The first thing Alice did was look at her [Explorer of Magic] Perks. She had been looking forward to this moment for a long time now. Just to make absolutely sure she wasn’t making a mistake, Alice first scanned the new Perks she had unlocked by reaching level 85. One of the Perks looked all right – it would give her an extra five magic tendrils and slightly increase the effect of her magic stat. Alice did want to increase her combat abilities. But it wasn’t her priority right now. Alice had already had plans for her level 85 Perk combination, and she had just been checking to make sure there weren’t any better options. Without further hesitation, Alice combined the Perks {Expanding Comprehension} and {Intuitive Magic Modelling}. Expanding Comprehension (Tier 2 Perk, level 55 Explorer of Magic) (Level 50 Explorer of magic Perk + Level 40 Explorer of Magic Perk) Perk Costs: Infusion of Comprehension + Reset Perk sacrificed to create this Perk. Once per two weeks, you may select one of your seeds. Over the course of the next hour, you will gradually expand your understanding of the Seed, as well as the concepts associated with it. The clarity will be lower compared to directly using {Infusion of Comprehension}. In addition, the Mana Conversion Ratio of the seed may improve by small amounts with each use of this Perk. At maximum an increase of 5% may occur. This Perk may never improve the Mana Conversion ratio of a given seed by more than 50% in total. Warning: You will be helpless during this time, so it is highly recommended you activate this perk only when your safety is assured and you are in an environment where you will not be disturbed. Alice had gotten a great deal of use out of {Expanding Comprehension} in the past. It had given her a lot of inspiration and a lot of useful discoveries. However, Alice was starting to feel like the Perk was just a bit underpowered compared to the questions she was trying to solve now. Her System seed was too complex, and there were too many types of mana Alice needed to untangle. {Expanding Comprehension} just wasn’t suited for handling compound magic seeds, and that was what Alice was working with these days. So the perk needed an upgrade. She had high hopes for what the Perk would achieve once combined with {Intuitive Mana Modelling}. Intuitive Magic Modelling (Tier 2 Perk, level 65 Explorer of Magic) (Level 5 Explorer of Magic Perk + Level 45 Explorer of Magic Perk) The best idea she had was to grab {Accelerated Thinking} as the other part of her Perk combination process. Requirements: Scholar level 10 or higher, Intelligence 125 or greater Slightly improves your thinking and processing speed. It was a bit of a basic Perk, which Alice had grabbed all the way back at level 15. At the time, Alice distinctly remembered that she hadn’t even found a Perk from her level 15 options, and had chosen to go back and grab another level 10 Perk. Alice imagined that {Accelerated Thinking} paired with {Scholar of Magic} might enhance the rate she understood magic AND the rate at which she improved magic seeds… or something like that. In any case, even though she wasn’t entirely sure what the result would be, Alice felt that she had a reasonable direction for improvement now. She stuffed the two Perks into the combination screen, and then activated her level 65 Perk combination. Alice felt the two Perks start to combine, and a few moments later, a new Perk appeared. Alice used her half-built System seed to fix the Perk’s various grammatical and comprehensibility issues, before she started reading. Scholar of Thought and Magic Tier 2 Perk, (level 65 Scholar) (Level 35 Scholar Perk + Level 15 Scholar Perk) Perk Costs: Scholar of Magic + Accelerated Thinking sacrificed to create this Perk. Your ability to understand magic is greatly expanded if you have a magic seed already related to the concept you are trying to understand. As your understanding grows, so too will your related magic seeds. Another upgrade to her understanding was an exceptional boon, especially given how absurdly complicated some of the topics she was trying to understand were. Combined with the understanding boost from her other new Perk, {Magic Comprehension}, Alice suspected that she would be able to do her research far more quickly and efficiently than before. And the Perk hadn’t lost the ability to increase the size of her magic seeds – instead, based on the wording of the Perk, Alice suspected her magic seeds would grow faster than before. The Perk wasn’t anything fancy, but it did what it needed to and helped Alice improve. With both of her new Perks built, Alice focused her attention inwards, towards her magic gem. She spent a few minutes nailing down its exact location, before she continued using her ‘mental map’ to build a perfect copy of it inside of her mind. Alice quickly confirmed that she could ‘build’ her mental map of the mana gem far more quickly if she was also observing the real thing. At the same time, her {Scholar of Thought and Magic} Perk was actually surprisingly helpful – it was capable of assisting her in making intuitive leaps that she might have had a hard time making originally. She could look at some of the components of the mana gem, and just… understand what they were trying to do. She would be able to do the same thing with some work, but it probably would have taken her several minutes of squinting at each part of the mana gem to figure out what she was looking at. The help from her two newest Perks let her skip this process. But Alice was shocked when she looked at one of the ‘facets’ of the mana gem, and realized that it boosted her… physical strength? To be precise, it seemed that the facet of the mana gem she was looking at was a +1% boost to the effect of her Strength stat, along with a few other bonuses. Alice stopped focusing on the other parts of the gem, and instead started poking at that one facet of the mana gem. The fact that it was boosting her physical strength just didn’t make sense to her. She had expected the magic gem to be related to the growth of Alice mana, or related to some sort of way to preserve her personality, or… something. A physical strength boost was totally different from what she had expected to find. However, as Alice kept poking at the specific facet of the mana gem she had found, she realized that strength wasn’t the only thing that the magic gem contained. In addition to the +1% boost to strength, the little facet of the mana gem had four other components. One of them gave her a 1% boost to the effect of her Dexterity Stat. One of the components was a 1% boost to her Perception stat. The second to last component of the gem facet gave Alice a… +15% boost to experience growth, but only applied to the concept of fighting? As Alice identified each part of the gem facet, she started scanning her Achievements list. The description for this gem facet sounded awfully familiar, and the last bit in particular was a type of boost she had only ever recalled seeing from one part of the System… A few moments later, Alice found it. You have slain another human being. Effect of Strength, Dexterity, and Perception increased by 1%. Classes with some relationship to fighting other humans gain experience 15% faster. The effects for this ‘gem facet’ were exactly the same as the effects of the {Murderer} achievement that Alice had gotten all the way back in Cyra. In short, the mana gem that Alice was looking at was… some sort of Achievement collection? Alice, admittedly, had never actually figured out where Achievements were ‘stored.’ Attributes were obviously stored in the respective muscles and nerves related to them. Classes were ‘stored’ inside of Class seeds, which were usually located in people’s hearts or brains. But Alice had never actually found where Skills and Achievements were ‘stored’ in the human body. She had always sort of assumed they were lumped into class fractals and muscles somehow. Now, it appeared that she had been mistaken. Alice concentrated on the last aspect of the fractal, that she hadn’t identified yet… and quickly realized it was, by far, the most complicated part of the whole thing.