The moment she got the message, Alice’s face lost all blood and sticky, heavy flood filled in her head. Somehow, she just assumed from the beginning there would be a way back. The door, the node was there and she only had to wait a few days, maybe defeat some monsters, clear some missions and it might as well open.

Not according to system’s settings.

Why is it this word? Why not termination, or shutdown, or suspension, why the fuck!

Familiar tunnels, road forks marked with X, Alice crossed them hurriedly as far as her Stealth skill and newly found ‘common sense in mortal danger’ allowed her. More than once, she would stop still or cover in hiding, haunted by shadows, fearing products of her own imagination. Spear she held tight was sweeping air erratically: the girl’s injured hand was hurting like hell, and her lips thinned into a blue line. Strange heat was still active, slowly easing the pain, and without knowing its nature Alice was honestly scared of taking in another Life potion, she would rather endure.

So the short girl ran. Stressed, not able to get rid of tension was slowly gnawing at her nerves that suffered above year worth in a day. Loaded with scattering in different directions thoughts, scraps of different plans and fading signs of brilliant ideas, which she just couldn’t stick together. Luckily, the tunnels and caves of the Emerald Dungeon remained empty until the very end, where…

[Ant Lvl 3] [Ant Lvl 6] [Ant Lvl 4] ... ... ...

System's notifications blurred in her eyes as Alice hid behind a corner. Her wrist pulsed in pain, half of it physical and another half from her panicking subconsciousness reminding her to want to run far, far away or at least stay there paralyzed from the fear of death. The girl opened her mouth to silently gulp the air and seconds passed before she suppressed various impulses. Alice felt dizzy, scorched inside. Wordlessly, she opened her dry mouth and inaudibly asked no one,

“What should I do?”

“Can’t let them go inside, can I?”

“System will close the node.”

“Plan, I need a plan.”

Thanks to the undead-like skill, Alice at least spent these seconds completely still. After making sure she could control herself, the girl very slowly cracked her pocket open and took out the second Life potion. Fire-like liquid soon flushed her veins, concentrated in her hand. A few ugly scars reddened brightly and started to dissipate under Alice's watch. An amazing sight the girl spent significant efforts to look away from.

Long corridor was dividing her and the first dungeon cave. She could only hear legs' clatters, barely.

Ants were black, smooth and looked... well, very much like ants. Half of a meter to a meter long, not really hideous a threat with only one pair of jaws for each.

The problem was the sheer number of these oversized black garden ants. Alice could see three constantly guarding the hole in the wall. With some grief, the girl noticed the broken glass of an oil lamp she had left near it... Anyway, more ants were running around in the cave with no obvious goal. Alice frowned, hardly able to tell them apart from each other, calculated on her fingers and silently ordered:

Observation, level up.

One of her six precious skill points vanished just like that and the first grey skill got maxed out. So this is the limit for them, Alice thought and attempted to view the ants with new eyes..

A-a-and they seemed to get off from a clone factory's conveyor all the same. Fortunately, even if system failed the girl, her own math skills and probability theory didn't. From eight... to ten. Plus say three loafing around. Way above her head, Alice confessed to herself calmly. But system wanted her to take them on. Even the girl herself knew she had to take them on, or what else? Run blindly into the unknown? Or wait for the situation to resolve itself until her body succumb to drowsiness and fatigue in the middle of the full of monsters dungeon?

Or until a squad marched by and ate her alive as a midday snack. Alice ideated with strange clarity born through her understanding of just how little odds she had, almost self-hypnotized to maintain calmness.

Bow, level up. Spear, level up.

Tickling at the ends of synapses, tides and falls at the very edge of perceptiveness. And then the breath of her body became distinct, precise. Purposeful. Concepts flowed in, took the empty places of her brain, rooted deep to connect, link, reorganize. Create knowledge, teach experience, growth the flourishing forest full of branches of knows and leaves of hows.

I see now. Alice broke into a smile when an illuminating moment passed, looked down, closed and opened the fist. The pain was nearly gone, just as scars. A few things about her the most important Skill just became clear to her, and a plan popped out from it.

But one glance in the cave full of monster ants and the fear resurfaced all the same. The heart fastened its beats and drops of sweat appeared on the girl's forehead as she tried to visualize this plan of hers, imagine herself fighting the monsters again.

She couldn't. Clack, clack, the ants were running in the cave while Alice was standing just behind the corner having no strength in her limbs to move or even stop nervous tremors in the fingers.

This kind of fear... was the first in her entire life. Once, she was lying in a hospital, very, very sick, sleepy and in pain. Dying, even. Her parents were there, her two older brothers and she was young, so young the concept of death was so distant and vague. Once, she heard wolves howls, saw from a hill a pack crossing a river under the light of stars and Moon. Her dad was near back then and she trusted him, in him and their rifles. With fear, excitement rose in her tiny body when grey proud beasts reflected in her sparkling eyes.

One hour, long as days, sufficed to purge ignorance of youth. Alice was alone now, she lacked the support of family and even more so the innocence of a child. Lacked time to nurture something as a replacement, something mature and firm. Something...

Whoosh.

The air stirred. Magic. Not hers, but from the cave. Where did they go? Alice noticed immediately as she looked, two ants guarding the hole were missing. Inside? They went inside? The girl had somehow missed the moment while spacing out.

Clack, clack, clack, the ants organized into a circle around the narrow passage, stared into the dark. Magic in the dungeon surged subtly, scarcely so Alice's newly six sense noticed it only because she was all fired up.

Pause, tense Alice too stopped breathing. And then...

Bang!

A sound of a dull blast shifted pebbles on the floor, lifted a smother of a dusty cloud.

Bang!

The cloud shook and coated the ants in the cave in gray before leisurely settling down. The insects wavered, clicked their mandibles one after another as if communicating. Plop, plop, red dots rained on the stone floor. Alice clenched her hands into fists so tightly her nails pierced the skin and drew blood.

Someone is here! A bold assumption thundered in her head. Other explanations completely eluded the girl's mind. Someone is here! She only wanted this answer to be true! It didn't substitute the genuine will to fight the monsters, nor added to her maturity, but still... as the last straw to push her into action right here and now, would do.

Plop, plop. Alice glanced down and watched red dots noiselessly dissipating in blue smoke. Slowly, the short girl touched the right sleeve of her jacket to find it completely dry. She sniffed the air then yet failed to discern the odor of sweat. Her lips distorted into a gruesome smile.

"Okay. Okay. Doesn't matter still. My plan. Do it." The lips moved soundlessly as Alice assured herself and stepped back into the tunnels.

[Ant Lvl. 6]

Despite having a relatively high level, this creature didn't play any particular role among its kin. Ants were of the same mind. They followed the same orders, had the same awareness, the same determination, like clones born from a singular template.

Born. Created?

This particular group of giant ants was busied with a task of 'exploration'. If not, then with something of a similar nature. They had been running through the dungeon like kings of a local food chain until reaching this very cave.

The ant probed the air with its antennas. The narrow hole remained dark. Void. Alien. Nearly robotic instincts were silent. No directives to follow, and without directives to fill their existence with meaning the ants were lost. They had to follow the task, but how? How? A decision, therefore, was made, foolish in its primitive rationality.

The ants went into the unknown, two at a time. To explore, to report back, to create a pattern. After one pair was gone, the second would follow in. The large group capable of standing against any rival species of the dungeon shrank and then shrank again. The ants didn't care. The very ability to they lacked. Once the decision was set, the ants followed it diligently. Indeed, the creatures of the same mind.

A new pair of ants readied before the wall, their purpose to evade the blasts, discover the pattern, and return. To lead the kin into unknown...

Swish!

Something whistled across the air. The ant clutched its jaws, screeched as it turned around, saw an [Ant Lvl. 4] lying on the floor, a long object piercing its head. Screech, screech! The kins followed him and stared at their foe together as one. Another long, sharp object flashed. It's a flying stinger, all ants acknowledged together as one. A new foe! A foe with two legs, multi-colored carapace and flying stingers as its weapons!

The tide of ants flowed next as one body with multiple legs and multiple jaws. To cling onto, to rip apart, to kill! Death, they feared not. Grief for murdered kin, they had not. Even their foe was not a real foe, but a target needed to be eradicated.

Another flying stinger pierced an ant when the black tide reached the entrance of the cave, but it was worth it. The kin found the pattern. The high-leveled ant saw the foгrth flying stinger pointing at itself and jerked from its way. Too fast! It still pierced through its body. Two legs stopped following commands; pain, there was not.

The foe ran out of flying stingers! The kin rejoiced, except they did not. Their foe ran into the labyrinth of caves, passages, turns, and caves. Into the dungeon, the hunting grounds for the kin. It ran not fast enough.

The ants reached the tunnel taking a sharp turn very soon. They had to slow down for a moment.

Swish! Flying stinger! Once more an ant died! Their foe stopped before another turn, its hand taking a stinger sticking out from the crack in the stone floor. Dodge, kin, it's your final shutdown!

The foe ran. The tide was diminished by two ants, the rest didn't lose nor add to their determination. A new pattern emerged: their foe would stop after every turn, sting one or two of kin, they would shrink the distance a little.

The foe used a strange, new weapon, yet acted with familiar excellency. Almost... robotic, similar to ants. Deserving praise if they could give away one. But despite mortal blows, the ants were winning this race. When only five of kin remained, two wounded, and the distance became so small a few jaw grips could do the thing, the foe's stinger thrower fell off.

Sadly, there was no joy for the kin. Nor expectations for killing their bitter enemy. And even though the foe suddenly retrieved the largest stinger of them all and struck the [Ant Lvl. 6] with it right into the oblivion they didn't even feel the sorrow.

Only the first arrow was hard to shoot. Fear had frozen her blood, dulled the eyes, bent the knees. Her heart had been beating hard in the temples, tum-dum, tum-dum, tum-dum. Every bit of willpower she spent on steading her hands. Until the first arrow flew and then strange, surreal sense of liberation filled her.

Alice grabbed the second arrow clamped in her teeth faster than a white stroke crossed the tunnel and a half the cave between her and the largest ant.

[+700 XP +280 BP]

The short girl pulled the bowstring according to skill-induced instinct she consciously aroused and allowed to control her body. In the split moment, she found her next target and opened her fingers. Two arrows her left hand was clenching with the bow, and the one of them she took out right away.

[+400 XP +160 BP]

The ants started to react, to move. Alice chose the easiest, the slowest as her third prey. The forth arrow she allowed herself because there was a time to shoot once more, to hit in hope if not to kill, then to injure. The girl didn't even look. Hit-and-run, that was her plan all along.

[+200 XP +40 BP]

Run from one checkpoint with two arrows stuck into the floor...

[+400 XP +160 BP]

[+200 XP +40 BP]

To another.

[+300 XP +120 BP]

[+500 XP +200 BP]

And again.

[+300 XP +120 BP]

If Alice were a skydiver, then this battle would have been her free fall. There was no fear in falling, only in jumping... or landing. For her, the fear before the jump was already gone and the earth was too far below. Tiny seedling of unhealthy excitement buddled in her blood, adrenalin as its fertilizer.

[+200 XP +40 BP]

[+300 XP +120 BP]

[+200 XP +40 BP]

Letting the bow fall down, Alice ran until a T-shaped intersection showed up, the ants almost chewing her heels. The girl reached out to a certain spot, jumped forward, turned around and nailed down the closest pursuer with her spear.

[+600 XP +240 BP]

Four left, the girl allowed herself this fleeting thought. She pulled the spear, stepped back and pulled so harshly it popped out from a corpse embrace with a nasty sound.

Four left.

"Huh, huh" Alice panted as she leaned on her spear with an ant's dead body under her legs. The insects indeed turned out to be an easy prey. They might run fast, but only in a straight line. Side-stepping sufficed to baffle the damn things. Yeah, things, the girl was sure of it now.

Level up!

Hunter lvl. 2 -> lvl. 3

+ 6 Skill Points

Attributes being adjusted…

Level up!

??? lvl. 2 -> lvl. 3

Attributes being adjusted…

System doesn't get in a way during a fight, at least...

The third level-up differed from the previous. It didn't bring rejuvenation to the girl, no. The shower of energy washed through her lazily and started to squeeze in when Alice suddenly felt... full. That's when her doubling level-up came. Every cell of her body burst in flaming agony. Alice cried out pitifully and fell down between the killed ants. Two energy flows met and collided.

Through blinding pain the girl could feel as if her whole body transformed into a big balloon, ready to blow up while two spoiled kids were fighting over a pump.

...fuck... they didn't tell... it hurts... fuck...

Spoiler: Status! Alice Sung-Hyun Branson Age: 16 Classes Level Race: Human/??? Hunter (common) 3 Exp: 8,600/14,000 ??? (???) 3 Skill Points: 6 ... ... Battle Points: 2,763 ... ... Attributes Strength: 5.6 -> 6.5

Mind: 8.3 -> 9.0

Endurance: 5.8 -> 6.7

Will: 8.2 -> 8.9

Dexterity: 8.0 -> 9.1

Perception: 8.2 -> 9.4

Agility: 6.7-> 7.8

Wits: 8.1 -> 9.1 Absolute Body Control Lvl: – Like a magical undead being, you are lacking muscle memories and have to control your body at all times. You can completely avoid unnecessary movements; your Perception reaction bypasses instincts. Hunt Lvl: 1 (2) Hide from sights, track your prey and take it down. This skill provides a specific hunting experience for all your 'Hunter' templates-related skills. Bow Lvl: 2 (3) Nock an arrow, aim, and shoot. Three months of training with a bow. Spear Lvl: 3 (4) Choose your stance and pierce your enemy. Nine months of training with a spear. Observation (Nature) Lvl: 3 (MAX) As a child of nature, you can discern signs of life and behavior patterns in a complex landscape. Stealth (Nature) Lvl: 1 (1) Basic ability to conceal oneself in a complex landscape. Butchering (Animals) Lvl: 1 (1) A child of nature is capable of providing herself with provisions.