Alice threw some supplies into a basket, especially her remaining emergency rations. She also grabbed her spear, stone hatchet, and stone knife, because having some weapons on hand in case she ran into something else terrifying might be critical. She spared a glance at her cave, which she had slowly worked to transform into a somewhat cozy home, before she turned back towards the entrance. She didn’t feel regret over leaving it behind – even though it had been her home for four months, she missed other people far more. It had been months since she had heard another human being’s voice, after all.

The only other thing she brought along was her book on magic, which she had long since memorized. It had taught her magic, and also a language. She was reluctant to leave it behind. Besides, in some societies paper and books might be valuable – in which case having a book on hand to sell might be a good way to get some funds.

She left behind Taps, the pet rock that she had painted a face on a while ago. Before she left, she knocked him against the wall one last time. He would guard the cave for her.

Her stay in the wilds had been cold and lonely, and she had little to remember it by except for the levels and stats in her status screen. Before leaving, she took one last look at the area around her, and remembered the day she had arrived in this world. For a brief moment, her thoughts drifted towards home.

Sorry, mom and dad. I still don’t know how to get home. I wonder if you two are thinking of me right now? The cops must have declared this to be a missing persons case by now. They might have even decided I was dead. I wonder if they’ve stopped searching for me. I hope you’re doing okay. It might take a while, but I won’t forget where I come from. Someday, I’ll see you again.

Alice grabbed her stuff, and began briskly walking upstream. She didn’t see any monsters with {Sixth Sense}, so whatever had roared probably wasn’t close enough to be a problem yet. Therefore, she would move quickly enough to make good time, but save energy for if she needed to jog or sprint later on. She moved as quickly as she could while still watching her surroundings, keeping an eye out for monsters. Looking back on her first few days in the world, it was a miracle she hadn’t run into more of them, moving so brazenly and quickly out in the open.

Another roar sounded in the distance, but as far as she could tell, it didn’t seem to be moving closer to her. Still, she felt uneasy, and picked up her pace as much as she thought she could get away with. Between running into a few more spidercrabs and whatever was making that sound, she would pick the spidercrabs every time.

A few hours later, she heard another one of the terrifying roars. This time, however, it was much closer, almost on top of her. She froze, her heart hammering in her chest as she scanned each direction.

Something massive stepped into the range of {Sixth Sense}. When she turned to her left, she saw a massive bear towering over the surrounding landscape. Its eyes were inky black, the color of a starless sky. It was staring at her, and it looked pissed. It took a huge, lumbering stride towards her, and her brain finally unfroze. She turned and ran, deciding that tangling with this thing would be the last mistake she ever made. She ran a few steps up the river, determined to try to follow her original plan as much as possible. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that even the plants seemed to be shaking in fear.

Then, a few blades of grass reached towards her ankles. She easily tore through them, the difference in strength far too large for the fragile foliage to accomplish much. However, ahead of her feet, larger, thicker cords of grass were forming. She realized that, somehow, the bear was controlling the grass around her. Shit! That’s not one of the four basic magics!

Alice heard another roar, and she glanced over her shoulder, seeing the bear grow in real time as it rapidly closed the distance between them. Then, she realized it was literally growing. Before, it had stood two and a half meters tall on its four legs, but now it was closer to three. Panicking, she felt her stomach churn with dread as she realized she was going to die here. She was still trying to run away, tripping over the cords of grass and vegetation, but she wasn’t going to make it. She was going to die…

She crashed into the thawing river, Thin ice shattered, and the cold water snapped her out of the primordial terror that had seized control of her being. She saw, in a brief moment of lucidity, the bear seem to shrink instead of grow, but before she could even process what was happening, the bear had also crashed into the water a few meters away from her. It moved a paw towards her, trying to swim closer, but before it could make any progress both of them suddenly became heavier.

Within moments, it became difficult to even keep her head above water. Her eyes flicked down, and she saw a fern-like creature scuttling along the bottom of the river, its three-meter long plant maw which for some reason had huge teeth opened wide as it pointed directly at both her and the bear. She extended some tendrils of magic towards her toga and dragged herself upwards, desperately trying to stay away from the river-monster below as the bear, struggling, began to sink beneath the surface.

The bear suddenly seemed to shrink into itself, and one of the trees from nearby began bending towards the bear. As it reached out a paw, the beast’s size snapped towards two meters, still huge but no longer at the level of a giant. In the face of this new threat, it felt ... diminished. Then, its head dipped below the roiling current, and even its angry growl vanished beneath the waves. A few moments later, its thrashing ceased. The sucking sensation dragging Alice to a watery grave stopped.

She popped straight up, her kinetic magic that she hadn't released yet launching her out of the stream like a cork from a bottle as she accidentally sent herself rocketing towards the sky...before she finally stopped using her magic. Rapidly, her momentum faltered and she messily plopped back into the suddenly still waters. She looked down one final time, and saw whatever was at the bottom of the river swallowing the bear whole. Terrified, Alice quickly swam back to shore, eager to get out of the way of whatever the fuck that thing was as fast as possible before it got hungry again.

She flopped onto the sandy riverbank, then crawled several further meters away before she collapsed into the ground, exhausted and terrified. It had only taken the blink of an eye for this world to nearly kill her. With a sinking sensation, Alice wondered if perhaps she had been lucky that she had dropped into this world near the start of this world’s winter. If whatever these monsters were hadn’t been hibernating when she had first come here, she was absolutely certain she would have died the first time she saw one. Even with her magic and the fact that her physical abilities had nearly doubled since she had come to this world, she had barely survived. Hell, if she still would have died if either of monsters had focused on her instead of each other – the bear had definitely been gaining on her, and she would have run out of mana before long if she was trying to escape the plant monster.

She took a few minutes to relax, just breathing in and out, before she finally checked her System notifications, realizing that this encounter had finally pushed her to level 35 in [Survivor]. She scanned the available perks, gauging what they actually did.

Sense hostility

Requirements: Survivor level 35 or higher, Perception 100 or higher

Whenever any being gazes upon you with hostile intentions, you will sense it, as well as sense the direction of the entity in question and its power relative to you. If said being is significantly stronger than you, or is too far away, locating them may be impossible. Improves the effect of the {Perception} attribute by 20%. Enhanced by your Perception attribute.

Ambush Predator

Requirements: Survivor level 35 or higher, Stealth - related perk unlocked at any point in time within the [Survivor] class

While undetected, you gain the ability to see twenty meters around you in all directions with any senses available to you. When attacking a target which has no knowledge of your presence, you will be able to pinpoint its weaknesses more accurately, and it will lose blood much more quickly for two minutes after your first attack.

Hardy

Requirements: Survivor level 35 or higher, Endurance higher than 75, Magic higher than 25

Your body gains a significant amount of natural resistance against hard impacts and magic. Effects of the Endurance stat increase by 20%.

Slayer of Monsters

Requirements: Survivor level 35 or higher, Monster Slayer Achievement, 3 stats at 100 or greater, no stats below 50

If you have killed a monster within the last 7 days, all of your stats have their effectiveness increased by 15%. Your ability to track and locate monsters is improved. (This counts the final blow against a monster.)

Alice quickly knocked out {Hardy} – even though it would be useful to someone who was solid enough to take a hit or two, Alice was pretty sure that multiplying her squishy physique by a bit would still result in her getting 1-shotted by an average vinebear, making its use dubious. In the end, she suspected that perk would just make her take longer to digest inside of a monster’s stomach. {Sense Hostility} was kind of tempting – even with the 200 meter detection radius of {Sixth Sense}, the bear had been much faster than she had thought it would be. It had only bought her twenty or so seconds, even through the wooded and rough terrain. If she hadn’t been so close to the river, she would have died, even with all the luck in the world. Furthermore, {Sixth Sense} was obviously more geared towards not getting eaten by monsters, and probably did very little that she would find useful in civilization. Having {Sense Hostility} would be a useful backup for letting her know when humans had problems with her.

{Ambush Predator} seemed more geared towards some sort of stealthy attack, and Alice wanted nothing to do with those bears – she didn’t have the combat proficiency to contest it right now. {Slayer of Monsters} was the only other major consideration she had – its effects were… odd. The other three perks had no real activation conditions – they were basically always on, and always at least potentially useful. {Slayer of Monsters} was interesting, but also had the requirement of having slain a monster in the last 7 days. Alice wasn’t sure how useful that would be while she was trying to survive reaching a town, though – she needed survivability now, and she had no idea whether or not a week had passed since her last spidercrab kill, and her odds of killing one in the near future seemed dubious if she had to hide from bears in the near future.

In any case, more forewarning seemed useful, so she grabbed {Sense Hostility}. The moment she grabbed the perk, there was a stinging sensation in her eyes, and then suddenly everything was much clearer. She hadn’t had much growth in her mental stats so far, so this was her first time really understanding what [Perception] did. Alice had thought it might do something like make her eyes better, or improve her hearing, or something like that, but after the 20% increase in the effect of the stat, she realized that was wrong.

Well, not entirely wrong, but the perk did so much more – every single point in the perk seemed to slow down the world around her, making her feel almost as if she had been watching a video and switched to playing it on 75% speed – it made sounds and sights crisper and clearer, allowing her more time to think and making it easier to notice things happening around her. She staggered, feeling slightly drunk as she tried to command her body to move, but even though she knew on some level that she was moving exactly as quickly as she had been before, it suddenly felt like her body was slow and unresponsive, unable to keep up with her new perception. Then, as she got more used to her new senses, she began walking back up the stream, wishing that her [Dexterity] and [Strength] were higher. Right now, she certainly didn’t feel like she was fully using her new [Perception] effectively. Her body just couldn’t keep up.

Then, even more slowly and cautiously than before, she began creeping along the edge of the river, hoping that she would reach civilization soon.

* * *

Two days into her journey, she was starting to realize just how good of a decision it was to take {Sense Hostility} together with {Sixth Sense}. The two seemed to feed off of each other, giving her the ability to sense monsters in a certain radius around her with much greater efficiency than either of the abilities alone would have provided. On top of that, she could detect when monsters were looking at her, which gave her a much better idea of when she should just sit tight with {Camouflaged} and hope they didn’t spot her and when she needed to run like hell.

This was especially useful because even spidercrabs were a hell of a lot scarier in the Spring – apparently, spidercrabs being alone was a winter thing. She had no idea whether or not spring was mating season for the damn things and that’s why they stuck together, or if it was some other factor entirely, but she hadn’t seen a group of less than six of them so far, and sometimes they numbered as many as ten. She was pretty confident in killing them one on one – even two on one should be pretty manageable. Six on one was just asking to die or get run up a tree while she tried to take potshots at them, but she doubted her mana seed had the capacity to deal with six spidercrabs unless she was much more confident in both her aim, and she had sufficient ammunition.

In short, {Camouflaged} finally proved just how good of a perk it was, saving her life in areas were the trees were less dense by giving her another way to survive the roving packs of spidercrabs.

Somewhere along the way, she had also picked up the {Stealth} skill, although she didn't notice much of a difference yet. Still, more skills never seemed to be a bad thing.

She had also seen another of the bears, but this time, it didn’t manage to detect her. She had observed it from a distance, trying to figure out what was going on with the shrinking and growing of the beast from her hiding spot. Eventually, she realized that the bear had some sort of ability to manipulate fear. Whenever it roared, her body would instinctively flinch, cowering and waiting to die, and the bear seemed to magnify the size of its body whenever its victim (mostly spidercrabs) got a face-full of fear magic. Afterwards, the bear would leisurely truss up its prey using some sort of plant-controlling magic and then kill and eat it. The damn thing didn’t care about the spidercrab packs at all – it could stroll up and leisurely slaughter an entire pack of them without any tension at all, making it clear that it was much higher on the food chain.

She also noticed that monsters seemed to be able to detect her if they were close enough, regardless of whether or not she was camouflaged and in a place where they couldn’t easily see her. Perhaps they could detect mana from close range, even if she wasn’t actively using it? Fortunately, when she had discovered this, she had been close to a tree, so the spidercrab pack following her hadn’t been able to get at her. After tearing off tree branches and trying to pelt them with makeshift sharpened stakes for a while, she had managed to kill one and injure a few more before they finally backed off.

These days, she stayed away from the edge of the water. Now that spring had arrived, the water was the domain of the things that lurked beneath the currents. It was no place for a human, or even a monster, to linger.

* * *

Another two days passed, and Alice’s hopes were finally realized. She climbed to the top of a tree one afternoon to get a better view of the forest, and at long, long last she could just barely make out a giant wooden wall in the distance. At least, she thought it was a wall. Even as she looked at the group of spidercrabs below, waiting patiently for them to lose interest and go somewhere else before they attracted a bear, she began smiling happily. Soon, she would be back in civilization. She would have people to talk to, and she wouldn’t be alone anymore. Also, if the people here were able to build up a walled city, they must have ways of dealing with the monsters! She would have danced with joy if she hadn’t been stuck up a tree.

* * *

She began travelling towards where she remembered the town to be, deviating slightly from the river and avoiding monsters, but still keeping the river nearby as a guide. It had become something of a security blanket of sorts, even if it was also filled with horrifying monsters, and she wasn’t eager to lose track of it. But soon, she would be at the city.

In addition, as she was travelling, she got a surprising System notification.

You have gained an achievement!

Survivor of Winter (Rarity: 3)

You have managed to survive a winter away from civilization with no help from other humans. You are truly committed to survival!

+15% class experience for the [Survivor] class and any further evolutions. Your body is able to handle temperature 10 degrees Celsius lower than before. +15% growth to the Endurance stat. During the months of winter, the effect of your Endurance stat is increased by 10%.

She looked at it, shrugged a bit, and dismissed it. It was useful, but nothing groundbreaking. She was much, much more interested in when she would reach civilization. The walls were still visible in the distance, getting easier and easier to see as she moved closer. The terrain was also growing increasingly difficult to wade through. Fortunately, as the walls grew closer, the monsters seemed to grow less active. Clearly, the humans here had some sort of deterrence against them getting too close. Either way, it was getting easier and easier to move around as she had to spend less of each day dodging around half-sensed threats and hiding. Soon, she would see another human being for the first time in far too long. Or at least an intelligent creature of some sort, since there was still a chance that the creatures here just vaguely resembled humans without actually being the same species. Either way, she would be grateful to see something possibly friendly.

* * *

She was finally in range of the walls. SHE WAS IN RANGE OF THE WALLS! She could see, in the distance, humans in uniforms and wielding bows, standing on top of the ramparts and vigilantly scanning the surroundings. She was sure by now that, somehow, they were humans – or, at the very least, their outer appearance was exactly the same and they seemed to behave exactly the same.

The trees around the walls had been chopped down for several hundred meters, making it difficult for any monsters to approach the walls unnoticed. About half of the distance between the walls and the trees was also filled with farmland, as well as people with various tools planting crops. They primarily seemed to be using iron or steel tools, as far as she could tell, and looked fairly normal.

At least, if every goddamn farmer was a superhuman who could bench-press like a bodybuilder. Every single farmer she saw did downright superhuman feats just to speed up their harvest a bit – ranging from throwing out seeds that started sprouting at a pace visible to the naked eye to the fences surrounding each farm repairing themselves when one got damaged. There were also plenty of farms she could see still being constructed.

In one case, someone even fell off the roof of the house he was constructing. Rather than being injured, he seemed more annoyed than anything else, despite the fact he had just fallen nearly ten meters. Shrugging it off, he climbed up a wooden ladder and got right back to it, paying no mind to the goddamn shattered log he had landed on. Below him, what she assumed to be his daughter cheered him on, laughing as a woman gently patted the little girl’s head while lifting up a beam with one hand and extending it back towards the man working on the roof. At least it wobbled a bit, meaning she wasn’t strong enough to hold it perfectly steady.

So this is what society looks like with a levelling System, Alice thought, dumbfounded as she watched the casual superhuman feats happening around her. It was with some relief that she could see that, at least in her own age group, she wasn’t astoundingly weak – the other few teenagers she could see weren’t casually doing superhuman bullshit, at least. They moved faster and more gracefully than her, sure, but she saw one of them at least get injured when a log landed on him, and needed some help getting it off. They didn’t move with superhuman grace either – they just moved as if they were dancers, or experienced fighters, or… something. She couldn’t really tell.

Now that she looked more closely, the age of people seemed to directly correlate to how superhuman their actions were – people that she guessed were around 30 and below still seemed anchored to common sense, at least mostly, while those between the ages of 30 and 50 seemed to be the ones who could give Olympic athletes a run for their money. She saw a few older people also helping out, although they seemed notably weaker than the younger ones – apparently, even the System didn’t help prevent the deterioration brought about by old age.

Still, the casual superhuman strength everyone displayed with was astonishing for Alice to see. While they were all significantly slower and weaker than what she had seen from the bears that controlled plants and fear, they were still a hell of a lot stronger than her. Alice had no clue what the soldiers of this world looked like, but if this was an average farmer she should probably expect something far more ridiculous.

Now that she was closer, she could also see that there was a guard post of some sort outside one of the walls. Even as she watched, a group of wagons approached the guard on duty, resulting in some gesturing before the guard began moving to check the wagons. Some sort of tariff perhaps? The wagons themselves were pulled by horses, and she couldn’t find a single hint of automation or machinery anywhere. Therefore, the world she was currently in probably had yet to reach the industrial revolution. Unless the horses were also absurdly superhuman, in which case maybe they just outperformed machinery. Still, Alice doubted it – even the System couldn’t make every aspect of automation obsolete, right? Probably?

As she walked closer, she saw that the human farmers outside of the wall kept one eye towards the forest at all times as they went about their farming. Why do you look so nervous? You seem scarier than the monsters! Alice’s mouth twitched. Perhaps there were scarier things than just vinebears? Was she luckier than she thought?

Meanwhile, a large number of other people in plain clothes labored near the river, digging something or another. Where back on Earth the same process with unskilled laborers probably would have taken hours, here it took minutes for visible progress to come from each builder. She was a little astonished to see the means of this new world at work as she watched some of the piles of dirt fling themselves away after people had stopped touching them, sliding away from the working site as if they were ice skating on dry land.

Now that she was closer, she could see that the people around her weren’t quite as superhuman as she had first thought – while the farmers and laborers were, without question, far stronger and more durable than she was, she didn’t see people moving fast enough that she struggled to track them, or anything of that sort. Putting together what she had seen from her own perks beyond level 25 in [Survivor] and her understanding of stats, she quickly realized that most of these people were probably several levels higher than her in some sort of [Farming] class, and that probably gave them several boosts to [Endurance] and [Strength]. At least, that was her best guess about why these people seemed to have such stilted physical attributes – their dexterity was also definitely higher than hers, based on the grace and speed with which they moved, but the difference didn’t seem to be too big.

Finally, she reached the guardhouse. The people there were wearing leather armor and holding long, metal pikes. Alice nodded to herself, more sure than before that the industrial revolution had yet to reach this world. She marched towards the second guard outpost, trying her best to seem normal while she fabricated a story. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do on short notice. Before that, she had to wait in line, since the guard was apparently still checking the wagon in front.

While she waited, a group of kids playing scrambled by as Alice watched in bemusement.

“Tag! You got eaten!”

“Ahh! I got eaten again! That’s no fair!”

Another kid showed up, wearing a yellow armband. “Bzzt! I got the monster!” he said as he touched one of the other kids.

“Aww!”

“All the monsters are dead! Civilians and Mages win the round!”

“Who are the mages this time?”

“I want to be a monster!”

“I got eaten three games in a row! I want to be something besides a civilian!”

The group of kids drifted off while Alice pondered. At the very least, it doesn’t seem like Mages are hated here. That’s a relief. Although, if normal people can do this much, what the hell killed the guy whose body I found? I might have suspected a vinebear before, but there’s no way in hell I buy the idea that he died from one of those if this is what an average civilian looks like. There must be much scarier monster than just vinebears somewhere around here. Alice shivered.

The guard finally finished checking the wagon in front of her, collected some silver coins from the group, and waved them through. Alice stepped up to the guard.

He looked at her, and seemed surprised for a moment. Alice winced. Her ‘toga’ was definitely weird compared to the other clothes she had seen – most people wore tunics and pants, or dresses and skirts, depending on gender. She hadn’t seen anyone else wearing what looked like a clumsily folded piece of cloth. At least, although there were a few holes and bite marks here and there, it still covered everything, but her attire definitely stood out.

“Name? Occupation? Actually, do you have an occupation? What’s your reason for travelling here?”

Alice took a deep breath before launching into her pre-prepared story. She wasn’t sure if the guard would be able to tell from the minute twitches of her body or something equally ridiculous if she was lying, so she kept her statements as close to the truth as possible.

“My name is Alice. My father was a merchant, but I encountered misfortune, and I’ve been surviving in the wilderness alone ever since. I am here because I have been looking for a town or some other bastion of civilization, and I saw the walls from the distance.” Technically, everything she said was the truth – her father worked to sell electronics, which was a kind of merchant. At least it was close enough. She wasn’t interested in divulging the fact that she was an {Outworlder} until she knew more about her situation – it was best to pretend to be a local for now. If she needed to run, she was pretty sure she had zero chance of escaping these freaks of nature.

The guard raised an eyebrow, and suddenly Alice felt as if he could see through her for a moment. Then, the feeling faded as he shrugged and waved her forward. “Do you have any Perks which allow for the storage of items?”

“No?”

She felt as if the guard was looking inside of her again, although {Sense Hostility} still didn’t pick anything up. She tried to identify what was going on, and after a moment, made a guess. Some sort of lie detection Perk? It does seem to be in-flavor for a guard, at least.

"Please read this statement out loud.” He handed her a block of stone with some words carved into it.

“I am entering this city while bearing no hostile intentions towards the city, nor do I anticipate my intentions changing before I exit. I do not intend to physically harm any person within the walls, nor do I anticipate my intentions changing before my exit. I am not a spy of the Sigmusi Empire, or from any other nations. I have no outstanding arrest warrants, and do not intend to take any illegal actions while within the city walls.” The feeling of the guard seeing through her returned. After a moment, he nodded.

“Good enough. Since you aren't carrying any goods, no tax on entry."

"Thank you. Is there anywhere I can go to get some general information on the area?"

The guard paused, tapping his chin. "Go to the guardhouse just inside the gates and talk to the receptionist.” For the first time, Alice saw a hint of sympathy in the man’s gaze. “He can help get you caught up with whatever you’ve missed, and possibly help out a bit with getting familiar with the area. At the very least he can offer you some information.”

Alice nodded, trying not to think any more about her parents that she might never see again. For now, at least, she was in the company of humans for the first time in months. She had finally reached a town, and it seemed like monsters avoided this area. She stepped through the gates, filled with a mixture of nervousness and hope.