Alice spent a great deal of time pondering the relationship between Alice mana and Achievements as the group continued travelling. Every night, Alice diligently worked on her mental map. Alice also took some time to discuss her discoveries, thoughts, and her Perk from [Explorer of Magic] with Cecilia, Ethan, and Allira. She wanted second opinions on what she had found and what it all meant. Alice also used {Shared Memories}, to directly show Ethan and Cecilia what she was seeing, in hopes that one of them could provide her with some of the insight that she was missing.

Alice also offered to share her memories with Allira, in hopes that she would have an idea to share with Alice. Sadly, Allira wasn’t too interested in her research. Allira was willing to smile and chat with Alice for a while every night, but the more time Alice spent with her, the more Alice felt a certain sense of… distance when she talked with Allira. She vaguely recalled that the first time Ethan’s mother had mentioned Allira, she had complained that Allira was friendly with everyone, but never really got to know anyone. Alice was beginning to see what Myra meant. And sadly, that also meant Allira was rather resistant to chatting about Alice’s research. Allira claimed that she wasn’t someone who had ever studied mana or magic in any great detail, which Alice thought made sense. Still, Alice had been hoping for as many opinions as she could get.

At the very least, Cecilia and Ethan were more than happy to weigh in on Alice’s discoveries. On the second night after the monster alpha experiments, the three sat around the campfire and discussed Alice’s mana gem in greater detail.

“I still don’t know why the mana gem has Achievements in it,” said Alice. “It’s obvious linked to Alice mana somehow, but I just… can’t find the connection.”

“Well… since all of the mana is related to your Achievements, and it’s also directly linked to Alice mana… maybe it’s linked to your Immortality Achievement?” said Cecilia, thoughtfully. “It could work as, like… a seed for Immortality. Or something like that.”

“Seed for Immortality?” asked Alice.

“Well… I should preface this by saying that I don’t understand exactly how Immortality works, at least not in any real detail,” said Cecilia, as she eyed Ethan. “Honored Immortal Ethan could probably tell you more about that. But Immortals obviously have something that makes them biologically different from everyone else. They don’t age, and all of them, without exception, have the ability to shrug off lethal wounds as long as their brain isn’t destroyed.

“The fact that Immortals ALL have this trait makes me think that it’s something biological, which the System just lumps together with the Achievement. You also said that the mana gem is only present in people above level 75, which is basically the final part of the race towards Immortality. If you reach level 100 and evolve your class, you start aging so slowly that reaching Immortality is pretty easy. So maybe the mana gem is kind of like the fertile soil that your Immortality Achievement will grow out of. Or maybe it’s some sort of biological construct that grows into whatever characteristics Immortals have, behind the scenes. I don’t know. I’m obviously making a lot of guesses with shaky information here,” said Cecilia, as she shrugged. “In the first place, we don’t really have much data about what happens right before someone reaches Immortality. That makes guessing a lot harder. But I think my ideas might have some merit to them.”

Ethan frowned thoughtfully. “Cecilia’s guess makes some sense. But I can’t figure out why the mana gem would store other Achievements in that case. If the mana gem is supposed to absorb all of your Alice mana and prepare your Immortality Achievement, it seems weird that it has all of the other Achievements mixed into it. After all, you only observed these mana gem in people above level 75. Almost everyone alive on this planet has an Achievement, since a few of them are very easy to acquire. Logically speaking, that should mean that everyone would have a mana gem. I’m mostly a combatant, but that particular bit of information is what’s bothering me the most about it.”

Alice nodded.

To be honest, that was the most confusing part about the mana gems. If they truly contained Achievements, why didn’t everyone have them? Alice didn’t think there were many people in this world who had no Achievements at all, besides six year olds who had just gotten access to their Status Screen.

“You know, what if we’re looking at this the wrong way?” asked Cecilia, after some thought. “I remember you mentioning that only people above level 75 have the mana gems you’ve mentioned… but it’s also true that reaching level 75 is impossible for most people. The average person reaches level 50 or 60 by the time they die of old age. In order to go further, you need at least decently high-rarity Achievements to keep pushing forward. Otherwise, the increasing cost of each level eventually stifles your progress. What if it we’re reversing cause and effect here? Maybe mana gems form once you get a certain rarity of Achievement. In that case, people who have high rarity Achievements form mana gems, and those Achievements also make them capable of reaching level 75? After all, the number of people with the potential to reach level 75 is pretty low. They’re not so rare people never see them – but they’re the elites of the country. Even if they fail to reach Immortality most of the time, they’re still extraordinary people. They’re the best craftsmen or warriors even in large groups of people. Alice hasn’t found a mana gem in anyone below level 75 YET. But that might be more of a probability thing than an absolute restriction.”

Alice thought about that. It was actually a good theory. It made sense. Correlation and causation weren’t the same thing, and Alice had gotten so lost in her thoughts and experiments that she had overlooked that. In fact, now that Cecilia brought it up, Alice also realized that it was possible everyone did have a mana gem. Perhaps they were just so tiny in normal people that they were impossible to see. Alice had already been having problems ‘zooming in’ her vision enough to see most mana gems. If the rarity of someone’s Achievements determined the size of their mana gem, it made perfect sense for her to miss the mana gems in most people’s brains.

Then, Alice realized there was a small problem with that theory.

“I don’t remember seeing a mana gem in my brain, though,” said Alice. “And I’ve had really high rarity Achievements for a very long time. If Achievement rarity was the thing that determined gem size, shouldn’t I have had a pretty big gem since the moment I got here? I got {Outworlder} almost immediately, and that’s a rarity 10 Achievement.”

Cecilia looked thoughtful. “That might be a strike against my theory. That being said, the System also notes that you have increased support from the System, and while we’ve found a few corner cases where that seems to matter… it’s also inconsistent and hard to figure out if we know all of the things the System does differently for you. It’s not inconceivable that the System works differently for you and then treats everyone else differently, especially when it comes to things like mana gems.”

Alice thought about it, and nodded. While experiments and data based on herself were useful, Cecilia did bring up a good point. The System clearly had some sort of difference in how it handled other people versus {Outworlders}. It was hard to say if that interacted with mana gems somehow to mess up her data.

“Cecilia, can I take a look at your brain again?” asked Alice, after a few moments. “I’d like to look for a mana gem in your brain again.”

“Go for it,” said Cecilia, extending an arm so that Alice could easily access it.

Alice activated every single relevant Perk she had that would let her see inside of Cecilia’s body, both from a mundane and a magical perspective. Then, she started carefully scanning Cecilia’s brain again, to see if she could find a mana gem that she might have missed the first time… and once again, she found nothing.

Was it too small for her Perks to pick out? Or was she missing something? Or did it not exist at all? Alice frowned in thought.

“Still didn’t find it?” asked Cecilia. “You look disappointed.”

Alice sighed, and then nodded.

“I was honestly expecting to find a mana gem this time. I have better Perks than before, and even if none of them directly improve my vision… well, I was still expecting something,” said Alice. “Instead, I still see nothing. Maybe there is some sort of fundamental difference between level 79 and level 80?” Alice sighed. “I just don’t know,” she eventually said. Running into a roadblock in her research even after getting her new Perk really made Alice feel frustrated. A lot of her earlier Perks had allowed her to slip past the roadblocks most other researchers encountered during their research. Alice admitted that she had been pretty lucky in that respect… but unfortunately, if she wanted more answers, she would need to wait longer.

“Relax, Alice,” said Cecilia, as she looked at Alice. Alice realized that she had let her shoulders tense up unnaturally, and made some effort to relax her body.

“I remember seeing a phrase in your memories that fits well here. Rome wasn’t built in a day,” said Cecilia. “You just have to keep trying to learn everything, and eventually it’ll all make sense.”

Cecilia even said the last part in English, which made Alice smile. Cecilia was getting better and better at English. Had she been practicing behind Alice’s back?

Hearing her friend try to cheer her up made Alice’s mood a lot better.

“You’re right,” said Alice. “I’m disappointed I didn’t find anything, but I just need more data. I can get that pretty easily once we’re back in Illvaria and I have more mental maps available. I get one a week.” Alice paused. “Do you mind if I make a mental map of your brain next, Cecilia? I’m able to ‘zoom in’ on images I’ve made mental maps of, which helps a lot.”

Stolen story; please report.

“Go for it. In fact, show me once you’ve gotten it set up,” said Cecilia. “I want to see it too.”

Alice smiled, before she returned to her tent and turned in for the night. She might still be stuck at a rather annoying roadblock on her research, but her Perk would solve it. She just needed time for her Perk cooldown.

And with the help of Cecilia and Ethan, Alice knew that she would make progress before things got worse. She just needed to keep making progress every day until she got the information she needed.

* * *

Four days after the monster alpha experiment, Alice finished constructing the mental map of her mana gem. Which is when Alice realized that her new Perk was absolutely amazing.

Mental maps started out as nothing more than fuzzy images of a chunk of mana that Alice could zoom in and out of. However, Alice concentrated on a mental map that was completed, she could create dozens of copies of that item and run them through whatever tests she wanted to. She could use any perk on her mental maps. She could view them from any angle. She had intuitive understanding of how some bits of mana worked that might have taken her months of study to figure out on her own.

And she also started to figure out at least little bits of her mana gem.

First of all, Alice confirmed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the mana gem had every single one of her Achievements stored inside of it. The mana gem that she had found was basically a repository for Achievements.

But it stored far more than just ‘Achievements.’

In addition to Achievements, Alice had found weird bundles of concepts just… floating around in the mana gem. These concepts didn’t seem tied to anything. They didn’t seem to be organized. They didn’t strengthen the user. They didn’t even seem like they were mana, or at least, not entirely. They were more like virtual images, in a way that Alice didn’t quite consciously understand yet.

The first of these concepts that Alice found in her mana gem was the concept of ‘research.’ When Alice focused on that particular concept inside of her mana gem, it felt as the idea of research was contained inside of that facet of the mana gem. One moment, it was like a mound of books. Another moment, it felt like a microscope, allowing her to glimpse at the unseen secrets of magic. Another moment, it felt like a Perk, dissecting the parts of magic that were still unknown to her…

At first, Alice had assumed that this was some sort of… alternate storage for Class seeds. Maybe the System stuffed mana here until it got organized into another Class, or something. After all, Alice found a little bit of [Laborer] mana sticking around in her mana gem, despite the fact that she had no Class for either of those concepts. Alice did distinctly recall doing a little bit of construction work while she was living in Cyra, as part of Illa’s deal, and it wouldn’t surprise her if she had met 1/10th of the requirement for the [Laborer] class or something.

But eventually, Alice realized that wasn’t what was going on. This was because she kept coming back to the concept of research stored inside of her mana gem.

As she continued to study and observe the mana gem during her sleep Alice started to realize something.

The concept of ‘research,’ as defined by the mana inside of her mana gem, looked rather… odd. Inside of the little bundle of mana Alice was investigating, she could also see constant, repeated images of her doing research as well.

In addition to piles of books, microscopes, and Perks, Alice could occasionally get glimpses of herself, viewed through the eyes of others. Once Alice started to pay attention, she recognized the library of her magic academy, where a little miniature memory of Alice reading books could be seen. She was pretty sure that she could also figure out who this particular image came from. Alice distinctly remembered that, at least a few times, she had seen Arsi in the library, and the two had chatted after reading their respective books or talking for the day. In short, this mana gem seemed to contain memories…

But even that seemed to be missing a few things.

Because Alice also found a lot of other little images of Alice, stored inside of the mana gem. And a lot of other things that felt kind of like skills, and kind of like Achievements. Alice was pretty sure that was where the two overlapped, but she could have been completely wrong.

In addition to memories, as Alice continued to explore, she realized that the concept of ‘researcher’ wasn’t quite as nebulous as she had thought.

The best way that Alice could describe was she had found was that the concept of researcher in the mana gem was… kind of like a mold. Or, perhaps, it was similar to a fertilizer that a farmer might use on his crops. The concept of ‘researcher’ in her mana gem was sort of like a giant structure that made it easier for other, related concepts to grow.

It was… hard to put into words. But as Alice continued to investigate, she realized exactly how and why Achievements were able to promote people’s growth speed in certain classes.

As time passed, everyone in this world had formed certain ideas about what certain types of people behaved like. For example, when people pictured a [Swordsman], they generally pictured someone swinging their sword around, whether on a training field or on a battlefield. These collective ideas about what certain people acted like seemed to have eventually reconstructed themselves into a certain, more concrete, set of mana concepts. These defined classes, and how they worked. But they also created Achievements, which seemed to be more related to these concepts than Alice had realized. Whenever someone became closer to a certain mana-concept, their related classes would grow more quickly, sort of like a child stepping into their parent’s clothing and putting on makeup to help them resemble their parent more.

Since Alice had accomplished several feats of extraordinary research since coming to this world, people’s ideas about what a ‘great researcher’ looked like had intermingled with her own existence. Thus, without knowing that Alice existed or having any specific idea about who ‘Alice’ was, their expectations about what a great researcher looked like had flooded into Alice’s body, making it easier for her to grow her research-related Classes.

The distinction between what was supposed to be a normal action that helped someone improve their class, and something that counted for an Achievement, was kind of fuzzy. Alice wasn’t sure what distinguished the two yet. And part of that was because… Achievements were a complete mess.

Alice had realized something profound.

The rest of the System was extremely distinct and well organized. Alice could state with certainty exactly what an Attribute point was. She could write pages upon pages of notes, discussing what exactly a Class seed was.

However, classifying what an Achievement was behind the scenes was hard. Not because Alice was bad at research.

No, it was because everything the System didn’t know what to do with seemed to be an Achievement.

Alice had assumed that the reason she had a hard time finding Achievements previously was because she just hadn’t found mana gems yet, either due to size limitations or because level 75’s were the only ones that had them. But as Alice continued exploring her mana gem, she learned that Achievements were basically the misc folder in an otherwise well organized system.

Does someone have a distinct image of who Alice is, and the System wants to deal with the excess mana?

Make it into an Achievement.

Has someone gotten closer to the concept of ‘research,’ and they need a way to bridge the gap between concept and human without warping the person’s personality?

Make it into an Achievement.

Is there some sort of weird mana fluctuation, that the System needs to handle somehow?

That’s also an Achievement.

Are people getting weaker because of old age?

Achievement.

Apparently, Achievements like {Malnourished} and {Old Age} had a bit less to do with mana than Alice had thought they did. They still had some links to mana, but that was probably mostly because a lot of people believed that {Malnourished} and {Old Age} made people weaker. Alice had the distinct impression that the System would have classified those as Achievements either way.

Achievement was basically a dumping site where the System tossed absolutely everything that didn’t fit into the rest of someone’s status screen.

Most Achievements seemed to be related to these mana concepts that Alice had found… but a disturbing number of them just seemed like random nonsense as well. The Achievements that had any sort of impact on levelling speed all had the strange concept-images that Alice had discovered. But really, that was the most consistent thing Alice found in the entire mess.

The only other thing that Alice nailed down with absolute certainty was that the mana gem was trying to connect to the System.

At least, she was pretty sure that was what she had found.

Alice had long confirmed that the System operated off of a few certain principles when it came to things like Perk selection. The System would always figure out what the person choosing a Perk wanted, and then select from a very wide list of possible Perks, before presenting the Perk chooser a few options. These options would essentially be based on what the user wanted – but there was an extremely consistent set of Perks that the System drew from. A [Barmaid], for example, had a few hundred different Perks that they could unlock at level 5 – but the System always pulled from that selection of perks for whatever the [Barmaid] could unlock.

Obviously, that meant that the System that people used on a daily basis had some sort of connection to the mainframe of the System. And Alice was pretty sure that she had found the spot where the System connected to the local version of the System people used.

When Alice tried to use her System seed to translate what the little facet of the gem she had found was doing, Alice essentially saw one message.

Error! Cannot connect to mainframe

Trying again.

This phrase repeated over… and over… and over… and over again. Every five seconds that Alice used her mana to translate the message, she just saw the same thing cycling over and over again.

At the very least, Alice had now confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that the way the System handled Achievements was somehow meant to be updated every few seconds. It was probably the only reason the entire Achievement system worked at all, considering how absurdly inconsistent the whole mess was behind the scenes. The local version of the System just wasn’t meant to handle the complicated mess at all, and the System was supposed to take over and keep everything running.

Sadly, the System was gone now.

Which meant that Alice had a much bigger task in front of her than she had imagined. Instead of just figuring out how one category of ‘things the System does’ worked, Alice needed to untangle the giant mess and figure out how every single little component worked. Otherwise, Alice stood a very real chance of making the Achievements worse instead of better.

At the very least, Alice was now pretty sure that part of Cecilia’s speculation was right. There was a curious little bit of the mana gem that looked like it was supposed to be doing something with Alice mana. It just… wasn’t working, for whatever reason. Alice could intuitively tell that it was like a jigsaw puzzle that was missing a piece. Alice mana fit perfectly into that missing puzzle piece… she just wasn’t quite sure whether stuffing all of the Alice mana into the same area would break everything. {Safety Analysis} was giving her ‘bad idea but not lethal’ vibes, and Alice wasn’t quite sure what to make of that.

The day after Alice discovered what a disorganized mess Achievements were, Ethan and Allira informed her of something.

“We’ve almost reached the palace,” said Ethan. “We’re going to say hello, and then move on. We just need to announce our presence before exiting the territory, or the [Queen] might think that we’re avoiding her.”

Allira grimaced. “I wouldn’t mind avoiding her,” she said.

Ethan also rolled his eyes, but the two still led the group towards the city Alice could now see in the distance.