The group of [Students] and Arin looked at the group of children they had found inside of the bag, dumbfounded.

After a few moments, Arin snapped out of his surprise, giving the children a closer examination while frowning. “Well, that is certainly… unexpected.”

Alice also stared at the children, especially the one with the weird System fractal, before she thought back to the fight. At the time, the group had stumbled across Society Members near a pile of children’s bones. The [Organic Mages] who had checked the area while Alice was watching the [Scout] had reported that the bones were fake, which had left Alice both baffled and relieved at the time. Now that she could see the children the Society members had kidnapped, she was finally able to make some guesses about what the Society had been trying to do.

“If they were planting fake children’s bones near the monster den, and they kidnapped these children, perhaps they were trying to cover up the acquisition of test subjects?” said Alice.

Arin frowned, before nodding. “The [Scouts] sent to investigate the area also found some rather odd trails that appeared sometime within the last hour or two. They certainly weren’t there when we started the hunt, and none of the [Scouts] from the last round of hunts stumbled across the trails either. We thought that the Society members just happened to have been sneaking through the woods right as the last group of [Scouts] were bringing students back to camp and missed them because of that, but if they were trying to make it look like the kids wandered off and got eaten by monsters, perhaps they were using some sort of Perk to make a false trail? The [Scouts] did say that some of the tracks were off compared to the bodies, but we just figured they were trying to use a Perk to change their own trail instead of disguising their trail completely and then making a totally new one.” Arin sighed. “I doubt we’ll find much else out unless we can pry information from the prisoner. The bigger question is why the Society is actively kidnapping children in this area.”

Alice frowned, before she turned back to the child with the strange rainbow mana glyphs. Then, she went over everything she knew about the Society of Starry Eyes. They had weird magic seeds, they were prone to unethical experimentation, and they often delved into branches of research most areas banned because they were either unethical or dangerous…

Was the Society of Starry Eyes able to see System mana? Thus far, Alice had yet to see any evidence at all of someone else being able to see System mana. Most people completely ignored it while they went about their daily lives, and Alice got several high rarity Achievements just by messing with System mana. Since Achievement rarity was dictated by the number of people who had an Achievement and the difficulty of acquiring it, Alice was sure that the ability was still quite rare. After all, while Alice did do a fair amount of hard work and experimentation to get some of her knowledge, she definitely felt that the rarity of her Achievements were inflated compared to the work she put in, meaning either no one or close to no one had the same Achievements. However, if the Society had a few higher ups who could see System mana, maybe they knew something about the messed up system fractals, and wanted to get more subjects to experiment with that?

“Let me see if the research journal has any information,” said Alice, popping open the book she had acquired from the group’s spoils of war before thumbing through it. Arin nodded, waiting to see if Alice could dredge up any information quickly, while Luka also leaned closer to hear more. Arsi and Erkki, though they looked concerned, were also beginning to look slightly uninterested in the conversation, perhaps because they had little ability to influence the situation.

After giving the research notes a quick skim, Alice found that the first parts didn’t have much related to System mana. Instead, it contained a great deal of information about subjecting humans to broken mana baptisms. The Society member whose research she had stolen had approached the idea of experimenting with broken mana baptisms from a very different angle than Alice wanted to. Instead of trying to figure out what the System was doing during a broken mana baptism and then reduce human fatalities, the Society member had tried subjecting numerous test subjects to different kinds of broken mana in order to… see what happened. When Illa had discussed the tragedy of Allenheim, the country that had basically destroyed itself messing with dimensional mana, she had mentioned that some people who got infected with dimensional broken mana became ‘contagious,’ subjecting other people to broken mana baptisms if they interacted with them for too long.

The Society member whose notes she was reading was apparently inspired by the Tragedy of Allenheim, and had started to wonder if Mages baptized with different kinds of broken mana might have additional ‘extra’ properties. Thus, they had captured a wide variety of people and forced them to go through broken mana, before trying to investigate whether or not the survivors had any ‘interesting’ properties, as well as investigating whether or not some kinds of broken mana had higher or lower survival rates. The known statistic for surviving a broken mana baptism was 0.8% in Illvaria, while the Society researcher claimed that the survival rate for dimensional and organic mana baptisms seemed to be lower, though the Society member had also mused that this may have also been due to low sample size.

The Society member also discussed the value of having a ‘broken mana’ magic seed, allowing them to forego the need for others to participate in the… process of testing out different types of broken mana, giving Alice a guess about the Society Mage they had fought with earlier who had an even weirder Magic Seed than the others.

The other research focus of the journal was discussing whether it was possible to force humans into different body shapes that better conformed to various specific roles, seemingly as a method of expanding the Society’s knowledge of the human body and how it interacted with mana. This method of experimentation was primarily used on [Slaves] the Society acquired through either purchase from the Sigmusi or kidnapping, and the owner of the journal seemed to have focused on trying to permanently enhance muscles and the skeletal structure and make test subjects better [Soldiers]. This branch of research was apparently already somewhat developed in the Society, and they had already created a way to turn [Slaves] into more efficient soldiers at the cost of drastically reducing their sanity. The [Slaves] that were ‘enhanced’ this way tended to lose their minds in the process sometimes, losing the ability to respond to external stimuli and instead performing pointless and repetitive tasks over and over again until they died of dehydration or exhaustion. The ones who survived this process semi-intact were sold to the Sigmusi Empire, and provided one of the primary sources of income the Society of Starry Eyes used to survive and continue conducting research. Alice started to feel sick as she read through the details of a few particularly horrific deaths caused by this vein of experiments, before she started to skim through the research notes more quickly.

Finally, near the end of the book, a note of a rather unusual experiment was recorded that shed a little more light on what was going on. Apparently, one of the Society’s upper echelons had found a rather unusual boy a few weeks ago. The boy had signs of activating his Status Screen and beginning to acquire Levels, Stats, and Skills.

However, the boy was four years old. And children normally unlocked their Status Screen whenever they turned six, meaning this was a truly bizarre case. Alice frowned as she read through the research data and notes about the boy’s information. Another System glitch?

Something felt increasingly off recently. Alice had spent several months in this world, and had only encountered a few System ‘errors’ before today. The first time she recalled the System ‘bugging out’ was when it tried to figure out what language she was speaking. It had taken the System a day or two to straighten out the {English Language Proficiency} skill, and after that the bugged out Skill name in her Status screen had quietly been fixed. The Second time Alice remembered the System freaking out was the day she tried to create Magic seeds from Earth physics. The third time had been when she and Cecilia had investigated the strange stone the Expedition had found, back when Illa and co. had gone to investigate the broken mana region where Alice had been dragged into this world, and had almost certainly been deliberately caused by someone. Finally, Alice’s {Russian Language Proficiency} Skill had also bugged out for a few days before the System got the name for the skill correct and stopped displaying the Russian language as {[email protected]#$%n (Language Proficiency)} in her status screen.

And today, she had gone from knowing of four System bugs to seven. The number had nearly doubled in a single day. Alice frowned, before shaking her head. She didn’t know exactly what to make of this yet. She would think about it more when she was alone. She turned back to Arin, before pointing to the experiment she had found at the back of the research log.

“I expect that this is the reason they’re kidnapping children,” she said. Arin leaned over before he also looked at the passage, before nodding.

“If the Society found one weird case, it makes sense that they would try to see if they can replicate it. Thank you for finding it, Lady Alice. If I were to take it back to the [Guard] it might have taken several hours to discover, and during that time more children might have disappeared. I will bring this information back to my superiors. If they’re targeting four year old children, we can alert the surrounding nations and take precautions in our own borders too.”

Alice looked back at the four year old child with the weird System fractals. She contemplated for a moment, debating to herself. Should she reveal what she saw about the boy and his odd System fractals? If the Society had found one kid with a Status Screen activated two years before it was supposed to activate, that meant it was possible for it to happen again. And given this child’s weird mana fractals, Alice felt a second case might be happening right in front of her.

If that was the case, the Society might already know something about the kid. Out of all the children in the entire country they had kidnapped, this group had just happened to stumble across this child, who probably had a similar state as the original test subject? They also kidnapped three normal kids, so it could have just been sheer coincidence, or it could have been some sort of Artifact or Perk letting them know there was something interesting in this region without giving them more precise information. Alice had no way of knowing what Perks the Society had access to, and even less of an idea what Artifacts they might have and what they could do.

What mattered was the fact that the kid might be targeted again. Alice debated for a moment, before she decided to reveal a little bit more. Even if she wasn’t entirely sure whether the Society knew something or they were just plain lucky, she wasn’t going to let a four year old kid potentially die because of her inaction.

Besides, she had already revealed to Arin that she had a rather unique set of Perks and Achievements that let her access unusual System-related information. Specifically, Alice had hinted that she could tell Mages and non-Mages apart with just her eyesight, and distinguish whether they were high or low level. If she revealed that she found something incredibly strange about the boy using the same mixture of Perks and Achievements, that should be enough. It would alert the [Soldiers] and [Knights] of the possibility that the boy was some sort of potential target for the Society, and it shouldn’t put Alice in much more danger than she was already in. The Illvarian government stood pretty firmly against the Society of Starry Eyes and unethical research, so Alice doubted they would turn around and make the boy a test subject if she revealed that there was something unusual about him. He might have some restrictions placed on his freedom of movement, but Alice doubted his parents would prefer to have their child kidnapped and killed by the Society of Starry Eyes if the alternative was just dealing with some restrictions and annoyances.

“[Knight] Arin, may I speak with you for a moment?” asked Alice.

“You may, Lady Alice,” said the [Knight], before the two of them walked away from the rest of the group. Once there weren’t any other people nearby, Alice sighed.

“First and foremost, may I ask that you keep my abilities a secret if possible? I do not wish to be targeted by the Society, and while I doubt they would target me over this, I still wish to avoid their attention wherever possible,” said Alice.

Arin frowned for a few moments. He gave Alice a very intrusive stare, and Alice couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable. She looked at him, wondering if he knew something.

Finally, he sighed, and nodded. “I can understand your concern. I don’t know if I agree with your concern over the matter, and I doubt this ability would make you a target of the Society on its own. However, even if I don’t agree, I will honor your choice anyway. Though, I also want you to know that if you ever feel interested, Illvaria would probably be willing to reward you handsomely if you use that ability for the crown. I’ve never heard of anyone being able to check who is or isn’t a magician with just eyesight, as long as they aren’t wearing a Mage insignia. Since it seems that you can also check levels, it would allow the military to work with much greater safety during large engagements. A squadron of high level [Soldiers] or [Mages] appearing behind an army and ambushing the Mages in the backlines has sometimes turned a battle against the army, and the ability to just look at the enemy side and see if all of their high level troops are missing would be invaluable. But your life is yours to live, as much as I wish I could recruit you into the army. Is that all you wished to talk about?”

“No. I wanted to tell you that the same mixture of Perks and Achievements is telling me there is something… unusual about one of the four children that were kidnapped. I… suspect he might also have some sort of ability to access his Status Screen before he should be able to, although I am not entirely sure if that’s what I’m seeing. However, there is something… very odd about him. I don’t know if the Society has any ability that mirrors mine or not, but if they do, they might explicitly be targeting that kid for use as a [Test Subject]. I could be wrong here – like I said, while I have my suspicions I don’t know exactly what I’m looking at yet, and I have absolutely no clue what the Society is or isn’t aware of. I just wanted to raise the possibility and let you decide how to handle it.”

“Is that so? Hmm… Interesting,” said Arin, frowning in thought. After a few moments, he turned back to Alice. “So you can at least potentially detect test subjects that the Society might be interested in? I wasn’t aware of that. Yes, I can absolutely see why you would want to keep this information hidden. I will find another excuse to give the [Guards] – I will simply say that the Society seemed especially interested in these children, and they may have some sort of reason for it. That is just true enough to avoid tripping a lie detection Perk without exposing your involvement in the matter, and it will give me an excuse to place some [Guards] around the child and his friends. I doubt I would need to read out a written prepared statement over something like this, so it should be fine. Thank you very much for this information, Lady Alice. Your willingness to help may have saved a few lives today.”

Alice nodded. She wasn’t used to near-strangers giving her gratitude, so to be honest, it made her a little uncomfortable to have [Knight] Arin so openly express good feelings towards her. The fact that he looked kind of like a grandfather helped her shrug off her momentary discomfort, and she shrugged.

“I don’t want my inaction to cause a kid to die. That’s all I wanted to say here.”

Arin nodded, looking thoughtful.

“All right, here’s what I propose. For now, we’ll head back to Metsel with the rest of the group and hand the kids over to the [Guards]. They have [Investigators] who are a bit more specialized in tracking down crimes like this, so they’ll follow up the tracks we found in the woods and see where they lead to. If they find an Illvarian village or something at the end of those tracks, we’ll see if we can find the parents of the kids there and sort things out with them. If we find a base of the Society or something, I will get a [Messenger] to let you know that I will be unavailable in the near future, and will inform you whenever I finish cleaning things up. You come back tomorrow with the rest of your friends from the [Student] group if I don’t send you a [Messenger], and we’ll get you the bounty money, deal with paperwork, and get everything else sorted out. You can keep the research notes we found, but tomorrow I’ll still need to borrow it from you so that we can do final checkups and make sure the book doesn’t have any critical information. We can also get you to meet with the parents of the kids you rescued, if they have parents and we can find them. If you’re willing to, you can expose your ability to see System information to help convince them that their kids are in danger and they should accept our help in keeping them safe. Sometimes, people can be really stubborn, and I would appreciate the help, although since their children were already kidnapped once I imagine it probably won’t be a problem. Anyway, we can figure it out tomorrow when we know more.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Alice, after a few moments of hesitation. “But I’m a little worried. What if the Society tries to take revenge against us, or something like that?”

“Revenge?” For the first time that day, [Knight] Arin laughed. “Revenge? The Society of Starry Eyes is a secret society. In other words, they hide, because they are not able to take over a plot of land or work their way into being an officially recognized institution by any government, and more importantly, they are weaker than most countries. Not to mention the fact that they are almost universally reviled. If they weren’t weaker than most countries, they would stop being a secret society and transition into something else. Probably a country or part of one. If a secret society like the Society of Starry Eyes decided to suddenly randomly throw [Spies], [Operatives], and Mages at you just because you were part of a group that killed some of their low-level operatives, the entire Society would need to expose a large part of its combat resources to do so. And in the process, it would risk losing some of those resources forever, or even being completely destroyed if things went poorly. Any secret society that reveals itself in order to take revenge on a group of random [Students] with no background is a society about to be tricked into an ambush, and will stop existing within a decade or two. Any leader of a secret Society who starts randomly trying to assassinate or kill you just over this is either an idiot or a traitor to the society they’re part of.” Arin shrugged. “At least, based on what is known of you right now. If you’re hiding other secrets, maybe if they discovered one of those and thought the gamble was worth it they might target you. But there’s no way anyone with a brain would pick a fight with your group of friends over this. And the Society has existed for decades now – it isn’t led by brainless fools.”

“Is that so?” Alice felt much more relived at that statement.

The two of them ended their conversation for the night, and the group of [Students] and [Teachers] returned to the capital soon after. Alice and the rest of her group split up with the rest of the [Students] and [Teachers] and helped carry the still-sleeping children to the [Guard] station. The [Guards] who received the kids were more than happy to arrange a few teams to investigate what they could, as well as arrange a comfortable place near the station for a few [Guards] to take care of them and keep watch over them until the kids woke up.

Alice quickly let the other three know that Arin wanted to see them at the Guard Station tomorrow to get some paperwork and information straightened out, and that if they wanted to they could tag along to see the parents if they wanted to. Then she returned to her inn room and collapsed into bed, exhausted. She fell asleep nearly the instant her head hit the pillow, not even having the time or energy to use her newly acquired [Explorer of Magic] Perk.

Name: Alice Verianna

Age: 16

Strength: 106 -> 109 (122%)

Perception: 127 -> 130 (165%)

Dexterity: 105 -> 109 (124%)

Intelligence: 164 -> 165 (128%)

Endurance: 119 -> 123(121%)

Willpower: 143 -> 145(108%)

Charisma: 127 -> 128(107%)

Magic: 138 -> 146 (117% -> 122%)

Primary Classes: 6/6

Survivor: 44 -> 50

Explorer of Magic: 51 -> 55

Scholar: 34 -> 40

Scientist: 38 -> 43

Kinetic Manabinder: 12 -> 23

Careful Enchanter: 1 -> 13

Evolved Classes: 2

Student of Kinetic Magic: 25

(Apprentice) Enchanter: 25

Secondary Classes: 2

Fisherwoman: 3

Student: 1 -> 2

Perks:

Foraging (Survivor 5)

Microbe Resistance (Survivor 10)

Extremophile (Survivor 15)

Camouflaged (Survivor 20)

Sixth Sense (Survivor 25)

Enhanced Training (Survivor 30)

Sense Hostility (Survivor 35)

Moderate Tissue Regeneration (Survivor 40)

Adrenaline Rush (Survivor 45)

Extended Organic (Survivor 50)

Magic Proficiency (Explorer of Magic 5)

Enhanced Regeneration (Explorer of Magic 10)

Combat Spellcaster (Explorer of Magic 15)

Improved Seed (Explorer of Magic 20)

Seeds of Magic (Explorer of Magic 25)

Three Seeds (Explorer of Magic 30)

Broken Seed (Explorer of Magic 35)

Mana Construct Modelling (Explorer of Magic 45)

Expanding Comprehension (Tier 2) (Explorer of Magic 55)

Enhanced Memory (Scholar 5)

Lesser Reduced Sleep Requirement (Scholar 10)

Accelerated Thinking (Scholar level 15 (-5))

Rhetorical Flourish (Scholar level 20)

Photographic Memory (Scholar level 25)

Improved Multitasking (Scholar level 30)

Scholar of Magic (Scholar level 35)

Lesser Organic Vision (Scholar 40)

Precise mana Measurement (Scientist level 5)

Sample Collection (Scientist level 10)

Timer (Scientist level 15)

Safety Analysis (Scientist Level 20)

Shared Memory (Scientist Level 25)

Advanced Mana Measurement (Scientist Level 30)

Degraded Seed Slot (Scientist 35)

Researcher's Speed (Scientist 40)

Object Control (Student of Kinetic Magic 5)

Above Average Mana Sight (Student of Kinetic Magic 10)

Folds of Magic (Student of Kinetic Magic 15)

Split Mind (Student of Kinetic Magic 20)

Improved Object Control (Sensory Enhancement) (Student of Kinetic Magic 25)

Mana's Binding (Kinetic Manabinder 5)

Enhanced Focus (Kinetic Manabinder 10)

Vastly Improved Kinetic Vision (Kinetic Manabinder 15)

Overclock (Kinetic Manabinder 20)

Enchanter's Vision (Apprentice Enchanter 5)

Monstrous Enchanting (Apprentice Enchanter 10)

Faster Enchanting (Apprentice Enchanter 15)

Faster Mana Regeneration (Apprentice Enchanter 20)

Speed Enchanting (Apprentice Enchanter 25)

Repurposing (Careful Enchanter level 5)

Blueprint (Careful Enchanter level 10)

Skills

Academic Skills:

Basic Mathematics: 122

English (Language Proficiency): 100

Illvarian (Language Proficiency): 99->100

Intermediate Mathematics: 78

Advanced Mathematics: 18

Sigmusi (Language Proficiency): 7

Basic Human Biology: 0-> 28

Russian (Language Proficiency): 0->1

Magic Skills:

Kinetic Manipulation: 57 -> 65

Mana Control: 41 -> 46

Mana Precision: 43 -> 47

Kinetic Force: 37 -> 44

Projectile Awareness : 12 -> 23

Divided Attention: 16 -> 25

Basic Enchanting: 19 -> 24

Broken Mana Purification: 12 -> 15

Mana Filtering 0->8

Seed Formation 0->12

Crafting Skills:

Weaving: 27

Woodworking: 28

Cooking: 12

Stoneworking: 11

Physical Skills:

Spearmanship: 19

Sprinting: 18 -> 21

Dodge: 18 -> 22

Climbing: 9

Fishing: 9

Digging: 8

Stealth: 4

Basic Medicine: 3

Magic Seed: 5/5

Kinetic Seed (135%) -> (145%)

Organic Seed (10%) -> (25%)

Pure mana Seed (50%) -> (21%) (Dropped because Infusion of Comprehension was sacrificed for new Perk)

Healing mana seed (10%) -> (23%)

Electromagnetic Seed (15%)

Achievements:

Outworlder (Rarity: 10)

Seeker of Truth (III) (Rarity: 9)

Baptized by Broken Mana (Rarity: 6)

Survivor of Winter (Rarity: 3)

Monstrous Encounter (Rarity: 1)

Monster Slayer (III) (Rarity: 2)

Well Trained (Rarity: 4)

Murderer (Rarity: 4)

Bookworm (Rarity: 3)

Kinetic Manabinder (Rarity N/A)

Careful Enchanter (Rarity N/A)

Capable Enchanter (Rarity: 5)

Seed Creator (Rarity: 8)