Alice discovered a small hindrance to her plans to get ahold of Battle Points. The Great Bugs War happened on crossroads. The tunnel from there was forking into two branches that hardly differed at first glance. The girl looked hard but failed to see anything distinguishable at the second glance too.

If she were to choose reasonably, Alice would have picked the road with centipedes, just how? The rocks retained no traces. Left or right? Okay, let's get my priorities straight. I want to get the hell out of this place. She really didn’t like staying in the bloody dungeon. Even if the Node #8 wouldn’t move with her, simply having a path to escape this place was nice enough.

Nodding to herself, Alice carved a big ‘X’ on a wall and decisively turned right. Not obvious, but this road was curving upwards. In a few minutes, the girl was sure of her decision. There were no monsters, nice and easy. She walked in an unhurried pace, producing barely any noise, deeply rooted knowledge of how seeded inside the girl. 

The nature of these skills never cleared up despite how hard Alice was brooding on it. She was certain her body was in her complete control, exactly as the painfully born skill implied. Exactly as condensed system's description went, the skill also included every bit of utility, not overloading her mind.

Her spear mastery skill and others were different. As long as Alice was holding the spear, she was presented with options surfacing from unknown corners of her brain.

Well, those options were mainly variations of thrusts.

Stealth skill taught her how to place feet correctly, breath quietly and look around without showing herself. But Alice still had to control her body manually, so to speak, same with her bow mastery skill. Also, point-blank range augmented her accuracy by a lot. Finally, Observation skill helped the girl to nail down behavior patterns, such as how awkwardly the snakeflies had landed on the centipede...

Alice stumbled across two new centipedes as she was rethinking her short battles, noticed them in a relatively long corridor when slightly poking her head out of a corner. She had passed three crossroads to reach this place, always turning right, but she never lost her caution. After all, being cautious and making good use of her skills were two keys Alice was certain would open any door and carry across any bridge in this trial. 

Both are Lvl 2. I will level up after them again. The nature of the whole experience thingy was still bothering her, but Alice couldn’t deny its contribution to her survival rate. Moving extra carefully, the short girl left her spear standing near and nocked an arrow. I am growing accustomed to this, she thought fleetingly and shook her head. They are looking in my direction. About ten and fifteen meters. Shoot the closest first and then…

Alice was planning diligently three steps ahead to the best of her abilities. Then one quick glance to ascertain the monsters didn’t move. They didn’t. Okay. Breath in, breath out. Now be better, the girl instilled herself. No useless anger. No emotions. Just… wait.

“What are they even doing here?” Alice asked herself suddenly with her lips slightly open and silently moving. Her fingers relaxed instinctively, the bowstring weakened.

It wasn’t a computer RPG were monsters were simply arranged smartly to be interesting obstacles between a player and their game objective. One could easily fall into a loop of the game-like thinking ‘oh, they are just a source of EXP and loot’, but Alice’s nerves were stretched too strong after being that close to death just a few hours ago.

So she ordered herself to think deeper and very soon a realization came to her mind. And only one way to check it. This system better not to shut down my skills now, suppressing sudden paranoid fear, Alice stepped into the corridor in the classic archer position.

The centipedes saw her, creaked at once, stirred. The string whipped and the arrow flew.

The monsters ran. One to the girl.

Another… away from.

The arrow traversed the short distance in less than a second.

With a soft ‘tuck’ the arrow burrowed deep into a centipede’s body, to the fletching deep breaking organs and joints on its way. Nevertheless, Alice missed the head as the monster had bent and half-turned. The overgrown bug only twitched and continued an attempt to make a run for its life even with dozens of its legs not functioning.

Screeching, the closer centipede rushed to Alice. Of no matter, the girl gazed over it and discarded as she drew an arrow from her quiver. She nocked it and she launched it!

The second shadow flew straight and almost nailed the escapee to the ground. But no EXP prompt from the system came up despite the girl’s lingering hope. Really, a zombie, she clicked her tongue, thought briefly about the third arrow, but the attacker was too close.

Alice dropped the bow and retrieved her spear, then did something she would have never done normally. She leaped, pushing herself further up with the shaft. As the centipede was angrily clapping and screeching below, the girl felt comfortable and calm. Lacking footing, yet fully in control: she could easily flip once or twice if chose so. Landing softly, she broke into a dash.

The spear drew an arc as Alice menacingly brought it down onto the running centipede, cleaving its head in half with force just before a tunnel’s twist.

[+200 XP +80 BP]

Hearing clacking behind, the girl quickly pulled the spear…

It got stuck. Because of an angle or a crossbar burrowing too deep at a too bad angle, but the spear got stuck. In her panic, Alice did what every clueless combatant would have done in her place: she tried to pull it out again but only dragged the carcass around; with disgust plastered all over her face the girl pushed it then with her heel...

When she realized her last enemy was already on her back, it was too late. Alice let the useless now spear go and hurriedly turned, saw forcipules already swinging and dodged… in her mind. The short girl wasn’t fast enough. A sharp spike-like limb flashed and bit into her left thigh.

Pain spread out as an ink drop in a cup of water. Alice choked on her scream, gasped for air. The monster advanced, slashing with its natural weapons left and right and she drew back clumsy, every step bringing new waves of viscous agony.

Weapon, I need a weapon. The girl finally jerked so the dead centipede laid between her and the attacker and gazed over the sticking spear. She thought of using a sword again, but her hands reached out to a quiver and armed themselves with two arrows.

It’s like two little spears, Alice got distracted by wild speculation. Right, wait for me, she silently taunted the hesitating centipede as the pain was somewhat subsiding. In fact, nice numbness took its place…

It struck her – Oh no! – in the process of her knee failing her, bending over on its own. She felt nothing when it crashed on the stone floor but heard a crunch. Her eyes imprinted the monster twisting in the arc. It opened its jaws and claws and then jumped.

Alice lifted the arrows in a strange serenity, watching the world rapidly coloring into white. She bid her time, lingered through unending fractions of a moment and drove the arrows down like two daggers.

The forcipules pierced her shoulders first; only the girl’s lips twitched and a short moan escaped for she had no breath to cry.

One arrow dug into a cloudy eye-orb next, another punctured its skull. In the last dying struggle, the claws contracted around the girl’s right wrist, gripped like a press, rip off the skin, rent muscles, crumbled bones.

[+200 XP +80 BP]