Chapter 158

Chapter 158

For a moment, Alice wondered if she had made a horrible mistake. Perhaps the System breaking down had caused Perks above level 75 to malfunction? Was her brain about to melt down or something? Alice spent a few seconds mentally kicking herself for rushing her Perk choice. She had assumed it was safe because every other Perk so far had been safe, but with the System down, she should have double checked whether this would cause any problems.

Before she had more time to worry, she felt something inside of her twist.

For a brief moment, Alice was overcome with a variety of bizarre sensations.

She could taste what it felt like to conduct an experiment. She could smell what it felt like to conduct an experiment with mana. She could hear curiosity. Every single sense blended together in a chaotic mixture of concepts, smells, sights, sounds, touches, and tastes.

And every single one of those sensations was associated with either the concept of being a [Scientist] or being an [Explorer of Magic].

Alice managed to wrestle open her eyes, unaware of when she had closed them, and tried to figure out what was happening with the mana inside of her body. The strange barrage of sensations continued, nearly overwhelming her ability to think, but after a few moments, Alice managed to get used to the overwhelming rush of sensations and get things back under control.

The first thing she did was look inside of herself, using her various mana senses and {Organic Vision}, and watched in surprise as she saw two of her class fractals orbiting each other, like a fast-forwarded version of the Moon orbiting the Earth. Rainbow mana flowed between the two of them, carrying concepts with them as both magic seeds expanded like miniature nebulas.

Much like the first time Alice had learned about the true nature of Classes, when she had felt the concept of an [Explorer of Magic] start to overtake her very sense of self, Alice could feel the concept of being a [Scientist] and being an [Explorer of Magic] start to rise up and flood through her body. However, the sensation was considerably muted compared to the time Alice had tried to form a Class seed as if it were a magic seed. It was equivalent to the mental pressure of around ten levels of unfiltered mana in each class, compared to the overwhelming barrage of concepts that had nearly instantly overwhelmed Alices personality in one fell swoop when she had tried to mess with class seeds.

A small amount of her mind focused on fighting off the new deluge of ideas, but most of Alices attention remained on the two class fractals and the way they were interacting with each other. Meanwhile, her body started sucking in mana like a black hole, draining all of the mana in half of her tiny cabin dry in seconds.

And then, Alice watched as both class fractals started to connect to each other in a way Alice hadnt seen before. The class fractals that were located inside of her brain started to stretch into each other, and all of the neurons between those two class fractals started to glow with mana. And then, the System mana inside of those class fractals did something.

A moment later, Alice felt more complete than before.

It was the strangest sensation she had ever felt, but Alice felt more like herself than ever before. The dull, thrumming sensation of mana pushing against her mind and body started to disappear, and Alice saw, with some surprise, that a very small part of her body had its regular biology replaced with something completely new.

It was a type of mana Alice had never seen before, and Alice was sorely tempted to call it Alice-mana. It was a mana that constituted the most fundamental aspect of who Alice was.

No, thought Alice, as she started frowning.

It wasnt mana built off of who she was.

It was mana that was built entirely off of what other people thought of her. Who they thought she was. What they thought she liked and disliked. What they thought brought her joy and sorrow.

It was as if every single person who had ever heard of her had a very small image of who she was, living inside of their mind, and the small, new strip of mana was trying to press that idea of Alice into her, overriding the real person behind the image.

Alice felt a spike of fear in her mind, before she realized something else.

Other Immortals didnt have this type of mana in their body. Ethan didnt have Ethan-mana inside of him. Allira didnt have Allira-mana inside of her, either. Their bodies were mostly made of mana, and that mana was constantly transforming back into their body but Alice didnt think that the mana-based bodies most Immortals had altered their mind in any way. Instead, Immortals were constantly transforming into themselves not some stereotyped or perceived version of who they were, but just themselves. Whoever they had come to be as the years and centuries passed.

She frowned even more deeply.

What was the difference here?

The most obvious assumption was that this was some kind of inherent problem that was solved by the System at higher levels.

When Alice had tried to form a class seed in a magic seed slot, what she had found strongly suggested that Classes were built off of peoples assumptions. What people felt an [Explorer of Magic] should be like influenced what people with the class could do in order to level up and, similarly, Alice also suspected it influenced what Perks the class could obtain.

In other words, peoples beliefs and assumptions somehow strongly influenced, or perhaps even created, Classes.

In that case, it seemed likely that peoples beliefs somehow interacted with mana and the System on a fundamental level. Peoples beliefs about things could legitimately impact how reality worked behind the scenes.

What did that mean?

Alice put aside the press of ideas brought about by the new Alice-mana for a moment, and instead focused on what her new discovery meant.

The clues had been there for a long time now. Peoples beliefs obviously interacted with the System. But the strip of Alice-mana in her body had still been created, even while the System was down. And Alice distinctly remembered that, at one point in the past, the System had given her an error message because personality-warping was a core violation of the System. Immortals didnt seem to be constantly changed based on the way people perceived them, but Alice was now experiencing a small amount of personality warping based on other peoples perception of her.

This was a problem created by the lack of the System. And it also potentially implied that peoples beliefs could alter reality. After all, peoples belief about who Alice was were now trying to override Alice the person, and she was fairly certain the System was trying to prevent that from happening.

Peoples beliefs could alter reality.

Now that Alice thought about it, this was pretty consistent with how she had seen several System components work.

No connection can be found. Searching users memories for a suitable name

{Sciences Mana} renamed {Scientific System}.

Proceeding with combination process.

(Due to increased Assistance/Authority/Recognition from the System and multiple Achievements related to exploring and understanding the System, as well as the desires of the creator, Perk direction is influenced)

(Perk direction is banned.)

(System removing upgrade to find a suitable replacement upgrade.)

(System cannot be accessed. Not enough processing power present in Class Fractals. Error.)

(No suitable replacement upgrades found. Continuing with original path.)

Systems Ambition (Tier 3 Perk)

Perk Cost: Scientific System + Seeds of Ambition sacrificed to create this Perk.

Once per month, you may create and synthesize four Seeds. If they are added to your S_yst@m seed, then each synthesis will also increase seed mana conversion ratio by a further 10%. If not added to your System seed, these Magic Seeds are instead categorized as inferior seeds, meaning that they cannot be influenced by other Perks or Achievements.

Seeds will add 30% to mana conversion ratio at maximum.

Due to influence of other upgrades, magic seeds created by Systems Ambition can be influenced by Perks.

Due to influence of other upgr@des, magic seeds created by Systems ambition can be influenced by Achievements.

Alice blinked in surprise as she looked at her new Perk, as well as the slew of System messages that had accompanied its creation.

There were several things that she wanted to analyze.

First of all, the name {Sciences Mana} had changed to {Scientific System} during the Perk combination process. Alice had always figured that the name {Sciences Mana} was probably a bug a lot of the names in the System, as well as the spelling and grammar, had gotten slightly messed up since the collapse of the System, and System descriptions had also gotten a lot less descriptive. There was a lot more trial and error involved in figuring out what a new Perk did and what it was useful for. It wasnt a huge deal, but Alice was happy to know that the correct name of the Perk had probably been applied during the Perk combination process. {Scientific System} sounded like a legitimate Perk name, instead of the glitched out nonsense Alice had been seeing recently.

The second thing Alice noticed was a System message she had never seen before.

The message about perk combination in progress.

When Alice had combined {Sciences Mana} and {Seeds of Ambition}, she had felt like she was more than before. As if something about her very nature, her very existence, had changed in some subtle way. She was fairly certain that the speed at which she aged had decreased considerably in the few seconds after she had combined her first post level 75 Perk, and she was also fairly certain that she had taken a very important, very critical step forward even if she wasnt entirely sure what that meant yet.

The System seemed to reflect that the System message about combining Perks, upgrading them based on her Achievements and her own behavior, and the various checks the System seemed to have gone through reflected the fact that the System seemed to be personalizing upgrades after level 75, at least to some extent. When Alice had checked the Perk list from the book of the Church of the System, the Church of the System hadnt had many Perks listed after level 75. It was now obvious why if each Perk was at least somewhat personalized, any record of what Perk combinations resulted in would be, at best, a loose guideline for what might happen. There wasnt much point in recording it, since there was so much variance in what Perks people might combine at this point, and even if they did the same Perk combination, they might get different results.

But at least in this one, specific case, the System collapsing worked in Alices favor. The System had tried to prevent Alice from getting a certain Perk upgrade direction for whatever reason, and replace it with a suitable alternate upgrade and then had failed, because the System couldnt connect to the main component of the System.

It was also the very first time Alice had seen the increased help from the System impact anything at all. Alice had spent about a year wondering what in the world the increased help from the System did by now. It was mentioned in {Outworlder} that she had it, but she had never, at any point in time, figured out what it actually meant.

Now, for the first time, it actually came up in a System message Alice suspected she hadnt been supposed to see.

Alice wasnt entirely sure what to make of that, so for now, Alice just noted what she had seen. There would be more time to experiment with the benefits of the {Outworlder} Achievement in the future, and see if it cropped up every time Alice got a post-level 75 Perk. But it was worth thinking about in the future. She finally had some hint about what the weirdest part of her first Achievement did.

The moment Alice finished scanning her new Perk, she noticed that the Perk was asking her to designate a seed or at least, Alice was pretty sure that was what it wanted her to do. She checked the Perks wording again, and noticed that it would give her extra benefits if she added seeds to her System seed.

In other words, Alice needed to point at one of her seeds and tell the Perk it was her System seed, or at least it would be in the future. Alice immediately selected her combined Filtration/Display magic seed. She had already been working on turning it into a System magic seed, so it made sense to make it her official System magic seed.

Then, Alice checked her new Perk, and found that sadly, it was still on cooldown. She got the feeling that she needed to wait about a week to use it again which she was pretty sure was less time than she originally had before {Seeds of Ambition} came off of cooldown, but Alice certainly wasnt going to complain about it.

Alice sighed as she thought about her new speculations from the day, and then decided to go to sleep.

She needed some time to think about what had just happened, and figure out a way to defend her mind against the influence of Alice mana. She had developed plenty of other ways to fight back against erosion of her willpower in the past she just needed to cement what she planned to do this time, and how to do so without hurting herself. The Alice mana wasnt what worried her, because Alice was pretty confident she could find a solution.

Instead, as she went to sleep, she thought about whether tomorrow the laws of physics would implode and turn every molecule on the planet into a nuclear bomb, or something equally absurd and lethal. The collapse of the System had always felt terrifying, but now it felt dozens of times more dangerous than ever before.