten her, even after she became an Immortal. Because last night had, once again, shown her that Immortals were far from invincible. Since [Survivor] was her only real combat-ish class, Alice needed to lean into the Class as much as she could and make sure she was prepared for fights like last night in the future.

Alice checked her Level increases next, since she had just done some pretty major fighting. She was sure that [Survivor] had probably levelled a lot, and she had also gained levels in several other Classes.

You have leveled up!

Survivor: 60 -> 68

Alice blinked in shock when she saw her first level up notification.

She had gone straight from level 60 to level 68 in ONE FIGHT. Things had seemed pretty desperate in a lot of ways – Ethan had gotten badly hurt, Alice had been desperately trying to run interference against someone who wanted to really hurt or kill her, and their side had been pretty badly outmatched in a lot of ways. Ethan had basically relied on his seniority as an Immortal and his hand-me-down sword from the Sun Knight to turn things around, and he had still been forced to use his Immortal regeneration just to escape the aftereffects of the battle.

But, much like with the Achievement, the rewards for surviving were excellent.

Alice grinned to herself, before she moved on to her next System notification.

You have leveled up!

Explorer of Magic: 79 -> 81

Alice was a little disappointed that she had only gained 2 levels in [Explorer of Magic] after the ridiculous amount of levels she had gotten in [Survivor]. Still, two levels finally let her take her first post-level 75 Perk – which meant two things.

First, if Alice wanted to, she could combine two Tier 1 Perks, turning them into something even better.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, Alice could now combine an [Explorer of Magic] Perk with any Perk from a completely different Class if she felt like it. Any Perk she had, from any Class, was now a potential combination target. This opened up a massive number of possibilities – enough that Alice suspected she would have a headache trying to sort through all of her options.

Luckily, at least so far, nothing seemed to be pressuring her to make her decision quickly. Alice decided that if Ethan was willing to, she would consult with him before taking her first level 75 Perk. Even if Alice didn’t give Ethan an exact rundown of what Perks she had, an Immortal would probably have decent advice on what she was lacking and needed to improve on.

Especially after the incident last night, Alice definitely wanted to boost her self-defense abilities further. Combining something from [Explorer of Magic] and [Survivor] seemed reasonable to her, but there was no harm in consulting with an actual Immortal.

You have leveled up!

Kinetic Manabinder: 44 -> 51

Alice grinned. Two more Perk choices. She now had five Perk choices to spend. She had used a fair amount of kinetic mana during the fight, and since it had been against an Immortal, she was glad to see that it had paid off. Finally, there were two last System notifications related to her level.

You have leveled up!

Careful Enchanter : 35 -> 36, Student of Organic Magic 24 -> 25 (Max) (Class Evolution Available)

Alice was a bit surprised to see that [Careful Enchanter] had gotten any levels at all. Apparently, flinging around her own, homemade enchantments in the middle of a dangerous battle counted for XP towards the class.

On the other hand, Alice had emptied weeks of work into a battle against an Immortal, and had still only gotten a single level in [Careful Enchanter] from the entire ordeal. Clearly, even though combat technically helped push her [Careful Enchanter] levels along, it didn’t count for much. Alice shrugged. She hadn’t really expected any levels in that class at all, so anything was better than nothing.

Finally, Alice had gotten her final level in her secondary Class, [Student of Organic Magic]. It was ready for Class Evolution. Alice had probably gotten the final level healing the soldiers last night. She wasn’t actually sure how the Class being a secondary Class would impact the benefits she got from evolving the Class, and she also wasn’t sure if the System could process a Class evolution with the System being down. After thinking about the fact that the System was down right now, she realized she was actually rather nervous. Evolving a class might go horribly wrong.

She decided to wait until they got back to Metsel before taking a look at her Class Evolution options for [Student of Organic Magic], to see if anyone had reported the System bugging out when trying to evolve Classes. It had been nearly a month since the System collapsed, so by now, someone must have tried to evolve a Class. Alice would wait to see if there were any problems before she proceeded.

Then, Alice got to looking at her [Survivor] Perks.

The first thing she noticed was that she had a completely different set of ‘level 50’ Perk reward options available than she had when she had actually reached level 50. She had four options.

Two of them weren’t particularly appealing, and had a lot more to do with surviving lack of food and water. They would let Alice go literal years without eating or drinking – but Alice had a storage Perk now, and wasn’t really that worried about running out of food or water. She was already carting around several months’ worth of supplies, just in case she got randomly teleported to another dimension again or got stranded in the woods for whatever reason. Those two Perks would probably never see use if she grabbed them.

The other two were more in line with what she wanted – ways to either flee or fight back against a greater threat.

Speedy _______

Requirements: Survivor level 50 or higher, Endurance 125 or higher, Dexterity 125 or higher

Once per day, if you in danger, physical speed____improved several times for 10 seconds, especially your balance and running abilities, as well as ____ fly with kinetic magic.

In short, this Perk allowed Alice to flee from bigger threats. It wasn’t quite what she was looking for, but it was definitely an idea for how to survive any future encounters with Immortals.

Alice spent a good few minutes considering the Perk. Alice didn’t like fighting. She really didn’t. Running away might let her avoid fights better, or hang around long enough for Ethan to win her fights for her, as long as she just stayed alive long enough. Surely, this was what she wanted?

But after some thinking, Alice sighed, shook her head, and ignored the Perk.

If Alice had nothing she cared about, that might work. But Alice had friends that couldn’t flee from a fight anywhere near as well. Cecilia would never have been able to escape the fight last night on her own, and Cecilia was even less of a fighter than Alice at this point. Alice needed ways to fight back, not just run away.

So she decisively turned towards her other Perk.

Dimensional___ Survivor

Requirements: Survivor level 50 or higher, Have dimensional seed, {Outworlder} Achievement (Or similar Achievement), have 150 Magic stat and 100 Endurance

Your ability to use magic tendrils through Portals and command over portals is enhanced drastically. Increases dimensional mana seed ratio by 20% to give you more mana. Your portals less broken mana.

During the previous fight, Alice had discovered that using magic tendrils THROUGH Portals let her ignore a lot of the range limitations that mages usually labored under. Most mages couldn’t move or interact with objects more than a few meters away from them, because the mana cost and difficulty of doing so was simply crushing after a certain distance.

Portals didn’t completely obviate this problem, since portals still seemed to become more expensive the further away Alice tried to make them. But she had already learned that dimensional mana drastically increased her effective range during a fight.

Alice felt that extending her range even further might do wondrous things for her combat abilities. So, after some hesitation, she took {Dimensional ____ Survivor}.

She felt her dimensional magic seed expand, from a mana conversion ratio of 40% to 60% of her magic stat.

She experimentally opened a few small portals, and confirmed that they leaked about 30% less broken mana. They were still horrendously leaky abominations that would force nearby people to undergo a baptism if she didn’t pay attention – but the Perk at least reduced the problems Alice could cause for her own side with this Perk.

Most importantly, Alice found it easier than ever to use {Extended Organics} through a portal. Whereas before, Alice would still struggle to balance the mana cost of manipulating items more then twenty or thirty meters away, even with her portals, now she could probably manage sixty or seventy meters. It was a very substantial range increase, as long as Alice learned how to properly make use of it in battle.

After that, Alice looked at her level 65 [Survivor] Perk.

She originally thought that she was going to be picking a new Perk – after all, she couldn’t figure out how to combine any of her Perks into something usable. However, just to be safe, Alice scanned her new Perks, and then also looked at all of the Perk combinations she could make – and found something rather surprisingly useful.

A very long time ago, Alice had taken the Perk {Camouflaged} as a way to try to stave off monster attacks. It had actually proven itself rather useful when Alice had fled the woods and found Cyra. However, after that, the Perk had fallen off in terms of usefulness. Alice simply didn’t get much value out of a very minor camouflaging effect that only activated when she stood still, at least not anymore.

Camouflaged

Requirements: Survivor level 20 or higher

While staying still, dramatically increases your ability to blend into the environment, making creatures around you much less likely to notice you. This can be turned off.

But apparently, the result of combining it with her newest Perk had a rather interesting result.

Alice only hesitated for a few more moments, before she combined {Camouflaged} and {Dimensional ____ Survival}.

Dimensional Camouflage

Perkkkkkkk Co$t: Camouflaged + Dimensional ___ Survivor sacrificed to create this Perk.

Your ability to use magic tendrils through Portals and command over portals is enhanced drastically. For a small price of mana, you may make portals only work ONE WAY – and for an extra mana cost, you may drastically reduce broken mana leakage through the portal.

Alice grinned to herself after she read the Perk.

One of the biggest weaknesses the Society Mages who used portals in combat was the potential for return fire. She had seen plenty of Society Mages get killed by an [Archer] firing an arrow into a portal they opened up. Alice had been aware that this might be a problem if she started using Portals in her combat style.

Now, her Perk had provided her with a way to solve that problem. She had lost the 20% boost to her Dimensional magic seed, dropping it back from 60% to 40% mere moments after she had increased the mana conversion ratio, which stung a bit. But Alice felt that the new Perk was worth the loss. It solved one of the biggest weaknesses of dimensional manipulation very quickly and efficiently.

Finally finished with her [Survivor] Perks, Alice turned towards her [Kinetic Manabinder] Perks.

This one wasn’t too hard to figure out. Alice wanted to improve her combat abilities, and the best way to do that was to get access to more mana tendrils. One of the Perk options did exactly that, while the others looked more crafting oriented. Alice just wanted raw combat efficiency right now.

Kinetic Combatant

Requirements: Kinetic Manabinder level 45 or higher, Magic 100 or greater

Increase the number _____ Tendrils you can control by 2.

She almost immediately selected this Perk. With this upgrade, Alice’s controlled magic tendrils increased from 7 to 9. It wasn’t a crazy increase, but it was still a useful improvement in her combat abilities.

Alice’s final Perk choice was a fair bit more interesting, because there were two Perk options worth considering.

Tendri____ of Kinetic.Mage

Requirements: Kinetic Manabinder level 50 or higher, Kinetic Seed at 120% or more.

You get 4 more magic tendrils, BUT these tendrils can ONLY be used to control kinetic mana. They may not be used for other types of mana at all.

Alice found this to be a pretty desirable Perk. Getting 4 more tendrils would increase her magic tendril count from 9 to 13. It wouldn’t be a world-shattering increase, but it would certainly be worth a lot in a fight. Ethan had a ‘natural’ tendril count of 40. If Alice could get to 13, she would essentially be at 1/3rd of Ethan’s combat prowess before he used limited-use Perks.

Of course, it looked like Ethan had sunk a LOT of his Perks into limited use Perks. Alice still vividly remembered the massive implosion of light and heat he had used to try to melt Emilia, as well as the Perk that gave him an extra 100 magic tendrils, and the other crazy abilities he had used on the battlefield. But 40 magic tendrils seemed like a huge number to Alice, and if she could get even a third of that, she would feel much safer in a fight.

The other perk option was similarly useful, but in a different way.

Burst of Kinetic

Requirements: Kinetic Manabinder level 50 or higher, Have more than 5 magic tendrils, Magic 150 or greater.

Once per day, you get a temporary 7 magic tendrils. They last 5 minutes.

The Perk was simple and to the point, but it was a Perk that Alice would get a lot of use out of in fights. She had 9 magic tendrils right now, and nearly doubling that number for 5 minutes would usually be enough time for a potential fight with an [Assassin] – which was exactly what Alice was most afraid of right now.

Alice thought about the two perks for a few moments, before she opted to take {Tendri___ of Kinetic.Mage}. She felt that she still needed to improve her ‘baseline’ combat abilities more, before she worried about limited-use Perks. And the restriction of her new magic tendrils only being able to use kinetic mana didn’t feel like much of a restriction: Alice could still channel other kinds of mana through her other tendrils, so she just needed to pay attention to which tendril she pumped mana through.

Then, once she finished selecting her new Perks, she went to go find Ethan and Cecilia. She wanted to talk with Ethan about her first post-75 Perk, and maybe get some advice. And she wanted to check up on Cecilia and see how she was doing after the fight.