The woman woke up to a blurry world, an equally hazy mind clouding her lucidity as she tried to comprehend her circumstance. The first protocol was confirmation of her location.

She was in a forest, a forest she had woken up in mysteriously. She was also nearby a suspicious hill, one she realised was where she had made a temporary camp. In addition to that came the realisation that the skills and glowing boxes were all real and not just a hallucination or a dream prior, with her stat block appearing before her with a simple mental command.

Name Unnamed Level 3 Health 19/100 Stamina 58/100 Essence

5/100 Power 5 Constitution 5 Endurance 5 Vim 6 Essence

5 Spirit

6 Stat Points 4

Once that had sunk in, she sat her body upright, leaning against a tree, and stopped thinking. Her brain was emotionally tired, her body cold, sore, and aching. Even though there were no apparent injuries, she felt like she had been impaled over and over still, her stomach raw and even twisting her torso sent Remnant Memories of pain through her.

As she sat there, trying not to move or even think of anything, her hands curled up into tight fists, clumped with soil, as her eyes moistened, drops of water clotting up and then rolling down her cheeks.

She didn’t close her eyes even as they began to sting, even as the tears began to accumulate, further blurring her vision into an indistinguishable wash of colours. The pain felt real as she struggled to process her emotions.

I… I could’ve died-I should’ve died.

The realisation sunk in, at how close she had come to the brink of death. Only practise and familiarity with using [Leech] had saved her, the activation becoming natural for her.

As evidence to this mortality of hers was the wilted, decaying bush in front of her. Discoloured, with yellow-spotted leaves and straggly stems, it was clearly unhealthy, if not completely dead. Desiccated like a corpse in a desert.

What am I even doing? I’m treating this whole thing like a game; not taking this seriously. I’ve lit so many fires without caring at all; I’m lucky nothing snuck up on me during those times. I’ve slept without any protections, on the ground, and completely vulnerable to wildlife.

I haven’t bothered to train up my skills or my body, and am just ambling along, letting the stats and skills carry my weight.

Her eyes were raw as she stared up at the leafy canopy above her, catching the occasional glimpse of the true sky above.

I’ve been treating my life too lightly. No precautions—no planning for the future.

Her hands slammed down onto the ground as she felt frustration build within.

I have to stop being an idiot. I-I need to work out what the fuck I’m doing.

Making spears my main weapon? Stupid. I’ve never even used a spear before; the only thing I’m good for is a gun and a fat lot of luck that experience will help me here.

There’s skills. Magic. Stop treating this like a game and more like real life; you need to train yourself.

Even as tired as she was, motivation oozed throughout the woman’s whole body as she slowly slinked back onto her feet.

I need to know something; the (1/10) after a skill's name. What does it mean? My initial thoughts were that skills can level up. They don’t do that by spending skill points on them so it may be one of the other ways I thought about, like time spent or essence spent.

[Leech] is my strongest asset currently; if there’s even a small chance of making it more helpful for my survival, I need to pursue that chance.

Tomorrow, I’ll focus on doing that when my essence has regenerated.

For the rest of the day, with a Rejuvenated spirit though still tired body, the woman contented herself with focusing on the mindless work of making more javelins.

After the first one that she had made, each subsequent one was easier and easier to make, not involving the same amount of bloodshed.

By the time night fell, she had an assortment of four separate javelins to use.

Instead of just sleeping in the burrow with no further defences as she had done previously, the first piece of evidence in her decision to actually take this all seriously was a wall of some sort.

She had collected some rocks that weren’t of the right material for spearheads and constructed some ‘boxes’ for them. They were really just sticks tied together with some bark twine, looking more like wire frames than anything else. Filling them up with the rocks, she placed them at the entrance to the burrow, lodging them into the dirt so they were at least somewhat secure.

This way, hopefully, they’d stop any curious creature from peering in, or perhaps even seeing the hole entirely (thanks to some mud and dirt she slapped into and onto the rocks). Additionally, it should also provide some level of defence, preventing the boars from being able to enter given their large sizes.

Even with this new precaution in place, the woman’s sleep was not a restful one. She tossed and turned, her arms building up a sweat even in her nudity, and she woke up numerous times throughout the night.

By the time dawn broke, the faint light trickling in down through the cracks in the door, the woman didn’t feel well rested at all.

No matter how much her inner procrastinator pleaded, she steeled her will as she shoved the box of rocks out of place and left the burrow, determined to improve herself.

First, to resume a routine she once maintained. She had figured that all the walking and fighting she was doing throughout the day would’ve made up for it but that was just an excuse; the mere nature of a routine, the pattern of actions and discipline it instilled in her, was vital as well.

So, she made two round trips to the stream and back, jogging the whole way.

Her body cried out in pain when she was nearing the end, unused to such extreme exercise for a long length of time, but she pushed herself forwards. She had been fit enough before that she was doing this once every other day; no time other than now would that same level of determination and discipline come in handy.

By the time she returned, she practically collapsed against the hovel, her mouth parched even after drinking from the brook.

But time spent resting was time that could be spent working, and what she could do next didn’t require her to even move a muscle.

Hypothesis: skills level up based on the amount of essence spent on them.

Methodology: I have regenerated 63 points of essence. I will spend all of these on [Leech] and observe the results.

In the end, she did have to move, the limited, 2 metre range of [Leech] forcing her feet to shuffle along the ground towards new plant life to devour.

Once all of her essence was spent, the immediate foliage around her camp gave off an eerie appearance; a circle of death surrounding a suspicious hill in an otherwise flat section of ground, of which all the plants near the land feature were dead while those further than two metres away were as healthy as you’d expect in a forest.

If that wasn’t a sign that something was up with this hill, the woman didn’t know what would be.

And, pleasantly, her received an answer to her question:

[Leech] [Level up]

Yes! Yes, yes, fucking yes! Skills can level up too; that is good news.

In addition to spending essence on [Leech], she had used [Maximise Mastery] as well to see how that affected her essence drain. As it turned out, increasing the intensity of a skill by 20% also increased the cost of the skill by 20% as well.

Conveniently, the cumulative effect was shown in the skills description:

[Leech] (2/10) -Learned

Drain 18 points of health from a living entity

4m range

Cost: 2.4 es/sec

Somewhat disappointingly, the scaling of [Leech] didn’t seem that good from the first level-up; the cost doubled but the damage increase was only 50% more. Maybe it’ll be different in the future? For all she knew, she was simply seeing the beginning of a geometric sequence rather than an arithmetic one.

All-in-all, this was excellent news. Frankly, she felt herself at a wall with the spears; if she wanted to develop better weapons, she lacked the capabilities to do so; mankind spent hundreds of thousands of years with stone tools before developing metallurgy, after all.

So, being able to improve in the metaphysical rather than physical was great news—and, at a much faster pace, it seemed.

From what she could vaguely remember, she didn’t use [Leech] too often before today. Attempting to remember all the fights she had been in, and then how often she used the skill, she came to the conclusion that it probably took 100 points of essence to level [Leech] up.

100 is a specific number and there was the chance that a human's bias for nice, neat numbers in maths influenced that conclusion but it seemed accurate enough. Anyway, later experiments should help to confirm the accuracy of it.

Levelling a skill up was only one avenue for improvement; now that she knew she could spend essence to make [Leech] stronger, it was clear how she should tackle future level ups.

I need to increase my essence regeneration. The more essence I regenerate per day, the more I can spend on [Leech] in a day, and the faster it levels up. Therefore, the stronger I get.

She went back to using the intuitive search functionality for skills. However, this time, she broadened her search somewhat.

Before, she had wanted to know of ways to increase her essence regeneration, a stat on its own. This showed her [Well of Spirit] but nothing else. This time, she searched for ways to gain essence, ways to regenerate essence (unrelated to the stat) and ways to make the spending of essence more efficient.

The goal was to get more bang for her buck, so to speak.

The last search didn’t garner anything new but the first two did:

[Essence Transformer] (1/10)

Convert 10 points of health into essence

Conversion rate: 1 hp/sec

Efficiency: 10%

[Meditate] (1/10)

Regeneration is multiplied by 1.1 while senses are subdued absolutely

The first skill was interesting; spending health was certainly a drawback but [Leech] gained health. Is there a way to use both at once? No results with a cursory search but that was a topic she should explore further anyway. That wasn't even mentioning that, if levelled up to the max and used in conjunction with [Maximise Mastery], could efficiency go over 100%? She doubted it; energy could never create more energy but numerically, it seemed like it could be feasible.

What all this meant, however, was that she needed to level up. If she levelled up three times, she’d be able to get these two skills in addition to [Well of Spirit], massively boosting her essence regeneration—and that’s not even considering if those skills levelled up as well.

This was good; rather than buying the immediately useful skill, she was planning ahead, not wasting skills on dead end paths. Though, she was lucky she hadn’t done that thus far. [Cleanse] was strange in that it didn’t seem to benefit much from skill amplifiers or level ups, but the health benefits it conveyed were worth it, in her opinion.

She needed to go hunting.

Though her body still groaned from her workout, she refused to remain idle. The prospective power up was too tempting to just wait for her to recover; her stamina was still high (even if her muscles disagreed with that) and her mind was whirling with energy—doing nothing may actually be more painful than something, in this situation.

Gathering her javelins in the bundle she had used for the purely wooden ones, she collected her knife and proceeded back towards the stream.

Her search was quick and daring. Whereas, before, she was quiet when hunting the small critters of squirrels and rabbits, she was loud and prompt, following tracks in the dirt or sounds in the distance. Her prey were boars, which seemed to level her up faster than the easier animals to kill. The fact that they didn’t run away from her if she made a sound was good.

Confidence exuded from her movements; she trailed along tracks with a grace to her movements, every step purposeful and strong. It didn’t take very long until she happened upon another hill, one populated with boars.

A designated home meant they travelled the same path to the stream day after day; the indents in the ground, the clearing of leaves, and the stagnant, familiar stench, no matter how faint, meant hunting in this forest was actually easier than what she was used to. The animals were all complacent in some ways, almost like they were complying in being prey.

The thought was strange but not unfamiliar; she filed it away with all the other useless thoughts of a similar nature. Ruminating upon the nature of her current reality did not help her in stabbing a beast to death.

She remained crouched down low, hiding amongst the bushes, as she scouted out this hill. It was a shame there was a lack of wind so deep into the forest; a rustling of leaves was more suspicious than she wanted it to be.

This hill was larger than the other ones she had come across; taller and with a wider diameter. It was an ellipse in shape, with one, two, three boars walking around it.

It was odd; they weren’t walking idly but more like a patrol. They were roughly equidistant from each other and periodically stopped at similar times, peering into the nearby undergrowth before continuing on in their clockwise movement.

Odd may be an understatement but it didn’t matter currently; in fact, their lack of grouping would help the woman in hunting them.

Sadly, her essence didn’t regenerate very much; she was sitting at around 7 right now. It was an uncomfortably low amount but provided that she stayed on her toes and dodged any gnarly attacks, it should prove sufficient.

The limitation certainly relegated [Leech] to being merely healing rather than damage, however.

She waited in a bush, holding her breath steady as her heart began to thump louder and louder, faster and faster, as she watched the boars do their rounds.

Whenever they stopped, they stared at the bushes. Even with the dirt she had slathered onto herself, her heart lurched every time the boars stopped, worrying about whether they’d see her.

They never did, though. Maybe she hid herself well enough or maybe their eyesight was just not up to par.

Nevertheless, she waited until her essence ticked over to 8 before finally feeling prepared and ready enough.

When the closest boar to her stopped walking as it raised its snout into the air, she decided that it was her moment.

With a mad dash out of the bush, she ran forwards towards the boar, only a few metres away, spear in hand and pointing forwards.

Surprise was evident in its form, taking a few seconds to react before it lowered its head to the ground, tusks pointing towards her, and began its charge.

As soon as the huge beast committed its momentum, the woman took this as a sign to launch the spear at it.

With the distance closing quickly, the weapon flew through the air in a shallow arc, lodging in the creature's skull as the woman sidestepped, kicking up a bunch of dirt and leaves into the air.

Even before the boar had realised it missed and redirected its energy, the woman jumped at it, slashing her dagger at its hide before digging it into the skull repeatedly, with strong, rapid cuts, each one deeper than the last.

She attacked with a beastly ferocity, wanting to end this thing as fast as possible.

The knife found root, digging in deep enough in one attack, and in just the right location, for the boar's body slunk to the ground as energy left its body.

This didn’t signal the end of the fight, however; the squeals were loud enough the woman was certain the two other boars would come charging towards her at any moment.

Wanting to prevent a two-on-one battle, she immediately dashed off towards one of the boars, meeting it halfway.

As soon as she entered its sight, its large, trunk-like head lowered and thus began its deadly charge.

It’s speed was incredible and she knew that she’d have no chance of dodging it cleanly like she did with the last one.

Instead, she reached out with her mind, feeling the connection fall into place, as she jumped both forwards and slightly to the side.

The unnatural sharp tusk tore through her abdomen, the adrenaline in her system dulling the pain even as she clenched her mouth.

Not wasting such an opportunity, her free hand grabbed onto the tuft of hair at the top of the boar's head as she felt her feet skid along the ground, digging in as the small stones and hard bits of mud ate at her soft skin.

So close, she thrust her dagger forwards even as the beast continued to power forwards.

She stabbed, missing the eye but clipping the ear.

The next one was closer but didn’t bring the beast down.

The third stab, however, found the knife plunging into the soft, gooey eye socket, rendering the boar nothing more than a warm bag of flesh before it even hit the ground.

By now, she could hear the final boar even though she couldn’t see it. Not wanting it to get the jump on her, she ripped the dagger unceremoniously from the boars flesh as she ran towards the hill.

Scrambling up with fervour, she climbed to the top, able to spot the boar. Somehow, due to a combination of the height of the hill and the angles blocking the view, the third boar hadn’t seen her yet.

Unlike the other two, this one seemed somewhat timid. It poked its nose around at the first boar's body before erratically throwing its head around to scan its surroundings.

It didn’t look up, though.

A plan quickly forming in her head, she began to quickly make her way down the hill.

The tumbling of loose dirt and rocks alerted the boar to her presence but not before she jumped at it, the mound giving her enough elevation to reach the beast.

With the response only a wild animal could muster, the boar backed away rapidly as she swung her dagger in an arc before her, clipping the boar with a shallow cut on its face as she landed.

Regaining her footing, she half-rolled backwards until she placed the first boar's corpse between her and the final beast. Its movements were unusually hesitant compared to the other boars, but she didn’t focus on that in the moment.

The boar began to promptly walk around the corpse, unable to charge with such a large obstacle between them.

Naturally, the woman circled around as well, keeping it between them.

Hesitant as the boar was, the woman didn’t waste this opportunity, reaching out to retrieve her spear while she had the chance.

Fully equipped once more, she made the first sudden movement.

Sidestepping out of the way of the boar, she dashed towards her prey. As soon as her opponent made to charge at her, digging its hind legs into the ground as its whole body lowered, aiming to get maximum power from its large muscles, she threw the javelin at the creature.

Not expecting this move, the javelin landed along the back of the boar, slightly too high to hit its head.

Nevertheless, it was physically startled by this manoeuvre. The woman closed in quickly in the second it took for the boar to react, angling her torso so it was only in front of one tusk as she swung the knife towards her target.

Her actions lacked elegance, experience, in wielding a short, bladed weapon. Her first slices drew wide, the boar shaking its head and its back, hoping to dislodge the foreign weapon from its flesh before resolving to go on the attack.

It swung its massive head towards her, its tusks grazing her arm simultaneously as it felt energy begin to seep at its bones. Like the cold harsh air bites at you, eating away energy until you’re an enervated, withered mess, energy, similarly, began to escape the muscles of the boar.

Each time it made contact with the woman, each time it drew blood, if even for only a second or two, it grew weaker and weaker as the woman drew closer and closer.

Unfortunately, it lacked the intellect to consider this development, to be able to comprehend cause and effect.

It was only a matter of time before enough slashes cut deep enough, and with whatever magical energy drained from its body, until it dropped dead on the spot.

The woman, meanwhile, was positively unharmed, if physically exhausted.

Her health was topped off at 100 but her essence was only at a measly 1 point.

However, thankfully, she got exactly what she was hoping for.

[Level up]

You have gained 5 stat points and 1 skill point