If only James had gotten a Class right when her first Tutorial started, she’d surely be the strongest human around with the number of near-death experiences she had gone through. Struggling to get out from under the pile of goblins, James waited for her stamina to refill. With all her buffs in place, she had some pretty impressive stats.

Her perception stat wasn’t as ludicrous now, at least compared to the rest of them, though strength still lagged behind. She was neither naturally strong nor had a Class with a disposition towards it. James could assign it some of her Free Stats, at this point she had more free stats than three of her allocated stat categories. She just didn’t want to do anything with them until she was surer of what the stats signified and how they affected each other. So for now, the free stats remained untouched.

Finally, with a bit more effort, she was out. While before she had begun going to the river to wash off fish guts, and then to run away from the goblins, now she had to clean herself off from all the goblin gore. At this point, her shirt was more purple-red than whatever color it originally was; she really didn’t remember what it used to be.

Moving at a much more leisurely pace than before, though really any pace would be more leisurely than that full out adrenaline-fueled sprint, James tried to compare herself to that girl that received that first System integration notification. She had changed.

That first day, she almost had a panic attack about the amount of people surrounding her at the Tutorial Area and heading to their first quest. She was so overwhelmed she managed to get herself into this mess of a Tutorial. James had no questions in her mind about what was supposed to happen to her here.

While the first Tutorial had appeared to be tranquil and academics-focused, this one was filled with conflict, monsters, and attacks. The people here were supposed to suffer and prove their mettle. She just hadn’t fit the bill. But circumstances must, and here she was, stepping out of a pile of dead bodies, monster or not, and going about her day.

It even gave her some perverted joy that she had managed to subvert that blue Pact alien’s obvious goal of killing her. It might have been a government employee, but it wasn’t a wonder it was overseeing Tutorials. With that amount of subtlety, it wouldn’t go far in politics.

Scrubbing herself off, she went back to the clearing, happy that it at least wasn’t the morning’s biting air surrounding her. Before her experiments she was smart enough to already clean off some fish from the morning, so she knew she would have breakfast even if she failed. Luckily, she had stored it before starting to experiment, so when she got to it, it wasn’t pieces of exploded fish.

Eating her raw Sharped Carp- it wasn’t as good now that she wasn’t famished- she considered what she could do. Her health hadn’t dropped below that critical 10% that would make her incapable of reacting as fast as normal, but she still had two or so days before her health points were full again. And she didn’t particularly want to experiment again with her Mana Blast after the goblin attack.

She could try and explore the area; that would at least still beneficial while not being too strenuous of an activity. Another plus in the idea’s favor was that it wasn’t boring.

An unanticipated side effect of being alone in the wild with no electronics was that she was left with very little to do. While her Mana Sense introduced a whole new view of the world to her, there was little she wasn’t already familiar with in the surrounding area. And since it was strictly mana based and couldn’t really add to her perception abilities beyond that, her hours of activity were still effectively controlled by the sun. And once it was down, she was in her shelter, counting sheep. And getting bored.

The meal done and the river water dried off, she set out into the forest. Her mana reservoir was full again, so if she somehow got into another weird situation again, she could defend herself.

Getting out of the area she already knew, she got herself in a walking rhythm, one foot in front of the other and her eyes scanning the world. The scanning was a bit superfluous with her Mana Perception alerting her to all the life around her, but Jean Paul and Louis had hammered it into her. It always paid to pay attention. Not to mention that she was out here to scout. And though animals didn’t stay in one place, plant life did. If she was going to be familiar with the forest, she better know where the important plants were.

Two hours of continuous hiking later, she began to notice a change in mana. Normally the air wasn’t the full of it, but over the past quarter of an hour, she had begun to notice that the area was almost getting infected with a pale-green mana mist. It didn’t feel harmful, though she did have to question if she would know if it was, and she let herself wade into it.

Gradually it became more and more concentrated as the forest floor started to go up in an incline. Checking up on her stats, she noticed that the increase in mana density even seemed to have a positive effect, increasing all her regeneration attributes. Finally, she saw a cave entrance coming up that seemed to be the mana mist’s epicenter. Or at least she assumed so because of how thick the green was in it.

It resembled what she always pictured a bear cave would be like, with the entrance mossy and covered with tree roots. The rocks and ground around it were a deep brown, and, despite being in the sun, cool to the touch. It was that same type of feeling as the infirmary walls back in the clearing. Another weird aspect was how little animals she could register in the area using her Mana Sense. Her sphere hadn’t decreased in size with the new mana mist stimuli, so she knew that they weren’t just out of her perception.

Peering around her and breathing in the damp cave air, James went into the dark.

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