Chapter 210: Chapter 202

The depths of the Society base were different from what Alice was expecting. The previous Society base had been like a makeshift fort. Most of the important bits were above ground, and while there was a basement, it was small. It had mostly been used for storage.

At first, Alice thought that this base was similar. However, as the group started to search the aboveground regions, she started to wonder. The Society base was different. The parts of the building that were above ground were filled with random magic supplies, and not a single test subject or report. It was almost like a glorified storage closet, filled with random bits and bobs. Alice had even started to wonder if the group had mistaken the owners of the base somehow. Perhaps the base wasn’t a Society base at all, but just a group of Mages that disliked civilization and set up a giant base in the woods for some reason? As ridiculous as the notion seemed, the base simply didn’t match her expectations based on the last Society base she had seen.

Then, one of the [Mercenaries] hired by Ethan found the real base. Near the back of the base, there was a hidden trapdoor which led to an underground floor. Since the group had found little aboveground, they quickly moved through the trapdoor.

The first floor of the underground facility was where things started to get weirder. The first room in the underground facility was filled with crystals. Lots, and lots, and lots of crystals. Alice had never seen them before. She had no idea what type of crystal they were, what they were supposed to do, or what they were made of. They weren’t particularly unusual to her various types of mana-sight, either. They were neither mana-rich nor mana-poor. They were somewhat pretty, but didn’t really stand out. If she had seen them while walking down the street, she probably would have thought they were some kind of raw gemstone that could be shaped into jewelry for upper middle class [Merchants] in this world.

The rest of the first floor was filled with a bunch of other supplies, all of similarly baffling nature. There were wooden sticks that had no special attributes, clothes that looked almost like those of a [Priest], but didn’t belong to any religion Alice knew of, etc. They were just random odds and ends, without any unusual mana characteristics or physical characteristics.

The second floor was filled with test subjects. Unlike most Society bases, the captives on the second floor were mostly alive - which was a small miracle. Only one in twenty were dead, which was an incredibly low casualty rate by the standards of most Society experiments. However, almost eighty percent of the captives had succumbed to some form of class madness. Several of them looked malnourished, or dehydrated, or both.

Alice frowned when she saw that.

Eighty percent… was a very high number of people to succumb to class madness.

Back in the capital of Morendia, Alice was willing to bet that less than ten percent of the population had succumbed to their class mana. Things there had reached a stage where it was hard to care for the sick and mad, but they were still sort of under control. In the Society base, the number of mad had already reached a point where there were few sane survivors left.

The group started to go around, rescuing the survivors and doing what they could for them. Meanwhile, the [Mercenaries] and Allira’s shadows fanned out to search the surrounding area. About two thirds of the way through giving the survivors medical checks and removing the Class mana pollution, one of the [Mercenaries] ran back up to Ethan and handed him a sheaf of papers.

“They found a research log,” said Ethan, after skimming through the papers. “Take a look with me.” He moved the papers so that Alice could also read them.

Alice grabbed hold of the book Allira handed over, and then started skimming it. She could do a more in-depth review of the book once she was safe, and asleep.

Record log of grand experiment 17:

Attempted to determine the nature of the ‘unusual’ behavior of the general population.

Based on some leaps of faith, as well as general suspicions of how Classes work and public knowledge shared by ‘Alice’ in Illvaria, we have attempted to determine whether there is any sort of relation between ‘beliefs’ and the progression of various forms of madness.

Experiment began by placing a regular ‘placebo’ crystal into a room, in full view of a select group of test subjects, and then having a single, fake patient placed into a room with that crystal. Fake patient was actually Veridin, a Society member who has the [Spy] and [Flesh Trader] Classes. Vedrin faked rapid insanity, while making it appear that the crystal was what caused the progression of Class madness.

Afterwards, we placed crystals into rooms with all of the other test subjects for batch one, and then tested the rate at which they fell into class madness when compared to a control group. It was confirmed that class madness takes over the patients and their mind nearly 30% faster if a crystal was placed into a room with a patient who witnessed Vedrin’s ‘madness’ act.

Patients that remained sane were returned to the research pool later, fo further study.

Experiment 18:

Using similar procedure to the previous experiment, it was determined that the crystals have no impact on patients that did not witness Vedrin’s ‘madness’ act. However people’s beliefs shape their surroundings, it does not seem to carry over. Perhaps this is a result of lack of concentrated beliefs? Worth testing in a future experiment. ℞ᴀ₦ΟꞖÊʂ

Alice felt faintly ill. At least she understood what all of the normal crystals on the previous floor were used for, now. They were to test placebo effects on the patients. The reason the crystals seemed so random was because they didn’t have any effect on their own.

The next few experiments in the research log were mostly of similar nature to the previous ones - just different ways of verifying the impact of ‘belief’ on mana and trying to pin down precise numbers for how belief and reality interacted with each other. The Society seemed maddened by the inconsistency of their results - after all, the Society didn’t seem to have any way to measure ‘belief,’ and since that was one of the core variables in their experiments, many of their tests came up with ludicrous or bizarre results that had a general ‘theme,’ but no consistent mathematical equations to back it up.

“So the Society found some of the same things I did,” said Alice, resisting the urge to grimace. “It doesn’t look like they got very useful results, though. Too much jumbled math and confusion on their end.”

Ethan nodded as the group continued rooting through the reports. “It looks like they were trying to devise some way to measure human belief, but kept failing. I’m surprised they got this far.”

Alice sighed. “It’s normal for them to find some of the same things I spent so much time discovering. They don’t care about ethical research, after all.”

Cecilia winced, before she nodded in agreement. “It’s way easier to produce results when you don’t care about the safety of your test subjects.”

Alice sighed. The Society had spent a lot of time verifying some of the groundwork for Alice’s own assumptions about the System, belief, and how humans and mana interacted with each other. That was… sort of useful for her. But it didn’t give her the kind of information she had been hoping to get from the Society base.@@novelbin@@

The group finished rescuing the captives, giving what medical aid they could, and correcting the problematic mana overflow in their body. As they were moving towards the entrance to the third floor, Cecilia made an observation that caught Alice off-guard.

“I find it interesting that this floor has ‘normal’ levels of mana,” said Cecilia. “We didn’t find anything that could have drained so much of the mana in Morendia in the base yet, did we? Why did the mana level increase so much on this floor?”

“That… is a good question,” said Alice, as she frowned. She had been mostly focused on the horror the test subjects had gone through, and hadn’t paid attention to mana levels. However, Cecilia was right. This area was at about normal levels of mana, at least by the standards of Morendia. This floor, in particular, had mana, while the parts of the base located aboveground, along with the first underground floor, had no mana present in them at all.

Odd.

The group continued searching the area for several more minutes, but apart from more magic supplies, they didn’t find anything useful.

Meanwhile, the creepy sensation that something was wrong with this whole scenario kept getting worse. Whatever the Society had been doing here, it was on a scale far beyond that of the other Society base. The other Society base had done some amount of human experimentation, but they hadn’t created a massive underground fortress with multiple floors, and then somehow create a manaless zone. Whatever the Society had done here, it wasn’t a small scale experiment.

So why had the base only been guarded by a couple of weaker Society Mages with little combat power? There weren’t even that many Society members in the base. The amount of manpower here was completely disproportionate to the results they had created. Had they missed most of the Society members in the base somehow? Would they encounter a second wave of combatants in the depths of the underground floors?

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

The idea set Alice’s teeth on edge. Besieging the Society aboveground had given Ethan a far greater level of control over the battlefield - things were less cluttered, meaning it was easier for his particular skillset to shine. He could toss around massive objects without fear of friendly fire. A stronger line of defense underground would be a potential danger for the group. Alice hoped she was wrong.

“The doorway to the next floor down is defended by some kind of magic,” said one of the [Mercenaries], shaking Alice out of her anxious thoughts. “It feels almost like an invisible wall.”

“Lead me to it,” said Ethan, as he put aside the sheaf of notes he had been reading.

The [Mercenaries] nodded, and then led the group towards the next area. There, Alice found a puzzle she could solve - a few enchantments, set up over a door.

“Interesting,” said Cecilia. “It looks like the enchantment that prevents anything from crossing through the doorway as long as it’s turned on. That part is obviously a kinetic enchantment. It’s a bit unusual, but not too different from what I might see in a regular [Enchanter’s] shop. There are two more layers to it, though. The first layer is something involving pure mana, I think? The second one is clearly organic. I’m not sure what either layer of the enchantment is doing.” Cecilia frowned, before she turned to Alice. “Alice, could you take a look at it?”

Alice leaned in closer to the odd enchantment, and after a few moments of examination, frowned in confusion.

“The pure mana layer looks like it prevents other things from poking at the enchantment,” said Alice. “If I had to guess, it’s probably inspired by the way all living things resist external mana manipulation, but for some reason the [Enchanter] made it out of pure mana instead of organic. I would expect the Society had far more [Organic Mages] instead of people experimenting with pure mana. I don’t know why they used this particular mana type to accomplish this. Budget or material limitations, maybe?” Alice shrugged. “The organic enchantment looks like it recognizes certain people, and then turns the enchantment off for those people. Clever, but nothing too unusual.”

“Why prevent people from entering or leaving this floor, though?” asked Jonathan, as he eyed the enchantment.

“Is it to prevent escape attempts from the prisoners?” asked Cecilia, as she eyed the doorway. “It would make sense, at least.”

Ethan, shook his head. “The source of the enchantment is still odd. Alice makes a good point. Why did they make this out of pure mana and not organic? If they were going to mimic an aspect of ‘life,’ organic would have been much easier. Besides, the society usually doesn’t do double-layered locks to prevent escape attempts. They control prisoners by enchanting the cells, not inconveniencing the researchers. It’s the reason a few prisoners have managed to escape from them, occasionally. The Society tends to have somewhat sloppy security measures for less well-funded bases.” Then, he turned towards the vast underground floor they had just traversed. “Though, this clearly isn’t one of the less well funded ones.”

“Then it might be to keep something else inside of the next floor. Or to keep intruders and [Spies] out?” Alice shook her head. “Either way, let’s be ready. Just in case something unusual appears.”

After that, Cecilia got to work disabling the enchantment. After about a minute, the enchantment fizzled out of existence.

“Pretty fast,” said Ethan, appreciatively. “I could brute force it by just slamming it with blasts of kinetic force, but you deactivated it much more quickly than I could without breaking the whole thing.”

Cecilia blushed, and smiled. “I’ve been working on enchantments a lot recently, since I was helping with the team of [Enchanters] back in Illvaria. I’ve gotten some good levels in [Enchanter]. The new Perks help a lot.”

The group moved past the doorway and into the next floor of the base, where Alice understood one of the mysteries about the door enchantment.

“It’s filled with monsters,” she said, jerking back. “And mana. The mana here is actually far more dense than in the rest of Morendia. Not quite double the mana density, but pretty close.” None of the monsters had noticed her yet, but Alice doubted that would remain the case for long.

Jonathan stepped in front of her, while Ethan sprouted mana tendrils like a deadly flower. Allira’s eyes glittered dangerously, before she squinted her eyes and stared at the monsters.

“These are rather rare monsters,” she finally said, after several seconds of thinking. “They usually don’t survive this far north, because the mana isn’t dense enough for them. Most records refer to them as ‘air leeches.’ They devour the air from around them, regardless of where it is located or what it’s shielded by. Then, they replace it with a sort of airborne… acidic… toxin. The properties of the substance they produce is quite unusual, since it can spread to new clumps of air and convert that into more of the acid-toxins. Eventually, the substance runs out of mana, at which point it solidifies into a clear, hard substance. They tend to hunt in packs, and they’re especially hard for humans to fight. Even though it costs them a lot more mana, they can replace the air inside your lungs with their special substance, so the moment you step near them, you start dying. In addition, they have the ability to transform their body into air, which they do when they feel close to death. They’re a massive pain for melee combatants to fight. They’re also pretty rare. I haven’t seen any since the last war with the Sigmusi, and before then I had never even heard of them.”

Alice frowned. “Can you deal with them?” she asked.

“I can, but I figure Ethan would be a better matchup,” said Allira. “I’d have to spend several Perks dealing with them, and I’d rather keep those in case we run into a second army of researchers or something.”

“I can do it,” said Ethan, as he took a step towards the monsters. Then, Alice saw thermal mana start to swirl around his body, mixed in with rainbow mana.

A few seconds later, one of the air leeches finally noticed Ethan. It started flying towards him at a breakneck speed, but it was too slow.

Alice felt a blast of heat rip its way out of Ethan’s body, before cooking most of the air on the third floor. It was like the space in front of them had turned into a giant oven. The air leeches immediately noticed Ethan, and started charging towards him. Several of them also turned their bodies into air, in a desperate attempt to survive.

Their actions meant little. Without any further spells or actions on Ethan’s part, the monsters quickly fell apart. In thirty seconds flat, the floor no longer had monsters on it.

“They’re gone. One of my Perks is gone too,” said Ethan, as he glanced at the dried-out, desiccated corpses of the monsters. They looked oddly similar to plastic bags, at least in Alice’s opinion.

“Anything else on the floor?” asked Ethan, as he turned towards Allira.

“Give me a moment to check,” said Allira. She started singing, and the shadows rose in response, before they started swarming the floor.

A few minutes later, the shadows returned to her. Allira shook her head.

“There aren’t any other monsters in here. There aren’t any other documents, either,” she said. “There are a lot of human corpses here, and that’s it. I’m not sure what they were trying to do here, either.”

Alice sighed, and stepped fully into the third underground floor. “Let’s see if we can dig any secrets out of the dead, then,” she said.

The group started investigating the floor, but just as Allira had said, there were no other monsters, no documents, no anything. Alice found that frustrating. The Society was usually quite gung-ho about recording their monstrous experiments. This was the first time Alice had seen a Society base that had basically no records at all of what they were trying to do. It was just… a pile of long-dead human corpses, and monsters roaming the floor for unknown reasons.

“Odd,” said Ethan, after the other Immortals and [Mercenaries] on the floor reconvened. “I can’t tell what the Society was trying to test here at all.”

“Hmm…” Allira frowned. “It seems like this base, in general, might have been testing the links between human beliefs and their environment. if that’s the case… maybe this floor was similar?”

Jonathan nodded. “It seems like as good of a guess as any. All of the human corpses we found were placed inside of isolation chambers, but all of them had one-way windows that let them see outside of their cells. A ridiculous amount of craftsmanship and resources were put into making it possible to see out of the cell, without alerting the monsters to the presence of the humans. If I had to take a wild guess, I would say that the Society wanted to see if human beliefs could influence monsters?”

Alice frowned. Jonathan’s speculation was a bit of a leap, since they didn’t have very much information yet, but it did make sense.

“Why kill all of the prisoners then?” she asked. Then, a moment later, a question struck her. One that she would have been interested in testing, if she had no morals or bottom line. “I wonder if human beliefs continue to influence their surroundings after they die.”

Ethan laughed, a grim, bitter laugh. “That sounds about right.” He turned to Allira. “Allira, did these air leeches seem any different from usual air leeches?”

Allira shook her head. “No. They seemed pretty normal to me.” Then, she frowned. “But we did kill them very quickly. It’s unknown what ‘change’ the Society tried to make to these creatures, if your assumption is correct. So it’s hard to say whether we would have spotted any smaller changes to the monsters.”

Since they didn’t have enough information, the group quickly moved on. Much like the difference between the second and third floor, the staircase between the third and fourth floor had an enchantment that kept unidentified life forms from moving between floors. Cecilia disabled it, and then the group stepped into the next floor.

The moment they entered the fourth floor, the group froze. The fourth floor was beyond Alice’s imagination.

Hundreds of dead people all lay slumped on stone altars, as if they had died in some act of worship. Hundreds more living people lay chained to other altars, drooling and mumbling some sort of mad set of ravings, over and over again. They seemed completely out of their minds - almost as if they were drugged, or had been influenced by Class mana to lose any understanding of their surroundings and their actions. The fourth floor itself was built like one giant, ridiculously oversized cathedral of epic proportions. Mana fluctuated wildly in the surrounding area, like the core of a black hole hungrily drinking in everything in sight.

And right at the center of this scene of utter madness was… something. It was shaped like a giant stone statue, at least four meters high, and built out of a massive, interlocking series of numbers and jagged, broken rainbow mana. It didn’t contain a single ounce of flesh or organic matter, and Alice could tell that it had been carved recently. The edges of the monumental sculpture still had the sharp edges and distinct lines of a monument yet to be eroded by time.

But this carving was no normal sculpture. It was faint, but its limbs twitched, and the mana in its body resembled that of a monster or a manaborn.

It was alive.

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