That night, Alice and Cecilia stewed in anxiety while they waited in Demor’s mansion. Alice’s worries about how to finish her last few problems had been tossed to the back of her thoughts. The Society’s appearance – or, perhaps more accurately, their reappearance, cast Alice’s thoughts into disarray. About two hours before Alice usually went to sleep, Allira and Ethan knocked on her door. Alice frowned, as the two led her back towards the common room. When Alice got there, she saw that Cecilia, Jonathan, Jonathan’s family, and even Demor were also sitting at the dining table. Before Alice could raise her voice to ask, Allira sat down at the head of the table. She moved with such force that she nearly shattered the poor wooden chair that she had sat down on, causing Alice to wince as she heard the distressed creaks of the furniture. The [Strength] of an Immortal was incredible, even if Allira was young by Immortal standards. “The Society is, indeed, behind [Scholar] Metista’s disappearance,” said Allira, with an angry huff. Alice frowned. So they had confirmation now. Allira worked as something like Illvaria’s spymaster most of the time, so Alice was willing to trust Allira’s word if she said the Society was behind this. However, why was Allira so angry? The woman usually seemed polite, if emotionally disconnected. Seeing her get worked up was… unusual. “So, are we going to rescue her?” asked Alice. “Or turn it over the local authorities?” “That’s the problem,” he said. “Nobody cares that [Scholar] Metista was abducted. Under normal circumstances, this case would have caused outrage. People would be demanding that the [Guards] of the city do something. I would have expected that [Soldiers] would be hunting down every possible lead, if only to stem public outcry. “Unfortunately, these are not normal times. The government is in too bad of a condition to worry about the disappearance of a single [Scholar]. Thus, the ruler of Morendia has told us that the country can’t follow up on this case right now. We were told that if we solved this problem, Morendia would thank us and wish us good luck… but the country will not offer us any assistance in rescuing Metista. After that, we were basically shooed out of the throne room.” Ethan paused, before he slowly nodded. “All right then. I’ll do what I can to pressure a few of the weaker [Nobles] into lending me some troops, and see what local [Mercenary] groups are in the area. It’ll be hard to put everything together, but if I work on it, I should be able to find a way.” Ethan laughed bitterly. “I’ll see how long that takes. Make sure not to waste time while I put something together for an attack, all right? It’ll take a while, and we need you getting as many experiments done as you can.” Allira also nodded, before the two of them left the mansion again. Jonathan and his family looked at Alice and Cecilia, as if trying to figure out what all of this meant for them… and then they left the room. She just hoped that this judgement call wasn’t a mistake on her part. The next few days were spent neck-deep in research. Alice constantly worked on finding new ways to make her magic seeds ‘light up.’ However, She had a difficult time finding the solution. Trying to force the double helix of mana in Jonathan’s toe into a tighter, compact ball of mana didn’t work. All that did was destroy the structure entirely. Trying to interact with the now ruined glob of mana produced no new results, and eventually, Alice was forced to admit that her attempt had totally ruined the mana structure and scrap it using {Broken Seed}. This left her with no small amount of regret, as she had been hoping to develop the mana helix into a functioning Class seed. The only upside was that Jonathan reported no abnormalities in his thoughts or physical body. Even though Alice constantly checked everything with {Safety Analysis}, she lived in fear of the day she made a mistake and hurt Jonathan. Alice was also unable to resolve the issue of the mana seed not properly absorbing mana on its own. By her own theory, the best way Alice could think of to fix this problem was to make the mana helix produce mana on its own and then use it, just like how magic seeds did. The problem was that Alice had absolutely no idea how to do that. Even though she knew the ‘solution,’ she had no idea how the solution was supposed to work. Thus, once again, Alice ran into a brick wall that she had no good solution for overcoming. After a few more days of research, the only thing Alice really accomplished, besides ramming her head into problems she couldn’t find a solution for, was to gain a few levels and finally get her Perks off cooldown. The Perks were something Alice had been waiting for a while for. After all, she had discovered or invented several new types of mana that she wanted, and her {Experimental Seed} was incapable of keeping up with the supply of mana that she needed. However, the levels were also rather exciting. Explorer of Magic: 89 -> 90, Careful Enchanter 43 -> 46, Scholar 71 -> 72, Scientist 72 -> 74, Student 10 -> 11 This was for a simple reason. [Explorer of Magic] had reached another Perk level, as had [Careful Enchanter]. [Explorer of Magic] was especially exciting, because Alice had hopes that the Class would solve her current predicament entirely. As for [Careful Enchanter]… it also had some chance to provide solutions for Alice’s current predicament. Since Alice didn’t know how her Perks and needs would change after taking her new Perks, she decided to deal with her new Perks before handling her Perk cooldowns. She looked at [Explorer of Magic] first. Thus far, Alice’s needs had been pretty comfortably met by combining Perks that were both part of the [Explorer of Magic] Perk. However, Alice had never forgotten that Perks above level 75 had one more advantage over regular Perk combination – they could also grab perks from totally outside of their Class, as long as one of the two ‘ingredients’ was from the correct Class. Right now, Alice was trying to figure out how to make artificial magic seeds, and there was a Perk that she suspected would help her do that correctly. It wasn’t from [Explorer of Magic]… but she suspected it would work well as a base for the Perk she wanted. {Raw Mana Enchanting}, the most recent Perk from [Careful Enchanter]. It was directly aligned with her current goals and needs, and Alice felt like it had a lot of potential as an ingredient for Perk combination. Requirements: Careful Enchanter level 40 or higher, Have Experimented with some form of construct derived entirely of pure mana and understood its nature, have access to at least 10 different types of mana at the same time, Magic 150 or higher, Pure Mana Seed available, at least 1 Rarity 10 Achievement You gain the ability to ‘stabilize’ constructs made of pure mana, at a significant mana cost. A stabilized mana construct will dissipate far more slowly, and will exhibit some resilience against wear and tear from its surroundings and natural dissipation. The problem Alice had was finding a Perk to combine it with. Alice couldn’t currently use Tier 3 Perks as fuel for combination. That would only happen once she evolved her Class again at level 100. {Broken Seed} was also far, far too valuable to ever give up, so it was completely off the table as a Perk combination ingredient. Thus, Alice had three choices left. {Combat Seed}, {Seeds of Magic}, and {Enhanced Regeneration}. {Enhanced Regeneration} was just a basic mana regeneration boost, which Alice thought might give her the results she wanted. After all, Alice was trying to figure out how to make Artificial magic seeds, and it did seem like one of the more important aspects of a Magic seed was its ability to generate mana. However, {Seeds of Magic} was a Perk directly related to Magic Seeds, so Alice suspected it would ALSO give her what she wanted. The question was which one would do a better job of giving her what she wanted. Alice spent nearly ten minutes debating what the correct path forward was, before she eventually decided to go with {Enhanced Regeneration}. It was… probably more relevant to the result she wanted? Alice hoped so, at least. Enhanced regeneration Requirements: Explorer of Magic level 10 or higher Allows you to regenerate mana 10% faster for all seeds.