Chapter Twelve: Snacks

A squeal escaped Kaltyr's lips.

"Yeeesss!"

-General Skills-

Magic Sense Lvl: 2

Small Projectile Throwing Arts Lvl: 2

Fishing Lvl: 1

Body Mana Reinforcement Lvl: 0

Item Mana Infusion Lvl: 0

Small Blade Arts Lvl: 2

"First of all, Small Blades Arts is obviously from fighting with, uh, small blades. Second of all, keeping my Magic Sense active—although I can't really turn it off—paid off! Seems that focusing on the magical layer of the world will quickly level that skill up. Second of all…"

Kaltyr eyed her new skill's level.

"Level 2 with the blades one? Are these levels randomized? I got Fishing at 1 and Magic Sense at 0…" She shook her head. "Nevermind. Doesn't matter. If The System wants to give me more levels, why would I complain?"

She raised her torso with her elbows and glanced around the clearing, noticing the piles of rocks stacked at four separate parts of the area.

"Oh, yeah, that's right…I should check on those."

Feeling the results of her adrenaline fading combined with her body's apparent opposition to mornings, Kaltyr yawned until tears threatened to form, then slowly got to her feet. She lumbered towards the first of the four different plant types she set atop leaves and weighed down with rocks. On the way, her mind couldn't help but follow and continue the string of pessimistic thoughts which she began when she set up the oh-so-advanced toxin detection system.

*What if none of the things were eaten? Wait another day in case the local animals just didn't find them before? What if the local animals just don't like those plants, but none of them are harmful? What if they're harmful to the animals, but not me? What if a poisonous plant looks similar to a safe one and I eat the wrong one? God, I hope none of these are harmful…*

Doubts ran amok in Kaltyr's head, but she did her best to push them aside. She knew she'd never get anything done if she allowed the unknown to distract her from progress. And there was a lot of unknown.

Arriving at the plump, juicy berries whose reflective surfaces almost glowed orange, Kaltyr counted six—nothing had changed. None of them were eaten over the course of the night.

"Well, damn. And they look so tasty, too…" Kaltyr sighed, then moved on. Although the fact that all the berries remained wasn't a good sign, she had only existed in that world a single day. Waiting a few more for the sake of differentiating good food from bad wouldn't hurt.

The girl made her way "east", where she had laid a small pile of seeds she'd found growing in bright blue flowers. The seeds gave her the same something's-wrong-I-can-feel-it feeling that almost everything in Manic seemed to confer upon her. The little, fingernail-sized gray pods were almost cubic in their shape and had what looked like four itty-bitty legs that, when placed atop a hard surface, wiggled around. The sight of the flower seeds moving on their own scared the living shit out of Kaltyr when she first noticed the strange behavior, prompting her to squish one in order to investigate whether it was really a plant.

It was—which only further shook the girl. Somehow, despite apparently not having memories of her life before the previous day, she knew for certain…that plants were not supposed to have that kind of mobility.

"I hate it! Even if it's only a mechanism for the seeds to crawl across the ground in order to spread themselves out—which is likely. It's just so fucking creepy…" She shivered. "Anyway, all but one were eaten." Kaltyr's jaw clenched, and she grumbled through her teeth, "Wonderful. Of all the plants to potentially be toxic, these little shits that were designed by the devil when he was high off his mind have to have the chance of being edible."

She put one hand on her hip and the other on the bridge of her nose as she faced the sky—using the mental conflict that the sight of the scarlet sky produced to wipe her mind of the images she just made herself imagine.

"Next one." She grumbled, making her way to the next stop. "Oh, thank God!"

To Kaltyr's immense relief, the somewhat normal-looking roots she'd placed at the "south" end were mostly gone, merely scraps of the plants left over. The roots were deep red and spindly in shape with dull, thorn-like protrusions covering their every surface. Since the entire edible portions were buried underground, Kaltyr only chanced upon them when her intuition told her that the half-meter tall leaf stalks sticking out of the ground looked suspicious. Her first instinct was to fear them, as she still knew nothing of the beasts that might have inhabited Manic and thought that plant monsters might be listed among them, but soon overcame her initial frightful reaction when she realized that pretty much any of the many thousands of different plants around her could potentially be enemies.

"Lastly…" She made her over to the "west" end. "Damn it."

The dozens of nuts she'd picked from a specific ground-dwelling vine that grew everywhere sat undisturbed.

"That's disappointing. They resemble peanuts, and I could use a PB&J… I think they taste pretty good." Kaltyr crouched beside the pile and picked a nut up, holding it between her fingers as she slowly applied pressure. "The shells aren't even strong, so I doubt that whatever critters found these couldn't break them to get to the seeds within. Just in case…"

In an attempt to lower the total number of variables to her little experiment, Kaltyr very carefully crushed and threw away the shells of half the nuts, leaving the bare seeds to lie alongside the shelled ones.

"Now, if the shells were really a problem, I'll see it in the number of seeds left over tomorrow."

Kaltyr returned to her feet with a satisfied grunt.

"It's really too bad about those berries, but at least I have two more nutrition sources. There's still the chance that I'll get poisoned, but I'll only eat a little bit of the plants at some point and wait for side effects. Not much else I can do."

She shrugged, figuring that she shouldn't worry about the variables she had little control over.

"Enough about these snacks! I need to focus on the main food supply I discovered and stab some more fish. Who knows? Maybe killing them contributes to my level?"

Kaltyr walked to the center of the clearing, where she left behind the black, shiny disc whose surfaces were riddled with carvings of symbols she wondered if she'd ever comprehend. Through her Magic Sense, she could clearly see that within the stone she'd left on the grass was a small pool of mana.

*To think that it'd be so useful.* Kaltyr thought as she bent over to pick up the tool. *Last night I assumed this thing would be some kind of magical weapon to help me slay some beasts, but it's actually way better!*

The girl made her way to the edge of the clearing, where a distinct line was cast by shadows due to how no branches of any surrounding trees seemed to dare grow above the protected zone. Then, with a mental flex of her will, she sent a strand of mana down from her brain into the arm she held the stone with, and with another flex, into the stone.

The next instant, as though lit by a giant lamp from all directions—whatever that was—the shadows of the forest within twenty meters of Kaltyr disappeared. The change, however, was subtle, because the forest's shadows weren't all that deep due to the brightness of the morning sun.

"Which, incidentally, I haven't actually seen yet. Maybe it's hidden behind all these damn trees? Because, I don't see very many clouds…"

Forgetting about the lack of a sun in the sky, Kaltyr turned her attention back to the magical tool within her grip.

*Although everything's a bit weird and disorienting without shadows, this tool might very well be key to my survival here. If I'm forced to fight at night, whether because my safe zone disappeared or I didn't watch the time, I won't be hindered by darkness. Plus, if I ever need an emergency supply of mana, this rock has its own reserve that I can fill up and take from, like a…battery? Not only can I charge it before I have to use it, but I can also use it as I charge it! It may only last a few minutes with its reserve full, but I can just send it a steady supply of mana during emergencies, since I can't find any other uses for 'magic power'—as it was also called in the guidebook.*

Kaltyr's belly filled with butterflies as she held the disc to her chest and smiled, thankful to The System for gifting her such a tool, even if only temporarily.

"Well, it was probably The System who put me here in the first place…" She grumbled, her mood ruined. "Whatever. I need to go slaughter some defenseless fishies."

After testing the magical tool the night before, she'd eaten some more of the fish she first nibbled on. Although she didn't finish it, and had left the other untouched—which she'd fed to an ungrateful bastard of a dog—Kaltyr did come to terms with the fact that those bland, tasteless, unappetizing, and unseasoned fish would likely be what kept her functioning, for the most part.

She turned off the magical tool and stepped into the forest.