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Chapter 109 - A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World
🕑 Added 2023-02-25 07:07:26 +0000 UTC------------------------------------
You have leveled up!
Explorer of Magic: 69 -> 71, Student of Organic Magic 3 -> 11, Scholar: 53 -> 54, Scientist 53 -> 55
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Scientific Discoveries (Rarity: N/A)
An Achievement Created by the ‘For Science!’ perk. It currently has one -> two successful experiment catalogued. Upon reaching five experiments, this Achievement will receive a beneficial upgrade.
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An Achievement Created by the ‘For Science!’ perk. It currently has one -> two successful experiments catalogued. Upon reaching five experiments, this Achievement will receive a beneficial upgrade.
+20% -> 40% class experience for all research related classes, +5% -> 10% bonus to mental attribute growth
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Alice looked over the first of her System notifications, and then grinned. Technically, Alice hadn’t actually done an experiment. She had only started the process for learning how to make mana baptisms safer. So she was quite happy with the number of levels she had gotten for a simple observation experiment. Three new Perks wasn’t bad at all.
Though, she did find the fact that this observation experiment counted as a successful experiment for the ‘For Science’ Perk to be quite strange.
She went back to examining her other improvements. Perhaps because the experiment was heavily related to how the human body worked, she had gained a large number of levels in {Student of Organic Magic}, and a fair amount of levels in a few relevant Skills as well.
With some amusement, Alice also realized that this was the first time she had ever gotten a Perk from a secondary Class. {Student} was creeping closer to level 10 as time passed, but the Class just didn’t gain levels very quickly. By contrast, since {Student of Organic Magic} had a huge number of high Rarity Achievements boosting its growth speed, even after its growth was dropped to 20% of its normal growth value it still grew faster than most people’s main Classes did. Which was more than slightly ridiculous, but Alice was glad that she had more Perks to mess with. Sadly, she would only get a level 5 Perk from the Class, even though it had reached level 10. But any Perk was better than no Perk. However, she decided to focus on {Explorer of Magic} first. It was her highest level class, after all.
She looked over her older Perks, hesitating as she considered her options for her new Perk.
Should she combine some Perks or get a new Perk? She had four Perks that she could still combine with each other to make new Perks, but Alice was unwilling to touch the {Broken Seed} Perk. That Perk was just way too critical to her studies and experiments, and losing it might cripple her ability to experiment with System mana in the future. Therefore, she could only mess with {Enhanced Regeneration}, {Seeds of Magic}, and {Three Seeds}. {Seeds of Magic} was basically just a generic Mana Conversion Ratio enhancement, which she had used on her Kinetic Mana Seed back when she was still struggling to survive. {Three Seeds} gave her three seed slots which was quite useful. Alice was chronically short of seed slots, so upgrading {Three Seeds} might not be a bad idea if she could find something to combine it with. {Enhanced Regeneration} boosted her mana regeneration rate, which wasn’t really critical for anything. It had originally been incredibly useful, since Stats grew from using them, and so regenerating mana faster meant that she could practice Magic more, thus boosting her Magic Stat and increasing how much magic she could do per day. However, Alice’s mana pool was already fairly high now, so the Perk was much less important than it had been in the past.
She frowned, wondering if any combination of the three Perks gave her anything she actually needed or wanted.
The list of outcomes for combining Perks HAD refreshed again, now that she had reached a new level threshold, and that meant that each Perk combination gave a slightly different outcome than before. But they were still at least somewhat based on which Perks she was combining, and Alice just wasn’t seeing how any of the combined results would actually help her.
Alice sighed, before turning her attention to new Perk choices. It had been a while since she gotten something completely new from her [Explorer of Magic] class. Perhaps it was time to get a new Perk? Alice could always combine it with another Perk at level 75. {Three Seeds} being combined with another Perk that increased her magic seed count might not be a bad idea. Right now, Alice didn’t have another Perk from the [Explorer of Magic] class that gave her more magic seeds, so she could just pick one up and then combine it next time. She started looking through her new Perk options. After scanning her new options, she found a rather appealing choice.
Seedy Ambitions
Requirements: Explorer of Magic Class at level 70 or Greater, Intelligence 150 or higher, Magic 150 or higher, At least 5 Magic Seeds, At least 3 Perks related to studying and interacting with Magic seeds
With enough study, you can create an inferior magic seed for ANY subject of study you are interacting with. This requires you to have a strong understanding of the subject, and only one seed can be created this way per month.
These inferior seeds will NOT count towards your magic seed limit. Inferior Seeds are limited to 25% Mana Conversion ratio. They cannot be upgraded via Achievements, but other Perks may interact with them.
{Seedy Ambitions} was much better than her other two options for new Perks, both of which were instead focused on upgrading the seeds she currently had.
The ability to create one new magic seed a month that wasn’t confined to her seed limits gave Alice a few new and interesting options for future experiments. For example, given what she had learned about Classes and Magic Seeds recently, Alice absently wondered if she could create a magic seed that was actually a class. If Magic Seeds and Classes were the same thing, what would happen if she created a [Fishermen] Magic seed? How would it compare to her [Fishermen] class?
Of course, only one seed a month wasn’t particularly impressive. For most Mages, that might completely change how they thought about their Seeds, but given how many Magic Seeds Alice cycled through a month, adding one new magic seed a month had surprisingly little impact. Alice figured that combining the Perk with {Three Seeds} might triple the speed she generated new Seeds, or something like that, which would make it pretty useful by level 75. While she might be misunderstanding how Perk combination worked, she thought it was a reasonable assumption for how the two Perks would combine together. And if she turned out to be wrong, she would at least learn a little more about how the System worked behind the scenes.
Of course, Alice was also still interested in seeing what happened if she used {Broken Seed} on a Class, and maybe seeing what happened if she made a [Fisherman] Magic seed and then broke it. There were simply too many unusual experiments she wanted to try, but most of them required that she have even more leeway to experiment with weird seeds and have more open seed slots. {Seedy Ambitions}, and whatever she got after combining it with another Perk at level 75, would hopefully help with that.
After that, Alice looked at her [Organic Mage] Perk next. Since this would only be a level 5 Perk, Alice wasn’t expecting much. She spent a few minutes looking over her options, before making another choice.
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Improved Organic Manipulation
Requirements: Organic Mage level 5 or greater
Unless you are explicitly trying to cause harm, while using Organic Magic to heal a patient you are less likely to make mistakes that will harm the patient in question.
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After giving herself a very minor papercut and testing the result, Alice confirmed that the improvement was rather minor. It helped, certainly, but she still didn’t trust herself to heal any truly dangerous injuries without causing a lot of long-term harm. Alice would probably need to pick up a better Perk that did the same thing in the future. Maybe it would turn into something useful if she combined it with another Perk someday? Alice shrugged. Her first Perk from a secondary class was rather… underwhelming.
Alice then turned her attention to her [Scientist] Class. What was still useful? What could be cut with little cost? What was kind of useful, but needed a bit of an upgrade?
After some hesitation, Alice eventually decided to combine {Researcher’s Speed} and {Timer}. After looking over her perks list, and the results for combining Perks, Alice was pretty sure that combining the two Perks would improve upon both Perks in a very interesting way. {Researcher’s Speed}, in particular, was somewhat helpful, but as Alice’s Stats and other Classes improved, she was already starting to be able to do things faster and more effectively. The original reason Alice had taken {Researcher’s Speed} was because she didn’t have enough hours in a day, and being able to think, process, and analyze information faster had boosted the speed she could do research. But Alice was also becoming less stretched for time after Ethan had helped solve some of her financial problems. She no longer needed to make every single Marium of mana turn into money and scrape out every second she could for her experiments. With that in mind, Perks devoted to saving time or maximizing the use of time seemed less important now.
And {Timer}, well… not many of Alice’s experiments had been related to specific timing recently. Sure, knowing exactly how many seconds passed as Alice tried and failed to form a weird magic System wasn’t bad information to have, but… in all honesty, the Perk’s relevance had been slowly fading away for quite a while. Not to mention, these days Alice could actually afford a clock if she needed to keep track of time. They were expensive, since they required a lot of enchantments to become accurate, but with how much Ethan was paying her, Alice didn’t need to use Perks to compensate for her poverty anymore.
Thus, Alice took one final, hesitant look at the two Perks she was about to sacrifice, and then started the combination process.
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Researcher’s Speed
Requirements: Scientist level 40 or greater
When you are working on an experiment, the pace at which you think, process information, and work will increase by a significant amount, allowing you to conduct experiments notably faster than before.
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Timer
Requirements: Scientist level 15 or higher, Intelligence 150 or higher, Perception 100 or higher
You may always tell what time it is down to the hundredth of a second. You may also attach a 'timer' to a specific object or area and measure the amount of time it takes for one condition of your choice to be met. (For example, you may attach a 'timer' to a rock before throwing it off of a building and set the start and stop conditions to 'touching no physical objects' and ' hitting the ground,' giving you the exact number of seconds that it takes for the rock to fall). Timers cost a small amount of mana to create (payable from any seed) and cannot last longer than 2 hours.
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Speed Experimentation (Tier 2 Perk, Level 55 Scientist) (Level 15 Scientist Perk + Level 40 Scientist Perk)
Perk Costs: Timer + Researcher’s Speed sacrificed to create this Perk
While doing an experiment, you may force time to pass more quickly for yourself and all variables related to the experiment. These variables MUST be contained with an area no greater than 10 meters by 10 meters by 5 meters. (note: If used upon another living being above a certain level of intelligence, permission must be obtained first).
This will place a significant amount of strain on your mind, and will also require some amount of mana to keep going (mana can be paid from any kind of magic seed, though the more related to time said magic seed is, the less broken mana will be produced, and the more efficient the conversion).
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After forming the Perk, Alice realized that she had gotten a very different Perk than she had expected to get. And it was absolutely amazing.
She had a freaking time manipulation Perk now.
It was a very limited time manipulation Perk, and had all sorts of conditions required to function. But she had just gotten a freaking time manipulation Perk. No matter how limited, specific, or difficult it was to activate the Perk, she could now manipulate time. She had no idea how much she could speed up the passage of time, but she could apparently speed it up now.
Absently, Alice wondered what counted as an ‘Experiment’ for the purposes of the Perk. If she was in a battle, could she decide that she was ‘experimenting’ with how fast an object moved if she applied a certain amount of kinetic mana to it? If she was in the middle of trying to form a system seed, did that count as an experiment?
There were a lot of possibilities, but no matter what, Alice was excited. It wasn’t every day that one gained the ability to manipulate time itself.
Especially since it implied that time manipulation was possible using normal magic as well. The System still worked on the basic principles that the rest of reality worked off of, which meant that anything the System did was theoretically possible, even if the System didn’t exist. In other words, time manipulation was a possibility for magic.
Alice frowned. She could have sworn that she had tried to form a Magic Seed from Earth physics that was related to time, back when she had still been living in Cyra and had nearly melted herself. It took a moment for her Memory-related Perks to bring the memory back to her, but she was pretty sure forming a spacetime seed had failed. What did a ‘successful’ time-related magic seed look like here?
Alice turned towards Ethan, her eyes alight with curiosity.
“Ethan! Are there time magic seeds? Or anything that related to the manipulation of time?”
Ethan stared with a baffled expression, before he nodded. “They are terribly inefficient, and not very powerful. But they do exist. I believe most estimates claim that they lose around 70% of their mana as broken mana, which means it’s ridiculously wasteful. It’s also not like you can travel backwards in time with them, although I know many fictional stories written for entertainment involve travelling back into the past to make up for a regret or somesuch.” Ethan shrugged. “Sadly, this isn’t possible. Though I suspect such stories have led many a hopeful Mage into forming a time magic seed. But for reasons nobody seems to quite understand, time can only ever pass forward, not backwards. I don’t recommend you waste a seed slot on time manipulation, if that’s what you were considering.”
Alice shook her head. “I was just wondering. The description for one of my new Perks made me think about it, but I wasn’t considering spending a seed slot on it.” Unless it seemed interesting, thought Alice.
Then, she turned her attention back to her Status Screen. For the first time in a while, she opened up her full Status Screen, to see what changes had happened in the past few weeks.
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Name: Alice Verianna
Age: 16
Strength: 113 -> 115 (122%)
Perception: 135 -> 137 (165%)
Dexterity: 115 -> 118 (124%)
Intelligence: 167 (128%)
Endurance: 127 -> 130 (121%)
Willpower: 147 ->148 (108%)
Charisma: 129 ->130 (107%)
Magic: 159 -> 161 (122%)
Primary Classes: 6/6
Survivor: 53 -> 54
Explorer of Magic: 63 -> 71
Scholar: 51 -> 54
Scientist: 52 -> 55
Kinetic Manabinder: 31 -> 41
Careful Enchanter: 20 -> 27
Evolved Classes: 2
Student of Kinetic Magic: 25
(Apprentice) Enchanter: 25
Secondary Classes: 3
Fisherwoman: 3
Student: 7 -> 8
Student of Organic Magic: 1 -> 11
Perks:
Survivor 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 Organics (Survivor 50)
Explorer of Magic Perks:
Enhanced Regeneration (Explorer of Magic 10)
Seeds of Magic (Explorer of Magic 25)
Three Seeds (Explorer of Magic 30)
Broken Seed (Upgraded) (Explorer of Magic 35)
Expanding Comprehension (Tier 2) (Explorer of Magic 55)
Combat Seed (Tier 2) (Explorer of Magic 60)
Intuitive Magic Modelling (Tier 2) (Explorer of Magic 65)
Seedy Ambitions (Explorer of Magic 70)
Scholar Perks:
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)
Super speed reading (Scholar 45)
Delve into the Arcane (Scholar 50)
Scientist Perks:
Precise mana Measurement (Scientist level 5)
Sample Collection (Scientist level 10)
Safety Analysis (Scientist Level 20)
Shared Memory (Scientist Level 25)
Advanced Mana Measurement (Scientist Level 30)
Degraded Seed Slot (Scientist 35)
For Science! (Scientist 45)
The Science of Mana Deprivation (Scientist 50)
Speed Experimentation (Tier 2) (Scientist 55)
Kinetic Mage Perks:
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)
Kinetic Enchanting (Kinetic Manabinder 25)
Reflection (Kinetic Manabinder 30)
Kinetic Tendrils (Kinetic Manabinder 35)
Speed Analysis (Kinetic Manabinder 40)
Enchanter Perks:
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)
Enchanter's Basic Magic Seed (Careful Enchanter level 15)
Pride of a Craftswoman (Careful Enchanter 20)
Enchanter's Armory (Careful Enchanter 25)
Organic Mage Perks:
Improved Organic Manipulation (Organic Mage 5)
Skills
Academic Skills:
English (Language Proficiency): 100
Illvarian (Language Proficiency): 100
Sigmusi (Language Proficiency): 7
Russian (Language Proficiency): 1
Basic Mathematics: 122 -> 123
Intermediate Mathematics: 78 -> 79
Advanced Mathematics: 18 -> 19
Basic Human Biology: 33 -> 38
Mana-biology: 2 -> 11
Magic Skills:
Kinetic Manipulation: 68 -> 70
Mana Control: 50 -> 52
Mana Precision: 50 -> 53
Kinetic Force: 47 -> 51
Projectile Awareness : 29 -> 32
Divided Attention: 31 -> 34
Basic Enchanting: 29 -> 31
Broken Mana Purification: 18
Mana Filtering: 22 -> 24
Seed Formation: 16 -> 19
Crafting Skills:
Weaving: 27
Woodworking: 28
Cooking: 12
Stoneworking: 11
Physical Skills:
Dodge: 28 -> 31
Spearmanship: 19
Sprinting: 21 -> 22
Climbing: 9
Fishing: 9
Digging: 8
Stealth: 4
Basic Medicine: 3
Magic Seed: 5/6
(unused seed has 15% conversion rat. Max)
(Note to self: The electromagnetic magic seed is {Degraded Seed Slot}. For that seed, Perks = no, Achievements = yes).
(Final Slot is one where Alice keeps trying and failing to make a System Seed)
Kinetic Seed (145%) -> 147%
Organic Seed (25%) -> 68% (6% from expanding Comp.)
Pure mana Seed (21%) -> 36% (8% from Expanding Comp.)
Healing mana seed (23%) -> 55%
Electromagnetic Seed (15%)
Achievements:
Outworlder (Rarity: 10)
Seeker of Truth (III -> IV) (Rarity: 9 -> 10)
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)
Scientific Discoviers (I -> II) (Rarity N/A)
Immortal's Apprentice at the battle against the Society (Rarity: 4)
Legendary Healer (Rarity: 7)
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Her improvements had been pretty good over the past few weeks. She felt more than a little happy with her gains. She decided that the first thing she wanted to do was test out how {Speed Experimentation} worked. She hadn’t ever seen a temporal manipulation Perk before, and she was very interested in seeing how it worked. At the same time, she wanted to test how limited the Perk actually was. It was both incredibly useful for making sure that she could perform experiments as quickly as possible, and also potentially useful in battle. She also had a few Perks that had come off of cooldown that she wanted to use, now that she had time. {Expanding Comprehension} was ready to use, and {Broken Seed} had been off of cooldown for a few days already. She also wanted to try using {Seedy Ambitions} and see if she could make a Math mana seed; if she wanted to form a System seed, she would probably need to combine several kinds of mana together, and while Alice didn’t think she needed to have a magic seed for every mana type during the formation process, they would probably help.
Alice turned back towards Ethan, who was giving her a curious look, before frowning to herself as she thought over Tavi’s observation experiment one last time. While she had gained a fair amount of information on how the System tried to help people during their mana baptisms, she still had a lot of questions left unresolved. She wasn’t even sure if her ideas on how to make them safer were correct, and testing some of them seemed… unethical. Alice felt a slight headache.
She couldn’t help but wonder if there was some sort of Perk combination that could solve this problem. Perhaps a way to simulate experimental results without actually performing an experiment?
On the other hand, if such a Perk was easy to access, the Society of Starry Eyes probably wouldn’t exist. Alice sighed, before frowning. At the end of the day, there were always more things she was missing, and always more pieces of information she wished she had. At least she had {Safety Analysis} to help figure out when something was a bad idea. She could use that to make some informed guesses about which of her ideas she could test without hurting someone else, and develop a more informed course of action based on that information.
Alice thanked Ethan for helping her set up the experiment, before promising Ethan she would write a more proper report on what she had learned from the experiment later, after she had some more time to think.
Then, Alice made her way to her room in Ethan’s mansion and began preparing to experiment with time manipulation.
Author’s Note: Just realized it has been a while since I last showed Alice’s Status Screen.
Good thing I checked this chapter. I apparently forgot to apply Alice’s Legendary Healer Achievement to the relevant Seeds, but while I was checking over her Status Screen I realized the numbers didn’t qualify her for the Student Organic Mage Class. I spent a while trying to figure out how she had taken a class without meeting the class requirements, before I realized the seed numbers were wrong and went back to check. Took me a while to figure out why her numbers were weird. RIP.
Bit of a System heavy chapter. But we had a lot of fairly System-light chapters before this one, so I figure it’s fine.
Comments
Margaret Lloyd
Why doesn't Alice have a merchant skill or secondary class? We've seen her sell to a merchant (the book), arrange a trade with one (on the boat), buy stuff (though perhaps the tailor didn't have a Merchant skill?, still somebody who sold her something should have at some point) and spend substantial time assisting (and selling stuff through) a shop of somebody we know has the class (Cecelia even uses a pretty high level class perk in one of those game sessions, win a deal once per day isn't a reasonable a low level perk).
The Lost Pages
Can she form multiples of the same type? E.g. 2+ Kinetic seeds?
MinE
Exact number mentioned in her otherworlder achievement. It’s bonus only applies for stats under 120, primary classes under 50, and secondary classes under 10. I’m hoping she gets an impressive achievement from exceeding all those values due to a combination of liking stat grinding, it taking so long, and the existence of basic training as an achievement.
Derek Walker
Was there something special about a stat of 120?
MinE
I can’t wait till her last stat gets to 120; the suspense is killing me. P.s I hope she gets an achievement for it plus getting level 50+ in all her main classes.
MinE
I wonder if she’ll try study non human mana baptisms; hopefully at least the beginning parts are similar, but even in the worst case it would be nice to know the difference between the processes. P.s I hope she forms a Math seed; it’s the only part of system mana stated so far that she doesn’t have yet.
Rain
Very cool! All the seeds!!
Luboš Hemala
Could Seedy Ambitions seeds gain from perks improving all seeds by x%? I think Alice was offered one such some time ago.
dicloniuslord
The seedy ambitions perk is absolutely broken. Even if its once a month, the ability to have infinite magic seeds (even at 25% conversion) has more and more usability as time goes on (and the whole "study you are interacting with" thing is prob a nonissue since it can be a basic experiment on seeing conditions, usability, and interactions of the magic type). As in, so long as she spends time learning each seed subject first she can essentially become an omnimage eventually. Cant wait to see how this goes
Luboš Hemala
Becoming a [Time Mage] would be so awesome!
Apoca
Also, Enhanced Training kind of stopped working. Maybe combining that with something would gain Alice passive stat gains over time.
Apoca
Ethan is a bad influence on the Survivor's leveling speed. Before they met Alice experimented and leveled a lot. Now nothing. And Survivor has a ton of perks that aren't useful anymore. (I don't see how combining them will be useful, but they can only be more useful than now) Alice may want to reset some of her Survivor Perks There were a lot of options which wasn't useful at that time but would be more useful now.
IDFree
It seems unlikely that perk was genuine time manipulation. More likely it was some form of reinforcement for physical actions + offloading some of the thinking to the system to speed up the thought process. As long as we know that the system is both relatively optimized and not completely godlike, it's safe to assume the system is most likely using some sort of "lazy" approach: if the same results can be gotten by using different processes, it will default to the one requiring less resources. That's why Alice is so impressed with this new perk: with the system having to speed up not only her thoughts, but every detail of every experiment imaginable it's likely she got genuine time manipulation
Enrico Snipes
Didn't she meet something that looked like time manipulation the first day in Cyria? She went to a tailor and when the tailor started working she abruptly sped up in all aspects. I thought that was a perk that sped her up during work and i would consider that time manipulation
Luboš Hemala
Thanks for the chapter, system update was welcome :-)
