The morning was cold and miserable, and Alice realized how little warmth the open ground of the forest floor provided. She looked at the remains of her attempts at lighting a fire, as well as the fish that had now been laying in the dirt for several hours, and sighed. The core of heat inside of her chest left over from her mana baptism thrummed with heat, warming up her chilled limbs, but it wasn't enough to completely drive away the cold. She shivered, before resolving to do better today. The hunger from not eating for a few days, as well as the fact that she still couldn’t even boil water yet, made her very aware of how close she was to a disaster that could appear at any moment. If she got sick or injured right now, she doubted she would be able to survive the aftermath.

And if she didn’t find something to eat today, she would start becoming thinner and weaker. She didn’t know how malnutrition interacted with her Status Screen, but she wasn’t willing to bet her life on the hope that she could keep working at full strength with no calories.

After thinking for a moment, Alice decided to try eating random plants instead of hoping to successfully make a fire this time. She wasn’t sure how to make a fire yet, and she didn’t have time for trial and error until she had a little more strength.

She began travelling down the river again, continuing her search for civilization while keeping an eye on her surroundings for anything to eat or any useful objects.

A few hours into her journey, she finally found something that might serve as food. A few berry bushes were growing close to the river, with blue-green berries about half the diameter of her pinky finger growing flowers on the branches.

Since she didn’t recognize the berries at all, she looked closely at and around the bush, trying to spot anything that might indicate whether or not the berries were edible. After a few minutes, she realized that the branches around her ankles were curiously devoid of berries, even though the flowers each berry grew from were present. Maybe small animals had been eating from this bush and had stripped the lower branches bare, but couldn’t reach the higher branches?

Alice had no idea if her guess was correct, but if she didn’t take a risk here she would need to hope to find a different source of food in the wilderness despite being totally unfamiliar with outdoor survival. She felt that she had to take a risk somewhere, and right now she had at least some evidence that these berries might be safe. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed one of the berries and then bit into it.

The flavor was somewhat odd. It tasted like a mixture of an apple and a blueberry, but it was much more tart than either fruit. She wondered if they weren’t ripe. Regardless, she had eaten one now. If this is poison, hopefully it’s a survivable amount, she thought, trying to clamp down the hunger pangs in her stomach as she sat down and waited. If some time passed and she didn’t feel any ill effects, she would consider the berries safe and eat more of them. If the berries were poisonous, hopefully one berry wasn’t enough to kill her.

After a solid ten minutes passed, two notifications suddenly sprang into the air in front of her.

Alice blinked away the notifications and went back to concentrating on her body, trying to figure out if eating the berry had any ill-effects.

After the better part of an hour, she still felt fine. Deciding she had waited long enough, she began ravenously devouring the berries, letting loose after spending a few days not eating.

After eating almost all of the berries off of the first bush, the rumbling in her stomach was finally gone. Instead, she now felt very full. It was the first time she had ever realized being full was such a wonderful feeling, and without realizing it, she smiled a bit to herself.

Alice sighed, realizing that her stomach actually felt a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps she had eaten too much. She took a look around before she decided to sit down, giving herself a small break as a reward for finding food today. Out of curiosity, she popped open her Status Screen, absently thinking about what each Stat actually meant.

Come to think of it, how do stats even work? I mean, on its surface, my [Endurance] Stat seems to raise as a result of me walking, but does that mean I’m getting more resilient against damage? Am I just getting better at ignoring pain and pushing forward? Do I have some sort of HP bar I’m not aware of, and Endurance is raising that?

[Strength] seems to indicate how much physical force someone can exert. But what happens if, for example, I only trained my leg strength for a long period of time? If [Strength] increases the same way [Endurance] does, training should raise my Attributes. However, if I get a point in Strength by training my legs, would each point of [Strength] make my legs stronger, or make my entire body stronger?

Also, what is the average for this world? I guess that based on my performance in gym class compared to the average student, the strength and endurance Stats average for my classmates on Earth would probably be around 80 or 90, but I have no idea how the more 'mental' stats would look at all. And I have no idea what a normal person looks like in this world, either.

Alice shrugged, before realizing that something she had never seen before was present in her Status Screen.

Next to her [Survivor] class, the words ‘level 5 perk available’ had appeared. Frowning, she concentrated on the survivor class for a moment, and suddenly her status screen disappeared, before being replaced with a new set of floating words. Detailed within the words were five different ‘Perks,’ along with various requirements to learn them.

Perks? Alice frowned, taking a closer look at the floating letters in front of her.

How do these Perks work? Alice wondered as she looked over the Perks. She decided to think more carefully about this later, but first, she needed to actually take a Perk. After messing with the Status Screen for a bit, she realized she could only pick one of the Perks, and she was also free to not pick anything and re-open the screen later.

What do I need right now?

While {Food Conversion} actually seemed rather useful because it would require less food for her to gain the same amount of energy, the perk didn’t specify how much of an increase in energy extraction efficiency she would get, and she was hesitant to take a gamble on the skill. If it was a measly ten percent, for example, while it would help, it wouldn’t be that big of a difference, and she would still be left stranded in the wilderness with no idea what she was doing.

Alice would have been willing to gamble on the perk if she had access to food security, especially because she was actually really interested to see if she could learn something else about the System as a result of this. How exactly did this perk work? Did it change the physiology of her stomach or intestines or something, or did it just shrug away the laws of conservation of energy, or did it do something completely different? But right now Alice needed to prioritize her survival and safety over her curiosity.

Learning all of the various ways this dimension shrugged off the laws of physics was something she would have to put on the backburner until she had food security and shelter.

After a while, she decided to, grudgingly, discard {Primal Instinct}. Even though it would definitely be useful to know what areas were dangerous beforehand, the words ‘very slightly’ meant that the effect was probably pretty minor.

Furthermore, she had absolutely no idea what dangers might lie in this world where an RPG system and magic existed. She doubted the perk would be particularly helpful right now.

Besides, right now she was in imminent danger of starving, freezing, or dying of disease. Those were much bigger problems than wild animals right now. She could run from wild animals, but there was no running from malnutrition. {Forestwalking} was discarded for similar reasons.

So then, what was most important? Food, or heat?

Alice really wished she could pick both.

Alice eventually decided to pick {Foraging} and focus on food, because if she had more energy in her body, she would have more energy to make shelter and solve other problems. The strange residual heat left in her chest after her mana baptism was doing some work in keeping her warm right now, and because of that, Alice felt she could put warmth at a lower priority for now. And being less hungry would make it easier to concentrate on other things. This would, eventually, loop back around to help deal with the effects of the freezing cold, because with more strength Alice would have an easier time starting a fire. If she hadn't been so hungry and tired yesterday, she might have had the stamina to keep trying to start a fire using sticks, rather than collapsing from exhaustion during the process and accomplishing nothing.

Alice concentrated on the perk, and after a moment she felt a sort of… ding inside of her head, and then her status screen updated, removing the ‘perk available’ notification. Now, the {Perks} category included {Foraging}.

Alice looked back at the berries she had been eating, and instead of the uneasiness she had felt before, she felt a sort of… relaxed sensation. She had been expecting the Perk to involve something more like an item menu in an RPG game, floating above food and giving her a detailed information box about what was and wasn’t edible. Instead, when she looked at the berries, she now felt anticipation and comfort, letting her know the berries were safe to eat.

Curious, she glanced at the grass below her feet and concentrated on it, before getting a sort of… indistinct feeling of disgust, letting her know that it wasn’t poisonous, but wasn’t edible. She scanned the area around her, concentrating on various random objects, and began to get a better sense how exactly her perk worked. The most complex sensation her perk transmitted to her was when she saw some sort of tree - after concentrating on it, she got the feeling that there might be some sort of food on its branches. When she concentrated on the branches, she saw some sort of nut that she didn’t recognize on the branches, and had a vague urge to roast and then eat the nuts. Mixed into this sensation was a curious feeling of wariness towards the nut, making Alice wonder if her Perk was trying to tell her the nuts were poisonous if they weren’t roasted first.

Since Alice wasn’t done playing with her Perk, she sat back up and started exploring her surroundings to see what other sensations her Perk transmitted to her. She found a different kind of berry bush hidden behind some trees a short walk away. Unlike the first berries she had encountered, this one gave her the chills, and she felt a distinct sense of fear when she concentrated on the berries. These berries were probably poisonous.

Alice also took the poisonous berries as an opportunity, and compared the ‘poisonous’ sensation of the berries to the ‘poisonous’ sensation given by the nuts growing in the trees. The ‘poisonous’ feeling she had towards the nuts were fairly mild, which probably meant minimal effects. Perhaps it might result in some flu-like symptoms or vomiting, or other problems that were unpleasant but survivable if she was in good condition. The berries gave a much stronger feeling of danger, and Alice guessed she might just die if she ate more than a few of them.

She moved back to the original berry bushes and then gathered several fistfuls, using the front of her pajamas to make a bowl to help her carry the berries. She checked the sky, and found that the sun was approaching its peak. It was a little before noon. She turned to the fallen sticks near her, and began thinking. What she needed right now was the ability to store more food, and she had plenty of branches to work with. She decided to try weaving a crude basket.

She guessed she would need two components to make a basket. One component would be a sort of ‘bottom’ composed of harder branches, and then she would make a circle of branches that she could tie to the bottom. If she could figure it out, she would also make a handle, but even if she only managed to make a crude bowl instead of a fully fledged basket, she would be able to carry much more. That would be good enough for now.

She climbed up one of the trees in the area and began tearing off thinner, still-living branches, making sure to also collect the nuts she had noticed earlier while she was nearby. After she had enough material to work with, she climbed back down and got to work.

First, she stripped off all the miscellaneous twigs and leaves from the branches. Afterwards, she tried to weave the somewhat straight bottom of her basket out of the branches. Her hands felt unwieldy and her fingers were clumsy, but she persisted, trying to assemble a somewhat stable ‘floor’ of branches.

The bottom of the basket fell apart.

Alice tried to weave the branches together.

The basket fell apart.

Alice tried to weave the bottom of the basket together, and the basket once again fell apart, but this time Alice got another point in woodworking out of it.

Alice quickly realized the benefits of having an RPG System boosting her actions. Every single time she got a point in a Skill, she had a slightly better idea what the ‘correct’ way to make a basket was. If she had enough time, she would eventually become a professional at basket weaving even with no teacher, assistance learning, or even though required. Trying the same thing over and over again was still able to benefit her learning and growth.

With one more point in woodworking, she noticed a definite difference. Her fingers felt slightly more nimble and dexterous, and her motions became more fluid. The bottom of the basket took longer to fall apart than before. She looked at her previous clumsy attempts at weaving a basket and felt that something seemed off. However, she couldn’t quite pinpoint what it might be, so she tried again.

Five more failures later, she gained a point in dexterity.

Seven tries after that, she gained her first point in weaving. She began trying to twist the branches into a more circular pattern, feeling that perhaps her method of making the bottom of the basket was wrong from the very beginning.

Sixteen tries later, Alice finally had the beginning of a more regular bowl shape. It was the ugliest bowl Alice had ever seen, but the sides were tilted in a way that would at the very least let her store about a third of a meal’s worth of berries.

In all, her attempts had taken her around three hours of work, but now she could continue to follow the river while having a few light rations. She ate another meal of berries, and then began storing some berries in her makeshift container.

Alice stored her berries and started working on another campfire. This time, without hunger gnawing away at her thoughts, she realized kindling would make starting a fire much easier. After nearly twenty-five minutes of rubbing sticks together, Alice finally managed to light a small campfire, and was rewarded with warmth and another survivor level.

For dinner, she roasted the nuts by dumping them into the fire before using a wet stick to roll them back out of the fire once they were cooked. Afterwards, she let the nut cool down a bit before peeling off the outer shell and then eating. The nuts were oddly spicy, and a nice change of pace from the berries she had been eating all day.

After that, she walked over to the stream and greedily swallowed down several mouthfuls of water. She still wished she had the ability to boil the water, but her shoddy bowl definitely wasn’t watertight. Or fireproof. For now, she would just have to put up with it and hope for the best.

Finally, she began thinking about constructing a shelter to sleep in for the night. She thought it was still three or four hours away from darkness, at least based on the time the sun had set yesterday, but her sense of time in a world without clocks was hazy. Besides, sleeping next to a food source didn’t seem like a bad idea. She would have easy access to breakfast before she started moving again tomorrow.

After a moment, however, she frowned, realizing that other animals probably also fed off of the berries in this area. If lots of animals were present in the area, she might run into a carnivore, which had a high chance of ending badly for her.

After some thinking, she grabbed a burning branch to carry with her and ensure fire-starting would be easier later on, and then continued heading downstream a bit, moving far enough away from the berry bushes that she could move back to them easily, but ensuring animals wouldn’t directly stumble onto her while she was asleep. She quickly re-kindled her fire, placing some stones around the fire to avoid starting a forest fire, and then began trying to figure out how to build a basic shelter.

She had no clue how to construct a shelter out of sticks. If she had animal hides, she figured she could have at least made a really crude tent, but she had nothing but sticks and leaves right now.

“Hmm… I probably can’t construct anything useful out of the sticks in the surroundings, I don’t have logs, I have no way to acquire them, and I don’t have anything to cover any holes in a makeshift tent, even if I manage to make one.” Alice thought about the problem for a while, but she still had no easy way to resolve the problem of freezing to death. Last night she had been so cold that she had woken up much earlier than she meant to, and when she had woken up her limbs were cold and numb. The source of heat behind her heart was enough to keep her alive, but it was still highly unpleasant.

She also had no idea what this planet’s seasons looked like. Assuming this world had seasons, which may or may not be correct. She could very well be about to enter winter, which would suck. And if winter was coming, she wanted a good shelter before the cold really set in.

After thinking about her crude tent some more, Alice realized that the ‘framework’ for a tent might still work. To make a basic shelter, she needed some sort of frame, some way to cover it up, and maybe a bit of luck to keep the mess together. Alice looked around again, and then realized that she was an idiot. The grass in the area around her reached close to her knees when she was standing up in some places. As long as she wove the long grass together, wouldn’t that perfectly cover a frame? If she could build some sort of frame out of sticks or wood or something, she could probably cover it with some sort of grass mat and it would at least keep some of the wind off of her and keep some of the warmth in. It would be good enough for now.

The only problem was that she had no clue how to weave grass together. And she somehow doubted the grass would be as easy to work with as the branches.

Alice spent a minute daydreaming about modern houses. She really wanted to return to modern society and sit inside a warm, insulated house again. Thinking of how well they kept the cold out and kept warmth in made Alice long for sturdy walls, before she shook her head and returned to her current reality.

Sighing, Alice got to work by plucking out several stalks of grass and then trying to tie them together. She had no idea what she was doing, but if she tried random ideas long enough, {Weaving} would bail her out, right? She just needed to keep grinding at it.

However, before she obtained a single point in any of her Skills, she realized that it would be much easier if she just used a stalk of grass to tie together other stalks of grass and then interconnected them… somehow. Possibly by tying together more stalks of grass.

She bunched a handful of grass together and then used some of the thicker stalks of grass to tie them into a bundle. Then she grabbed another handful of grass and did the same, over and over again…

After a bit, she got the second level of the weaving skill and her fingers started to feel a bit more nimble. She continued her boring and monotonous task, weaving together bundles of grass over and over again with an occasional break to grab a few more branches to chuck into the fire.

Two hours later, when she was at the fifth level of weaving, she felt a small change in the way the skill aided her. Before, each level of weaving would increase the dexterity of her fingers when weaving, but they weren’t yet strictly helping her weave so much as making her less clumsy. However, at the fifth level, she felt like her understanding of weaving itself grew a bit. She started to understand more about what made a stable knot of grass stalks. She still wasn’t entirely sure how to connect everything together in the most optimal way, but she was reaching the point where she could at least tie her grass knots to a wooden framework and make a crude outer layer to a tent. After making enough grass knots, Alice grabbed a few fallen branches from her surroundings, drove them into the ground to make a very basic wooden framework, and then began tying stalks of grass between the branches to make a crude shelter.

By the time she was done, the sun had begun to set, and her shelter still wasn’t particularly well put together or stable. However, it would do for the night. Alice eyed the fruits of her labor. The result of three hours of her life…

Three hours of staring at grass and trying to weave it into a wall for a shelter. It was, quite possibly, one of the most tedious things she had done so far. At least it looked like it would retain some warmth and keep the wind off of her. At this point, that was all she was really asking for. Tired and exhausted, she crawled into her crude tent and went to sleep, hoping tomorrow would be better than the last few days had been.