Day 37
While she was logging, she finally saw the ‘monster sense’ ability of {Sixth Sense}. It quickly flipped her opinion on the Perk, changing from useless to incredibly valuable. The moment a spidercrab walked within about 200 meters of her, she instantly noticed its mana fluctuation – it felt kind of like a bright candle had suddenly been lit up in the middle of a dark night. She could tell exactly where it was, even though it was moving around in the forest, apparently oblivious to her perception. She could even tell roughly how much mana it had, although she didn’t know what to do with this information. She noticed, with some interest, that it was also moving downstream for some reason – perhaps Spidercrabs migrated downstream during the winter or something, and the ones she was coming across were stragglers?
Either way, being able to tell the instant a spidercrab moved even sort of close to her was incredibly useful. She was running a bit low on meat, and she still wanted to preserve her smoked fish, so she moved to hunt down the spidercrab. 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 popped in, 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 anything particularly threatening anymore and thus [Survivor] got no EXP – or it was just the result of the increasing difficulty of levelling up after level 25.
Either way, it was good to know that the seemingly useless perk was actually pretty useful – it was just situational.
Day 39
Her new shelter was finally finished, 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, 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 -although the use of that was debatable now that she had confirmed the effects of {Sixth Sense}.
It looked… kind of like a beaver dam gone horribly, horribly wrong. However, it kept the cold out far more effectively than her previous shelter had. Instead of just trapping a little bit of the heat inside with her, her shelter now actually worked towards keeping the cold out and trapped most of the heat from her fire inside. She had a difficult time with smoke, since it didn’t leave as easily now, but Alice could manually disperse it by temporarily opening a little chunk of the sticks with her 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. Alice grinned. Even though her levelling speed had dramatically slowed down after 25, it was nice to know that big accomplishments would still reward her a good amount of EXP and levels.
* * *
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, although Alice had to admit she was kind of tempted by {Intelligent}. However, she had always wished she had a photographic memory, and this seemed like a good way to get much closer to her dream.
Day 43
Alice found two spidercrabs at once while collecting firewood. Alice could only manage to 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. Her physical stats were getting better, 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 would end poorly, but she had an idea. She first got near them, and then opened the fight by firing a rock at one of them, breaking some of the chitin on its back and injuring it. After that, she scrambled up a tree, letting the two idiotic monsters bash themselves ineffectually against the trunk. While they tried and failed to accomplish something, Alice used her spear itself as the object to manipulate with her kinetic magic, trying to use her mana as a ‘third hand’ of sorts and stab the spidercrabs with it. She touched the spear with her tendril of mana, trying to keep applying exactly enough kinetic energy upwards to counteract gravity and avoid dropping it, and then, very, very slowly and methodically, she maneuvered the spear into position… and then she launched the spear straight into one of the spidercrabs as it launched itself against the tree. She lost control the moment the spear moved more than a few meters away, her range too small to allow her to interact with the object.
That didn’t matter, because the spidercrab was now nailed to the ground, twitching but unable to move. With one of the two dealt with, Alice slid back down a few branches, getting back into range of the other spidercrab, and then picked it up and slammed it against the ground. From there it was a simple matter to finish off both of the spidercrabs with her stone axe.
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. She was finally getting her fourth perk from [Explorer of Magic]. She looked over her options, and found something a bit more interesting than what she was expecting.
| Mana Interference Requirements: Explorer of Magic level 20 or higher |
| Increases the natural pushback against external magic produced by your skin. An increased 'Magic' attribute moderately increases this effect. All levels, attributes, and skills very slightly increase this effect. Also improves your ability to directly push back against external mana. |
So it isn’t just monsters that push back against mana, thought Alice. Of course, she had tried using her magic against plants in the surroundings, but none of them offered any resistance against her manipulation. She hadn’t been sure whether it was just because plants were specifically unable to offer resistance against magic, or whether monsters specifically resisted magic, or if winter was the reason the plants didn’t push back against her mana. However, this perk strongly hinted at the idea that Alice herself also pushed back against mana. Perhaps it was harder to use magic on something that had magic, and monsters pushed back against attempts to influence them because they had mana inside of them?
Something worth asking about in the future, when I reach civilization. If no one knows, I’ll have to find a way to test this out in further detail.
| 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 |
All of the magic seed options before this one at least had the decency to be a multiple of five. What the heck is this? Alice shook her head in mock disappointment. System, you’re slipping up! It won’t be long before you can’t even count properly!
On a serious note, I still don’t think it’s quite time to grow another seed yet – although I’m pretty tempted. Maybe next level?
| 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. I had assumed it was, but now I’m incredibly curious. Alice had been wondering what the hell ‘mana conversion ratio’ meant for a while, because she either hadn’t seen or hadn’t managed to translate the term in the book she had found. Ultimately, she decided that she would grab this perk this time, just to see what happened, as well as hopefully improve her kinetic magic a bit more.
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 which there was only one option. She selected her kinetic magic seed, and a moment later, her kinetic magic seed suddenly increased to 110%.
She frowned, trying to feel out the differences. It took a moment, but…
Was her mana pool bigger now? Yes, it definitely was. And she also noticed that it was easier to push kinetic mana through her mana tendril, by a fairly 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 thinned out the liquid, 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 probably exactly 10% higher. Seeing that, she had a bold 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, maybe getting other mana seeds was even better than she had expected – if each one had a separate mana pool, she would basically be multiplying the amount of magic she had!
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 and influence the world around her. In other words, 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, it would potentially still be very useful to keep working on increasing her seeds. However, by the same token, focusing more on one particular seed was probably optimal for combat, at least.
Either way, it was a decision she could make whenever 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
Unnoticed, her [Survivor] class had ticked over to 30 while she slept. Alice wasn’t sure whether something dangerous had prowled around the area, or [Survivor] just passively got a little bit of experience just from her continued survival each day, but she wasn’t going to complain.
She looked over the available perks, and felt a surge of surprise. After reaching level 25, the levelling speed of her class had slowed down dramatically. However, it appeared that the perks offered by her class also became far better.
| Stronger, Faster, Better Requirements: Survivor level 30 or higher |
| Your Strength, Endurance, and Dexterity Attributes both increase 15% faster, and the effect of each stat is improved by 7% |
| Enhanced Training Requirements: Survivor level 30 or higher, have followed a rigorous training regime for 30 days or longer |
| All stats grow 10% faster. You gain better comprehension of how to most efficiently maximize stat gains from training. For every fifty stats you have in one attribute, it gains 1% increased effect, up to 4% |
| Woman Versus the Wilds Requirements: Survivor level 30 or higher |
| If you have not had contact with civilization in the past 7 days, your awareness of the area around you is dramatically increased, you gain some limited ability to detect danger, and all of your physical stats will be improved by 10. |
| Born of Frost Requirements: Survivor level 30 or higher, 'Extremophile' perk unlocked |
| Your body gains the ability to resist temperatures which are 40 degrees Celsius lower than was previously available (This stacks with extremophile for a total of 50 degrees Celsius.) |
| Born of Flames Requirements: Survivor level 30 or higher, 'Extremophile' perk unlocked |
| Your body gains the ability to resist temperatures which are 40 degrees Celsius higher than was previously available (This stacks with extremophile for a total of 50 degrees Celsius.) |
In general, while the perks before level 30 had been incredibly valuable for her survival, they hadn’t interacted so directly with other parts of the system. They had mostly focused around knowledge, her physical abilities, and empowering her to create the tools she needed to survive in this foreign world. However, at this level, it seemed like a lot of perks gave significant bonuses to attributes, as well as some sort of improved senses. Perhaps this was something common to this level? The perks also had more requirements in order to make them work. Before this, there was never a time where she had a perk that could be…disabled, for lack of a better term. {Woman Versus the Wilds} hinted that maybe after level 25, more changed about Perks than just the power level of each Perk.
Alice thought closely about the perks for a while, before eventually choosing {Enhanced Training}. She wondered if she would eventually curse herself for being too greedy, but it seemed to have the most growth potential, and surprisingly enough, she was actually doing pretty well for herself at this point. She had food, water, shelter, and warmth, so she could afford to be a little greedy.
Furthermore, the [Endurance] attribute also directly helped her survive colder temperatures, meaning that this stat would eventually provide a more useful way of dealing with the cold. It was, notably, less useful than the {Born of Frost} perk at this exact moment. However, as it currently stood she already had ways to deal with the cold well enough that she thought she could plan ahead a bit more. Whenever she found her way back towards civilization, she wouldn’t have any particular use for {Born of Frost}, but {Enhanced Training} would prove its worth over and over again. Besides, she had to wait out the cold, and entering civilization with a few more attribute points could put her at less of a disadvantage compared to other humans.
Day 60
Alice was growing increasingly tired of waiting for winter to end. It had only been a month and some change, but she was lonely. Having a friend to talk to would make this whole thing much more bearable. Her growing Endurance stat, along with Extremophile, enabled her to do what she needed to each day in order to survive. Then she trained and worked on reading the book. However, after that, there was nothing to do. She spent a good chunk of each day inside, reading her book over and over again. Illvarian language proficiency had nearly reached 100 now. Alice wondered why it seemed so much easier to level that skill instead of any of the others?
It was so boring. Spidercrabs didn’t seem to give levels at all anymore, and there wasn’t much happening in the forest.
She couldn’t wait for spring to come.
Day 70
Alice had finally started having conversations almost entirely in Illvarian. After winter ended, she would need to use this language nearly constantly, if that was the right language to use in this region. At the very least, people would probably be more likely to understand it than English.
Naturally, since there were no people and almost no animals in this region, she had a conversation with her pet rock. She had named it ‘Taps’ because she liked the sound it made when she tapped it against the wall of her cave. It was a reminder that even though this world seemed dead and silent, there was still something here with her besides horrifying monsters from nightmares.
She had drawn a little face on the rock. She knew it wasn’t alive, but it was something to talk to, damnit!
* * *
Day 85
[Explorer of Magic] hit level 25 partway through her training routine. After some thought, she chose {Seeds of Magic}.
| Seeds of Magic Requirements: Explorer of magic level 25 or higher |
| You may gradually enhance one seed of magic by up to 25% mana conversion ratio beyond its current maximum. This perk may not increase a magic seed’s mana conversion ratio beyond 200%. This process will require that you actually focus on the concept governing your particular magic seed, and understand the forces that govern that seed. |
Compared to the other perks offered at the same level, it seemed rather impressive, even though the System had offered a 35% seed. Based off of what she had seen so far, it seemed harder to improve seeds that already existed compared to forming new ones, and Alice thought that a 25% improvement to her kinetic seed could be incredibly useful for combat down the line. The fact that, as far as she could tell, the perk would put her in some sort of meditative state related to kinetic energy, was, if anything, a plus at this point.
At least it was something to do.
Although Taps didn’t seem to approve. Alice could tell from the way the inanimate object leaned against the wall.
She was going freaking crazy. Luckily, she thought spring would come soon.
* * *
Day 95
The days were getting noticeably warmer. Alice was excited. Soon, she would be able to follow the river further. The book had washed down towards her from upstream, and whatever had killed the poor guy she had seen earlier was hopefully gone by now. The fact that a corpse had come from upstream meant that somewhere further up there must be people! She had no idea why a book on magic had been in the river, but either way, books meant civilization of some kind. She could work with that.
When she used the {Seeds of Magic} perk, it felt like she had flashes of insight pouring into her mind, like iron filling a mold and patching up holes she hadn’t known were there before. These flashes of thought, however, weren’t strictly new to her. It was like she was back in her high school physics class, except with far fewer numbers involved and a much greater focus on the concept of motion itself. When pondering these topics, she could feel the ideas whirling around her brain getting engraved into her magic seed. As her magic seed changed, the heat inside of her chest grew stronger, shifting and changing as her magic seed improved. The perk worked slowly, and each percentage point was hard to acquire, but she could feel her mana pool improving over time, as well as her control over her magic.
[Scholar] levelled for the first time in weeks while pondering all of this information. Previously it had stopped at 7 once she had finished reading A Comparison of the Lesser Seeds and the Four Basic Magic Seeds. Alice quietly celebrated a bit with an extra serving of nuts that evening. She was very sick of them…
Day 99
Alice was pretty sure that today was her birthday. She had lost track of time a bit, towards the beginning, but she was still pretty sure that it had either been a few days ago, or today. The System still claimed that her age was 15, which puzzled her. If it was her birthday, why did her status screen still say "age: 15?" maybe the System doesn't know my birthday? Or it's counting the day I arrived on this planet as my birthday for some reason? That's quite strange.
She quietly gave herself an extra serving of spidercrab soup, mixed with nuts, and celebrated her birthday alone in the forest, with no humans around for several kilometers in any direction. There was no cake, no parents and friends to talk to, and nothing to look forward to.
* * *
Day 105
It hadn’t snowed for a few days now, and the deep blanket of white over the land was starting to disappear enough that she could see sprouts of green poking up from beneath the snow. Just as she was deciding that she would leave within a few days, a terrifying roar sounded in the distance, like nothing she’d ever heard before. The spidercrabs did not make this sound – they hissed and screeched, and sometimes made her want to claw her ears out, but they never roared.
This roar was different. When she heard it, she felt like a firefly staring at the sun. It wasn’t close enough for {Sixth Sense} to pick up the monster – which, honestly, she was thankful for. She quaked, like a leaf in a hurricane, as the terrifying roar echoed across the forest, far away but not far enough. She had thought, several times, that she was incredibly unlucky for getting dropped into this world near the start of winter. However, she had forgotten one thing.
Winter was when several predators hibernated. And in a world filled with magic and monsters, the predators at the top of the food chain were terrifying indeed.
| Name: Alice Verianna | Age: 15 |
| Strength: 84 (104%) | Perception: 109 (105%) |
| Dexterity: 81 (103%) | Intelligence: 155 (103%) |
| Endurance: 89 (103%) | Willpower: 125 (102%) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
acaswell
So, I've been going back and forth on this for a while, and I want to know your opinions - do you guys want to see every single perk choice, or just the ones Alice picks? I have a list of perks for each class in my worldbuilding notes, and usually I pick the perks Alice qualifies for and show up to five perks at each choice. Do you guys want this trend to continue, or do you want to just see what perk Alice takes and skip the rest?
Final chapter of the first arc tomorrow. Woo! After that, I'm going to take a few days off, and then I'll probably switch to either uploading once or twice a week. I was originally planning on doing one chapter a week, but you guys have mostly been pretty awesome, and I feel a lot better and more motivated about my writing than I used to, so I've been debating whether or not I can handle two a week. I'll think about it a little more, but I'm leaning towards trying it and seeing how I feel afterwards. Thank you all so much for taking the time to read my story! For those of you who have commented, rated the story, reviewed it, or sent private messages, an extra thank you! It makes me happy to know that people are enjoying my writing for the most part. :) Have a lovely day!
Day 37
While she was logging, she finally saw the ‘monster sense’ ability of {Sixth Sense}. It quickly flipped her opinion on the Perk, changing from useless to incredibly valuable. The moment a spidercrab walked within about 200 meters of her, she instantly noticed its mana fluctuation – it felt kind of like a bright candle had suddenly been lit up in the middle of a dark night. She could tell exactly where it was, even though it was moving around in the forest, apparently oblivious to her perception. She could even tell roughly how much mana it had, although she didn’t know what to do with this information. She noticed, with some interest, that it was also moving downstream for some reason – perhaps Spidercrabs migrated downstream during the winter or something, and the ones she was coming across were stragglers?
Either way, being able to tell the instant a spidercrab moved even sort of close to her was incredibly useful. She was running a bit low on meat, and she still wanted to preserve her smoked fish, so she moved to hunt down the spidercrab. 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 popped in, 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 anything particularly threatening anymore and thus [Survivor] got no EXP – or it was just the result of the increasing difficulty of levelling up after level 25.
Either way, it was good to know that the seemingly useless perk was actually pretty useful – it was just situational.
Day 39
Her new shelter was finally finished, 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, 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 -although the use of that was debatable now that she had confirmed the effects of {Sixth Sense}.
It looked… kind of like a beaver dam gone horribly, horribly wrong. However, it kept the cold out far more effectively than her previous shelter had. Instead of just trapping a little bit of the heat inside with her, her shelter now actually worked towards keeping the cold out and trapped most of the heat from her fire inside. She had a difficult time with smoke, since it didn’t leave as easily now, but Alice could manually disperse it by temporarily opening a little chunk of the sticks with her 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. Alice grinned. Even though her levelling speed had dramatically slowed down after 25, it was nice to know that big accomplishments would still reward her a good amount of EXP and levels.
* * *
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, although Alice had to admit she was kind of tempted by {Intelligent}. However, she had always wished she had a photographic memory, and this seemed like a good way to get much closer to her dream.
Day 43
Alice found two spidercrabs at once while collecting firewood. Alice could only manage to 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. Her physical stats were getting better, 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 would end poorly, but she had an idea. She first got near them, and then opened the fight by firing a rock at one of them, breaking some of the chitin on its back and injuring it. After that, she scrambled up a tree, letting the two idiotic monsters bash themselves ineffectually against the trunk. While they tried and failed to accomplish something, Alice used her spear itself as the object to manipulate with her kinetic magic, trying to use her mana as a ‘third hand’ of sorts and stab the spidercrabs with it. She touched the spear with her tendril of mana, trying to keep applying exactly enough kinetic energy upwards to counteract gravity and avoid dropping it, and then, very, very slowly and methodically, she maneuvered the spear into position… and then she launched the spear straight into one of the spidercrabs as it launched itself against the tree. She lost control the moment the spear moved more than a few meters away, her range too small to allow her to interact with the object.
That didn’t matter, because the spidercrab was now nailed to the ground, twitching but unable to move. With one of the two dealt with, Alice slid back down a few branches, getting back into range of the other spidercrab, and then picked it up and slammed it against the ground. From there it was a simple matter to finish off both of the spidercrabs with her stone axe.
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. She was finally getting her fourth perk from [Explorer of Magic]. She looked over her options, and found something a bit more interesting than what she was expecting.
| Mana Interference Requirements: Explorer of Magic level 20 or higher |
| Increases the natural pushback against external magic produced by your skin. An increased 'Magic' attribute moderately increases this effect. All levels, attributes, and skills very slightly increase this effect. Also improves your ability to directly push back against external mana. |
So it isn’t just monsters that push back against mana, thought Alice. Of course, she had tried using her magic against plants in the surroundings, but none of them offered any resistance against her manipulation. She hadn’t been sure whether it was just because plants were specifically unable to offer resistance against magic, or whether monsters specifically resisted magic, or if winter was the reason the plants didn’t push back against her mana. However, this perk strongly hinted at the idea that Alice herself also pushed back against mana. Perhaps it was harder to use magic on something that had magic, and monsters pushed back against attempts to influence them because they had mana inside of them?
Something worth asking about in the future, when I reach civilization. If no one knows, I’ll have to find a way to test this out in further detail.
| 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 |
All of the magic seed options before this one at least had the decency to be a multiple of five. What the heck is this? Alice shook her head in mock disappointment. System, you’re slipping up! It won’t be long before you can’t even count properly!
On a serious note, I still don’t think it’s quite time to grow another seed yet – although I’m pretty tempted. Maybe next level?
| 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. I had assumed it was, but now I’m incredibly curious. Alice had been wondering what the hell ‘mana conversion ratio’ meant for a while, because she either hadn’t seen or hadn’t managed to translate the term in the book she had found. Ultimately, she decided that she would grab this perk this time, just to see what happened, as well as hopefully improve her kinetic magic a bit more.
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 which there was only one option. She selected her kinetic magic seed, and a moment later, her kinetic magic seed suddenly increased to 110%.
She frowned, trying to feel out the differences. It took a moment, but…
Was her mana pool bigger now? Yes, it definitely was. And she also noticed that it was easier to push kinetic mana through her mana tendril, by a fairly 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 thinned out the liquid, 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 probably exactly 10% higher. Seeing that, she had a bold 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, maybe getting other mana seeds was even better than she had expected – if each one had a separate mana pool, she would basically be multiplying the amount of magic she had!
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 and influence the world around her. In other words, 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, it would potentially still be very useful to keep working on increasing her seeds. However, by the same token, focusing more on one particular seed was probably optimal for combat, at least.
Either way, it was a decision she could make whenever 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
Unnoticed, her [Survivor] class had ticked over to 30 while she slept. Alice wasn’t sure whether something dangerous had prowled around the area, or [Survivor] just passively got a little bit of experience just from her continued survival each day, but she wasn’t going to complain.
She looked over the available perks, and felt a surge of surprise. After reaching level 25, the levelling speed of her class had slowed down dramatically. However, it appeared that the perks offered by her class also became far better.
| Stronger, Faster, Better Requirements: Survivor level 30 or higher |
| Your Strength, Endurance, and Dexterity Attributes both increase 15% faster, and the effect of each stat is improved by 7% |
| Enhanced Training Requirements: Survivor level 30 or higher, have followed a rigorous training regime for 30 days or longer |
| All stats grow 10% faster. You gain better comprehension of how to most efficiently maximize stat gains from training. For every fifty stats you have in one attribute, it gains 1% increased effect, up to 4% |
| Woman Versus the Wilds Requirements: Survivor level 30 or higher |
| If you have not had contact with civilization in the past 7 days, your awareness of the area around you is dramatically increased, you gain some limited ability to detect danger, and all of your physical stats will be improved by 10. |
| Born of Frost Requirements: Survivor level 30 or higher, 'Extremophile' perk unlocked |
| Your body gains the ability to resist temperatures which are 40 degrees Celsius lower than was previously available (This stacks with extremophile for a total of 50 degrees Celsius.) |
| Born of Flames Requirements: Survivor level 30 or higher, 'Extremophile' perk unlocked |
| Your body gains the ability to resist temperatures which are 40 degrees Celsius higher than was previously available (This stacks with extremophile for a total of 50 degrees Celsius.) |
In general, while the perks before level 30 had been incredibly valuable for her survival, they hadn’t interacted so directly with other parts of the system. They had mostly focused around knowledge, her physical abilities, and empowering her to create the tools she needed to survive in this foreign world. However, at this level, it seemed like a lot of perks gave significant bonuses to attributes, as well as some sort of improved senses. Perhaps this was something common to this level? The perks also had more requirements in order to make them work. Before this, there was never a time where she had a perk that could be…disabled, for lack of a better term. {Woman Versus the Wilds} hinted that maybe after level 25, more changed about Perks than just the power level of each Perk.
Alice thought closely about the perks for a while, before eventually choosing {Enhanced Training}. She wondered if she would eventually curse herself for being too greedy, but it seemed to have the most growth potential, and surprisingly enough, she was actually doing pretty well for herself at this point. She had food, water, shelter, and warmth, so she could afford to be a little greedy.
Furthermore, the [Endurance] attribute also directly helped her survive colder temperatures, meaning that this stat would eventually provide a more useful way of dealing with the cold. It was, notably, less useful than the {Born of Frost} perk at this exact moment. However, as it currently stood she already had ways to deal with the cold well enough that she thought she could plan ahead a bit more. Whenever she found her way back towards civilization, she wouldn’t have any particular use for {Born of Frost}, but {Enhanced Training} would prove its worth over and over again. Besides, she had to wait out the cold, and entering civilization with a few more attribute points could put her at less of a disadvantage compared to other humans.
Day 60
Alice was growing increasingly tired of waiting for winter to end. It had only been a month and some change, but she was lonely. Having a friend to talk to would make this whole thing much more bearable. Her growing Endurance stat, along with Extremophile, enabled her to do what she needed to each day in order to survive. Then she trained and worked on reading the book. However, after that, there was nothing to do. She spent a good chunk of each day inside, reading her book over and over again. Illvarian language proficiency had nearly reached 100 now. Alice wondered why it seemed so much easier to level that skill instead of any of the others?
It was so boring. Spidercrabs didn’t seem to give levels at all anymore, and there wasn’t much happening in the forest.
She couldn’t wait for spring to come.
Day 70
Alice had finally started having conversations almost entirely in Illvarian. After winter ended, she would need to use this language nearly constantly, if that was the right language to use in this region. At the very least, people would probably be more likely to understand it than English.
Naturally, since there were no people and almost no animals in this region, she had a conversation with her pet rock. She had named it ‘Taps’ because she liked the sound it made when she tapped it against the wall of her cave. It was a reminder that even though this world seemed dead and silent, there was still something here with her besides horrifying monsters from nightmares.
She had drawn a little face on the rock. She knew it wasn’t alive, but it was something to talk to, damnit!
* * *
Day 85
[Explorer of Magic] hit level 25 partway through her training routine. After some thought, she chose {Seeds of Magic}.
| Seeds of Magic Requirements: Explorer of magic level 25 or higher |
| You may gradually enhance one seed of magic by up to 25% mana conversion ratio beyond its current maximum. This perk may not increase a magic seed’s mana conversion ratio beyond 200%. This process will require that you actually focus on the concept governing your particular magic seed, and understand the forces that govern that seed. |
Compared to the other perks offered at the same level, it seemed rather impressive, even though the System had offered a 35% seed. Based off of what she had seen so far, it seemed harder to improve seeds that already existed compared to forming new ones, and Alice thought that a 25% improvement to her kinetic seed could be incredibly useful for combat down the line. The fact that, as far as she could tell, the perk would put her in some sort of meditative state related to kinetic energy, was, if anything, a plus at this point.
At least it was something to do.
Although Taps didn’t seem to approve. Alice could tell from the way the inanimate object leaned against the wall.
She was going freaking crazy. Luckily, she thought spring would come soon.
* * *
Day 95
The days were getting noticeably warmer. Alice was excited. Soon, she would be able to follow the river further. The book had washed down towards her from upstream, and whatever had killed the poor guy she had seen earlier was hopefully gone by now. The fact that a corpse had come from upstream meant that somewhere further up there must be people! She had no idea why a book on magic had been in the river, but either way, books meant civilization of some kind. She could work with that.
When she used the {Seeds of Magic} perk, it felt like she had flashes of insight pouring into her mind, like iron filling a mold and patching up holes she hadn’t known were there before. These flashes of thought, however, weren’t strictly new to her. It was like she was back in her high school physics class, except with far fewer numbers involved and a much greater focus on the concept of motion itself. When pondering these topics, she could feel the ideas whirling around her brain getting engraved into her magic seed. As her magic seed changed, the heat inside of her chest grew stronger, shifting and changing as her magic seed improved. The perk worked slowly, and each percentage point was hard to acquire, but she could feel her mana pool improving over time, as well as her control over her magic.
[Scholar] levelled for the first time in weeks while pondering all of this information. Previously it had stopped at 7 once she had finished reading A Comparison of the Lesser Seeds and the Four Basic Magic Seeds. Alice quietly celebrated a bit with an extra serving of nuts that evening. She was very sick of them…
Day 99
Alice was pretty sure that today was her birthday. She had lost track of time a bit, towards the beginning, but she was still pretty sure that it had either been a few days ago, or today. The System still claimed that her age was 15, which puzzled her. If it was her birthday, why did her status screen still say "age: 15?" maybe the System doesn't know my birthday? Or it's counting the day I arrived on this planet as my birthday for some reason? That's quite strange.
She quietly gave herself an extra serving of spidercrab soup, mixed with nuts, and celebrated her birthday alone in the forest, with no humans around for several kilometers in any direction. There was no cake, no parents and friends to talk to, and nothing to look forward to.
* * *
Day 105
It hadn’t snowed for a few days now, and the deep blanket of white over the land was starting to disappear enough that she could see sprouts of green poking up from beneath the snow. Just as she was deciding that she would leave within a few days, a terrifying roar sounded in the distance, like nothing she’d ever heard before. The spidercrabs did not make this sound – they hissed and screeched, and sometimes made her want to claw her ears out, but they never roared.
This roar was different. When she heard it, she felt like a firefly staring at the sun. It wasn’t close enough for {Sixth Sense} to pick up the monster – which, honestly, she was thankful for. She quaked, like a leaf in a hurricane, as the terrifying roar echoed across the forest, far away but not far enough. She had thought, several times, that she was incredibly unlucky for getting dropped into this world near the start of winter. However, she had forgotten one thing.
Winter was when several predators hibernated. And in a world filled with magic and monsters, the predators at the top of the food chain were terrifying indeed.
| Name: Alice Verianna | Age: 15 |
| Strength: 84 (104%) | Perception: 109 (105%) |
| Dexterity: 81 (103%) | Intelligence: 155 (103%) |
| Endurance: 89 (103%) | Willpower: 125 (102%) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
acaswell
So, I've been going back and forth on this for a while, and I want to know your opinions - do you guys want to see every single perk choice, or just the ones Alice picks? I have a list of perks for each class in my worldbuilding notes, and usually I pick the perks Alice qualifies for and show up to five perks at each choice. Do you guys want this trend to continue, or do you want to just see what perk Alice takes and skip the rest?
Final chapter of the first arc tomorrow. Woo! After that, I'm going to take a few days off, and then I'll probably switch to either uploading once or twice a week. I was originally planning on doing one chapter a week, but you guys have mostly been pretty awesome, and I feel a lot better and more motivated about my writing than I used to, so I've been debating whether or not I can handle two a week. I'll think about it a little more, but I'm leaning towards trying it and seeing how I feel afterwards. Thank you all so much for taking the time to read my story! For those of you who have commented, rated the story, reviewed it, or sent private messages, an extra thank you! It makes me happy to know that people are enjoying my writing for the most part. :) Have a lovely day!
