Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Alice slept poorly - she was used to sleeping in a silent bedroom, and now that she was farther away from the massive area of dead trees and messed up animals she had first arrived in, shuffling sounds and animal calls kept her on edge throughout the night, making it hard for her to stay asleep. Alice woke up the next morning feeling groggy and irritable when the sunlight started creeping through the holes in the top of her ‘tent.’

She shivered and rubbed her arms, but she was much less cold than she had been yesterday. The fire burning somewhat near the shelter at night had helped with warmth, even though it had gone out sometime during the night. The strange warmth near her heart had also helped, although Alice was noticing that it was getting more and more faint as time passed. She didn’t exactly know what the strange warmth was in the first place, so Alice decided to simply take it in stride for now. Even if it certainly helped her temperature problems, it obviously wasn’t a long term solution, so she needed to adapt fast enough that she could survive without it once it was gone. She shook her head, trying to ease her doubts and worries, before she refocused on the world around her. Specifically, her tent.

I should be able to improve my tent construction after a few more tries, she thought as she took a careful look at the shoddy grass knots and attempts to make everything stick together. Surely more Stats and Skills will get me somewhere if I just throw more tries at learning how to do this? Then, she began thinking of how annoying it had been to construct her shelter. While the weaving process had gotten easier as she gained both skills and {Skills} related to tent-construction, it had still taken her quite a while to construct the tent. Perhaps there was some way to carry it with her so that she didn’t have to reconstruct one from scratch? She wouldn’t get any Skills or Attributes from retrying the process from scratch again, but she also desperately needed to focus on other things today, and being able to carry around her tent with her still help stave off the cold.

She began looking at the edges of the tent, trying to figure out a viable way to carry away some parts of it, and eventually, she realized that taking the frame of heavier branches she had stabbed into the ground to hold up the woven grass was impractical. In order to make it into a shape that wouldn’t be too awkward to carry, she would basically have to undo all of her work anyway.

However, the sort of... blanket-like outer shell of grass could be taken with her if she was careful. Therefore, she clumsily disconnected the outer layer of grass from the wooden stakes before folding it up into a blanket, then placed it underneath the berries in her bowl.

Fear me, for I am Alice, queen of terrible craftsmanship and grassy... blanket things. She winced. Everything she had built so far on this world really did look atrocious, and the shoddy craftsmanship really showed when she was trying to stave off the cold or stop her items from falling apart.

She went back to the berry bushes and restocked her food supply, eating all of the berries she had picked yesterday as she walked before refilling the bowl with fresh food. Then, she began travelling again, following the stream and hoping to find civilization somewhere.

A few hours passed uneventfully as Alice followed the stream, but she began to get more and more nervous as she looked at the sky. It was getting darker as a heavy blanket of clouds approached, gradually obscuring the sunlight and promising rain was coming soon. Once again, it dawned on Alice how truly far away from civilization she was. At home, a bit of rain didn’t mean much to her at all – she would be inside of a building for most of the day, and if she was in school the rain was just a sound effect that sometimes left puddles of water outside of the building.

However, right now, she was dressed in pajamas, had little food security, and shelter that was, at best, flimsy. Suddenly, freezing rain had changed from ‘interesting but unimportant’ to a life threatening disaster she couldn’t escape. She glanced at her grass blanket and quickly realized that it wasn’t going to keep the rain off of her. She stopped focusing only on following the river and paid more attention to her surroundings, hoping to find a cave nearby. If she didn’t find one, she was almost certainly going to freeze to death. The strange warmth near her heart definitely wouldn’t be enough to keep her alive if she was drenched in this weather.

Perhaps an hour later, the clouds finally arrived. And it didn’t start raining, contrary to Alice’s earlier fears. Instead, white little flakes began to drift down from the sky, fluttering lazily in the wind as they began to smother the earth, choking away the last remnants of warmth in the area. Alice, both feeling the ever-dropping temperature and her lack of thick clothing more than ever before, looked at the sky and resisted the urge to start swearing. Was it actually snowing? Of all the times she could have arrived in this world, she had arrived here right at the start of winter?

Alice felt increasing tension and fear as she almost completely stopped worrying about following the river. She needed shelter now, and a town along the river wouldn’t be enough to save her if she froze to death while travelling there. She began scouring her surroundings for any sort of shelter, praying for something to appear. She took note of what direction she could travel to get back to the river when the weather passed, but otherwise she completely broke away from the gentle slope of the river and focused entirely on finding something to keep the cold away.

The snow began to pile higher and higher, and after another ten minutes of walking, her bare feet, which were already swollen and had numerous small cuts along the bottom of her feet, were beginning to sink into a thin layer of snow with every step. Not only did she need to worry about pain and getting an infection, but she now needed to worry about frostbite. Her body wasn't reacting as poorly to the cold as she had expected it to, thanks to the strange warmth behind her heart, but she could still feel the cold creeping through her body and dragging her towards eternal sleep. The remnants of her mana baptism were slowing the process down, but not stopping it.

Am I going to die like this? She wondered. She had already wondered if she was about to die many times in the past few days, but this was one of the first times death felt so... stifling. She had almost died when she was dealing with mana poisoning, had somehow lucked out of getting this world’s version of smallpox so far, and had almost gotten mauled by a strange animal. Now, she was at risk of freezing to death as well.

She trudged through the snow, plagued by lonely thoughts as she wondered if perhaps someone would stumble across her corpse one day and wonder who she had been. Minutes ticked by while she searched for shelter and the temperature dropped, the stifling feeling of inevitability warring with increasing desperation as she tried to find some way to stay alive.

Finally, as her shivering was growing more and more uncontrollable, she stumbled across a ‘cave.’ It was really more like a rocky overhang with a sort of sideways bowl-shaped indentation in the stone around it, but it at least offered enough protection from the snow that she would be safer from the cold. She set down her bowl of berries, pulled out the sheet of grass she had used to create a crude tent the day before, and wrapped it around herself as a blanket.

It was wholly holey, but at this point anything helped. Then, after spending a few minutes shivering under her grass blanket, she realized her limbs were growing numb. She began rubbing her limbs together, trying to get some warmth back into her fingers and toes after recognizing the warning signs of frostbite.

Minutes ticked by, and she grew colder and colder while the specter of death loomed ever closer. Her fingers and toes still had some feeling in them, but she felt cold and increasingly sleepy. She looked over at her basket of berries and grabbed a few half-frozen berries to nibble on. Finally, she realized that this wasn’t a sustainable method of survival – even if it was desperate, she needed to go back out into the cold to grab some tree branches, hopefully dry ones, and get some sort of fire started. Otherwise, she would definitely die here.

She stepped out of the cave, trying to work her way through the biting cold as it penetrated into her veins. The snow had stopped falling, but the carpet of snow on the ground already reached up to her ankles. She might have found it beautiful, if she were at home and waiting for Christmas to come, but right now it seemed to blot out the color in the world, dyeing the world monotone shades of white and grey.

Quickly, she grabbed some cold branches from the area around her and shook the snow off, looking at the still-green leaves on the branches and wondering if they would catch flame. They looked damp, and she doubted she could dry them out, but it hadn’t been snowing for that long yet. Apart from the exterior of the branches and leaves, perhaps something here was still able to catch fire?

For several minutes, she grabbed branches and dragged them back towards her cave, trying to ignore the sinking feeling as her feet started to get more numb. Right now she didn’t have time to keep massaging her limbs and keep blood flowing to her fingers and toes, so she was stuck praying for the best. Then, back inside of her cave, she first peeled away the outer layer of bark on some of the branches. To her surprise, an entire outer ring of bark came off of each branch easily, leaving only the dry interior of the branches while casting away the outer layer of wet wood. She had no idea what kind of tree this was, but right now her trademark curiosity had been nearly stifled by her desperate circumstances. With no interest why these branches could be peeled so easily, she began rubbing sticks together with some tinder, hoping for a fire. A stick snapped, cutting her palm. She gritted her teeth and kept going, knowing that failure wasn’t an option.

Finally, a spark caught, and she leapt up and danced with joy. The tiny little ember of fire spread to the dry innards of the branches, and soon, a cheery blaze was burning away in her cave. She stuck out her hands and feet, warming them up while occasionally nibbling on a few berries. Within another hour, she could feel all of her toes and fingers again, thankfully, which meant that she should at least be able to avoid losing her fingers or toes to the cold. Warmer and more comfortable, she soon fell asleep again.

You have leveled up!

Survivor: 9 -> 11

* * *

The next day, Alice woke up to find that the snow had stopped falling. Her campfire, unnoticed, had burnt out while she was asleep. Thankfully, the smoke had been guided away from the shelter by the shape of the cave, which was something she only realized once she woke up. She hadn’t paid any attention to the smoke at all, and if the cave had been shaped a bit differently she might have never woken up. She also realized that she had gained another two levels sometime last night, either when she had started a fire or when she was asleep. Either way, it had given her another perk slot, so she started out by taking a look at what was available. Her first Perk had given her the ability to easily identify food, something she desperately needed right now, and this Perk could also be a lifesaver.

Dark Vision

Requirements: Survivor level 10 or higher, Perception higher than 100This chapter's initial release occurred on the n0vell--Bjjn site.

Allows you to see your surroundings as if they were fully lit up, regardless of the level of light present in your surroundings. This may be turned off. Will not physically alter your eyes.

Microbe Resistance

Requirements: Survivor level 10 or higher

Name: Alice Verianna

Age: 15

Strength: 44

Perception: 101

Dexterity: 47 -> 48

Intelligence: 153

Endurance: 44 -> 50

Willpower: 118 -> 121

Charisma: 125

Magic: 0 -> 5

Primary Classes: 2/5

Survivor: 0 -> 12 (Level 10 Perk Available)

Explorer of Magic: 0 -> 1

N/A

N/A

N/A

Perks

Foraging (Survivor 5)

Secondary Classes

0

Skills

English (language proficiency): 100

Woodworking: 0 -> 7

Weaving: 0 -> 5

Achievements

Outworlder (Rarity: 10)

Baptized by Broken Mana (Rarity: 6)

She closed the status screen, wondering how much she had changed in the short period of time she had been here. Already, she was desperately trying to level up in order to survive. Despite the fact that she was both nervous about the levelling system and baffled by its implications, it seemed like she also needed to rely on it. Otherwise, the myriad of problems an interdimensional traveler would inevitably face would probably kill her within a week.

After all, she was just a fairly normal girl from the modern world. She had no familiarity with camping, much less surviving in the wilderness with no supplies. Her body was wholly unsuited to survive in this world, disease and infection would kill her without access to modern antibiotics and medicine, and while some of the biology of this planet was suspiciously similar to Earth’s, the rest was totally alien to her. Without any help, she estimated her odds of surviving this planet to be close to zero. For now, the System was able to provide that help. If levelling up was the way to survive so that she could investigate the System and the magic of this world, she would need to level up.

Such were the thoughts of a young girl alone in the frozen wilderness.