The rest of the day passed uneventfully, with Alice occasionally going to get a few more tree branches whenever the fire started to run low on fuel, but mostly, she stayed near the fire for warmth and occasionally ate some of her berries when she felt hungry. They weren’t very filling, but they were far better than the nothing she had eaten the first few days here.

Through Training, you have increased an attribute!

Endurance +1

She spent the night huddled under her grass blanket inside of her cave, cold but alive. When she woke up, she realized that sometime during the night the cloud bank had peeled away and the sun had returned. Alice was glad to see sunlight, but she felt uneasy after her close encounter with hypothermia.

Nothing is ever easy, thought Alice as she looked at the world around her.

Deciding she needed to eat something besides berries today, she began carefully making her way around, periodically checking the surroundings for food. She found more of the strange nuts that she had roasted a few days ago and put them into her basket, as well as some more dead branches that could be turned into firewood with some effort. Finally, she found a weird plant that looked like a fist-sized glob of wax. She had no clue what it was, but {Foraging} claimed it was edible, so she rinsed it off in the river and ate it. It tasted like cardboard, but maybe it would make up some of the nutrients she was probably starting to lack.

She carried everything back to her cave and stripped the wet outer bark from the trees, gaining a point of [Dexterity] in the process. Afterwards, she turned a quarter of her firewood into a small blaze, roasted the nuts and peeled them, and had a late and light lunch of roasted nuts along with the rest of her berries. After eating, she was still hungry, but at least the worst of the hunger pangs were gone.

Alice needed to decide whether to stay in the cave and try to survive the winter, or keep following the river and hoping to find civilization. It was a decision that could determine her survival. Her initial instinct was that she should keep following the river – after all, if there were more people around, her odds of surviving would be better, right?

However, recent events and deeper thinking had caused her to wonder if that was actually just wishful thinking. As much as Alice longed for human company, it was entirely possible that she wouldn’t find civilization for a long while. And what would happen if she did find civilization?

As of right now, she was worse than a bedraggled refugee - she had none of whatever this world’s currency was, if there was even a currency system. She had no ability to defend herself, no connections, no influence, and no reason for anyone to help her. Frankly speaking, if the rest of this world had grown up with the System, right now she might be as weak as a kitten compared to the average person, meaning that her ability to work in any useful capacity was questionable.

Even worse, depending on the level of technology in this world, she might run into a stone-age village and get turned away after putting her life on the line to find civilization. There was no reason for anyone to help her except for the kindness of the human heart, and she felt very uncomfortable placing all of her hopes on such a fickle thing, especially if winter was approaching, as she thought it was. If she found a village and they just considered her a useless mouth to feed, why in the world would they give her supplies and help her survive? And even more problematic was travelling barefoot through the snow - her feet were already scratched up, and although she had dodged frostbite so far, she seriously doubted that she would keep all of her toes if she tried to continue seriously travelling during the winter. She was very fond of her toes, and her feet, and all of her other limbs too. Even if they hurt right now, she was definitely not willing to lose them to frostbite.

By contrast, if she stayed in the wilderness, she had no thick clothing, so her temperature would grow worse and worse, even though she did have access to fire. Wild animals might attack her, she still had no clue how to use magic aside from numerous failed attempts, food was unreliable, and pure water was also a luxury instead of a staple.

However, she also had her cave, which was able to keep the worst of the elements off of her while she slept at night, a way to obtain firewood, even if it was somewhat time consuming and labor intensive. Finally, while it required a lot of time and grinding, her [Survivor] class was helping her find the tools she needed to survive in this world, and would probably continue to do so as long as she reached a high enough level before freezing to death.

Finally, after much deliberation, Alice decided to stay in this area for now and try to survive. It was a difficult decision – she had only been here for four days, and she was already starting to feel lonely without being able to see other people and talk to them. However, continuing to search for a city when she had thought it was spring or summer was completely different from trying to find a city as winter approached. As bizarre as it seemed, Alice thought she actually had a higher chance of surviving in the wilds right now.

Having made her decision, she began gathering more branches, this time not bothering to peel the wet bark off since it would dry out from being near the fire. As long as she was careful to avoid setting her stack of firewood alight, at least. Warmth was one of the things she would need to pay attention to.

Alice looked at her pajamas again. They were somewhat thin, and didn’t do a very good job of keeping heat in. If she could find some way to replace them, it would be ideal. Could she make some sort of clothing out of leaves? If she found a way to weave them together it might do a better job of keeping in heat. However, she discarded the idea after a bit. She didn’t have the supplies or {Weaving} skill required to pull it off, and the leaves might not last through the winter.

Alice sighed and returned to the camp, then sat next to the fire and tried to think positively. At least for now, she was warm and not too hungry. She found comfort in the small victories right now. She had a cheery blaze going inside of her little cave, and a blanket of grass to help keep the warmth in. Her feet hurt from walking through the wilderness, and were starting to get scrached up, but at least she had an extra bit of firewood. For today, at least, that was enough.

* * *

The next day, the snow had at least melted enough that she could see hints of green peeking through the snow again.

The nuts she had been roasting would probably keep through winter with no problems, or at least she thought so. Nuts didn’t go bad after being picked, right? Furthermore, the shell of the nuts were poisonous, which meant that a good portion of the local wildlife probably avoided eating it. Therefore, she should focus on gathering a large quantity of nuts and firewood, and then storing both in order to survive the winter.

Perhaps I could bury them in the ground, to make sure wildlife doesn’t get at it? After all, the nuts must have evolved the poisonous shell to avoid getting eaten by something, which means that whatever that something is, it probably also evolved some countermeasure for the poison… Wait, isn’t that how squirrels prepare for the winter? Have I ascended the evolutionary ladder and become a squirrel? Did it only take half a week to reach this point?! Alice twitched, suddenly assaulted by a strange idea. This was for her survival.

Alice looked at the surroundings, and managed to find a few more trees that still had the same kind of nut she had eaten earlier. She filled up her basket with the nuts and then moved them back to her shelter, before she began to bury the nuts. The soil was hard, probably because it was still half-frozen, but with some effort she managed to dig an untidy little hole to store her food for the winter. Then, she covered the area up with soil again.

Even though it was fairly obvious where she had buried her harvest, at least it would make it take longer for the local wildlife to steal her food. Hopefully she would notice before they finished, and could scare the animal off.

By the time she had finished her eighth pile of nuts and her third haul of firewood, evening had once again come.

You have leveled up!

Survivor: 13

Through Training, you have increased a skill!

Digging +2

* * *

The next day, the snow had almost completely melted, and today she could see much more ground than snow. However, the leaves on the trees were finally starting to turn reddish-brown, somehow having done so in a mere day.

Alice had absolutely no idea what was going on with the biology on this planet – at first, she had thought the trees of this world were identical to the ones on Earth, and she still thought that was at least somewhat true. The biological blueprint of a tree was still definitely the dominant plant in the area, but Alice was pretty sure trees on Earth needed way more than 24 hours to go from green leaves to red and brown leaves, so obviously something was different.

More unfortunately, it confirmed that she had probably entered this world right before winter, if the leaf colors were anything to go by.

Another piece of bad news was that Alice had noticed a critical flaw in her grass blanket that she had failed to plan for– the grass was withering. It was a natural consequence of it being pulled out of the ground, and the grass would probably retain its moisture for a few more days, but it definitely wouldn’t provide the warmth throughout winter that Alice needed.

She didn’t have sufficient firewood reserves to survive through the winter either, and her cave’s ability to keep in warmth and keep out the cold was still quite flawed, due to the large opening of the cave and the fact that it wasn’t very deep.

Alice couldn’t do anything about the second fact, but maybe she could do something about the first?

She tried to think of a way to cut down trees again, but came up blank. If she had an axe or something, she could at least cut down some of the thinner trees and make some sort of rudimentary log wall to cover up the entrance. However, she had no tools, and wasn’t really sure how to make any either.

Alice sighed, and glanced at her [Magic] attribute again. If she could just figure out how magic worked, maybe it would provide a solution. Sadly, magic continued to resist her attempts to control it. She would probably have to find a teacher in order to get anywhere with magic, because her attempts at ‘sensing a muscle that wasn’t there’ and ‘pushing energy out’ and 'meditating to find her inner core' seemed to be doing absolutely nothing ever since the time she had gotten mana sickness. If there was some sort of easy way to start using magic, she had no idea what it was.

She would have seriously loved to take a look at this whole magic thing and see whether it was the cause behind all of the blatantly impossible things she had seen the System do so far, but right now, she had a hard time telling whether or not her [Magic] stat did anything at all, much less using the concept of magic as a tool for analyzing all of the absurd things she had seen the System do so far.

Alice sighed, and went back to gathering smaller branches and nuts. At least there was still available firewood in the surroundings. She had to stock up as much as she could for this world’s winter.

Through Training, you have increased an attribute!

Endurance +1, Strength +1

You have leveled up!

Survivor: 14

* * *

When Alice woke up the next day, she felt cold even though her forehead was much hotter than usual. Her skin was also starting to swell in strange ways, especially on her arms and legs, and there was a piercing pain in her eyes. She wasn't entirely sure, but she felt it was a good guess to assume it was some sort of disease, so she grabbed the {Microbe Resistance} Perk. She had no idea what the heck this disease was, but even if it was not very lethal to her after the boost from {Outworlder}, she would still die if she lost the time she had left before winter came.

Afterwards, gritting her teeth and doing her best to ignore the discomfort in her body, she grabbed her pointy stick and some of the more well dried – out branches and made her way to the river. Now that she was able to start fires properly, she would be able to get at least a few fish meals in before winter. Furthermore, even if her knowledge of it was rudimentary, she knew that using smoke to cook meat and fish would help preserve the food. If she ate a diet of only nuts over the winter, she would suffer from various nutrient deficiencies. Variety in her meals was important, and she had to get some fish now before the river froze over. Perhaps if she found more weird plants to eat, it would help solve the problem? Something to keep an eye out for.

Sitting next to the shallow part of the river as the disease and her perk waged war in her body was uncomfortable, but Alice managed to put up with it and keep fishing. Then, ignoring the cold and the piercing pain in her eyeballs, along with the strange discomfort and lack of sensitivity in her fingers and hands, she waited near the shallow part of the river for some fish to come.

She had learned a great deal from her initial failures at catching and cooking a fish, and within an hour she had successfully speared her first prey for the day. Then, she found another relatively sharp stone and made a second pointy stick. Although it was much less pointy than the first, it didn’t need to be as sharp as her hunting stick.

She pulled the dead fish off of her fish hunting stick, and, after much fumbling, managed to slit open its belly and pull out what she figured were probably the intestines. She had no proficiency in descaling fish, but she should hopefully be able to eat around it. Afterwards, she slid the fish onto her second pointy stick and then propped it onto two larger stones nearby, starting a fire between the two and making sure to keep the sticks relatively high in order to avoid exposing the fish directly to the flame. If she managed to smoke the fish properly, it would be preserved for much longer.

If she messed up, her {Foraging} perk should tell her that it was no longer safe to eat. Meals of food other than roasted nuts, here I come!

After another hour, Alice had successfully speared two more fish and had turned over the ‘smoking stick’ a few times to (hopefully) help the process even out a bit. Even better, Alice realized that the uncomfortable swelling and pain in her arms and legs, as well as the feverish sensation and pain in her eyes had already started to fade away. At this rate, within a day or less whatever symptoms she had should go away. It looked like her bet on {Microbe Resistance} was paying off.

She slowly ran her hands over her arms and legs, and realized that the slight swelling in her arms and legs was already starting to disappear. While she had been nervous about how much her Perk would protect her, this seemed to guarantee that she would be at least moderately safe from sickness and disease, which was welcome news. It was about time something went right. She started humming a little tune as she turned back to her fishing.

Finally, a few hours later, she noticed something far more odd than a fish drift into her corner of the river.

It was a book. The title was in an entirely foreign script, and Alice had no clue what it said, but it still told her several things.

First, there is, or was, something intelligent enough to write books using some sort of written code upstream - even though she had been travelling downstream the whole bloody time. Alice felt irritated at the idea she had been heading in the wrong direction, but at least it confirmed that if she followed the river, she should be able to find civilization.

She had no idea whether this would be helpful to her, but at the very least it was comforting to know for sure that she wasn’t alone in the world. She had been trying to push the thought away, but the thought of wandering this world alone forever was terrifying. The knowledge that, eventually, she would be able to find other intelligent life-forms was like a cup of hot chocolate on a cold day, comforting and warming.

The second thing she knew was that she had no flipping clue what the book said. This meant that she didn’t have any sort of auto-translate function added onto her {Outworlder} perk. Still, she dutifully flipped through the pages of the book, and noticed that all of the pages were still relatively intact, despite the fact that it had been in the stream for who-knew how long. In fact, the moment she had lifted it out of the water, the water slid off of it without leaving any indication that it had been there in the first place. That meant that whoever had made the book had sufficient technology (or magic?) to make the paper waterproof, and had valued this book enough to do so.

Well, probably. There was also some chance that it was ludicrously easy for people in this world to waterproof books. On the topic of magic, despite the fact that Alice had nearly died in the process of acquiring magic, had a magic class and the imagination of a twenty-first century bookworm, she still had no freakin’ clue what she was doing wrong when she tried to use magic. She was slightly bitter…

There was also another bright side, which was that her status screen had {English (Language Proficiency)} listed as one of her skills. That meant that, with practice, she could probably pick up whatever language this book was written in, which would be critical when it came to communicating with the locals. Come to think of it, did language skills differentiate between written and spoken language? Alice’s Status Screen only had {English} from her time on Earth, even though she had developed plenty of other skills during her time both in the American school system, and as a result of her personal hobbies and projects over the years, which probably meant that the System had no idea what Skills she had. She hadn’t tried writing anything yet…

She tried writing a few random sentences into the dirt with a stick, but didn’t pick up a {Writing} skill or anything of the sort. For now, she would take that as a light confirmation that language skills probably didn’t differentiate between written and spoken language. Which was a weird thought – was everyone on this planet literate as long as they had functioning eyes? It would be hilarious if she stumbled across a stone age civilization with a higher literacy rate than a developed country on Earth.

Wait a minute… Come to think of it, I was able to read my Status Screen before the System had figured out what the English language was. What?

She pulled up her status screen, which displayed all of her attributes in nice, easily legible Arabic Numerals and English words.

But the System hadn’t known what language she was proficient in. When she had just arrived on this world, her {Language Proficiency} had looked like a glitched-out error message. In other words, the System did not recognize the English language and had struggled to make sense of it. And yet, somehow, it had still displayed her entire status screen in a language it seemed to not understand.

How did that even… what?

Alice felt her head start to hurt. This just didn’t make sense, did it? She could put aside the fact that the System had managed to figure out the English language in a day or two – while unreasonably high-speed, given what else she had seen the System do, it wasn’t that surprising that the System had managed to do something beyond her common sense in that respect. Therefore, this must also be somehow logical, and she was just failing to understand it properly. She was confused, which meant that something she believed to be true was actually false.

She sat down and began to think, trying to figure out how these two seemingly contradictory facts could both be true at the same time.

There was a logical explanation somewhere, she just knew it. She thought about it. Very hard. She continued thinking…

Eventually, Alice slammed her head into the rock she was using to smoke her fish, just to make sure her brain was still working properly. If an outsider had been observing this moment, they probably would have pointed out that anyone randomly banging their head against a rock for seemingly no reason probably wasn’t all that sane to begin with. Fortunately (or unfortunately) there was no such person to witness a fifteen year old trying to figure out how to reconcile totally conflicting information by banging her head against a rock.

Alice lapsed into twitching as she rubbed her head. “All right, what does that actually tell me?”

Alice thought long and hard about the subject, before finally arriving at a conclusion.

"Maybe the System isn't intelligent? The System is obviously capable of interacting with my thoughts as well as my physical body – otherwise, it would be impossible for it to do things like improve my willpower and give me hints about how to properly start a fire and make a basket. However, if it was intelligent, it probably wouldn’t be able to read my thoughts and communicate with me without understanding what it’s doing. Or, alternatively, the System is somehow communicating directly with me after knowing the language, and simply hadn't named it yet, or it's somehow communicating with me by sending information to my brain and my brain is thus making sense of it while trying to reference a database of names, or... something?

“Let's run with the idea of intelligence for now. A human, or humanoid intelligence, if they were powerful enough to recalibrate my physical body without me noticing, read my thoughts, and watch over every second of my life while presumably doing the same for every other sapient intelligence on this planet, they shouldn’t be so low on processing power that they would need to spend several days trying to figure out what the English language is even though I think in the language, know exactly what the language is called, and don’t know any other languages. That isn’t something an intelligent, thinking person would struggle with if they accomplished the other points, probably. It seems more like something a series of automated processes would stumble over, if they were designed with the ability to adapt in mind but needed time for the results of those processes to finish churning out results.”

In other words, the System was likely to be some sort of program, or at least was similar in cognitive abilities. She couldn’t conceive of a human communicating without understanding their own communication at all, but a computer program certainly did that all the time. In some sense, that was what most computer programs were doing – a long string of code telling a program how to do something and defining all of those ‘somethings.’ It was also why computer codes were hilariously finnicky and broke if even a tiny bit of syntax was wrong, while a human reading a language could usually work around a few minor grammatical errors and still figure out what a sentence meant most of the time.

Or it could mean something completely different. She didn't have enough information yet. Still, it was an interesting line of thought to pursue.

Through Training, you have increased an attribute!

Intelligence +1

Had… had the System just given her an attribute point for concluding it was dumb? It did make sense, at least in some ways – she had followed a fairly specific chain of thinking and logic in order to arrive at this conclusion, after all. Still, the System rewarding her for calling it dumb was quite amusing. She tried to feel out the changes caused by gaining one [Intelligence], since it was her first time gaining any of the stat, and realized that her thoughts were, perhaps, just a tiny bit faster and clearer than before. Her memory was also the tiniest bit more efficient, more effective. However, it was fairly difficult to feel out the changes in a bigger and more concrete way.

At least something was going right this week. With the book, she might be able to pick up a language skill as well. She needed to finish catching and smoking some fish, but later on, she would have a book to investigate! Regardless of what the book was about, it would definitely be nice to have something else to focus on during her time here. If she was lucky, the book might have useful information for her to use when it came surviving in the wilderness, or something along those lines.

Less than ten minutes later, more things started floated across the patch of river Alice was inhabiting. A few fragments of wood. A piece of cloth, that she couldn’t determine the use for but quickly ran over to snag. Maybe it could be made into clothes later on. Some bruised purple and red round things that looked sort of like giant berries but her {Forager} perk stated, in no uncertain terms, that eating it would be the worst, and last, mistake she ever made.

And finally, a horribly mangled corpse. She couldn’t tell what the gender of the person had been – male or female, it was hard to tell in this state. It looked like it had been tossed over and over in the river until it was horribly mangled, although it looked like it had once been a human. Most notably, it looked like the heart had been carved out, although at this point it was hard to tell whether it had been dug out by a wild animal or a human.

Alice stifled a scream, lurching away from the river and feeling nauseous. She could have tried to stick around, either to scavenge more supplies or figure out what had happened to this person, but her gut was telling her to nope the fuck out of there as fast as possible. Something was wrong with this, and she didn't want to die trying to figure out what it was.

She immediately hurtled over to the fire she was using to smoke the fish and threw dirt on it to put it out, grabbing her fish and quickly doing her best to erase any evidence that anyone had been here. She had no idea what had killed this person, be it wild animal, human, or something else entirely, but just in case she wanted to be as far away as possible.

She grabbed her new cloth and the book, and moved her way back into her cave and hid for the rest of the day, anxiously watching the surroundings for any sign of something or someone hunting her down. She waited for hours with nothing happening, until finally, she drifted off to a fitful sleep, startling awake at the smallest noises throughout the night.

Even until that morning, nothing came.