Alice spent the rest of the night desperately reconstructing the image of her rebuilt mana gem within {Magic Modelling}. The problem of ‘Alice’ mana had been solved by her, but that didn’t mean it was solved for everyone. If Alice kept relying on her Achievement to fix people’s mana gems, there was no way she would be able to help everyone who needed it. There were way too people for five restorations a month to cover everyone. Not to mention, Alice was also very interested in learning to fix Achievements. However, even though Alice was excited to keep going, come morning, she was still dragged out of her dream library by Allira. Alice groaned as something inside of her shadow poked her arm until she woke up. Her sleepiness was rapidly dispelled when she looked around the area. The swamp was different. The positions of the trees had shifted subtly from last time she looked at them. The fog that laid over the swamp like a blanket had become thicker and darker in color. The smell of rotting vegetation had grown stronger. Whatever conceptual nonsense was applying to the swamp behind the scenes, it hadn’t just made the area as creepy as possible. The trees themselves had subtly rearranged themselves while the group slept. Alice eyed Allira with curiosity. Last night, Allira had, theoretically, been keeping watch over the group. Since that was the case, when had the swamp rearranged itself? What had it looked like at the time? Before she could express her thoughts, however, Ethan threw her a plate of steaming monster meat and what appeared to be scrambled eggs. “Eat up. We’ve got a lot more travelling to do today,” said Ethan. “With any luck, we’ll get through the swamp today, but with how much the geography of this area has been… distorted, it’s hard to say if anything else will change. We’re exploring unknown territory here. “Maybe the ravens are like enchantments,” said Cecilia, as she looked at the woods. “What? Enchantments? What do they have to do with ravens?” “Well… I’m just thinking. Yesterday, you said that the swamp itself was ‘watching’ us, right?” said Cecilia. “As in, the swamp itself is actively observing us in a way that implies sapience?” “Well… the swamp itself was drastically changed by people’s beliefs about it and the influence of mana. I’m wondering if the ravens are also part of the ‘swamp,’ rather than real life forms. Maybe they’re part of the swamp in a more literal way. Sort of like a painting. If an artist paints a picture on a piece of paper or canvas, you can’t pick up an image inside the painting and move it around. After all, it’s just colored ink on a canvas. Maybe the ravens are similar?” “I… suppose it’s possible,” said Alice. “Since this is new to me, I have no idea whether that’s what happened here, but I could see it happening, at least.” Alice thought about it, before she shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine for what’s happening here. I don’t have a better theory yet.” Cecilia grinned. “If that’s the case, I actually find the ravens pretty interesting. They really do remind me of enchantments. At the end of the day, enchantments are also sets of instructions coded into objects via mana and hard work. These ravens are also sets of instructions coded into a solidified glob of mana, if my theory is correct. I kind of want to investigate them more.” “If they’re still around once we get the System fixed, we can try to take a look,” said Alice. Cecilia nodded. Soon, the group passed by the ravens Alice had spotted. While they spotted a few new patches of ravens every hour or two, none of the ravens disturbed the group, and the group didn’t make trouble for the odd creatures either. This gave Alice a great deal of time to think about the progression of the collapse of the System, and its impact on the rest of the world. Until after several hours of travel, Alice was abruptly dragged out of her thoughts. “Is that… smoke?” asked Allira, as she looked into the distance. Alice blinked, and then looked into the distance. There was, indeed, a thick pillar of smoke rising into the sky from a considerable distance away. Alice squinted, and then frowned. The smoke contained an awful lot of mana. As far as Alice could tell, it was smoke-mana, or something very conceptually similar. The quantity of it was very, very high. Most human Mages formed one of the four basic magic seeds and used that as their core ability. For a huge plume of smoke-related mana to appear meant that either human beliefs had warped the area again, or the smoke had been created by monsters. “Isn’t that a major Fendrallian city?” asked Jonathan, as he also looked at the giant plume of smoke in the distance. The group spent the next hour flying closer to the plume of smoke. But the closer they got, the more their hearts sank. The plume of smoke was, indeed, one of the former major cities of Fendrallia. The city had been burned to ashes a few days ago, and unlike the abandoned villages the group had encountered in Cendaria, the city here clearly hadn’t been evacuated. Instead, the group encountered huge numbers of corpses in the city. Tens of thousands of people had died trapped in the city – perhaps even more. But even the staggering number of corpses wasn’t the most concerning part of the whole encounter. The most concerning thing that Alice saw was the swamp. The city looked like the swamp had come to life and then tried to take a giant bite out of the formerly human territory. The city walls had been ripped apart by tree branches, which looked like they had grown unnaturally quickly and deconstructed the city walls. Patches of fetid water had already started to form at the bottom of houses and streets, in places where fetid water had no business existing. Ravens feasted upon the dead, ripping apart their corpses and making the scene even more sickening. Alice felt incredibly uneasy when she saw the ruins of the city. It wasn’t too hard to figure out what had happened. Human beliefs had already obviously influenced the swamp. Normal swamps didn’t rearrange themselves to confuse wanderers. Since human beliefs could even make a swamp rearrange its geography in an actively malicious way… human belief could clearly do much more than that. Somehow, human beliefs had caused the swamp itself to expand and engulf the city, killing most of the inhabitants. But even more concerning was the way the humans in the city had died. Most of the people looked like they had been ripped apart by powerful monsters. The monsters the group had seen in the swamp so far seemed more like ambush predators. They were dangerous, but with Ethan’s flight and Allira’s scouting, they didn’t actually pose a threat to the group. The monsters had never existed in the swamp before… but Alice had thought they weren’t that big of a deal, so long people stayed out of the swamp until the System was fixed. That was clearly wrong. Some people had been literally torn apart by strong, inhuman jaws and limbs inside of the city. Buildings had been flattened. Most troublesome of all, the mana-based smoke still shifted around the city, almost like a living, breathing creature. “Let’s keep away from the city,” said Ethan, shuddering. “I really don’t like the look of that smoke. It might be more poisonous than the rest of the swamp. I’m not sure if our current measures can keep us safe from it, and I don’t want to spend a lot of organic mana right now. This place… doesn’t feel right.” Alice had the same feeling. She also had an increasingly strong feeling that something was watching them. And this time, it wasn’t the creepy but largely harmless swamp. “The smoke is drifting towards us,” said Allira, frowning. “I think it might be some form of monster.” “It doesn’t have a core, though,” said Cecilia. “I don’t like it,” said Ethan, as the group started to drift further away from the Fendrallia city. Luckily, the strange, mana-based smoke didn’t keep moving towards them after they moved a certain distance away. However, the feeling of being watched never disappeared. As the group started to shift away from the ruined city, Alice felt the trace of unease in her heart grow stronger.