Cold sweat soaked her back as her eyes rapidly bounced around. Not once had she taken her eyes off him, yet he had suddenly disappeared from sight. She had no clue where he had gone. Was it teleportation? Had he gone invisible? Did it have something to do with that mist? Thoughts raced around her head.

‘Where did he go?!’ Kurushimi gritted her teeth as she continued to search around. Her location shouldn’t have been compromised just yet… As long as she kept low and remained hidden, she should be able to spot Karshak.

After a tense few more moments with no sign of Karshak, Kurushimi’s confusion only grew more and more. It was like he had been spirited away. The best case scenario was that he had just decided to leave after being unable to find her, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that wasn’t it.

‘Was it some kind of skill?’ With no other options at hand, Kurushimi could only allow her mind to wonder. The most likely answer to what he had done was make use of a skill. Karshak was a creature that had managed to reach the monstrous level of 120. Who knows how many skills he would have by now?

‘Mmm… What is a movement skill? An illusion maybe..?’ Kurushimi crossed her arms and leaned against the tree behind her. Everything so far was speculation but one thing was for sure, ‘That black mist must’ve been the cause.’ She felt sure about that at least. That mist definitely wasn’t present before Karshak’s disappearance. “Hm?” From her seating position, Kurushimi looked into the distance and noticed the mist had covered the entire area. And it was growing, it wasn’t that thick when she was looking around for Karshak.

“Body transformation stage one…” The skill Karshak had used suddenly popped into her mind. The description had stated that it ‘re-allocated and boosted stats’ and also, “Depending on the level, more is accessible. Lvl. 17… Did he become the mist-!?” Kurushimi’s eyes shot open, as she quickly jumped up.

Mist gathered in front of her and she suddenly heard a deep and eerie voice. However, it didn’t come from her or Voice-san. Instead, it came from the mist. Despite being unable to tell what was said, Kurushimi understood she was in deep sh*t.

Two large rows of teeth emerged from the mist. Her limbs feel limp, completely unresponsive. As evade activated, the blessing that had kept her alive this whole time suddenly became a curse, allowing her to perceive her own death with accelerated brain activity.

Karshak’s jaws closed down on her upper torso, lifting her up as her lower body lifelessly flailed about. Like that, her flesh was ruthlessly mangled as her vision faded to black.

. . .

Kurushimi adorned the top of a canisfang, her butt placed on its lifeless carcass. Two bite holes had been impaled into its skin and blood glistened on the end of her fangs. Regardless, she sat there with a blank face devoid of emotion.

“Kurushimi?” Voice-san prodded for a response, but was failing to get one. She had been like this since reviving and even after meeting the three canisfangs, she had just quickly disposed of them and gone back into this state. For once, the stoic and unconcerned Voice-san was beginning to worry for her.

A few more seconds passed, until suddenly Kurushimi snapped “God dammit!” Woken up from her unresponsive state, the emotion abruptly returned and exploded out, “This isn’t fair! Why in the hell is Karshak there?! If there was never any chance of escaping this damn forest, at least don’t give me hope!”

“Feeling better?” Voice-san asked.

“Mm, a little.” Breathing in and out, Kurushimi felt a little better than before after being able to shout out her complaints. “Seriously, what was that? …and was it just me going crazy in the end or did Karshak actually speak?” Kurushimi recalled her final moments.

Karshak had actually spoken to her - or at least she thought he did. But as to the contents of what he said, Kurushimi sadly couldn’t understand. It didn’t look like she would conveniently learn the language of this world or have everything translated into japanese. Of course, it would never be that easy. Then, after that came her death.

Simply recalling it sent a cold chill down her spine. When you die, your mind goes into a state of hyper-activity in a desperate attempt to stay alive. And, evade activated during that period. No matter how long she lived for, she wouldn’t be able to forget how that felt.

“I heard it too.” Voice-san replied, at least reassuring Kurushimi she wasn’t just hearing things. But her next words surprised Kurushimi, “I believe he said something along the lines of, ‘I found you’. I wasn’t able to hear it clearly.”

Kurushimi sprung up for a moment, “Eh? You understood what he said?”

Voice-san replied, “Yes, I’m naturally able to speak most languages from this world as well as your world.”

“I will need to rely on you until I learn it then.” Presuming that she would eventually meet a resident of this world, the time would come where communication would be a valuable asset. Although, friendly interactions were very low in her current location - an isolated forest.

“Anyway – I think I was too reliant on ‘evade’ during the fight.” Kurushimi stated, opening the description for evade. It was the main thing that had kept her alive, but in the end it had become completely useless. Rather, it had become a detriment.

Skill: Evade Lvl. 2

Skill type: Mental enhancement

Mana cost: 2 MP

PASSIVE: Whenever an enemy attack is close to connecting, perception and brain processing receives a considerable boost.

“Oh, evade leveled up.” Kurushimi mentioned after seeing the skill had reached Lvl. 2. Some skills seemed to be able to level through repetitive usage, while some leveled up when a certain requirement was met.

“Hm? Wait a second… I still have evade?” Kurushimi paused before hurriedly opening her status menu. To her surprise, not only was her level unchanged but she had kept all her skills and stats gained through what’s yours is mine.

Bewildered, she asked, “I keep all this…?”

Even after dying, she had retained everything. Keeping all progress through death was not only incredibly convenient, but also stupidly powerful. There were so many possibilities presented with this. For example, she could kill a monster to take its experience and stats then do it again in the next loop. Kurushimi feared what she would become in the future.

But at the moment, she was still very weak. It would be a very long time until she even stood a chance against Karshak. Now, with her exit blocked and no definite way to leave, she could only head deeper into the forest.

Kurushimi sighed as she faced the path which would lead her there. When she gazed in that direction it caused the memories of her first two runs to flood her mind. Two paths, the left leading to a pack of five canisfangs and the right leading to the large crystals. What awaited her beyond that… she had no idea.

“But before I go that way, there’s some stuff I wanna do.” Kurushimi declared, putting aside adventuring deeper for now. “Before I rush in, I want to prepare a bit. So the very first thing I’m going to do is – learn some skills.”

It had been a considerable amount of time since she had last learnt a skill. As time progressed and she leveled up, she had collected a fair amount of skill points to spend - 700 to be exact. Looking out into empty space, she commanded, “Show me a list of all skills currently available to me.”

As she had asked for, an incredibly long list of skills appeared before her. Kurushimi felt amazed by the sheer number. Just to remind you, this was a list of skills that were ‘currently available’. How many skills are there in total? And how long would it take to learn them all, if such a feat is even possible?

The large majority of skills that popped up were hard for her to understand, even after reading their descriptions. So, Kurushimi kept to looking at the easier-to-understand ones and selected a few out of those.

Blink: A rapid, low-range teleportation with a short cast time. The maximum distance ranges to a full metre but cast time is increased accordingly. Immediately after casting blink, there is a short period where blink cannot be casted again.

Camouflage: Allows the user to blend into their environment and hide oneself. Detection abilities of a higher level than camouflage will detect a stealthed user.

In the end, Kurushimi only looked at these two skills in particular. The reason being that blink in itself cost 200 skills points, while camouflage cost a grand total of 500 skills points. With that, her 700 skill points were drained up instantly.

As she was looking through the various skills, she discovered that various skills cost more than others. Better skills generally were more expensive than others. However, she didn’t feel at a loss. Kurushimi knew that these skills would help tremendously with survival.

One aspect she was severely lacking was mobility. Essentially, she was a sitting duck. Which is why when Karshak had her in his jaws, she was powerless to escape. But, if she had ‘blink’ at the time, she would have been able to survive that attack.

Now with this skill learnt, she could dodge the attacks of monsters better, escape impossible situations, run away easier or even chase them down more efficiently. It was actually an incredibly valuable purchase for the measly 200 she had spent.

The other situation which had led to her downfall in her last run was that she had been too open. Karshak had already started hunting her a long time before Kurushimi noticed him. To avoid that recurring again, camouflage would come into play.

“Now, when I’m roaming about, I’ll activate camouflage so that I don’t get detected. And, as an added bonus, I’ll always be getting the first attack since monsters can’t see me until I’m close!” Kurushimi explained her plan.

“Then, why haven’t you learned it yet?” Voice-san replied. Kurushimi had been rambling on this entire time about how she was going to use camouflage, but the thing is, she hadn’t actually learned it yet.

“Yeah, there’s a slight problem with that…” Kurushimi paused, before facing the opposite direction of the path. “Camouflage isn’t available to me yet. That is why I am going to visit that pullumskāl again and see if I can find out the requirements.”

Kurushimi stretched and looked in the general direction the pullumskāl should be in. As long as she didn’t go too far then she shouldn’t have to worry about meeting Karshak for the second time. “Welp, let’s go meet our old friend!” She declared as she set off to visit the pullumskāl once again.