No longer able to ignore her hunger, Jen decided to eat a meal of mushrooms. As much as she wanted to conserve her magic to use for other tasks, eating was still a necessity. Thinking positively, she was grateful that her mana pool was large enough that she wouldn’t have to find out what would happen if she didn’t have any mana for the mushrooms to steal.

Between her increasing Pain Resistance and her growing familiarity, the hurtful feeling as the mushrooms ate away at her magic was mostly ignorable. Jen sunk into her meditation, interested in trying to increase to maximize her regeneration, given just how much of her planned progress was dependent on magic.

As she entered that meditative state, she turned her thoughts towards the future. While escape remained her main objective, her goal that she would always be working towards, there were still decisions to be made regarding the small details of which actions to take to get there.

Jen’s immediate options in term of reaching her goals could be grouped into three categories, with some overlap between them.

First and most general would be to learn new skills and increase the level of her current skills. The skills themselves would increase her ability, allowing her to accomplish things that would otherwise be out of her reach. Beyond that, the Skill Points turned Plot Points would be invaluable. The stat points that the paths gave would be necessary to increase her magical strength, and the two skills she had received from the Path of Patience had been skills she would never have earned on her own.

There were still two paths available to Jen, Underdark Dweller and Magic Mastery. If either of the paths were to give her a related skill, Jen would be ecstatic, especially if the skill proved to be one that would be inaccessible otherwise.

Underdark Dweller seemed especially promising in that regards. It didn't use a simpler term such as cave dweller or underground dweller, but instead chose a word that had a much more specific meaning. The Underdark was not any location underground, but the subterranean region of the Forgotten Realms, home to Drow, Deep Gnomes, and other fantasy races. It was a fantasy word for a fantasy world. Hopefully a Path that made a reference to it would give an equally fantastical skill.

The Magic Mastery path didn’t have such portents, but some ways held even more promise. Magic had already given Jen a source of light, and had potentially helped her digest an otherwise deadly source of food. More than its past accomplishments, it was magic. Which to Jen, meant that anything was possible with enough effort and study.

That tied into the second area in which Jen could advance. Her current control and understanding of magic felt minimal at best. She had managed to produce a ball of light, but there was no understanding of the mechanisms behind that, nor had there been purpose behind her actions the first time she had achieved that feat. Even now success felt more similar to trying to wiggle a single eyebrow and eventually managing it than acting with purpose.

In order to improve her magic, Jen needed more. More skills, with the knowledge and abilities they provide. More stats, to increase her mental prowess. And more knowledge, to guide her actions, give her insight as to areas she could improve and refine her skills. She was eager to learn her first system spell, not just for its given purpose, but out of a desire to learn as much as she could from its workings.

The final goal that Jen had set for herself was to explore. She had been lucky to find the pool of water, and the mushrooms nearby that kept her fed and alive, but she had grown complacent. The rest of the cave system was still a vast mystery to her. Exploring it would not only give her a better understanding of her surroundings, but could potentially give her more resources to improve herself. A way out would be ideal, but even if her luck was not that good other sources of food, water, or building supplies would all go a long way towards making her long term survival more tenable. Jen’s mouth watered a little at the thought of edible food that didn’t come with a severe case of poison and pain. Whether such a resource existed or not, the concept would be useful in providing motivation to continue to advance.

Exploring would be helpful in more subtle ways as well. Jen had noticed that the growth of her skills had been rapid at the start, when she had pushing her limits to survive. Without that struggle, she had noticed that her skills had levelled off. Even accounting for a higher level taking more effort to achieve, her growth had been stagnant. It seemed that merely using a skill wasn’t enough for it to grow; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that pushing an ability to its limits would cause the skill to increase in level more rapidly.

Jen had reached a place where her current skill levels were sufficient. Her Echolocation and Listen could help her navigate to and from her mushroom supply, and her Poison and Pain resistances were approaching the point where eating the deadly mushrooms would be little more than a hassle.

Heading out to explore would be a change from her routine, one that would hopefully force her to improve her skills once more, granting her the skill points necessary to complete the paths available to her.

While Jen had made a mental division between these areas, she knew there would still be overlap. Adventuring would raise her skills, and increasing her skills would help her become more proficient at magic in various ways. The mental constructs were just to keep her intentional about everything, to put an effort into exploring, into learning new skills, into understanding magic.

A part of Jen wanted to put that concept into practice immediately, to head out right away to challenge herself against the cave, but a greater part urged caution and patience. There were plenty of things she could do to prepare for her excursion, such as testing her new light source to have a better understanding of its functionality.

Not wanting to find herself trapped in the dark like she had been upon her arrival, Jen began her experiments, trying to vary the amount of mana she was giving it and timing it’s duration. It was good training for her magic manipulation, trying to pay attention to her outgoing mana and releasing discrete and intentional amounts.

Her time in between charging the mushrooms was spent timing the relative durations, which seemed to follow a rough rule of five minutes per mana point invested. She also spent that time trying to think of new skills to try and acquire.

Having already earned both Listen and Taste Testing, Jen was eager to try and improve her other senses with similar skills. Being able to see or smell better would always be useful, even if it might mean her enhanced senses could possibly be overwhelmed by strong stimuli.

Low Light Vision was relatively simple to earn. Jen simply had to try to make out details on the cave floor further and further away from her glowing mushroom. Trying to gain a better sense of smell proved much trickier. For one, there was a lack of things to smell. The water, mushrooms, even the moss were all essentially odorless. Jen tried to smell herself, but wrinkled her nose soon after.

If skills were gained by a desire to improve oneself, then trying to determine how she smelled at the moment was probably negative reinforcement with regards to that goal.

A touch related skill was equally difficult to come by, and Jen wondered if part of it was due to lack of a clear goal on her part. She could mentally picture what it would be like to see better, to see further or clearer in the dark, or to hear better, hearing noises that were almost inaudible. Part of that was her past experience with similar events. It was possible to hear better by moving closer to a sound, or see better in a good light. Colds had always dulled her sense of taste in the past, so even that sense she had a good idea of what was better or worse.

Her sense of smell had been lost at times, but it had never been important enough to really understand what not smelling meant. A runny nose was always more irritating for having to continually clear out the accumulating snot than any feeling of missing her sense of smell. Touch as well was a sense that was just there, something she took for granted.

Quickly running through her other senses such as temperature, balance, pressure, and more, Jen didn’t come across any that she felt she could acquire a skill for on her own. It was always possible that she could gain one with system assistance, but Jen decided her time was better spent trying to learn other skills.

A few minutes spent throwing punches, elbows, and knees earned her a Fist Fighting Mastery skill. Jen knew from the start that it wasn’t a skill that would hold immense value to her, but would still be worthwhile for the early skill points she could easily gain.

An attempt was made to gain a Speech or Oration skill, but failed. Jen thought that the desired skill might exist, it was just difficult to try and give a rousing speech to an audience of mushrooms. Ballroom dancing was easier to practice, as Jen was able to focus on simply following the steps, using her heartbeat to count the time as she went through the motions. She took advantage of that to practice her singing at the same time, running through several songs to give herself something to move to.

It was a pleasant distraction, trying to remember different songs, humming when her memory failed on the lyrics. A notification appears but she ignored it, happy to just revel in the moment. When she finally ran out of songs, she let out a little sigh of contentment.

Singing is now Lvl 5.

Congratulations! You have learned the skill Dancing Lvl 1. Dancing is now Lvl 2.

The skills were appreciated, but Jen was more grateful for the mental break that dancing had given her, a chance just to pretend to be elsewhere for a moment.

Happy for the moment with her new skills, Jen turned her attention to her status screen. Her current mana was 32/80. Even if she was pessimistic about how long the mushroom light would last, that should be plenty for a two hour long expedition.

After taking a long drink from her pool, Jen organized her gathered rocks into a pile and carefully placed the mushroom on top. As soon as she started to force the magic into the mushroom she started her mental counter. Trying to both keep an accurate count and concentrate on quickly forcing her magic into the mushroom was difficult, but ultimately possible.

Under the warm light, Jen planned her next step. Her initial thought had been to explore further in the direction of the mushroom cracks, but she quickly changed her mind. With her limited amount of time to explore, she didn’t want to be slowed down and possibly misdirected by the rough terrain. She also didn’t want to waste all her effort exploring back in the direction of the central pillar.

Operating on the assumption that the pillar she had first approached the pool from and the mushroom cracks were on opposite sides of the pool, she decided to head towards the left of the cracks. Her echolocation had told her the ceiling was dropping as she travelled that way, and she was eager to reach the cave wall.

Filling one pocket with the last few mushrooms, and her other pocket with a few small rocks, Jen began to move.

Her speed dropped off rapidly once she left the illuminated area and was forced to test every step before moving forwards. Even though the ground was clear of all obstacles, the threat of stepping wrong and breaking a leg was enough to keep her moving slowly.

Patience was the name of the game, and Jen was once more grateful towards her skill. No matter how much she might be opposed to the idea of mental manipulation, in practice it seemed to be positive for the moment.

As she moved forwards, Jen paid close attention to both the dripping sound from the pool as well as the amount of elapsed time. She might not know how quickly she was travelling, but if she kept a steady speed she could have a good idea of relative distances of various locations.

It took a good ten minutes until she could no longer make out the steady rhythm of dripping water. Jen switched her focus towards echolocation at that point, trying to make out various interesting features. She also paid close attention to the ceiling as it continued to lower, using it as a rough metric of her progress forwards.

She continued to throw glances backwards to reassure herself that her beacon of light was still present. For all her testing and her safety margin, She had never given the mushroom this much mana at one time, and the possibility of it fading early worried her.

Reaching the wall of the cave after half an hour of travelling was almost a letdown. The ground had been clear the entire way, with nothing of interest to make the trip worth the effort for her yet. After taking a moment to use her supply of rocks to make a directional marker pointing back towards her camp, Jen turned and went right, running along the wall as she made her way further into the unknown.