As the group continued walking through Fendrallia, Alice began to notice a little bit of a chill. It wasn’t overwhelming, the way Illvarian winter had been when she first arrived in this world. Instead, it was more of a subtle, creeping chill burrowed into her bones.
Which surprised Alice. While she didn’t have much cause to think about it these days, she had taken {Extremophile} as one of her Perks, all of those days back in the Illvarian wilderness. Combined with her exceptional [Endurance] stat, she usually didn’t notice major fluctuations in temperature unless she literally stuck her hand in a fire.
Alice looked behind the party, where Jonathan’s family was trailing behind the rest of the group. Since Jonathan was afraid of his family picking up [Explorer] mana before Alice found a way to treat it, they were well behind the group. They were close enough that the Immortals could rush to their aid if they were attacked… but they were still far enough behind that they weren’t picking up [Explorer] mana.
Then again, the main group hadn’t picked up any [Explorer] mana yet either. So it was likely that they just hadn’t hit unexplored territory yet.
Walking alongside Jonathan’s family was also something… different. Something Alice couldn’t quite put her finger on, but made her hair stand on end.
Allira had sang to a few shadows for several minutes after Jonathan’s family had decided to join them. Then, the shadows had started moving.
When Alice had seen that, she couldn’t help but think that were as still an awful lot that she hadn’t learned about Allira’s combat abilities. She had felt that Allira’s ability to summon illusions of the past was already powerful enough, but on hindsight, Ethan had revealed a truly mind-numbing number of trump cards when Emilia had tried to assassinate them. It wouldn’t make sense if Allira only had one trick up her sleeve. Still, Alice really wasn’t sure what was up with the shadows moving around. They were… strange.
“Ethan, could we get a bit of warmth?” asked Alice, as she looked at the group of people behind them. “Jonathan’s family might be a bit cold. Even I’m feeling a little chilly, and I have a bunch of stats and Perks that they probably don’t.”
Ethan froze, before he also glanced at Jonathan’s family.
Alice thought that the first theory was more likely, and she was just dead wrong about some aspect of how this worked. But even so, if her Achievement had somehow replicated the mainframe of the System and Alice had caught a picture of it with {Magic Modelling}…
Alice felt a wave of excitement at the thought. She might finally have a key to fix Achievements.