Observation, level up.

One of her five precious skill points vanished just like that.

[Observation: 2 -> MAX]

So this is the limit, Alice deduced and attempted to view the ants with new eyes...

A-a-and they seemed to get off from a clone factory's conveyor all the same. Fortunately, even if the system failed the girl, her own math skills and probability theory didn't. From eight... to ten of them there. Plus say three loafing around. Way above her head, Alice confessed to herself calmly. But the system wanted her to take them on. Even the girl herself knew she had to take them on, or what else? Run blindly into the unknown? Or wait for the situation to resolve itself until her body succumb to drowsiness and fatigue in the middle of the full of monsters dungeon?

Or until a squad of giant bugs marched by and ate her alive as a midday snack. Alice ideated with strange clarity born through her understanding of just how little odds she had, almost self-hypnotized to maintain calmness. 

Bow, level up. Spear, level up.

Tickling at the ends of synapses, tides and falls at the very edge of perceptiveness. And then the breath of her body became distinct, precise. Purposeful. Concepts flowed in, took the empty places of her brain, rooted deep to connect, link, reorganize. Create knowledge, teach experience, growth the flourishing forest full of branches of knows and leaves of hows.

[Bow mastery: 1 -> 2 (2 SP)]
[Spear mastery: 2 -> 3 (3 SP)]

I see now. Upping spear from 2 to 3 also took two skill points, while observation and bow required only one. Mastery types have a growth factor. Alice broke into a smile when an illuminating moment passed, looked down, closed and opened the fist. The pain was nearly gone, just as scars. A few things about her the most important Skill just became clear to her, and a plan popped out from it.

But one glance in the cave full of monster ants and the fear resurfaced all the same. The heart fastened its beats and drops of sweat appeared on the girl's forehead as she tried to visualize this plan of hers, imagine herself fighting the monsters again.

She couldn't. Clack, clack, the ants were running in the cave while Alice was standing just behind the corner having no strength in her limbs to move or even stop nervous tremors in the fingers.

This kind of fear... was the first in her entire life. Once, she was lying in a hospital, very, very sick, sleepy and in pain. Dying, even. Her parents were there, her two older brothers and she was young, so young the concept of death was so distant and vague. Once, she heard wolves howls, saw from a hill a pack crossing a river under the light of stars and Moon. Her dad was near back then and she trusted him, in him and their rifles. With fear, excitement rose in her tiny body when grey proud beasts reflected in her sparkling eyes.

One hour, long as days, sufficed to purge ignorance of youth. Alice was alone now, she lacked the support of family and even more so the innocence of a child. Lacked time to nurture something as a replacement, something mature and firm. Something...

Whoosh.

The air stirred. Magic. Not hers, of course, but from the cave. Where did they go? Alice noticed immediately as she looked, two ants guarding the hole were missing. Inside? They went inside? The girl had somehow missed the moment while spacing out.

Clack, clack, clack, the ants organized into a circle around the narrow passage, stared into the dark. Magic in the dungeon surged subtly, scarcely so Alice's newly sixth sense noticed it only because she was all fired up.

Pause, tense Alice too stopped breathing. And then...

Bang!

A sound of a dull blast shifted pebbles on the floor, lifted a smother of a dusty cloud.

Bang!

The cloud shook and coated the ants in the cave in gray before leisurely settling down. The insects wavered, clicked their mandibles one after another as if communicating. Plop, plop, red dots rained on the stone floor. Alice clenched her hands into fists so tightly her nails pierced the skin and drew blood. 

Safe zone is forming! A bold assumption thundered in her head. Other explanations completely eluded the girl's mind. She needed this safe zone! She only wanted this answer to be true! It didn't substitute the genuine will to fight the monsters, nor added to her maturity, but still... as the last straw to push her into action right here and now, would do.

Plop, plop. Alice glanced down and watched bloody dots noiselessly dissipating in thin blue smoke. Slowly, the short girl touched the right sleeve of her jacket to find it completely dry. She sniffed the air then yet failed to discern the odor of sweat. It seemed to get digested by the dungeon, too. Her lips distorted into a gruesome smile.  

"Okay. Okay. Doesn't matter. System, level up Stealth. Now my plan. Do it." The lips moved soundlessly as Alice assured herself and stepped back into the tunnels.

When preparations were done, the short girl returned. No more ants seemed went into her safe zone and died. The girl gulped and readied her bow.

Swish!

Only the first arrow was hard to shoot. Fear had frozen her blood, dulled the eyes, bent the knees. Her heart had been beating hard in the temples, tum-dum, tum-dum, tum-dum. Every bit of willpower she spent on steading her hands. Until the first arrow flew and then strange, surreal sense of liberation filled her.

Alice grabbed the second arrow clamped in her teeth faster than the stroke crossed the tunnel and a half the cave between her and the largest ant.

[+700 XP +280 BP]

The short girl pulled the bowstring according to skill-induced instinct she consciously aroused and allowed to control her body. The ants clutched their jaws all at once, screeched in chorus. In the split moment, Alice found her next target among them and opened her fingers.

[+400 XP +160 BP]

Two arrows more Alice was clenching in her left hand along with the bow. The ants started to react, to move. Alice chose the easiest, the slowest as her third prey.

[+200 XP +40 BP]

The forth arrow she allowed herself because there was a time to shoot once more, to hit in hope if not to kill, then to injure. The girl didn't even look. Hit-and-run, that was her plan all along. The system didn't confirm, so no kill. Alice ran, turned around the corner, lifted an arrow stuck in the floor crack.

When the first ants showed up this part of the tunnel, the girl was ready.

[+400 XP +160 BP]

Then she ran. Another arrow on her way waiting to be snatched...

[+200 XP +40 BP]

The distance shrunk a little. To convenient zigzag...

[+300 XP +120 BP]

[+500 XP +200 BP]

And again.

[+300 XP +120 BP]

If Alice were a skydiver, then this battle would have been her free fall. There was no fear in falling, only in jumping... or landing. For her, the fear before the jump was already gone and the earth was too far below. Tiny seedling of unhealthy excitement buddled in her blood, adrenalin as its fertilizer.

[+300 XP +120 BP]

Letting the bow fall down, Alice sprinted until a T-shaped intersection, the ants almost chewing her heels. The girl's hand reached out to a certain spot, she jumped forward, turned around and nailed down the closest pursuer with her spear.

[+600 XP +240 BP]

Four left, the girl allowed herself this fleeting thought. She twisted the spear to left and right, stepped back and pulled so harshly it popped out from a corpse embrace with a nasty sound. Alice lunged, just grazed another ant, and stepped back, then again to keep the distance. Almost supernaturally, the spear shot at a circling her little ant twice, piercing its head.

Three left, she counted, ignoring system messages completely, and retreated again. Having committed the place to her memories, she didn't need to look behind and watch where to step. Observation skill at its finest.

Ants weren't smart. They ran at her all at once, but Alice had chosen a narrow tunnel, so they cramped and slowed down. The girl thrust at the bigger, center one lightly, feinting, and it clapped with mandibles onto the air while the spearhead danced away and then slashed at the injured by an arrow on its left.

Two, Alice confirmed almost mechanically, slapped the shaft and it sprang up, just like her Spear mastery hinted it would. She controlled the impulse by painting a circle with the spearhead and then brought it down on the right ant, sinking deep. When the spear stuck inside its insect body just as she expected, the girl forcefully pushed it under the last ant's legs, hindering it as she drew her sword.

When her spear fell on the ground, Alice already stabbed the ant between its jaws. For a moment she stared into black eyes from up-close as the monster froze, dead. One. Zero.

"Huh, huh" Alice panted as she leaned on the wall with an ant's dead body under her legs. The insects indeed turned out to be easy prey. They might run fast, but only in a straight line. Simple feints sufficed to baffle the damn things. Yeah, things, the girl was sure of it now.

 

>Level up!
>Hunter lvl. 3 -> lvl. 4
>+5 Skill Points
>Attributes being adjusted…

 

>Level up!
>###hidden### being adjusted...

 

System doesn't get in a way during a fight, at least...

The third level-up differed from the previous. It didn't bring rejuvenation to the girl, no. The shower of energy washed through her lazily and started to squeeze in when Alice suddenly felt... full. That's when her doubling level-up came. Every cell of her body burst in flaming agony. Alice cried out pitifully and fell down between the killed ants. Two energy flows met and collided.

Through blinding pain the girl could feel as if her whole body transformed into a big balloon, ready to blow up while two spoiled kids were fighting over a pump.

...fuck... didn't tell... it hurts... fuck...