“Explain?” asked Alice, as she scratched her head. Jonathan’s suggestion had taken her by surprise. The idea of a Immortal family just… joining the group was outside of her expectations. “Well… first of all, the monster hordes are a bit of a problem,” said Jonathan. “Based on what I’ve heard from a lot of other areas, the damage from the monster hordes is honestly getting pretty bad. Illvaria has been somewhat more sheltered from it… but even Illvaria is still starting to suffer from the monster hordes. And recently, my farm was also attacked by a large swarm of monsters. I managed to drive them back… but I didn’t manage to exterminate them. That’s a bit worrying, in my opinion.” Alice blinked. While Jonathan had mentioned failing to drive off a monster swarm, the sentence before that worried her more. Even Illvaria was starting to suffer from the monster swarms? She had thought that Illvaria was handling it reasonably well, since Ethan hadn’t said much about it to her. She had also been caught up in her research and trying to fix the System collapsing… which, now that Alice thought about it, might have been why Ethan never mentioned it to her. She already had enough on her plate to worry about, and she couldn’t really contribute to the monster swarm problem anyway. This was a good reminder that after all of this was over, Alice really did need to develop her own information network. Being able to learn information quickly would make her much more aware of her surroundings. Alice knew that she had a tendency to get distracted by her research, but she should still keep some awareness of the rest of the world. But that was something to think about later. The System was far more important right now. Ethan winced. “It’s true that some of the outlying villages in Illvaria have been destroyed, but most of them have been evacuated. Although some of the truly southernmost towns in the recolonization area have been lost completely…” Ethan sighed. “It’s really a shame that this happened right in the middle of Illvaria’s best chance to reclaim the area. And food production is also starting to look a bit worrying, since most outlying villages are agricultural centers. But that’s a topic for later. It’s not as urgent as it seems.” Alice thought about it for a moment, and then sighed. She really didn’t know much about crops and farming. She knew that on Earth, food production was really high because of modern fertilizer… but she had no idea how to manufacture it. She sighed again, and then turned back towards Jonathan. “All right, so monsters are a concern. Still, it sounds like you’ve handled it so far? Also, wouldn’t this mean abandoning your country?” On the other hand, Jonathan’s words made sense, to an extent. The catastrophe was hitting people harder and harder. Monster swarms and people losing their mind to mana was starting hit countries faster and faster. Alice had developed some solutions to mana related problems… but they were slow, hard to spread, and required special resources to create. If Alice refused to get help from anyone else, there was still a possibility that the world would collapse sooner or later. Alice didn’t think that humans in this world could realistically survive without the System, and Alice just wasn’t replacing it fast enough. Did Alice really have the option to deny a test subject? Especially one that presented himself willingly, and could potentially shrug off most smaller problems that Alice’s tests might cause him? After all, Immortals were very hard to hurt. Ethan had beheaded himself during the fight with Emilia, and then proceeded to shrug it off afterwards. That would have killed Alice so fast that she wouldn’t have even processed her own death. An Immortal test subject was actually almost an ideal one, if one wished to do ethical experiments. “As a [Farmer], how resilient are you?” asked Alice. “The two main stats that [Farmers] tend to improve are [Endurance] and [Strength],” said Jonathan. “The two most useful things for tilling the fields. I have over eight hundred [Endurance], once you factor in my multipliers and miscellaneous conditional Perks. I just need to make sure I’m in the middle of farmland that I’m managing myself. But frankly, killing me is… very, very hard.” Alice nodded thoughtfully… but she was still hesitant. The closest she had gotten to human experimentation before this was observing people undergo their mana baptisms in front of her. A project that was currently on hold, because the collapse of the System was several orders of magnitude more important. Deep in her heart, Alice still kind of wanted to just say no. But despite how much better it would make her feel, Alice also wasn’t blind. Things were collapsing faster and faster. Did she really have the right to say no when it might doom everyone? Alice felt icky, but she also realized that saying no was impractical. “I’ll… think about it,” said Alice. That was the best she could do for now. She didn’t know what she was doing yet anyway, so she would leave this problem for future Alice to think about. Jonathan nodded. “I’ll let you think about it. But this is the best way.” Alice gritted her teeth, and then turned towards Ethan. “I believe it’s time to leave,” said Ethan thoughtfully. “I, for one, am not opposed to you joining us, Jonathan. You’re a good man, and I’m happy to bring you along.” Jonathan nodded, and the group went to collect the rest of Jonathan’s family. Jonathan’s family had not been happy about leaving the farm, apart from Jacob, who looked like someone had given him the best present in the world. The little girl, Mimi, asked why they were leaving their nice house for the dirty wilderness. Jonathan’s wife, Nerissa, felt that the farm was safer, and that they might get hurt while travelling to other lands. As for the middle child, Stuart, he didn’t seem to have much of a reaction either way. He was neither enthusiastic about leaving the farm, nor upset by the fact that they were leaving. He had simply looked at his father and asked whether this was the best decision, and after his father reaffirmed his decision, he had left to go pack his bags. However, at the end of the day, Jonathan’s family still decided to leave as one. Without Jonathan to keep the farm safe, the position of this farm was simply too dangerous. Monster swarms were roaming the countryside, and a little bit of bad luck might spell the end for any family members that stayed behind. Thus, a considerably larger group left Jonathan’s farm than the one that had entered. As the group started to tromp away from the farm, Alice noticed a rather peculiar reaction from the farm itself. The moment Jonathan stepped outside of the farm, it was as though a small tremor of rainbow mana radiated out of his feet. Then, Alice rubbed her eyes, and realized it wasn’t a tremor that left Jonathan’s feet. Instead, it was the reverse. Almost like a vacuum cleaner, all of the rainbow mana in Jonathan’s farm started to move towards his feet. One droplet of rainbow mana after another rushed towards his body, joining the nebulous cloud of mana inside of him… and at the same time, the farm started to wither. The verdant green crops started to die. Giant pieces of produce started to decay in real time, as if someone had hit the fast forward button on crop decay. The farmhouse itself wasn’t altered – but every single plant on the farm started to disappear. The last to fall was the giant apple tree that had caught Alice’s attention when they first entered the farm. The branches and bark started to shrink and darken, until eventually it collapsed under its own weight. Instead of a magnificent tree, it was now just a pile of ashy bark. By the time the group had walked ten minutes away, the verdant farm filled with overripe produce, abundant water, and giant crops had disappeared. In its place was what Alice assumed must have been the farm’s original appearance. It was a flat, gray wasteland with a scraggly, threadbare creek running through it. There were still a few weeds present in the farm’s former territory, showing that it wasn’t impossible to grow crops there – but the land was only a few steps away from looking like barren tundra. Alice winced. No wonder nobody wanted to conquer this territory from ‘Superbia.’ This kind of land was so worthless that most nations would probably forget it was even part of their borders to begin with.