Chapter 57

Chapter 57

The scouts spent about half an hour cutting apart the vinebears, searching for valuable materials. In the meantime, a few spidercrab packs wandered into the area, perhaps attracted by the mana leaking out of the vinebear corpses. Alice and the other mages quickly shredded them apart, if the [Guards] didn’t shoot them down first. Alice was sure she was pretty close to {Monster Hunter III}, though there was still some way to go. With some effort, she could probably pick it up before she left Cyra. These corpses were also disassembled by the [Scouts], turning into more spoils of war.

Apart from that, the few people who had gotten injured during the fight received treatment from the [Organic Mages]. Luckily, nobody had died or lost a limb, making it fairly easy to heal most of the injuries. Alice couldn’t help but marvel at one of her first times seeing this world’s method of healing [Soldiers] and [Guards] after a battle. She had been unconscious when an [Organic Mage] had interacted with her during the Expedition, and the [Organic Mage] who had inspected her after her trial had simply used some Perks to analyze her body for potential problems. Thus, this was her first time actually seeing an [Organic Mage] heal someone else.

And upon seeing [Organic Mages] heal people, Alice couldn’t help but think that this world’s healing was definitely superior to Earth’s medical technology. On Earth, getting someone to heal after getting mauled by a bear and receiving a massive gash to their chest would have required some serious medical attention. The person in question would probably have needed to take a trip to the Emergency Room. If a person was particularly badly mauled, they might have even needed surgery, blood transfusions, rabies shots, and any number of other things.Ñøv€l-B1n was the first platform to present this chapter.

In this world, an [Organic Mage] demanded the patient give {Patient’s Consent} to reduce their resistance against Mana. Then, the [Organic Mage] put their hand on some exposed flesh from the other party, closed their eyes, and started throwing Perks and mana at the problem. A process which Alice could now, finally, observe firsthand, as mana fractals formed a strange net that stretched out from the brain of the [Organic Magic] and into the other person’s body, continuously lighting up the whole way before the entire net of mana dissolved into thin air and much more basic Organic mana started healing up the person. Usually, the whole process took less than ten minutes. Afterwards, it was hard to tell that the person in question had even been injured in the first place. They could get up, move around, and walk with no problems, whereas on Earth they would have probably needed to stitch up the mauled area and keep it safe for a few weeks before they finished recovering.

After everyone was healed up and the [Scouts] were done cleaning up the vinebear corpses, it was time to deal with the rewards from the battle.

Every single monster had a monster core – this was something innate to all monsters on this planet. Vinebear cores were particularly compatible with Healing Enchantments, making them relatively high in demand because Healing Magic wasted far more mana than Organic Magic. On top of that, the pelts of the vinebears were also decent materials for making warm clothes. Even though many of the fur coats had been ruined during the fight, about half of the vinebears still had useable pelts. Finally, there was a huge amount of bear meat and bones, neither of which was particularly valuable.

First, everyone was given a choice: they could either take one vinebear core, or Illa would sell them in bulk to one of the traders from upriver and divide the money among all of the people who just wanted to sell the core. Most of the [Guards], [Scouts], and [Soldiers] chose to sell the core, along with about half of the Mages. Everyone was given a similar option for the bear pelts. Alice grabbed a Vinebear core, since she would probably have a use for it sooner or later, but opted to sell her share of bear pelt because it wasn’t particularly useful for enchanting. Finally, the bear meat and bones didn’t have very much value. Thus, they were pretty much just ‘whoever wants it can take some.’ Alice grabbed as much as she could stuff inside of {Sample Collection} – which wasn’t much, since the Perk only allowed a certain quantity of any ‘unique’ substance to be stored inside of it. However, it was still at least a few days of free meals after they were cooked. Alice could probably sell it to the [Innkeeper] in exchange for a free dinner or two. She could use the money. She did the same with the bones, on the off hand chance she could figure out something useful to do with them, although she didn’t have very many hopes for actually using her vinebear bones. Still, since she had room to store them, it didn’t hurt to bring them along, just in case. Finally, the Mages and [Archers] picked up whatever they wanted from the dead spidercrabs.

Since the number of vinebears had slightly outnumbered the members of the hunting party, there were about fifteen remaining vinebear cores. These were distributed to the Mages in the group, including Alice, netting her a total of two extra vinebear cores, with the final remainder going to Illa and Allira.

After that, with the spoils of war distributed, the group began trudging back towards Cyra. Alice opted to walk alone this time, intending to think more carefully about what she had seen during the fight instead of chatting with others.

As they walked, Allira began bouncing from group to group again. Alice couldn’t help but feel a bit surprised by this. She had expected that Allira would mostly keep to herself on the way back home, now that there was no real need to keep up morale. However, the woman seemed to actively enjoy mixing around and talking to people.

Perhaps Allira just enjoyed talking with people in general? That did seem quite logical. In the first place, [Bards] tended to be people who interacted with other people a lot. If Allira didn’t enjoy talking, she would have probably picked a different Class.

Eventually, Allira made her way to Alice. Alice, although slightly surprised, was more than happy to see her. It wasn’t often she got an opportunity to observe an Immortal up-close.

“Greetings to honored Immortal,” said Alice, giving Allira a respectful nod. “That was extraordinary! I had heard stories of Immortals fighting before, but hearing about it and seeing it firsthand is completely different.”

Allira gave a small chuckle at Alice’s statement, before she nodded. “The abilities Immortals possess are pretty interesting. Once I became an Immortal, I could hardly believe what we’re able to do myself. It took a few years for me to really get used to the idea that I my abilities were so... reality-bending.”

“So do all of your abilities get a comprehensive upgrade after you become an Immortal?” Asked Alice.

Alice shrugged. “I want to know the truth of mana. I am sure I’ll find a way to use it for practical purposes in the future – however, even if I don’t find a single practical use behind anything I spend my time and energy learning about, I wouldn’t regret it. I just want to know for the sake of knowing.” She felt a small smile tug at her lips as she said this. “Though, I have already gotten a few Achievements for exploring and learning. In that sense, I’ve already gotten some nice bonuses from studying this topic, so I can’t say it has been a waste of time.” Alice didn’t hesitate at all to advertise the benefits of taking part in her research. Even if it was unlikely, maybe in the future she could get an Immortal to help her learn about the truth of mana! Allira was a pretty relaxed person, so maybe someday it was possible!

Allira’s smile became gentler, less filled with fun and carelessness and more relaxed. “If that’s what motivates you, then I can only admire you. Wanting to know for the sake of knowing may not always be what causes [Merchants] and [Nobles] to line up and sponsor your research, and some people might even say it’s a fundamental failure to research something just for the sake of knowing more. But... Ultimately, even ‘impractical’ knowledge is what creates the stable base of knowledge all other [Researchers] in the future reference as they make their own innovations. If you truly make great contributions in this area, perhaps in the future someone will take your work a step farther and create something miraculous.”

The conversation fell into a comfortable silence for a while, until the walls of Cyra came in sight. After a brief hunt, the Vinebear threat was exterminated.

* * *

Somewhere far away, a man stood in a room filled with rocks and maps. If one were to analyze the rocks, they wouldn’t be able to find anything unusual about them – save, perhaps, the fact that most System Perks would completely ignore the rocks, as if they weren’t there at all.

In the center of the room was a map. On it were images of three continents.

The Central Continent, the origin of the human species in this world, and the continent with the lowest mana density and highest human population density.

The Southern Continent, which was more recently settled. It had much higher mana density than the Central Continent, and few had ever explored farther south than the Shil Confederacy and lived to tell the tale. It was becoming more and more heavily settled as the decades passed, but it would be a long time before it reached the population density of the Central Continent.

And finally, the Western Continent. The mana density would kill anyone who tried to go there and wasn’t a Mage. And if the mana density didn’t prove fatal, the ridiculously powerful monsters would. Even Immortals never ventured onto the Western Continent unless they were feeling suicidal. The only maps of the continent basically consisted of some random chunks of coastline. The rest was untouched by human hands.

And on the map, there were a variety of blinking lights. Most of them were black, but about one in four of them were white. There were even a few blinking lights on the Western continent, though they were very few in number.

On the map of the Southern Continent, one of the white lights blinked, then flashed bright red. After a few moments, the light disappeared entirely.

“Another hit, huh?” The man turned to the only other occupant of the room – something which seemed human, except half of its body had been replaced with metal. “Are there any known settlements there?”

The half-metal human stared at the spot for a moment, deep in thought. Then, finally, he shook his head. “None of my Perks are pulling up anything at all in that area. Checking through the map’s record log, There was no blue flash. So the total number of people is lower than 100. Still... Red means at least 50. An unrecorded settlement with a high enough level of [Enchanter] to start investigating one of the probes and trip the minimum population requirements... it might be the one, Master. There’s a good chance of it being another miss, but this could be it.”

The man who was looking at the map smiled. “Then prepare my Enchanted weapons and Items. Especially the consumable ones – get at least a few hundred ready. Just in case. We are taking a trip to the Southern Continent, it seems. Let us see if we’ve finally stumbled across one of the bases of the Society of Starry Eyes.”