[Well of Spirit] (1/10)

Spirit is multiplied by 1.2

[Essence Transformer] (1/10)

Convert 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 woman had only one skill point to spend but three viable options with none of them being the most immediately beneficial.

Therefore, with the ground cleared of leaves and debris, and a stick in hand, she prepared herself for some maths.

Since [Well of Spirit] directly buffs a stat, I’m assuming that [Maximise Mastery] won’t affect it. Therefore, my 120 essence per day will increase to 144. That means 5 per hour increases to 6 per hour.

I’ll save [Essence Transformer] for last since that seems to be the most complicated one.

[Meditate] increases my regeneration for everything, if I’m understanding it correctly, by 10%. Essence per day increases to 132, or 5.5 per hour.

If we apply [Maximise Mastery], it’s 5.6 per hour, still worse than [Well of Spirit].

[Essence Transformer] converts health into essence. There are multiple ways to tackle this skill. Firstly, let’s compare it to [Leech].

[Leech] (2/10) -Learned

Drain 18 points of health from a living entity

4m range

Cost: 2.4 es/sec

18 points of health for 2.4 points of essence, or 90 health for 12 points of essence. [Essence Transformer] takes 90 health to give 9 points of essence.

So, straight-away, that’s a net loss, which means I don’t need to factor [Leech] into my calculations.

Let’s consider my natural health regen instead, then. I regenerate 100 per day, so that’s about 4 health every hour, which translates to 0.4 essence every hour provided I want to maintain 100 health.

That increases essence per hour to 5.4. However, that’s without factoring in [Maximise Mastery], which I’m not entirely sure will work how I expect it to.

With [Leech], [Maximise Mastery] kept it proportional; it just used more essence per second. In theory, that wouldn’t change anything except it takes less time to convert resources.

In this case, [Well of Spirit] is clearly the best one to take.

But my interest is piqued.

Assuming [Maximise Mastery] will not keep [Essence Transformer] proportional, and every number is effected by a 20% change, what would that look like?

[Essence Transformer] (1/10)

Convert 12 health into essence

Conversion rate: 1.2 hp/sec

Efficiency: 12%

My essence regeneration would be 5.48 per hour.

The order seems obvious.

Wiping away all the calculations, the woman willfully purchased [Well of Spirit] and then went to check her stat block.

Name Unnamed Level 4 Health 19/100 Stamina 58/100 Essence

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

5 Spirit

7 Stat Points 9

Good.

Next on the agenda, working out how quickly I can level up.

This last level I achieved was after killing three boars, while the one before that was after two. The pattern seems to be the number of boars I need to kill is equal to my level. So, four more boars before my next level.

Standing up, the woman stretched out her body, her bones and joints creaking from being hunched over during all that maths, as she walked over to the fresh boar corpses.

She had already scolded herself over how wasteful she had been with the corpses that she had hunted before; she was far too optimistic, believing she would find a city or town any day and so hadn’t bothered utilising them the most that she could’ve.

So far, apart from the mysterious tower, there had been no other sign of civilisation. Hoping for the opposite was just naive at this point.

Therefore, she decided to finally tackle the issue of clothing.

There were numerous issues she had to overcome. Firstly, the material itself. Clothes could be made from leather, hide from an animal that has been skinned, the hair and fur removed, cured and treated in some way.

The problem there was she didn’t know how to actually make leather, and doubted that just soaking it in water would worked.

So, instead, she’d just make do with the fur as it was. She’d obviously clean and dry it before making it into clothes but it’d lack the durability and life of leather, being nearly a raw product.

However, that came with its own problems; clothes weren’t just one piece of fabric. She needed not only a needle to sew them all together but some kind of thread as well.

She skinned the first boar, as she had done many times before. The fur was short, rough, and probably irritating but the warmth would be worth it.

Carrying the surprisingly heavy skins, she made two round trips to the stream were she submerged them, kept in place by a circle of rocks she had made and stuck in the brook. The flow of water wasn’t strong and the rocks were large enough that the fur shouldn’t just float away.

She also managed to find a flat, coarse stone she could use hopefully in lieu of a file or sandpaper.

Next, with her knife, she began to chop off the legs of the boars, something that only made her appreciate more putting stats into power.

The muscles were large and tough, not to mention the bone itself; even putting all of her weight and strength into it, it still took minutes before one leg had been severed from its main body.

She could only thank whoever made this knife and it seemed to be miraculously sturdy and sharp, blade perfect and able to withstand whatever she threw at it.

Using the knife to cut down one leg, slicing open the skin, she found the tendon. Pulling it out and then cutting off one end, she extracted the useful material and threw the leg away to be used later.

She repeated the process for all four legs until she had a pile of tendons.

Each tendon was floppy and moist still, having just come out of the boar, so she set them up on a stone so they could dry.

Next, making a bone needle. With the leftover legs, she skinned them fully, removing all skin and flesh, until she was left with the bones.

With the longest and straightest bone, she placed it on the large, coarse stone she had found and used another stone (this one narrow with rounded edges) to pound away at the bone.

Just like with chopping the leg, trying to split the bone like this--through application of brute force, pretty much--involving all of her body and was tiring to say the least.

But she did manage to split the bone, thankfully.

Finding a suitable, small piece of bone, she got to work shaping it. First was to smooth out the edges by rubbing the bones against the coarse stone. After that was shaping one end into a tapered point which, surprisingly, didn’t take as long as she expected it to. Maybe it was because bone wasn’t as hard as she thought it was or because the bone was already small to begin with.

Nevertheless, she had the right shape (albeit, not very pointy) but lacked the eye of the needle. To make that hole, she needed a drill.

Drills are not modern implements. At their heart, what they are is rotating a stick really quickly. In essence, if you could move your hands fast enough, you could make a drill.

Unfortunately for the woman, she was a human and so needed to compensate for her lack of natural talent with tools, like any good Homo Sapiens would.

She went trawling for a bit, trying to find a good shaped piece of wood, until she found a nicely curved branch that was of sufficient thickness and with a good curvature. After that, she peeled some inner bark, twined it together, and cut two grooves in either end of the branch.

She also made a spindle, like she had done many times before, sharpening a piece of wood with her trusty knife.

Twisting and tying, she made two hoops in the twine. Hooking one end onto one groove in the curved branch, she twisted the twine around the spindle before hooking the other end around the other groove, making what looked like a miniature bow.

With her drill constructed, she could finally finish her needle.

The spindle--or, rather, drill head--was rather narrow and small but that was because the needle itself was small.

Holding down the needle with her foot, she placed the spindle into a small indent she had made with her knife, applying pressure to the top of the spindle to keep it in place with a rock she held.

With her free hand, she pushed and pulled the bow, each movement spinning the spindle and creating friction where it connected with the bone.

She drilled until her arms felt like they were on fire before, finally, she had completed her needle.

Sadly, there was one, great, big obstacle that she couldn’t tackle, no matter how much she wanted to; time. Things needed time to soak and dry so, she decided, it was time to hunt.

Retrieving her bundle of spears, down by one since one of them finally broke on her, she headed back to the stream before making her way even further downhill.

It had been some days since she woke up in this forest, and each day she tried to journey just a little down the incline. Some days, she stayed in the same place as that was a convenient place to make camp but, overall, she had travelled some distance.

The forest was large; far larger than anything she had been in before. Any forest, real or artificial, she had camped or hunted in were carefully cultivated and only allowed to grow within their confines. As such, walking in a straight line, you could cross from one side to the other in a day.

But, this forest? It was positively humongous. That wasn’t even mentioning the trees, able to rival giant redwoods easily.

As the days passed, the woman was growing increasingly less optimistic about getting out of here quickly.

When stranded, the best thing to do was to remain optimistic. However, not too optimistic; you should believe that you will survive, not that someone will save you. She reminded herself of this, endeavouring to try her best at keeping alive but knowing it was all on her. She was the person who was going to save her.

She walked for a fair bit, her body still spritely but feeling the lingering effects of the past battle and the heavy workout since, until she came across another hill.

The hills were spaced out a fair bit--enough room to work their legs out without encroaching on each other's terrain. But they all seemed to be a similar distance from the stream, which was reasonable.

Crouched down and sneaking up quietly, she tried to observe the surroundings.

This hill was big, not as big as the one she was currently using as an outpost but bigger than the first one she stayed at.

Immediately in eyesight was one boar, though she doubted it was alone. No other boar could be seen.

This boar wore the purplish markings and was of a usual size; nothing strange on that front.

Wanting to get a better view, and wanting to take advantage of her skills, she slowly made her way over to a large, thick tree with low hanging branches.

The woman waited until the boar stopped its peering and proceeded to walk in a patrol, just like the last ones had done. She hid her bundle of spears in the undergrowth, out of sight.

Seeing an opportunity, she took it, quickly clambering up the tree, snapping off a weak branch here or there, until she got to the stronger looking branches.

Obviously, from all the noise, the boar looked over before dashing to see what the sound was.

Upon seeing her, it squealed angrily, raising up onto its hind legs before stamping down, trying to alert the other boars.

By which, she could see there were two more, running round the hill to get to where their frantic member was.

One goal she had hoped to get out of this expedition was to figure out how much health the boars had. The squirrels had a constant amount of thirty while plants often had less--closer to ten.

She measured this by checking how much essence she used when killing them with [Leech]. Currently, she had 19 points of essence in the tank. Doing some quick calculations, she could deal around 140 points of health, which was more than enough to kill her.

Making sure she was somewhat secure on the branch, she reached out with her mind, feeling the mental click as [Maximise Mastery] gave her the range needed to reach the first boar.

With all that in place, she opened her stat block as she began to watch the essence drain out of her quickly.

It only took a few seconds before the readout showed a big 0 and, unfortunately, the boar was still alive.

More than 140 health, then. That’s fine; I’m content to wait. For science.

And thus began an incredibly dull experiment.

Over the next hour and a bit, the woman contented herself with looking through the skill trees, trying to see if there was anything interesting or usable.

When she regenerated sufficient essence, she used it on the boar, hoping that this time, it would drop dead.

It didn’t. She repeated this until, in total, she had spent enough essence to deal 200 points of damage. Only then did she finally manage to kill the boar.

They have 200 health. That means, with [Maximise Mastery], it takes me around 27 points of essence to kill them. So, every four and a half hours, I regenerate enough essence to kill a boar.

She settled herself in for a long while waiting.

The woman had some experience in this regard; she had, numerous times, waited in hiding for some prey to emerge. This wasn’t something she particularly liked doing--no one liked waiting, always alert for sight or sound, for hours on end--but there were times when the incentive was worth it for her.

Eventually, however, the endless trawling of blue boxes grew dull, her mind became unfocused on the constant squealing boars beneath her, and her limbs were growing tired.

The boars didn’t remain underneath her for the constant time. Whenever they passed by, they’d spend many points howling at her--even headbutting the tree at one point, though, given the girth of it, the winner in that fight was obvious.

The last two boars were of the differing brown and purple markings. When one passed by, she’d gaze at it and if it was brown, she’d use [Leech], spending all her essence she had accumulated so far.

The boar always reacted, stopping in its tracks, looking around eagerly, before shaking its body and moving again.

Over the four hours, watching the sunlight slowly disappear between the leaves as the beautiful dark quickly arose in its place, the woman felt her mind wandering.

She wasn’t thinking about the present, no, but her mind drifted to the past.

Such a sky like this, even draped with leaves occluding most of it, was rare. Just one of the reasons she enjoyed camping; she got to see the unfiltered beauty of nature. Light pollution, sound pollution, and just general pollution sullied this natural scenary.

The tiredness seeping through her bones, and the tranquil night sky (as the intermittent squeals grew more and more infrequent) a sense of calmness took over her. Fighting was exhilarating, adrenaline pumping through her veins as she was down on the ground, in the fray.

But just sitting back and enjoying it all was something she hadn’t gotten to do much of lately. Part of her grew wistful for human comforts, luxuries she hadn’t felt for days, like a nice, soft bed or even a variety of food.

But, even then, there was just something about being out there, surrounded by nature, that made her feel alive. The simplicity of it all, how everything she did was reliant on her rather than another person. Even the simple act of setting up a tent could be enjoyable; you had to make where you were going to sleep.

In a way, every action she made was rewarded, and nothing happened without her wanting it to happen.

Eventually, her memories had to end somewhere, and that somewhere was with the second body of a boar collapsing to the earth, shrunken and small.

Even from her perch, she could see how its muscles had atrophied, its fur was a less luscious, vivid colour, and the smell was stronger than ever before.

Climbing down the tree hastily, she retrieved her spears as she went dashing towards the hill, scrambling up it as she looked for the boar.

The moment she found it, the woman withdrew a spear, carefully aimed, and then launched it at the boar.

A direct hit but landed in its flank.

With a loud, frightened squeal, the boar rapidly turned around on the spot, its eyes resting on the woman with a vengeful blackness in them.

It began its charge then and there, legs thundering off the ground as it rushed up the hill with spectacular speed.

The woman, meanwhile, readied another spear. As the boar drew close, she lobbed this one, hitting it in its skull but not deep enough, apparently.

The third and final spear, she held in her hands firmly as she planted her feet on the ground, one behind the other, bracing for the boar.

As the large beast was within the range of her weapon, she finally thrust it forwards, piercing the creature right between the eyes.

But, yet, the creature continued on, its strong neck muscles throwing the spear from her hand as she stepped into it, throwing her hand forwards, the dagger she held swinging sideways before landing right in the side of the head.

This one, finally, brought the creature down, tumbling to the ground right at her feet as she gasped a few deep breaths.

She fell flat on her butt, tired not from an exhausting fight but from the intensive day she had.

For a few minutes, she stared straight up at the sky, appreciating the sight before her, before picking herself back up and gathering her spears.

Another one broke, sadly. Just two left.

But this whole thing was insightful. As she went exploring around the hill, making sure there weren’t any more boars hiding in the undergrowth--however unlikely it was--she reflected upon what she had learnt.

And continue learning more things she would, for inside the burrow itself was something she never would’ve imagined finding.

Boars. Three boars, to be specific. Inside, huddled against the wall, fur neatly blending in with the surroundings. Their tusks were miniscule--nubs, really--and theirs overall size was closer to a small dog than the hulking creatures their parents were. They, she believed, were boarlings.

The things were stationary, trying not to move. Their legs were short, body stout, and fur covered in dirt. Children, and ones attempting to hide from the predator that had just invaded their nest. One could even say they were cute.

But a niggling thought wound its way into her head.

Could they help me level up? Do I kill them?

She had killed their family, essentially cutting off their lifeline; they’d probably not survive. But, still, that wasn’t a certainty.

Killing them here was definitively ending their lives while they might still live otherwise, no matter how small a chance that was. A baby left without its mother, in the wild, was unlikely to get very far.

Looking at them, so clearly seeing the fear in their bodies, she steeled her emotions as she crawled over to them.

As quickly as she could, and with her thankfully sharp dagger, she ended each of their lives, granting them better deaths than starving in the cold together.

[Level up]

You have gained 5 stat points and 1 skill point

The notification wasn’t as satisfying as she hoped it would be.