Chương 9: Chapter Nine: Progress, Of a Sort

Alice brushed off what mud and dirt she could from the coat, pointlessly overall, before she continued. She had twenty points of Vigour left and several free hours before her. Now that she knew how to use skills actively, the question was how many she could level, and how much based on practice alone. She prepared herself for a moment.

"Silent Step," she said, out loud, to an empty field. Something shifted. It wasn't very dramatic, just a muffling to her footfalls as she took a step, then two. [Silent Step] – Active. One Vigour point spent. She walked in a small circle for another second, feeling the difference, which was real but subtle, and considerably harder to describe than she'd have liked. The skill then quickly cut out when she stopped maintaining it and she almost flinched at the sound of a twig twisting beneath her feet.

Time to figure out how different two similar sounding skills were.

"Hide," she said, and immediately realized why they were separate skills. [Hide] – Active. Where [Silent Step] reduced her sound, [Hide] seemed to reduce her presence. Like turning down a lamp until the light was barely there. A reed warbler three feet away on a low stem that had been watching her simply… stopped watching. Looked away. She was, for one second, not interesting. One more Vigour point for one second of use.

Alice then used each of the skills again, getting the feel of the on-off, before using them both at once, noting that combining them would cost two points per second and give her something that felt a little bit like invisibility as the small birds around completely ignored her even when she went right next to them. After that, she took a moment of rest, and took out the food from her bag. The loaf was plain, but even a few bites made her feel better. As she ate, she looked over her Attributes.

Attributes Vigour Lv. 3 (11/30) Acuity Lv. 6 (55/60) Alice pursed her lips. Active skills were very useful, but they cost too much. The fact of the matter was that her Vigour was embarrassingly low. If she was in the wrong place and the only option was to [Hide], she'd only manage to do so for thirty seconds at most before she keeled over and died or whatever happened when Vigour reached zero. She needed to find a way to increase Vigour and quickly. Considering the definition… Vigour Lv.

3 (11/30) Physical capacity. Stamina, endurance, life force. Vigour depletes under physical stress and active skill use, and recovers with rest and treatment. … the only thing she could think of was physical exercise. There had to be a better way, some shortcut, however. While Alice would admit to not enjoying working out for its own sake, her main concern was her deep belief that this world definitely did not consider the peak of human condition to be an Olympic athlete.

There were monsters here and a System with levels! Humans definitely had some way of training their bodies for supernatural threats, and that meant enhanced strength and dexterity, beyond normal means. She just couldn't figure out how… For now, she better focus on training her skills. She'd develop a regular exercise regimen to at least bring her Vigour up to the same level as Acuity, within normal human ability, at some later time, when she hadn't just wasted a bunch of Vigour on playing with active skills.

But passive skills had their own problems. In contrast to the former, passive skills cost little, but their use often just relied on Alice's own abilities and did not result in any great changes. She looked at her status screen, and kept thinking. Her highest skill was Lv. 4… Perhaps, if she leveled a skill up to Lv. 20 or thereabout, she would notice a greater difference in the applicability of passive skills. She looked back at Vigour. She had only gained two points from snacking and the short rest.

Testing passive skills it was. Alice spent the next stretch of time primarily on [Observe] as she picked up strawberries and some flowers here and there, giving her a couple of levels on [Forage] as well. It must have been something like two hours before she had to pause for a rest again. She began massaging her temples, for she had one terrible headache. Skill [Observe] has leveled up. Great, but her Acuity had really suffered for it. And Vigour hadn't recovered much. Attributes Vigour Lv. 3 (15/30) Acuity Lv.

6 (34/60) Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. She had only reached [Observe] Lv. 7 and [Forage] Lv. 3, and each time she leveled a skill up, it was harder to progress further. The more interesting news though was a different notification. Progression threshold met. You have leveled up! She was now Level 4. One level.

From approximately three hours of deliberate skill practice, active and passive, standing in a marsh saying words out loud like an idiot or giving herself bruises and migraines. Even worse, she didn't know if this level up was as a result of the cumulative effort of the past few days, which included at least one encounter with a demon. Alice knew she sounded pessimistic. This was probably great news for a person of this world.

The System had explained that the vast majority of the population stayed within the Ignota rank and thus did not go above Lv. 20. Whereas she had only been in this world for a week and was already Lv. 4. But here was the issue: Alice was not one of the people of this world. She was an [Anathema (Alien)], and even worse, a [Chosen One].

Whenever she read that title, the only thoughts in her head were of anime protagonists having to go through extremely fucked up things, coming face to face with death basically every other episode. And harems. In her more hilarious moments, she asked the System if there was a harem out there waiting for her to save them from their lonely misery. The System never responded, of course.

Regardless, trauma was not fun, and Alice had yet to process her death and murder, she was not excited to face even more of those any time soon. [Threat Detection] – Passive. She immediately stopped massaging her temples and froze. Alice wasn't sure if this was due to her higher level skill, but she could tell quite clearly there was something watching her maliciously at two o'clock. It wasn't even noon yet, when something found her, she thought wryly.

The candle lantern was hooked to the basket handle, but the sun had come out, giving her a somewhat clear view despite the thin mist covering the marsh. She really wanted to reach for a weapon, but unfortunately, the knife was at the bottom of the basket wrapped in its cloth, and the basket itself was on her left and behind her. Alice shifted slowly, quietly, reaching backwards into the basket, and got the knife from the bottom of it with her left. She kept her eyes forward.

She looked for what had triggered her [Threat Detection]. There. Twenty feet away. Low ground, thick stems, the kind of cluster she now recognized by shape after a whole morning of observation. It had not moved yet, which meant either it was waiting or it hadn't committed to an attack. Alice made the mistake of meeting its eyes by accident through the foliage. It moved. It came through the reeds low and fast and she got her first proper look at it as it cleared the stems into the open grass.

It was roughly the size of a large canine but built closer to the ground. Dark matted fur, wet from the marsh, clung flat to a body that seemed mostly made of shoulder and jaw. Long fingers, too long for the limbs they were attached to, spread wide as it ran. Its eyes were amber and very focused and they were pointed directly at her throat. This… beast was too different from the demons she had encountered so far. It did not feel absent and present at once, or look shapeless in any way. This was just an animal.

A weird-fucking-animal that was running at her full speed with its mouth open. You have encountered a [Lesser Boggart]. Too little, too late, you imbecilic System, she thought and swung the basket. It ducked. Actually ducked, dropping its head in mid-sprint, and the basket went over it and she had a half second of being completely off-balance before it hit her left shin with its shoulder and she went sideways into the grass. She landed badly. Got her arm under her.

The Boggart had overshot and was already turning, fast and with no hesitation. She scrambled up before it finished the arc because staying on the ground seemed like a terrible idea. Wait, where was the knife? Had she dropped it?! As she panicked, it came in lower this time. She gathered her wits about her and didn't swing. She stepped hard to the right instead and brought the basket down as it passed, and this time the rim caught it across the back of its neck with a sound like hitting packed wet earth.

The thing stumbled. Not much, just two steps, a slight drop of the shoulder, but it stumbled. She opened the lantern and held it toward the creature. It did not care. It tracked her eyes and gathered itself and came again, completely indifferent to the flame. Right. She hadn't assumed it would be scared of the light like the demons, but had thought fire was scary for most animals. She had been wrong. Alice regripped the lantern and spotted the gleam of her knife at her feet at the same time. But there was no time.

The Boggart launched from four feet out and she moved left and drove the lantern down in a short arc, not aiming anywhere specific, just into the mass of it. It connected. The Boggart screamed. It was high, sharp, and completely unlike any sound she'd been expecting from something that size. It then wrenched itself sideways hard enough to make her lose her balance and step back. It went three feet before it slowed. It seemed to be breathing deeply. Why did she smell something burning?

Before she could clear up her thoughts, the Boggart growled low and rushed at her. Alice fell back from the strength alone but managed to hit it with the lantern once, twice on its face before it could tear out her throat. It screamed and thrashed, seeming almost crazed as it scratched and grabbed at her. Alice was using the lantern as a shield at this point, knowing her hands were not much defense at all, when she noticed its skin burn upon contact. Not because of the flame. But the casing.

She didn't know where she got the strength but as it pulled back from her body in pain, she followed it, leaning up, and drove the lantern down with everything she had. At some point, it stopped moving, and so did she. She lay back listlessly on the ground, its heavy weight on her legs and the smell of burning flesh in her nostrils. Thirty seconds. It did not get up. Alice felt almost frozen as nausea built up. She pushed it off herself and moved backwards until she no longer felt like vomiting.

[Lesser Boggart] killed. Combat event logged. Main Quest: [Alice's Adventures in Wonderland] advanced.

Progression threshold met. You have leveled up!

Skill created: [Strike] She breathed deeply for a few minutes in silence. She slowly stood up, her arms and legs all scratched up and soon-to-be bruised. She walked to where last she had seen the knife and picked it up carefully, holding it with too strong a grip and then looked at the body. The demons did not have any bodies left after dispersing. As Alice looked at this one, she was not quite sure how she felt.