A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World

“Allira, can you send a few shadows to make sure there aren’t any physical traps located right under this thing?” asked Ethan, as he pointed at the Artifact.

Allira started singing, and a few shadows started checking over the room again. After a few minutes, she gave Ethan a thumbs up, and Ethan crammed the artifact into his storage Perk. Meanwhile, Allira grabbed [Scholar] Matista and started carrying her back to the rest of the group. Jonathan looked distinctly out of place as he looked around, as his family and Cecilia looked for something they could do to make themselves useful. After Ethan finished storing the artifact, he grinned.

“We’ve already gotten everything of note here, I think. Alice, do you want that statue that emits System mana? It’ll be a pain to store safely, but if you think it’ll be useful for your research, I’ll make it work.”

Alice nodded. “I definitely have a use for it. It’ll help me study how faith and System mana interact with each other. I’m thinking what I might do is create ‘baselines’ for things to work with, then use faith to perfect any issues with my designs. At least, if things work the way I hope they do. If it doesn’t work, I’ll think of another solution,” she said.

Ethan shrugged. “You would know more about it than I would. But it sounds like a good idea. If you can use that to smooth out the issues with your own version of System mana, it could skip a lot of the final steps of fine-tuning it and fixing it.”

Alice smiled. If it sounded like a good idea to Ethan, that was a strong endorsement for the viability of her plan.

The group made their way back to the room where they had fought the Society, and Ethan used several Perks to pack away the Statue, as well as the last few miscellaneous research logs and other items. While Ethan did so, Alice looked at the [Mercenaries] that Ethan and Allira had hired, and tried not to wince.

Nearly half of the [Mercenaries] had died, and the leader seemed none too pleased about that. He kept eyeing Allira and Ethan with an angry scowl, although the difference in power seemed to be keeping him from complaining out loud. Alice could understand why. The battle had been ruinous from his perspective. The Society had kept Matista alive, perhaps because they thought she would be useful for saving the world. However, the Society had clearly not felt the same way about the [Mercenaries]. They hadn’t held back at all against them, and the [Mercenaries] had fallen like wheat before a scythe. For about a minute of fighting, the [Mercenaries] had needed to hold their ground against twice their number of Society Mages. For average level [Mercenaries] with no outstanding qualities, that was practically a death sentence.

The [Mercenary] leader gritted his teeth, and marched his way over to Ethan.

“This was a far more costly battle than you implied,” he said.

Ethan looked at the man, and seemed to notice the same thing Alice had. He winced. “I apologize. I will not dismiss your contributions to the fight, nor the comrades you lost. I have no way to revive the dead, or rewind time… but at least  I can compensate the company for the fallen, and give some extra aid to any family they might have had,” said Ethan.

The [Mercenary] leader still looked pissed, but Ethan’s words at least blunted his anger. He grunted in acknowledgement, and his expression relaxed a bit more when Ethan handed him a bag full of gold.

With that concluded, the group began making their way back to the surface. As they walked, Alice took a moment to look over all of the Perks she had been offered. She had two new choices, and she was excited to see what they were.

The first one she looked at was [Survivor].

Alice glanced over the Perks she could combine, and quickly decided that she wasn’t that interested in combining any of them. Many of her perks, such as [Microbe Resistance], were basic, functional Perks that helped her survive the different biosphere in this planet. Risking that would just be a terrible decision, even if the odds of it killing her were low. There was no reason to risk her health or life for a little bit of power. Thus, Alice checked her new Perks instead.

There were four options available for her Class, but Alice quickly ignored two of them. One of them was a generic stat boost to [Endurance], which, while somewhat appealing, really wasn’t what Alice needed. In a fight, Alice mostly relied on her kinetic magic to deflect projectiles and objects before they hurt her - and at this point, Alice suspected that was always going to be her first line of defense. [Endurance] helped if she failed to deflect an object… but if things were hitting her, the fight had already gone horribly wrong.

The second Perk she ignored increased the strength and density of her body. Since Alice’s fighting style was highly reliant on magic, boosting her [Strength] was a waste of a Perk slot.

The next Perk was more interesting.

This Perk was odd, but appealing. One of the things Alice had seen Ethan use in battles semi-frequently was Thermal magic. Tossing around fireballs seemed to be something he specialized in… and also a threat that Alice’s current Perk toolkit was woefully unable to deal with. This Perk provided her with better options than ‘dodge and hope to hit the enemy first’ if she was fighting against another [Thermal Mage] who specialized in combat.

Of course, it wasn’t perfect. Magical resilience allowed her to hit non-physical things with her kinetic mana… but it still required a two-step process to defend against things like lightning blasts. She would first need to touch a lightning blast with a magic tendril, then inject it with kinetic energy, then use kinetic mana to divert the attack. Considering how fast things like lightning moved, it would be hard to pull off without an unbelievably high [Perception] stat. Alice doubted she would be able to deflect things like lightning bolts with her current stats, even though she had her reflexes and range boosted to insane levels by her other Perks and abilities.

Still, Alice felt like it was a strong contender for her 70th level pick. Alice currently had no good way to defend against even a lower level [Thermal Mage] who wanted to hurt her, and this Perk would fix that need. [Thermal Mages] that focused on combat were very rare, since the mana to damage ratio was terrible, but they still existed. It might not help her against higher level enemies, but not even having a defense against lower level Mages was a problem. Not to mention, Alice’s [Perception] and other stats would certainly increase as time passed. That was the nature of Stats in this world - even though they grew more slowly as they got to crazier and crazier numbers, they never permanently decreased, and ways to interfere with other people’s Status Screen were rare. Eventually, Alice would have the [Perception] needed to react to lightning bolts in time.

However, the other Perk Alice had been offered was also a strong contender.

This Perk was actually kind of similar to {Magical Resilience}, in that it covered up a distinct weakness Alice had. However, the weakness this Perk addressed was different. While {Magical Resilience} allowed Alice to fight more safely against [Electromagnetic Mages] and [Thermal Mages], this Perk was more of an incremental improvement on what Alice already did during a fight. [Kinetic Mages] were known as the most combat oriented Mage specifically because they could deflect arrows, swords, and any other physical object that was near them. Since Mages were rare, and [Kinetic Mages] could crush most non-Mages of similar level, that made [Kinetic Mages] kings and queens of the battlefield. 

However, at higher levels, plenty of [Archers] and [Swordsmen] also had Perks that countered [Kinetic Mages]. One of the most common ways for them to start countering [Kinetic Mages] was to make it hard to influence their weapons with external mana. This was usually imperfect, since a Mage could punch through it after a few seconds… but those few seconds might also get the Mage killed. This Perk sounded like it either let Alice outright ignore this issue, or drastically reduced its potential to impact the battlefield.

Alice spent a few minutes tossing ideas around in her head, but ultimately, she decided to go with {Touch the Untouchable}. High level [Archers] and [Swordsmen] were probably more common enemies than [Thermal Mages] and [Electromagnetic Mages] that focused on combat, and both Perks explicitly addressed weaknesses in her build. Since she had problems dealing with both situations, she might as well take the one that she was more likely to use. If there weren’t any better options, she could always just take the other Perk at level 75.

After that, Alice moved on to her second set of Perks. The Perk for [Kinetic Manabinder].

Unlike [Survivor], [Kinetic Manabinder] still had a huge stock of Perks left over that ALice had yet to combine. Alice only gave the new perks a brief scan before she confirmed that none of them interested her. She ignored them, and started looking at Perk combinations.

The Perks from [Kinetic Manabinder] could loosely be divided into three categories: Those that were focused on sensing the area around her, those that were focused on direct combat, and those that focused on enchantments.

Alice had been using enchantments as a basis for a lot of her research recently, and if the Artifact they had stolen from the Society was anything to go by, this was probably going to continue to be true in the near future.

With that in mind, Alice decided that she would focus on the enchanting side of things with her new Perk. Specifically, if she could find Perks that helped her gather information and modify enchantments, that would be best.

The first Perk she decided to sacrifice was Overclock.

Overclock was fine as a Perk, and Alice still frequently used it while Enchanting. However, it wasn’t exceptional. At this point, Alice was hoping that a Perk combination would take this ability to new heights. And if something went horribly wrong during the Perk combination process, and she lost the ability entirely, Alice wouldn’t be too upset, either. It was perfect fodder for Perk combination. Of course what Alice was really hoping for was some method of boosting comprehension when she studied enchantments - something that {Overclock} did not innately do.

The second one was a bit more unusual of a Perk to use. Last time Alice had looked at this combination of Perks, the result had been much less promising… but just like the available Perks she had, every five levels, the results of combining two Perks changed slightly. The results this time were rather promising.

Alice checked the likely result for the Achievement combination one more time, and then combined the two Achievements.

Alice grinned, and then checked her Status Screen, since it had been quite a while since she had last done so.

As Alice looked over her Status Screen, the group finally reached the surface, and started making their way back to Morendia’s capital. Alice just hoped that she would be able to make use of the resources they had found in the Society base to finally stabilize this chaotic world.