Or, trying to, because although Kaltyr found herself mentally exhausted from trying her damnedest to sense the ambient magical essence, she had not been awake for long at all.
“Whatever. I’ll take the sky’s switching of colors as a sign to put my attention elsewhere.”
Some time after the process of unlocking the Magic Sense skill, Kaltyr had found and put away the foldable knife she’d found in her left pocket, but didn’t search the other four cargo pockets which were located along her pants.
“Now’s a good enough time as any.”
Another phrase from her memory that she didn’t quite know she knew until then. Though, the phrase itself didn’t really fit the situation, because Kaltyr really needed to take stock of her belongings as soon as possible for the sake of her survival.
She opened her second right pants pocket.
“A box of matches and a bottle of an unknown liquid.”
Then her second left pants pocket.
“A…rock with carvings on its surface and a spool of wire?”
So on.
“A piece of metal and what looks like a piece of flint.”
And so forth.
“Lastly, a flask and a little plastic baggie containing a white powder.”
Kaltyr stared at the assortment of items she lined up on the grass in front of her.
“So… Some of these are obvious to me—like how the matches are consumable items for starting fires, the flint and metal are another method for making fire by producing sparks, and the flask is for carrying water. But…”
The girl separated the items into two groups determined by whether she fully understood their uses. Then, with her best impression of a detective, Kaltyr gingerly lifted a random item from the pile of stuff she didn’t understand.
“Ah, yes. I can see that this disc-like rock has some sort of magical use, but I currently don’t know how to use magic, so…”
Atop Kaltyr’s palm sat the well-decorated rock covered with thin etches. Its surface was a shiny gray color that reflected a lot of light and the markings carved into it appeared mystical in nature rather than like message, as the symbols and shapes didn’t seem to have any patterns and were all connected to each other by more lines.
“I’ll try casting a spell with it later when I can manipulate mana, or something.”
She stored the gray disc rock back in the pocket she found it in and picked up another item in the same manner she did the rock.
“This appears to be a glass bottle containing a potion…because I have no idea of what this could be. Next!”
A little fearful that the glass could break and the liquid inside explode as a result, she left the bottle on the grass and away from any stones.
“This spool has a flexible metal wire wrapped around it. Wires can be used to tie things together, but, again, I have no clue as to what else it might be useful for.”
The spool returned to her pocket.
“Uh, I’m afraid to open this baggie in case the powder within is some kind of poison.”
She almost put the baggie away to never again see the light of day when she noticed that one of its sides had tiny words printed on it.
“Could these be instructions? It reads, ‘Around thirty grains for a full bag of water. Too few and it won’t be effective. Too many and you might die.’” Kaltyr stared absentmindedly at the words for a few seconds until she hit herself with her third facepalm. “Of course! This is to clean the water I store within the water bag!”
She hadn’t yet considered that the water she could end up drinking out there in the forest required sterilizing, but figured it didn’t matter all too much because she’d remember before taking her first swig. Imagining herself struggling to build a fire to boil her water, Kaltyr was suddenly very thankful for the water sterilizing agent and very carefully stored it away for future use—which she figured wasn’t too long from then.
“That’s all!” Kaltyr clapped her hands together with a smile for the sake of keeping positive. “That’s all the stuff I have on hand for my survival needs—the guidebook for its basic information of this world and ability to keep a written record, the pocketknife for cutting and or stabbing things, the stone with carvings on it for throwing, I guess…the matches, flint, and metal for fire, the bottle of a mysterious liquid for who-the-hell-knows what, the spool of wire for tying things together, and the bag and sterilizing agent for water. All that I need now…”
Kaltyr patted her rumbling belly.
“…is food. Well, of course, I need to find a water source, figure out how to shelter myself from the elements, build a campfire, and sense the damn magical stuff in the air…but I can do those things after finding food.”
The girl joyfully grinned at the thought of building her own little territory equipped with everything she’d need to assist in living off the land—nearly all the fright from the amnesia and survival setting completely gone after she pulled herself together enough to accomplish a few things. Maybe playing this “game” orchestrated by “The System” wasn’t going to be all that bad.
……
“Damn it all! My past self was too naïve!”
Wiping sweat droplets off her forehead, Kaltyr crouched beside a tree, leaning against it to save energy. She wanted to lie down on the soft grass and take a nap, but she was no longer within the clearing that the guidebook labeled as safe. She worried that as soon as she let her guard down, something might jump out at her on its search for its next meal.
However, she had no way of knowing whether anything that dangerous actually prowled in the area, as the only creatures she’d seen were too small to harm her—either itty bitty reptiles, amphibians, bugs, or herbivorous mammals that scurried about when she neared.
“Speaking of a next meal…” Kaltyr sullenly patted one of her bulging cargo pockets, which she had filled with an assortment of seeds, nuts, berries, and some plant roots. Soon after building up the courage to forage for food outside her safe zone, the girl had come across what she thought to be possible food sources in the form of edible plants, but…
“I don’t want to risk my health by gambling with Mother Nature.”
Poison. Just before Kaltyr ate the first berry she found, she remembered that some plants can be harmful to ingest—the same reason she didn’t take her chances with fungi and skirted around them when she saw any, because her instincts warned her of the odds that they might be super toxic.
To Kaltyr, that meant she was left with one option: to hunt and kill one of the furry creatures for their meat. Surely their flesh couldn’t be harmful to consume if cooked.
“I don’t like the sound of having to put down a cute little squirrel or rabbit, and the idea of harvesting and cooking their flesh makes my stomach turn, but…”
All the lass could do was mentally apologize to the cute future critters that would soon become her victims as she steeled her resolve to transform into a predator. She chose a direction facing away from the clearing that she had yet to explore and began her hunt.
……
The sky switched from bright yellow to a deep green, but Kaltyr paid the transition no mind. Her attention was instead focused on her body and the forest floor. The girl creeped forward with utmost care, avoiding dry leaves, sticks, and depressions in the dirt as she carefully scanned the nearby ground, searching for unusual shapes and movement.
Countless bugs and tiny critters ran from her in fright since she began her search for prey, but noticed no viable targets. She’d gotten pretty close to a few tree-dwelling rodents like chipmunks, but they were all too fast and nimble, easily escaping her reach by retreating to the tops of the trees. With how well that went for her, she mostly concentrated on what she could hunt that couldn’t climb—rabbits.
She’d seen a few small mammals like rabbits and weasels, even a herd of deer, but all had spotted her first and successfully fled into thick bushes without giving her any chance at all to chase. Kaltyr contemplated giving up and going hungry for the day after all her failures, but the news about her tools and safe space expiring really put her on edge. She probably wouldn’t survive long without them…especially if the powerful beasts the guidebook alluded to found her.
Kaltyr was just cutting another mark into a nearby tree with her pocketknife to help her better navigate the forest when her body froze and her ears twitched, picking up a high-pitched noise from ahead of her and to the left. Her heart rate immediately began increasing, but she managed to regulate it with rhythmic breathing. She didn’t want to feel her heartbeat in her head because that could potentially affect her odds of catching food.
Slowly, she stalked in the direction the noise came from, until she heard it again and more clearly—definitely an animal’s squeak.
The wind picked up, causing a smile to form on her face, because it blew toward her from where she headed, both preventing her smell and some of the noise she made from giving away her presence.
“Bingo.”
Gathered around what seemed to be a burrow, several brown fluff balls congregated around a few larger furry animals, all munching on vegetation.
None of the rabbits noticed as Kaltyr settled into a pouncing position a few meters away behind a bush, her knife in one hand while the other mimed grabbing one of the animals.
“I hate to think about what’s about to happen,” she thought with a mental shake of her head, “but it’s necessary for my survival.”
She really didn’t want to hurt such innocent-looking creatures, but she also didn’t want to die. To ease her conscience, Kaltyr stimulated her hunger by imagining a pot of rabbit stew boiling over a campfire, the smell of seasoned meat wafting everywhere.
“I just need to catch one adult and I’ll be set for at least two days. Here I go! Five…four…three…two…”
Finished psyching herself up to the challenge, Kaltyr released the tension she had built in her legs, launching herself forward so quickly that all she could hear was air resistance. Consequently, the family of rabbits scattered, all running in different directions…but not before the hunter closed in on one of the adults.
The surrounding vegetation was shaken by the fleeing critters as Kaltyr fell to the ground with one of them in her hand.
“This is it!” She cried in her mind, righting herself and plunging her knife toward the rabbit she captured. Adrenaline and excitement coursed through the girl as she made her final move.
Yet, the rabbit acted much faster. Just as Kaltyr got into a position that allowed her to stab the animal, it sharply turned its head and bit at her hand, sinking its teeth into her flesh.
Screaming, Kaltyr’s grip loosened a bit and the rodent struggled free, escaping.
“DAMN IT!” She shrieked, unwilling to end the hunt there. Quickly gathering herself, she let her wounded hand bleed freely as she gave chase, diving into the shrubbery she last saw the rabbit jump through. The girl still didn’t see her prey on the other side, but pressed forward, sprinting through the dense forest, ducking under branches, leaping over thick roots, and dodging trees.
Such potent anger flowed through Kaltyr at her failure that she ignored reason, uncaring of how she lost her prey’s trail, and just ran, hoping to catch sight of it.
At least, until pain awoke her from her rage-fueled charge.
“S***…” She growled through her teeth, slowing down to catch her breath and inspect the damage to her right hand. Most of her fingers were covered in blood, making for quite the gruesome sight, but it appeared much worse than it actually was. The rabbit’s long front teeth had only punctured less than an inch into the back of her hand and missed all the bones, leaving Kaltyr better off than she expected, but still wounded.
“First the cut on my finger, and now this?!”
The flame of fury within Kaltyr blazed again as she thought about how she was already injured twice on the first day of her dreadful survival “game”. With an enraged grunt, the lass threw her pocketknife, wishing she had something, or someone, to blame for her misfortune.
“Though, I shouldn’t take it out on the knife…it’s an important tool.”
Heaving the heaviest sigh of her life, Kaltyr trudged forward in search of her precious blade. Then, as soon as she finished rifling through the bush her knife landed in, the girl noticed a soft sound with a little more importance to it than the squeaks of the rabbits from before.
“This better be…”
Ears wide open, she ventured forth in search of the sound’s source and noticed that the ground sloped down a little in the direction she headed.
“Yes!”
