A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World

Chapter 18

“CALM DOWN!” Snapped Illa. A wave of… pressure crashed over, and the crude spears fell out of midair, immediately slamming back into the ground. It took a moment for Alice to figure out what she was feeling – it was mana, and for once {Sixth Sense} was actually doing its job, letting her vaguely feel the mana Illa released.

“She does not seem anything like one of the Society of Starry Eyes, or we would have already had a much bigger problem. Furthermore, she trips nowhere near the number of perks a Member of the Society would have. Besides, if she is recently baptized, as the mana density in her body indicates, there is no way she could have been involved in something on the level of dimensional manipulation. And Lady Vallis -” Illa turned towards her, and Alice could actually feel the woman’s glare, even though it wasn’t directed towards her. “You attempted to attack someone whose safety I have guaranteed until the end of the trial. If I had been a second slower, I would have violated a System-enforced contract.” Her voice dropped dangerously low, and Alice could feel her hair begin to stand up. Some instinct, perhaps from her levels in [Survivor], was telling her that Illa was very dangerous.

“If you try to forcibly break my contract with Lady Alice with me as the endangered party again, I will drive you from this town, regardless of the consequences. You may be the only valid noble representative in this town, but you tried to force a break in a [Priest of the System] enforced contract with me on the other end. I am familiar with your trauma. I am also aware of the fact that the penalty for breaking this contract is quite minor, and will only last 29 days. I don’t care. I am still very displeased. We will settle this later.”

The woman’s expression shifted, sliding from fear and hostility towards just fear for a moment, before it slid back towards a more normal expression. Alice could tell that the woman was still restraining the urge to glare at her, but the hostility {Sense Hostility} detected in the room decreased significantly.

“Explain to me in detail what happened.” Said Illa, turned back towards Alice. “Start from the right before you arrived here – I want to know what happened.”

“I am… I was a student in my home dimension. I did my homework, chatted remotely with some of my friends for a while, and then I went to sleep for the night after eating dinner. My parents were upstairs in our house. Then, I woke up in the middle of the wilderness with no clue where I was or how I got there. There was a huge area of broken mana around me, so I contracted broken mana poisoning within a few days, and I luckily survived my baptism. After that, I survived on my own for a while, before I eventually managed to find my way here. I don’t know where I am at all, or how I got here.”

Illa glanced towards the people in the back of the room holding up sticks.

“No lies at all, Lady Illa. It seems unlikely that she would be able to foil five different Perks and the {Trade Contract} unless her build is specifically geared towards doing so, which seems unlikely. Her stats just don’t add up to what they would need to be for a high-level criminal, as far as I can tell.”

Illa turned back towards Alice.

“So you were taken from your home then? Ah, but the {Outworlder} perk should indicate a much farther journey…” Illa frowned for a moment. “Where is your home?”

“Planet Earth. My home is a planet we called Earth.”

“I have never heard of it before. Did you have any contact with the Society of Starry Eyes?”

“No. I was simply at home one day, and then I was here. To the best of my knowledge, there was no interaction with a human being in between these steps.”

“Did the mages at your home have any potential ability to move you here, either on purpose or by mistake?”

“At home, there were either zero mages, or all of the mages in the world were somehow hidden from the public eye. I don’t know which is true, but I think it’s highly unlikely I am here as a result of someone from home moving me. After all, at home, as far as I know there was no mana at all either.”

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For a moment, Illa seemed like she was trying to chew a particularly hard piece of gristle between her teeth. Then, she shook her head and turned to the [Priest of the System.] He shook his head. “A world without mana at all? That’s impossible, I think, but perhaps I am mistaken.” The Priest shrugged. “Either way, I have never heard of the Achievement she mentioned, and while I can send a query to one of the churches farther north, I suspect I would get the same result. It is also, by far, the worst rarity ten perk I have ever heard of – most rarity ten perks give something along the lines of doubling multiple stats, maybe doubling or tripling levelling speed for several different kinds of classes, and then doing a bunch of extra useful things like making you immune to temperatures dozens of times beyond the usual temperature. For it to do so little is… odd. I am certain I would have remembered it for that reason alone if I had ever seen it mentioned before. The mention of ‘increased support from the System’ is also unusual.”

“In that case, perhaps one of the members of the Society tried to do something with dimensional magic and succeeded?”

“They could be hiding farther south, but the monsters living there should have hunted down anyone living in that area. For the entire Society to survive there seems… unlikely. Perhaps they set up a ritual there and had some other members kill off the surrounding monsters? But how could they have set up a huge ritual in the middle of the wilderness? And why would Alice have escaped them if that were the case?” The Priest shook his head. “No matter how I try to think about it, it doesn’t make any sense. If I may be a tad presumptuous and make a suggestion, I think we should send an expedition to investigate the site later, to see if we can learn anything.”

Illa simply tapped her finger against her chin for a moment, thinking. “I agree. We will discuss the details later.”

Finally, Illa turned towards the other four occupied seats.

“First, I would like to make a vote on guilt for the murder of a Mage. All of those in favor of moving to a vote?”

The other three assented.

“On the charges of murdering the mage Eric Lehmann?”

“Not guilty.” Nobody, not even the noble representative who seemed to have a problem with her, disagreed with this verdict.

“By a vote of four to zero, with one abstaining, Alice Verianna is cleared of the charge of murdering the mage Eric Lehmann.”

The moment Illa finished speaking, Lady Vallis piped up again.

“What about the dimensional taboo? Regardless of whether or not she has murdered a mage, the fact remains that she still represents a risk. The tragedy of Allenheim need not repeat itself if we destroy any risks. Anything related to the Society cannot be allowed to live, lest they call a catastrophe upon us all! Killing her is the safest option for all of us.”

“She is a child caught up in circumstances beyond her control.”

“She is nearly sixteen! She might even be sixteen! She is no longer a child, and she represents a possible threat to the entire town! Even if she is innocent, if she calls those vultures to this town it will bring about a calamity! Her mere existence is a problem!” Yelled Lady Vallis.

“If I might interject,” said the merchant representative, “Regardless of whether or not she is an adult, the fact remains that she had no control over her arrival here, and she also has no willing association with the Society of Starry Eyes. Killing her is both premature and unfair. I do not support murdering a young woman because of a half-baked assumption that she represents a threat. The tragedy of Allenheim was brought about by a variety of circumstances, including mages failing to prepare proper safety precautions while experimenting with new and untested magic. While dimensional magic cannot be allowed to exist, and nobody with a dimensional seed should be allowed to live while keeping one, she is directly associated with neither. She only has a Kinetic Seed, which is one of the four basic seeds. The Society of Starry Eyes is certainly not a threat to take lightly, but killing her is rash, especially since thus far she poses no major threat to the town.”

“She does not emit any broken mana. Presuming she is willing to let an [Organic Mage] look over her and remove any possible contagious diseases, as well as lead an expedition back to the area which she claims is filled with broken mana so that it may be purified and investigated, I think that having another mage in Cyra is not a problem, and harming her would be unfair.”

“What if she has a way to fool the Perks present here? The Society of Starry Eyes is not to be taken lightly!” Lady Vallis’s words rose to a near shriek at the end.

“Then let us call it to a vote. Those in favor of voting?”

Three of four people agreed.

“On the question of Alice violating the dimensional taboo, the Crown Estate votes not guilty.” Illa simply ignored Lady Vallis completely.

“The Noble’s Estate votes guilty! If she lives, it might mean the death of us all!”

“The People’s estate votes not guilty. She is an innocent girl caught up in matters beyond her understanding, and does not deserve to die for that.”

“The Mage Estate votes not guilty.”

“By a vote of 3-1 with one abstaining, Alice is absolved of the suspicion of violating the dimensional taboo.” Illa turned back towards Alice, and simply nodded.

Alice sagged in relief, as the Perk that robbed her of her physical strength simply fell away. The guard who had been applying it stepped back a moment later. Strength flooded her body again – the knees that had previously wobbled from both terror and her weakened physique jerked back into place, and her body was strong again. She had started to get used to how it felt to have her body respond to quickly and accurately to her intentions, something that had never happened on Earth, and having that suddenly taken away had been nightmarish on a deeper level, even if it was only temporary.

“Alice, you are expected by the court to assist an expedition of mages in finding the area where you entered this dimension, in order to ensure that we may purify the broken mana there and investigate any potential wrongdoing. Furthermore, you are obligated to go through a checkup with an Organic Mage, effective as soon as possible, to resolve any potential contagious diseases. Are these terms acceptable to you?”

Alice swallowed, her relief being somewhat short-lived as she tried to muster up her courage. It was now or never.

“If… if a mage was responsible for me coming here, is it possible that they could also help me return? Or that there might be some research notes or something somewhere in the broken mana area that I could use? If I assist you guys in finding the area, I want to go home.”

Illa shook her head. “I think you misunderstand why dimensional magic is banned. About 800 years ago, scholars theorized the existence of other dimensions, as a half-baked theory to investigate. Mages tried to form Dimensional Magic seeds as a form of experimentation, and thus the first dimensional seeds were formed. However, that was also where experimentation ended, due to broken mana production and the ridiculous mana costs associated with even the smallest experiments.

“All magic is imperfect – what we do with a magic seed is, fundamentally, to impose our will upon reality using mana. In the process, we directly overwrite the world around us. The more we fight back against ‘reality’ as it currently exists, and the less we understand about what we’re manipulating, the more ‘broken mana’ we produce in the same moment. This mana, unlike natural mana, is very, very toxic to everything besides monsters. In short, the less a magic seed fights against reality, the less broken mana is produced, and the less harm to the surrounding environment. An ordinary mage with, say, a Kinetic Magic seed, produces so little broken mana per day that it’s negligible – a little cleanup once a week is enough to keep even an average mage academy pretty much clear of the stuff, preventing any harm from befalling the mages attending there, or the surrounding populations.

“On the other hand, in order to produce a dead zone you could literally wander around in for hours… requires both absurd inefficiency, as well as far more mana than an individual should ever have access to. Hell, even two or three immortal mages working together probably couldn’t produce that much broken mana. In other words, a large group of mages spending several days on a ritual to try to play with dimensional magic would probably be required, possibly sacrificing hundreds of monster cores and then breaking much more mana around them whenever they temporarily connected your home world with Luliv, the world you currently stand in. You see, every single time anything related to dimensional magic works out, for reasons [Scholars] still debate over today, a huge chunk of the mana in the surrounding region breaks, turning into broken mana even though it wasn’t produced directly by a mage. In any case, you were probably dragged here by accident while some mages were fucking around with something they barely understood.

“And, most likely, they killed themselves sometime during the process, since perks that defend against broken mana are quite rare, and almost no one is insane enough to baptize themselves in broken mana. Even a huge group of mages wouldn’t produce that much broken mana, and I doubt they properly prepared precautions against things going wrong. Especially if they were mages from the Society of Starry Eyes.

“It is probably impossible to return – your presence here in the first place is a massive anomaly, and I doubt it is possible to replicate whatever brought you here. Even trying would cost absurd amounts of mana and resources, and most of it would just be converted into broken mana, possibly killing us all. And that is assuming you managed to get dozens of mages to work together, which would be incredibly expensive and time consuming.” Illa’s eyes softened for a moment. “I… apologize, for what it is worth. However, sending you back is far more likely to simply cause you to die in the process, or vomit a huge amount of broken mana into some totally random area somewhere in-between dimensions. And that is if we got every single expert in the entire kingdom who has been permitted to legally study dimensional magic, of which there are very, very few. You should give up.”

Alice felt a heavy sensation at that. She had, somewhere in the back of her mind, always assumed that this dimension itself was something of a short trip. That somehow, soon she would be back home. Even when path after path back home was shown to be impossible, she had still retained the belief that, somehow, she would get there soon, and wouldn’t have to think about this illogical dimension with different rules and laws of reality anymore. She had originally wanted to explore the System, but as time had passed, she had felt more and more that this was like a bad dream – one she would wake up from whenever she got back.

That was apparently no longer an option. No, it had never been an option in the first place – she had simply hoped that it would be. However, she was here in this dimension, and regardless of what she did in the future, it would probably be in this world. She might never see her home again, never see her family or friends ever again. Never…

Alice closed her eyes, and felt hot tears start to well up in her eyes. She hadn’t cried when she had suffered from mana poisoning, even though she had screamed in pain multiple times. She hadn’t cried when she had endured endless months in the cold wilderness, alive only due to some quirk in how mana heated up her body and the System giving her survival tools that just barely let her limp out of winter with all of her limbs and her life still intact. However, now, finally, she broke down, accepting that maybe the hope that had kept her going for months was impossible from the beginning.

At the same time, she finally let go of a belief she hadn’t even realized she had been carrying this entire time. She had been… arrogant. In many ways. She had assumed that this world was illogical and that she would soon be back home, where things made sense. Thus, she had subconsciously rejected many components of her new reality, believing them to be similar to a dream – she would wake up from them sooner or later, so there was no need to look at the deeper principles of reality and where she might be wrong. She was, after all, someone who had come from another world – the knowledge she had built up from ten years of mandatory education must count for something, right?

Wrong. She was, in many ways, crippled in this society – she had no understanding of the System, was several years of hard work and grinding behind most people, had a much weaker physique and only average or slightly above average mental stats, and no connections at all. She had understanding of physics and science, at least to some extent – but in the end, she hadn’t even finished high school. She knew a few things, but nowhere near enough to begin seriously studying this world and the laws that worked in it. She knew that mana had to seriously change the way she perceived reality, but she had thought herself above this world, in some ways. There was no need to form close relationships, even if people were friendly, because she would leave them behind soon. No need to study up on some things, because she would be home soon. No need to really accept that she was wrong about the fundamental nature of reality, because once she got back home she could just keep following her original plans for her life, thinking about the System and mana and their implications once she was safe and back among those she cared about.

She had been wrong from the very beginning. In her time in the wilderness, she had only gained 7 levels in [Scholar] and had never questioned why. She had assumed it was due to the lack of books and things to research – even though most days, she had thought at least a bit about the implications of the System. Survivor had reached level 12 in less than a week. Why had it taken her so long to get levels in [Scholar] then?

Obviously, it was because something was wrong with her thinking and the way she approached problems from the very beginning. If she believed that her home world was correct about everything, she would be throwing away the reality she could see in front of her eyes. Reality was that which did not go away when you stopped believing in it. Similarly, it was obvious that Earth had several things fundamentally incorrect about the nature of reality, due to the fact that mana clearly existed. She wasn't planning to throw away her beliefs about reality entirely, of course - the thousands of years of studying the nature of reality at home still held plenty of value, and there were things she could learn from it. However, this world knew a lot more about magic and mana, and since she was able to view magic unfold right before her eyes, it was obvious that she needed to try to find a way to understand it as well. Assuming she had an advantage in knowledge was wrong – in fact, she might be farther away from understanding the truth about the world than an average child in this world. So, she had to think of herself as a learner who had room to grow and think.

She closed her eyes, and, finally, cast aside the notion that she was special somehow. It seemed like she had just been brought here as a fluke from some mages practicing illegal magic. That was it. No grand quest to save the world, no demon king to defeat. No grand purpose behind her arrival here. Nothing but some assholes messing up her life by a fluke. She had no purpose in being brought here – it was just a huge accident.

She thought back to when she had survived her mana baptism. Suddenly, it seemed like a giant metaphor for her entire existence in this dimension so far – she had nearly died less than two days after she arrived here, and survived as a result of a lucky fluke. Apparently, the odds of survival for mana baptism was four percent – and lower if one was exposed to broken mana. She had survived, not because of some hidden talent or virtue, but by sheer dumb luck. When she was bumbling around in the wilderness, she hadn’t relied on her great problem solving skills or someone helping her – she had gotten lucky and just barely managed to find what she needed before she died. If mana didn’t cause her body temperature to rise, if [Survivor] hadn’t helped her solve her heat problems, she would have died in the frost of winter. {Foraging} saved her from starvation in the nick of time. She had failed to start a fire over and over again before she finally got lucky and managed to get one started. The only reason she had lived this far was a series of lucky coincidences and random chance.

She had made blunder after blunder, and been bailed out by coincidence.

If she really wanted to survive on this world, she had to grow – not just in her status screen, but as a person. She had made many, many bad decisions in the four months she had been here. Now that she was trying to think clearly about it, she could see that. A Status Screen was important, but it wasn’t just some gimmick of this world that she could exploit before leaving and forgetting about it – it was a component of this world she needed to accept and seriously look at. And even the System wouldn’t save her from making stupid decisions if she didn’t help herself first. Thus far, she had barely scraped out an existence in this world, surviving on the edge of catastrophe. She couldn’t go home, so instead, she should start working towards having a life here without regrets. Instead of just surviving here, she should start living here.

You have unlocked the class Scientist as a result of throwing away a belief you have held for a long time, having an [Intelligence] Stat above 100, and having an interest in exploring the world around you from a logical perspective. Would you like to make this class a primary class?

Yes

No

Through Training, you have increased an attribute!

Willpower +6, Intelligence +2

Alice hesitated a moment. Then, instead of immediately accepting or rejecting the class, she decided to consult with the [Priest of the System] first. Blind assumptions about what the best choice was when she had little evidence would get her nowhere productive. And making a decision when she barely knew what she was doing was just absurd – it was better to ask someone who actually knew what the hell they were doing. She would still make her own decisions, but there was certainly value in getting input from someone who studied classes for a living - and, if she wasn't mistaken, that was what [Priests of the System] were, at least in some sense. Asking about what people usually did for their 'build' and learning from that was something she should have done yesterday, honestly. There was no reason to make a decision immediately, after all, and consulting someone who was older and had more information was just common sense. It was something she would have done back on Earth in a heartbeat, so even if it was a foreign world, why would she hesitate?

Still, the knowledge that she was never going home weighed her heart down like a ton of bricks.

Alice looked around, blinking tears out of her eyes and looking at the world with new eyes – and realized that everyone was staring at her. Why were they – had Illa asked her a question?

“I – I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

“Do you find the conditions acceptable? You must lead us to the site of broken mana so that we may purify and investigate it, and have an [Organic Mage] look you over to make sure you aren’t carrying any contagious diseases. Apart from that, you are under no legal obligations. Is this acceptable to you?”

Alice closed her eyes, thinking for a moment. She didn’t really mind having an [Organic Mage] look over her – in fact, it might help ensure that she didn’t get killed by some sort of weird mutated version of the common cold from Earth that somehow turned into a superplague after touching mana. She had become a mage after touching mana, so in a sense, this was actually a huge benefit to her.

As for helping a mage expedition find the place where she had arrived, this was also in line with her goals. She wanted to know what had happened in detail, and to make absolutely sure that her parents hadn’t somehow been brought here. She didn’t have the ability or knowledge to make heads or tails of the area, but being there while a bunch of powerful, knowledgeable people sorted through the area was exactly what she needed. In fact, since she wouldn’t have to pay the people for their time, it was much better than anything she could put together herself.

“Yes. Thank y – I thank the court for its mercy.”

“Very well. Finally, we must discuss secrecy regarding this court session – Priest, would you mind forming contracts to avoid people discussing {Outworlder}? If the Society learns of this, while unlikely, it might lead to some of those damn lunatics sneaking through my town to access whatever information they think they can extract from young lady Alice. If I had known there would be a violation of the damn dimensional taboo, I would have gotten a higher level [Priest of the System] so that I could make some damn group contracts.” Illa broke off into irritated muttering.

“I do not have enough contracts for the week – the reset is in three days, so perhaps instead we could use some form of people watching each other instead? If we have each person responsible for keeping track of another person, that might be a way to get around the two-person limit for each contract, with an assumption that one person spilling information regarding the fact that a living example of something from another dimension exists is grounds for violating the contract. Once the next rollover begins, I can finish setting up contracts, and if the first set expires in 10 days, I can set up a new round for the first set of contracted right afterwards. If the penalty is changed to reducing [Intelligence], the dissuasion effect could- … We could also….”

Illa and the priest moved closer together, discussing things for several minutes. Eventually, of the twenty or so people in the room, seven glanced at the air in front of them. They scanned it for a few minutes, before they gritted their teeth and muttered something. Meanwhile, Alice pondered upon her insights, trying to think of any instances where she may have made errors in her judgement and needed to reflect on her actions. In the midst of this, after some more words and statements were passed around the court, Illa eventually made some references to Illvarian law that Alice couldn’t understand, seeming to reference secrecy statutes.

“With that, the court is dismissed. Ah, and young lady, if you are willing to, come speak with me outside. I have an offer you may be interested in. Although, even if you aren’t willing to discuss it, you still need to see me for the [Organic Mage] checkup. I don’t know what diseases are common in your world, but dealing with those is critical to ensuring the safety of the town. In this, at least, I must insist.”

The other three people in the room got up and left, Lady Vallis shooting Illa an angry glare, the merchant seeming totally uninterested now that the court was over, and the old mage giving her a curious glance before he shuffled out.