Chương 2: Waking Up as a Rock?!

Chapter Two Waking Up as a Rock?! The world was a pleasant green. Tall oaks erupted out from the earth. Bushes burdened with innumerable berries dotted the forest floor. The bright sun twinkled across a lake's calm surface.

"What... What the...?" Alice felt as though she had just stumbled off of a malfunctioning merry-go-round. Her thoughts twisted and tumbled in a confused jumble. She tried to scratch her head... but nothing happened. She tried to blink... but nothing changed. She tried to turn left or right... but the world remained a static shot of the tranquil forest. She could not move. It was as if she was watching the scenery through a high-definition security camera, the angles fixed and steady.

"Oh." The confused rumble of her thoughts started to calm, and she remembered the truck. The trucks, rather. And there had been The Voice and the sea of endless black. She remembered the car door, as well, and...

"I died." A strange sound filled the air whenever she spoke, though she was reluctant to even call it a sound. She could feel the words like the rumble of an earthquake. A very tiny earthquake. Alice noticed the rock then. It was not a particularly large rock, though she would have had to pick it up with both hands. It was not particularly pretty or remarkable either. It was just a rock, and the unusual cone of her vision seemed to be centered around it.

"Is that... me?" She remembered her conversation with The Voice then. Not an eagle or a shark.

"A rock. I asked her to turn me into a rock." The cone of her vision extended ten feet in every direction from the rock. She tried to lift her arms and legs, but the rock did not move. She tried to shake her butt and then her head, but the rock continued to bathe in the sun without even a tremor. She whispered and shouted. She tried to whistle, though she had never learned how. It did not seem to matter.

All her shouting and whispering produced was the faintest rumble, a noise scarcely more noticeable than the footsteps of an ant.

"Huh. I'm really a rock." She felt surprisingly calm. Unable to move. Unable to speak. Unable to do... anything. And yet she felt perfectly content. She supposed being calm went hand in hand with being a rock. It also helped that she was in such an idyllic forest. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"That was nice of them," Alice said as she basked in the warm glow of the sun. The Voice could have just as easily plopped her down on top of a mountain. Or underneath one.

"They must have been some sort of... god." Once more she was surprised at how calm she felt. She had died and woken up as a rock. If she knew her isekai, and she had read half a hundred such stories online, this must be another world.

"And if this is isekai, does that mean there is some kind of... system? Would it even work for- " Name: Alice Merryweather Race: Ordinary Rock Class: N/A Alice blinked in surprise, or at least she would have if she had eyes. A semi-transparent screen had appeared in front of her CCTV-like cone of vision. Level: 1 STR: 0 AGI: 0 VIT: 0 END: 10 PER: 0 INT: 0 WIL: 0"Huh," Alice said as she continued to review the unusual screen.

"That's a lot of zeroes. I guess those are my stats...?" Her nonexistent eyes scrolled down the semi-transparent screen, and still more text appeared. Active Skills God Sense (Rank X): You need not see n or hear with the feeble eye or ear. The world and all its secrets reveal themselves to you without restraint or restriction. Passive Skills Geological Patience (Rank X): Man marks his days by the ris e and fall of the sun, but not you. The rise and fall of mountains is your calendar.

You are content to wait and watch as the world transforms around you. Geological Memory (Rank X): The mortal mind sees and forgets. The earth, however, remembers. That which you have seen shall always remain untarnished within your mind's eye. Alice read the three skills over and over. She had been half joking about isekai and systems, but unless this was all some sort of hallucination...

"Wait a minute." Her eyes glanced back at her pitiful stats.

"Level 1? Does that mean rocks can level up in this world?" She could not move, however. She could not even speak. How was she supposed to level up if she couldn't even challenge an ant to a fight? She knew in some of the stories she had read there were passive sources of experience. Daily log-in bonuses and other convenient mechanics. Would it be the same in this world? She looked at her skills and stats once more... and then shrugged.

"Do I even need to level up?" For the first time in so very, very long, Alice felt... content. Rather than worry about gaining experience, she shook the stat screen from her CCTV vision and simply watched the forest. Birds appeared and sang their happy little melodies. A fluffy rabbit hopped over her rocky head and lapped up water from the lake. Time swept past her like a tranquil current. The sun fell and then rose once more.

It had to be her [Geological Patience] skill, but Alice felt very happy simply doing nothing for days at a time. She likely would have gone insane if Mom had forced her to sit still in a chair and watch the grass grow for even an hour, but here... Alice could have happily watched the birds and the bees for the rest of eternity. But on the fifteenth day of her reincarnation as a rock... a harbinger of chaos descended on the lake. The Girl appeared.