Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Day 37

While Alice was logging, she finally got to observe the ‘monster sense’ component of {Sixth Sense} Perk in action. It quickly changed her opinion on the Perk, making her feel that it was very specialized, but incredibly useful. The moment a spidercrab walked within about 200 meters of her, she instantly noticed its mana. To her, it felt like a bright light had suddenly been turned on in the middle of the night. She could tell exactly where it was, and the spidercrab didn’t sense anything at all from her until it got much closer. She could even tell roughly how much mana the spidercrab had, although she didn’t know what to do with this information. She noticed, with some interest, that this spidercrab was also moving downstream for some reason. Perhaps Spidercrabs migrated downstream during the winter or something?

Either way, being able to tell the instant a spidercrab was nearby was incredibly useful. She was running a bit low on meat, and she still wanted to preserve her smoked fish as much as possible, so she moved to hunt down the spidercrab she had used as her test subject for her new Perk. With her growing stats and skills, hunting a lone spidercrab when she had the element of surprise was no longer a challenge, and so she simply walked up to it, held it down with kinetic magic, and stabbed it a few times. She only got a single level in [Explorer of Magic] from the fight, probably because she wasn’t really surviving a threatening encounter anymore. As a result [Survivor] got very little EXP. At least, that was her current guess for why the fight gave so few Status Screen related rewards.

Either way, it was good to know that the seemingly useless perk was pretty useful. It was just highly situational.

Day 39

Alice finally finished chopping down trees and building up the walls of her cave. Her shelter was finally complete, and was constructed of logs and sticks piled together. Alice hadn’t had a good way to make the logs stick to the ground properly, so she had ended up digging little holes to put the logs into, keeping them at least reasonably stable. However, there had been some gaps in between the log-based wall, so she had filled those in with rocks and sticks, making something that kept air and heat in reasonably well and blocked off monsters and animals. Even though it was far from perfect, Alice was still happy to improve her living conditions again.

Admittedly, her cave now looked like a beaver dam gone horribly wrong. However, it kept the cold out far better than before, and that was what mattered. She had a difficult time with smoke from her fires, since it didn’t leave the cave quite as easily now, but Alice could manually disperse it by temporarily opening a little chunk of the sticks near the top of her new wall with her Kinetic Magic to let out the smoke, so it wasn’t too big of a problem.

Her [Survivor] class jumped up two levels for the first time since it had reached level 25, reaching level 27 on the day she finished building her new set of walls. Alice grinned. Even though her levelling speed had dramatically slowed down after level 25, it was nice to know that big accomplishments would still reward her with a good amount of EXP.

* * *

Day 40

[Scholar] finally reached level 5, and Alice eagerly pored over the available perks.

Improved Memory

Requirements: Scholar level 5 or higher, Intelligence 100 or greater

Greatly improves your ability to remember information.

Speed Reading

Requirements: Scholar level 5 or higher, Perception 100 or greater

You read more quickly

Intelligent

Requirements: Scholar level 5 or higher, Intelligence 100 or greater

Increases the effect of the [Intelligence] stat by 2%

Alice quickly grabbed {Improved memory}. The other two perks were kind of bland and unimpressive. She had always wished she had a photographic memory, and this seemed like a good way to get much closer to her dream. Besides, Alice felt that {Improved Memory} would probably help her level up some of her Skills more quickly than before. Language, for example, was something heavily reliant on learning and remembering the vocabulary of a new language. Alice didn’t know if {Improved Memory} would actually increase the levelling speed of her Language Skill, due to the fact that the System controlled most of her language learning, but it seemed worth a shot.

Day 43

Alice found two spidercrabs at once while collecting firewood. Alice could only form one tendril of magic at a time, so even though she could easily kill one spidercrab, she wasn’t really that confident in taking on two at once. Her physical stats were improving, but they were still seriously lacking, even if she no longer found herself out of breath after a light jog through the forest for a few minutes.

Alice was certain that fighting them head on would end poorly, but after thinking back to her first encounter with a spidercrab, she realized there was a way to exploit the low intelligence of the creatures. She first got near them, climbing up a tree. Then, she watched for a few minutes as they bashed themselves against the tree trunk, making sure that their behavior wasn’t significantly different from other spidercrabs she had seen. Then, finishing her observations, Alice began manipulating her spear with her Kinetic magic, trying to use her mana as a ‘third hand’ instead of as a sling to hurl objects. It proved far more difficult than she had expected to hold an object in midair without dropping it or throwing it. To do so, she needed to apply exactly enough kinetic energy to counteract gravity without adding any extra mana, or she would accidentally send the spear flying into the air. However, she managed to accomplish her goal after some trial and error, after which she tried stabbing one of the spidercrabs with the spear without losing control of her projectile.

This failed, unfortunately. She launched the spear straight into one of the spidercrabs, but failed to control the speed well enough to retract the spear afterwards. The spear killed the first spidercrab, before lodging itself into the dirt. It was out of range of her mana tendrils, so Alice gave up on experimenting with her new idea.

With one of the two dealt with, Alice slid back down a few branches, getting the other spidercrab in range of her mana tendril, and then picked up the monster and slammed it into the ground. While it was stunned, she climbed down, pulled out her stone axe, and brained it.

In addition to the meat, she got enough levels in [Explorer of Magic] to level to 20 in one go, as well as push [Survivor] to 29. It seemed that her attempt at balancing her spear against gravity counted as ‘experimenting’ with magic, giving her a bunch of levels in her magic class, while killing two monsters at once for the first time gave her some levels in [Survivor]. Since [Explorer of Magic] reached level 20, she also had a new Perk slot. She looked over her options, and found one of the Perks a bit more interesting than what she was expecting.

Mana Interference

Requirements: Explorer of Magic level 20 or higher

Increases the natural resistance against external magic produced by your skin by a slight amount. Your [Magic] Attribute moderately improves this effect. All levels, attributes, and skills very slightly increase this effect.

The first Perk wasn’t that appealing, but it did indicate Alice was correct in her earlier assumption that living creatures seemed to resist external mana intrusion. If nothing else, having the System provide more confirmation for her theory was nice, although Alice wasn’t that interested in the Perk itself right now.

Kinetic Senses

Requirements: Explorer of Magic level 20 or higher, Kinetic Magic seed at 25% or higher

Improves your ability to sense kinetic movement and energy within ten meters. Your Perception Stat increases this range.

Interesting, but not that appealing. Although it does seem quite useful to improve my senses by a bit... Hmm...

Magic Seed

Requirements: Explorer of Magic level 20 or higher

Allows you to grow another magic seed with a maximum of 29% mana conversion ratio

Alice was still slightly interested in getting another seed, but she felt it was more important to develop her Kinetic Magic more. She didn’t have the time or training to pick up an entirely new magic seed yet, although eventually she wanted to for the sake of research purposes.

Improved Seed

Requirements: Explorer of Magic level 20 or higher

Allows you to improve one magic seed's mana conversion ratio by 10%. This is only effective on magic seeds below 200% mana conversion ratio.

So 100% isn’t the maximum mana conversion ratio a seed can have. I had assumed it was, but now I’m incredibly curious. Alice had been wondering what ‘mana conversion ratio’ meant for a while. It showed up in several of the Perks she had been offered by [Explorer of Magic], but Alice had zero context for understanding what the term meant. The book she had been reading didn’t mention the term either, so Alice was excited at the prospect of finally figuring out what this term meant. Since the other Perks weren’t incredibly powerful, she decided that she would grab {Improved Seed} this time, just to learn some more. Besides, this Perk seemed built to improve a magic seed, and since Alice wanted to concentrate on developing her Kinetic Magic this Perk fit her interests perfectly.

The moment she got the perk, she could see it move into her status screen, similar to other perks. However, unlike other perks, it also had a little + symbol next to it. She concentrated on it for a moment, and it displayed a list of her magic seeds. Of course, Alice only had one magic seed right now. She selected her kinetic magic seed, and a moment later, the little percent symbol next to the seed she had formed suddenly increased to 110%.

She frowned, trying to feel out the differences. It took a moment, but after a few moments, Alice finally realized what was different.

Her mana pool was suddenly bigger. She also noticed that it was easier to push kinetic mana through her mana tendril, by a small but noticeable amount. If she was to keep comparing her mana tendril to a pipe and her mana to liquid she wanted to move around, this felt like she had expanded the pipe and lowered its viscosity, making it pass through her mana tendril more quickly and easily when she willed it to.

She manipulated the environment around a bit, trying to figure out how much more mana she had than before, before coming to a conclusion that it was around 10% higher. Seeing that, she had a new guess. Maybe her ‘mana pool’ for kinetic mana was her magic stat multiplied by her magic seed’s mana conversion ratio? If that was the case, it seemed to indicate every magic seed had its own, independent mana pool.

Alice suddenly wondered if she had made a mistake in passing up so many other magic seeds. If every seed had its own mana pool, picking up a new magic seed would increase the amount of time she could fight, as well as the amount of tricks she had in combat and the amount of mana she could spend on making herself more comfortable every day.

A moment later, though, she realized there was a significant problem with that idea. The higher the magic seed’s conversion ratio, the easier it was to manipulate that particular seed’s mana. In other words, the reverse would probably also be true. The lower the conversion ratio, the weaker her control of the seed would be, and the harder it would be to use the mana from it. If she formed a bunch of magic seeds left and right, while her maximum mana would increase by a fair margin, it would be too slow and difficult to use in an actual fight. Of course, if she found other ways to improve magic seeds, having more Magic seeds would obviously be better. However, due to the differences in how easy it was to manipulate mana within a seed based on its conversion ratio, focusing more on one particular seed was probably optimal for combat.

Either way, it was a decision she could make again when she reached a higher level and saw her next round of perks. For now, she was just happy she had gotten so many levels from a single fight.

Day 53

Alice’s [Survivor] class reached level 30 while she was asleep. Alice wasn’t sure why. Her best guess was that perhaps something dangerous had prowled around the area while she was asleep, or perhaps [Survivor] just passively got a little bit of experience from her continued woodlands survival each day. She was extra cautious as she observed the area that day, but she didn’t find anything particularly new or deadly, and eventually decided her second theory was more likely.

Dexterity: 81 (103%)

Intelligence: 155 (103%)

Endurance: 89 (103%)

Willpower: 125 (103%)

Charisma: 125 (102%)

Magic: 91 (101%)

Primary Classes: 3/5

Survivor: 34

Explorer of Magic: 26

Scholar: 8

N/A

N/A

Secondary Classes: 1

Fisherwoman: 3

Perks:

Foraging (Survivor 5)

Microbe Resistance (Survivor 10)

Extremophile (Survivor 15)

Camouflaged (Survivor 20)

Sixth Sense (Survivor 25)

Enhanced Training (Survivor 30)

Magic Proficiency (Explorer of Magic 5)

Enhanced Regeneration (Explorer of Magic 10)

Combat Spellcaster (Explorer of Magic 15)

Improved Seed (Explorer of Magic 20)

Seeds of Magic (Explorer of magic 25)

Enhanced Memory (Scholar 5)

Skills

English (Language Proficiency): 100

Illvarian (Language Proficiency): 88

Kinetic Manipulation: 31

Weaving: 27

Woodworking: 25

Spearmanship: 19

Mana Control: 17

Kinetic Force: 14

Mana Precision: 14

Sprinting: 13

Cooking: 12

Stoneworking: 11

Climbing: 9

Fishing: 9

Digging: 8

Dodge: 7

Basic Medicine: 3

Magic Seed: 1/1

Kinetic Seed (135%)

Achievements

Outworlder (Rarity: 10)

Baptized by Broken Mana (Rarity: 6)

Monstrous Encounter (Rarity: 1)

Monster Slayer (I) (Rarity: 1)