The process of squishing all of the materials into an artifact was… complicated.

Alice watched in mute fascination as Demor started weaving together the three materials in front of her.

Alice had always vaguely felt that enchanting resembled coding from her previous world. Most enchantments resembled if/then statements from a code. Of course, there were plenty of differences between writing a code in a computer and making an enchantment, but Alice had always felt that they were outweighed by the similarities.

However, if creating an enchantment resembled the creation of a set of if/then statements, creating an Artifact was more like trying to create a human brain using metal instead of organic matter. Alice had assumed that Artifacts were nearly as rigid and ‘dumb’ as regular enchantments, but as she watched Demor work, she realized that wasn’t the case.

In fact, indications of this had already been right in front of her, she just hadn’t connected the dots. In Illvaria, the Artifact that controlled the canals of Southern Illvaria was comprised of ten different artificial magic seeds. Based on Demor’s description of how all of this worked, that meant that the Artifact had 10 mana globs and 10 ‘concept materials.’ In theory, that meant the Artifact could only have 10 if/then statements programmed into it. Demor had also mentioned that Artifacts often had supplementary materials in them… but even so, there was no way Illvaria’s canal artifact ran off of if/then statements.

The Artifact in Illvaria responded fairly intelligently to a wide range of scenarios. Based on historical records from the academy Library, Alice knew that the Artifact in Illvaria could handle most ‘normal’ disasters. If there was too much rainfall one year, the Artifact would handle some of the water and keep it from damaging towns. If there wasn’t enough rainfall, the Artifact would add in some more water to supplement the lacking rainfall for the year. The Artifact also controlled water erosion, to keep new river channels from forming, and did dozens of other things to keep the canals stable. The Artifact did hundreds of different things… and it responded to each change in real-time, without any need for further input from users or further information.

If every single one of those actions was broken down into if/then statements, how many instructions would that take? Tens of thousands? Millions? Alice had no idea, but she was sure that there was no way any material in this world could hold that many instructions. Materials that could hold eight instructions were already rarities. Finding a material that could hold millions of instructions would obviously be a pipe dream.

So obviously, Artifacts worked differently. After watching Demor create an Artifact, Alice had a better idea how Artifacts sidestepped this problem.

Artifacts didn’t use ‘if/then’ statements at all. Or at least, not in the same way a regular enchantment did. Based on Demor’s instructions and demonstration, Alice realized that Demor was essentially molding an Artifact into a concept. It was actually somewhat similar to the manaborn swamp the group had encountered on the way here. The Artifact had some sort of specific ‘instruction,’ and then it had a specific ‘concept’ that it followed. Alice suspected that the Artifact in Illvaria, for example had the instruction of ‘maintain’ or ‘stabilize,’ followed by an image of the canal network it was supposed to keep stable.

This was surprising for Alice, because it also seemed to point directly at the ‘true’ nature of mana. Mana seemed to respond to people’s beliefs and ideas, taking any idea that people ‘believed’ in and then turning that into a real, physical part of the world. The System operated off of a similar net of background operations. It took people’s beliefs about what certain ‘jobs’ did for a living, and then made those into Classes, plus or minus several dozen details that Alice still needed to figure out. Artifacts also took a specific concept, and then turned that into reality.

Of course, there were also differences between the way Artifacts interacted with the world and the true nature of mana. Artifacts didn’t seem to interact with the belief mana in their surroundings at all.

Instead, as Alice watched Demor weave the materials of his organic concept metal and the glob of pure mana together, she eventually realized where the Artifact was getting its ‘concept’ from. Instead of hooking up to the beliefs of everyone in the world, it looked like Demor was somehow infusing his beliefs into the artifact as he created it.

Alice couldn’t see exactly what was going on, but from what she could observe, Demor wasn’t just adding mana and instructions to the Artifact as he created it. He was also tossing into some beliefs about what ‘healing’ was as he created the healing Artifact. This meant that rather than a bunch of tiny, if/then statements, there was a specific ‘pattern’ that the Artifact pulled from in order to figure out how it was supposed to behave. Alice wasn’t entirely sure how ‘specific’ this pattern was. After all, Demor was the one creating the artifact, not her. However, Alice still found the perceived resemblance between AI and the Artifact to be interesting, since it seemed almost like the Artifact was creating an artificial version of Demor’s brain to emulate his beliefs and use them to function.

“All right, that’s the Artifact creation process in a nutshell,” said Demor, after a while. He looked at the massive glob of interwoven mana and dream metal, and smiled contentedly at it. “It’s a little bit faster than usual, because I’m cutting some corners here. It’s a pretty shoddy healing artifact, honestly. It can heal someone completely once a day, sort of like the second life most Immortals get. As far as Artifacts go, it’s on the weaker end… but it’s far from worthless.” He turned towards Alice. “Are you learning anything from this?” Rather than sounding like a teacher, Demor sounded more curious. It was as if he didn’t really think Alice would learn anything from watching, but was willing to be proven wrong.

“I learned a few things about the innate functions of an artifact,” said Alice, nodding. “But… I don’t think this is the part I need to pay attention to.”

As sad as Alice was to admit it, her first glimpse of Artifact creation was fascinating… and it was also probably not the most important part of this whole process. Which meant she probably wouldn’t get to see more artifacts being created, at least not for a while.

Right now, Alice needed to find a way to create artificial magic seeds. Then, she needed to figure out how the System turned those artificial magic seeds into Class seeds. As much as it stung to give up the opportunity to see an Immortal with centuries of practice work on their specialty, right now Alice had other needs she needed to focus on.

“I see,” said Demor. “It sounds like you have a better idea what you want now. Which material do you want to observe the creation process for?”

“Could you show me the process of creating an Artificial magic seed?” asked Alice. “I think that’s most relevant to my current research. Anything else I can pick up is a nice bonus, but that’s the important bit.”

Demor nodded.

“Sure.” His grin grew a bit wider and toothier, as he scanned the rest of the room. “I have a few ‘core materials’ prepared for this purpose.” Demor grimaced. “There is a slight problem, though. It takes a while to create an artificial magic seed. Usually, it’s a process that takes a few weeks, even if I rush things and cut some corners. If you want to see a quality product, then it could take months – or even years of hard work.”

Alice winced. “Faster is better. The situation outside is getting worse with every passing day, and I’m hoping some parts of this will be relevant to fixing the whole mess.”

“In that case, I’ll show you the fastest version of this process I know of. Since I’ll be skipping several steps, the seed will be much lower in quality than usual… but it should still have some value as a target of observation.”

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Alice nodded, and Demor pulled out a small patch of grass from a separate storage container in the room. Alice blinked in surprise.

Demor shrugged. “Core materials take all sorts of shapes and sizes. I found this patch of grass 17 years ago and stored it. If I wanted to buy it, I would need to go to the central continent and then spend… oh, probably around 500 gold crowns on it. Core materials get pricey, since the central continent burns through them so fast. Probably because they’re almost always at war.”

Alice winced. She wasn’t even used to using gold crowns. Even a few hundred Gold Suns still felt like an outrageous amount of money for her, and that was despite spending time near an Immortal. No wonder nations didn’t create artifacts much. This was the price for creating one artificial magic seed – and most Artifacts incorporated multiple seeds together, plus supplementary materials. The overall price tag for a ‘good’ Artifact was probably staggering, numbering in the tens of thousands when it came to Gold Crowns. While most nations could probably afford to make new Artifacts occasionally, they would eat a good chunk of the treasury each time. Then, if an Immortal [Enchanter] was making an artifact for others, they would also expect to be paid for their time… meaning that countries without an Immortal [Enchanter] would always hesitate to create new Artifacts.

Alice sighed. On the bright side, if she ever managed to learn to create Artifacts without needing core materials, she would have an easy way to acquire large amounts of wealth. On the other hand, it also put into perspective just how difficult her current task might be. If materials for artifacts were so expensive, nations would have put plenty of research and resources into lessening that need. In other words, Alice had a few months to accomplish something nations had actively tried and failed to accomplish for centuries. Even with the advantages she had… Alice felt daunted by the idea.

Unaware of her thoughts, Demor spent a few minutes examining his handful of grass. Then, he glanced at her again. “I’m about to start. Pay attention.”

After that, Demor started sending mana into the grass. Alice watched in curiosity. At first, it looked almost like Demor was just randomly flooding the grass with mana. Everything she saw reminded her of someone charging a battery, or a faucet pouring water into a bathtub. It didn’t seem like there was any sort of caution or precision involved at all. More frustratingly, the scene was also bright. The energy Demor was flooding the handful of grass with looked like a crackling bonfire of mana, and nearly blinded her the first time she glanced at it. It took several seconds before she blinked the tears out of her eyes and started looking for details in the process happening in front of her.

The mana Demor was sending into the handful of grass wasn’t just pure mana. Instead, the mana he was pumping into the grass was divided into two layers. The outer layer looked like pure mana, but the inner layer was made purely of System mana. That gave Alice a glimmer of hope. If System mana was a big part of this equation, it meant that as she constructed her System magic seed, it would become more possible to replicate what was happening in front of her eyes.

Alice observed the System mana, as it carefully controlled Demor’s mana. The moment it touched the grass, it looked like the System mana formed a sort of support structure. It seemed to be anchoring Demor’s mana in place, while using the grass as a sort of foundation to keep it from all falling apart. In a weird way, it reminded Alice of how people built bridges back on earth. The System mana was kind of like a support pillar, while Demor’s mana acted as the ‘surface’ of the bridge, and the grass acted as a sort of underlying foundation to set the support pillars into.

Alice continued watching as Demor poured more mana into the Artifact, but didn’t see anything ‘new’ happening afterwards. A large part of what happened was simply an expansion of the support pillars, foundation, and ‘bridge surface’ of the mana construct. Alice started to frown.

She was still missing a lot of details she needed. It didn’t look like anything was going to happen until a certain threshold of mana appeared, though…

Finally, Demor sighed.

“That’s it for today. I’m starting to get lower on mana than I’m comfortable with,” said Demor.

Alice blinked in surprise. So little? She used her mana perception Perks to evaluate the glob of mana, and then her eyes widened.

The ‘little’ amount of mana that she had seen was nearly 5,000 Mariums. No wonder Demor was running low. Alice seriously doubted he was out of mana… but no Immortal ever seemed to fully let their guard down. Demor was probably reserving somewhere between half and three quarters of his mana… but the amount of mana he had poured into the grass looked like it was only a few hundred Mariums if she didn’t use her Perks to evaluate it. Maybe there was something more than her observations to this process. She squinted at the handful of grass again, and realized that she hadn’t paid enough attention to mana density. The mana in front of her was dense. So dense, in fact, that it resembled sludge, instead of the almost gas-like form mana usually had.

Alice sighed, but nodded. “Understandable,” she said.

“Did you get anything useful out of your observations?” asked Demor, for the second time that day.

Alice frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll have to think some more, and run everything through some Perks.”

Demor nodded. “Well, I wish you the best of luck.” With that, Demor led Alice back out of his enchanting room, and the two returned to the dining room.

Alice noticed that a few shadows moved next to Allira as they stepped into the room, almost as if they were reporting everything that had happened to Allira. Allira didn’t say a word, although she and Ethan did glance at Alice. After scanning her for a few moments, they both relaxed.

Jonathan, as well as his family, gave Alice and Demor more casual looks, before they returned to what they had previously been doing. It looked like they were playing a card game, although Alice had no clue what the rules for the game were. Alice found herself a bit surprised that this world had developed their own version of playing cards, but shrugged afterwards. It didn’t seem that relevant either way..

“How did it go?” asked Ethan, after Alice returned to her seat. As he spoke, a rainbow bubble appeared around the two, isolating them from any potential eavesdropping.

“I observed a few things, although I’m not sure how to piece it all together yet,” said Alice. “I can see that the first thing I need to do is condense my mana. A lot. The mana that Demor used when creating an artificial magic seed looked like sludge. I have never condensed my mana to that level, but I suspect it’s necessary for Artifact creation, even if I find a way to get around the other needs. I can tell that the ‘core material’ for an artificial magic seed just acts as a kind of stabilizer, as well. So I need to figure out how to stabilize mana without it. That sounds difficult… but maybe there’s a way,” said Alice, thoughtfully. “I don’t know how the System avoids this step. I’ll have to think about it more, and maybe test a few things out. Maybe the System just uses pure mana manipulation to keep everything from falling apart until it’s done?” Alice frowned. “I wish I could see how the System creates a Class seed. Maybe I can get lucky, and one of those spurts of rainbow mana will appear again and build a class seed in front of my eyes?”

Ethan snorted. “If only life were that easy. Well, I suppose it’s not impossible, but…”

Alice sighed. “Yeah, it’s pretty unlikely. All I can do is work with the memories I have. At least I did get to observe my [Fisherwoman] class seed being reconstructed, even if I wasn’t paying attention to some of the right details at the time. Maybe I can figure something out from that. But my observational skills were also much less precise and detailed back that, since I had far fewer Perks to work with.” Alice resisted the urge to sigh again. As much as photographic memory was helpful, there were still some obvious limitations to what she could do, even with near-perfect memory.

“Well, don’t be discouraged. You managed to get this far, so you’re clearly doing something right,” said Ethan. “Anyway, let me know if there are any supplies you need. I’ll get them for you. Just focus on your research.” Ethan’s lips tightened into a grimace, before he nodded at her.

Alice she nodded. Since the food Demor had made was still sitting in the cook pot, she got another bowl of food. After she finished eating, she was about to return to her room, when Jonathan stopped her.

“Miss Alice?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“Do you have any ideas on artificial magic seeds that I can help with?” he asked.

“Not quite yet. However, would you do me a favor? I need you to do some fishing,” said Alice, after a few moments of thought. “I have seen my own fishing class seed get constructed by the System. I missed a bunch of details, but maybe I can put something together if I learn more…”

Jonathan nodded. “I’ll start fishing tonight then. Do you just need me to hit the base unlock requirements for the [Fisherman] class?”

“Probably. At the very least, I don’t think it would hurt. And if I can’t figure out how to turn it into a class seed, it still shouldn’t prove much of a problem for you to suppress one level of mental interference, right?”

“It should be fine,” said Jonathan. “In that case, I’ll see you later. Have a good night.” Alice moved up the stairs to her room, before she collapsed onto her bed. It had been a long day. She had a lot to think about, and she would probably think carefully once she entered her dream library… but for now, Alice just enjoyed the process of relaxing as she laid in bed, waiting to fall asleep.