Alice woke up from a very restless and painful night. Her mostly boiled skin was stuck to the bandages by a foul smelling pus that had leaked into her sleeping bag.
Painfully dragging her battered body out of bed, Alice quickly rinsed herself with water she made. She then proceeded to get her textbook and read the section on biology and it’s magical applications.
After reading through a few sections, Alice decided to eat before she tried any healing magic. She had learned that her body would fix itself on its own, using pritine?-or something like that- from the meat she ate. But that would need lots of meat and lots of time. She was definitely forgetting a few steps, but that was the basic idea of it. Alice took the shoddily butchered wolf and skewered sizeable chunks of it over an open flame in the fire pit. She was very careful to keep it far enough away that it would cook all the way through but not burn. Alice was also smoke tanning the wolves pelt to replace her torn and ripped clothing, every time she looked at it she desperately prayed to the goddess for luck. She had learned enough of everything from her mom and dad to survive in a situation like this, but not enough to thrive. But she would get there eventually.
Alice waited patiently for the slowly browning chunks of wolf to cook, the slowly sizzling crisp forming on them was too mouthwatering for her to resist. Eventually they first skewer was done and Alice sunk her teeth into the chewy meat. Alice made short work of the first meat she had eaten in weeks. It was chewy and bland and not not as good as she made it out to be, but Alice was hungry and desperate, and that was the best seasoning you could ever have. Alice ate the skewers until she was full to bursting. Having gotten carried away, Alice sat there, waiting for the meat to digest. As she sat silently, her thoughts began to wander.
Why do the wolves only ever move in groups of three and five? Why are wolves the only predators I’ve seen so far? I wonder what level they were? With that last thought, Alice was reminded of the system. She remembered how excited she was about it at first, before she realised just how … bland and forgettable it was. Alice wondered why it even existed when all it did was tell you things you already knew. Alice knew she was a 10 year old human girl, she knew she could survive decently well in the woods and she knew what skills she had before she checked. The only thing she supposed it was good for was telling you about your stats, since it was hard to tell when they went up.
Alice opened her status to see if it had changed since then.
Name: Alice
Level: 11
Race: Human(Age:10)
Titles:
Mana:100%
Vitality: 20
Endurance: 42
Speed: 28
Strength: 30
Wisdom: 28
Passive skills: [Navigation: Lv3], [Survival skills(Forest): Lvl 5], [Bow proficiency: lvl0.5], [All Magic proficiency: Lvl 2]
Active Skills:[Basic Identification: Lvl 2]
Divine skills:[Protection Of Fate], [Fate Vision(minor)], [Deus ex Machina], [Flames of Vengeance]
Alice was pleasantly surprised at her much higher attribute values. She was considerably less pleased however, by the lopsidedness of her stats. Endurance being her highest made sense considering how much damage and fatigue she had to endure on a daily basis. But strength being her second highest made no sense considering her fragile frame. Her speed and wisdom didn’t bother her though, she was just happy they went up at all. Alice vowed to equalise her stats, one way or another. It was then that she noticed her endurance drop immediately down to 30 while her other stats slowly rose up to thirty at a rate of around 1 point every 10 seconds. After about a minute and a half, all of her stats lay at exactly 30.
Looking at her skills, Alice was pleased to see all of them had gone up, except for [Bow proficiency]. It had actually gone down in level, probably because she hadn’t as much as touched a bow in the past few weeks. She had also gained the [All Magic proficiency] skill, that was kinda cool. Alice did wish it could help her with her healing magic though.
Just then, a visible system prompt appeared before her eyes.
The system offers its blessing.
Accept TAC Deny
The blue semi translucent window floated in front of her, patiently waiting for her answer. Alice couldn’t help but consider the offer quite odd. She hadn’t needed to consent to the protection of fate after all. She also didn’t know what a TAC was, which made her many times more suspicious. As she thought this, the floating window highlighted TAC and opened another window in front of the first.
Terms And Conditions are statements you must agree to in order to use the service provided.
After she read it, the window closed itself and went back to waiting for her answer. Now curious, Alice opened up the Terms and Conditions. Alice was immediately assaulted by about ten windows, covered in text on both sides filled with hard to read language in a tiny print size. Alice was tempted to just accept the blessing to get out of reading all the gibberish in front of her, but she restrained herself and thought about it for a moment, coming to a simple conclusion. What kind of respectable service needed her to agree to so many things to make use of it, all while making it incredibly difficult for her to realise what she was agreeing to. Her spirits sank as she was confronted by the fact she would need to read the entire document.
Alice banished the windows with the intention to read them later, but instead of vanishing as she had expected, they shrunk down into the corner of her vision, always beckoning her to read them. That’s going to be annoying. She thought.
Alice decided to put this system nonsense behind her for a bit and go back to healing her burns. Alice skimmed the textbook section on healing magic to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything important. She then thought of a short incantation while imagining herself ordering the tiny people inside of her to fix her quicker. She gathered her mana outside herself, then she layered it onto her burns like a coat of aloe vera, she then said her brilliantly thought up chant.
“With nimble hands and skilful speed, clear the debris and make wounds clean. With dexterous hands and unending supplies, make pain numb and new skin spry. Marked with nothing but your great skill, my humble orders shall be our spell!”
Her incantation didn’t need to be a poem and she didn’t need to be a queen, she did this however, because it was fun. And she believed, fun was half the magic. Putting thought into the incantation and image behind the magic made it stronger either way, so her having fun did in fact help her out.
The coat of mana on her started vibrating wildly and shining a faint gold. It let out a faint hum and her skin started to tingle.After a moment, the magic settled down and seeped into her skin. In the next moment, Alice fell over, unable to move or feel the areas the mana had touched. She watched, half in awe and half in panic, as her mana reserves were immediately depleted. Her burns turned from their reddish brown colour, to a pale, almost reflective white. The skin then slowly gained its colour back, looking like nothing more than ordinary skin. Everything from the pores to the microscopic hairs were recreated, there was quite literally no way to notice she had been burned before.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
With a tingling sensation, like pins and needles all over her, Alice regained feeling in her body. With her feeling returned to her, Alice felt bad, like she had done something she wasn’t supposed to, a foreboding feeling of dread and terror assailed her. She felt incredibly hungry, horribly sick and indescribably exhausted. Alice resisted the urge to pass out, but ultimately failed, falling into a deep sleep.
Upon waking up, Alice could see about ten different floating windows in front of her face.
For spending three hours analysing the Terms and Conditions, you have gained the achievement [Born Skeptic]!
For spending over two hours passed out due to your own actions, you have gained the achievements [Accident Prone] and [Unlucky]!
For surviving over two hours in a vulnerable position whilst in a dangerous situation, you have gained the achievements [Survivalist] and [Lucky]!
For having an achievement related to the goddess you worship, you have gained the achievement [Child of the Goddess]!
For having two contradictory achievements, you have gained the achievement [Melting Pot]!
For causing the tears of a goddess, you have gained the achievements [Pitied by the Goddess] and [Loved by the Goddess]!
For having three achievements related to the goddess you worship, you have gained the achievement [Divine Love]!
For having ten achievements without accepting the system’s blessing, you have gained the achievement [Dedicated, or Lucky?] and the divine skills [Protection of the System], [Artificial Active skill] and [Timeless Skills]!
For casting a spell using your mana core, you have gained the achievement [Ambitious Spell caster]!
For perfectly healing a wound that would have left lifelong scars, you have gained the achievement [Masterful Healer]!
Alice’s eyes hurt from looking at the long list of glowing panels, but at least they explained what had happened to her. It seemed the healing spell had been too large of a burden on her mana reserves and had eaten into her mana core. Knocking her out and causing a menagerie of side effects.
Alice called upon her status to look at her mana but instead of the normal status sheet she was used to, A translucent blue window appeared.
Mana: -469%
Mana Recovery: 5% per hour
Time till full capacity: 4.1 days
Due to the reconstruction of your mana core, mana recovers at one fifth its normal speed.
That was a massive problem.
That meant no magic or magic practice for four entire days. That also extended to no hunting for four days. Alice looked mournfully at the wolf meat. Without magic she had no method of preserving it, she would have to eat it all by tomorrow morning at latest. The only things she could do now were studying that stupidly dense textbook and reading ten page documents. Definitely sounded like a good time.
To drag her mind away from the bleakness of her situation, Alice asked the new and improved system for definitions of new terms.
Achievements are an acknowledgment of your actions by the system, normally carrying beneficial effects.
They are purely cosmetic until either the blessing or protection of the system are acquired.
[Protection of the System] provides an Interface update and makes the system more user friendly. Unlike the [Blessing of the System], this skill does not allow the user to be strengthened through the system skills, it does however, allow the user to sacrifice levels to create Active skills.
Divine Protections signify that a divine being has you in their sights. Divine protections normally come attached with skills related to that divine being, allowing you to borrow their strength.
Achievement and skill effects:
[Born Skeptic] - makes you slightly more difficult to deceive. [Accident Prone] - makes unwanted events that place you into danger more common, but makes them less likely to cause you harm [Unlucky] - Causes unlucky events to happen more frequently, but reduces the severity of bad luck. [Survivalist] - Slightly increases odds of survival in dangerous situations [Lucky] - Causes lucky events to happen less frequently, but increases the magnitude of lucky events. [Child of the Goddess], [Pitied by the Goddess], [Loved by the Goddess]- Increases your affinity with the goddess.
[Melting Pot] - Slightly decreases requirements for new achievements. Allows for synergy between contradictory achievements. [Divine Love] - Deepens your connection with the divine in question. Allows them more influence over you. [Dedicated, or Lucky?] - Purely cosmetic. [Timeless Skills] - Prevents the deterioration of skills. Makes skills slightly harder to level up. [Artificial Active Skill] - Allows the sacrifice of levels and stat points to create active skills. [Ambitious Spell Caster] - Increases mana capacity. [Masterful Healer] - Provides a bonus to magic cast with the intent to heal.