Alice slept poorly - she was used to sleeping in a silent bedroom, and now that she was farther away from the area with broken mana the occasional shuffling sounds and animal calls at night woke her up. Thankfully, nothing decided to attack her in the night. Alice fully woke up, groggy and irritated, when the sunlight started creeping through the holes in the top of her… magnificent and amazing tent that she had constructed. Yes. That was definitely an accurate title for it. Some may look at the fact that there were several holes in the grass coating she had used to make the tent, or the fact that it was just a pile of sticks and grass stuck together in some vague semblance of a shelter, but Alice chose to be proud of her excellent and magnificent work.

She shivered and rubbed her arms, but she was much less cold than she had been yesterday. The fire burning somewhat near the shelter at night had helped with warmth, even though it had gone out sometime during the night. The warmth burning in her chest from whatever the heck had happened when she had gotten mana poisoning also helped, although she was already noticing that it was slowly starting to disappear. She was more than a little worried about this - was her potential to use magic decreasing or something? If she didn't have magic, her options for exploring this world would probably decrease dramatically. However, there was nothing she could do about it, so she tried to ignore the sinking feeling and nervousness in her stomach and keep moving on. Right now, magic wasn't helping her at all anyway, so if she lost it, she might still be able to survive. Hopefully.

I should be able to improve my tent construction after a few more tries, she thought as she studied her makeshift tent. Then, she began thinking of how annoying it had been to construct her shelter. While the weaving process had gotten easier as she gained both skills and {Skills} related to tent-construction, it had still taken her quite a while to construct the tent. Perhaps there was some way to carry it with her so that she didn’t have to reconstruct one from scratch?

She began looking at the edges, trying to figure out a viable way to carry away some parts of it, and eventually, she realized that taking the frame of heavier branches she had stabbed into the ground to hold up the woven grass was impractical. In order to make it into a shape that wouldn’t be too awkward to carry, she would basically have to undo all of her work anyway.

However, the sort of… blanket-like outer shell of grass could be taken with her if she was careful. Therefore, she clumsily deconstructed the outer layer of grass and folded it up into a sort of blanket-shape, then placed it underneath the berries in her bowl.

Fear me, for I am Alice, queen of terrible craftsmanship and grassy… blanket things. She winced. Everything she had built so far on this world really did look atrocious… Yeah, I’m just going to avoid thinking about it. At least I haven’t starved or died of cold yet. That’s probably a miracle already, considering the fact that my first interaction with mana nearly caused me to die of mana poisoning, my immune system is underequipped for this planet, and the fact that I haven’t eaten much except for a whole lot of berries and a few nuts recently.

Not to mention how spectacularly poorly-equipped I am to deal with wilderness survival even back on Earth, much less in a foreign dimension. On top of the fact that my digestive tract probably shouldn’t be able to process the food in this dimension, and yet somehow it seems to be doing all right. Somehow, I'm still mostly fine.

She went back to the berry bushes and restocked her food supply, eating all of the berries she had picked yesterday and refilling the bowl with fresher ones. Then, she finally began travelling again, following the stream and hoping to find civilization somewhere.

A few hours passed uneventfully as Alice slowly followed the stream, but she began to get more and more nervous as she looked at the sky. It was getting darker and darker as a heavy blanket of clouds approached, gradually obscuring the sunlight and promising to shroud the world in heavy rain soon. Once again, it dawned on Alice how truly far away from civilization she was. At home, a bit of rain didn’t mean much to her at all – she would be inside for most of the day, either in school or at home, and the rain was just a nice sound effect that sometimes left puddles of water outside of the house.

However, right now, she was dressed in pajamas, had little food security, and shelter that was, at best, flimsy. Suddenly, a burst of freezing rain had changed from ‘interesting but basically unimportant’ to a life threatening occurrence. She glanced at her grass blanket and quickly decided that it wasn’t going to keep the rain off of her very well. Then, she looked around, hoping to find a cave or something. There must be something somewhere nearby that could help keep her safe… right? She began focusing on finding a better shelter as she trudged along the river.

Perhaps an hour later, it didn’t start raining. Instead, white little flakes began to drift down from the sky, fluttering lazily in the wind as they began to smother the earth, choking away the last remnants of warmth and replacing it with hues of grey and white. Alice, both feeling the ever-dropping temperature and her lack of thick clothing more than ever before, looked at the sky, dumbfounded. Was it nearly winter? Seriously? Of all the seasons she could have arrived at, she had arrived here right at the start of winter?

After a few minutes of searching, she hadn’t even found any stones larger than a small boulder in the area around her, much less a place that a cave could be hiding. Furthermore, since she was looking for a place to find cover from the snow, she had been forced to leave the river behind. She didn't think that the gentle slope of the river could provide the cave she needed right now. While she still remembered the direction she had come from after leaving the river behind, without sticking to the river her chances of finding human civilization were even lower than before, but some trades simply had to be made.

The snow began to pile higher and higher, and after another ten minutes of walking, her bare feet were beginning to sink into a thin layer of snow with every step. Her body wasn't reacting as poorly to the cold as she might have expected - probably either some quirk of her mana baptism or whatever had happened to her during the process of getting a status screen. However, she could still feel the cold creeping through her body, dragging her towards eternal sleep, even if it was a fair bit slower than it would have been on Earth.

Am I going to die like this? She wondered. She had already feared dying many times in the past few days, ever since arriving in this world, but this was one of the first times death felt so… stifling. She had almost died when she was dealing with mana poisoning, almost gotten mauled by a strange animal, and almost starved to death. Now, she was at risk of freezing to death.

She trudged through the snow, plagued by lonely thoughts as she wondered if perhaps someone would stumble across her corpse one day and wonder who she had been. Minutes ticked by while she searched for shelter and the temperature dropped, the stifling feeling of inevitability warring with increasing desperation as she tried to find some way to stay alive.

Finally, as her shivering was growing more and more uncontrollable, she stumbled across a ‘cave.’ It was really more like a rocky overhang with a sort of sideways bowl-shaped indentation in the stone around it, but it at least offered enough protection from the snow drifting down from above that she was somewhat sheltered from the cold. She set down her bowl of berries, pulled out the sheet of grass she had used to create a crude tent the day before, and wrapped it around herself as a blanket.

It was wholly holey, but at this point anything helped, and she didn’t even have any sticks to set up anything more complicated at the moment. Then, she began rubbing her limbs together, trying to get some warmth back into her fingers and toes in particular. If she truly lost the ability to feel her limbs for an extended period of time, frostbite might take away a finger or toe forever, and she desperately wanted to avoid that.

As the minutes continued to tick by, she grew colder and colder, and the specter of death seemed to loom ever closer. Her fingers and toes still had some feeling in them, but she felt cold and increasingly sleepy. She looked over at her basket of berries and grabbed a few half-frozen berries to nibble on. Finally, she realized that this wasn’t a sustainable method of survival – even if it was desperate, she needed to go back out into the cold to grab some tree branches, hopefully dry ones, and get some sort of fire started. Otherwise, she would definitely die here.

She stepped out of the cave, trying to work her way through the biting cold as it penetrated into her veins. The snow had stopped falling, but the carpet of snow on the ground already reached up to her ankles. She might have found it beautiful, if she were at home and waiting for Christmas to come, but right now it seemed to blot out the color in the world, dyeing the world monotone shades of white and grey.

The sky was still cloudy and overcast, but she guessed it was probably sometime between midday and evening, judging by how much light trickled through the clouds. Quickly, she grabbed some cold branches from the area around her and shook the snow off, looking at the still-green leaves on the branches and wondering if they would catch flame.

For several minutes, she grabbed branches and dragged them back towards her cave, trying to ignore the sinking feeling as her feet started to go numb. Then, desperately, she began rubbing sticks together with some tinder, hoping for a fire. A stick snapped, cutting her palm. She gritted her teeth and kept going, knowing that failure wasn’t an option. As her limbs shook with exhaustion and the specter of death stalked her, she rubbed sticks together over and over, hoping for a miracle.

Finally, a spark caught, and she leapt up and danced with joy. The tiny little ember of fire spread to the other mostly-dry branches, and soon, a cheery little blaze was steadily burning in her cave. She stuck out her hands and feet, trying to warm them up a bit and occasionally nibbling on a few berries. Within another hour, she could feel all of her toes and fingers again, thankfully, which meant that she should at least be able to avoid frostbite. Warmer and more comfortable, as body heat started to return to comfortable levels, she fell asleep.

You have leveled up!

Survivor: 11

* * *

The next day, Alice woke up to find that the snow had stopped falling. Her campfire, unnoticed, had burnt out when it had run out of fuel, the smoke thankfully guided away from the shelter by the shape of the cave. She should have paid more attention to that. She also realized that she had gained another two levels sometime last night, either when she had started a fire or when she was asleep. Either way, it had given her another perk slot, so she started out by taking a look at what was available.

Dark Vision

Requirements: Survivor level 10 or higher, Perception higher than 100

Allows you to see your surroundings as if they were fully lit up, regardless of the level of light present in your surroundings. This may be turned off. Will not physically alter your eyes.

Microbe Resistance

Requirements: Survivor level 10 or higher

Dramatically enhances your immune system's ability to locate, react to, and expel or kill foreign entities of microscopic size. Also enhances the overall power of your immune system.

Sense intentions

Requirements: Survivor level 10 or higher

Allows you to determine the intentions of other living beings towards you, as long as your perception or Charisma (Whichever is higher) is higher than the other entity's acting and Charisma (as well as any other relevant perks or achievements).

Parasite Resistance

Requirements: Survivor level 10 or higher

Your body becomes naturally toxic to all parasites that naturally live inside humans. Weaker parasites will be killed shortly after entering your body, and stronger parasites will still be seriously weakened as a result of their environment. This will not adversely affect any living beings besides parasites.

Innate Mapping

Requirements: Survivor level 10 or higher, Perception 100 or higher, Intelligence 100 or higher

Allows you to perfectly create a mental 'mini-map' of all places you have visited so far and your location relative to these places you have previously travelled to. You will not gain any information about places you have never personally visited, and this map will only detail geography.

The requirements are for ‘level 10 or greater' again. I assume that means perks are given every five levels, although I will need to verify that later. From these, what do I need the most? I could also go back and grab {Primitive Warmth} from level 5, since it seems like I can also get perks from earlier levels. Alice took stock of the area around her, trying to figure out what she was missing the most desperately.

The temperature is very low now, and if winter is coming it'll continue to drop as time passes, making warmth a huge priority. While I can still feel my arms and legs, if I step out of the cave, it won't take long for me to begin freezing again. Disease from this world is also potentially a concern - I don't know how useful the {Outworlder} perk is since it just says it 'strengthens my immune system' and doesn't go into further detail. This might mean I'm practically immune to diseases now, or it might mean that my immune system got 5% stronger and I'm about to die.

Disease is extra scary right now because if I get a fever in this weather, I'll probably die. As far as food goes, I have berries and nuts that can keep me going, although I'm not sure how much longer the berry bush is going to be around since these plants are green in the middle of a snowfall. To remove the poisonous parts of the nuts, I need wood to make a campfire, but all of the wood in the area is likely going to be drenched. Finally, I should work on solidifying my cave if possible, to ensure a wild animal doesn't decide it's a good idea to try moving in with me. Nearly getting bitten once when I first arrived was enough, and I don't want a repeat scenario.

In other words, her food was at least partially secure, and what she was missing was shelter/warmth and possibly disease resistance. It was difficult to gauge how badly she needed to improve her disease resistance, because she had no idea how much the {Outworlder} achievement helped.

Alice glanced back over the perks that she was able to choose, and quickly disregarded most of them. {Dark Vision} and {Sense Intentions} were actually rather interesting, and Alice was genuinely curious to know how {Dark Vision} worked. If it didn’t physically alter her eyes, how in the world was the perk producing sight? In the first place, vision was just the result of human eyes interpreting photons that hit them. If there were no photons in the first place, what the heck was she using to see? If she could, later on she would love to get a similar perk and a lot of lab equipment to see if she could figure out what was going on at a microscopic level.

However, currently Alice was motivated by necessity, and so she had to concentrate on not dying first.

{Sense Intentions} was also something that Alice thought would be quite useful, since the perk didn’t specify that it was restricted to animals. If she ever found civilization, being able to determine whether or not people bore hostility towards her would be invaluable. It was a perk she would definitely consider coming back to if she had a perk slot to spare in the future.

However, her curiosity and the ability to sense the intentions of her fellow humans was nowhere near as valuable as disease and infection resistance. She had no idea what penicillin looked like or where to find it, and she had no clue whether or not the other people of this world had access to the drug either. If they didn’t, the ability to fight off infections would be one of the most valuable skills she could have in this new world.

In the middle ages, a random cut might become life-threatening if it got infected and was allowed to spread. Her feet had definitely been cut up as she was wandering through the forest and she was extremely nervous about the chances of infection. Thus far, she had been lucky, but there was no guarantee that would continue.

After some thinking, she realized that she wasn’t strictly obligated to choose right now. The description of the {Microbe Resistance} perk made it seem highly likely that it would affect disease and infection retroactively, meaning that she could wait to see whether she got an infection or the plague first.

Slowly, she closed the perks window. If she got sick, she would grab the {Microbe Resistance} perk to finish rounding off her ability to avoid contracting whatever this world’s version of smallpox was. If a few weeks passed by and she was fine, or she desperately needed to grab {Primitive Warmth} from level five to keep away the cold, she would get that instead. It didn’t seem like she had to pick right now, and since she was able to make fires already, she could, just barely, deal with her warmth problem.

She glanced at her surroundings again. Moving around was probably a bad idea in the snow, but if she stayed inside of her little hidden cranny for too long she would starve and run out of firewood.

After that, she looked back at the branches of incredibly green leaves that were currently bending a bit under the weight of the snow, trying once again to figure out the implications behind why the leaves weren't turning brown and red.

“Does this world even have the same seasons as Earth? I mean, realistically speaking, most planets that are similar to Earth should have something like seasons, because of the way planetary orbits and tilt usually end up working out in practice. That would make sense, but…” Alice pulled up her status screen. Despite how absurd it seemed, there were still floating numbers in front of her face “In this world, who knows? Half the time this world seems to follow similar rules to Earth - gravity still works, I still need to breathe and eat, and the sun and moon are still pretty close to home. The other half the time, the old rules are just chucked out the window.”

Either way, right now she should prepare as if winter was coming. Being prepared never hurt, and if you expected the worst you might be pleasantly surprised if things went well and survive if reality lived up to your worst expectations.

“Wait, maybe if I can find some wood and peel away the bark, the inside will be dry and suitable for use as firewood?” The branches she had used as fuel had been somewhat difficult to set alight, even though they weren’t really too soggy from the snow yet. However, that would probably be a problem today, and she needed firewood.

“If that works, then I could roast the nuts and possibly cook some meat if I catch animals later, as well as having an emergency supply of warmth.”

Once she had made a decision, she put it into action immediately. Alice crawled out of her little cave and scanned the surrounding area, hoping to find a few sticks she could pull apart or dry out to use as firewood. With every step forward, her feet sank into the snow up to her ankle, and she wished she had worn thicker pajamas. Or shoes. Still, there was no use in regretting things she couldn’t have known and couldn’t change now.

Alice moved around the area, picking up fallen tree branches, and then gathered a few more pieces of fallen wood before heading back to the cave.

Then, Alice began carefully peeling off the wet outer bark of the dead branches, exposing the still mostly dry innards. Then, she made three more trips to gather branches, before the cold began to go from horrible to unbearable. Then, deciding that she had enough wood to at least get some warmth back into her body, she began rubbing the sticks from her first trip that had their wet outer edges removed together, saving the branches from the second and third trip. Fifteen miserable minutes later, another tiny, cheery blaze started on one of the branches.

You have leveled up!

Survivor: 12

Thank the caveman ancestors, thought Alice as she warmed herself up. With a cheerful blaze growing, Alice felt much less miserable. She opened up her status screen, curious to see if there were any other changes she had missed.

Name: Alice Verianna

Age: 15

Strength: 44

Perception: 101

Dexterity: 48

Intelligence: 153

Endurance: 50

Willpower: 121

Charisma: 125

Magic: 5

Primary Classes: 2/5

Survivor: 12 (Level 10 Perk Available)

Explorer of Magic: 1

N/A

N/A

N/A

Perks

Foraging (Survivor 5)

Secondary Classes

0

Skills

English (language proficiency): 100

Woodworking: 7

Weaving: 5

Achievements

Outworlder (Rarity: 10)

Baptized by Broken Mana (Rarity: 6)

She closed the status screen, wondering how much she had changed in the short period of time she had been here. Already, she was desperately trying to level up in order to survive. Despite the fact that she was both nervous about the levelling system and baffled by its implications, it seemed like she also needed to rely on it. Otherwise, the myriad of problems an interdimensional traveler would inevitably face would kill her within a week.

After all, she was just a fairly normal girl from the modern world. She had no familiarity with camping, much less surviving in the wilderness with no supplies. Her body was wholly unsuited to survive in this world, disease and infection would kill her without access to modern antibiotics and medicine, and while some of the biology of this planet was suspiciously similar to Earth’s, the rest was totally alien to her. Without any help, she estimated her odds of surviving this planet to be close to zero. For now, the System was able to provide that help. If levelling up was the way to survive so that she could investigate the System and the magic of this world, she would need to level up.

Such were the thoughts of a young girl alone in the frozen wilderness.