Chương 10: Chapter Ten: The Case Against Sensibility

There were seven notifications waiting at the corner of her vision. She had been ignoring them for the entirety of the fight as she couldn't afford distraction. Alice sat back in the marsh grass, away from the Boggart's corpse, and looked through them. Damage received. Condition created: [Lacerated] (minor). Well, that was to be expected. Additionally, there were some notifications of passive skills being used, like [Drop Safely], [Notice Detail], and [Sprint]. And then there was [Strike]. [Strike] Lv.

1 The deliberate delivery of force to a target with one's hand, a weapon, or a blunt instrument. One of the basics of physical combat. The creation of a clear combat skill was probably the best thing to come out of that fight. She felt great relief that it was doable, although the fact that she could gain combat skills only while in combat was… unfortunate. She had leveled up as well, which put her at Level 5, finally.

In stories, there were usually some perks that came up when reaching certain levels, like 5 or 10 or 20. But she couldn't see anything special here. Maybe there was something to be had at Level 10, or maybe there was nothing at all as this wasn't that type of System. Only time would tell. What she took her time pondering on, however, was: Main Quest: [Alice's Adventures in Wonderland] has advanced.

The last time she had seen the Main Quest advance, she had just arrived in this world and fought with a Flicker demon for the first time. Could the Main Quest be related to combat? But that didn't feel right, especially when considering the name of the quest and the feel she got from the System. She had read the book, of course. It was quite popular back home… though now, that she thought about it, she should check out the book in libraries here.

It was written in the 19th century, she was quite sure, but did not know the exact year of publication. Still, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. A girl falls through something she didn't choose and wakes up in a world with its own internal logic and absolutely no interest in making sense. A funny analogy to her situation, perhaps, but could that be all there was to it? In the book, things kept changing shape.

The various entities trying to harm Alice, such as the Queen's court, the Duchess's kitchen, the playing-card soldiers, never quite managed it. That Alice persisted, largely because she found the situation more exasperating than frightening, and at the end she wakes up under a tree. It was not, as templates went, the most comforting thing she could have been handed.

But it was honest about the rules, and the arbitrariness of the rules, and the fact that surviving them was mainly a matter of refusing to be properly overwhelmed by how strange everything was. Strangely appropriate for Alice Darling's personality as well. But it made too much sense. It fit too well, and too simply. Everyone who falls down the rabbit hole becomes something. The question is what. Alice read the explanation for the Main Quest again and then looked at the body of the Boggart a few feet away.

She frowned. She had a suspicion of what this meant, and she didn't like it. She shook her head. It was too early to guess on the mysteries of the System. Alice took out clean cloth and water from her bag and began to clean her wounds. Luckily, there were only surface-level, but they hurt, and she really didn't need an infection. As she did that, she called out the Status screen.

STATUS Name: Alice Darling Race: Human (Common) Class: Novice Thief Level: 5 (Rank: Ignota) Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Title: Chosen One Conditions Malnourished · Minor Anaemia · Persistent Cough · Anathema (Alien) · Bruised · Lacerated (minor) Attributes Vigour Lv. 3 (9/30) Acuity Lv. 6 (22/60) Skills Tier 2 (Uncommon): RESTRICTED Tier 1 (Common): [Arithmetic] Lv. 3 · [Advertise] Lv. 2 · [Bluff] Lv. 3 · [Britannian Language] Lv. 2 · [Convince] Lv.

3 · [Disguise] Lv. 1 · [Drop Safely] Lv. 1 · [Feign Ignorance] Lv. 3 · [Forage] Lv. 3 · [Francian Language] Lv. 1 · [Garden] Lv. 1 · [Hide] Lv. 1 · [Lie] Lv. 3 · [Local Slang] Lv. 1 · [Maintain Alias] Lv. 2 · [Map Building] Lv. 2 · [Mending] Lv. 1 · [Notice Detail] Lv. 3 · [Observe] Lv. 7 · [Pick Pocket] Lv. 1 · [Prusijan Language] Lv. 1 · [Reading and Writing] Lv. 2 · [Recall] Lv. 2 · [Silent Step] Lv. 1 · [Spot Tail] Lv. 1 · [Sprint] Lv. 1 · [Squeeze Through] Lv. 1 · [Strike] Lv. 1 · [Tailoring] Lv.

1 · [Threat Detection] Lv. 3 · [Vault] Lv. 1 · [Weaving] Lv. 1 Quests Main Quest: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Sub-Quest: Find the White Rabbit Sub-Quest: Off With Her Head The attributes were the part she lingered on. 9/30 Vigour was the number of someone who had pressed her luck for too long. She had even worse Vigour than when she woke up in the surgery freshly from a murder attempt. She felt mostly fine, however, as most of the Vigour had been used up during her practice of active skills.

So perhaps lower Vigour did not imply that she was physically bad? Like a character in a game, it only implied how much she had left in her before it was over? Questions for later. The main issue she realized was that she had not used a single active skill in that fight. [Sprint] would have definitely been useful, and yet… She'd need to get into the habit of using more skills soon. She closed the Status screen and looked at the lantern. That was the part still bothering her.

Not that it had worked, she was very pleased that it had worked, but why. She'd held the flame toward the Boggart when it first came through the reeds and it had come anyway, straight through, not even blinking, even though animals were usually at least a bit afraid of fire. Or maybe she was the type of naive girl who had never dealt with wild animals and was basing too much on movies. Regardless… When the casing had grazed its flank, it had screamed. The flame had done nothing. The casing had done that.

Alice turned the lantern over. It had iron sides. When she had bought it, the chandler had been clear about it, horn-sided were the cheaper ones; iron-sided were the better ones. They supposedly lasted longer. She had bought the more expensive one, despite the price, because she knew she was going to get a lot of use out of it. As for why that had made such a difference in the fight? She had some ideas. Boggarts were infamous in British folklore.

Not prominently, as she was working from a hospital bed memory of a children's encyclopaedia and one rainy afternoon in a library at age eleven, but they were there. Household spirits. Trouble-makers. Fey-adjacent in almost every version. And iron, in nearly all the fey traditions, was a terrible weapon. For the Boggart, it apparently burnt. That seemed a reasonable enough explanation. But the fact that she only survived this encounter through sheer luck… Because she had thought to buy the more expensive lantern…

It really pissed her off. Alice looked at the knife next. Bone handle, yes. But a steel blade from the look of it. Steel was an iron alloy. Whether that was enough to make use of it she genuinely didn't know, but it was a considerably better hypothesis than nothing, and she would rather go into the next fight with a theory than without one. She looked at her Vigour again. Then toward the gate, very far away and in the direction of home and safety. She should go back.

9/30 was not a comfortable number by any measure. She was scratched and bruised and had been on her feet in a cold marsh since before sunrise. The sensible thing, the thing that followed obviously from looking at that number, was to pick up the basket of dropped strawberries and the lantern and the last of the bread and walk to the gate. She sat in the marsh grass and did not move. It had been occurring to her, with increasing frequency, that recklessness was a relatively new quality.

Cora had not been reckless with cancer. She had been, if anything, the precise opposite: deliberate, managed, and scheduled. Not because she was frightened of it, exactly, but because the waiting had been the worst part. Eight months of knowing something was probably coming but with a small hope that it might not, if only she held on a little bit longer … that had been the only thing she could do. There was no fight, no obstacle, no wall she could jump over or push against. Just the management.

Just the slow administration of a narrowing set of options, and the months stretching ahead full of things she was going to have to sit still for. She had not liked waiting. Not even a little. This world handed her immediate problems with immediate feedback and no waiting at all, and she had found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she preferred it immensely. The Vigour loss was real. The level-ups were real.

She had done something and the world had noticed and said so, and the fact that the thing in question involved being assaulted by a creature with too many fingers was, apparently, acceptable to her. Death was presumably still coming. But she did not have to wait for its scheduled time. Reckless, she thought, or just finally going toward something instead of sitting with it. Probably both. She rested some more, ate her lunch, drank from the flask, and stood up, eyes focused deeper into the marsh.