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Chapter 212 - A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World
🕑 Added 2025-03-28 22:46:58 +0000 UTCWhen Alice returned to Demor’s research lab, she found the man hunched over the Artifact they had recovered from the Society. The Artifact didn’t look particularly different from the last time she had seen it. It still strongly resembled a plate of spaghetti gone horribly wrong. She sighed, before she knocked on the side of the wall to get his attention.
“Demor? Are you free right now?” she asked.
“It depends on what you want, Lady Alice,” he said. “For what reason have you come?”
“I came to check on your progress,” she said. “I have a few things I’m hoping the artifact will be able to resolve, and the faster we can get it working, the better it will be.”
Demor sighed, before he gestured towards the Artifact. “This damn thing is posing problem after problem. The person who created this Artifact is a lunatic.” He flashed a wide, toothy grin at Alice. “I like their style. But it does pose a bit of a problem when trying to make this thing work the way it’s intended to. Do you want to see?”
“Of course,” said Alice, as she moved closer to a set of half-physical and half-mana pipes.
“Based off of the tidbits of your own research that you’ve shared with me, I’ve been trying to get the Artifact to work in conjunction with the statue,” he said. “I was having a very hard time getting the Artifact to work on its own, but there are some parts of what I’m working with that I simply don’t understand. Perhaps you would be willing to share some more of your own research with me, to make my job easier?” He asked.
Alice hesitated. She was, indeed, holding some information closer to her chest. After all, she was increasingly aware of just how easy it would be to abuse her research. Sharing enough that people could solve the current crisis, without creating a new one immediately afterwards was a difficult line to walk. It was also a bit difficult to trust Demor, at least the way that she trusted people like Cecilia and Ethan. She didn’t mind outsourcing work to him, but telling him how human beliefs could utterly warp the fabric of reality seemed dangerous before she found a way to curtail this problem.
However, if she didn’t share enough information, everyone would die from the crisis. Alice sighed.
“What have you actually managed to find out?” she asked, as she tried to divert the subject. If Demor had run into a problem she could solve with her own knowledge base, she could avoid sharing too much dangerous information and still accomplish her goal. She could only hope that Demor would drop his attempt to find out more.
“Well… regarding the artifact itself, when paired with the passages from that Immortal’s notebook you showed me, I’ve confirmed that this thing is supposed to manipulate reality mana to do… something. I’m not quite sure what, but the Artifact is meant to cover a huge range. At full capacity, it could probably cover half of a country the size of Illvaria. The way the Artifact regenerates mana using its artificial magic seed is also quite clever - it’s not something I’ve ever seen before. However, I have no clue what the mana is supposed to be doing, so I have no clue whether it’s working or not. Reality mana seems like it’s supposed to define reality, and then make that reality ‘come to life?’ Or something like that? But as far as I can tell, every time I actually use the Artifact to ‘change reality,’ nothing happens.” Demor poked the Artifact to demonstrate, and a cloud of mana appeared right in front of him. He pointed at the cloud of mana, and snorted.
“See? No infinite bars of gold appeared to fund my extravagant purchases and material acquisitions.”
Alice frowned. “It can only cover an area half the size of Illvaria?” She had been hoping that Demor would find a way to increase the range. If the Artifact could cover the entire planet, or even the entire southern continent, that would have been good enough. She could make another one for the Central Continent, and that would have kept the majority of humanity safe during the crisis. Illvaria was far from a large country. If the Artifact could only cover half of Illvaria, they would probably need hundreds of these things to cover the planet - and there was no way they had enough Immortal [Enchanters] to make all those Artifacts.
Demor nodded. “It seems like the Artifact could have reached a much wider area of effect… if it were complete. Unfortunately, it is not complete. That’s a big part of what I’m struggling with. Not only do I not know exactly what the completed Artifact is supposed to do, the damn thing isn’t even finished. Worse, the madmen from the Society have clearly gotten a bit creative during the creation process, meaning there are a bunch of smaller quirks in this Artifact’s creation process. I need to disassemble each of those, figure out how they work, and then figure out how that ties into the whole thing. I can do it, but it’s not fast.”
“I see,” said Alice. She was beginning to get an idea of just how many issues Demor was facing during the study of the Artifact. The task she had handed him might not be impossible, but completing it in a reasonable time frame was probably beyond his abilities.
“So, what have you actually tried?” asked Alice.
“I did try combining the Artifact with the statue that you recovered. I thought maybe that would help the whole thing along, and I was running out of ideas for fast, easy solutions. My Perks indicated that it might be a good idea. However, the statue itself is also a mess. According to you, the statue is made to be some sort of… intelligent replacement for the System. But however it’s supposed to accomplish that is beyond me. I tried just sticking the statue in the middle of clouds of Reality mana, but that didn’t do anything - or if it did something, I didn’t notice it, at least. The third time I tried it, the statute did start draining mana from its surroundings though.” Demor’s eyebrows furrowed. “Damn thing nearly released the monsters in the basement. That would be a huge mess. I shut it down, but frankly, I have no idea how these two things are supposed to synergize, if they are indeed meant to work together. I can’t get the Artifact working on its own. I also can’t get the statue to do anything on its own. I am quite frustrated by this.”
Demor sighed. “I get the impression that maybe the issue with Reality Mana is that nothing is telling it how it’s supposed to work. I could be wrong, but that’s my theory. We both assumed that Reality mana would just… pull information out of the Mage’s head, and use that to shape reality. But now, I suspect some sort of specialized input method is needed to get Reality mana to understand what it’s supposed to be doing.”
Alice frowned.
No instructions? That… was a problem. Alice hadn’t tried using Reality mana yet, so she was only aware of its existence - not any of the actual mechanics behind its use. How did one tell a non-sapient, non-sentient clump of mana what reality was supposed to look like? Alice frowned, before she turned her attention towards her mana types. Luckily, her compound magic seed had Communication mana as one of its mana types. Perhaps that would allow her to solve her problem?
It was worth a shot.
Alice decided to start small, in case her little experiment didn’t go as planned. She turned towards the Society’s artifact, as well as the huge amount of sored up reality mana.
“Can you have the artifact release a very small cloud of reality mana?” asked Alice. “I want to run some tests.”
“Sure,” said Demor, before he started fiddling with the artifact. A bit of rainbow mana flowed through his body and into the Artifact, and a moment later, one of the pipes emitted a small cloud of Reality mana.
Demor looked at it and frowned. “I was hoping for a bigger cloud of mana,” he admitted. “This thing is way too finicky. And delicate. Who the hell makes an artifact that’s literally just a giant tangle of enchanted pipes? Reminds me of a ball of yarn. Idiotic design.”
Alice didn’t say anything as Demor snorted and harrumphed at the Artifact design. Instead, she entended a mana tendril into the cloud of rainbow mana, and then started trying to feed it communication mana.
It felt almost like she was connecting to something… but at the same time, it felt as if something was missing.
Alice started focusing on the way she thought reality was supposed to look like. She only had a high-school education back on earth, but she still had at least a reasonable idea what the physical world looked like underneath the hood, so to speak. Atoms, molecules, gravity, electromagnetic force, strong nuclear force… all of Alice’s jumbled together knowledge of physics came to the forefront of her mind as she tried to create a framework for the physical world. It was patchy, but it was probably close enough that it would help, at least.
Then, she tried shoving that information into her mana using communication mana. A moment later, Alice frowned. The mana still wasn’t quite responding as expected. What was missing?
A moment later, Alice realized what she needed to do.
The biggest problem here was language. Mana didn’t ‘think’ in pictures, words, and symbols, the way Alice did. Mana didn’t think at all, because it wasn’t sentient or sapient. So what Alice needed to do was find a way to translate her thoughts into a ‘language’ the mana could understand.
Normally, that would be impossible - after all, communicating anything to something with no ability to understand it was essentially a definition error.
However, Alice had access to a type of mana that could overcome this gap. Meaning mana.
Alice tried infusing meaning mana into her communication attempt, and this time, she started to see results. The cloud of reality mana started to shiver, almost as if it were trying to form a tornado. After several seconds, Alice felt that the mana was… probably doing what it was supposed to do?
The problem was that it was hard to track. After all, the only real effect of reality mana was to suppress or amplify the impact of beliefs and mana on something. Thus, it was hard to check how much of an effect it was having on a certain area or object. Nobody had any strong beliefs about the random patch of air in front of her, so the Reality mana was amplifying or reducing the effect of… nothing. Alice quickly realized that trying to multiply anything by zero was a wasted effort.
Alice thought of Jonathan a moment later. Jonathan had volunteered to be a guinea pig, and Alice had just used a lot of belief mana in order to patch up the version of the System she had given Jonathan. That belief mana had obvious, visible effects, and if this experiment didn’t work, she didn’t think anything harmful would happen to him. It was a good way to test Reality mana safely. She ran a few questions through {Safety Analysis}, just to make sure she wasn’t about to accidentally hurt Jonathan, and then smiled. Her tests were at least reasonably safe.
“I’ll be right back,” said Alice, before she dashed out of the room. She found Jonathan, dragged him over to Demor’s lab, and made him stand right in front of the Artifact.
“Can you have the artifact release another cloud of reality mana?” Alice asked. “Release it right on top of Jonathan.”
Demor gave Jonathan and Alice a curious look, but did as she asked. Alice tried her experiment again.
This time, Alice focused on what she understood about the System. The way it worked. The way its mana flowed into the human body to control it, and prevent harmful effects from arising as a result of the interaction between people and mana. The properties of mana, and how they could harm humans… and the way the System used those very aspects of mana to instead empower people and allow them to survive in this world. The way Class seeds worked, at least in her limited understanding of them. Her understanding of her own Class seed. She communicated all of those ideas with the Reality mana cloud in front of her.
At the same time, Alice used her other mana tendrils, as well as {Burst of Multitasking}, to investigate what was going on inside of Jonathan’s body.
This time, the effects of her attempt were far more noticeable. The knockoff Class seed inside of Jonathan’s body started to shiver, almost as if it had been trying to dance. Then, Alice saw little flecks of belief-strings of mana drift start to writhe around like worms. Things shifted slightly out of alignment, before they swapped to a new type of alignment. It seemed every so slightly more stable and complete than before, although Alice wasn’t entirely sure if she was just imagining things or not.
Finally, the seed stopped changing. Alice squinted at it for a few seconds, just to make sure that nothing had changed for the worse, and then frowned. Things were different than before, but Alice didn’t have a perfect understanding of the System, so she couldn’t pinpoint all of the changes. She did feel that Jonathan’s Class seed had probably improved… but in what ways had it gotten better?
Alice sighed.
Even though she still didn’t understand every component of a System magic seed, she could now state with certainty that Jonathan’s Class seed looked closer to a finished product. She wasn’t quite sure what had changed, but with the assurance of {Safety Analysis}, she was at least reasonably sure that she hadn’t done anything that would kill him on the spot, or anything like that. In fact, she was pretty sure that the reality mana she had just used had helped to correct a few smaller mistakes in her attempt at making a Class seed. She didn’t think any of those mistakes had been critical problems - they would have probably slowed down Jonathan’s levelling speed, or reduced how quickly he could absorb Class mana. Those were minor issues. However, she was somewhat sure that Reality mana had, indeed, helped a bit - though she would need to keep observing Jonathan to make sure she hadn’t messed up and made things worse somehow.
After that, Alice thought of the Society notebook again, and started to feel confused. Trying to find a way to use the reality mana had been difficult, and she wasn’t even sure that this was the ‘optimal’ way to use reality mana.
Why hadn’t the Society mentioned the correct way to get reality mana working in their notebook? The Society did seem like it had left a bunch of information specifically to make her life easier in the notebook, and this was certainly one of the more important stumbling blocks. The Society had probably understood how important Reality mana was to her. Why hadn’t they listed how to properly use it?
Alice frowned. Reality mana amplified the way that mana and beliefs interacted with each other, which also implied that they were naturally ‘attracted’ to each other. Maybe there was some way to get it working? Say, by using belief mana to directly feed a certain version of reality into reality mana? Alice wasn’t sure exactly how one would use Reality mana to amplify or suppress a certain set of beliefs, if the mana type naturally reacted to and fed off of strings of belief mana in the first place. However, perhaps the Society had somehow gotten this mess working by accident?
It was an assumption that Alice had no way to prove or disprove yet. However, the notebook did detail many other experiments and ideas in-depth, but was suspiciously silent about this vital piece of information. As much as she didn’t like the Society’s methods, she had to admit that they had, at least thus far, genuinely tried to help her… once they died and stopped trying to kidnap her and kill her friends, at least.
If the Society had managed to somehow accidentally fulfill the conditions, it would make a lot more sense. The society’s understanding of Reality mana was also patchy and filled with holes, so perhaps there were other aspects of it that she would need to explore or understand in more depth. That was her best guess for why the notebook was missing this information, at least.
Alice scratched her head, before she sighed. At least she had found a way to get the bloody mana working. Now, she just had to figure out how to propagate that to the entirety of the Artifact’s range, and preferably, a way to automate it, because she still needed to sleep and trying to transmit her beliefs to the Artifact 24/7 was impractical. She had also noticed that the mana further away from her mana tendrils had reacted far more slowly to external stimuli, meaning there was probably a range limit to how effective reality mana modifications could be.
Alice sighed again .Sometimes, she felt like every time she solved a problem, it created two new ones. But at least she was still making progress.
Author’s Note:
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Comments
Rain
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Stephanie Washburn
Ah, Alice. Forgetting to communicate with your research partner and test subjects once they've done the bare minimum you need them to do.
MinE
She could just put Alice Mana in there to get the same effect and just isolate and/or kill off everyone else to make sure it perfectly represents her knowledge.
kyle
An alternate win condition: expand the artifacts range and force her beliefs onto the rest of the world . . . That sounds a bit more like a tyrannical dictator now that I read that out loud.
