Chapter 98

Chapter 98

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” After Ethan’s Organic mana made its way into her brain, Samantha jerked awake with a scream. Alice took a step backwards as Samantha wildly thrashed around, and for a moment Alice was afraid that Samantha would fling herself off of the cot Ethan had placed her on and hurt herself. As Alice tried to figure out how to calm Samantha down, Samantha leapt off the cot and charged towards the door at top speed.

Ethan’s body lit up with rainbow mana, before a Perk enveloped the room. Suddenly, Alice felt an extraordinary sense of calm settle inside of her thoughts. It didn’t make her feel sleepy, or dull any of her mental faculties – however, it removed most of her emotions from her thoughts, allowing her to think calmly and clearly. Alice felt very strange after Ethan’s Perk was used – she could see how useful it was, but she also wasn’t sure if she liked having her emotions suddenly cut out of her thoughts like this. Even if she loved being able to think clearly, this felt oddly detached from the experience of being human. After a few moments of thought, Alice used {The Science of Mana Deprivation} to cut off Ethan’s Perk, isolating herself from the strange emotionless state.

Samantha’s reaction was far more noticeable than Alice’s mild discomfort. Her incredible panic disappeared completely, replaced with near total calmness in the span of a second. Her frantic flight quickly wound down, as she took another good look at Ethan and Alice. Then, she stopped moving, instead opting to eye both of them warily.

Influenced by Ethan’s calming Perk, Samantha’s eyes contained a trace of clarity and sanity again. However, Alice realized that Ethan’s Perk didn’t cut off emotions quite as cleanly as she had assumed. Samantha was clearly at least somewhat lucid again, but she still incredibly jittery, even after seeing Alice and realizing that her circumstances had changed. Her eyes were still wide and filled with panic, and although she had calmed down a bit, she still looked like she might spring into motion and flee again at any moment. However, as she looked at Alice, she finally managed to croak out a word.

“Alice?” She asked. Her voice had taken on a soft, pleading tone now, in stark contrast to the terror from earlier. Samantha sounded as if she didn’t quite believe in Alice’s existence.

Alice did her best to give Samantha a reassuring smile. “You’re safe now. We rescued you from the Society – you’re back in Metsel, in a property owned by my new mentor.”

Samantha’s eyes widened, as she seemed to realize she wasn’t dreaming. She reached out with one of her arms, before patting herself on the back. She shivered, before she started frantically clawing at her back, pressing her fingers against a certain spot near her spine over and over again. Then, with a manic fervor akin to someone drowning, she clawed at her heart.

“Is it... is it really over?” Samantha finally asked.

“It’s really over. You’re safe now, and we’ll make sure the Society can’t hurt you again,” said Ethan, giving Samantha a gentle smile. Unlike Alice, his words were reinforced by a Perk, but Samantha seemed to find Alice’s words and presence more reassuring than Ethan’s. She turned back to Alice.

“Am I really back in Metsel?”

Alice nodded. “You’re really back.”

Samantha shivered a bit more, but her fear was still heavily reduced by Ethan’s Perk, preventing her from falling into another full-blown panic attack. “Did you – how did you... I mean, what happened?”

“A lot happened in the past few days,” said Alice. “For one, the Immortal of Spells and Seeds has taken an interest in your wellbeing, which is a big part of the reason you were successfully rescued. A small army was put together to rescue you, as well as to deliver a heavy blow to the Society and inflict heavy damage on them. We succeeded in storming the Society base, where we rescued all of the prisoners in the base, including you, and dealt with all of the Society members we could find. It has been a few hours since then, and Honored Immortal and I just woke you up,” said Alice.

“Is... is that so,” said Samantha, still faintly trembling and jerking around from time to time, but finally starting to relax. She closed her eyes for a moment, before she suddenly snapped to attention. “Honored Immortal?” Samantha’s eyes widened as she gave Ethan another look.

Alice nodded again. “I would like to introduce you to my new mentor, the Immortal of Spells and Seeds. He helped me rescue you from the Society base, and was largely responsible for putting together the small army that made the rescue possible.”

Samantha finally stopped rubbing her spine and checking it for injuries, and then tried her best to perform a very clumsy, half-baked curtsy.

“Thank you for saving my life, honored Immortal,” she said. “I apologize for not recognizing you earlier – I’ve heard a lot of stories, but I don’t know what Immortals look like.” She paused for a moment, before glancing at Alice. “And... congratulations to you.”

Ethan simply nodded at her, maintaining his relaxed and reassuring smile. Now that Samantha had more time to process the situation, and had realized she was in the presence of an Immortal, she seemed to have calmed down much more. The traces of panic in her eyes started to completely fade away, and she no longer looked ready to bolt for the door the moment she saw an opportunity. After a few more moments, she calmed down enough to walk back towards the cot Ethan had originally placed her own. She sat down on the cot, and then took several deep breaths, slowly working to calm herself down more and more. Neither Alice nor Ethan interrupted her while Samantha slowly worked through what she had seen and experienced in the past few days, as well as the fact that she was suddenly free again. Then, finally, she opened her eyes and looked at Ethan again.

“If it can erase the Society from my life, and doing this will make me no longer sick, I can lose my kinetic seed. Will it be dangerous if I reform it afterwards?”

“It shouldn’t be, but we aren’t entirely sure yet, so it’s up to you if you want to risk forming another kinetic seed,” said Alice.

Ethan smiled at Samantha, redirecting her attention to him. “Good. Now that we’ve obtained your consent, I’m going to put you back to sleep. Just stay calm. When you wake up, you’ll be safe, and all of this will hopefully be behind you...” Samantha laid down on the cot, taking a moment to get comfortable, before Ethan placed his finger on her forehead. A burst of Organic Mana made its way to her brain, and five seconds later Samantha was asleep. Then, Ethan quickly used a combination of Perks and organic mana to regrow Samantha’s mage core. With her mage core regrown, and her broken kinetic seed back inside of her body, Samantha’s complexion began to rapidly get worse and worse, as signs of her previous illness flooded back into her body.

“It’s your turn, Lady Alice,” said Ethan.

Alice quickly stepped up to Samantha and activated {Broken Seed}. Since Samantha had given Ethan and Alice permission to break down her Kinetic Seed, {Broken Seed} didn’t encounter any problems. Rainbow mana surged out of Alice’s body, before it wormed its way into Samantha’s mana core and shattered her kinetic seed. The signs of Samantha’s illness, which had been spreading throughout her body, rapidly disappeared again.

“How interesting,” said Ethan, watching as Samantha’s body regained its former vitality and shrugged off its sickly complexion. “I can’t see magic seeds at all, but I can still see the effects of adding or removing a broken magic seed so easily. And yet, I can’t figure out what’s happening behind the scenes at all.”

He turned towards Alice, before giving her a nod. “Well done. Even if I don’t have the ability to see what’s happening, this is still quite fascinating. I can see her getting better, even if I don’t have the ability to observe the cause.” he trailed off, before giving Samantha another glance. “Do you want to be around when I wake her up again?”

Alice frowned, thinking for a moment, before she shrugged. “I think it’s best if I’m not in the room when she wakes up. The fact that I’ve managed to apprentice myself to an Immortal should be surprising for her, but not a cause for her or anyone else to raise eyebrows. People who are familiar with me already know that I have a couple high rarity Achievements, and that I’ve done a few interesting things with research. I even published a research paper through my magic academy’s library, so people might think I caught your attention with that, and although it does slightly clash with my current image of a battle specialist, my display during the fight at the Society base should make people think I’m at least reasonably battle-oriented. However, if I’m seen as being too actively involved in the healing process, the Society might catch on to the fact that something is wrong with me, since there are already a few points of oddity they could pick up on. Even if that might still happen eventually, it’s best that it happens as late as possible, so I have as much time to grow as possible.”

Ethan nodded. “Well reasoned! I was worried you might want to stick around and show off, and I was prepared to give you a lecture if you asked to stick around. At least you’ve got your head screwed on properly. Since Samantha knows you’ve become an apprentice of mine, go shuffle some papers around in one of the other rooms – I’ll crack the door open so that Samantha can catch a glimpse of you doing all of the boring and mundane work I’m ‘too busy and important to deal with.’ It’ll make it look like you’ve been dealing with paperwork since shortly after I healed her, and it should also cause Samantha to dismiss your presence in this incident. If all goes well, Samantha won’t suspect a thing. I’ll wake her up in a few minutes and get one of the [Maids] to escort her out of the building, and I’ll make sure she catches a glimpse of you working hard on her way out.”

“Thank you for your assistance, Honored Immortal,” said Alice, taking a stack of documents they had taken from the Society Base. Ethan pointed out a room for Alice to occupy, before he ‘set the scene’ by cracking the door open with a mana tendril. Alice quickly pulled over a chair from the corner of the room, before she started shuffling through the Society documents they had taken from the base.

Alice began seriously reading through the documents. Even though a large part of the reason she was going through the documents was to fool Samantha, Alice was genuinely curious to know what the Society had been learning about and researching. With the help of {Super Speed Reading}, Alice was able to process the documents at an incredible speed, allowing her to read and analyze information far more quickly than before.

However, as Alice read through the documents, she began to frown.

The documents she was reading through were a great deal more concerning than she had thought they would be. After reading through the notes she had procured from the Society group she had fought during the hunting expedition, Alice had been prepared for a wide variety of things. Horrifying human experiments, for example, or records of all sorts of other atrocities. Perhaps records of modifying and selling slaves to the Sigmusi Empire. However, what she found inside of the documents was rather different.

It was a record of various phenomena the Society of Starry Eyes was concerned about. It detailed three separate types of occurrence, and requested that any operatives take whatever measures they could to find out more about them.

First, the phenomenon of children below the age of six acquiring classes for unknown reasons well before the time they should have access to the System.

Second, the increasingly frequent occurrence of people forming broken magic seeds, leading to illness and eventual death, along with all sorts of other bizarre medical and magical health problems.

And third, the thirteen recent cases of random outbursts of dimensional broken mana. Most of them had occurred away from human civilization, making them relatively unknown so far, but Alice quickly noticed that the Society was extremely meticulous about cataloguing each and every instance of broken dimensional mana suddenly flooding an area. And the outbursts of dimensional mana were getting increasingly frequent. The Society’s first records indicated that the dimensional mana outbreaks had mostly occurred in areas with higher mana density, but as time passed, they were starting to become both more frequent, and appear in lower and lower mana densities.

Alice felt a prickling suspicion when she looked over the Society’s records of dimensional mana outbreaks. A flood of strange dimensional mana sounded a lot like what she had experienced when she had been dragged into this world. And even though she didn’t know exactly what these occurrences meant, by looking at the Society’s documents, and then combining it with her own experiences and investigations, Alice was becoming increasingly aware of one fact.

Something was going very, very wrong in this world behind the scenes. And it was getting worse by the month.