Chapter 54

Chapter 54

A few hours later, the [Innkeeper] politely rapped on Alice’s door a few times. With the help of some sort of noise-enhancing Perk amplifying the sound of him knocking on the door, the sound was loud enough to wake Alice up.

Only to find that the world looked a rainbow cloud had fallen over it. For a brief moment, she wondered if she had somehow wandered into the Aurora Borealis back on Earth. Every single inch of air, floor, and wall was covered with color and lights. The lights were not static, however – instead, it seemed as though every single inch of the air was rippling and vibrating with color every second.

“Lady Mage? As per your request, I am trying to wake you up an hour and a half past morning bell. Can I receive an acknowledgement that it has succeeded?” came the Innkeeper’s voice from outside of her door.

Alice looked at the swirling lights, which were moving enough that she was starting to feel motion-sick. The entire world was suddenly swimming and rippling with swirling color every second, and there was nowhere Alice could move her eyes to avoid seeing more of the dancing colors.

“I... I am awake. Thank you, Innkeeper.”

“It is my pleasure to be of service to a Mage,” said the Innkeeper. Alice heard the man begin to move away from her room, giving her more time to examine... whatever the heck was going on with her vision.

This was something Alice had never experienced before. It certainly hadn’t been there when she had gone to sleep earlier. Even if she had been tired from the experiment she and Cecilia had finished yesterday, she was still sure she would have noticed the entire world starting to look like a confused unicorn’s rainbow puke.

She looked blearily at the walls of her room, before she shook her head and closed her eyes. She rubbed at her eyelids for a moment, trying to figure out if she was seeing things.

Maybe she was still sleepy? She had only gotten a few hours of sleep before waking up.

She opened her eyes again. The rainbow colors had not disappeared. They were just as prevalent and vibrant as before, distorting the air and making it hard for Alice to see her surroundings clearly.

She looked at her hands, only to see that even underneath her skin, the rivulets of rainbow lights were still present.

She closed and opened her eyes a few times while focusing on a specific point in her inn room, giving her eyes and brain some time to adjust to the perpetual motion in her vision. After a few minutes, her motion sickness was starting to clear and she was getting used to it. Even though she still found the constant shifting and moving in her vision to be obnoxious, it was no longer making her feel ill, at least.

“What in the world am I looking at?” She asked, watching as the streams of color whirled and danced underneath her skin. The colors were inside of her skin, her flesh, her bones... Everything.

As she watched, Alice started to feel a sense of familiarity with the lights. Hadn’t she seen something like this before?

After a few moments, she finally figured out why the streams of light looked familiar.

Didn’t this look kind of like that incredibly complex flood of mana that had appeared when she nearly melted herself? She tried not to think about the time when she had tried, and failed, to form a wide variety of modern physics-based seeds, only to end up failing each and every time before she nearly melted both her room and herself. However, even though she tried not to remember that day...

The swirling fractals of lights in midair reminded her of that day quite a bit.

The difference was scale.

The swirling fractals of light she had seen on that day had mostly been focused. They had been limited in scope, appearing mostly around her body and the air directly surrounding her. She hadn’t been able to see much else as far as the light fractals went outside of that specific, limited space.

The light fractal she was seeing now was everywhere. It was a rainbow fog that obstructed her vision of her surroundings.

She reached out one of her hands towards the floating lights in midair. As expected, her hand passed directly through it.

Alice had a sneaking suspicion that she knew what she was looking at, or that she at least had a guess. She focused on her Pure Mana magic seed before she extended a tendril out towards the air in front of her and tried to mess with the dancing lights.

The lights shifted away, continuously remolding and reshaping themselves into new patterns and fractals as they avoided her mana tendril. The lights also avoided any mana or broken mana that Alice pushed out of her pure mana seed for a few seconds, before the lights seemed to ‘ignore’ the mana that had originated from her. She tried a few more times, before confirming something.

“Cecilia and I have been trying to figure out how mana works, and how mana influences a lot of other things,” said Alice. “We found a few interesting results, but we want to verify them. After all, one person isn’t a very good representation of everyone in the world, and I have a few Achievements that might screw with the results a bit.” Such as {Outworlder.} Alice still had no clue what “Increased Support from the System” meant, and for all she knew that might throw all of her experiments out of whack.

“Anyway, we need a little more data... if that’s all right with you. I have a Perk to detect how dangerous an experiment might be, and it looks like it’ll be safe for you. There shouldn’t be any danger, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Said Alice.

“Mana levels and their effects? Hmm... I think you might be best served by messing with some Spidercrabs, if you haven’t done that already. Even if it isn’t usually what they focus on, most [Adventurers] would probably be willing to help you catch a few alive for a few silver suns. Heck, if you wanted to save money, you could probably do so yourself. At this point I seriously doubt an average spidercrab pack poses any threat to you, and you could probably demolish a pack, grab a few alive, and then drag them back for research. Just make sure to wear thick padding. There are even a few loons who try to raise them like farm animals in some areas where the ground is too barren to grow regular crops or fodder for animals. I seriously doubt they would be hard or time consuming to get ahold of.”

“The issue is that I want to look at how Mana and Stats interact. Monsters don’t have access to the System, so there’s nothing to test there.”

“Wait, testing the System?” Milo gave Alice a strange look. “Umm... like, to see what the almighty System deems proper?”

“Ermm... I want to see how the Almighty System makes decisions, and how its blessings work,” said Alice. “I just figure that there has to be some underlying mechanic behind how the System’s blessings work out in practice, and I want to see what those mean for the world in general.”

Milo, thankfully, didn’t immediately decide she was a heretic and start yelling, or anything of the sort. Instead, he pursed his lips, seriously thinking it over. Finally, he nodded.

“How long would it take, and what exactly do you want from me?” said Milo, after a few moments of thought. “At least, I trust you enough to know you wouldn’t lie to me about my safety, and I don’t mind helping you out.”

Alice felt a smile tug at her lips. “I’m just asking you to sit in a special room for a while and test your physical strength. I have also undergone the same experiment with no harm coming to me, and Cecilia will be doing the experiment with you,” said Alice.

“Testing my strength in a room? All right, I can see it sort of making sense. Are you planning on messing with mana quantity by changing it over the course of the experiment?” Milo mulled it over for a few moments. Finally, he nodded. “I don’t particularly mind, I guess.”

Alice felt her smile grow wider. “Great! Thanks, Milo! I’m glad that you’re willing to help out. I’ll get more bags ready for the manaless room.”

Milo paused, and his expression turned to complete bewilderment.

“I’m sorry, WHAT? Manaless room? As in... a room with no mana in it?”

“Yes?”

Milo gave Alice a blank stare.

“What exactly is the wording for this Perk that claims no harm will befall the subject? Didn’t you say – wait, you already did this? To yourself?”

“It’s why I think I found something big,” Said Alice. “I have gone through the process of sitting in a manaless room for about half an hour. During this period of time, I experienced some reductions in my stats and my Perks became weaker, but none of them were life-threatening, and as long as you are not sick or seriously injured, none of them will place your life at risk either. Since it’s common knowledge that lack of mana is lethal, and it clearly isn’t for me, I want to see what happens if other people try it. My Perk claims it isn’t lethal for other people either, so I want to know what actually happens if people sit in a manaless room for extended periods of time. Do other people also lose stats? Is the stat loss consistent? There are a lot of other finicky things I want to experiment with, but since everyone’s Perks are so different, I need bigger sample sizes if I want to really figure out what’s going on here.”

“Being perfectly honest, this seems more than slightly insane. Alice, that’s an environment with no mana! You can suffocate monsters just by dropping the mana in an area low enough! It’s the main reason human civilization can thrive at all – stronger monsters can’t wander out of their high mana environments without dying off in droves. They stick to the mana-rich, wild parts of the world, and humans inhabit the mana-thin regions. To hear someone say that lack of mana isn’t lethal just sounds... I trust you, but it sounds totally nutty.” Milo’s expression kept changing, warping between shock, and confusion, and anger.

Alice took a deep breath, feeling {Rhetorical Flourish} kick in and help her select her words more accurately.

“Milo, there is a difference between monsters and humans. Monsters need mana to survive, but there isn’t enough evidence to conclude that humans do, right? In the first place, monsters don’t even strictly need to eat in the first place, if the environment has enough mana. By contrast, humans starve to death, or get the {Malnourished} Achievement if they don’t get enough food in their bellies. This happens regardless of how much mana there is inside of the food, right?” Alice couldn’t help but think about her and Cecilia’s mana-influenced diet, and how little the amount of mana inside of food seemed to influence mages. “Monsters get stronger in environments with high mana density, too. Humans don’t. Similarly, mana deprivation doesn’t necessarily have to be lethal for humans, even if it’s universally lethal for monsters, right?”

“This is crazy.” Milo sighed. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this. All right, I don’t mind. You can use me as a test subject. But let the record show that even if this experiment works out, this is insane. The fact that you tested this on yourself is insane. Remind me at the end of the week to help out.”

Alice felt a huge grin tug at her lips. “Thanks, Milo!”

“Don’t mention it. I might have a nervous breakdown if I think about it in further detail.”