During the time she spent in her mental library while asleep, Alice got to thinking.
The problems of Illvaria were indeed numerous, and Alice didn’t have a way to interact with many of those problems. After all, she was a researcher, not a [General] or an industrial expert. The bottleneck on production of enchantments, for example, wasn’t one that Alice knew how to fix yet.
At least, that was what she thought at first. But while Alice was asleep, she realized that wasn’t entirely true.
The biggest bottleneck on enchantment production was the number of [Enchanters]. Alice used {Broken Seed} to allow [Enchanters] to get the magic seeds they needed to make system-related enchantments. Alice could only use {Broken Seed} once every four days.
But what if there was a way to use {Broken Seed} far more frequently? Naturally, Alice was thinking about a particular type of enchantment that could help.
System enchantments.
Alice had largely assumed that System enchantments were out of her reach, except with the aid of System Perks. After all, that was common sense for the people of this dimension. To make a System enchantment, one needed to be above level 50 in a production class and then take an appropriate Perk. But Alice realized that she might have a way to sidestep this common sense a bit. After all, the System was just a very complicated enchantment that helped control mana. If that was the case… perhaps Alice could make System enchantments without the relevant Perks? Alice had already fused {Science’s Mana} and lost access to it, but that didn’t mean that it was hopeless to make System enchantments. Alice had even gone through the process of making System enchantments before, albeit aided by a Perk at the time.
And System enchantments were uniquely suited to fixing the limited uses of {Broken Seed} each week. Stat boosts were the most common type of System enchantment, but System enchantments could also grant people access to Perks they didn’t normally have.
What if Alice could create a System enchantment that let the wearer use {Broken Seed}?
In that case… the number of [Enchanters] with relevant magic seeds would skyrocket. And the biggest bottleneck in enchantment production would be fixed. After the visit to Cyra, they had more enchanting materials than they could currently make use of. If Alice could raise the number of [Enchanters] to meet that need, they might actually make class-fixing enchantments fast enough to cope with the onset of class-mana poisoning. A few people might fall into temporary madness as a result of their unfiltered mana… but the damage could be mitigated by a huge amount. And it wasn’t like the people who fell into mana-madness were dead. They lost their mind and their free will, which made Alice incredibly uncomfortable – but they could still be restored to their original personality after the fact. Previously, the amount of class-fixing enchantments was so hopelessly low that it still barely functioned as a solution. But if Alice got a {Broken Seed} System enchantment working, the entire problem would become basically manageable. And from there, Alice would only need to replace the System’s function of creating class seeds, and all of the urgent fires from the collapse of the System would finally be put out. Or, at least, all of the fires Alice was capable of fixing.
With that thought in mind, Alice got to work while still in the midst of her dream library.
She was much less familiar with System enchantments than she was with normal enchantments. So Alice spent several minutes first reviewing the few times she had created a System enchantment. She hadn’t made extensive use of {Science’s Mana} before she had combined it with {Seeds of Ambition} to create {System’s Ambition}. But she had still used it a few times, and she had even gotten some lessons from a [Tailor] to figure out how to use her new Perk. She remembered that System enchantments relied a lot on doing something ‘related’ to a certain idea while using the Perk. So she started thinking about what it meant to destroy a magic seed without harming the wearer.
As she worked, Alice felt a bit regretful at the fact that her only method of ‘naturally’ making a System enchantment was gone. After all, it might have made things a little bit easier if Alice could try making a few more enchantments. However, at the end of the day, it wasn’t a big deal.
{Science’s Mana} wouldn’t have been able to support what Alice was trying to do. The Perk just didn’t have enough output to let Alice create a System Enchantment that let people access a level 35 Perk. If Alice had reached level 80 in [Scientist], and then combined {Science’s Mana} with a [Careful Enchanter] Perk, it might have been able to do what Alice needed. But Alice was a long way away from reaching level 80 in [Scientist], and her Perk had already been combined with another one.
So Alice spent several hours staring at an iron ring and sinking into her memories, while trying to replicate what her Perk had done.
Unsurprisingly, Alice’s first attempts at making a System enchantment without a Perk were unsuccessful. Even after Alice started grabbing the System enchantments she had laying around in storage, her first attempts to create a System enchantment were disastrous. System enchantments were complicated. They were way worse than regular enchantments.
A System enchantment basically had a bunch of mana inside of it that operated off of similar rules to the System seeds in her body – lots of different kinds of mana were working together to create some sort of effect, and also to communicate with each other and make sure that everything that happened was working correctly. Which meant that Alice needed to somehow make an item accept a huge amount of different types of mana, and have those types of mana communicate with each other…
Alice was beginning to understand why having a bunch of different mana types fused together into one magic seed was such a clever idea. With the right Perks or materials, it might let her totally cheat the usual limitations on enchanted items. Sadly, Alice’s System seed wasn’t developed enough yet. She was still missing several mana types, and had no way of replicating exactly what a System enchantment was doing.
So Alice started getting creative.
Alice couldn’t replicate exactly what the System was doing, at least not right now. But maybe it was possible to approach things from a completely different angle. She didn’t need to perfectly copy the System, anyway. She just needed to get a solution that worked and didn’t harm the user of her System enchantments.
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So Alice turned towards artifacts. As far as Alice knew, an artifact was essentially a massive enchantment that somehow had artificial magic seeds stapled into it somehow. And, if Alice was lucky… maybe there was a way to make an artificial magic seed replicate the effects of her [Explorer of Magic] Class. Alice had no idea if that was possible or not, since Alice had very little understanding of artifacts. She had only seen a single artifact during her time in Illvaria, after all.
So Alice went to ask Ethan whether it was possible to see the artifact controlling the rivers of southern Illvaria again. She wasn’t sure if she was actually going in the right direction with her new idea, but it was worth trying. Even if she failed, spending a lot of time and effort researching artifacts would surely help her level up her enchanting classes and her magic-related classes. If Alice got to level 85 in [Explorer of Magic], she could fuse {Expanding Comprehension} and {Intuitive Mana Modelling}, which would make research much easier and help her figure out the right path forward.
Thus, later that day, Alice and Ethan found themselves once again sitting in front of the artifact that controlled Illvaria’s southern canal system.
The first thing Alice paid attention to was the nature of the artifact itself. When Alice had first observed the artifact that controlled the rivers of southern Illvaria, she had noticed that the way the artifact seemed to work was via a set of artificial magic seeds. One was related to water, and the other one was related to dirt. Then, several tendrils extended out of the room under the palace and into the distance, doubtlessly feeding into the canals themselves. The tendrils were made partially out of System mana, and System mana also seemed to be somehow responsible for telling the artifact what to do. The artificial magic seeds that the Artifact relied on to function somewhat resembled class seeds. Alice grinned. Hopefully, that meant that she was heading in the right direction with her new line of research.
The System had started collapsing while she was in the middle of studying the artifact the last time she was here, but without the imminent chaos of the System’s collapse looming over her, Alice found it notably easier to focus.
Alice watched as the artifact worked. Every few seconds, a pulse of System mana traveled through one of the tendrils and towards the large metal pillar that acted as the core of the artifact. Then, the metal pillar sent a pulse of mana back out of the room, through one of the massive mana tendrils, and into the distance.
Alice observed the magic tendrils for a moment, before she grinned.
Now that she had managed to create a half-baked System seed, she could see how some parts of the System mana were feeding information to the artifact. Math mana, pure mana, and a few mystery mana types were constantly feeding packets of data to the core of the artifact. They delivered information about things like the location of each canal, the soil near it, and a bunch of geological information that Alice didn’t really know how to make sense of. As far as she could tell, the artifact was actually doing a lot more than she had first thought. It didn’t just ‘maintain the shapes of the canals’ in southern Illvaria. It somehow monitored the soil composition of the entire region, then used the canal system to send needed nutrients to the soil anywhere they were needed. It was an all-in-one soil management enchantment that covered the entire southern region. Alice wasn’t quite sure where the canal system got those nutrients. Since the artifact didn’t need any sort of external input, the artifact must be making them somehow – but the exact mechanics of how this worked weren’t immediately obvious to her. In all honestly, Alice didn’t care very much, either. Alice was already pretty sure that magic didn’t obey conservation of energy, so creating matter just didn’t seem that important to her anymore.
Still, even though Alice was glad that she could understand more about how the System tendrils worked now, she was struggling to figure out how she would create an artificial magic seed and thus expand the use of {Broken Seed}. There was just too much going on that Alice didn’t understand here.
Alice sighed, before turning to the artificial magic seeds. In any case, Alice was very interested in artificial magic seeds for other reasons. The System clearly had some way of creating a magic seed so that people could have Classes. Perhaps Alice could finally get the class-creation of the System working again if she stared at the artifact for long enough?
After ten more minutes of trying and failing to learn anything new, Alice finally gave up. She turned to her side.
“Ethan, who created this artifact?” asked Alice.
If she couldn’t recreate an artifact on her own, the easiest way to fix things was just to ask the creator of the artifact. In any case, Alice was perfectly happy to work with someone else while fixing the collapse of the System. She’d been shown, time and time again, that she couldn’t fix everything on her own.
“It was created by Demor, an [Enchanter] from one of the other Shil Confederacy member-nations. He’s not from Illvaria – none of the Immortals of Illvaria are capable of creating an artifact,” said Ethan. “While there are five larger nations in the Shil Confederacy that kind of run the confederacy, that doesn’t mean that none of the smaller nations have any noteworthy strength or Immortals. And most of those nations are eager to forge alliances with the larger member-nations and keep themselves safe. After all, the Shil Confederacy might work together against outside threats, but most nations in the confederacy are also perfectly happy to invade their neighbors if given the opportunity. This creates a rather Byzantine web of smaller alliances that the member states take part in… but anyway. I digress. The point is, at the time, Illvaria and a smaller member nation by the name of Morendia were allied, and the Illvarian [King] of the time was rather invested in the creation of long-term magic artifacts. Since the Illvarian south was perfectly intact at the time, and also one of the wealthier parts of the country, the Illvarian [King] felt it was a good idea to cement its food supply, since it needed a lot of imports from the north to survive on its own. So he hired some outside help.” Ethan shrugged. “Well, I think Doll worked on some parts of it too, but most of the work wasn’t done by her.”
Alice sighed. Of course it wasn’t that easy.
“Is it possible to contact Demor and ask him a bit about the theory behind artifacts?” asked Alice. “I’m trying to see if there’s a way to give other people access to the {Broken Seed} Perk I have access to. Making an artifact might be a solution to the problem.”
Ethan paused, before he nodded. “It’s probably possible. The alliance between Illvaria and Morendia isn’t as strong as it used to be, but the general reasons for the alliance are still valid. Morendia has Immortals who are capable and willing to help Illvaria in some things that Illvaria’s Immortals just don’t specialize in. Their military is also pretty strong for a small nation. Illvaria and Morendia also somewhat distant from each other, so they don’t have any territory that both nations dispute the ownership of. But they’re still close enough to help fight other Shil Confederacy nations.”
Alice nodded. “So we can invite him over here?”
Ethan frowned.
“Well… that might be a bit more difficult. You see, the collapse of the System is almost certainly being felt by every nation on the planet right now. Nations that are weaker are more likely to turtle up and hide in their territory… which makes it more likely that [Enchanters] and other non-combat oriented Immortals just won’t leave their safe spots. You’re a bit of an exception, but…” Ethan shrugged.
Alice grimaced.
“I’ll send a few letters by the fastest [Messengers] we have available, but… how do you feel about travelling to another country?” asked Ethan.