Chapter 90

Chapter 90

After Alice finished dealing with all of her upgrades, she visited Boris for the week. Now that she had a more extensive list of ideas and guesses about class seeds, Alice took this visit as an opportunity to observe Boris in greater detail, to see if she could verify any of her guesses about the nature of class seeds. She had already observed that Boris had a huge amount of mana in his body compared to the amount of time he had been working on levelling up, but now that she had more information, perhaps she could learn something new.

Unfortunately, this idea ended up as a dead end. Alice didn’t manage to discover too much or confirm any of her guesses after the visit. However, she did discover that the class seed in Boris’s body wasn’t absorbing any mana, unlike the seed she had seen in her vision. This puzzled Alice, but considering how much she didn’t know about class seeds right now, it wasn’t too surprising that she had missing information right now. Alice couldn’t help but wonder if Boris’s condition would get better the moment he turned six. Perhaps the moment he turned six and turned the right age for a normal status screen, the class seed in his body would instantly eat up all of the extra mana in his body and he would return to normalcy? Or perhaps nothing would happen, or the class seed would start absorbing mana and slowly ‘digest’ the excess mana in Boris’s body bit by bit? Alice wasn’t quite sure, and she didn’t dare to mess with anything right now due to her fear of harming Boris in the process. At the very least, ever since Alice had encouraged Natasha to prevent Boris from farming, his condition hadn’t gotten any worse, so Alice considered that a minor victory for now. Next weekend she could hopefully bring over Professor Feliza and get Boris an enchantment to shut off access to mana in his surroundings, which would work as another countermeasure to prevent Boris’s condition from deteriorating further.

Alice left Natasha’s house in a poor mood. She still didn’t know enough about how class seeds worked to solve the root problem, so she could only sigh, remind Natasha not to let Boris farm or work in the fields, and return to Metsel for the night. On the way out of the village, she couldn’t help but notice that the number of [Guards] around Natasha and Boris had drastically decreased compared to a month ago. There was still one extra [Guard] sticking around Natasha’s village, but considering how many different directions Illvaria’s manpower was getting pulled now, the [Guards] obviously couldn’t afford to devote more people towards an attack that showed no signs of materializing. Alice was starting to think her guess was unfounded – the Society of Starry Eyes might have stumbled across Boris as a result of blind luck, and maybe have just been kidnapping children at random in hopes of getting lucky instead of having some way to actively search for him.

The following day, Alice returned to her magic classes and prepared to learn more about monster biology, self-defense, and attend an extremely exciting, fascinating, and valuable lecture about morals. But before she could get settled in and talk with Samantha for the day before switching back to talking with Luka, Erkki, Laila, and Arsi, she realized that Samantha wasn’t present in the classroom.

Samantha usually arrived to class fairly early.

Alice started to get a bad feeling.

“Do you know where Samantha is?” She asked her four friends in the class.

Luka simply shrugged, and Erkki frowned for a moment before he shook his head. Laila lifted her head towards Alice for a moment, before she yawned and responded with a lazy “I don’t know who that is.”

Arsi gave Alice the most useful response. He turned towards her and then frowned for a moment, before nodding to himself. “I’ve heard one of her friends from an earlier class I share mention that Samantha was sick today. I didn’t pay much attention to it, but I did hear her say that the girl is sick enough for her family to hire an [Organic Mage] to take a look at her. She should be healthy by tomorrow, I guess, assuming Samantha’s family hires a good [Organic Mage].” Arsi shrugged. “If you wait until Wednesday you can probably see her again.”

Alice’s bad feeling intensified as she wondered whether an [Organic Mage] could even find Samantha’s weird and broken kinetic seed. The best thing the healer might be able to accomplish was healing some of Samantha’s symptoms, unless the [Organic Mage] had a very surprising set of Perks and Achievements.

“Do you know where Samantha lives? I’m sure you know that she and I have been talking recently when I have extra time, so I want to go wish her well. Besides, I’ve recently been learning bits and pieces about organic magic, and maybe I can sit by the side and learn something useful,” said Alice. The effort she had been putting in for the past week came in useful, as Arsi simply nodded at her statement. Alice was now known to enjoy speaking with Samantha, and so Arsi didn’t think there was anything unusual about Alice wanting to visit her friend.

“I don’t know anything specifically where she lives. You could probably ask one of her friends for more detailed information. If you’re lucky, she might even be heading there after her classes for the day are finished in order to check up on Samantha. If she is, you can probably just tag along. And even if she doesn’t plan to make a visit, she should know where Samantha lives, so you can still get directions from her.”

“Is that so? I’ll have to ask her later, then. Who should I look for?”

“Look for the girl named Taylie. She has black hair and blue eyes, and she’s a little taller than you. But she walks with a slightly hunched posture, so in practice your height is about the same as hers. She’s a bit more on the nervous side, has slightly below average [Charisma], doesn’t really like people too much, and her mage emblem is made out of copper. She shouldn’t be too hard to identify,” said Arsi, before adding a few description about Taylie’s schedule. “She finishes her classes for the day the same time this class ends, and she doesn’t really stick around the after class. She heads straight out of the building the moment she can leave. I imagine you’ll probably have to rush and catch her by the door if you want to meet with her today. If that doesn’t work, you can always just wait until Wednesday, although you’ll miss the chance to observe a healer with a full certificate in action.”

Alice thanked Arsi for sharing this information with her. Class started right afterwards, so she did her best to turn her attention to class, but had a hard time paying attention. Her thoughts kept turning back to Samantha’s situation. She had been hesitating on what she should do for a while, and Cecilia had also advised her not to put herself in too much danger, and had implied that Alice should look after herself first, even if it meant abandoning Samantha and letting things play out. Alice had originally felt that Cecilia’s words made sense. She would help where she could, but she would look out for herself first.

However, now that Samantha’s condition was getting worse, Alice found that her thoughts were a mess. Could she really just coldly watch on as someone she enjoyed talking with get sick and possibly die, just because she was afraid of the Society of Starry Eyes? Alice wasn’t even sure if the Society would notice Alice treating a slightly weird illness, and she was pretty sure the root cause couldn’t be treated by anyone but her. Alice also felt a little guilty, because she knew for sure that if the person in danger wasn’t Samantha, but was someone like Cecilia, Alice wouldn’t have hesitated at all. Cecilia was her closest friend in this world, and if Cecilia had been the one in danger she would have helped Cecilia first and figured out the consequences later. Even if she wasn’t as close with Samantha, letting her die just didn’t feel right.

“Good evening,” said the [Organic Mage], giving them a friendly nod as he walked closer. Alice noticed that his gaze settled on the two for a moment, as if he was trying to make a decision, before he took a step closer to them. The alarm bells in Alice’s head grew louder. “May I ask what you’re doing on this fine day?” At the same time, he stretched out his hand towards Taylie’s, as if asking for a handshake. Taylie frowned sluggishly, as if she could also tell that something wasn’t quite right, but she reached out her hand to shake the man’s anyway.

“We’re here to visit our friend,” said Taylie, giving the man a sleepy nod. Alice got a better idea of what was happening as she saw a jolt of rainbow mana reach out of the man’s hand and into Taylie’s arm during the handshake. Taylie’s smile grew more relaxed and lethargic after a few seconds, and without any further explanation or focus, Taylie veered away from the man and kept walking towards Samantha’s house.

At the same time, the [Organic Mage] extended his hand towards Alice for a handshake. Alice started panicking. Should she shake the man’s hand, or immediately open hostilities? The man hadn’t attacked Taylie as she walked by, so he seemed to be uninterested in killing her. If that was the case, Alice might have a better opportunity to open a fight with a surprise attack...

Like a wooden puppet, she extended her hand towards the [Organic Mage] as she started praying that her next idea would work. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched a burst of rainbow mana get injected into her body.

Then, Alice used {Extended Organics} to create a small, needle-sized mana tendril inside of her wrist. {The Science of Mana Deprivation} activated, and the burst of rainbow mana was quickly isolated from the rest of her body, tying up one of her mana tendrils but preventing her from falling asleep.

“I wish you the best of luck checking up on your friend, then,” said the man, giving them an more amiable and warm smile as he walked past Alice, completely ignoring her. Alice did her best to mimic Taylie, veering slightly to the side and sleepily walking towards Samantha’s house.{Sense Hostility} stopped activating, and right after Alice passed by the man, she immediately used {Extended Organics} to create three mana tendrils a few inches away from the man, targeting the front of his clothing. Before he had time to react, Alice used kinetic magic to turn the buttons on his clothes into weapons and shot them directly towards the man’s heart.

The three buttons tore through the man’s skin, but Alice could tell that she hadn’t managed to kill him. He turned around as his flesh regrew, wriggling around in meat tendrils as Perks activated inside of his body. The man’s facial features contorted, before his face melted like putty as twisted as he snarled at her. All of a sudden, the man’s facial features were completely different, and Alice immediately realized the man had somehow used Organic magic to change his own facial features.

“Society attack!” Yelled Alice at the top of her lungs, hoping to call over some [Guards] to help.

The man snarled at her, and then reached down, ripped a cobblestone out of the street with his hands, and threw it at her.

{Adrenaline Rush} activated, and Alice’s perception of time was warped as the world slowed to a crawl. She reached out one tendril of mana to stop the cobblestone flying towards her while simultaneously activating her bracelet and preparing one more cobblestone to use as a projectile. However, when she tried to stop the cobblestone flying towards her, she realized to her shock that the force behind the cobblestone was somehow resistant to her attempts at stopping it. Forced to abandon her plan of counterattacking, Alice instead tried to duck away from the incoming projectile. She quickly realized that also couldn’t get out of the way in time, so she cancelled her other mana tendrils before reforming them with {Extended Organics}. Then, she used her free mana tendrils to grab herself by the clothes and throw herself out of the way.

She barely escaped having her head crushed like a grape as the cobblestone tore through the air, slamming into the wall of a nearby house and tearing a massive hole in the wall. Alice felt her heart beating faster as she imagined what would have happened if she hadn’t gotten out of the way in time, and grew even more afraid of the Society member who was attacking her.

Luckily, the Society member didn’t follow up on his attack. Since he was in the middle of the city and [Guards] might come any minute, he instead strengthened his legs and began running from the scene at full speed. Alice didn’t even concentrate on getting up or healing the bruises from crashing heavily into the ground, as she began firing cobblestones, her consumable bracelet, and random pieces of the surroundings at him. She managed to clip him with a few stones, and almost managed to slice his leg off with a flying piece of roof tile, but the man’s regenerative powers were high enough that he just regrew his flesh and kept fleeing at top speed. Alice chased after him until for a few seconds, until {Adrenaline Rush} ended and she realized she couldn’t stop him from fleeing. Soon, he disappeared into the distance.

Alice swore, staring at the decimated street and giving herself a quick check over. Luckily, it didn’t seem like she had any serious injuries – just some scrapes and bruises from throwing herself around like a rag doll, but those were easy enough to heal.

She turned back to the scene of the brief fight, and noticed Taylie had made it inside of Samantha’s house before collapsing and falling asleep, having managed to completely ignore the brief fight. Since Alice had no ability to chase after the suspected Society member, she cursed again and walked back into Samantha’s house to check on Taylie. Luckily, the girl wasn’t terribly injured. Inside of the house were also an older man and a woman, along with a young girl, all sleeping comfortably on a bed together. If it weren’t for the rainbow mana in their bodies, along with the fact the couple and their daughter had somehow managed to sleep through a wall being demolished a few seconds ago, Alice might have thought that they had simply fallen asleep.

However, Alice felt that something was missing here. This was Samantha’s house, after all. Where was Samantha?

It only took her a few moments to confirm her ominous premonition.

Samantha wasn’t in the house.