The rest of the day passed uneventfully, with Alice occasionally going to get a few more tree branches to peel whenever the fire started to run low on fuel, but she mostly stayed near the fire and occasionally ate some of her berries. They weren’t very filling, but they were far better than nothing.

She spent the night huddled under her grass blanket inside of her cave, cold but alive. When she woke up, she realized that sometime during the night the cloud had moved away and the sun had returned. Alice was glad to see sunlight, but she felt uneasy after her close encounter with hypothermia.

After deciding she needed to eat something besides berries today, she began carefully making her way around, periodically checking the surroundings for food. She found more of the strange nuts that she had roasted a few days ago and put them into her basket, as well as some more dead branches that could be turned into firewood. Finally, she found a weird plant that looked like a fist-sized glob of wax. She had no clue what it was, but {Foraging} claimed it was edible, so she rinsed it off in the river and ate it. It tasted like cardboard, but hopefully it would make up some of the nutrients she didn’t get from berries and nuts.

She carried everything back to her cave and stripped the wet outer bark from the trees, gaining a point of [Dexterity] in the process. Afterwards, she turned a quarter of her firewood into a small blaze, roasted the nuts, and had a late lunch of roasted nuts along with the rest of her berries. After eating, she was still hungry, but at least the worst of the hunger pangs were gone.

Alice needed to decide whether to stay in the cave and try to survive the winter, or keep following the river and hoping to find civilization. It was a decision that could determine her survival. Her initial instinct was that she should keep following the river – after all, if there were more people around, her odds of surviving would be better if this was the modern era.

However, recent events and deeper thinking had caused her to wonder if that was just wishful thinking. As much as Alice longed for human company, it was entirely possible that she wouldn’t find civilization for a long while. And what would happen if she did find civilization?

As of right now, she was worse than a bedraggled refugee - she had no money, if there was even a currency system in this world. She had no ability to defend herself, no connections, and no reason for anyone to help her unless they felt sympathy for her. Frankly speaking, if the rest of this world had grown up with the System, right now she might also be as weak as a kitten compared to the average person, meaning that her ability to work in any useful capacity was questionable. Which meant trading labor for food would also be difficult.

She felt very uncomfortable placing all of her hopes on the kindness of strangers, especially if winter was approaching. If she found a village and they just considered her a useless mouth to feed, why in the world would they give her supplies and help her survive? And even more problematic was travelling barefoot through the snow - her feet were already scratched up, and although she had dodged frostbite so far, she seriously doubted that she would keep all of her toes if she tried to continue travelling through an unknown amount of snow.

On the other hand, if she stayed in the wilderness, she had no thick clothing, so staying warm when she wasn’t near the fire would be hard, even though she could warm up back in the cave. Wild animals might attack her, she still had no clue how to use magic despite numerous failed attempts, food was unreliable, and water she knew she could trust was a luxury instead of a staple.

However, she also had her cave, which was able to keep the worst of the elements off of her while she slept at night, and a way to obtain firewood, even if it was somewhat time consuming and labor intensive. While it required a lot of time and exposure to danger, her [Survivor] class was also helping her get the tools she needed to survive in this world, and would probably continue to do so as long as she kept levelling up.

She tossed her options around in her head, weighing her options as she tried to figure out which option had a higher chance of keeping her alive. Finally, Alice decided to stay in this area for now. It was a difficult decision: she had only been here for a few days, and she was already starting to feel lonely without being able to see other people and talk to them. However, continuing to search for civilization when she had thought it was spring or summer was completely different from trying to find civilization while travelling through piles of snow. As counterintuitive as it seemed, Alice thought she actually had a higher chance of surviving in the wilds right now since she had no clue where a city might be or how helpful it would be to find one.

Having made her decision, she began gathering more branches, this time not bothering to peel the outer ring of wet bark off since it would dry out from being near the fire anyway. As long as she was careful to avoid setting her stack of firewood alight it seemed like a workable plan.

Alice looked at her pajamas again. They were somewhat thin for this weather, and didn’t do a very good job of keeping heat in. If she could find some way to replace them, it would be ideal. Could she make some sort of clothing out of leaves? If she found a way to weave them together it might do a better job of keeping in heat. However, she discarded the idea after a bit. She didn’t have the supplies or {Weaving} skill required to pull it off, and the leaves might not last through the winter.

Alice sighed and returned to the camp, then sat next to the fire and tried to think positively. At least for now, she was warm and not too hungry. She found comfort in the small victories right now. She had a cheery blaze going inside of her little cave, and a blanket of grass to help keep the warmth in. Her feet hurt from getting scratched up walking through the wilderness, but at least she had an extra bit of firewood and a way to gather food. For today, at least, that was enough.

* * *

The next day, the snow had at least melted enough that she could see hints of green peeking through the snow again. She decided today was a good day to restock on food.

The nuts she had been roasting would probably keep through winter with no problems, so it was also a good idea to store some in advance, if she could. Nuts didn’t go bad after being picked, at least to the best of her knowledge. Furthermore, the shell of the nuts were poisonous, which meant that a good portion of the local wildlife probably avoided eating it. Therefore, she decided to gather as many nuts as she could today and store them for later.

Perhaps I could bury them in the ground, to make sure wildlife doesn’t get at it? After all, the nuts must have evolved the poisonous shell to avoid getting eaten by something, which means that whatever that something is, it probably also evolved some countermeasure for the poison… But I don’t have a way to plan around that right now. Alice sighed, realizing that she was once again stuck in a position where she didn’t know enough, and could only hope for the best.

Deciding she needed to get a move on, she started searching her surroundings, and managed to find several more baskets of nuts. She carted them back to her shelter, before she began to bury the nuts in the soil. The ground was hard, probably because it was still half-frozen, but with some effort she managed to use a few sticks to dig an untidy little food storage hole. Then, she covered the area up with soil again and stuck her digging tool into the ground nearby, to make sure she didn’t lost track of her food reserve.

Even though it was fairly obvious where she had buried her harvest, at least after burying it, the local wildlife would struggle to steal her food before she noticed and scared the animals off.

By the time she had finished her eighth haul of nuts and her third haul of firewood, evening had once again come.

 

* * *

The next day, the snow had almost completely melted, and today she could see much more ground than snow. However, the leaves on the trees were finally starting to turn reddish-brown, somehow having done so during the few hours she had been asleep.

Alice was increasingly convinced that, although the trees of this world looked like the ones at home, they were some sort of species of tree she had either never heard of, or was unique to this world.  The trees in this area were, strangely enough, still identifiably trees, and the fact they looked like the ones at home were baffling. However, Alice was pretty sure tree leaves on Earth needed way more than one night to go from green leaves to red and brown leaves.

Of course, the leaves turning brown also confirmed that she had probably entered this world right before winter, unless the leaves of this world changed colors for totally different reasons.

Another piece of bad news was that Alice had noticed a critical flaw in her grass blanket that she had failed to plan for. The grass was withering. It was a natural consequence of it being pulled out of the ground, and the grass hadn’t finished withering yet, but it definitely wouldn’t provide the warmth throughout winter that Alice needed. In hindsight, this problem was quite obvious, but Alice had somehow completely missed it while planning, possibly due to how desperate she had been when she first arrived here.

Alice decided that, if possible, she wanted to make a replacement of some sort. And while she was at it, she also needed more firewood, in case it got harder to find later in the winter, or in case she needed to focus on other problems in the future. While she was at it, perhaps she could also close the opening to her cave a little? That would help fix the problem of her grass blanket withering, since if the entire cave was warm she wouldn’t desperately need a grass blanket anymore.

She tried to think of a way to cut down trees for bigger chunks of wood, but couldn’t come up with any ideas. If she had an axe or something, she could at least cut down some of the thinner trees and make some sort of rudimentary log wall to cover up the entrance. However, she had no tools, and wasn’t really sure how to make any.

Alice sighed, and glanced at her [Magic] attribute again. If she could just figure out how magic worked, maybe it would provide a solution. Sadly, she had absolutely no clue what she was doing, and no matter what she tried she couldn’t make Magic work. She would probably have to find a teacher in order to get somewhere with magic, because her attempts at ‘sensing a muscle that wasn’t there’ and ‘pushing energy out’ and 'meditating to find her inner core' seemed to be doing absolutely nothing.

Alice sighed, and went back to gathering smaller branches and nuts. At least there was still available firewood in the surroundings. She had to stock up as much as she could for this world’s winter.

* * *

When Alice woke up the next day, she felt cold, and her forehead was much hotter than usual. Her skin was also starting to swell in strange ways, especially on her arms and legs, and there was a piercing pain in her eyes. She quickly assumed it was some sort of disease, so she grabbed the {Microbe Resistance} Perk from the [Survivor] class.

Afterwards, gritting her teeth and doing her best to ignore the discomfort in her body, she grabbed her pointy stick and some of the more dry branches, before she made her way to the river. Now that she was able to start fires properly, she would be able to get at least a few fish meals in before winter. Furthermore, even if her knowledge of it was rudimentary, she knew that using smoke to cook meat and fish would help preserve the food. If she ate a diet of only nuts and random plants over the winter, she would definitely suffer from various nutrient deficiencies. Variety in her meals was important, and this might be one of her last chances to get fish from the river if it froze over during the winter.

Sitting next to the shallow part of the river as the disease and her Perk waged war in her body was uncomfortable, but Alice managed to put up with it and keep fishing. Then, ignoring the piercing pain in her eyeballs, along with the strange discomfort and lack of sensitivity in her fingers and hands, she waited near the shallow part of the river for some fish to come.

She had learned a great deal from her initial failures at catching and cooking a fish, and within an hour she successfully speared her first prey for the day. Then, she found another relatively sharp stone and made a second pointy stick. Although it was much less pointy than the first, it didn’t need to be as sharp as her hunting stick.

She pulled the dead fish off of her spear, and, after much fumbling, managed to slit open its belly and pull out what she figured were probably the intestines. She had no proficiency in descaling fish, but she could just eat around it. Afterwards, she slid the fish onto her second pointy stick and then propped it between two larger stones nearby, starting a fire underneath the fish and making sure to keep the sticks high enough to avoid letting the fish catch on fire. Alice hoped this was how people smoked fish.

At the very least, if she messed up her {Foraging} perk should tell her that it was no longer safe to eat. So the worst case scenario was wasting some time, instead of poisoning herself to death.

After another hour, Alice had successfully speared two more fish and had turned over the ‘smoking stick’ a few times to (hopefully) help the process even out a bit. Even better, Alice realized that the uncomfortable swelling and pain in her arms and legs, as well as the feverish sensation and pain in her eyes had already started to fade away. At this rate, within a day or less she wouldn’t be ill any more. {Microbe Resistance} was quickly paying off the Perk slot she had spent to acquire it.

She slowly ran her hands over her arms and legs, and realized that the slight swelling in her arms and legs was already starting to disappear. While she had been nervous about how much her Perk would protect her, this seemed to guarantee that she would be at least moderately safe from sickness and disease, which was welcome news. She started humming a little tune as she turned back to her fishing, thinking that it was about time something went well.

Finally, a few hours later, she noticed something far more odd than a fish drift into her corner of the river.

It was a book. The title was in an entirely foreign script, and Alice had no clue what it said, but it still told her several things.

First, there is, or was, something intelligent enough to write books using some sort of written code upstream - even though she had been travelling downstream ever since she arrived in this world. Alice felt irritated at the idea she had been heading in the wrong direction, but at least it confirmed that if she followed the river, she should be able to find civilization.

She had no idea whether this world’s civilization would be hostile or helpful, but at the very least it was comforting to know for sure that she wasn’t alone in the world. She had been trying to push the thought away, but the thought of wandering this world alone forever, with no human contact ever again, was terrifying. The knowledge that, eventually, she would be able to find other intelligent life forms was like a cup of hot chocolate on a cold day.

The second thing she knew was that she had no flipping clue what the book said. This meant that she didn’t have any sort of auto-translate function added onto her {Outworlder} perk. Still, she dutifully flipped through the pages of the book, and noticed that all of the pages were still relatively intact, despite the fact that it had been in the stream for an unknown length of time. In fact, the moment she had lifted it out of the water, the water slid off of it without leaving any indication that it had been there in the first place. That meant that whoever had made the book had somehow made the paper waterproof.

Alice had no clue whether this was accomplished via technology or magic. Since Alice had no clue how magic worked, she was still working entirely on guesses for how or what Mages looked like in this world.

There was also another bright side, which was that her status screen had {English (Language Proficiency)} listed as one of her skills. That meant that, with practice, she could probably pick up whatever language this book was written in, which would be critical when it came to communicating with the locals. Alice briefly wondered whether language skills differentiate between written and spoken language. Alice’s Status Screen only had the{English} listed, meaning that the System didn’t differentiate between reading and speaking the language. Then, Alice frowned. The System didn’t seem to have any sort of supernatural awareness of what skills she had possessed back home, so ‘written English’ might just not be listed in her Perks yet. She had talked out loud a few times after coming to this world, but she hadn’t tried writing anything yet…

She tried writing a few random sentences into the dirt with a stick, but didn’t pick up a {Writing} skill or anything of the sort. For now, she would take that as a light confirmation that language skills didn’t differentiate between written and spoken language. Which was a weird thought – was everyone on this planet literate as long as they had functioning eyes and the ability to speak a language? It would be hilarious if she stumbled across a stone age civilization with a higher literacy rate than a developed country on Earth.

Wait a minute… Come to think of it, I was able to read my Status Screen before the System had figured out what the English language was. What?

She pulled up her status screen, which displayed all of her attributes in nice, easily legible Arabic Numerals and English words.

But the System hadn’t known what language she was proficient in when she first arrived in this world. When she had just arrived on this world, her {Language Proficiency} had looked like a glitched-out error message. In other words, the System did not recognize the English language and had struggled to make sense of it. And yet, somehow, it had still displayed her entire status screen in a language it did not understand.

Alice struggled to comprehend what that meant, or how that was even possible in the first place. A few minutes later, Alice’s head started to hurt. That just didn’t make sense, did it? She could put aside the fact that the System had managed to figure out the English language in a day or two – while it was an unreasonably high learning speed, given what else she had seen the System do, learning a language in less than a week seemed downright normal in comparison. However, she had no clue how the System could make a Status Screen for her to read in English without understanding English.

She sat down and began to think, trying to figure out how these two seemingly contradictory facts could both be true at the same time.

There was a logical explanation somewhere, she just knew it. She thought about it. Very hard. She continued thinking…

Eventually, Alice slammed her head into the rock she was using to smoke her fish, just to make sure her brain was still working properly. If an outsider had been observing this moment, they probably would have pointed out that anyone randomly banging their head against a rock for seemingly no reason probably wasn’t all that sane to begin with. Fortunately, there was no such person nearby.

Alice lapsed into twitching as she rubbed her head. “All right, what does that actually tell me?”

Alice thought long and hard about the subject, before finally arriving at a conclusion.

"First, from what I know, the System is obviously capable of interacting with my thoughts as well as my physical body, at least on some level – otherwise, it would be impossible for it to do things like improve my willpower and give me hints about how to properly start a fire and make a basket. However, it seems hard for anything to able to communicate with me without understanding what I’m saying. Rather, this information is directly conflicting with itself, as far as I can tell. It’s like saying someone can speak and read English perfectly, but doesn’t understand the language at all – it almost seems like a definition error or something. So, maybe the System is somehow communicating directly with me without using language at all, or something?” Alice frowned. It was her best guess for now, at least.

“Also, a humanoid intelligence, if they were powerful enough to recalibrate my physical body without me noticing, read my thoughts, and watch over every second of my life while presumably doing the same for every other sapient intelligence on this planet, probably shouldn’t take several days trying to figure out what the English language is even though I think in the language, know exactly what the language is called, and don’t know any other languages. Which makes me wonder if the System is intelligent at all, because given the seemingly godlike abilities the System has thus far demonstrated, it doesn’t seem to make sense for them to be so bad at learning the name of the English Language. That feels more like an automated process stumbling over its feet, although I could be mistaken in my assumptions.” Alice shrugged. It was her best guess about the nature of the System for now, although she definitely needed more information to confirm or deny her assumptions.

Most of her reasoning was made based on rather loose assumptions. The biggest thing Alice could think of that made her theory likely to be correct was the fact that she couldn’t conceive of a human communicating without understanding their own communication at all, but a computer program did that all the time. In some sense, that was what most computer programs were doing anytime they functioned – a program was essentially long string of code telling a program how to do something and defining all of those ‘somethings.’ It was also why computer codes were hilariously finicky, and broke if even a tiny bit of syntax was wrong, while a human reading a language could usually work around a few minor grammatical errors and still figure out what they were hearing or reading.

However, Alice tried her best to remind herself that she didn't have enough information yet. She could be misunderstanding something, or totally wrong. However, it was an interesting train of thought to pursue.

Had… had the System just given her an attribute point for concluding it probably wasn’t intelligent? It did make sense, at least in some ways – she had followed a fairly specific chain of thinking and logic in order to arrive at this conclusion, after all. Still, the System rewarding her for calling it dumb was quite amusing. She tried to feel out the changes caused by gaining one [Intelligence], since it was her first time gaining a point in that Stat, and realized that her thoughts were, perhaps, just a tiny bit faster and clearer than before. Her memory was also the tiniest bit better, and she was able to remember things a bit more clearly than moments earlier. However, it was fairly difficult to feel out the changes in a bigger and more concrete way, and the differences were slight enough that they could also be attributed to the placebo effect.

Alice shook herself out of her thoughts, and refocused on the book she had found. With the book, she might be able to pick up a language skill as well. She needed to finish catching and smoking her fish, but later on, she would have a book to investigate! Regardless of what the book was about, it would definitely be nice to have something else to focus on during her time here. If she was lucky, the book might have useful information about this world, and she would also get the ability to communicate with people if Language Skills worked the way she thought they did.

Alice got back to fishing. Less than ten minutes later, more things started floated across the patch of river Alice was fishing in. A few fragments of wood drifted by. Then a piece of cloth, that she couldn’t determine the use for but quickly ran over to snag. Maybe it could be made into clothes later on. Then some bruised purple and red round things that looked sort of like giant berries, but her {Forager} perk stated, in no uncertain terms, that eating it would be the worst, and last, mistake she ever made.

And finally, a horribly mangled human corpse floated downriver. She couldn’t tell what the gender of the person had been – male or female, it was hard to tell in this state. It looked like it had been tossed over and over in the river until it resembled a rag dunked in acid instead of a human corpse. Most notably, it looked like the heart had been carved out, although at this point it was hard to tell whether it had been dug out by a wild animal or a human.

Alice stifled a scream, lurching away from the river and feeling nauseous. She could have tried to stick around, either to scavenge more supplies or figure out what had happened to this person, but she had no clue if whatever had killed the man was nearby, possibly hunting for another meal. Something felt wrong here, and she didn't want to die trying to figure out what it was.

She immediately hurtled over to the fire she was using to smoke the fish and threw dirt on it to put it out, before grabbing her fish and erasing any evidence that anyone had been here. She had no idea what had killed this person, be it wild animal, human, or something else entirely, but she wanted to be as far away from it as possible.

She grabbed her new cloth and the book, and moved her way back into her cave and hid for the rest of the day, anxiously watching the surroundings for any sign of something or someone hunting her down. She waited for hours with nothing happening, until finally, she drifted off to a fitful sleep, startling awake at the smallest noises throughout the night.

Even until that morning, nothing came.