After nearly getting eaten by a freaky monster, Alice had to re-evaluate her priorities. She had a hard time keeping track of how long she had been in this dimension for, but she was sure that it had been a little under a week. In other words, within less than seven days of arriving on this world, she had nearly been eaten by a monster.

Obviously, this did not bode well for her future prospects if she remained as weak and squishy as she was now.

She ran over her options, trying to figure out what the best way to achieve at least some level of combat proficiency was.

Bow and arrow? I have no experience at all with shooting, so even if I made a bow and arrow I wouldn’t be able to use it. Perhaps a Skill would make up for that – I don’t know how fast skills level up. Still, it feels somewhat unreliable. Also, I have no idea how to build a bow either. I think it has something to do with how much the wood is able to bend? Woodworking would probably help with that, but I would probably need to level it more first. It doesn’t seem like a solution that would be useful in the near future, even if it’s something to think about later.

Spear? It at least helped against Spidercrab, although admittedly circumstances were also quite favorable. However, if {Sprinting} gets high enough, I might be able to set up future scenarios to also be favorable, making this potentially my best option.

Knives? I can’t make anything that refined with stone yet – I think I have some ideas for setting up somewhat refined stone products, but they’ll take time and effort to get right, and don’t give me the range I would want. Getting my hand near Spidercrab’s mouth just seems to be asking to lose a finger, or my whole hand. Not exactly on my to-do list.

After a quick evaluation, a spear seemed like her best option – primitive, but it would get her some distance from whatever else wanted to eat her and even if she had no clue what she was doing she could probably still use it at least somewhat effectively. ‘Put the pointy end in whatever was trying to eat her’ wasn’t exactly rocket science.

She went back to the tree branch she had used as her makeshift weapon during the fight with Spidercrab and grabbed it. Afterwards, she moved back to her cave, scanning her surroundings carefully as she walked to avoid getting ambushed by a second monster, before she finally arrived.

She began by finding a stone with a somewhat sharp surface, and then began awkwardly carving away the edges of the stick, trying to refine it into a somewhat sharp wooden spearpoint. However, in a flash of inspiration, she grabbed two more rocks – one that she was going to try to make into a spear tip, and then one to use as a carving tool. She placed the first rock down on a particularly large stone near the entrance to her cave, then placed the rock with a sharp edge against it.

Then, she began using the third rock as a sort of pseud-hammer, banging it against the second rock over and over again to chip away at the edges of the rock.

Through training, you have increased a skill!

Stoneworking +1

It took a great deal of time and work, with Alice nervously surveying her surroundings over and over again, but thankfully, no other monsters showed up to attack her while she was working. Finally, she had a relatively sharp spear tip.

She looked back over to the piece of cloth she had found yesterday – then, she began trying to tear a strip of cloth from it.

“Hnnnnng! Riiiiip!” The cloth was much tougher than Alice would have thought possible. In fact, it seemed quite bizarre, since she could clearly feel the fact that the cloth was somewhat coarse. It was a large bolt of some sort of rough fabric, nothing particularly fancy, but no matter how she strained against it, she simply couldn’t tear off a piece of the edge with her bare hands.

Finally, she began carefully poking little holes into the fabric with her stone spear point, weakening the edge of the cloth. Then, she managed to tear a rough strip of cloth from the edge of her new blanket. Finally, she tied the spear tip to the wooden branch, making the tightest knot she was able to with the assistance from the {Weaving} skill.

By the end of it, she was holding a very crude stone spear.

Behold! The condensation of generations of intellect! My caveman ancestors have blessed me with glory! Or something.

Alice took another look at her work. It was really, really ugly. Functional. But ugly.

She waited. Usually every time she accomplished something that furthered her survival, the System rewarded her with a level. However, this time, nothing came up.

Seriously? Nothing at all? Alice felt depressed after a while. Maybe this was the difference between leveling up at low levels versus high levels?

Still, she had a stone spear now. It would be useful both for fishing and for fighting off any other monsters that wanted to maul her face off.

She glanced back at the strip of cloth, trying to figure out if she could make proper clothing out of it, before deciding that it was outside of the range of her current abilities. Perhaps in the future, but for now it would just continue to serve as a blanket.

Stone spear in hand and slightly more confident, Alice returned to fishing, although this time she kept a much closer watch on her surroundings. Her carelessness had nearly cost her a limb, or even her life, and she was determined not to let it happen again.

She caught another fish, and the system gave her another happy ding as a notification appeared.

Through training, you have increased a skill!

Fishing +1 You have unlocked the class Fisherwoman as a result of catching several fish through your own efforts, as well as having access to the Fishing skill. Would you like to make this class a primary class? Yes/No

Alice quickly selected no, since she doubted she would use this class very much. The river might freeze over soon, and she wasn’t quite desperate enough to pick a class she didn’t think would be useful for more than a week or two, maybe a month at most. Besides, she was curious to see what the difference between a primary and secondary class was.

She wondered why the [Survivor] and [Fisherwoman] class seemed to have such a high level of overlap. [Survivor], as far as she could tell, was a class that boosted her ability to survive in the wilderness by herself. It centered around giving her some aspects that wild animals benefited from, such as ‘fur’ (Extremophile) and night vision, as well as giving her knowledge and information early hunter-gatherer humans would need in order to survive in the wilderness. Included within that were several abilities that were related to food, water, and shelter. Even though fishing was a bit different, at heart it seemed to have several similarities as well. Perhaps classes could heavily overlap? If that was the case, Alice needed to think very carefully about her primary classes. If she could get five overlapping magic-related classes as her primary classes, for example, she would have five times the amount of magic-related perks.

Alice sighed, and turned her focus back to catching and cooking her fish. Thinking about the future felt… nice. It was something she had precious little time to do over the past week as she drifted from one near-death experience to another. It felt almost normal.

After catching a few more fish, Alice grabbed her twelve smoked fish and carried them back to her cave. She could still feel whatever illness she had caught messing with her senses, but it was already nearly gone. She silently thanked whoever or whatever had created the System, or the System itself if she was wrong and it was alive or sentient/sapient, for helping her avoid dying of whatever this world’s version of smallpox was. That night, she studied the book a bit, ate one and a half fish, and then went to sleep. It had been a long day.

* * *

The next day, Alice made a stone bowl, deciding to finally add boiled water to her supplies list. She wasn’t actually sure if it mattered at this point, given the {Outworlder} achievement and {Microbe Resistance} perk both boosted her immune system already, but she figured it was better to be safe when she could. After all, if she got sick, it would be too late to regret it. This came with a welcome surprise.

You have leveled up!

Survivor: 20

It seemed like the bowl had tipped her over the edge into level 20 of Survivor, which meant another perk was available.

Flee

Requirements: Survivor level 20 or higher

You may expend a significantly greater amount of calories in order to greatly increase your speed for a short period of time. This will cause you to grow tired more quickly.

Long Distance Running

Requirements: Survivor level 20 or higher

The amount of stamina and calories you consume while running is significantly reduced, allowing you to run much greater distances if you pace yourself properly.

Photosynthesis

Requirements: Survivor level 20 or higher

Your body gains the ability to convert sunlight into calories and nutrients at a slow pace. (Will not cause your skin to turn green). (You will not be perfectly sustained by this perk.)

Camouflaged

Requirements: Survivor level 20 or higher

While staying still, dramatically increases your ability to blend into the environment, making creatures around you much less likely to notice you. This can be turned off.

She glanced over the perks briefly, trying to think about what she needed the most.

She didn’t know what killed the person whose corpse had washed downstream or why, but a sinking feeling in her stomach made her suspect that she was going to find out, sooner or later. However, figuring out where she was just didn’t seem to be as important as surviving right now, given the fact that monsters were roaming about and either monsters or people were killing people upstream.

{Long Distance Running} and {Photosynthesis} were dismissed due to the fact that they didn’t help deal with monsters much, and frankly didn't seem terribly useful right now. If it had been just two days ago, she probably would have chosen photosynthesis, because it both allowed her to experiment with the System by seeing if she could figure out how she would be able to do photosynthesis afterwards and because it addressed one of her bigger concerns, which was food. However, now she also needed to make sure she wasn’t at the bottom of the food chain.

That left {Flee} and {Camouflaged}. Alice briefly wondered whether or not she would have had access to a more offensively oriented perk if she had better physical stats, since the [Survivor] class seemed to rely a lot on the physical body and hers was incredibly lacking, but she pushed the thought away and refocused on her Perk selection. Regardless of what was and wasn't 'optimal,' she needed to live first.

Eventually, she chose {Camouflaged}. It had some offensive ability if she used it to spring surprise attacks, which, while uncertain, at least gave her more options. More importantly, it might let her hide from monsters in the future. If she could find any more rabbits in the area, it might even help her get food. By contrast, {Flee} was a bit more useful for escaping monsters, but also worried her because she wasn’t sure how much food would be available over the winter. If she starved to death as a result of running away from a monster, she was ultimately still dead.

Afterwards, Alice began boiling some water in her new stone bowl, as well as using her stone tools to cut off another part of her blanket.She looked at her book until the water finished boiling and had then cooled down a bit, before she took her washcloth, dipped it in the water, and then wiped down her body, finally being clean for the first time in several days. She also took the opportunity to give her pajamas as much of a wash as she could, since right now she was both warm and near a fire. While waiting to dry off, she returned to looking at her book.

Finally, she managed to translate one of the most important words on the cover. One that sent her into a frenzy. Magic. She didn’t know what any of the other words meant, but now that her Illvarian language had reached level 5, apparently it had been enough to translate this one important, critical word. Alice could already imagine throwing fireballs around instead of struggling for firewood, creating a house out of thin air, and all of her worries disappearing under a few well-structured spells…

Okay, even with magic she probably wouldn’t be able to cure all of her problems at once. After all, if she had learned anything about the system so far, it was that it rewarded hard work, innovation, and (possibly) danger. Still, having access to magic would hopefully give her an incredibly powerful tool to survive when she was currently seriously struggling.

Besides, Alice was very, very curious about how this world could possibly exist with a system and magic that handwaved away the regular rules of reality. She wanted to know more, and that meant that she would need to get into the thick of things. To do that, she needed to have access to the System, and she also needed access to magic so that she could figure out what distinguished them. Alice had no clue whether or not magic was similar to the System, or just some strange, unspoken law of this dimension, or what. However, she was definitely going to find out.

That being said, it also raised the question of why the person floating down the river had been next to a book about magic. Were mages perhaps hunted down by society, the same way ‘witches’ had been burned at the stake back on Earth? That didn’t seem to explain why the man’s heart was missing, but it could be some sort of ritual ‘purification’ rite. It could also be a cult going around killing people, or the man could have simply been a merchant who got eaten by monsters, or something else entirely.

She thought about the corpse for a while, but couldn’t come to a conclusion. Right now, she simply didn’t have enough information. However, it was clear that something had killed the person. She didn’t know who, or what, or why, but she had a sinking feeling in her stomach that she might find out why at some point. Especially if the man’s death was related to magic somehow.

Or, perhaps, the reason might find her.

* * *

Alice spent the next few days devoting far more time and attention to the book than she previous had, raising her language proficiency, and trying to translate the book as she nibbled away at her fish and nuts. She occasionally went back to catch and smoke some more fish and eat the occasional random plant {Foraging} led her towards, feeling growing nervousness as the river began to show more and more signs of freezing over. However, the presence of the book on Magic seemed to promise a better solution to both defending herself and acquiring food if she could just figure out what it said. Any time she wasn't gathering food or firewood, she was studying the book, running over its passages over and over again. It was, in some ways, maddening to read a book that she didn't understand very much of, but she could feel her understanding of the words in the book improving every time she gained another level in {Illvarian (Language Proficiency)}.

* * *

On the fifth day, Alice’s {Illvarian (Language Proficiency)} finally reached level 22.

Her ongoing attempts at translating the book were getting closer and closer to paying off. She couldn’t translate enough of the book to make sense of it yet, but she could, at the very least, tell that the book was talking about the theories on the development of something called a magic seed, and the four main forms of magic seeds in existence.

They seemed to be what allowed a human to use mana, but Alice couldn’t understand more than that… yet. She thought the book was indicating that she needed to form one in order to use magic, but was unclear on how this could be accomplished. As a result of her efforts, the system had offered her a new class.

You have unlocked the class Scholar as a result of studying a single topic for several days, reading a book on the topic, and attempting to think beyond the teachings of the book and apply it to the world around you. Would you like to make this class a primary class?

Yes

No

Alice thought very carefully about the question. [Scholar] was… not useful to her current circumstances. At all, in fact. One could say that, compared to [Survivor] it was a waste of a main class slot. However, if there was one thing she loved doing, it was immersing herself into the study of knowledge.

This world had the bizarre, reality-altering System that fascinated her. It also had magic. There was a lifetime’s-worth of things to study in this new world. She closed her eyes, hesitating for a moment as she tried to assess whether it was more important to think about the present or follow what she wanted to do in the future. Then, she tapped the ‘yes’ button.

There was no huge change in either her body or mind. That was to be expected, since the class was, after all, just at level one. She hadn’t even noticed the effects of the survivor class on her actions even when it was at level five, and even now it just seemed to vaguely ‘help’ her think of ways to deal with problems she encountered that were within the scope of the class.

Still, after taking the [Scholar] class, she felt better. More resolved. In the nearly two weeks she had been here, she had spent the first week teetering from crisis to crisis, always on the verge of dying if she was just a bit unlucky when the next challenge came her way. To some extent, this was still true – she had no idea what had killed the guy who had drifted down the stream last week, although she felt ominous prickles at the back of her neck when she thought about the event even now.

She hadn’t seen any other monsters, but knowing that they were out there meant that she was at risk of being attacked anytime. In most stories she had read, stronger monsters were often able to use magic, which meant that she had no idea what she even needed to defend herself from in the future.

However, even with all of that, the [Scholar] class called to her. It made her feel as if she was planning for the future instead of just surviving in the present.

She turned her attention back to the book, trying to at least translate enough to figure out something. A clue about how to get her magic working, at the very least. She slowly scanned through the book, and finally, after a great deal of guesswork and translation, she finally figured something out.

The basis … …. … magic is a magic seed. They are …… …… a mixture of ….. … .. …, and primarily fall under four. ... … .. . The kinetic-magic type seed, the …… type seed, the electromagnetic type seed, and the ….. … type seed. To form one, one must ….. ….. … magic stat must be above 0. This may be done by… … .. …….. …. with a high lethality rate. Assuming these conditions are …. ……….. …… …. Then, one must form a magic seed by ….. ….. on the concept one wishes for their magic to …… There appears to be… …. … …. …. . Once a seed is constructed, … … ……. …… .. That is also why ….. less likely. However, one cannot say that….. … basic four …. all magic. Plenty of other.. . …. …. After all, the basis …… …. ….. …. …. belief. At least, … …. humble author’s …. …. ……… … .. ….

The words were a mix of things she could actually translate as well as a few words she had guessed based on the way the Illvarian language and sentence structure worked, but she was at least somewhat confident that even her translations from outside her language skill were mostly correct. Her Illvarian language skill was also levelling up far more quickly than her other skills, like {Stonecraft} or {Weaving}, even though she still used the latter two skills more often. This baffled Alice. Perhaps language skills were somehow special? Or she was somehow displaying more proficiency with the skill since she was actively trying to translate beyond the skill’s auto-translate functions? Or something? It was a question to keep in mind for later.

She frowned, a bit nervous about the fact that the book had mentioned a ‘high lethality rate,’ but stopped herself before she could delve too deeply into her worries. Perhaps the book was referring to the method of getting the magic stat above zero? The achievement she had gotten for almost dying of mana poisoning had mentioned something about a high lethality rate as well. Also, the fact that the book directly mentioned the ‘magic stat must be above 0’ told her that the other people on this planet ALSO had access to the System. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be referencing ‘stats’ as if it was common knowledge in the book.

In other words, until proven otherwise she would assume that every living creature had exactly the same System as she did. Which brought up the question of what exactly the System was again, but Alice just didn’t know enough to make a good guess yet. It was something to think about later.

She could only translate two of the four types of magic seed, which had needed to be given to her by her language skill, but what interested her the most was that the two types of magic listed seemed to actually be based on physics. Unlike the System that for some reason could reshape her abilities at a moment’s notice, the very fact that an ‘electromagnetic’ mage controlled both electricity and magnetism gave her some hope that magic, at least, was based on something that could vaguely be related to the laws of physics she was familiar with from her classes on Earth.

However, the way it was referenced in the book was odd - Alice was damn sure that electromagnetism was in charge of more than just forming bolts of lightning and moving metal objects around, but in the brief mentions of the roots of magic, the author didn't mention anything beyond that at all. Instead, the author directly referenced the electromagnetic seed as being responsible for creating lightning and moving metal - with no other abilities at all mentioned, even those that should have logically followed actually controlling electromagnetic force via magic. It was... odd. Perhaps it stemmed from the failure of the native people to understand the deeper components of physics and how they interacted with reality?

Maybe.

For now, however, she decided that, at least based on the book's descriptions of the two seeds in question, electromagnetic magic would be far less useful than she would have originally assumed. She was a bit tempted to see how her understanding of the world could be translated in terms of her magic usage, but curiosity wasn't enough for her to risk her life trying to figure out if she was just better than the natives at creating magic seeds. She only had one chance at this, after all.

She hadn’t managed to translate any of the other pages of the book in such great detail, unfortunately. She had no idea how the language perks worked, after all. However, she had managed to translate the page describing Magic Seed formation, and she had at least a reasonable guess what she was supposed to do.

A Magic Seed seemed to require a few things.

First, one needed to have a magic stat. Magic stat at zero meant that it was impossible. Fairly straightforward.

Then, one needed to forcibly impress their understanding of a concept onto their mana, whatever that meant. Interestingly enough, there didn’t actually seem to be any Skills required for this, at least if her translation was correct. Even if one didn’t know how to feel, see, or detect mana in any way, shape, or form, as long as one had a magic stat it was possible to form a magic seed. The author had seemed to be pointing out exceptions to some sort of rule of magic, but she hadn’t managed to figure out what exactly the rule he was talking about was. It seemed to be related to ‘extra seeds’ beyond the basic four, which Alice was fairly certain was the actual topic of the book – contrasting the ‘basic four’ magic seeds with whatever other magic seeds there were.

Either way, Alice had literally no background in magic at all. ‘Basic’ sounded ideal for her if she was going to figure out how to do something without hurting or killing herself.

She thought carefully for a few moments longer, before finally, she made her decision. Even though the {Illvarian (Language Proficiency)} skill had been growing more quickly than her other skills, ultimately, it was still progressing slower and slower. The words and grammar rules she got at each level of the skill were far more noticeable than other skills – after all, she could literally see exactly what words she could translate that she hadn’t known a few minutes ago. However, the skill’s growth was still slowing down. She had no idea when she would be able to translate the rest of the book, and a more powerful monster might show up and eat her if she waited too long.

Of the two magic seeds she could translate, kinetic magic sounded like it would be more useful. The author, unhelpfully, didn’t add in any explanations of the ‘basic four’ magic seeds beyond when he was comparing them to corner cases and outside examples. However, based on the name, she could guess what it was supposed to interact with.

Tonight, she would try forming a kinetic magic seed.