CHAPTER 3

  //You killed a monster, your aura got stronger.//

  The first thing Alice saw when she woke up was this text. 'What is this?' She closed her eyes to get rid of the message in front of him, but it caused these letters to come to her mind more clearly. When she looked more carefully, she realized that the message appeared in her mind, not in front of her.

  ' Is this system, Like the ones in novels!? 'Let's calm down' she though giddily. ''H-hello system are you there? She waited for a while, but when there was no answer said, "I have a lot of questions, can you speak?" She tried to ask politely and waited again.

  After a while, Alice said with disappointment, "I shouldn't have expected too much." She tried to stand up and felt a sting in her left leg and sat down again. 'Shit I totally forgot about this' she thought and looked at her leg. The wound looked much better than before she fainted.

  'Do wounds start to heal so quickly? ' No, right?' Alice wondered if she had been unconscious for a few days and touched the wound on her face. 'Hsss' was still quite painful but it was already starting to close.

  She looked around and found the creature's body. 'There's still blood being shed from this thing, it can't have been that long,' she stated.

  Than stood up, using her good leg, and tried to tear off the bottom of the tank top she was wearing.

  When she couldn't tear it off picked up a stone from the ground, approached the creature's body, bowed down in front of it and said to herself ‘'You do what you gotta do'’ and set to work to remove the sharp parts at the ends of its tentacles. After struggling for a while, she took out two spikes, ripped the top she was wearing and tied it tightly over the injured area of ??her leg. "These might come in handy later," she said, looking at the spikes in her hand, and tucked them into her trousers.

  She stepped on the ground with her injured leg, it felt better than before

  Alice looked around for something she could use as a stick. 'It would help me while walking and if I could attach the sharp end to his head, I would have a spear with which I can protect myself.'

  She looked around and caught sight of the high cliff a little further away. She went towards it and climbed on it with the help of her stick. Everywhere was rocky and hard soil. Her aim was to see a green area and head towards it.

  After walking aimlessly for a while, small trees began to appear in the distance and this excited Alice. 'If the trees grow as I move in this direction, there may be a water source or even a settlement nearby.’ she thought and thanked her high school geography teacher sincerely.

  This newfound sense of direction and purpose energized her and she continued to move forward. After some walking, Alice decided to rest for a while under a small tree. Because the weather was quite hot and it was quite rare to find a place with shade. She sat down slowly under the tree. 'I wonder what Mum and Jessie are doing. I hope my disappearance won't affect them too badly. 'I must do my best to meet them again.' she said sadly but determined.

  She focused on the sentence that appeared in her mind and noticed that the words were starting to become clear again.

  // You killed 1 monster, your aura got stronger.//

  'When I wasn't thinking about it while traveling, it disappeared, but when I thought about it, it appeared again' she thought and tried to clear her mind. 'Oh it worked' the texts had disappeared again. Alice closed her eyes and focused as much as she could.

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  'Stats'... 'Skills'... 'System'... 'Fuck, nothing is happening.'

  Just as she was about to go further, she saw movement in a dry bush in the distance and immediately stood up and hid behind the tree. After observing the bush for a while, when there was no movement, she said, "Rest time is over" and started walking.

  As she progressed, she noticed that the environment began to change slightly, more bushes began to appear, and the desert-like lands she had first found herself in became less and less dry. 'I'm on the right track' Alice thought with excitement because she was slowly starting to feel thirst and hunger. 'I hope I can at least find a puddle' and continued walking, accelerating her steps. As she was running, suddenly heard a rustle and quickly turned in that direction.

  There was movement in the distant bush. "Am I being followed?" she said nervously, took a deep breath and continued walking as if nothing had happened, but all her attention was on the bush where the rustling came from. She started to move quickly towards a large tree she saw ahead and hid behind it and began to watch the bush.

  After remaining motionless for a while, a creature similar to the octopus-like creature she had killed before appeared from behind the bush and began to look around. 'So it was you who followed me' tought Alice somewhat relieved. 'I beat it before, I can beat it now, I know his weakness and his attack pattern' she instilled self-confidence. Alice gripped the stick in her left hand tightly, and with her other hand she grasped the sharp spike she had taken from the previous creature. "Let's do this," she said and came out from behind the tree.

  As soon as Alice came out, the creature turned towards her and made an ear-shattering sound like skreech and started running towards her. Alice prepared herself, leaned forward a little to keep her balance, and put one foot forward. As soon as the creature approached, it lunged at Alice's leg with one of its tentacles, but Alice was aware of this and immediately stepped back and avoided it.

  However, the creature jumped from the ground using its other tentacles and came towards Alice. The first thing Alice saw was the tentacle right next to her face. Using her reflexes, she immediatelly used the stick in her left hand to protect herself.

  The sharp end of the tentacle entered the stick in her hand and got stuck an inch away from her face. Alice held the stick tightly and prevented the creature from pulling its arm back. Just as she was about to attack with the sharp tip in her other hand, the creature wrapped its other two legs around the tree behind Alice and moved to the other side of the tree with the momentum of its jump, and attacked Alice from behind.

  'This one is smarter than the other' thought Alice, but still remained calm and tried to find an opening from which way to attack to the head of the creature. The creature is wrapped two of its tentacles around a tree behind Alice, ‘one tentacle is stuck in the stick in my hand, the other is lunging towards my leg and other two at the tree' she analyzed.

  Alice focused on the creature's remaining two arms that it could attack, and when she felt the other tentacle swinging at her leg, she used the stick in her left hand to lunge at the two free tentacles moving towards her. That changed the direction they came from, albeit slightly. This created an opening for Alice to attack the creature's right side and head. Alice pinched the sharp tip between her two fingers and punched the creature with all her strength, the power in all the creature's tentacles disappeared and the creature collapsed to the ground.

  //You killed 1 monster, your aura got stronger.//

  Alice fell on her ass and began breathing rapidly. 'That was too close' she thought and checked her body to see if she had received any blows. When she saw that there was nothing but minor scratches, she was relieved and laid down on her back and smiled. '’Why did this feel so good?'’

  Alice said to herself and watched the blue sky without moving for a while. 'She focused on the incoming system message and noticed that the new message replaced the old one and the old one disappeared. She couldn't understand how she figured this either.

  ''I feel better than before, less tired and less thirsty.'' she figured. ‘‘I think killing things makes me stronger.’’ She laughed out loud and said, "Somehow I feel so relaxed."

  Alice always found something to get irritated about people when interacting with them. Her tolerance level to things she don’t find plausible was always pretty bad. Sometimes this was even reflected in objects, such as poor door handles. She always kept those irritations to herself because the situation could cause problems at her work or private life.

  She couldn’t have many friends either. The reason she didn't have friends was not because people around her didn't want to spend time with Alice, but because she stayed away from others.

  For Alice, this situation was not something she paid much attention to and she thought that the reason was that she could not express herself sufficiently. But now she felt better than ever because she could take out all her stress and anger on these creatures and plus, it made her even stronger. In fact, she knew that if she could not find food and water, she would have to slaughter these creatures in order to survive.

  ‘At least until I find people or a settlement.’ After resting and taking control of her breathing for a while, she stood up and said, "Adventure time," with a grin. The tank top she was wearing was stained with blood and had tears all over it. Her pants were starting to look more like shorts than pants. 'At least I wore black so the dirt would be less visible' she said without really caring. But what disturbed her most was the dried blood and dirt in her hair and body. 'I need water to at least clean myself' she thought.

  Alice moved towards the creature's body and realized that the stick in her hand was about to break in half. After applying some force and breaking the stick in two, she looked at the sharp points at the end of a creature's tentacles and then looked at the short pieces of wood in her hand, which were now two.' After all, I don't need it to walk anymore’ she thought and took the sharp tip she had removed from the previous creature and set to work to remove the new ones.

  After some effort, she now had four spikes in her hand. Alice inserted these sharp ends into the broken sides of the sticks. The ones in her hands looked like two arrows, about elbow length. She held it in both hands and started swinging it randomly. 'It feels good' she thought and couldn't wait to use her new weapons and continued walking towards the green wooded area in the distance.

  However, there was now a new emotion in her gaze; anticipation.