Alice settled into a routine over the next week as winter descended. In the morning, she would wake up and train her magic, moving objects around and trying to improve her proficiency, as well as training {Sprinting} and {Spearmanship} since those seemed to be most relevant to combat. She also tried throwing stones at herself using her magic to train {Dodge}, but for whatever reason it didn't end up helping her raise the skill at all - she probably needed something besides herself to throw the stone, or at least that was her guess.

It had become easier to keep up her training routine after the wound in her leg had finally healed, notably faster than the wound would have on Earth. Alice attributed it to some influence of her increasing [Endurance] stat, or some property of the [Survivor] class, or both, although the effect was quite subtle for now.

At midday, she would replenish her firewood and bury some nuts, catch and smoke some fish, eat some berries, and work on creating some tools to make her life easier. At night, she read her book by the campfire, boosting her language skill and [Scholar] by a bit.

She had also managed to, with equal parts luck and skill, make a stone knife after several tries of using rocks as both hammers and chisels, even if the knife’s edge was rather uneven. With it, she had carved a few wooden boxes to store her smoked fish. Most importantly, while she couldn’t make anything too big, she managed to grab some branches and weave some of the leaves and grasses that hadn’t quite died yet into a very, very rough wall that helped cover some of the edges of the cave. While it would break down if she shoved it, it helped keep some of the heat in, which allowed her to sleep in far greater comfort than she had previously been able to.

In that time, [Survivor] had also leveled up to 21, [Scholar] went up to 3, and [Explorer of Magic] had made it to 10. The progress was much slower than her first experiments with magic, but Alice theorized that part of the reason was that the danger of her dying was continuously decreasing. After all, during her encounter with a monster she had gained 4 levels in Survivor in less than an hour, while it had taken her several days to get to level 12 in Survivor beforehand.

Her level 10 perks for [Explorer of Magic] hadn’t been too exciting, but she had grabbed {Enhanced Regeneration}.

Enhanced Mana Regeneration

Requirements: Explorer of Magic level 10 or higher

Allows you to regenerate mana 20% faster for all seeds.

Like all other stats, [Magic] increased when she used it. Therefore, regenerating mana 20% faster meant that she would have more training time than other people at the same level, boosting both her [Magic] Stat and [Explorer of Magic] Levels by a significant margin as a long-term investment. Apart from that, she had acquired two more skills related to magic, both of which seemed quite useful.

Through training, you have increased a skill!

Mana Precision +1, Kinetic Force +1

{Mana Precision} helped her control how much mana she sent through her mana tendrils. If the first time, she had been grabbing random amounts and pumping it through her mana tendril, now it was at least a bit more refined, allowing her to avoid wasting mana when she didn’t need to.

{Kinetic Force} was much more interesting, primarily because it seemed the most game-like Skill she had gotten so far. Most of the other Skills she had gotten so far improved her knowledge and instincts. Sprinting seemed to help her more naturally adopt a real ‘runner’s stance,’ which was something she could have, theoretically, learned entirely on her own even without the System. {Mana Precision}, for example, improved her control, but if she had sufficient practice, she probably could have done the same thing, it just would have taken a far longer period of time to reach the same level of proficiency. By contrast, {Kinetic Force} didn’t seem to be doing any of that – instead, with the exact same amount of mana, she was able to exert more force on the same object if she wanted to. Alice was baffled by this.

Was there some other part of the process of converting mana to kinetic force that she was missing? Was that what the Skill was improving – some part of the process she didn’t notice or understand? Most of the other skills were fairly straightforward in what they were improving, but this one baffled her. She was eager to learn more about it, but thus far had no success figuring out what was going on behind the scenes. She really hoped that some of the Perks in [Scholar] would finally help her figure out more of what was going on behind the scenes - she had seen too many intriguing tidbits of whatever rules the System was operating off of to not be interested, but she was always lacking the information she needed to start tying everything together. Thus, no matter what she wanted to learn, she always fell short when it came to really looking at what was going on. Still, she couldn't do anything about her lack of knowledge - yet.

Regarding her levels, Alice did wonder how big of a role innovation played in her experience growth, considering how much her levelling speed had slowed down compared to her first week in this world. She obviously still got some amount of progress in her classes just from doing the same routine over and over again to prepare for winter, even with no new dangers or innovations involved. However, she had gotten multiple levels per day during the first week here on some days as she found new solutions to problems and adjusted to this world, and now, after a week of training, she only got two levels in [Explorer of Magic].

In her first training session for her magic, she had gotten three levels, if you excluded the bits about forming a magic seed and learning how magic worked. That was obviously an anomaly, probably brought about by whatever bonuses innovation gave. However, even so, the fact that the class had only levelled twice in the next week meant that innovation probably gave a much bigger bonus to experience points than she had thought it did, and her first training session had probably counted for part of that. Or, alternately, since the class had the word ‘explorer’ as part of its name, the class got much bigger bonuses than other classes for innovating and playing with magic. Or something – Alice wasn’t really sure what the metrics for class experience points were.

Regarding her magic seed, she had done some rough calculations, and found that if she drained her magic seed it seemed to take a little under two days to replenish fully, or at least it had before she got the {Enhanced Regeneration} perk. She guessed that the ‘base value’ for magic regeneration was probably exactly 2 days, and then her 15% enhanced mana regeneration from {Baptized by Broken Mana} was boosting that regeneration speed by enough to make the math screwy, but it was a good thing to keep in mind regardless. As a result, with her morning training sessions she made sure to leave a little over half of her mana available, to deal with any emergencies, while draining half during training sessions to get whatever Stats, Skills, and Levels she could.

In any case, it still felt good to be settling into a routine. No sudden emergencies plunging her into a crisis, no trying to figure out how to deal with the influx of new problems and crises that had plagued her for the first week she had been here. Her time on this world was approaching three weeks now, and although her start had been a bit rocky, she was finally starting to reach some level of stability.

However, her somewhat comfortable lifestyle had come to an end this morning. A problem had occurred. One she had known was coming for a while, but had hoped would take longer to come than it had.

Today, the river finally froze. The fish had been thinning out for a while now, but as of this morning, it seemed like there would be no more for her. Not only that, but the berry bushes she had found near her cave had also stopped producing berries completely, the leaves finally turning brown as the bushes entered dormancy and waited for winter to pass. She had about two and a half week’s worth of food, give or take a bit, but that was far from the three months worth of food she probably needed. At least, assuming seasons were still around ninety days on this world – they could be more days, or fewer, but Alice wanted to at least be prepared for a solid three months, rather than hoping that a roll of the dice would save her from a slow death via starvation.

She wandered around the region, trying to find any sources of meat or plants that might be edible. While she wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for, she could rely on {Foraging} to help cue her in on what was and wasn’t edible. Furthermore, although she didn’t remember it particularly clearly, but she was pretty sure she had seen a rabbit on her second day here, when she was suffering from mana poisoning. That meant there should be other rabbits in the surroundings, as well as other game animals if she could find them. She could also try going after some birds, although their thinning presence in the area meant that they probably also didn’t like winter and wouldn’t become a lasting food source.

However, as she stepped through the trees, concentrating on random plants, she felt a familiar icy sensation of fear trickling down her spine. Danger.

She looked around, avoiding moving too much, and spotted another spidercrab. This time, she didn’t fly into a blind panic. The creature was sniffing around the trees, about 10 meters away, but it didn’t seem to have fully caught onto her scent yet. She had a few moments to think about things.

Am I about to get stuck in a tree again? Alice looked at her stone spear, which had a sharp and sturdy point. Her mana seed was about 70% of the way full, having recharged some from her morning practice. She hesitated. Then, finally, she extended a mana tendril out from her seed, preparing for a fight. These things were obviously common around here, and if she couldn’t even defeat one of them it would mean that she was going to continuously be stuck in trees over and over again during her time in the wilderness. Not to mention, depending on the terrain when she got closer to civilization, there might not be as much tree cover as she followed the river further. Besides, if a tree branch broke and she fell to the ground while trying to hide from a spidercrab, she would die. Fighting at least one spidercrab at a time might be manageable for her, and being able to deal with them would drastically improve her survival odds.

The spidercrab seemed to sense it the moment she used mana, and turned towards her, giving off a screech that made her wish she was deaf. Then, in one swift movement, it pounced towards her.

Still clumsy, but much less than before, she managed to touch spidercrab with a mana tendril as it got within a meter of her. Then, she gave it a shove with her mana the moment she had a proper connection, trying to throw the spidercrab to the ground and hopefully mess up its balance.

Instead of getting smashed into the ground, Alice felt almost as though the spidercrab was shoving right back against her mana. Not very effectively, but she still felt as if most of the force she tried to leverage against the monster dissipated into nothing. No, that wasn’t it – the mana that she was trying to feed into spidercrab to change its momentum had disappeared somewhere, or at least a significant portion of it had. Alice panicked, but luckily, even though only a little over half of her mana actually affected spidercrab, it was still thrown off balance by the push, causing it to fall back towards the ground a bit short of her. Having failed to hit its target, it stumbled, trying to recover its balance. Before it could, Alice shoved it again, this time committing a much larger chunk of her mana to a single push to keep it off balance.

At the same time, trying to psych herself up, Alice stabbed at spidercrab with her spear, managing to nick the monster on one of its legs. Green-white blood spilled out, and the thing was pissed. It released another screech, this one louder, and launched itself towards her again. She was starting to run low on mana, but she managed to nudge the front two legs away from her body, then stabbed its underbelly. The spidercrab’s momentum did the rest of the work as her spear punched through its stomach, where none of its annoying chitin protected it, and it flailed and screeched for a brief moment before its legs dug into the soil and it pushed itself back. However, she could see it was slower now, much more heavily injured than before.

However, that didn’t stop the damn thing’s aggression at all. Even while it shied away from bending its body too much, it leapt to the side, then bounded towards her again.

Oh shit. Alice tried to dodge and instead stumbled. She fell down, and spidercrab didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the lack of a stone spear controlling its movements. It leapt towards her prone form, and its teeth sank into her stomach. Alice screamed, and threw every last bit of her mana into a mana tendril as she threw the spidercrab upwards. A sudden headache formed as her mana seed was suddenly devoid of mana.

Spidercrab lifted a several centimeters upwards, giving Alice just enough space to get her spear and ram the point directly into its head.

Spidercrab made a sort of warbling sound, the spear partway into its throat, and spasmed. The spear held it in place as its bottom legs scrabbled against the ground, panicking, before spidercrab started slowing down. A few seconds later, it stopped twitching entirely, its body going limp and sagging towards the ground.

Alice breathed in and out, blinking away the various notifications that had popped up in the middle of her fight. Her stomach hurt. She looked down, and saw blood. Panicking, she ran back to her cave as blood trickled out of her wound.

She cut another strip of cloth from her blanket, a larger one this time, while also using some boiled water to clean off the wound. Fortunately, once she got a better look at it, she realized that it wasn’t actually that bad – it hadn’t managed to seriously mangle her flesh, or penetrate too deeply. Really, the wound was about a quarter of the length of her pinky to her stomach, which, while very painful, wasn’t the end of the world. It felt much better once the strip of cloth she was now using as a bandage was wound around it, and Alice trusted that her stats would hopefully do the rest of the healing she needed.

Calmer now, Alice tried to ignore the pain in her stomach as she took several deep breaths. She took a few minutes to relax, going through a vaguely remembered breathing exercise as her body and mind calmed down after the fight. After she settled her racing pulse and thoughts, she finally took a look at the notifications from the fight and its immediate aftermath.

You have leveled up!

Survivor: 23

Explorer of magic: 14

Through Training, you have increased an attribute!

Willpower +1, Magic +6, Strength +2, Endurance +3, Dexterity +1

Through Training, you have increased a skill!

Spearmanship +3, Basic Medicine +2, Dodge +2, Kinetic Manipulation +3, Kinetic Force +2,

Mana Precision +3, Mana Control +4

Even though she got hurt during the fight, the gains were also nothing to sneeze at. However, beyond just the Levels, Stats, and Skills, there was one other notification that interested her.

You have gained an achievement!

Monster Slayer (I) (Rarity: 1)

You are no longer at the bottom of the food chain! Congratulations!

Increases the Effects of the Strength and Perception stats by 3%

After a few more minutes of some basic breathing exercises to help relax her, Alice finally began thinking back over the fight and its results.

The first thing to note was that her spear had held up reasonably well, but her body and skill with the spear hadn’t fared quite so well. She had been practicing {Spearmanship}, and now had at least some of the instinct and reflexes someone who actually knew what they were doing with a spear would have.

However, she was seriously lacking in several other departments. Her body simply couldn’t keep up with what it needed to do, and her thinking speed couldn’t really keep up with a fight very well. Alice was more at home in a science lab than a fight, and before today she hadn’t really been in any physical conflicts. She didn’t really have much idea what she was doing beyond what her Skills told her, and while they helped a great deal, they couldn’t cover her lack of experience. Furthermore, she had no idea what had happened to her mana while she was fighting the monster – it had, somehow or another, dispelled a big portion of she what had thrown at it, and her attempts to control the monster’s movements had been much less successful than she had expected. She had managed to get her mana tendril where it needed to be after hours of trying to juggle rocks, but it had barely been enough because her raw mana reserves were so low.

Despite all of that, she had managed to pull out a win. Even if the fight hadn’t gone as well as she would have liked, she had managed to survive a fight with a monster. Her physical stats and Skills definitely needed more training, but she could defend herself in a pinch if she needed to. That thought gave her a feeling of security – before, she had been worried that basically anything she came across in this world might swat her to death. She hadn’t managed to pick up an identify skill despite trying, so she had no way of figuring out what the surrounding world was like in terms of power. She lived in fear of a level 30 monster simply sneezing her out of existence. However, as of now, she was at least capable of fighting off the weakest monsters in the area, and hadn’t seen any hint of stronger monsters around here. For now, at least. While she still suspected that high level monsters would be a huge threat to her, at the very least, she wasn’t helpless any more.

Apart from that, she had gained another achievement. The fact that {Monster Slayer} had a number next to it indicated that it was probably the first tier of the achievement, or at least that was Alice’s guess. The idea of an upgradeable achievement was something to keep in mind for the future, even if she couldn’t do much with it yet. She also thought it was a little strange that the achievement was only rarity 1, the same rarity as seeing a monster. Alice wasn’t sure exactly how common an {Achievement} with Rarity 1 actually was, but it seemed to indicate that even after she found civilization, she would probably need to be prepared for more monster attacks. At the very least, maintaining a decent level of combat proficiency was probably a good idea if she wanted to survive in this world, if she didn’t find a way home.

Alice sighed, as she always did when thoughts of home came up. The last week had caused her homesickness to intensify, especially as she had settled in and her survival became easier. Without desperation to occupy her thoughts, they slipped towards the house she had been in less than a month before. Were her parents doing all right? What did they think after she had disappeared into thin air in the middle of the night? She hoped that they weren’t worried about her, but she ultimately knew that they were probably desperate to find out what had happened to her. If she could at least send a message to them and let them know she was alive, she would feel less guilty about being stuck here, wherever here was.

After a few minutes, she pushed the thoughts of home away. For now, they weren’t productive, and she needed to keep moving forward instead of drowning in memories and worries she couldn’t change.

She focused back on the fight, and suddenly had a thought - was spidercrab edible?

Even if its legs looked kind of spidery and incredibly gross, the center of its body looked much closer to a crab. Alice wasn’t quite desperate enough to resort to eating the spider bits, but she didn’t mind eating crab. Maybe it’s worth trying?

Alice crept back out of the cave, keeping an eye on her surroundings as she wanted to avoid another fight right now, and after a bit of backtracking and searching she managed to find the body of the spidercrab.

{Foraging} let her know that, with some cooking, spidercrab was, in fact, edible. Thus began an entirely new ordeal -trying to drag the damn thing back to her cave so she could butcher and cook it. Her stomach was still wounded, even if it had stopped bleeding, and she had a hard time moving around too much weight. After some thinking, Alice took her stone knife and cut off the thing’s head first – she wasn’t going to eat the eyes or the mouth anyway, so it was adding on weight she didn’t need. Then, she also removed the ten legs – they were too spiderlike for her comfort, and even if it was irrational there was a huge ick factor whenever she looked at them. That might change in the future if she was desperate enough, but for now, her disgust at anything insect-like won out. Without those things, the corpse was much easier to move.

Finally, she managed to get the whole mess back to the cave, where she started clumsily dealing with the corpse. She learned pretty quickly that the shell on spidercrab’s back was hard to remove – it was best to just try scooping out meat from the underbelly. After a messy process that likely missed several edible chunks, she tried cooking most of the flesh, since {Foraging} let her know that most of it could be edible if some level of preparation was done.

Unfortunately, most of the internal organs weren’t safe to eat, even after being cooked. Alice wasn’t really sure what to make of that, but ended up discarding them – if the perk said it was a bad idea, she wasn’t going to try it. There was obviously some other process that needed to be done to them if she wanted to eat them, but she had no idea what it was, and so for now the meat could only be abandoned.

The flesh itself tasted all right – somewhat similar to cooked crab from home, if a fair bit less good due to the fact that there were no seasonings to go with it. She wasn’t sure if smoking the meat would work, but she gave it a try for a good chunk of the corpse and gorged herself on the meat for the rest of the night. Once she healed up, she would try hunting another Spidercrab. Even if the first fight had been a bit desperate, she could improve her fighting skills with time and training. More importantly, she had found a source of meat for the winter.

Name: Alice Verianna

Age: 15

Strength: 56 (103%)

Perception: 103 (103%)

Dexterity: 55 (102%)

Intelligence: 154

Endurance: 63 (102%)

Willpower: 123

Charisma: 125

Magic: 30

Primary Classes: 3/5

Survivor: 23

Explorer of Magic: 14

Scholar: 3

N/A

N/A

Secondary Classes: 1

Fisherwoman: 3

Perks:

Foraging (Survivor 5)

Microbe Resistance (Survivor 10)

Extremophile (Survivor 15)

Camouflaged (Survivor 20)

Magic Proficiency (Explorer of Magic 5)

Enhanced Regeneration (Explorer of Magic 10)

Skills

English (Language Proficiency): 100

Illvarian (Language Proficiency): 27

Weaving: 11

Spearmanship: 11

Kinetic Manipulation: 9

Mana Control: 9

Woodworking: 8

Fishing: 7

Stoneworking: 6

Sprinting: 6

Mana Precision: 5

Cooking: 4

Kinetic Force: 4

Digging: 4

Basic Medicine: 3

Dodge: 3

Climbing: 3

Mana Seed: 1/1

Kinetic Seed (100%)

Achievements

Outworlder (Rarity: 10)

Baptized by Broken Mana (Rarity: 6)

Monstrous Encounter (Rarity: 1)

Monster Slayer (I) (Rarity: 1)