Chapter 195
With her mana penetration improved, Alice got back to work. After giving her new Perks one final read-through to make sure she wasn’t missing anything, she activated her new Perk. In an instant,{Burst of Multitasking} created five new magic tendrils.
Contrary to her expectations, Alice didn’t ‘see’ things through her new magic tendrils. Instead, any time her new magic tendrils touched a bit of organic matter, Alice got a strange mixture of sensations from them. It was more like she was touching, smelling, and looking at any piece of organic matter the tendrils touched. They also felt very different from her normal magic tendrils. It was a bizarre collage of sensations that Alice didn’t quite know how to parse.
Of course, this was a bit more limited than the wording of the Perk implied. Alice couldn’t see anything on the level of microbes. She couldn’t see viruses, or bacteria, or any of the truly microscopic types of organic matter. However, if she focused, she absolutely could see individual muscle fibers, especially the blocks of solidified mana-muscles that the System favored when people increased the physical stats. In short, she could see tissues, but nothing smaller than that. Alice was a bit disappointed by this, but not very surprised. People in this world had general knowledge of how diseases worked, but seemed to have no intimate knowledge of things like the size difference between bacteria and viruses. If a mere level 70 Perk could let people observe the microscopic world, it probably wouldn’t be a mystery to the people in this world right now. So even though Alice wished that her Perk would let her observe more, she wasn’t surprised that it didn’t.
That wasn’t the only unexpected side of the Perk. The mana cost of the Perk rather hefty. Even though Alice had a compound System seed with around 600 Mariums of mana inside of it, she still suspected that she could only keep the Perk running for about 5 minutes, if she were to use her System seed to keep the thing fueled. In other words, the seed was chewing through about 2 Mariums of mana per minute. That level of consumption might pose some problems if she was using the Perk solely for its organic vision-related abilities. After all, sometimes Alice needed to observe an experiment for an extended period of time. However, the level of detail and information Alice was getting from her Perk was also much higher than before, so it wasn’t entirely a loss. Not to mention, this Perk was actually very useful in combat, and would be much more valuable in quick fights than the two Perks she had lost.
The mental strain of the Perk was another matter. Even with nearly 200 [Intelligence], Alice felt like her mind was being strained even if she only activated the Perk for a few seconds. With the mental strain of the Perk added in, Alice suspected that she might only be able to keep the Perk running for a total of three minutes right now. Past that point, and it would start to become a painful and unwelcome distraction. That was far less time than she had been hoping for. This new Perk had a great deal of useful sides, but it was also an endless black hole for her mana and mental energy.
Alice sighed, before she focused. She needed to focus on the [Fisherman] mana in Jonathan. If she only had 3 minutes before she needed to take a break, she couldn’t waste them sighing and thinking. She still had Jonathan’s permission to interact with his body, so she pushed her mana tendrils right back into his stomach, to see if her new Perk would fix her previous problem.
This time, Alice didn’t feel like she had rammed her magic tendrils into a steel wall. She still felt Jonathan’s body resisting her intrusion – after all, Immortals had ludicrously dense mana in their bodies. However, it was at least at a manageable level now. If before she was trying to punch through solid steel, now it felt like she was trying to push through hard wood with a few small holes drilled into it. Alice still wasn’t making great progress. The ‘holes’ in Jonathan’s defenses were too small for her to perfectly exploit. However, she could do something, at least. It was still much harder and more expensive than a regular patient, but she could work through it, if barely.
Alice started looking at Jonathan’s body again, and planned her next move. She wanted to build Jonathan’s [Fisherman] mana into a knockoff class seed. Of course, Alice didn’t know much about the construction of a proper Class seed, so she had to improvise a bit. For now, Alice’s plan was simple – she would tie a ‘string’ of stabilization mana around a bit of Fisherman mana, and then try condensing it. From there… Alice would see what happened. At the very least, {Safety Analysis} wasn’t ringing any warning bells at her, so Alice thought it was a safe enough experiment to run. However, just to make sure, she decided to only interact with the mana in Jonathan’s left pinky toe. Alice knew that the System placed class seeds in other locations – mostly near the heart or the brain. There was probably a reason for that… but Alice didn’t know what it was. Therefore, for now, Alice decided to experiment with mana only in the least vital areas of the body. That way, if something went wrong, the lowest possible amount of damage would be inflicted. Furthermore, if something went truly wrong, Alice could always chop off Jonathan’s pinky toe before the damage spread. In this world, it wasn’t very difficult to restore missing limbs with the help of an [Organic Mage]. Losing a toe wasn’t a big deal.
Then, Alice frowned. How was she supposed to cut through the flesh of an Immortal with a crazy [Endurance] stat? She had Jonathan wait while she went back to the manor. Luckily, Ethan was in right now, so Alice dragged him over. Alice didn’t think Ethan could help much with her actual experiment, but he could probably cut off Jonathan’s toe if needed. Besides, he was also an experienced Immortal with centuries of practice as a healer. Even if it wasn’t his main focus, it was probably good enough to handle the current situation.