acaswell
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A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World - Chapter 25
🕑 Added 2021-05-22 18:52:30 +0000 UTCAlice spent the night in nervous anticipation, before she finally got up the next day. She started out by reading through more of Illa’s library, as usual, but couldn’t focus on the words in each book as well as she normally could.
Today, she would finally test one of her theories. She had generated dozens of them during her time in the wilderness, wondering what the System was and how it worked. Finally, she had the ability to test at least a corner of how this dimension worked. A tiny start, but it was, finally, a start.
Finally, after a few hours, the usual time for Alice’s training session with Illa was here. Alice stepped into the room with far more eagerness than she usually felt at the prospect of having beans thrown at her face while she ran herself to exhaustion. Even if she could see the usefulness and the necessity of it, it was far from what Alice considered to be enjoyable.
However, today was different. For once, Alice was looking forward to training today. She ignored the strange look Illa was giving her as she practically bounced up and down on her feet, waiting for the training to start.
For those of you who aren’t interested in the scientific research aspect of the story, start skipping from here. The place to stop skipping with be bold, and underlined, to let you know when to stop skipping.
Alice’s theory about Mana and its relationship to how muscles worked was a bit underdeveloped at the moment. It was more based on a rough assumption, rather than a well-built hypothesis. Her current materials for experimenting were also all incredibly crude – she only had her eyes and her body right now. However, what Alice wasn’t looking for a great experiment right now – this was mostly because she didn’t have enough familiarity with mana to design a more complex experiment in the first place. What she was doing now was closer to a very rough test – not intended to create a specific conclusion, but just generate some observations she could do more specific tests with later on. If it were ever presented as a serious science experiment, it would probably be laughed out of the classroom. However, she also had so little information in her topic of interest to work with that, instead of an experiment that perfectly isolated variables, double-checked for any errors, and had a flawless methodology, right now she just needed some way to generate ideas for what direction she should be heading. It wasn’t even quite a proper experiment, in some sense – she was testing her hypothesis, but doing so in a way prone to errors. But it was also the best idea she had at the moment.
This led to the idea behind her first experiment. The books that both the church and Illa’s library contained mentioned that people who had higher stats, levels, and skills all consistently had more mana than those who had lower levels, stats, and attributes. This was true regardless of whether or not somebody was a mage – which struck Alice as odd. Illa’s books confirmed this statement, taking it as common sense that, without exception, those who were stronger had more mana in their body.
Since Alice had also noticed that people in this world were much stronger than those at home, and the System didn’t SEEM to negate the need for some sort of energy to fuel the body, Alice theorized that, somehow, the bodies of people in this dimension were using mana as a fuel source to make themselves stronger. Specifically, Alice theorized that, maybe, people were burning mana in place of fat or something when they used their seemingly superhuman fat, which somehow translated to the extraordinary feats of human strength and endurance most people considered commonplace in this world. She had no idea how that would work from a biological perspective, in practice, or even if it was correct. However, if she was wrong, it wasn’t a big deal – what mattered more was just getting a rough idea of whether she was looking at a branch of theory worth pursuing at all. And if she was wrong, then that was that. No big deal. Just a few hours of wasted concentration, and maybe a slightly embarrassing memory of the time she thought that she had stumbled onto something incredible only to find out her entire assumption base was totally wrong from the very beginning. However, it would be much better to find out now that she was wrong, instead of finding out she was wrong after investing several months of her wages and materials into an experiment.
For her experiment, she wasn’t doing anything complex. She was just going to use her {Above Average Mana Sight} to carefully observe the mana inside of her body and muscles while she exercised. What she expected to see was mana inside of her muscles continuously decreasing as she exercised, assuming her theory was correct. Or, alternately, perhaps mana would continuously flow into her muscles from the air around her at a much faster than usual rate. The mana in the air already flowed into her body, as far as she had observed last night, but it usually did so at an extremely sedate and stable pace. The amount of mana she absorbed from one moment to the next didn’t really change, and after staring at it both at night and this morning, she knew how quickly she absorbed mana while ‘at rest.’ She wasn’t exactly sure whether this was ‘normal’ or not, and none of Illa’s books referenced it either, but she was at least confident in noticing if her mana absorption rate changed. And if she saw either the mana in her muscles decreasing or the rate she absorbed mana increasing, she would know that she might be on to something. If neither happened, she was probably wrong, and should scrap the idea and search for another angle to start investigating the System.
And so, Alice started her weighted jogging. As usual, Illa would occasionally randomly throw a bean at her, and Alice would do her best to sense it and stop its movement before it hit her. Out of the corner of her eye, Alice could see Illa's expression growing increasingly bizarre as the training session progressed, but most of her focus remained on the way mana was swirling around her. She needed to focus now, and Illa probably wouldn't mind too much if she was focusing on training her mana perception, right?
As far as she could tell, her initial hypothesis… seemed to be correct? The mana in the air around her was continuously drifting into her, much, much more quickly than it had when she was resting or reading this morning. It was still small enough that she wouldn’t have noticed it if she wasn’t paying attention, but she could definitely tell that her ‘mana absorption rate’ was increasing while she was exercising. In addition, if she slowed down her jog, or took a break, the mana absorption would immediately slow down. In short, the amount of mana she was absorbing from the air around her was always directly related to how much she was exerting herself.
She was about to pat herself on the back for making a good first hypothesis, thinking that she was on to something, when something totally out of her expectations happened that immediately threw her hypothesis out the window.
Through Training, you have increased an attribute!
Endurance+1
The moment before she gained an attribute point, the mana in the air around her grew much denser. Then, suddenly, all of the mana in the air around her swarmed towards her, like a group of children who had just seen a pinata. In an instant mana was suddenly invading her body much more quickly than it had been mere moments ago. The amounts of mana involved were still tiny - if she hadn’t been paying such close attention, she wouldn’t have noticed anything at all. However, since she was watching the entire thing as closely as she could, she knew that the mana swarming into her had happened exactly the moment before she had picked up an Attribute point.
The excess mana that had invaded her body swirled inside of her muscles and bones, quickly assimilating itself into her body. She could barely make out what was going on – the only thing that she could tell for sure was that whatever was happening, it was complicated. Way, way beyond anything Alice could process, even with double or triple her [Intelligence] stat. It was like watching somebody perform Calculus when you barely understood Algebra – the only thing she was sure of was that something weird was happening.
Right on time, Alice felt the typical small improvement in her abilities from gaining an Attribute Point.
And, most importantly, the mana in her body was, every so slightly, more dense than it had originally been. Especially in the spots where the mana swarm had targeted – her bones and muscles.
What did I just see? Alice tried to stop her imagination from running wild – however, it was impossible for her to not start feeling wild anticipation build up after seeing the way the mana had behaved. She had been expecting to either be totally correct or totally incorrect when it came to her theory – after all, being wrong wouldn’t have been too strange here, and she had already mentally prepared herself to start over.
Instead, it looked like she had been somewhere in the ball park of the right answer, but totally wrong in several aspects of her original hypothesis. Or, at least, she possibly had been. Alice gritted her teeth, and continued jogging – it was possible the mana surge had just been some sort of anomaly. She should at least double check, and see if she saw the same thing happening when she gained her next Attribute point.
However, at the same time, Alice began to quietly wonder what her observation meant. Her first theory was probably wrong, or at least partially incorrect. However, there was another way to explain what she was observing, and also accounted for her new observations. What if mana wasn’t being used as some sort of fuel source, as she had first imagined? What if, instead, mana was somehow being used to build up muscles or something like that instead? Or it was being used to replace muscle fibers? She was having a bit of a hard time visualizing that, because she couldn’t understand how mana, which seemed to mostly act like a gas, would map to physical matter, but it would explain what she was looking at.
Alice paused for a moment, as she felt a trickle of cold sweat. She thought about the first part of her experiment. For a moment, she had felt confident that her theory was correct, based off of the fact that the observations she had generated seemed to match her expectations. It might still be correct - she couldn't tell if her body was burning mana as fuel or not. However, the fact that she gained more mana when she gained an Attribute point meant that there were definitely other possible explanations as well. If she hadn’t been luckily bailed out by the fact that she had gained a Stat Point at the right time, she might have kept pursuing her incorrect theory for weeks, or even months, wasting huge amounts of time and resources.
Clearly, she was missing several things when it came to setting up proper experiments. She needed more rigor – control groups, ways to check for false positives. Possibly an assistant if she could find someone who would serve as a good candidate for one and was actually interested, to bounce ideas off of and help check her work and ideas. That way, instead of crappy science, Alice would be able to actually engage in good science. Otherwise, she would just generate another one of those terrible scientific papers the news liked to use to generate shock and surprise, rather than a legitimate and academically rigorous research result.
In fact, after a moment of thinking, Alice realized that there was yet another possibility - it was possible that mana was related to the supernatural strength of people in this world, but it was also possible that there was some other factor, and mana was just reacting to it. Or that both mana and the System were just reacting to an improvement in her physical abilities, rather than causing them. While it seemed unlikely to her, it was still entirely possible. She needed to come up with ways to test all of the above.
Still, at the very least, this experiment had given her some food for thought. Alice continued to watch the mana in the air around her as she ran, and began trying to see if the mana in the air around her consistently reacted to her gaining an attribute. She would need to test it against other people in this world, but she wanted to at least see if the mana surge was a consistent reaction for her gaining an attribute.
It took less than an hour for Alice to next observe a surge of mana. Once again, she stopped for a brief moment, ignoring Illa’s increasingly bizarre gaze, while she stared at the mana. The mana in the air around her quickly restructured itself, before surging towards her moments later.
Another attribute gain?
Less than a second later, a System notification appeared with a pleasant ‘ding.’
Through Training, you have increased an attribute!
Strength+1
Once again, Mana flooded into her body. However, since Alice was paying close attention to it, she was able to notice a few slight differences from the way the mana had reacted when she had gained a point in Endurance. Instead of mana flooding into her bones, muscles, stomach, and throughout her body, this time the mana primarily seemed to accumulate in her muscles, especially her arms and legs.
Hmm… For now, Alice decided to try to find a ‘control group’ for this experiment, before proceeding any further. The Priest at the Church taught children twice a week, right? There were probably at least a few kids who would gain attributes per day in that environment. She should see if the Priest minded her dropping in and asking kids to let her know when they gained stats. If she was able to predict who gained a stat before they said anything, it would lend credence to the idea that the mana surges and stat gains were a regular phenomenon in this world, instead of some weird mutation brought about by her {Outworlder} Achievement or her previous world’s lack of mana or something. After all, Alice had already noticed that the amount of mana in her body was much lower than everyone else she had seen in Illa’s house. She wasn’t sure whether Illa’s mana was simply abnormally dense or Alice’s mana was abnormally low, although she was betting on the latter.
Those who aren’t as interested in the scientific aspects of the story, start reading again here.
Alice had, at the very least, discovered one thing as a result of her small experiment – she could tell that there should be some sort of relationship between mana and stats, even if it might be completely different from her first hypothesis. Rather than mana being some sort of fuel that the body burned in place of fat, it seemed far more likely that mana was somehow improving her stats by…replacing her muscles as she exercised? Something like that? Unless, of course, one of the other possible explanations proved to be more correct. However, it was a good enough theory to at least base some future experiments off of. She could work with that.
And then, with a sense of confusion, Alice watched as the mana in the air began to grow far, far more dense than it had when she had just picked up a point or two of attributes. Instead of just a thin extra layer that invaded her body and then broke apart, this looked more like a tidal wave of mana.
It surged into her skin, exactly the same way it had when she had gained an attribute. She braced herself for… something. Pain, strange sensations, anything. Instead, she noticed absolutely nothing, besides the fact that a huge string of notifications suddenly popped up.
Through Training, you have increased an attribute!
Intelligence +1, Perception +2
You have gained an achievement!
Seeker of Truth (I) (Rarity: 8)
You have gained a singular glimpse into the mechanics of the System and at least partially understood it, allowing you to understand more of the truths of mana and the world around you.
+1 Primary Class Slot(s), +40% class experience for all research-related classes, +10% Effect of Intelligence, +15% Effect of Perception. Your ability to see Mana is significantly enhanced.
You have leveled up!
Scientist: 9
Scholar: 15
Explorer of Magic: 31
Hah? Alice looked at the string of notifications. The Levels in Scientist were, more or less, what she had been expecting. If anything, she thought the System was being quite generous, since it was giving her nine levels for a half-baked experiment on how Mana and muscles interacted. The number of levels she gained in [Scholar] seemed a bit low, probably because the class was more geared towards books and knowledge than experimentation and knowledge. The Attribute increases also made sense, since she was doing research and had focused a lot on her observational skills to do so. However, what the heck was {Seeker of Truth}?
It implied that she had seen… something a bit different than just a random guess at the truth. Or, rather, that most people didn’t realize something that she had seen in her experimentation. Alice had already started to work out how many of the mechanics behind levelling and attribute growth went – the System didn’t necessarily reward correct actions. Instead, it rewarded critical thinking and planning, regardless of how correct or incorrect a statement was. If she did an experiment that proved that the System was intelligent, even if the System wasn’t intelligent it would still give her levels in [Scholar]. It was like her math teacher – it would reward her work, giving her plenty of points even if she got the final answer wrong as long as the steps leading up to that answer were kinda reasonable-ish.
However, the {Seeker of Truth} Achievement implied something very different. It meant that she had, at some point, stumbled across something correct.
Alice had started out with the theory that people in this world used mana as some sort of fuel source in place of the regular energy supplied by the human body, and had nearly decided she was correct before she luckily gained an Attribute point and realized her theory was definitely missing something. Most people in this world accepted the current theory that was promoted by [Scholars], which claimed that Mana was, instead, something similar to air – human bodies needed it in order to survive, and so humans naturally ‘breathed’ it in every second.
The theory Alice had ended up with at the end was that maybe mana was somehow reshaping the body as it passed through it. Was the System implying this theory was correct, or was there something else to it?
Alice shook her head. For now, she would do her best to be careful. Even in this experiment, she had nearly messed up, and only succeeded anyway as a result of pure luck. She didn’t want to keep stumbling by on pure luck. She couldn’t improve too much right now – her methodology for her experiment had been dubious, but none of Illa’s enchanted stuff had helped her do anything like measure mana in the air or inside of her body, and she simply didn’t have the materials to do more rigorous experiments. Illa DID have a tool to measure Broken Mana, but that was hardly what she needed right now.
However, at the very least, she could put more time and energy into removing the more obvious loopholes in her experiments – as well as finding an actual control group.
She took a look around the room, trying to get a sense for what {Seeker of Truth} was improving. The sensation of her mind moving too quickly for her body to keep up with increased, just like it had the first time Alice’s [Perception] had improved. Her thoughts were also clearer – in fact, they were clearer than they had ever been in her life. She quickly did some math. The effect of her [Intelligence] stat had just improved by ten percent, so that was about the equivalent of adding 15 points to her [Intelligence] total? It was certainly noticeable, now that was getting so many points at the same time. Her ability to see the world around her and think were both much clearer.
Of course, far more notable was her ability to see mana. Before, she had mostly seen the world with a sort of colored ‘film’ over it. However, making out individual swirls of mana had been difficult, especially farther away. Now, however, Alice was seeing something else entirely – her vision was much, much clearer. She could see that the broken mana in this room, for example, had two very slightly different shades of color associated with them. One of them was obviously Alice’s Broken Mana – as she deflected another bean, Alice could see a very small chunk of her mana, perhaps four or five percent of it, break off and form another little speck of Broken Mana. The other color, by simple elimination, should probably belong to Illa, since she was the only other mage in this mansion.
That led to the question of what Broken Mana was– nothing she had read or heard about indicated that there was a major difference in the Broken Mana produced by one person versus another, but she could clearly see that there was some sort of difference. Another question to investigate, when she had more time and a better idea of what she was doing.
Alice closed her eyes, trying to adjust to the feeling of her new Stats as her body tried to compensate for assumptions about how she moved and saw things that simply weren’t true anymore.
Apart from that, she also had an extra Primary class slot. Suddenly, the knowledge that she was going to lose the [Scholar] class in the next few weeks just... vanished. If she had six class slots, she didn't need to give anything up. It was an unexpectedly liberating feeling - she had acknowledged that she needed to focus on her survival, and the {Sense Hostility} Perk was simply too useful for her to abandon right now. However, she certainly hadn't felt good about giving up [Scholar] it felt awful. Now, suddenly, she didn't have to give it up. Most of the Achievements she had seen that granted something like an extra class slot were rarity 9 or 10, and involved such ridiculous feats Alice was absolutely confident she would die if she tried for them. However, even though she didn't remember seeing this Perk in the Church's book, she now had one final class slot. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief, before she focused again, trying to redirect her attention back to what she needed to do.
In the next two days, she had two things to do. First, she needed to find a control group. Hopefully Priest Friedheim didn’t mind her sitting in on the lessons he conducted – if so, she could probably get decent information from that. Second, in two days, Alice needed to visit Erik’s daughter and discuss enchanting with her. Alice still didn’t even understand the different types of Enchantment, and she had no ability to start learning Enchanting by herself at all.
Of course, before that, she had Perks to select. One in each class, in fact.
"If you are done staring at your System notifications, may I ask what exactly you're doing?" Asked Illa, staring at Alice and frowning.
Author’s note : So, last chapter, one of the options for Alice’s level 10 [Scholar] Perks was {Accelerated Thinking}, which people seemed to be talking about a lot in the comments and saying she should have picked it. I included the Perk specifically because the effect of each point of [Intelligence], as far as Alice knows, increases the speed someone thinks, as well as the ability for someone to process information. Thus, the Perk could be said to be the same as ‘improves the effect of the [Intelligence] stat,’ or at least Alice would have interpreted it that way. I thought it was a pretty clever way to subtly hint that her understanding of the Stat was either slightly off, or missing some information, and was planning on later adding in a few more specific hints about other aspects of the Stat. While it does both of those things, it has a few more subtle effects as well, after all.
This did not work as intended. I might delete that Perk from the options for ‘Perks she was able to grab for that level,’ or otherwise modify it somehow to make this a bit clearer. I’ve been critiqued a few times for having Alice internally monologue too much, which is honestly pretty fair. I was trying to avoid doing that when it wasn’t necessary, but maybe I should add in a bit more internal monologue for that chunk of the last chapter? I’ll think about it some more.
Apart from that, I hope that the way I divided the Scientific Experimentation and more 'normal' chunk of the chapter worked for everyone. If people liked the way it was dealt with, I'll continue to do so in the future. If people disliked it, I'll see if I can think of something else.
Comments
dicloniuslord
makes a lot of sense, but like the courtroom with the secrecy contracts, could always just just be her seeing Alice stare into space/act weird for a bit
IMHO those not interested in the scientific research of a budding scientist in another world need to find a new story to read. That big bold text is jarring to those who are reading for that exact purpose. Similarly for the monologue of the scientist. That is the primary draw & purpose of this story - not a detraction from it. You won't please everyone. So pick your audience and please them and tell everyone else where to go and how to get there :P
acaswell
Jake Cantrell - that's really nice to hear, and thank you for saying it. :) Benjamin Smith - Indeed. Otherwise Alice would have been interrupted with several beans to the face. The best way to alert a slacking student!
Rip Woodham
Hmm, in response to the added line at the end: I assume Illa has mana sight as well. Is that wrong? Seems like it would be very important for a combat mage to see attacks coming, mana build up before an attack, etc. If so she would have noticed the mana going into Alice, and maybe had a different reaction.
Flogoyog
I am jumping in to give my two cents on the reduced sleep perk issue and I think the percentage idea solves a lot of the problems the perk introduces, if the system works the same for everyone (we cant assume that with how your story is built) perks should tend towards bonuses that are numerically precise.
thkiw
I think it's a one time thing. You probably need to discover a new truth or something like that.
thkiw
There's no need for any complications. The purpose of scientific rigor is to discern the truth without any original bias, but this is a story, and the truth is what you make it up to be. I believe that the process should be more like this. There's no point in making repeated observations inside the story, but you can just gloss over the fact that you did. There's also not much difference between scientists and the natural philosophers of the past. The main difference is that they're free of the church's influence and have a very solid foundation to build on. You can just call her an extraplanetary scholor and people who don't know scientists would understand you.
acaswell
Yes, you can. I believe I mentioned it in chapter 21 or 22? Somewhere around there, I think. I forget the exact chapter, but I'm sure I've posted in one of the chapters the rules about switching Perks, and you can change one out per year
acaswell
I have grown in mentality since I started writing the story! From the power of a blob of squishy tofu, I have advanced, reaching the pinnacle of seawood-wrapped tofu! I have advanced in life! Honestly, I figure a lot of it is also just anxiety in general. I am a rather anxious person. I'm pretty glad I didn't try to do something like two chapters a week, though - being able to take breaks from the story when I need some time to think about things, or avoid thinking about things, has been critical to my ability to keep the story from drifting off-track or degrading. Don't worry - I'm doing my best to make sure I finish this story! I'm pretty determined to avoid having this be a story that the author dropped, since I have been so disappointed when novels I was reading and enjoying just disappear into the abyss. I have the ability to take small breaks when I need them, which is really important. Also, I'm getting more used to this as time passes. A lot of the stress and such are probably just the result of it being the first story I've ever posted online, and I'm getting more used to things related to writing, commenting, and what to ignore and what to use as useful critiques for my work and use to improve as I get more 'into the groove' as it were. If the worst case happens, and I really can't continue the story due to something happening, I intend to, at the very least, post a plotline of all of the major surprises and reveals, along with the story and such. I don't intend to leave readers hanging and wondering what happened for all eternity. I mean, unless I get hit by a car or die in some completely random accident, in which case... sorry?
ShadeByTheSea
Also I think the sleep perk is fine, she chose it because she thought she'd lose it her having pickers reromse and dealing with that might make a good subplot and learning moment. Plus I heard you can change out perks like once a year or something.
ShadeByTheSea
I liked the chapter, but I also feel you shouldn't worry about seperating the science out. It will just make it so you have to write it twice. To make it clear for people that can't follow you could also include a "page" from her nodes with the hypothesis, short description of the experiment, results, and conclusion. It wouldn't even need to be that long or fully detailed.
Rip Woodham
Honestly your comment concerns me a little. I would think it's probably a prerequisite that as an author of a web serial you *have* to be able to filter the criticism you take to heart by worth, or just have really thick skin. I'm not saying I'd take it better; with the amount of anxiety I have probably not heh. I hope you can get used to it.
ShadeByTheSea
I feel the sleep one might have been better received if scaled with her scholar level, or did some thing like "reduce the negative effects of lack of sleep". Heck even pooling the bonus might be better received. "You need 3 hours less sleep one day a week". Though the 30 min/day is the cleanest one imo. I to thought liked her choice a lot better when she was going to lose it.
Benjamin Smith
I figured that since Illa has mana sight as well she can tell that whatever Alice is doing is getting results and not just her slacking off.
Jake Cantrell
This occurred to me too, and the extra line really helps. Its part of the danger of publishing chapters one at a time, the reader loses some of the natural flow of events, and every chapter is in danger of becoming a cliffhanger. Honestly I don't think there is anything you can do but try and keep it in mind. Also, one of the main reasons I joined as a patron was because I kept seeing those stupid comments and reviews from people on RR who think they know how to write your story better than you. Just know that there are for more people who appreciate the story and generally want to just read and enjoy it and provide good feedback where we can.
Katherine
>Sushi exists so you can eat raw fish That kids, is why many internet nerds would die if in a survival situation. Death because they didn't consider isaki land fish could have illnesses or poisons they could not know about.
Rip Woodham
You can't let patronizing commenters get to you. Some people just have a stick up their butt or their nose so high in the air that they don't look down. There are just people like that. Either commenting solely to stroke themselves, or from some misguided arrogant sense of do-gooding. Don't write for them. :) Ah to be clear I don't mean Buzz - I agree with him to a degree. Especially the point about Alice being a child. People that attack your familiarity with science for something Alice thinks have their head way up their ass.
acaswell
I can do that. In the future, I'll add the old level to the level up notification
acaswell
I added in a line of dialogue to the end - I intended to leave it for next chapter, but you make a good point that I should at least bring it up in this chapter.
Dissi
I am confused over the lack of the teacher saying anything by the end of this chapter. Her pupil is clearly acting differently than normal: More excited at the start, clearly looking at herself constantly while running instead of looking where she is going, obviously looking around herself at "something", and stopping her exercise in the middle without having been given instructions for her to do so. You mentioned the teacher giving her looks and watching her but as a teacher, isn't it her job to instruct? Not asking what she is doing, looking for and distracted by seems wholly .... odd, to say the least. Something tells me that this girl must be making different expressions as all this is going on as well, which should be noticed by the teacher or maid, if she is there. 2nd edit now: Definitely not complaining about the writing or the story, it just feels there are ..... hrmmm things missing in this chapter? if that is a good way to put it?
Rip Woodham
Eh, wait. Alice's hypothesis was that mana is fuel for the superhuman stuff. Not 'used to improve her physical performance.' Fuel specifically. More superhuman people have more mana, but that can be explained by just having a bigger fuel tank. She didn't explicitly state the last part, but I thought it was implicit. This didn't make much sense to me to begin with, though maybe that's just because I read a lot of this stuff. It could never *just* be fuel. Something can only be as good as its vessel. The mana has to be directly enhancing the parts of her that correspond to each stat. Even if it is just 'mana strengthening' and not say increasing muscle density. That's all her conclusion was, and I thought the chapter did a good job leading her to it. She saw the increase in her stats as a result of the targeted infusion of mana within her body. The sequence and nature of the infusion implies the stat increase is a result of it, rather than a case of just more mana coming in to fill up the extra space or whatever. It doesn't have to contradict that mana is fuel in some way, and I didn't think that was implied. She does say several times that she was *partly* wrong, not completely. I'd have to reread again to make sure all references line up with that I guess though. If I were her I'd have another hypothesis from this, which is that rather than the extra mana when she is pushing herself being fuel, it may go toward 'breaking in' the next increase in her stats.
acaswell
Hmm. That's an interesting point, actually. I hadn't considered phrasing it as a percentage. I think I'll do a poll next chapter and see if people want to rewind the clock, and have expressing it as a percentage be another option. The more I think about it, the more I favor using a poll. Polls are cool, you know?
Buzz1089
Sorry, one last thought about the sleep perk. Maybe if you described it as a percentage instead of an exact amount it would sound better. Half hour less sleep for a 7 hour night is about 8% less. I think 10% sounds better and is still close to what you intended. If the perk was that she needs 10% less sleep, that sounds like a noticable change to me despite my varied sleep schedule.
Benjamin Smith
I wonder if that would decrease the benefits of the achievement, since it seems based on rarity. Start spreading Seeker of Truth to everyone and how long would it keep that extra class slot? Further, when the rarity drops, does it affect people who already have it? That would sure suck.
Buzz1089
Damn. I was not aware of people being that critical of your work. Personally, I think they're being stupid. Your character is a child. Of course she's not going to be some perfect scientist. And you're absolutely right about eating raw fish. I love sushi. I wouldn't trust some random fish I just caught in a river though. All I can say is I think you're doing great. Everyone has room to improve, sure, but you're already much better than a lot of what I read. Write the story YOU want and the people who enjoy it will stick around, the people who don't will leave. Thanks for your work!
acaswell
That might be fair. For me, I've always been really consistent about sleeping 7 hours in a day, give or take about fifteen minutes on either side, so for me sleeping half an hour less each day would be a pretty notable difference. I can certainly see why some people would feel the reading perk might be better, especially since it's now revealed Alice will keep her [Scholar] class. I think next chapter or something I'll do a poll and see if people want to rewrite time, I suppose? That's my current thought on the matter. Idk, your thoughts on that would be nice to hear. At the time, I was thinking that the sleep perk would be more in character for her, but I can also certainly see why it would feel bad as a reader, and I don't mind adjusting it if people really want it to change.
Buzz1089
Also, about the thought acceleration perk, I think that's fine as a way to show that she is misunderstanding what the stat does. My problem was that the perk for a half hour less sleep needed feels like a nonsense perk. I can sleep anywhere from 5 to 9 hours at night, so a half hour change wouldn't even really be noticable at all.
acaswell
Hmm... I didn't really intend for them to be patronizing, per se. I've just gotten burned by assuming people will understand where I'm heading or how an experiment should look before. Specifically, in chapter two, I got cussed out because people said that, since sushi is common planet Earth, Alice obviously should have been able to realize that eating raw fish was fine. Then, in chapter 8, I attempted to explain that Kinetic Magic does not generate any 'opposing forces' when it is activated - in short, no wind or other energy is generated when an object is moved. I used Newtonian physics as a way to describe this, because I assumed it was familiar enough with most people. This led to me getting cussed out for not understanding that our world has plenty of objects that don't obey Newtonian laws, and I was told several times that I didn't know how science worked and that I was an idiot. Then in chapter 18, when I tried to do the big character development thing where Alice starts to realize that even as an {Outworlder} She isn't really that special, and that she needs to really start focusing and nailing down her hypotheses, both to grow as a person and a scientist. I was then told that I needed to look up what science was, because I didn't understand it. My cat died shortly afterwards, and honestly, it felt like everything was going wrong. My writing felt terrible and I got anxiety when I thought about it, I was depressed my cat died, and I was just emotionally exahusted. I almost quit writing the story after that. I didn't want to leave the story in an unfinished state, though - people have actually been kind enough to donate on Patreon or show that they were excited about the story in the comments section in Public. I didn't want to be the person who left a major story unfinished - I've been wanting to write this story for a while, and this is the third iteration of the 'overarching' story. And so I kept chugging along. I don't want to come across as patronizing, but emotionally I can't handle another round of that. I wanted to make VERY CLEAR what Alice was thinking of because if it happens a fourth time, at the very least I'm going to need to take a bit of time away from the story. I'm sorry if it didn't come across well - I felt a lot of anxiety when I was writing the chapter, so I kept going back to add in a slightly better explanation, because I wanted to make it clearer that she wasn't doing a 'real' experiment so much as generating observations.... I'm really sorry T_T.
Buzz1089
I don't think the internal monologuing is bad in and of itself, but at times it can be excessive. Specifically, the 3 paragraphs after the first bolded section are repetitive and rambling. You use a lot of words to basically state that this isn't a clear and nuanced experiment but is instead observations to help refine her current hypotheses. To me, it feels like you're just stating the same information over and over in slightly different ways because you want to be REALLY SURE that we're not misunderstanding. Those three paragraphs felt a little patronizing.
Todor
I don't follow the logic in Alice's interpretation of the results. In particular, I see no contradiction between the hypothesis that mana is used to improve her physical performance and the fact that larger amounts of mana gather towards her body when she gains stat points. The mana gathered when gaining stats makes total sense - in fact we could deduce it from these points: 1. Stat increases cause ability improvements in discrete incements, and aren't simply a reflection of those abilities (has Alice observed discrete improvement to her abilities as a result of stat gain before? if not, then this is just an assumption). 2. People with more stats have more mana in their body. 3. Hence, when you gain stats, the mana in your body should increase. Since bodies seem to absorb mana from the environment rather than produce it, the increase must also be gathered from the environment. But I think it makes sense for the normal mana burn to be a completely unrelated process. Perhaps the amount of mana she burns, and thus her effective abilities, is limited by the amount of mana in her body. As such, higher stats mean more mana burn and so better abilities. I think that's fully consistent with her initial hypothesis.. The point is, observing once process shouldn't invalidate a hypothesis about the other.
Rickard Gustavsson
She's also aware of perks of similar nature or that synergize well can later be combined, her earlier memory perk + the one she didn't pick could likely combine into something awesome down the road, I feel like she's completely ignoring combo potential when selecting perks.
Flogoyog
The thing I am surprised she did not think about is that this Seeker of Truth achievement is completely busted and insanely valuable, because she can tell others the steps to get it. Even if you have to actively discover this "truth" and being told it prevents the achievement from triggering she could just say to her allies "you need to look at what happens to mana around a child constantly and then infer from the changes that come from stat gain" and bam ! all her allies get 6 class slots.
Lino
It would be great if you could add the old level during level ups.
Rip Woodham
You write better dialogues than my other most enjoyed stories, and just in general you write interactions well. :) I wonder if the important character is the enchanter's daughter. Not fishing for an answer hehe. I just thought that from the moment she was in the courtroom, there's friendship material there. I just speak for myself, but I enjoy reading status pages, thinking of the future etc and bad perks or ones that aren't synergistic where it matters etc really stick in my craw lol. Yeah wouldn't want anything cut short just to fit in chapter. :)
acaswell
Yeah. I was originally setting up for something a bit more complex in this chapter, before I started to realize Alice didn't have any of the tools for more interesting experiments, so this turned into more of an observation - and - setting up real experiments in the future type chapter. It is what it is, I suppose?
acaswell
That's actually a pretty good point about how breaking up the chapters like this could affect the way I think about them. I hadn't considered that aspect, but it's definitely a good thing to keep in mind. Maybe I'll just chuck the idea of splitting the chapters out the window if more people have that kind of thought. As for Illa's response, it's definitely coming next chapter. I just didn't want to start the Dialogue this chapter, since it would probably be quite long and this chapter is already starting to push the average chapter length a bit. I can see how the 30 minutes less sleep wouldn't feel too impactful - I was mostly thinking that Alice wouldn't pick a Perk if she thought she was going to lose something that she would REALLY feel the loss of, but maybe I should change her Perk choice anyway? I can see how it would feel pretty bad for the reader, even if it's in character. Maybe I'll do a poll on it next chapter, if people are interested in rewriting history. And, of course, this kind of problem will also crop up less once we start getting to higher levels, since all of the Perks at higher levels are much more impactful (obviously). I don't mind critique, as long as it's fair and constructive. It's people who feel... more ragey and less constructive that cause me to avoid reading comments and kind of waffle around. (That's a technical term us rabbits use for 'flop like a pancake and spazz out). If anything, I appreciate that people are invested enough in the story to gently point out things that they think when they're reading the story. It helps me know what parts of the story people are interested in, so I know what to focus on. I have a general plotline for how this story should go, but the smaller details are prone to changing as long as they don't disrupt the overall story, so I make a lot of adjustment to those as time passes. As for experiments, in the future it's likely they'll be a lot more dialogue focused, since by that point more of the permanent side cast should be introduced, including a fairly important character... Ahem. Anyway. I never thought I would be complimented for my dialogues - if anything, they're what I feel I do the worst as a writer. I always end up double and triple checking them, and I always feel pretty nervous about them. Every time I write one I usually end up almost doubling the number of drafts I do for that specific part of the scene XD. Most chapters go through 3 drafts, and dialogues usually go through 5 minimum. Huh.
acaswell
That is also my intention for the future - it is why she specifically mentions a lab assistant in one of the later paragraphs. This one, however, just didn't work out chronologically with that intention. However, in the future experiments there will definitely be more dialogue and debate, once Alice has someone to bounce ideas off of and talk about results with.
Rip Woodham
I'm not sure breaking up the chapters like that is a good idea. It can lead to you feeling like you can make those bits even more technical and less interesting to read, and people will in turn be more prone to skipping them, and it just doesn't end well. It's also jarring, and the story *is* called Budding Scientist. I enjoyed the science bit even though I am not a scientist type, but one thing I'll say is it felt like there was a *lot* of unnecessary or even annoying hemming and hawing and explaining the explaining of the explaining. If it's just because it's the first time she got to do a real experiment, okay but... *shrug* I'll second that you have Alice do a bit too much internal monologuing, but not so much that I really mind it. But you write great dialogues, so I wish you would write them more. I loved the dinner discussion with Illa. 30 minutes less sleep just doesn't feel like a good or strong perk, may be part of why people got annoyed by it. I was with you on it being best as a talent she will lose soon, but now that she might get to keep Scholar it kind of hurts.... A lot of critique, sorry. I enjoyed the chapter! And what an awesome gain. I had a big grin. :) And I'm really looking forward to Illa's reaction, if Alice answers her. Illa should ask after watching that oddity, and hopefully for Ila's patience Alice will answer.
thkiw
I think there's no problem in monologing. People tend to do it a lot when thinking, qnd she can't share any of her findings or thoughts. Even if she did, why should she always talk about it instead of *think* it. As for the seperation, I think it's pointless. The name of this book has science in it, and it's fairly obvious what you're trying to so.it isn't even a proper experiment, just some theorizing. She wasn't even testing but more like making initial observations. Actual science can be boring and requires a lot of rigor but you can skip plenty of the repetitive stuff and just get to the results. Also, seeker of truth seems way too overpowered. I wonder if they have record of it somewhere. Hahaha, imagine the look on the priest's face
william wallace
instead of having her monologue have her explain what she is theorizing and what she has learned to someone else, have it be a conversation. learning does not happen in a vacuum and just because this world is not scientifically advanced does not mean they are stupid. she is a child, a student, she is used to talking to adults about what she is learning. i would lean in to that habbit.
acaswell
Fair point. I added in a paragraph near the end of the chapter where she thinks it over.
Robert Mullins
She seems remarkably unaffected by the fact that she got a new primary class slot. Those are limited to 5 for pretty much every one right? Shouldn't that get at least a single line of acknowledgement?
