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.” 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? 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 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.